Journal of No. 118

I got word that Professor Gerald Larue passed away recently at the enviable age of 98. There's a certain irony, I think, in the first president of the Hemlock Society living so long. I can't claim to have really met him, but I did bump into him at a debate on evolution/creationism between libertarian creep Mike Shermer and liar for Christ Duane Gish, 25 years ago at UCLA.

Larue was an interesting fellow. An early life of faith led him to study the bible and to profess biblical history and archaeology at USC for many years. But by that point, he had become decidedly skeptical.

One particular stunt stands out, and it's hard to untangle, since so many stories tell it out of order.

In 1985, a certain George Jammal wrote a letter to creationist Duane Gish, announcing that (after many travails) he had obtained a piece of Noah's Ark. Many, even in the creationist camp, had doubts, but...

In the early 90s, when Sun International Pictures wanted to make a documentary about the ark, Henry Morris of the Institute of Creation Research, gave them Jammal's name.

Sun's documentary, "The Incredible Discovery of Noah's Ark," which included Jammal's claims, aired on CBS.

Larue declared the whole thing to be a hoax.

Sun International Pictures doubled down. Quoting Talk Origins:

The secondary defense consisted of four parts: (1) That Sun had examined Morris' interview with Jammal. (2) That Sun had conducted their own two-hour audio taped interview looking for inconsistencies in Jammal's story. (3) That Sun compared the two interviews and found them to be consistent with each other. (4) That Sun gave Jammal's interview tapes to psychiatrist Paul Meier, who pronounced Jammal credible. By late September, Sun added a fifth defense: (5) That Sun had Jammal's hand-drawn map of Ararat and his expedition routes examined by Ararat expeditioneers who "assured us that it could not have been drawn by anyone who did not have experience with the mountain."

Reaction from CBS and the ICR was similar: "CBS, Sun, and the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) set out to control the damage to their credibility by defending the program against the criticisms of Larue. Since Jammal was continuing to defend his story, at first the three organizations went on the offensive against Larue. CBS Entertainment President Jeff Sagansky stated that "There was clearly a hoax perpetrated ... we're not sure whether it was on Sun International and CBS or whether it was on Time magazine." A press release from Sun called it "sad and unfortunate that Dr. LaRue [sic], a distinguished USC professor, would victimize Mr. Jammal and his family to execute a third party hoax in which he was the primary benefactor." John Morris, the Administrative Vice President of the ICR, made much of Larue's "long association with humanistic and anti-Christian organizations" and concluded that "This is hardly the resume of an objective critic." All defended the overall quality of Sun's research."

In 1993, "the Long Beach Press-Telegram--Jammal's hometown newspaper--ran a story about the hoax. In the story, Jammal did not admit to a hoax, but stated in response to a question about his religious background that "If I told you that, you'd know the secret." The reporter noted in the article that a poem framed in glass on Jammal's piano begins, "Humanism is a philosophy for people who think for themselves ....""

And so, eventually, Jammal revealed the deliberate hoax, and that Larue had been in on it with him from the beginning. They offered up a chunk of railroad tie marinated in teriyaki sauce, and creationists either bought it, or were happy to let other 'liars for Christ' perpetrate a fake on the public.

Grandma's celebration of life was last weekend. With all of the craziness of the house selling and buying, I couldn't make it there, but at least I could play another small part in the overall process. Although her urn was interred alongside Grandpa at the veterans' cemetery, a bit of her had a different fate. She had asked to have ashes spread at Laguna Beach.

Now, knowing the risks of the release of ashes on the Pacific Coast, we added our own wrinkle to the plans.
( Do you want to know more? )

aaronjv ran Endgame last night at Wyvern Manor (a perfect setting and many thanks to Pam and Lianna for hosting).

The game is a 1920s murder mystery, so... I don't want to spoil things. But I did have a very good time, and it's a very solid game that is complicated enough to be interesting, but simple enough to be pretty easy to run and play. (So if you have an ambition to run a larp, here's one you can download and get cracking. That's what these things are for.)

The player mix was good, and I only knew a couple of them well, and a few more somewhat more vaguely. So at least half the people are now people that I'll know only by their character names...

I don't have any criticisms, but I'll mention one detail, just because my mind would not let it go. The setting is left vague, but the reference to Prohibition places it in America, but the character names all read to me as quite English (Harringdon, Stirling, Fairfax, Smyth-Montague...) more so than even the WASPiest of enclaves on the east coast (at least I imagine so -- I'm not invited to those parties). This is somewhat reinforced by the inspiration that the larp lifts from Dame Agatha.

OK, two more details from the run:

I wore great-great-grandfather's watch.

Favorite dialogue:

Rattled Suspect: It makes no sense to accuse me. I had the opportunity to kill him numerous times on other nights.
Me: So how many times did you kill him tonight?

Although the FDA existed in 1937, it did not have the authority to require companies to demonstrate the safety and efficacy of drugs. Then SE Massengill marketed a liquid form of the early antibiotic sulfanilamide, using diethylene glycol as a solvent. Unfortunately, DEG is poisonous to humans. At least 100 deaths across the country resulted.

