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Stuck In Traffic
"Current Events, Cultural Phenomena, True Stories"
Issue #31 - November, 1999
Contents:
Explain This Bird:
A look at a very odd bird and a look at two world views on how to
explain it.
Review: Sunshine and Other Forms Of Radiation:
The new CD from Leather Hyman ask's the question, "How sentimental can
a Rock Band Get?"
The Trial Of Bill Gates:
Does Bill Gates deserver what's coming to him? Yes and No.
=======================================
Cultural Phenomena
Explain This Bird
Australia is well known for harboring oddities of the animal kingdom.
Australia is the land of trans-order monotremes like the duck-billed
platypus. Australia is the where kangaroos and wallabies swarm across
the desert regions. It's the land of wombats, who look cute and fuzzy
when they're young and then, almost over night, turn mean, ugly and
grumpy. It's the land of Koala bears, who look cute and fuzzy when
and if you can get them to wake up from their 19 hour a day nap.
Australia is also known for its animal kingdom throw-backs. If the
locals are to be believed, crocodiles rule the river ways. Take one
good look at a crocodile, I mean really look hard into those eyes, and
you can't help but feel you're looking back thousands of years in
time. Australia is a land where feral pigs are considered game sport
because their population is out of control. Wild horses roam the
marshy billabongs where one would never imagine a horse ought to live.
Truly, Australia is the place to be for the weird looking, out of
place, and out of sorts wildlife. But it's not just the physically
weird that inhabit the continent. There are plenty of animals roaming
the country side that look, well, for lack of a better word, "normal,"
but are nonetheless quite bizarre. In fact, some of the most
question-your-grip-on-reality beasts in Australia wouldn't warrant a
second glance if you passed by them.
Dr Seuss Would Be Proud
Take, for example, the orange-footed scrubfowl. Sounds like something
Dr. Seuss would invent doesn't it? Its name has the same cadence and
meter that so many of the whimsical Dr.Seuss creatures have.
The yellow-bellied star sneech
cried Ker-plal-plal-plal
while the Orange-footed scrubfowl.
went screech screech screech
You get the idea. But unlike the whimsical creatures that inhabit the
Seussian universe, the orange-footed scrub fowl, looks quite ordinary.
The orange-footed scrubfowl stands about 16 inches high. It's shaped
pretty much like a chicken, but it has very different colors. In
fact, bird watching sources make a point of warning bird enthusiasts
to be careful not to mistake a feral chicken for the scrubfowl.
Officially, biologists say that the underside of the bird is a dark
slate gray, though the ones I've seen have a definite bluish tinge to
them. Their top-half is a dark brown. The have a distinct, sharp
pointed crown on their head and a beak about the size of a chicken's
but with a little more hook to it on the end. Also like chickens,
they have rather large claw like feet,
The orange-footed scrubfowl inhabits low-lying rain forest areas. It
lives on the ground under the dark canopy of the treetops. It's dark
colors and the low lighting of it's habitat make it almost impossible
to get a good picture of one. But then there's its namesake, those
orange chicken claw like legs that are quite visible even in the low
light of the rain forest.
Like many birds, the orange-footed scrub fowl mates for life and where
you find one, you will almost always find another near by. The wander
through the rain forest scratching in the underbrush looking for
insects, grubs and other stuff to eat. The two birds keep in contact
with each other by calling out to one another so they know where each
other is. The Kuninjku aboriginal name for this bird is Gulguldan,
which some believe is an otomotopaedic attempt at imitating the sound
of these birds. Like chickens, the orange-footed scrubfowl mostly
sticks to the earth, and usually only fly when frightened or being
pursued. Unlike chickens, however, they are quite good fliers.
The Weirdness of Megapodes
So kind of a wild chicken. That doesn't seem like such an out of the
ordinary bird. Certainly not when compared to the other unusual flora
and fauna of Australia. The thing that sets the orange-footed
scrubfowl and the other members of the "Megapodes" family of birds is
how the nest and raise their young.
