http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/01/opinion/01judson.html?ex=1136782800&en=6e3a676f53fb66af&ei=5070
Why I'm Happy I Evolved By OLIVIA JUDSON New York Times Op Ed January 1, 2006 IF chimpanzees observed New Year's Day, they would have much to reflect on. In 2005, they joined humans, chickens and mosquitoes, as well as less famous occupants of the planet, on an exclusive but growing list: organisms whose complete genomes have been sequenced. What would they make of this news, I wonder? Perhaps they would resent the genetic evidence that they are related to us. Or perhaps they would, as I do, revel in being part of the immensity of nature and a product of evolution, the same process that gave rise to dinosaurs, bread molds and myriad organisms too wacky to invent. Organisms like the sea slug Elysia chlorotica. This animal not only looks like a leaf, but it also acts like one, making energy from the sun. Its secret? When it eats algae, it extracts the chloroplasts, the tiny entities that plants and algae use to manufacture energy from sunlight, and shunts them into special cells beneath its skin. The chloroplasts continue to function; the slug thus becomes able to live on a diet composed only of sunbeams. Still more fabulous is the bacterium Brocadia anammoxidans. It blithely makes a substance that to most organisms is a lethal poison - namely, hydrazine. That's rocket fuel. And then there's the wasp Cotesia congregata. She injects her eggs into the bodies of caterpillars. As she does so, she also injects a virus that disables the caterpillar's immune system and prevents it from attacking the eggs. When the eggs hatch, the larvae eat the caterpillar alive. It's hard not to have an insatiable interest in organisms like these, to be enthralled by the strangeness, the complexity, the breathtaking variety of nature. Just think: the Indus River dolphin doesn't sleep as you or I do, or indeed as most mammals, for several hours at once. Instead, it takes microsleeps, naps that last for a few seconds, like a driver dozing at the wheel. Or consider this: a few days after its conception, a pig embryo has become a filament that is about a yard long. Or: the single-celled parasite that causes malaria is descended from algae. We know this because it carries within itself the remnants of a chloroplast. It's not that I have a fetish for obscure facts. It's that small facts add up to big pictures. For although Mother Nature's infinite variety seems incomprehensible at first, it is not. The forces of nature are not random; often, they are strongly predictable. For example, if you were to discover a new species and you told me that the male is much bigger than the female, I would tell you what the mating system is likely to be: males fight each other for access to females. Or if you discover that the male's testicles make up a large part of his weight, I can tell you that the females in his species consort with several males at a time. Suppose you find that a particular bacterium lives exclusively in the gullets of leeches and helps them digest blood. Then I can tell you how that bacterium's genome is likely to differ from those of its free- living cousins; among other changes, the genome will be smaller, and it will have lost sets of genes that are helpful for living free but useless for living inside another being. Because a cell is a kind of factory that produces proteins, and because proteins can have a variety of components, some of which are cheaper to synthesize than others, you might expect that proteins that are mass produced are made from cheaper components than proteins that are constructed only occasionally. And you'd be right. The patterns are everywhere. Mammals that feed on ants and termites have typically evolved long, thin noses and long, sticky tongues. A virus that is generally passed from mother to child will tend to make its host less sick than one that readily jumps from one host to another via a cough or a sneeze. When I was in school, I learned none of this. Biology was a subject that seemed as exciting as a clump of cotton wool. It was a dreary exercise in the memorization and regurgitation of apparently unconnected facts. Only later did I learn about evolution and how it transforms biology from that mass of cotton wool into a magnificent tapestry, a tapestry we can contemplate and begin to understand. Some people want to think of humans as the product of a special creation, separate from other living things. I am not among them; I am glad it is not so. I am proud to be part of the riot of nature, to know that the same forces that produced me also produced bees, giant ferns and microbes that live at the bottom of the sea. For me, the knowledge that we evolved is a source of solace and hope. I find it a relief that plagues and cancers and wasp larvae that eat caterpillars alive are the result of the impartial - and comprehensible - forces