Mass Murder in Afghanistan

The killer who mowed down innocent women and children in Afghanistan has been whisked out of the country to a safe haven in the US. What the hell is with that?
This man walked out of a US military compound onto Afghan soil outside of any military ordered action, brutally killing unarmed non-combatants. This act was outside the context of war and the rules of engagement. The killer removed himself from the jurisdiction of the US military and exposed himself to the laws and justice system of Afghanistan - and he's carted off ultmately to be tried by a US military court! This is outrageous! He should be handed over to Afghan authorities, to be tried under Afghan jurisprudence.
If they condemn him to be drawn and quartered, beheaded, have his eyes ripped out...or whatever...so be it! It'll be hard to feel sorry for him. It will be hard to feel sorry for any accomplices he may have had as well.
Sorry, Bruce, We Take Care of Our Own doesn't cut it here.

When Love Dies

Poem was published in Chiron Review, December 2011, if I recall. Written in 2005 or 6.

When Love Dies

When love dies it’s not like a gunshot to the head

or the heart.

It’s not like the crash of tangled tin and gleaming chrome

of a 4 wheel hack or a silver bullet fallen from the sky.

It’s not like a mortar lobbed into a foxhole or

the glint of a blade and a line of blood along a slit neck

or peeled scalp.

It’s not like a shiv stuck in your stomach to disembowel you

and let your innards fall like rotten fruit onto a stained soil.

It’s not like the whiteout and mushroom cloud of a megaton delivery

from demonic fools

or the rush and rage of flame thrown from flyers over the jungles.

No, it’s not like that.

Love dies slowly and unseen, taking its time, taking its toll,

creeping like a vine in the attic

or a nest of ants diligently working in the walls

or a fungus eating out the insides of an old tree,

and you only realize it’s gone when its already been dead for quite some time

and the glorious once-tree finally falls in the forest

and spills its dust onto the moldy leaves and musty humus below.

Misconceptions

A student recently interviewed me for an English assignment, meant to probe a professional in her field of biology. One of the questions she asked, and my answer, was:

Any common misconceptions about Biology?

Sure there are lots of misconceptions about biology, or aspects of biology. The whole concept of a 'balance of nature' is probably one. It is a steady-state concept, whereas most ecologists and other biologists now accept that ecosystems are dynamic, constantly changing, with outcomes of organismal interactions shifting back and forth. In my own field of evolutionary biology we are constantly faced with misconceptions. A common one might be that organisms do things 'for the good of the species'. This is completely incorrect. Oranisms do things to maximize their individual fitness (survival and reproduction). Period. 

During my time teaching evolution I always began by enumerating some of the misconceptions about this process. I recreate these here.

Common misconceptions about evolution

• Evolution is a process of perfecting organisms.

     -Organisms are rarely perfectly adapted. They are as adapted as they can be in their current environment, given past history.

• Evolution is progressive, striving toward a goal.

     - The history of life is like a bush, not a ladder (leading to humans).

• Evolution is a random process.

     - There are random processes in evolution but natural selection is deterministic, selective.

• Natural selection = evolution.

     - Natural selection is only one mechanism of evolution.

• Organisms change because they “need” to.

     - Mutation is random. If a population has variants that reproduce more than others in a given environment the population will change. 

• Evolution explains the origin of life.

     - Evolution is about organic history. It’s what happened after life began.

•Adaptations are for the good of the species.

     - Adaptations are preserved because individuals that have them reproduce better than those that don’t, not because they perpetuate the species.

• Microevolution and macroevolution are distinct processes.

     - Speciation (formation of new species) and extinction are the only processes that occur above the species level. It's the relative rates of each that determine macroevolutionary patterns.

Rumblings in the Madhouse

Continued rumblings in the madhouse...endless farts from assholes filled with fat heads...the babbling of ten thousand pundits and politicians undergoing reverse development...when will it end?
We've gotten past one bugbear...one of a long line of bugbears...it wouldn't do to go too long without creating another one. Now the bugbear is Iran. The war talk is increasing in volume...the flatulence is filling the empty balloons of the airwaves and internet...perhaps they will pop, smearing shit all over the faces of...people who have read and studied much but learned very little...leastwise how to think...less so how to feel.
When will it end?
Enemies are everywhere...we must threaten and throw down a monstrous stone upon the ground to deafen all who would dare to defy, make them cower in fear of our might...
Well, when a defensive regime is threatened by nuclear powers (such as...), a logical response is to develop comparable defenses. The greatest stimulus to Iranian nuclear weapons may be the threat of military action against them.
When will it end?
In the rooms of power the minds narrow so that they look like upright flatfish, eyes pointed in only one direction.
All may not be hopeless...but I am not heartened.

Delusion and Fantasy on the Fringe

Here in Sacramento a group calling themselves The South Africa Project came out with placards, skinheads and tattoos decrying the 'genocide' of whites in South Africa. Why do this at the Capitol in Sacramento, California, USA, is not clear. A segment of the Occupy movement came and engaged in a bit of violence toward the police who were protecting these people. I was moved to write this letter, which was published in the Bee today, March 2.
:
Re "Two officers injured, three arrested as protesters clash near state Capitol" (Capitol & California, Feb. 28): Lest one take 'the South African Project' seriously, I'd like to affirm that after 8 years living in South Africa I can guarantee that there is no genocide of white South Africans, in any sense. These deluded souls pine for the days of white supremacy and special priviledge, nothing more.
True, South Africans experience considerable violent crime. The vast majority of victims are black.
Also true, the economic purse-strings and bulk of the wealth in South Africa are still in the hands of the white minority - it isn't surprising that those who seek to get something on the quick might target those who have something.
This group's website is sufficient to dissuade oneself of any doubts that they are a racist, anti-semitic, neo-fascist fringe living in a fantasy world, few likely to be South African.
Here we have Republican presidential candidates Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich to worry about...