These birds are not content to build a nest from which they can hatch
and raise their young like other birds do. Instead they use their
large feet to scratch up leaves and twigs and other sorts of litter
from the rain forest floor. In fact they are quite obsessed with
piling up mounds of vegetation. These 16" tall birds can build up
mounds of leaves as high as 3.5 feet tall and up to 12 feet in
diameter. Most biologists believe that the orange-footed scrubfowl
devotes its entire life to the maintenance and upkeep of its mound.
As many of you will realize, a pile of leaves and debris of that size
doesn't just sit there forever. Eventually the material starts to
decompose and start to generate heat. The large mounds that these
birds build eventually turn into big compost heaps in the rain forest.
There's some research to suggest that the orange-footed scrubfowl and
other Megapodes can tell to a fair degree of accuracy just how warm
their compost heap is and there are reports that suggest that these
birds will actually remove litter from the compost heap if it gets too
hot and add litter to the mound to generate more heat if necessary.
This mound building obsession does have a purpose. They don't just do
this for fun. This large compost heap is actually their nest.
Temperatures in a typical mound are at least 90 degrees and are
usually higher. The female digs a burrow in the mound and lays a
single egg, which incubates in the heat of the mound for about 45
days. When the eggs hatch, the newborn birds are completely
independent of their parents and fend for themselves. The
orange-footed scrubfowl is known to mate throughout the year and can
lay eggs every few days.
How? Why? What would possess a bird to build a 3.5 foot mound in the
first place? And how did the orange-footed scrubfowl ever learn that
such a mound would eventually generate its own heat. It's not like it
spontaneously starts generating heat as soon as you pile it up. It
takes a while. And how would the orange-footed scrubfowl even know
that the heat would continue? And what would cause it to lay its eggs
in there? And if by chance, one of these birds from many generations
past did somehow learn to do this, how did it become so common place
that it has become instinctual? The parent birds do not raise their
young. They are independent at birth. So how did this mound building
instinct get started?
The Creationist View
Religion has taken a lot of heat in recent years. And Creationists in
particular have been under heavy pressure to just go ahead and admit
that they're wrong. But faith is their strength and public debate and
argument does little to sway them.
There are two basic tenants of the creationist doctrine. The first
and most controversial tenet is the belief that the Bible is somewhat
accurate in its description of how the world was created and how the
various species of plants and animals came into existence. They more
or less believe that the Lord created heaven, earth, and everything in
between in 7 days. Now, some creationists will argue that the term
"days" is metaphorical and that it wasn't literally 7 days, but they
still hold to the basic principle of creation by divine force.
Set aside, for the moment, the fact that we seem to have good
empirical evidence that the earth and the universe is much much older
than the Bible would have us believe. This is an inconvenient fact
for those who believe the Bible is literal in its story of creation.
But it doesn't phase the "metaphorical" creationists in the least.
But the orange-footed scrubfowl still has to be explained. If the
Lord created this bird, why? Why create a bird that nests in this
way? What's the reason for it? What's its purpose?
Your average creationist will shrug his shoulders at this point and
respond, "The Good Lord had a plan and it's not necessary to explain
it to us." Fair enough. It's not necessary to the creationist world
view to understand these things. In fact, there are lines of
theological argument that argue that these unexplained idiosyncrasies
that seem to keep popping up are proof positive of the existence of
God.
The argument is known as "The Watchmaker Argument." It's an
allegorical argument that goes like this. Suppose you were wandering
in the wilderness and by chance, you found a pocket watch on the
ground. It's bizarrely out of its element. There does not seem to be
a need or purpose for it out here in the wilderness where it does no
one any good. It appears that there is no way it could have
spontaneously come into existence. Therefore, you would have to
conclude that someone made the watch. You might not know anything
about the watchmaker, you might not know why the watchmaker made the
watch or how. But you would nonetheless be confident that there was
in fact a watchmaker. Likewise, one could observer this odd bird
called the orange-footed scrubfowl, decide that there's no way this
bird could have spontaneously become the way it is, and therefore
conclude it must have been created. Created by an unknown force for
unknown reasons. Created by God.
