ARCTIC CRIME WAVE

BANKS BEWARE!

              The notorious Cordova mob trains its new get-away driver!

WE BELONG TO A DISGUSTING SPECIES

Little kids, as they ought to be

Some wise and respected biologist whose name I have forgotten, once said something more or less like “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.”  I wholeheartedly agree. The more I learn about biological processes, the more I am convinced that they are so needlessly complicated and imperfect that they must be the result of random chance operating on a substrate itself constructed of a long chain of random chances.  We (and all life, I guess) are Rube Goldberg contrivances, not the result of expert engineering.  (And, if you don’t know who Rube Goldberg is, look him up.)

So, I take it as axiomatic that species change and sometimes become new species by processes of natural selection.  At this particular juncture natural selection has spewed up Homo sapiens as the dominate species world-wide.  Not only that, but it has (tragically) imbued us with the power to exterminate thousands of other species – something no other dominate species has ever been able to do.  More even than that, it has made us capable of exterminating ourselves, and with climate change, wars, WMDs, over-population, irrational and murderous hatreds between group – and indomitable stupidity – we promise to do just that, and perhaps very soon!

        

Can you tell that I am in a foul mood this morning?

What has put me in this mood is the war in Yemen, specifically images of little children dying of malnutrition.  Little children ought to be happy and healthy, like my great grandchildren (above).  None should ever have to lie on a cot, ribs and arm-bones scarcely covered by skin, a glaze of misery and incomprehension in their eyes – sucking their thumb!  They are innocent, for Christ's sake!  Whatever the economic and geopolitical consequences of this war may be, they cannot, ever, justify torturing little children to death!  I am sure that you agree.

A big part of my problem here is that I don’t know what to do about it – and neither, if you will be honest with yourself. do you.  Yemen’s misery is only one aspect of the frightful mess the Middle East has become.  We (the U.S.) tolerate Saudi Arabia solely because of its huge oil reserves.  If the deserts of Arabia were just barren sand and camel dung we would have nothing but contempt for the Saudis.  Also, the Iranians hate us (for reasons that can be substantially justified historically), and the Saudis hate the Iranians, so we cuddle up to this corrupt, medieval band of Arabian thieves ever more tightly.

For my part I don’t give two hoots in hell about whether the Middle East is all Shia, all Sunni, or half in half, so long as they don’t fight about it.  Also, I would like the Saudis to blow their oil out of a part of their anatomy not designed for that purpose; we can frack our way to petroleum independence, and moreover ought to phase the stuff out, anyway.  And as for Israel, let them fend for themselves - they have shown repeatedly that they can do it, in spades.

And I don’t know what to do about nuclear proliferation.  Maybe MAD will take care of it.  

So, maybe evolution has blundered humanity into a spot where our next step is to render ourselves extinct.  I wouldn't be surprised.  We certainly deserve it.

I am not going to watch TV news tonight.