 
_GOLDMAN'S BULLDOG_ **PRESENTS**

### NOBODY KNOWS  
EVOLUTION!

BULLDOGS, ROTTWEILERS

AND THE INTELLIGENT DESIGNERS

Written by:

### NOBODY!

________________________

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR NOBODY KNOWS EVOLUTION!

"Let's have Nobodies review the book before we publish it. That'll give us a jump on the critics!" Nobody!

"Nobody! drags Darwin's theory kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century. It's a hole-in-one!" Nobody teeing off at the Darwin Golf Club

"Nobody! cuts through the Gordian knot of Darwinian Evolution and Intelligent Design!" Nobody at Gordian Solutions

"Evolution for idiots!" Nobody on the Board of Education

"You mean idiots for evolution!" Nobody in _The_ _Idiot in Rural Society_

"Of course it's science. You can't make this stuff up." Nobody at the American Association for the Advancement of Science

"You can't?" Nobody at Fox News

"Intelligent microbes guide evolution? A colony of networked idiots can build a town? God is bacteria? Need we say more?" Nobody at the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science

"Nobody! unifies science, religion and mysticism by insulting God...and praising bad breath? Give me a break!" Nobody at Listerine Antiseptic Mouthwash

"Who'd have thought we'd ever have a common enemy? Nobody!" Nobody at the Creationists vs. Scientists Annual Hardball Game

"Nobody! puts the hag back in science hagiography!" Nobody in Eastwick

"Science humor _is_ the sword!" Nobody at Bic Pens

"Nobody! thinks like a microbe--and that's supposed to be a good thing?" Nobody at _The_ _Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders_

"If idiots can form an intelligent network, then why do intelligent people seem to form idiot networks?" Nobody in the US Congress

"The problem is with democracy itself--the vote turns intelligent politicians into idiot on-off switches that can't change their connection weights." Nobody at Unemployed Students for a Democratic Society

"You're only as smart as you have to be; intelligence isn't free!" Nobody at the Dollar Intelligence Store

"' _Altruism is a natural by-product of selfish networked individuals?'_ Just thinking about it gives me a headache!" Nobody at Bayer Fast-Dissolving Aspirin

"Fiction Science follows the same rules as wave-particle duality. When you view it as fiction, it's fiction; and when you view it as science, it's science; but you can't view it as fiction and science _at the same time."_ Nobody on the Copenhagen Interpretation of Fiction Science

"Unless you've been drinking!" Nobody at Wild Turkey Bourbon

"And the Good Humor part provides the crucial element of dynamic instability!" Nobody at Good Humor Ice Cream

"It's not just Schrodinger's cat. The Toxo rat can be dead and alive _at the same time_ too." Nobody at the Emma E. Booker Elementary School

"The great Fiction Science writers? Darwin, Velikovsky, von Daniken, Alvarez, Dawkins... Hawking, Penrose, Dyson, Davies, Smolin..." Nobody at the Annual Fiction Science Awards

"The Tootsie Galaxy Pop--we can print globes on them instead of solid colors. Send Nobody! a hundred cases." Nobody at Tootsie Roll Industries

"We think you could make a nice Microbe Mind logo out of a pair of Golden Arches. Remember, for them it's all about food." Nobody at McDonald's

"And you could update the 'CELLS' spaceship for the twenty-first century by shaping it like a Coke bottle with feet instead of a fish." Nobody at 21st Century Coke

"' _Mutation is the garlic salt of life!'"_ Nobody at Spice Daddy

"Once again Nobody! has invented a whole new genre--Hardboiled Microbe Fiction. Look out Mickey Spillane!" Nobody at the Red Onion State Prison "Super-Prison Literary Society"

"And a video game that explains recidivism-- _Prison Germs: And how they keep pulling us back in!"_ Nobody at Godfather Video Games

"So what he's saying is, _'_ _Let's get small. Let's get really small. Once you get small enough you will understand...everything.'_ Small wins!" Nobody at the Annual Steve Martin-Randy Newman Small vs. Short People Competition

"When Steve Martin was perfecting his comedy, Nobody! was running a bluegrass club. Now that Steve Martin is playing bluegrass, Nobody! is perfecting his comedy!" Nobody at The Banjo Cafe

"In your wet dreams! _'_ _God is bacteria'_ is an old Steve Martin routine from the seventies. Apparently, they weren't ready to come out yet. Steve had to drop it from his act because he got terrible migraines whenever he used it." Nobody at The Comedy Store

"If God is bacteria, does that mean that we're _already_ teaching religion in our schools?" Nobody on the Supreme Court

"Schweitzer got it right. _'_ _Reverence for all life!'"_ Nobody counting holes in the Albert Hall

"Science has finally found its moral compass--albeit a tiny one!" Nobody at the Pocket Compass Company

"If we build it, they will go! Microbes in space! Seed the universe!" Nobody at NASA

"Let the Bac be with you! _Hiccup!_ God is Bac!" Nobody at The Cristal Cathedral

"We don't believe that merging science with literary satire is what C. P. Snow had in mind." Nobody reading _The Two Cultures_

"We're not sure that giving God a firm scientific basis is doing God any favors." Nobody at Save God from G-Theory

"We don't think that literature needs an abstracts writer." Nobody at Save Literature from Nobody!

"It Might Be Nobody!" Nobody at the Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony

"It Might Not!" Nobody at the Skeptics Society Annual "Let's Eat Nobody! for Breakfast" Dinner

"You call this crap art?" Nobody at Cow-Pie Clocks

"Of course we can sue!" Nobody at the American Bar Napkin Association

________________________

_GOLDMAN'S BULLDOG_ **PRESENTS**

### NOBODY KNOWS  
EVOLUTION!

BULLDOGS, ROTTWEILERS

AND THE INTELLIGENT DESIGNERS

Written by:

### NOBODY!

Published by Smashwords, Inc.

www.goldmansbulldog.com

Copyright 2012 by Author

________________________

SMASHWORDS EDITION, LICENSE NOTES

Thank you for downloading this free ebook. You are welcome to share it with friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form.

________________________

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1: The Bar Napkin Theory

PART ONE

BAR NAPKIN ORIGAMI

Chapter 2: The Hummingbird

Chapter 3: The Griffin

PART TWO

KISS

Chapter 4: Cats Eat Zombie Rats

Chapter 5: Our Brain and the World Cray

Chapter 6: The Feynman Principle

Chapter 7: Turtles All the Way Down!

Chapter 8: They Might Be Giants!

Chapter 9: Not Even Wrong!

Chapter 10: Evolution's Big Prediction

Chapter 11: Evolution is History

Chapter 12: The Central Dogma

Chapter 13: What Geneticists Think

Chapter 14: She, the Master Builder

Chapter 15: The Weasel Gene

Chapter 16: How Bacteria Evolve

Chapter 17: The Food Obsession

Chapter 18: The "Pay Attention, Fool!" Tool

Chapter 19: The Beast That Wants to Know

Chapter 20: The Anthill Brain

Chapter 21: Infinite Bandwidth

Chapter 22: Talking Microbes

PART THREE

AND TELL

Chapter 23: The Neuron Rosetta Stone

Chapter 24: Desperate Housewives

Chapter 25: The House Neuron, the Senate Neuron, and the Intelligent Designers

Chapter 26: The Doomsday Machine and the Houdini Electron

Chapter 27: A Brief History of Time

Chapter 28: Let There Be Light!

Chapter 29: The World Map

Chapter 30: Prophets and Loss

Chapter 31: The Vagina as a Whole

Chapter 32: The Tenth Muse

Chapter 33: The World We All See

Chapter 34: G-Theory and the God Germ

PART FOUR

BITTEN BY THE LOVE BUG

Chapter 35: The Dice Man

Chapter 36: Body Heat

Chapter 37: The Force that through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower

Chapter 38: Message in a Bottle

Chapter 39: What Do You Do with a Drunken Microbe?

Author's Photo

Soon to be a Major Motion Picture!

________________________

To Whom It May Concern

________________________

"The Moses of Microbes rides again!"

Sauncho Pauncho

Human kind cannot bear very much reality.

T. S. Eliot

Four Quartets

A thoroughly new idea gets no response.