Under the main tenet of creationism then, you don't so much explain
the existence of the orange-footed scrubfowl as you just accept the
existence of it Accept it on faith that there is a purpose, if
mysterious, to all of God's creatures. And the more unusual the
creature, the more likely it is to be proof of the hand of God.
The Evolutionist View
Evolutionists muster a barrage of observations and hypotheses to
explain the orange-footed scrubfowl scientifically. Biologists and
other scientists tend to taxonomize everything into some sort of Grand
Scheme. Kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species. And
at the top of the classification system, perhaps this works out OK.
It's pretty easy to determine the difference between a plant and
animal, between a reptile and a mammal. It turns out that life on
this planet doesn't ever fit nicely into some neat, Aristotelian
classification system. The duck-billed platypus and other monotremes,
for example, can best be described as "sort of a mammal but not
entirely." And even the seemingly obvious cases aren't ever quite so
obvious. Here again, the orange-footed scrubfowl serves as a good
example. Is this bird its own species? Much debate occurs among
biologists at this point. There seems to be some general agreement
that birds who incubate their eggs via heat from decaying vegetable
matter, solar energy, or geothermal heat are all in the same family
called "Megapodes," which from the Latin means "big footed". But
after that, all the biologists disagree. Some biologists claim there
are as many as 17 different species of Megapodes. Others claim there
are as few as three. Why the difference of opinion? Because there
are always minute differences between animals, and one has to decide
if the differences are biologically relevant or mere variation. So
one's breakdown of species is largely based on what you decide is
different enough to be classified differently.
The situation is further complicated by the fact that conservationists
are politically motivated to classify as many different species as
possible because it helps them make claims for protecting the animals'
habitats. For example, suppose there are orange-footed scrubfowl in
the northern end of Australia and yellow-footed scrubfowl on the
southern end of Australia. If one decides that the color of the
bird's legs is not biologically relevant, then there are just one sort
of scrubfowl. If a developer in Northern Australia wants to build a
neighborhood and remove some of the scrubfowl's territory, the
developer can make a valid argument that there is still plenty of
habitat left for the scrubfowl. But if thepainting copyright 1999 by
Denise Goodfellow color of the feet _are_ biologically important, then
the conservationist can respond with, "Sure, we have plenty of
_yellow_-footed scrubfowl, but you're endangering the _orange_-footed
scrubfowl. There are spirited, emotional debates among biologists
about these things, where the pure biologists will reject the
classification of multiple species on the grounds that there is a lack
of taxonomic evidence.
In any case, the Byzantine variety of life on the planet keeps
biologists busy. It also either negates or confirms the notion of
"evolution," depending on how you look at it. This inability to
classify life into nice neat hierarchies means that you can't ever be
sure if a species is evolving from one sort to another or if you've
just had your taxonomy wrong in the first place.
But this natural variation that defies classification is also the very
basis of evolution. As the theory goes, these minute variations among
individuals of a species occasionally give one subgroup of the species
an advantage or disadvantage in its environment meaning that the
subgroup will either die out or flourish. In any event, the overall
composition of the species changes.
Critics of evolution are quick to point out that if this was all there
was to it, then we'd see a "continuuMost evolutionists won't hazard a
guess as to how life got created in the first place. Most will simply
wave their hands and say, "Sparks of Life Happen".m" in the animal
world as they slowly evolve and mutate. Yet the evidence suggests
that this continuum doesn't exist. Instead we see "clusters" of
animals. sharing largely he same traits. We see lots of eight-legged
spiders, for example, but no 9 or 10 legged ones. And this clustering
of traits is what makes our taxonomy of species even possible.
