Quiche Moraine

For three months in 2007, I had to use my credit card in order to pay for Ella’s prescriptions. I am still paying down that balance as well as I can. The insurance company kept on telling me that generic Lamotrigine is an approved substitute for Lamictal, but the doctors continued to say, “No, it must be Lamictal.”

I was taught that at birth I carried the sin of Adam and Eve and that I needed to practice certain rituals or pray certain prayers to be cleansed of the sin that I never committed. I needed baptism, confession and contrition to access the creator. In another version of Christianity I needed to be “born again.” I could never be good enough for the creator on my own, being human. And being human, I was condemned to be separate from the creator unless I chose the right way to accept redemption.

When I contacted Steve Kelley’s campaign director to arrange a meeting with Steve and Sophie Kelley, I suggested Tuesday. She responded that they had arranged their schedule to meet me on Wednesday. When I read her response, the part that I saw was, “They had arranged their schedule to meet with you at Pizza Nea, 306 Hennepin Ave…” The part that I missed was, “…Wednesday at 7.”

So I arrived at the coffee shop not entirely sure why I was there or what I was going to do or even exactly whom I was meeting. I had a vague idea of who Lizzie was, but it would be all too easy to get it wrong and mistake her for someone else or someone else for her. She was small, had red hair, and would be wearing black, as most of my students seemed to. Among the young women in the coffee shop, this ruled out…almost no one.

Rusty-red rocks against an electric blue sky were an exact color match for the mix of brilliant intellect I knew to be in Phoenix on Monday. I had just flown into Sky Harbor Airport from Minneapolis, and any Minnesotan will tell you that we don’t waste a day like that indoors. It was a sparkling spring morning alive with color and radiant sunshine. But I happily joined 3,000 other science fans inside a dark auditorium for a full twelve-hour day of physics, cosmology, biology and more.

You didn’t hear about it? It was the much anticipated and sold out public event called the Origins Symposium. The media may not report it, because they don’t get science. But regular, everyday people do and are hungry for it. We came to hear the new, and what we know will be stunning, discoveries about how the world works. We filled up the concert hall on the campus at Arizona State with anticipation.

Monday morning began with an amazing line up of rock star status scientists who spoke for an hour, one after another. Does lecture style delivery at a podium with PowerPoint visuals on a large screen sound boring to you? Not a bit—it was mesmerizing for five hours straight. Steven Pinker, Don Johanson, Brian Greene, Richard Dawkins, Craig Venter, and Lawrence Krauss presented their unique views on evolution, origins and their research with charismatic delivery. We laughed and cheered and bonded knowing we were witnessing an historic event. As the late afternoon panel of six, count ‘em, six noble laureates came on stage, we stayed right where we were. Ira Flatow, the nationally known science journalist and host of Science Friday, expertly juggled the egos and zingers that the physicists on either side of string theory tossed at each other.

Listening to these brilliant minds was like hearing a symphony performed by the original composer. The world of ideas and the appreciation of beauty is an aesthetic artists share with scientists. This trans-disciplinary approach is one that Michael Crow, President of ASU, and Lawrence Krauss, physicist and director of the “Origins Initiative” are developing. Along with college courses, the Initiative will also reach out to the public and journalists through workshops and future events.

Between presentations, I noticed how many in the audience were curious about the people around them. We found each other interesting and smart. We’re creating a trend, riding a wave of discovery, taking part in a cultural transition don’t ya know. Many people told me how relieved they were to see our intellectual lives respected after eight years of oppression.

So with spring and science in the air, I felt a little giddy heading back to Minneapolis. I’ll revisit my bookmarked pages at the Origins web site during the year, watching how the Initiative develops and hoping to catch next year’s big event.

Lynn Fellman is a Minneapolis artist and blogger, as well as an interviewer for Atheists Talk radio and one of science’s most enthusiastic cheerleaders.

If we step outside of our chauvinistic inclination to look at evolution as a process with humans as the teleological result of its process, the unfolding story of life’s continual divergence makes even more sense. As Klink illustrates, we are but a small twig on a minor branch of the Tree of Life and not necessarily its crown.

Quiche Moraine is proud to present The Fourth Stone Hearth, a blog carnival that specializes in anthropology in the widest sense of that word: the study of humankind, throughout all times and places, focusing primarily on four lines of research: Archaeology, Sociocultural Anthropology, Biological Anthropology, and Linguistic Anthropology.

The Red River in Minnesota flows backwards in its channel, in a northerly direction. Its course is backwards not because it’s going north (many people in America do think that rivers flow south), but rather, because its channel is part of a larger channel that historically carried more water than any other river on this planet has ever carried. This was the Warren River, which emptied Lake Agassiz (the largest fresh water lake ever) via the Red River Valley, then on to the Minnesota River Valley, then to the Mighty Mississippi. Much mightier then.

Science edition: Footage of extremely rare rhinos, the hardwood industry held hostage by small rodents, enzyme critical for cancer metastasis found, chimps build a better “fishing rod,” andscientists’ favorite Darwin readings.

Humans have never wanted to go backwards. Less comfort, security, pleasure, utility, convenience and strength are not options most people will consistently choose in their lives, even if it is for the betterment of their own bodies or the environment as a whole. We’re wired to eat fat and lay around. This is why selling people on consuming less, conserving more, paying more and getting less has always been a failing political position, even if it’s the smartest long-term approach and the least costly one. The answer to environmental problems, then, isn’t to get people to drive less. It’s to improve our technology with more efficient cars or alternative, lower polluting cars. Or heating systems. Or packaging. Or water use.