Jacques Bardun

From Dawn to Decadence

________________________

CHAPTER ONE: THE BAR NAPKIN THEORY

I believe in the Bar Napkin Theory. It may be impossible to prove, but the evidence in its favor seems strong. Simply stated, the Bar Napkin Theory says that if someone understands what they are talking about that they ought to be able explain it on a bar napkin. Fortunately, a bar napkin has a fair degree of flexibility. Most ideas should fit on one side or two (referred to by scientists as the "visible bar napkin" since it's the part that you see). But if the idea is truly complex, the napkin can be unfolded to reveal first two, then four more sides for a total of eight. Any person who cannot explain themselves on an eight-sided bar napkin simply does not know what they are talking about--or so the theory goes.

The theory was first proposed by Ernest Hemingway--in a bar, natch--in Havana, a long time ago. It's rumored that he may have been drinking. So far, no one has been able to falsify the theory, and all who have failed to achieve its goal have been deemed to not know what they were talking about by their drinking buddies. The extent to which alcohol affects this process has yet to be subjected to a comprehensive double-blind scientific study.

As an example of the theory, I'll explain time to you. I've picked time because scientists do not understand time. I have five books in my library that explain time, and I have to admit that they are all on my list of "books in my library that I do not understand." I can say unequivocally that I do not understand time, but I can still explain it to you on just one side of a bar napkin. You could probably write it in lipstick, although that's normally not my medium. Also, to be clear (since this is a book of science humor), this is _not_ a joke.

The source of my information is Julian Barbour, a physicist, who wrote one of the books that I do not understand titled _The End of Time: The Next Revolution in Physics._ Here it is--the Bar Napkin Abstract regarding time:

The universe is a crystalline solid. It is a place where nothing moves and time does not exist--that is to say, it's really solid! Apparent time and apparent movement are a path that consciousness creates while exploring this crystalline solid.

Here's the napkin:

Universe is solid

Nothing moves

Time's a path

Consciousness cuts

Through this solid

Fuchsia might be a nice color for the lipstick. Take it home. Pin it up on a cork board or magnet it to the frig. Marvel at the fact that my non-comprehension of time has been communicated with such crystalline clarity that it has become _your_ non-comprehension. Now, you too can write it--and with authority--on a bar napkin.

Since the Bar Napkin Theory works for something I don't understand, imagine how well it might work for something I think I might understand a bit. This book is just one big bar napkin basket that is woven from intertwined bar napkins. It is, perhaps, the first popular science humor bar napkin basket book in all of evolutionary history.

It's exactly what you'd expect from an abstracts writer.

________________________

### PART ONE

### BAR NAPKIN ORIGAMI

________________________

CHAPTER TWO: THE HUMMINGBIRD

The visible bar napkin (the two-sided bar napkin) of an entire book (even a bar napkin basket book) is the equivalent of a promotional tease for a TV program. Here are the abstracts:

Shift from a gene-centric view of evolution to a network-centric view.

The two views should be viewed as complimentary--not in opposition.

Life is a network; the basic building block of life is the network neuron.

Learning happens when the connection weights between neurons change.

In the living world, the most important learning is stored in DNA so it won't get lost.

The Intelligent Designers that guide evolution are bacteria and archaebacteria.

Bacteria collectively form a super-network that is almost four billion years old (like the Ents of Middle Earth).

Historically, we have called this super-network God.

God is coming out of the closet now (as aliens amongst other things) because God wants something.

God wants a taxi--a lot of them, actually.

________________________

CHAPTER THREE: THE GRIFFIN

The eight-sided bar napkin was developed for those who don't like to read books but who don't like to be teased. They're like movie watchers who just want to "cut to the chase." Admittedly, it's a bit of a mutant monster, but then everything--including impatience--has its costs:

Life is a network; the network neuron (from now on, we'll just call it the neuron) is the basic building block of life. Neurons are connected to many other neurons, but some connections are more important (carry more weight) than others. There are two kinds of neuron connections--static and dynamic. Static neurons are neurons whose connection weights don't change much. Networks store information in static neurons much as computers store information on hard drives. Dynamic neurons can change their connection weights. Networks learn as the connection weights of their dynamic neurons change as a response to changes in the network environment.

Life is a non-rule-based network; a computer is a rule-based network. It's important to understand the difference between the two. Rule-based networks evolve from simple to complex as they add rules. Examples include computers, law, government, corporations, science and religion. Non-rule-based networks are networks of living creatures that do not follow any fixed rules. Non-rule-based networks evolve from complex to simple as they discover more efficient connections between neurons--as they get smarter. Examples include language, mobs, revolution, spirituality, neighborhoods and anthills.

Human beings are non-rule-based networks of cells so we tend to prefer non-rule-based networks although we belong to many rule-based networks. We evolve rule-based networks into non-rule-based networks whenever we can. Rule-based reality-TV shows like _Survivor_ evolved into non-rule-based shows like _Jersey Shore_ in the blink of an evolutionary eye. In the modern age, thoroughly entrenched rule-based religions are slowly yielding to infinitely flexible non-rule-based spirituality. But, so far, non-rule-based revolution has always yielded to rule-based government because we still need rules although we're clearly evolving to need them less.

Since living things form non-rule-based networks--and non-rule-based networks evolve from the complex to the simple--then it's possible to think that life _devolves._ According to Hindu creationism, all species on earth including humans have _devolved_ from a highly evolved state of pure consciousness. As it turns out, this might also be the best possible _scientific_ explanation of the reality that we inhabit. You might be surprised to discover that there is a perfectly reasonable _physical_ candidate for a complex living network that existed from the very beginning--and still exists today--that would qualify as a highly evolved state of (seemingly) pure consciousness that we might have devolved from. I refer, of course, to bacteria and archaebacteria, which I will collectively call bacteria--or microbes--for convenience.

Microbes meet all the criteria for a non-rule-based network. They store their most important information in DNA (life's hard drive), and they change established connection weights between neurons to learn. Microbes are absolute masters at manipulating DNA, mutating it, ferrying it around, and interchanging it with others. They're also masters at using chemical signals to communicate. They form into colonies that demonstrate the same kind of intelligence as anthills (google or Wiki "slime mold"). Because colonies of microbes can number in the gazillions upon gazillions upon gazillions instead of mere billions, they have all the computing power and storage capacity to form a mind that dwarfs the human mind in size and complexity--and they've been around perfecting their craft for almost four billion years now. Unfortunately, we cannot communicate with this intelligence directly because it is _non-verbal_ , but it can, and does, communicate with us indirectly.

Human bodies are composed of one hundred billion human cells and one hundred _trillion_ bacteria cells. By number of cells, we are 90% bacteria and 10% human! Bacteria are so small that they only weigh a few pounds, so we are far more human than bacteria by weight. Thank God cells don't vote! In the past, the Microbe Mind was referred to as God ("all knowing, all powerful, in everyone and everything..."). Today, we have also come to think of it as an alien invasion--or the potential for one (think _Men in Black_ or _Independence Day_ ). _Men in Black_ got it right. They are already here, and while mischievous (the Trickster), they're more or less harmless, which is to say that they're harmless except when they aren't. When they aren't harmless, we think of them as bad or evil.

"Why aliens?" you might ask. Do you think it would be wiser to woo us with visions of bugs controlling our minds? First, it was God asking us to be good; then, it was chimps evolving into us; now, it's ET just visiting for a few plant samples to take back home; next, it'll be benevolent bacteria petitioning Congress for funding for space travel (if an idea ever needed a Walt Disney--or his mutant child Pixar--it's this one). They're breaking it to us gently! I think you'll agree that it's an idea that takes some getting used to--the God Germ.

So, what does God want? In essence, arks--think space ships with solar sails equipped with a system to disperse its precious cargo if a suitable planet is found. Essentially, God wants to _be_ the alien invader set loose on the galaxy! And what is God willing to offer in return for this celestial transport? What God has always offered its obedient and respectful creation--love, hope, inner peace, inspiration and miracles! And who isn't a sucker for a good miracle?

In case you think I'm making this up, the microbes even have their own web site and forum (www.microbes-mind.net). Apparently, they're _Thoroughly Modern Microbes!_

________________________

### PART TWO

### KISS*

* Keep It Simple, Stupid!