Stephen J. Gould, noted anthropologist and often cited as a "critic"
of evolution, explains this conundrum by introducing the concept of
randomness into the universe. He acknowledges the clustering of
traits among species. He also acknowledges the lack of an
evolutionary continuum. But he believes these are explained by a
natural amount of "inherent randomness" in the cosmos. He cites the
extinction of the dinosaurs as a good example. He will point out the
fact that mammals apparently evolved at approximately the same time as
the dinosaurs. But the dinosaurs dominated and the mammals inhabited
a small, niche corner of the ecosystem. Then Something Happened to
kill the dinosaurs. Best working theory among scientists is that a
huge meteor hit the earth, fundamentally changed the climate for an
extended period of time. Dinosaurs could not survive it, mammals
could. Therefore the mammals became the dominate species.
So by combining inherent randomness with the idea of natural variation
and selection, Gould, and other evolutionists claim to be able to
explain the clustering of species and the lack of an evolutionary
continuum doesn't bother them in the least.
The _origination_ of life is still, distressingly, unexplained. Most
evolutionists won't hazard a guess as to how life got created in the
first place. Most will simply wave their hands and say, "Sparks of
Life Happen". There are some scientists who are working on theories
about how life could have spontaneously evolved from nonlife. But
they're still in the early stages of mustering their arguments and
marshaling their data.
Common Ground?
Most people would agree that there is an intractable conflict between
the evolutionist view of the world and the creationist view. I don't.
If your only knowledge of the conflict is from the nightly news about
school board decisions, it would seem so. But there's more to the
creationist view than just the literal interpretation of the story of
creation.
Also fundamental to the creationist world view is that God is the only
one that can give a creature a soul and that each of God's creatures
is unique. This view is fundamental to Christian theology (as well as
many other religions around the world.) It is so fundamental that, in
fact, it's rarely stated. But if you ask a trained, scholarly
theologian they will carefully note this principle along with the more
well-known tenet about Creation.
It's this tenet of uniqueness that serves as the basis of most human
rights around the world. No you can't lynch that man and hang him
from a tree, because he is unique and equal among God's creatures and
any physical differences you might observe between you and he are
irrelevant in the eyes of the Lord. Therefore lynching him is a Bad
Thing.
Even at the dawn of the age of cloning, the Catholic church has
affirmed its commitment to this. They have already publicly stated
that no matter how your body may have been created, either in the test
tube, cloning, or the good old-fashioned way, only God can give you a
soul and no matter how similar your genes are to someone else, you are
nonetheless unique in the eyes of the Lord.
Isn't it interesting then that the evolutionists base their very
arguments on the notion that natural variations among a species lead
it to evolve and change over time, while a fundamental, if lesser
known, tenet of the creationist world view is that, yes in fact, every
living thing is unique? Is accepting a certain amount of "inherent
randomness" in the universe as a requirement for your view of
evolution so different from accepting that "the Good Lord must have a
plan"? Suddenly the two world views don't seem nearly so antagonistic
to each other.
And where does this leave that bizarre little bird known as the
orange-footed scrubfowl? Is it proof that a Watchmaker exists? Is it
proof of evolution? Perhaps the answer is yes.
=======================================
Review
Sunshine and Other Forms Of Radiation
When the L.A. based rock band, Leather Hyman, put out their first
album, Host Body, they gave you the impression of another hard-rock
wannabe band. They had the energy, they had the volume, they had the
attitude.
But that high-end rock sound couldn't hide the fact that these guys
and gals had a flair for lyrics. Their album actually had a _theme_
for cryin' out loud. When was the last time you heard an up and
coming rock band put out a concept album? And the traditional guitar
and drum sound was kept revealing an odd instrument here and there
that added to the mix. Clearly this band wanted to break free of the
traditional expectations of a rock band.