of evolution rather than the caprices of a deity. More than that, I find that in viewing ourselves as one species out of hundreds of millions, we become more remarkable, not less so. No other animal that I have heard of can live so peaceably in such close quarters with so many individuals that are unrelated. No other animal routinely bothers to help the sick and the dying, or tries to save those hurt in an earthquake or flood. Which is not to say that we are all we might wish to be. But in putting ourselves into our place in nature, in comparing ourselves with other species, we have a real hope of reaching a better understanding, and appreciation, of ourselves. ----------------------------------------------------- Olivia Judson is an evolutionary biologist at Imperial College in London. To subscribe: http://lists.portside.org/mailman/listinfo/portside *** THUNDERHEART by Hunter Bear: 12/30/05 I have never been a great move goer. Some of this may go back to being a Depression child, especially with the limited film fare of those days, but, for whatever complex of reasons, I've always preferred reading -- and writing. [SHANE AND SALT OF THE EARTH were favorites of mine very early on.] Lately, however, relatively house-bound [and restless], I've spent more time in front of our family television and I've seen things I wish I had seen earlier. One of these was CONSPIRACY [2001], which I discussed in a post a year ago http://www.hunterbear.org/reminiscence.htm And another is THUNDERHEART [1992]. Now, almost always when I encounter these on HBO, I see them to the end. When THUNDERHEART initially appeared, many of my University of North Dakota students -- Native, Anglo, and Other -- strongly recommended it. But Eldri and I went to virtually no movie houses and missed it. It was our considerable loss. Finally seeing it on TV several months ago, I realized significant dimensions of it certainly resonate deeply within me. And the family has since given it to me on DVD as one of this year's Christmas gifts. The setting is the Badlands of South Dakota -- obviously depicting the troubled Pine Ridge Oglala Sioux Reservation in and around where much of it was filmed. The cast is rich with Indians. Val Kilmer, himself part-Indian, plays Ray Levoi, a young half-Sioux FBI agent who grew up in a large urban area, and who with his superior, Frank Coutelle [played by Sam Shepard], goes there officially to apprehend an alleged killer, a Native militant who the FBI perceives as "an enemy of the United States." Early on Levoi encounters tribal policeman and astute detective Walter Crow Horse, a man of considerable courage, social conscience and wit, admirably carried by Graham Greene [a Six Nations Oneida and always a special favorite of our younger family members.] Despite outwardly differing cultural backgrounds and perspective, the two men are slowly drawn toward each other. Crow Horse, as with almost all of the Natives in THUNDERHEART, is politely tolerant of Levoi -- but Levoi's personal story unwinds slowly on the "Moccasin Telegraph": a Native father and high steel construction worker of considerable courage himself, who tried to give his son some sense of Sioux culture and identity, but who dies as a result of alcoholism. Some ice is thawed, then broken, much of this due to the kindly reaction and involvement by Grandpa Sam Reaches [Ted Thin Elk] to whom the young agent is brought by Crow Horse. The venerable Elder, obviously aware of deep conflicts not resolved in Levoi, also senses a very special quality in him. It isn't long before Levoi, with help from Crow Horse and implicit suggestion from Grandpa Sam Reaches -- a critic of the corrupt tribal administration -- begins to slowly realize that there may be another agenda, primary and sub rosa, on the part of his FBI superior in close conjunction with the crafty and violent tribal chair, Jack Milton [played by Fred Ward, also part-Indian] who has a legion of gun-waving goons. The nature of this sinister scheme is sharpened specifically by a young, attractive and sharply sensitive school teacher, Maggie Eagle Bear [Sheila Tousey] who has discovered that a major river on the res is being polluted by uranium spill-off. Levoi is drawn, deeply and almost subconsciously, to her. Along the trail, the name of a historic holy man is heard -- Thunderheart, who was among the hundreds of unarmed victims of the United States Army's Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890. In a major juncture, Levoi visits the graveyard at Wounded Knee where these many victims lie buried. On an old stone memorial are carved the names of many of the leading targets of the Army on that horrific day and, as he reads down the list, Levoi notes, in stunned and profoundly empathetic fashion, the name, Thunderheart. And he returns to his vehicle and sitting there, shaken, he falls into a strange sleep. And in that state, he is suddenly running desperately