________________________

CHAPTER FOUR: CATS EAT ZOMBIE RATS

Why should you care about this book? That's an excellent question, and one I'll answer right now. I can give you the answer in one word. Actually, I'll only use a small part of one word. You should care because of Toxo.

Toxo is short for a single-cell parasite called _toxoplasma gondii._ Toxo is so tiny it can live inside your brain without doing you any harm. Half the people in the world are thought to host Toxo, so Toxo's story should interest a lot of people (flip a coin, it might be you). Should you belong to the 50%, don't fret; Toxo has no desire to be inside you because Toxo can't reproduce inside you. "So what is Toxo doing in me?" you might ask. The answer is a bit complicated because Toxo wants to be inside a cat.

Huh? Then what's Toxo doing inside me--or you? This is Toxo's sad story. Toxo started life in the body of a cat. Toxo lives in its intestines, reproducing happily as it does so. For the most part, Toxo doesn't harm the cat. Toxo babies exit the cat, first, in its shit buried as fertilizer, and later, they enter whatever animal kills and eats the cat--or finds and eats its dead carcass. You see the problem this presents for Toxo babies, don't you? Cats don't eat dead cats or cat shit or fertilized vegetables, so how do Toxo babies get back into a cat?

If it's not in a cat, Toxo lodges in the brain of any animal that it does manage to get into, which then acts as a prison from which it cannot escape. Like Edmond Dantes in _The Count of Monte Cristo_ , Toxo babies must escape from their prison somehow and find a cat! But how? What Toxo does in its effort to get out of its brain prison is really quite amazing. Since it's in a brain, it works with the material at hand and attempts to _reprogram the brain_ so that it can achieve its goal and get inside a cat. Only God knows how many animals it unsuccessfully reprogrammed before it finally succeeded through trial and error--the great creator of intelligence. The animal that finally worked was a rat.

Once inside the brain of a rat, Toxo is able to reprogram the rat's brain so that the rat becomes obsessed with one thing--and only one thing. If you guessed cats, you'd be wrong, but close. It's cat piss! Like a drug addict, the rat becomes so obsessed with the smell of cat piss that it spends all its energy sniffing it out. When it finds cat piss, it then obsessively tracks it back to its source. When the rat finally finds the source of its cat-piss elixir, nature follows its natural course, and Toxo gets back into its only happy home (a cat).

The idea that a tiny single-celled parasite can turn a rat into a zombie that unknowingly seeks its own death inside a cat is really quite remarkable, don't you think? When I first heard the Toxo story, the writer in me had one of its "Eureka!" moments: "Microorganisms can reprogram brains! Our bodies are host to tens of thousands of microorganism species! Think of the possibilities!" Well, I wasn't the only one. Scientists thought of the possibilities too. They figured that since so many human beings carried Toxo that they could conduct studies to see if Toxo has reprogrammed human brains.

Wanna know what they discovered? Men who carry Toxo dislike rules, don't like to wear ties, and let their hair grow longer. They tend to be suspicious, jealous, and dogmatic. As a metaphor, men with Toxo are dogmatic, self-serving liberals; men without Toxo are rule-loving conservatives. Women who carry Toxo tend to be warm-hearted, outgoing, conscientious, persistent and moralistic. They love shopping and are considered more attractive by men. Women without it are less social and are considered less attractive. Women with Toxo are social babes; women without it are wallflowers. Hollywood seems to attract Toxo-types like honey attracts flies.

Scientists also discovered that Toxo affects human reflexes; Toxo members of both sexes have slower reaction times. People with Toxo get into _six times_ more automobile accidents* than non-Toxos, which might also explain why people with Toxo tend to be more afraid than those without Toxo. Still, none of this should surprise us. Zombies are notorious for their slow reflexes. Why does a rat on its way to be eaten by a cat need good reflexes? The slow reflexes might have been programmed by Toxo just to make the cat's job easier (when you live on the inside, you try to cover all the outside bases that you can).

Isn't the fact that our personality might be the result of a parasitic infection vastly more disturbing than the idea that we are at the mercy of our primitive selves ( _Forbidden Planet's_ "Monsters from the Id")? What self-respecting human being wouldn't prefer to think that, if they aren't in charge, then at least their inner gorilla is? Isn't _anything_ better than thinking that our bad breath germs might be in control?

* You gotta hope that auto insurance companies aren't reading this, or rates will be going up steeply for a lot of people as soon as the test results are in.

________________________

CHAPTER FIVE: OUR BRAIN AND THE WORLD CRAY

Let's talk a little about Toxo's prison cell--your brain or mine. The human brain is made up of billions of neurons. Neurons are a special kind of cell. Like a transistor in a computer, they are, essentially, an on-off switch. Each neuron is connected (hard-wired) to hundreds of other neurons; there are literally trillions of connections.

The reason that our brain doesn't light up like a pinball machine when scientists scan it is because the vast majority of these neurons are set in one position (on or off) and normally don't change. These _static_ neurons form the memory of the human transistor system. They are, quite literally, where we store our memories, but they are also where myriad fixed responses (instincts, reflexes, personality, autonomic processes and the like) reside. Neurons that normally are in one static position can occasionally change positions. When you access a memory, for example, the normally static positions of some switches will change to allow you to access the memory--that is to say, these neurons are mostly static but are occasionally dynamic.

That leaves millions of neurons with billions of interconnections that _do_ turn on and off. These neurons light up (if they happen to be working) when scientists scan the brain. When one of these neurons has fired (switched positions) one time, it has a tendency to fire again in response to the same input (it "learns" and forms "habits"). While these neurons are dynamic, they actually want to be static; they want to learn a job, and then "just do it." They are dynamic workers with static dreams. It's as if they want to discover "who they are" so that they can then just "be themselves."

The human brain is vastly complex in its architecture (hemispheres, lobes, etc.). Our intelligence is thought to reside in this complexity as well as in the different types of neurons in the system, but for our purposes (simplicity and clarity) we will think of the human brain as _an_ _interconnected system of static/dynamic on-off switches._

My brain (or yours) is the most complex thing that we have discovered so far in the universe. One of the most surprising revelations of the past few years is that a vastly larger brain may exist in physical form here on earth--and the human brain, for all its billions of neurons and trillions of connections, may be but a pale imitation of this larger brain. We may be nothing more than a triumph of miniaturization--an IBM PC that it is a mere "gleam in the eye" of the World Cray Supercomputer.

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CHAPTER SIX: THE FEYNMAN PRINCIPLE

Richard Feynman stated what has come to be known as the Feynman Principle during his commencement address to Caltech science students in 1974:

"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself--and you are the easiest person to fool."

Of course, there's the _Cliffs Notes_ version of the Feynman Principle: "You science fool, you!"

Feynman could be brutally honest when it came to science (and not just with pseudoscience). When a colleague had to testify before Congress to justify the cost of his (very costly) project, he knew that he would be asked what the potential dollar value of the project might be. Feynman told him to tell them the truth--that it had no potential to make money. We want to know because we want to know. Needless to say, his colleague didn't follow his advice.

My interpretation of the Feynman Principle is that if you cannot point out the flaws in your theory better than anyone else, then you probably shouldn't trust yourself ("You science fool, you!"). Like a good debater, scientists should know what is wrong with their theories as well as what is right. They should be brutally honest about the weaknesses in their theories. This is a toughie; it's hard to be an advocate for an idea and critical of it _at the same time._ But it's necessary. Nobody said that science was easy.

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CHAPTER SEVEN: TURTLES ALL THE WAY DOWN!

The ridicule that scientists love to heap on lay people often applies to the scientists themselves, although they tend not to notice this. Stephen Hawking opens his book _A Brief History of Time_ with this wonderful story:

A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise." The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortoise standing on?" "You're very clever, young man, very clever," said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down!"

Hawking is making fun of the little old lady ("Most people would find the picture of our universe as an infinite tower of tortoises rather ridiculous..."), but he fails to notice that scientists _routinely_ believe not only that "it's turtles all the way down," but that "it's turtles all the way up" as well. It's especially interesting because Hawking's story is about gravity--Newton's gravity. The thing that really impressed people about Newton's theory of gravity when it was first proposed was that it explained the movement of the planets in our solar system with the same accuracy that it explained the trajectory of the slingshots and arrows of outrageous fortune here on earth. For centuries, it was assumed that Newton's laws would go "all the way up" and explain the workings of the larger universe and not just of our solar system (although they might have, they didn't; we needed Einstein for that). When the subatomic world of atoms was first discovered, scientists adopted Newton's solar system model for the atom. The hope, once again, was that Newton's idea would go "all the way down" (again, it didn't).