A woman wrote to U.S. President Roosevelt and described the death of her daughter: "The first time I ever had occasion to call in a doctor for [Joan] and she was given Elixir of Sulfanilamide. All that is left to us is the caring for her little grave. Even the memory of her is mixed with sorrow for we can see her little body tossing to and fro and hear that little voice screaming with pain and it seems as though it would drive me insane. ... It is my plea that you will take steps to prevent such sales of drugs that will take little lives and leave such suffering behind and such a bleak outlook on the future as I have tonight."

I ran across this in an article in The Scientist, which also includes the detail that due to a legal technicality [an "elixir" legally denotes a medicine containing ethanol, which Elixir Sulfanilamide didn't] FDA agents did have the authority to track down and seize remaining bottles, "an operation that saved as many as 4,000 lives."

Back in December 2007, we started our streak of grilling once per calendar month. In the fine weather months (eleven-twelfths of the year, hereabouts) we generally average a lot better than once per month. That's put a lot of wear and tear on the grill. To wit, we oxidized our way through the coal grate.




Never fear, a replacement is here, and later today we'll notch month 67.

Fascinating/Horrifying story in the current SciAm (only a wee preview available) about how traditionally land-based pathogens are infecting sea creatures. Possum cooties killing California sea otters. MRSA in dolphins. Meningitis (presumably originating from human sewage) killing off 90% of the Caribbean's elkhorn coral. Drug resistant bacteria from livestock (treated with antibiotics) in sea mammals. And, yes, Flipper getting your cat's toxoplasmosis.

Fascinating/Horrifying article by Nicoli Nattrass in the current Skeptical Inquirer.

Either I missed this when it happened, or my brain blocked it from my memory for my comfort:

Christine Maggiore

an HIV-positive activist who promoted the view that HIV is not the cause of AIDS
...
Christine Maggiore chose not to take antiretroviral drugs or other measures which reduce the risk of mother-to-child transmission of HIV during her pregnancies. Maggiore also breast-fed her children, despite evidence that breast-feeding can also transmit HIV from mother to child.
...
In April 2005, Eliza Jane became ill with a runny nose. She was seen by two physicians, one of whom reportedly knew of Maggiore's HIV status. Eliza Jane was not tested for HIV, and was diagnosed with pneumonia. When Eliza Jane failed to improve, Maggiore took her to see Philip Incao, a holistic practitioner and board member of Maggiore's AIDS-denialist organization Alive & Well AIDS Alternatives, who claimed Eliza Jane appeared to be only mildly ill, and prescribed her amoxicillin for a presumed ear infection. On May 16, 2005, Eliza Jane collapsed and stopped breathing. She was rushed to Valley Presbyterian Hospital in Van Nuys, California, where, after failed attempts to revive her, she was pronounced dead.

An autopsy revealed that Eliza Jane was markedly underweight and underheight, consistent with a chronic illness, exhibited a pronounced atrophy of her thymus and other lymphatic organs, and that her lungs were infected with Pneumocystis jirovecii, a common opportunistic pathogen in people with AIDS and the leading cause of pediatric AIDS deaths. The post-mortem examination of Eliza Jane's brain showed changes consistent with HIV encephalitis; protein components of HIV itself were identified in Eliza Jane's brain tissue via immunohistochemistry. The coroner concluded unequivocally that Eliza Jane had died of Pneumocystis pneumonia in the setting of advanced AIDS.
...
On December 27, 2008, Maggiore died at the age of 52. She was under a doctor's care and was being treated for what was originally reported as pneumonia.

The bossfella gives us Good Friday off, so Dr. Pookie and I set off to climb around Rancho Palos Verde. Just a few steps into the relative wilderness, we found the Ostara Lagomorph.

Sadly, this was not the hike we were looking for. Through some ambiguity in instruction, we wound up clambering around the Forrestal Reserve instead of the PV Peninsula Land Conservancy. We took the trail less travelled (and more poorly maintained), And that made all the difference. Oh, there were nice views of the cliffs and the hills and Catalina and the ocean, but we were scrambling up hillsides, and the trail was becoming less and less a trail, and more of a track, or perhaps a vague figment.

Then Dr. Pookie let out an ululation of cosmic terror that puts to shame the noise she made at her surprise birthday party. This noise was to indicate that I had rather blithely trodden on a rattlesnake. Oh pshaw, thinks I, this is the Dr. Pookie who once mistook a twig for an earthworm, surely th.. Holy Shit there's a snake, disappearing into the manzanita. It does seem to have what one might call a rather distinctive sort of diamond-y pattern on its back, but mayb... "Shk-shk-shk-shk-shk-shk-shk-shk-shk," quotha the snake.

It is clear that I do not have what it takes to be a war photojournalist, because my only thoughts were of self-preservation. At this point, the trail is a line segment AB, with Dr. Pookie at A, your humble narrator at B, and a pissed off invisible rattlesnake somewhere just to the side of AB. I found an alternate route to A, and we decided the adrenaline was probably the equivalent of a good 20 mile hike, and it were best if we descended and returned to the car.

More pics, including one more adorable bunny, if you click through. In addition to the Easter Bunny and the Easter Rattlesnake, we saw Easter Crows, Easter Hawks, other miscellaneous Easter avians, and the Easter Stink Bug. Oh, and a run-over Easter Skunk on the way back.