Well, they separated from their record label and struck out on their
own. What a great era we live in when bands can become their own
producers and promoters! When the late"What a great era we live in
when bands can become their own producers and promoters!"st CD from
Leather Hyman showed up, I couldn't wait to hear what they had done
now that they didn't have to try to conform to the standard rock band
formula. I wasn't disappointed. Leather Hyman's latest CD, Sunshine
and Other Forms Of Radiation, drops the Traditional Rock format and
gets down to the serious business of actually creating music.
Sunshine and other Forms of Radiation is a dreamy, introspective,
album full of moody lyrics, dreamy riffs, exotic sampling, and an
eclectic orchestration.
Total creative freedom of course means taking risks with The Music,
which Leather Hyman has not shied away from on this CD. Of course
taking risks means there are the occasional failures. "Mr. Pierce"
kinda fell flat and there was more than one occasion on this album
when I thought, "Ya know, if they knew just a little bit more about
music, they'd know how to fix this track." But I, for one, am the type
to applaud the occasional failure when I see a band trying, I mean
really trying, to create a mood, make a statement, light a fire.
Leather Hyman deserves applause. Lots of it.
"Ojos Amarillos" is particularly strong track lyrically. Even though
half or more of the lyrics are in Spanish, you can't help but imagine
Heather singing in the middle of a southern California desert singing
sad soulful praises to the night sky and then the song eases into a
long slow base and drum groove supporting a beautiful violin line.
"So Went The Full" probably does the best job of highlighting lead
singer Heather Lockie's voice, which gets downright Kate-Bush-like.
Meanwhile the various "Locus" tracks scattered throughout the album
show that these folks know how to whip up a cacophony of samples that
would make Trent Reznor proud.
Some have said that "So went the Full" and "Deaf in one eye" are the
best tracks on the album. Fine everyone's entitled to their opinion.
But, to my ear, the track that pulls it all together for Leather Hyman
is "From the Sun". On "From The Sun" Leather Hyman shows it's a band
that knows how to use samples, dissonance, noise, and lyrics to build
a sad, beautiful song. There ought to be a law against songs being
that sentimental. In this age of Rock Band du Jour, there are far too
many kids who can't handle strong emotions in music.
=======================================
Current Events
The Trial of Bill Gates
Being a programmer by day and amateur social critic by night, I'm
somewhat obligated to comment on the trial of Microsoft. Keep in
mind, I speak for no one but myself. But I believe that the trial of
Microsoft is a very Bad Thing. And someday, the computer industry is
going to regret it.
The finding of fact recently released by the Judge in the case are
100% on the money. I feared for the worst. The computer industry and
the software industry are complicated businesses and you have to have
an understanding of how the bits and pieces of software interact with
each other to get a feel for the implications of what Microsoft has
done to the market. Furthermore, you've got to understand a bit about
how the software industry is structured to understand the implications
of Microsoft's actions. But the Judge's finding of fact got it all
right. I was amazed.
I won't go into all the details of the Judge's finding, if you're
really interested, then go find the ruling at any computer magazine
web site. But I can't resist the temptation to add fuel to the fire
with my own dig at Microsoft.
The reason I feel the need is that I get furious when Microsoft screws
up and never, ever seems to get any bad press out of it. For example,
the last three major e-mail viruses that have come out, the Melissa
virus, the info.zip virus and the BubbleBoy worm are all due to
exploitations of security flaws in Outlook Express.
In the first two viruses, it was a combination of flaws in the IMAP
protocol and Outlook express that was exploited. And the Microsoft
press releases were quick to point out that any IMAP based e-mail
client was susceptible to this problem. What they didn't say was the
Microsoft is the company that's been pushing for the IMAP protocol
over the tried and true POP3 protocol.
In the most recent case, the problem arose due to a security flaw in
visual basic scripts embedded in web pages that are sent as e-mail.