Actually, the idea that a theory will go all the way up _and_ all the way down is the wet dream of every physicist. This dream even has a name--the unified field theory. In modern times, the unified field theory has evolved into something called superstring theory (in its ultra-modern form, M-Theory). The unified field theory explains the workings of the subatomic world _and_ the workings of the universe. All the way down, all the way up, no? Scientists only seem to find the claim humorous when non-scientists make it. They actually believe that it applies to science, _even though it has not yet been demonstrated to be true of any science theory._

So, we shouldn't be surprised when evolution theorists claim that the process by which animals adapt to new environments goes all the way down and explains how all life managed to assemble itself in the first place. I'm afraid we gotta blame Darwin for starting that particular chestnut. Perhaps, if scientists could point to _any_ of their theories that actually _do_ go all the way down, then we might be more inclined to believe them. Otherwise, we might feel justified in thinking that they're reasoning like a bunch of old ladies.*

* In all fairness, when Nobel-prize-winning physicist Wolfgang Pauli proposed his World Clock theory, the World Clock was balanced on the back of just one crow. Pauli never suggested that it was "Crows all the way down!"

Wolfgang Pauli's World Clock

________________________

CHAPTER EIGHT: THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS!

In an interesting fictional regression, there's a fiction story about a fiction story about a fiction story. The innermost story is the one where Don Quixote tilts at windmills; the intermediate story is about Sherlock Holmes hunting for Professor Moriarty; the primary story is...well...the subject of this napkin and an old movie from the seventies. _They Might Be Giants_ is a film (based on a play, both written by James Goldman*) about a millionaire who loses contact with reality after his wife dies, and he comes to believe that he is the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. His brother wants to have him committed to a psychiatric hospital so that he can gain access to his fortune. A female psychiatrist is assigned to the case--Dr. Watson!

The beauty of the story is that the relationship between Holmes and Watson isn't like the fictional relationship between Holmes and Watson. Instead, it's like the fictional relationship between Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Don Q is delusional while Sancho sees clearly, but Sancho follows Don Q into trouble repeatedly out of concern for Don Q's safety and, eventually, out of friendship (love).

Holmes embraces Watson as his legendary sidekick, and they set off in search of Professor Moriarty together. Complications ensue; the most serious, of course, lies in determining whether or not Holmes is crazy--as he so obviously appears to be.

Holmes presents what sports fans refer to as the Giants' Defense, or as the film title states it: "They Might Be Giants!" It works like this. Yes, Don Q got it wrong when he insisted that the windmills were giants, but there was a kernel of truth in what he had to say. Here's how Holmes/Quixote put it in the film:

"Of course, he carried it a bit too far. He thought that every windmill was a giant. That's insane. But thinking that they might be... Well, all the best minds used to think the world was flat. But, what if it isn't? It might be round. And bread mold might be medicine. If we never looked at things and thought of what they might be, why, we'd still be out there in the tall grass with the apes."

You'll notice that what he is talking about is science (and penicillin and evolution). The point he is making is that the theories (hypotheses) of science are based on the idea that "They Might Be Giants!" "Atoms might be miniature solar systems!" "Stars might be galaxies!" "Dark matter might exist!" "We might find the Higgs boson in CERN!" "M-Theory might explain it all!"

"They Might Be Giants!" is the rocket fuel of science; it's what propels science into a future that nobody can predict. _The beast that wants to know_ causes scientists to tilt at windmills while acting like Sherlock Holmes! Have you ever heard a better definition of science? What a movie!

* I know; this blew me away too. James Goldman (The Lion in Winter) is William Goldman's brother! Yes, I mean William Goldman the creator of the phrase "Nobody Knows Anything!" and the inspiration for all things Goldman's Bulldog. Can you believe it? They both write screenplays! I didn't even know he had a brother, let alone that he was a Quixote fan too. It's a small world.

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CHAPTER NINE: NOT EVEN WRONG!

Richard Dawkins (a.k.a. Darwin's Rott) believes that the theory of evolution can be falsified. Dawkins has ridiculed those who have said that evolution cannot be falsified by saying that finding human fossils during the age of the dinosaurs would do the job just fine. It's an interesting point--and you will undoubtedly agree with him--but do you notice that it is _strictly a rhetorical argument that has absolutely_ _no connection to any physical reality whatsoever?_ You could just as easily say that the discovery of a new element between platinum and gold would falsify the periodic table of the elements. It would! Or that the discovery of a large but formerly unnoticed planet between Earth and Mars would falsify Newton's law of gravity. It would! Only now you can see the rhetorical device. It's impossible to falsify anything with a _hypothetical._ We could falsify Dawkins theory that God is a delusion _if_ we found God fossils amongst the dino fossils, now couldn't we? If you insist that there are no such things as God fossils, then we would have to point out that there are no such things as human fossils amongst the dinos either--except in the mind of Darwin's Rott. It seems that our Oxford Don sometimes reasons like an Oxford Don Quixote instead of a Sherlock Holmes.

Because this is highly technical, I'm going to keep it short and simple. In the world of science, "falsification" has a very specific meaning. It starts with the idea that no theory can be proven to be true in science because all science theories are provisional. Any theory can be replaced by a better theory; there are no exceptions. But theories in science _can_ be proven to be false. There are two ways to do this. First, a theory can propose some test that it can be put to, and if it were to fail that test, scientists would consider it false or falsified. The other way that a theory can be falsified is if it makes a prediction _that we wouldn't make otherwise,_ and that prediction fails to be true. If a theory predicts that the sun will rise in the morning _(The Sun Also Rises),_ scientists wouldn't pay attention because this isn't a _unique_ prediction.

The physicist Wolfgang Pauli had a phrase that he used to ridicule other physicists who would propose theories that could not be tested and that made no unique predictions. He said that such theories were "Not even wrong!" What he meant was that they weren't worth considering because they could not be disproven. The Spanish have a phrase that they use when they really want to denigrate an idea. They call it, _"Pura teoria!"_ Think of it as Spanish for "Not even wrong!"

Unfortunately, there is no way to test the hypothesis that the genetic code of each species was built up one mutation at a time. This has been a stumbling block for neo-Darwinian theory, which--when combined with the gaps in the fossil record--amounts to two arguments based on reason and imagination in place of a testable theory.

But evolution makes predictions, doesn't it?

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CHAPTER TEN: EVOLUTION'S BIG PREDICTION

Many scientists and popular science writers claim that the theory of genetic evolution makes one impressive prediction--it explains how bacteria become resistant to antibiotics. Bacteria reproduce so rapidly that mutations can appear in a few years that would take many thousands of years to appear in higher animals. If one of these mutations is resistant to an antibiotic, it will multiply and spread while the rest of its mates are being destroyed by the antibiotic. Eventually, these antibiotic-resistant bacteria will spread widely and force us to develop new antibiotics. This argument is endlessly repeated in books and articles _as if it were gospel._

First, think about the logic of the argument. Penicillin is bread mold; bread is wheat. Wheat has been around for a long, long time. This is not the first time that bacteria have encountered wheat or bread mold, so why should they need to evolve resistance to it now? Actually, scientists have known since 1952 (before DNA was discovered) that bacterial resistance to penicillin existed in bacteria _before penicillin was ever manufactured by man._ Bacteria only had to find the resistant gene in the world bacteria genome and then disseminate it widely.

There's another problem with the claim that genetic evolution predicts antibiotic resistance that you may have noticed. Bacterial resistance to penicillin occurred _before_ DNA was discovered--before there was a DNA mutation theory of evolution. As the existentialist playwright Ionesco pointed out a long time ago, "It's a lot easier to predict things after they have happened." Newton _predicted_ the effects of gravity; everyone after Newton _explained_ the effects of gravity using Newton's equations.

The degree to which genetic resistance to modern antibiotics naturally occurs was demonstrated in 2011 by the discovery of ancient pristine bacteria buried 30,000 years ago in the Yukon. The bacteria they studied are common soil bacteria that do not harm people. These bacteria give dirt that "earthy" smell, so they're really common although they have nothing to do with disease. This is only surprising because these bacteria turn out to be veritable antibiotic factories.