with the other Indians, men and women and children, away from gun-shooting cavalrymen. He and the other Indians die. He tells his "dream" to an astonished, but not really surprised Crow Horse. "That was no dream," his friend tells him. "That was a vision." And he explains to Levoi that that comes only rarely and not to everyone. And by now, increasingly critical of the FBI arrogance he is seeing, coupled with mounting evidence of FBI frameup endeavors, Ray Levoi, drawn powerfully and irreversibly by his Native side and expanding consciousness, quietly crosses the line into the Indian World. By moon-lit night Crow Horse takes him to a special remote area to explore the presence of nefariously and dangerously disturbed uranium -- of which they find plenty of evidence. It's clearly obvious in the add-up that a small handful of self-seekers, including his FBI superior Coutelle and tribal chair Jack Milton and outside entrepreneurs, are planning to secure and "develop" the yellow ore to enrich themselves -- at the expense of the Indian people and the land and the water. Suddenly seeing circling coyotes in the moonlight down in a draw, they investigate further. The coyotes flee, and the two men then see the body of Maggie Eagle Bear -- recently shot -- lying in a shallow grave. They return to a key reservation settlement where the final climactic excitement mounts rapidly. Coutelle and Milton, by now aware of the stance of Levoi and Crow Horse who have just discovered another killing, arrive accompanied by pickups full of armed goons. Pursued, Levoi and Crow Horse flee on obscure roads in Levoi's vehicle while, in a CB radio conversation with his one-time superior, Levoi traps Coutelle into an admission via tape. The flight takes the two into an especially sacred area. The road ends close to a high, cliffy ridge and the Levoi car banks down in a ditch. The two men head on foot toward a complex of small canyons but stop when an armed Coutelle, Milton, and the army of goons all level down on them. In a tense, terse colloquy between Levoi and Coutelle, the latter offers to receive Levoi back into the Fold along with an attractive deal. If Levoi hesitates, it's only for a split second before walking over a few steps and publicly affirming his stance with Crow Horse -- and the People's cause. Guns -- many of them -- are now aimed directly and purposefully at the two. And then, to the sound of traditional singing, many of the People appear over the up close ridges with their own guns -- appropriately aimed. Grandpa Sam Reaches is obviously a major leader in this dramatically timely appearance. The other side wilts. It's clear that the Sun has won. In a few short scenes, before Ray Levoi heads out to publicly expose the uranium schemes, Elder Grandpa Sam Reaches and the young man exchange meaningful gifts in the context of solid relationship. Solid too, are the ties between Levoi and Walter Crow Horse who reminds the now most likely ex-FBI agent that he can always come back to the res. And, with specific reference to the Wounded Knee massacre, he tells Levoi, "You were there, Ray." The Land -- the setting -- is very real. The acting, consistently excellent, is mostly done by Indians. Almost all of the depicted homes and settlements, and many of the vehicles, fit the economically marginal nature of nearly all Indian reservations. The themes are obviously powerful and are handled sensitively and well in authentic fashion: Ray Levoi's ultimately well resolved and not uncommon between-two-worlds socio-cultural identity conflict, and the struggle to preserve the Earth and prevent the desecration of It and The People. The frequent complexities of tribal factionalism -- bureaucracy with hovering outside corporate interests opposed by strong and vital traditionalism with vigorous traditional approaches -- are set forth with accuracy. And Vision -- always rare and usually with great personal meaning: No Indian would ever have any problem with that. HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk www.hunterbear.org Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´ and Ohkwari' Check out our big page on the art and practice of Community Organizing http://www.hunterbear.org/my_combined_community_organizing.htm In our Gray Hole, the ghosts often dance in the junipers and sage, on the game trails, in the tributary canyons with the thick red maples, and on the high windy ridges -- and they dance from within the very essence of our own inner being. They do this especially when the bright night moon shines down on the clean white snow that covers the valley and its surroundings. Then it is as bright as day -- but in an always soft and mysterious and remembering way. [Hunter Bear] _______________________________________________ Rad-Green mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green ------------------------ Yahoo! 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