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/03/01/4299456/mondays-protests.html#storylink=cpy

One Dog Barking

Also in the recent issue of New Contrast. Check it out. It's very South African but hopefully there's a thread that might resonate with others.

One Dog Barking

It was a wild night in the old settler town that sat in a bowl on a hilltop, tipped on the edge of the future. There was singing and screaming and dogs barking and the howls of people whose gender or race or age could not be discerned. The arrogant accelerations of excessively loud engines ripped asphalt off the streets and the pop of what might have been guns punctured the night.

            It was a routine night for me.

            All day long some guy down at the petrol station had been singing, in a guttural and broken voice a song of only his imagination, while random hooters popped the air. He had stopped for a few hours and then begun again. Such endurance amazed me.

            By the time midnight came close there were voices everywhere. They could have been coming from the trees on Hill St. or the belfry up at St. George’s, or a gathering on Raglan Rd., or an event at Rhodes, or just any group of Saturday night people who were both near and far.

            People were partying in their way, as I was in mine.

            I sat there and I thought; ‘I will die, and no one will know my story.’

            And then I thought; ‘Life’s like that.’

            Friday had been an interesting day.

            It all started when I woke up and realized I’d forgotten to pull up the little green latch on the alarm clock. So I was late in getting going. I don’t have to punch a time clock, but it doesn’t look good.

            Of course, that’s part of the problem. The Episcopalian adherence to early to rise, early to bed, ran like a gash through the gut of the life I sought after. It was the dominant paradigm, and it was pathetic, but I confess I had it far better than in all those years of frozen dawns and bare fingers on fire, scraping ice from a broken windshield.

           Within minutes people started to draggle in to see me, as if they’d been hovering in the corridor waiting for my arrival. On any given day I could go for hours without a soul recognizing my existence, but sudden bursts of supplicants penetrated the brief period between lock click and log on.

            I didn’t begrudge any of them for those moments, for it was my job, and unlike the other side of my life this one was a social life. It allowed the other side of my life, and I was grateful for that.

           The stream carried students, staff, salespeople, colleagues, maintenance workers, and various more or less lost souls, some of them plain flotsam and some of them sparks, brilliance in the making. I felt lucky to be in their presence.

            None of them knew where I had come from, or where I was going.

            It was a day much like any other day. I had my day routine and my night routine. It was too damn bad one had to sleep somewhere in between.

            Not that I don’t waste time. I succumb to the enticements of the internet as much as any of my compatriots – for example. The intellectual life is fettered by trying to frame it in filigrees of mahogany or oak.

            So when Jimbo came in, shuffling around a bit, shy as a duiker caught in the lights, I was taken a bit by surprise.

            “I just wanted to thank you for all you’ve done for us this year. It was a good year. I got a lot out of it.”

            “I’m glad to hear it Jimbo. All I really wanted to do was to help you guys out a bit.”

            He thanked me again, and bowed backwards through the door as if he was a wraith.

            I looked out the window at the plane tree that stood out there and which had marked the seasons for me, now in full greenery, with a weaver pulling at a recalcitrant bit of phloem or xylem. Clouds were rolling in and I saw a bolt of lightening split the darkness above the township. I knew the temperature was dropping like a stone into a bottomless well, the typical late afternoon loss of summer or spring that happened in this place.

            And then the building shook; the walls and floors seemed to ripple, and the ripple rolled up my jeans, ran across my thighs, grabbed my gut, slid up my sides and pulled my ears, and finally skitched my scalp. What would make a building rumble so?

            I sat dazed for less than a minute….they were having training manoeuvres up at the Army base. It was not common, and it had never made the house of science shake before.  

            The reality of my leaving gripped me - a warm glove or a cold vise, I wasn’t sure.

           

            By two o’clock in the morning, the aural environment had become softer, and silence was no longer a foreign thing. It was lovely to hear very little at all, and it was so rare a thing that I simply sat and listened, and then listened some more, for quite some time.

            Finally there was only the sound of one dog barking.

            The night was not hopeless.

The Bad Hosts

This poem was published in the December 2011 issue of the South African journal New Contrast. Most people around the world will find it hard to get a hold of this so I don't have a problem posting it here. You can check out some details here:  http://www.newcontrast.net/ 

The Bad Hosts

The bad hosts don’t seem to realize that they are not so special.

Someone new comes into their midst and they sniff around

like dogs

and wonder when they will be approached for entry into the club –

when will the applicant bow before them in order to be allowed to sit

             amongst them?

They’ve created a myth for themselves, and they’ve come to believe it.

There are piles of bad hosts situated across a myriad of loci,

like turds fallen onto a broken sidewalk that stretches from horizon to

             horizon

all believing the myth they’ve created for themselves.

Funny people, those ones.