If 30,000 years seems like a long time, 93 different bacteria samples thought to be four _million_ years old were found in a cave in New Mexico in 2012. To everyone's surprise (except for the scientists conducting the experiment as this is what they were looking for), many of them were resistant to modern antibiotics. Scientists now realize that antibiotic resistance is a commonplace phenomenon that seems to go all the way down in the world of bacteria.

Think about it: what haven't bacteria seen in four billion years? They have undoubtedly seen everything many, many times over; and a lot of it is filed away in a dusty file room somewhere like the final resting place of the Ark of the Covenant in _Raiders of the Lost Ark_. They may not know exactly where it is, but it's there to be found if they should need it. They're like resourceful little squirrels that store up nuts for the winter and then promptly forget where they put them. They may have to search, but they know that they're out there somewhere. Using just such a system, squirrels with bad memories manage to survive brutal winters.

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CHAPTER ELEVEN: EVOLUTION IS HISTORY

The fact that evolution cannot be falsified and makes no predictions doesn't really matter. Falsification applies to science theories and, amazing as it may seem, evolution is _not_ a science theory. Evolution is a historical theory that is supported by scientific evidence. Evolution is a lot more like the theory that the dinosaurs became instinct because of an asteroid strike (a historical theory that makes no predictions) than it is like the theory of gravity (a science theory that makes lots of predictions).

There's a big advantage to evolution not being a science theory. Evolution's Bulldogs and Rottweilers like to emphasize this advantage by insisting that it's a fact. _Because evolution is not a science theory, it can be true._ Science theories can't be true, but history can. Did Greeks and Romans exist? Absolutely! We may not be able to prove that they existed in some absolute sense of the word "prove," but that doesn't matter. We _know_ that Greeks and Romans existed.

If life actually evolved one mutation at a time as some think that it did, then that would be a historical fact. A historical fact is not a science theory. "Variation and natural selection" are not natural laws; they are an effort to explain things that happened in the past. Historical facts aren't expected to make predictions. While we might not be able to prove history the way that we can prove science (with repeatable tests and predictions), we might very well come to believe it anyway. Clearly, many people have already arrived at this point regarding the theory of evolution.

While it's unreasonable to say that evolution is as much of a fact as gravity, it might be reasonable to say that evolution is as much of a fact as the Greeks or the Romans. Of course, you still have to present your evidence and make your case.

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CHAPTER TWELVE: THE CENTRAL DOGMA

The theory of evolution has a Central Dogma, although no one calls it that. It's not even the first Central Dogma in genetics, it's the second. The reason that the Central Dogma of genetic evolution is not called that is because the first Central Dogma turned out to be a bust.

The first Central Dogma of genetic science was that information only travels in one direction--from DNA to RNA (don't worry, what this means doesn't matter). In the seventies, scientists discovered something call reverse transcriptase (don't ask), which demonstrates that information can also travel from RNA to DNA (again, doesn't matter). The Central Dogma of genetics now has a footnote; it's true, except when it isn't. Information only travels from DNA to RNA except when it travels from RNA to DNA. Needless to say, nobody talks much about that Central Dogma anymore.

To be fair, the scientist who coined the term--Francis "The Central Dogma" Crick--later said that he thought that "dogma" meant "hypothesis." Of course, the fact that Central Dogma _sounds_ so much better than Central Hypothesis might have had an influence too. It also has a nice religious tone that gives it an added authority, don't you think? Scientists may not like religion, but they sure do like its language. Charles "The Origin of Life" Darwin started it all, of course. Then there was Crick's partner, James "The Secret of Life" Watson. Later, Leon "The God Particle" Lederman came along to be joined soon by Stephen "The Mind of God" Hawking, who spawned a twin, Paul "The Mind of God" Davies. Modern scientists seem to like religious terminology for their theories almost as much as Galileo hated it for his. In the old days, they were just looking for the laws of nature--not God, God's mind, or refutations of God.

The other Central Dogma is in genetic evolution theory. Like many ideas in evolution, it started with Darwin, but in its modern form it states that the genome of each species was built up slowly over an immensely long period of time because it was done, for the most part, one random genetic mutation at time. For Darwin, who knew nothing of genes, it was one small _variation_ at a time; but it was the same idea as he thought that tiny variations might go all the way down and explain the origin of life in some warm womb-like pond and not just _The_ _Origin of Species_ (the title of his book).

This Central Dogma is _necessary_ for modern evolution theory because it explains how a genome could be built up in the first place. The reason that the average person believes in evolution is because of the fossil record. The fossil record begins with the simplest of creatures, and over immensely long periods of time, the fossils get more and more complex. That slow but steady increase in complexity seems to agree with the theory that life evolved slowly from the simple to the complex--the simple fossils _evolved_ into the more complex fossils. The problem with the fossil record is that there is little evidence that any of the creatures in it evolved into any of the other creatures in it. They all seem to be end points in the story of evolution rather than transitional points between one fossil and another. The Central Dogma (both Darwin's and modern genetics') explains how the genomes of all these fossils might have been built up, but it doesn't explain how it happened without leaving any fossils. This has proved to be a thorn in the side of the theory.

Darwin responded to this lack of so-called "transitional" fossils (and there is a lack for nearly _every_ fossil in the fossil record) with an argumentative _fudge._ He speculated that so few creatures actually leave fossils that there are huge gaps in the fossil record so that it should be no surprise that we have not found any of the transitional fossils. All the fossils in the world only represent a drop in the bucket of evolution. We haven't found the fossils of, say, small pre-bat gliding mammals, not because there were no such animals but because they did not leave any fossils (or they haven't been found yet).

This is an argument that would make any debater proud. An absence of evidence is turned into an argument in favor of your position. The problem with the "gaps" explanation is that in the century and an half since Darwin first proposed it, we have discovered one hell of a lot of fossils. Interestingly enough, it's the transitional fossils that continue to avoid detection while new species are discovered constantly (googlewik "Burgess Shale" for a sampler). Each new species is another addition to the gaps problem.

Even the relatively recent evolution of modern man from hominids is riddled with the discovery of several distinct new hominid species--but still no "missing link" that evolved into us. Even hominids with _human-like feet_ are not thought to be _our_ ancestors! It's almost as if God _hid_ all the transitional fossils just to test our faith in the theory of evolution.

The Central Dogma also tells us that the increase in complexity that we see in the fossil record is due to chance and not to any direction or flow of evolution. The flow that we think we see is just an accident, an artifact of history. There is nothing in the theory that would compel multi-celled animals to appear; they just happened as a result of chance and circumstance. Again, the theory of evolution does not seem to jibe very well with the reality that we see. Over time, the fossil record seems to be moving up some sort of evolutionary ladder, even if we can't say just what sort of ladder that it is.

So, you can see that the Central Dogma of Genetic Evolution is both necessary to preserve the theory and requires our belief. Perhaps that's why the genetic theory needs a Rottweiler to convince us today when a mere Bulldog was sufficient to defend Darwin's variation theory. And perhaps that's why evolution theorists _insist_ that evolution is a _historical_ fact. After all, who can argue with history? Even God can't change history.

But, as Sam Butler pointed out a long time ago, historians can. Reality always trumps theory. To be clear, the most convincing evidence for the theory of evolution is the fossil record, and the fossil record (as we've found it so far) doesn't support the theory very well. The rest of the evidence is based on logic, plausibility and the insistence that there is no other theory.* When it comes to evidence, the slow buildup of genetic information over time is very poorly supported. That doesn't mean that it's wrong, but that's why it needs a Central Dogma, even if they don't want to call it that.

I hope that the reason that this is a big deal is obvious--as the Central Dogma goes, so goes a major assumption of the theory. Fasten your seatbelts, it's gonna be a bumpy ride.

*The idea that a theory is right because there is no other theory is, of course, wrong. It's a debater's argument, not a logical argument. There may be no other theory because no one has thought of it yet; Ptolemy had to wait 1500 years for Copernicus. The theory that God created all living things was unchallenged before Darwin; did that make it right?