Now, the Microsoft press machine spread the word that lots of e-mail
programs can display HTML pages with embedded scripts in them. This
is true. But the implication is that all of these programs are
therefore susceptible to the BubbleBoy worm. Not true. Because
Outlook Express is the only e-mail program (to my knowledge) that
supports Visual Basic scripts in e-mail. All the other e-mail
programs I'm aware of support Java script in HTML pages and not Basic.
And so far, Java Script has not had any security flaws found in it.
And it just kills me that thousands and thousands of people lose
millions of hours of time recovering from these viruses and no one
ever even thinks to get mad at Microsoft. They just seem to think
it's something to accept and move on.
There are other examples of Microsoft's lackadaisical attitude toward
security. On Windows NT, due to sloppy design and programming, the
user password file is vulnerable to attack. A group of
semiprofessional security crackers at Lopht Heavy Industries, have
published software that can extract encrypted user account passwords
out of a Windows NT password file in a matter of hours, often in a
matter of minutes. (Hint: Make your passwords on Windows systems
long. As I recall, it's best if they are 14 characters or over).
Furthermore, the same group of crackers have published a program that
can remotely retrieve this sensitive file from a remote machine
without you even knowing it. Now, I believe that you have to have
access to the same physical LAN segment to do this retrieval. And it
I also think it may require getting a small and unobtrusive piece of
software installed on the target machine. But even so, the real
weakness is in the password file.
These security flaws were publicized quite well. The story even made
it to CNN. And yet there was no hue and cry of outrage from people
who have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars on NT on the
promise that it's a secure "corporate computing platform."
These are the things that make me so mad I could just spit. Yeah,
every thing the Judge published is true. But his findings of fact
just covered a few of my many grievances against Microsoft.
And still I find it regrettable that the government decided to go
after Microsoft. It sets a bad precedent in the computer industry.
And in the long run, I think Microsoft can't keep it's stranglehold on
the industry anyway. They simply have not been able to take over the
Internet world like they took over they consumer market. Certainly in
the Internet world they are a force to contend with, which can't be
ignored. But the people running the Internet are a much more
skeptical, critical lot. They can smell a rat. Furthermore, the
consumer industry is beginning to get savvy about Microsoft tactics
and has begun, if unsuccessfully so far, to counter the Microsoft
tactics. Furthermore, the open source community, spearheaded by the
Linux operating system leading a full suite of free Internet
application software is starting to provide a credible counter to the
Microsoft muscle. True, no one is showing any signs of displacing
Microsoft on the consumer desktop. But there's more to the world of
computers than that.
So I'm not saying that the Judges ruling is wrong. I'm not saying
that the law isn't on the side of the government. I'm just saying
that I'd have much preferred to see Microsoft brought down a peg or
two by the industry, not by the government. And I think that this
will eventually happen, even without government intervention.
=======================================
About Stuck In Traffic
Stuck In Traffic is a monthly magazine dedicated to evaluating current
events, examining cultural phenomena, and sharing true stories.
Why "Stuck In Traffic"?
Because getting stuck in traffic is good for you. It's an opportunity
to think, ponder, and reflect on all things, from the personal to the
global. As Robert Pirsig wrote in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
Maintenance,
"Let's consider a reevaluation of the situation in
which we assume that the stuckness now occurring,
the zero of consciousness, isn't the worst of all
possible situations, but the best possible
situation you could be in. After all, it's exactly
this stuckness that Zen Buddhists go to so much
trouble to induce...."
Contact Information
All queries, submissions, subscription requests, comments, and
hate-mail should be sent to Calvin Stacy Powers via E-mail
(powers@ibm.net) or by mail (2012 Talloway Drive, Cary, NC USA 27511).
Copyright Notice
Stuck In Traffic is published and copyrighted by Calvin Stacy Powers
who reserves all rights. Individual articles are copyrighted by their
respective authors. Unsigned articles are authored by Calvin Stacy
Powers.
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