hell’s handmaiden

I found this article rather fascinating mostly because I’ve long thought that “our technological and medical advances have removed most of the selection pressures acting upon us”. That such is not the case makes for interesting possibilities.

Human evolution is speeding up. Around 40,000 years ago our genes began to evolve much faster. By 5000 years ago they were evolving 30 to 40 times faster than ever before and it seems highly likely that we continue to evolve at this super speed today.

Not long ago, I did a little piece on homeopathy. That post did not flatter the… ahem… medical science of homeopathy. Not surprisingly, my honesty and integrity were called into question– repeatedly. I was accused of rejecting homeopathy because I don’t understand science and because I have a prejudice against it. I was asked not to kill homeopathy– the blessing to mankind– because of my selfish motive and ignorance. I was accused of not wanting to read the literature and of basing my conclusions on one flawed study. These are all typical first blush reactions from supporters of faith-based and evidence challenged ideologies, hence my lack of surprise.

I’ve been thinking a lot about grade inflation over the past few months, mostly because I am on the front lines of it. That is, I’ve been grading papers– a lot of them. I’ve been through 500 or so pages of freshman, mostly, attempts at writing philosophy… well, let me rephrase that… attempts at thinking for the first time in their short lives. Of course, each student is having thoughts they’ve never had before and each and every one of them thinks these thoughts are original and genius. They are neither.

This piece from Salon has been in my “must get to” pile for a several weeks, though it dates from March ‘07. It has been gnawing on my brain.

I have talked to more than 20 female veterans of the Iraq war in the past few months, interviewing them for up to 10 hours each for a book I am writing on the topic, and every one of them said the danger of rape by other soldiers is so widely recognized in Iraq that their officers routinely told them not to go to the latrines or showers without another woman for protection.

We seem to be eating ourselves alive.

A WorldNetDaily article from March describes the concerns some US religious groups have over a particular piece of ‘hate crime’ legislation. The Bill in question this time around is H.R. 254. The concern is that the legislation “could be used to make criminals of those whose religious faith doesn’t endorse homosexuality” and that it essentially opens the door to a kind of thought policing.