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CHAPTER THIRTEEN: WHAT GENETICISTS THINK

While evolution theorists claim that the science of genetics provides the strongest evidence for their Central Dogma, they don't like to mention that geneticists often disagree with them. Here's a geneticist stating their case (Maxim D. Frank-Kamenetskii in his book _Unraveling DNA: The Most Important Molecule of Life,_ 1993, pp. 71-4):

"As genetics continued to amass an impressive record of accomplishments (especially following its passage into the molecular level), its conflict with the theory of evolution, which had arisen at the dawn of this century, became increasingly acute. The substance of the conflict was as follows. The two pillars of the theory of evolution are variability and selection. Presumably, genetics had explained the mechanism of variability--that it was based on point mutations in DNA. But is it precisely the form of variability that can account for evolution? Perceptive minds understood a long time ago that this kind of variability could hardly get one very far in understanding evolution. All the new things we have learned in the course of the development of molecular genetics have tended to confirm these doubts."

"In addition, one might explain variability of higher organisms on the basis of the regrouping of the 'ready-made' genes. But that would mean that genes, having once evolved, are here to stay, with evolution only reshuffling them like a deck of cards. New properties would then be novel combinations of the same old genes. The most unpleasant thing about this scheme is that it creates the impression of explaining the whole set of observations that serve as the basis of the theory of evolution. The century-old experience of breeders is in line with this. All their accomplishments are the result of reshuffling genes previously produced by nature."

What the author is saying is that all the fossils in the fossil record can be explained by interbreeding without the need for random mutations. The little horses that are supposed to be the evolutionary ancestors of modern horses may not have "evolved by point mutations" into modern horses. The natural variation of interbreeding interacting with changes in the environment and natural selection might explain the transition from tiny horse to modern horse. When any species encounters an abundance of food and a lack of predators, its members tend to grow larger. There's some evolution in the process (like the genetic mutation that created modern Thoroughbred horses, which were then "selected" by man to run races), but it is not a process driven by evolution. The process is driven by the variation of interbreeding and selection (natural or human) with a "pinch" of evolution (random mutation) occasionally thrown in the mix.

Darwin was right about the significance of variation, but he was speculating when he "extended" his theory all the way down. All of the evidence before his scientific eyes could have been explained as interbreeding selected by the natural selection of a new never-before-seen island environment with a "pinch" of variation thrown in--especially if the original population was small (which was surely the case with Darwin's finches) and a lot of family interbreeding led to the inevitable genetic defects that incest creates. Darwin's new finch beaks might have been the finch equivalent of the "Habsburg jaw" (googlewik)--which is the human creation of royal interbreeding and not a "random" genetic mutation. Darwin's need to extend his theory all the way down was not driven by the evidence--it was a creative interpretation of the evidence. Darwin was the Velikovsky or von Daniken (googlewik) of his times. The main difference between them is that we tend to believe Darwin but not Velikovsky or von Daniken.*

Wolves are the breeding ancestors of both a German Shepherd and a Pekingese. You might be surprised to learn that the tiny Pekingese is one of the oldest dog breeds and is _closest_ in genetic structure to the wolf--not the more obvious German Shepherd, which is related to the Mastiff rather than to the ancient herding breeds like the Pekingese. You can see how looking at fossils without DNA might lead to all kinds of misinterpretations. Interbreeding is the spice of life! Mutation is the garlic salt; it's a good spice, but it's not everything.

Just to repeat for emphasis, "The most unpleasant thing about this scheme is that it creates the impression of explaining the whole set of observations that serve as the basis of the theory of evolution." Normally, scientists prefer the simplest explanation. They even have a name for this preference; they call it Occam's razor (googlewik). If evolution can be explained by interbreeding, why bring random mutations into the mix? The reason that scientists don't want to accept this simpler explanation is because it does not explain how the genomes in the fossil record _got built up in the first place._ Once we understand that random mutation doesn't explain this build-up either, we're left with a very unpleasant reality. Here's how the author of _Unraveling DNA_ put it:

"...However, the key question--of where have the genes actually come from--remains unanswered....Darwin's question about the origin of species thus becomes the question about the origin of genes."

So, while point mutations can explain certain changes when you already have a genome, they do not seem to explain how a genome came to be built up in the first place. Point mutations can be very powerful, but they are not the whole story. Darwin was right about variation, and mutations are an excellent example of one form of variation. Gene blending (think sex) is another--and much larger--source of variation. Incest is a huge source of variation (the kind that can lead to genetic monsters) that occurs _naturally_ whenever a population is greatly reduced and inbreeding becomes the only option. This is to say that Darwin was right _except_ when he thought that his theory went all the way down--a common error, as we have seen, amongst scientists (and writers). The Central Dogma of Genetic Evolution claims that genomes were built up, more or less, one point mutation at a time. With what we now know about genetics (and have known for a long time), the claim that point mutations can explain the build-up of genomes doesn't seem to stand up very well to scientific scrutiny.

* This was certainly influenced by the fact that Darwin presented his theory as a theory to be discussed and debated while Velikovsky and von Daniken presented their theories (as novelists might) as interpretations of history backed by science that were true. All three of them, however, sorely lacked a sense of humor, which is needed to give speculative theories some perspective so we don't come to think of speculation as fact. Speculative science is fiction science until it ceases to be speculative.

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CHAPTER FOURTEEN: SHE, THE MASTER BUILDER

This is a tale of two cells...say a nerve call and a liver cell, although any two cells would do. There is absolutely no genetic difference between a nerve cell and a liver cell. The genetic structure of both is exactly the same--they are constructed from the same DNA--yet the two cells are completely different. One makes up your brain and nervous system so that you can think and feel and move. The other allows you to drink alcohol without killing yourself because your liver removes it (and other poisons) from your bloodstream. These two cells are not even vaguely similar.

How is such a thing possible? How can you make two different things from the same blueprint? The answer is not in the widely acclaimed "secret of life" (DNA). The truth is that the secret doesn't know the secret--one of life's pesky contradictions. The answer is known to the Master Builder. In the living world of construction, DNA is a blueprint--and RNA is a work order or office memo. That a blueprint is not sufficient to construct something ought to be obvious. All those who have called DNA the secret of life fail to point out that DNA doesn't know how to build anything. DNA needs a builder; all blueprints need builders.

A builder can read blueprints, but the builder brings a lot more to the table than the ability to read blueprints. The builder knows how to build. While this might sound like a tautology, it isn't. Modern scientists can easily draw up blueprints for the Great Pyramid at Giza. The blueprints could be incredibly detailed and could contain the exact size and tolerances for all the stones needed. They would show the dimensions and locations of all the tunnels and shafts. The blueprints would have an incredible amount of detailed information from all possible angles, but they would not tell you how to cut the stones to the correct specs, how to transport them to the job site, or how to construct the pyramid. The knowledge of how to build a pyramid was contained in the Master Pyramid Builders of the day. Because they buried the Master Pyramid Builders _inside_ the pyramids when they were finished (to make sure they kept the secrets to themselves), we're still trying to figure out how they did it. There are many theories _because_ the knowledge was hidden and has been lost.

So, who knows how to use DNA to build something? We all know the answer to that question, don't we? The female egg (the ovum)--one single cell and only this cell--possesses this knowledge. Always has; always will. Scientists think that the knowledge possessed by a female elephant egg cell is sufficiently extensive that it could probably grow a mammoth, if we could only supply it with some mammoth DNA. How does a female egg cell know how to grow a complete being from DNA--even a completely different species? As of today, nobody knows how, but we know that they do.

And how does a female egg cell create different kinds of cells from the same DNA? Just like any Master Builder, she uses the same materials in different ways. For all their insistence about the importance of genes, scientists seem to be somewhat chauvinistic in ignoring "She, the Master Builder" to praise the blueprint so profusely. They don't make that mistake with the pyramids, but then, they were built by men.

If life is a symphony--or a reflection of the _Music of the Spheres_ (googlewik)--DNA is the sheet music. The female ovum is the orchestra _and_ the conductor! Yes! She! Is!

