pantoum's Diaryland Diary

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CASUAL AND MEANINGLESS PRODUCTS

(No. 300 � Thursday) As some readers know, I love the Pacific NW and would like to retire to Whidbey Island or thereabouts and spend the rest of my days kayaking in Seattle�s bird sanctuaries (where I will photograph and sketch birds) and off Vancouver (where I will cavort with the permanent killer whales pods) and at Ebey�s Landing (where I will also watch birds and draw).

I will write on my deck in Coupeville or Langley and take long ferry rides as much as possible and walk the beaches while admiring the snow-capped Olympic mountains in the distance, drive to Hurricane Ridge with my windows down so I can smell the Douglas firs, escape to the Salish Lodge & Spa when I need an excellent meal or a romantic weekend away, drink decaf lattes like they�re going out of style (but not from Starbucks), eat fresh salmon with a wide variety of Asian sauces, flirt with leather-clad riotgrrrls (who will of course be charmed by my southern accent), and finally make use of my copy of How to Carve Totem Poles after studying the many poles in and around Vancouver, but I will never never never kayak through the busy locks while huge boats that nearly wash me into the walls again.

Here�s something I don�t like about Seattle though. The Center for Science and Culture at the Discover Institute (which may sound like an organization that uses the scientific method to study and understand the world, but it�s really a bunch of so-called researchers who advocate the theory of intelligent design) is there. (And we have already discussed C-YA�s presence there.) So, even though the Seahawks finally reached the SuperBowl (a game which Pottergrrrl sums up as �they try to get more balls through the goalposts than the other team, right?�) and even though Seattle�s architecture and gardens have a wonderful Asian influence and even though there�s all that ocean with mountains and fabulous sunsets all in cool one place, Seattle is nevertheless a leeetle bit less appealing to me now.

Of course Seattle is still hosting the 14th Annual Women of Wisdom 2006 Conference: Return to the Well and (wo)man do I wish I could go to this crystal-squeezing feel-good event. (And note how the conference organizers avoided using the word �science� in their title.)

I just don�t get it. Christianists have such an easy way out. All they have to do is say that their god�s design was to fashion life through evolutionary processes. How hard is that when the evidence is staring you in the face?

Even Pope John Paul II said (in 1996) that evolution is �more than a hypothesis.� He qualified his statement though: �Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense�an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection�is not.� (And he's an expert and would know, right?) Whereas the new homophobic pope Benedict said that humans �are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution.� And, well, there you have it folks: two men in skirts who devoted their entire lives to scientific um exploration in accordance with established scientific methods of inquiry have, in the typical voice of the (white male) expert, solved the vast mysteries of creation for us all.

Meanwhile Christianists recently coined the term �evolutionism� to categorize people who use the theory of evolution to refute what the Christianists call God�s hand in creation. (Or was that a Martian�s hand? You can never be sure with Intelligent Design.)

Meanwhile, in the about-gawddamn-time category, a recent Supreme Court ruling said that Ashcroft�s Federal Department exceeded the proper bounds of its authority when it tried to undermine Oregon�s assisted-suicide law or, as the Times says so well, the decision �rejected Mr. Ashcroft�s attempt to impose his religiously conservative ideology on a state whose voters had decided differently.� Mastuh Ashcroft first tried to block the law by overturning it with a federal law. Then, as attorney general, he announced that the Controlled Substances Act granted him the authority to prevent doctors from prescribing lethal drugs for the purpose of suicide.

The current Bland Old Party is, when you think about it, amazing. One Republican senator announces that he is capable of medically diagnosing a patient in a coma through video. Mastuh Ashcroft announces that physician-assisted suicides are not a �legitimate medical purpose.� Emperor Boy Bush announces that he can wiretap anygoddamnbody he chooses because he is the commander-in-chief of the universe (of the armed services, dude). And these privileged boys clearly believe that they, not doctors, can define the parameters of medical practice too.

But it is 78 degrees outside now and I am leaving early for the gym. Then an editor and I are going to wander around campus with our digital cameras and admire the daffodils that have suddenly popped out everywhere and the pink and white blooms that are suddenly on every tree is sight, so maybe I'll leave my boring grey suit hanging on the back of my door and just wear my gym clothes for the rest of the afternoon. Yes!

READING: I hope to start The Kite Runner tonight, but it will depend on how late I stay at my pal Zulu�s house.

11:48 a.m. - 2006-03-02

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