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CHAPTER FIFTEEN: THE WEASEL GENE

There are two ways that cells read genes. Let's say there's a gene that's spelled _WEASEL_ (there isn't, although that hasn't stopped this from becoming a famous gene). When one kind of cell reads that gene, it locates the phrase on a string of DNA (METHINKSITISLIKEA _WEASEL_ ) and clips it just before the _W_ and just after the last _L._ This cell then takes home a gene that reads: _WEASEL._

When another kind of cell wants to get the _WEASEL_ gene, it goes to a string of DNA and looks up the phrase: _W_ OND _E_ RL _A_ NDI _S_ WH _E_ REIWANTTOBE _L_ OVED. The cell cuts this long phrase out just like the first kind of cell, starting with the W and ending with the last L. You'll notice that it doesn't have the weasel gene that it needs yet, and the cell knows this. The cell (smart like "She, the Master Builder") knows what gene it is looking for, so it cuts out the various letters that occur in the correct order for it to write _WEASEL._ Then it pastes those letters together to form--the _WEASEL_ gene!

To make this even more interesting, another cell might come along and start with the word IS and end far past the word LOVED to cut out a piece to cut up and edit to create a completely different gene that it needs. This means that overlapping genes with lots of extra letters are spread throughout the genome. What a mess to decipher, no? Thank God cells understand the system!

Now, ask yourself the question, "Which system of storing and retrieving genes seems more robust and less prone to error?"

If you chose Door #1, you're right. We have to think that we're awfully lucky as human beings to have the nice precise system. The sloppy system is probably good enough for bacteria. It turns out--much to geneticists' surprise--that lowly bacteria store genes as whole units _(WEASEL),_ and we human beings use the sloppy system of cutting and pasting together bits and pieces to form genes. In truth, it is _only_ the simplest of cells that do not even have a cell nucleus to store and protect their DNA that use the simple, effective system (simple uses simple). Cells with a cell nucleus, which includes all life that is not bacteria or archaebacteria, use a complex system that is prone to making errors (complex uses complex).*

Doesn't it seem likely that complex uses complex _because_ it generates errors? That's what some scientists thought when this phenomenon was first discovered back in the seventies. So, why might this be so? If all cells with a nucleus use a certain system, we really do have to consider that that system benefits them, even if it seems to do the opposite. We know that it is more likely that cells will make copying errors using this system. The copying errors could be much more severe than mere point mutations because the mistake would depend entirely on how the cell failed to cut and paste correctly (more than one letter of the genetic code could be affected). God knows what genetic monstrosity might be created by such a system.

As in so much in life, it's all about real estate--location, location, location. The genetic monster is being created _inside of one single cell._ If it kills the cell, it kills itself, and the whole process ends there. The most horrific of mutations can be tried out by a cell and only one cell will be lost if the mutation proves fatal. If you think about it, this is its ultimate beauty! Individual cells will inevitably generate and attempt to use genes that have been copied incorrectly. If they have no usefulness (or are harmful), they will be discarded and another cell will go to the DNA library and cut out the necessary gene again--this time correctly--so all will be well, as if the mistake did not occur in the first place. End of story.

In rare cases, however, this incorrectly read gene might prove useful. If the mistake is beneficial, then the cell that had it could multiply, spreading the benefit, so to speak. The beauty of this system is that the original gene still exists in the same place that it always did. No information is lost, but new information has been gained. A new gene can be created and tested within a cell and then tested in the body at large if it is positive enough to allow the cell to reproduce with it.

Can that information be transmitted back into DNA somehow to become a permanent part of the genome? As that weasel Shakespeare once put it, "That is the question!" The truth is that scientists have absolutely no idea how the complex physical design of a bird's nest can be preprogrammed into a birds' DNA (amino acids used to make proteins), but they know that it can. At some point in the past, the complex act of building a certain kind of nest got packed into DNA--only God knows how. How genomes of DNA got built up in the first place is a true scientific "We do not know!" But while we may not know how it was done, we do know who did it. Enter the hero!

* The obvious implication--noted by the scientists who first discovered this phenomenon in the late seventies--is that cells that have a nucleus did not evolve from bacteria (as some evolution theorists believe) since they process DNA differently. What they did evolve from is a very good question--and is very possibly still around. It coexisted with bacteria for a billion years (as they both had to have had a common ancestor) before it became the nucleus of a cell, but it will be hard to find as there are millions of samples that will need to be analyzed. The culprit would look like a bacterium but would process DNA differently--bingo! It could be the pre-life ancestor of all multi-celled life. It may have gotten inside a bacterium by accident...or was imported to do a job.

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CHAPTER SIXTEEN: HOW BACTERIA EVOLVE

Bacteria are creative doers--inspired users of trial and error to achieve needed results--not mechanical machines. Bacteria use the gene copying system that is _not_ prone to error. Random mutation explains the evolution of bacteria, at least, doesn't it? Well, yes, it does, but only sort of. Random mutation is more like a "donut" spare tire than a functioning tire in the world of bacteria. They use it--at times they may need it--but it's not part of the running car. The reason for this is that bacteria have a way to soup up the random mutation mechanism when they need to solve a pressing problem. They know how to put the pedal to the metal.

Bacteria colonies keep small colonies of rapidly mutating bacteria "fenced in" so they don't reproduce and produce genetic monsters, but when nature deals them a bad hand, they open the flood gates and let the mutants out to be fruitful and multiply (kind of like zombie bacteria sent to save the day). Bacteria seem to understand that while mutation is generally a bad thing that it can be a good thing when you're desperate. We can see from this strategy alone that bacteria have tested the system of waiting for random mutations and found it wanting, no? They figured out a way to supercharge the mutation system. Pretty nifty!

But even supercharged mutation isn't enough for crafty bacteria. They have other strategies to make up for the inability of point mutations to fuel evolution. One of them is the clear bacteria antecedent for all sexual creatures to follow. Some species of bacteria grow what appears to be a penis (a protrusion) that they insert into a bacterium of another species so that they can inject their DNA directly into it. _"Rape of another species! The horror!"_

A third way that bacteria seek new genetic knowledge is by eating it. They will gobble up any extraneous piece of DNA that they might encounter just to find out what information it might contain--much like browsing purposelessly in a bookstore hoping to find something interesting to read. Some microscopic parasites (like _Bdelloid rotifers)_ will also eat any DNA that they encounter in cellular debris. We know that up to 10% of their DNA originated in bacteria, fungi and algae. The process by which the "eaten" DNA of another species is incorporated into existing DNA is still unknown, but it reeks of Lamarckism (googlewik). "Eaten" information is "learned" information, isn't it?

And we haven't even mentioned viruses, yet. Viruses are DNA's world-wide pony express system. Viruses are little snippets of DNA that must get inside a cell (bacteria or plant or animal) and hijack its reproductive system to reproduce themselves. There are countless species of viruses, and they get into absolutely every living thing ferrying around every possible snippet of DNA information. They are the agents of DNA globalization. They provide a DNA communication system that connects all life. They carry information here and there, willy-nilly, so that all the information in the world genetic code flows freely everywhere where life exists on the planet. Viruses are DNA's internet!

Random mutation? Absolutely! The whole story? Not even close! Bacteria are the intelligent designers of evolution, not the mechanical parts of a purely physical process.*

* For those who would like to see more detailed evidence for the ideas on this napkin, they can find it in a book written by a geneticist for scientists (Evolution: A View from the 21st Century by James A. Shapiro). I wouldn't recommend it for most readers because it's a hard slog, but Shapiro presents an abundance of evidence.

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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: THE FOOD OBSESSION

It would seem reasonably obvious that Darwin's survival of the fittest does not go all the way down in the world of evolution. Survival of the fittest is one of the many partial truths of evolution; sometimes it applies, but it isn't a universal governing principle. Let's assume that evolution started with a single cell and that cell soon became a large colony of cells (trillions of cells in a few days). Let's say that this cell colony ate sulfur. Obviously, there was nothing living to eat yet--except them, of course, but then there was nothing living to eat them yet. As long as there is lots of sulfur around, the colony grows and thrives; a lack of sulfur would cause the colony to die off. This is a world with no competition, only food--or its lack.

This is the first sense--the "food" sense. All life must be able to detect its food--obviously, no? Here's the interesting part--because bacteria multiply so rapidly, they inevitably create their own food crisis. The colony grows in size _until_ it runs out of food. At this point, the colony should starve and the experiment in life should end. In this world, the definition of fitness would be "the ability to solve the problem of having emptied the pantry." Without that ability life would face extinction soon after it began.

Let's say that a random genetic mutation ("Go, Darwin!") managed to give one cell in the colony the ability to eat calcium, but it could no longer eat sulfur. As long as there's lots of calcium around, the new species of bacteria does just fine. There would soon be two species of bacteria--one eats sulfur, the other eats calcium. There is no competition in this world. The two bacteria colonies could both exist but they would not interact. They each would have "separate but equal" information. Species of bacteria might be added for a long time that ate other things without competing with the colonies that were already around.

But if the mutated bacteria could eat sulfur _and_ calcium, their colony would grow larger than the colony of the bacteria that can only eat sulfur because they would find more food. Whenever there was a lack of sulfur, they would eat calcium. But if there was a lack of calcium but plenty of sulfur, it's easy to think that they might overpower the sulfur-only eaters with their superior numbers. You can see how the sulfur-only bacteria might become extinct, but this isn't really a loss--the genetic information to eat sulfur has not been lost. It's the bacteria with more limited information that were eliminated.

In the beginning, there was food. _Being_ was eating that food. There was only food or lack of food--eating or not eating. Eating led to life and reproduction. Not eating led to death and extinction. It was survival of the well fed. Since food would inevitably run out (by eating and reproducing and eating and reproducing), the only successful survival strategy would be to learn to eat other things. _Becoming_ was learning to eat something else. To eat other things, you would have to become something that you were not. Evolution was about survival, but its technique was to get smarter about eating--learning to eat more and different kinds of things.

Almost as if they set out to prove this very point (they didn't), scientists at Michigan State University conducted a long-running experiment with common stomach bacteria _(E. coli)._ In twenty-five years, they raised 50,000 generations (these bacteria reproduce every four hours), keeping frozen samples every 500 generations as a kind of fossil record. When they began the experiment, they estimated that they would find one or two mutations in twenty-five years. They were in for a big surprise.

After just 30,000 generations (fifteen years), the scientists were shocked to discover that the bacteria had learned _to eat a new kind of food!_ Apparently, they didn't like being restricted to just one food indefinitely. They figured out a way to eat something else that was in the petri dish. To accomplish this, a gene was moved on the bacterium's DNA to a location where it was controlled by a different genetic switch. This was only one of three steps (each accompanied by multiple mutations) that were necessary for the bacteria to consume the new kind of food. The scientists determined that there were probably dozens of mutations over the life of the experiment and not the Central Dogma's one or two.

Evolution started as gastronomy! It should come as no surprise that we humans are obsessed with food!

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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: THE "PAY ATTENTION, FOOL!" TOOL

There are lots of ways of looking at consciousness. If you think of consciousness as the voice inside of your head that talks to you, then consciousness must have something to do with language and is uniquely human. What I'm looking for here is a definition of consciousness that goes all the way down--something that works for bacteria and amoebas as well as human beings. Such a definition already exists. People noticed a long time ago that one of consciousness' most basic functions is to react to a change in circumstance or the environment. You only really need it every now and then, but it always needs to be vigilant--like a guard in a prison tower. You could think of it as the "Something's changed, pay attention, fool!" tool for all living things. It's life's most basic app.

Living things crave a static existence. We want life to be as simple and predictable as possible--food, clothing, shelter, work, TV, sleep (perchance to dream/sex if you're lucky) and then repeat. When you live in a monastery, and you hear the pounding hooves of an approaching army, you dust off the consciousness app and...well...pay attention, don't you? When an amoeba runs into something that is poison to it, it recoils and seeks an escape route. It may not find it, but it will die trying; it won't just sit there and take it. When any living thing encounters something that it has not encountered before (change), consciousness is the extra special attention that it applies to the situation to make sure that everything's okay--or not. It's a remarkably simple app. It doesn't tell you what to do, it just tells you to pay attention. Fool! You can probably download it to your phone for a few pennies.

In a sense, consciousness is "feeling" that something has changed. Now our microbes have two senses--food and feel.

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CHAPTER NINETEEN: THE BEAST THAT WANTS TO KNOW

When change occurs and survival is at stake, consciousness (the "Pay attention, fool!" tool) needs to be alert to find out what's going on so that it can figure out what to do. Consciousness is _activated_ by change. The rest of the time consciousness is "on-deck," waiting to be called up to bat. So what does consciousness do while it's in the waiting-batter's circle (officially called, ironically I'm sure, the next-batter's square)? If it can, consciousness will listen to music or watch TV. Sometimes, it likes to read cereal boxes to pass the time. It might want to nap, but it can't unless you do. If it's really bored, it might get creative and sing the same song over and over again until it drives you crazy enough to take it to the movies:

It's a small world, after all;

It's a small world, after all;

It's a small world, after all;

It's a small, small world.*

But if there is _absolutely_ nothing to do that interests it, then consciousness will do what it's trained to do even if it isn't necessary-- _it will try to figure out the solution to some problem, even if no problem exists!_ When consciousness is static for too long, it will want to be dynamic. That's how the "need to know" can evolve into something else. There is no beast that _needs_ to know. The need to know (the "Pay attention, fool!" tool) is like a bullmastiff at your side. It's there to protect you from trouble; it's a good thing. It doesn't cause trouble or look for trouble; it only growls when necessary.

_The beast that wants to know_ is different. _The beast that wants to know_ is like one of those chatty animal characters in _Ice Age_ cartoons that are propelled forward by nothing more than their never-idle curiosity.

And what do they always get into?

Trouble!

Why?

Because that's what consciousness exists to get us out of!

_The beast that wants to know_ is nothing more than consciousness bored out of its skull and looking for trouble. Out of this, science was born.

And why is _the beast that wants to know_ a beast?

Because there isn't anything that _the beast that wants to know_ won't do to find out.

Why?

Because that's its nature--to do whatever it takes to save you!

* Because of his history working for Disney, Steve Martin was able to suggest to Walt that he rename the "Children of the World" exhibit "It's a Small World" when it was still under construction in 1967. Walt had no idea that Steve was developing a comedy routine based on the exhibit at the time--but he would soon. It's a small world, after all.

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CHAPTER TWENTY: THE ANTHILL BRAIN

Now, we're ready for the anthill brain--the key to understanding "all and everything." Individual ants are thought to be...essentially...incapable of thought (stupid), limited in their responses (non-creative), and pre-programmed by instincts (mechanical); but when ants live together, they create a system that is a marvel of engineering, structure, and organization. Aphids are brought back to the anthill, kept like domestic cows, fed, and "milked" regularly for food. Raiding parties go out to capture slaves and bring them back to help with the work. At times, new queens take flight to spread the colony to other locations.

What baffles us is where all this organization comes from. The individual ant has a tiny brain, but the anthill doesn't have a brain at all! It's as if we went to thousands of rural villages where people have different skills and found the village idiot in each one. Then, we placed all the idiots together in a lumberyard with tools--and they spontaneously built a village (something that none of them as individuals had the knowledge or ability to build). You see the problem, don't you?

Somehow, an anthill acts as if it had a brain--as if it _were_ a brain. So, what is it about this situation that creates brain-like behavior? The answer comes from a hybrid of biology and computer science. An anthill is a living group neural network. Neural networks are normally defined as either individual living beings (all animals are neural networks of living cells) or as computer simulations of brain neurons (computer-simulated neural networks) that mimic living neural networks and can be used for problem solving.

But there is another kind of living neural network that we see everywhere in nature--ant hills, termite mounts, bee hives, lion prides, wolf packs, human neighborhoods, slime molds, etc. These societies are all neural networks in which the individual creature is the neuron. Ants, like neurons, perform simple functions; but they are not mere on-off switches like those inside a computer. Ants are on-off switches that interact with each other and regulate each other. Ants are closely connected to other ants that are near them and less closely connected to those farther away (just like neurons in a body). In a group network of living neurons, individual neurons can be stupid, non-creative, and mechanical (just like ants--or the neurons in your brain). Things that happen to one part of the network can affect other distant parts of the network even though the individual members are completely unaware that this is happening. Creativity occurs at the network level unknown to its individual members.

All living beings are, at minimum, part of their species neural network. "If we only had a brain!" Human networks are especially interesting because the individual neurons that make them up (us) are the most intelligent neurons on the planet, but our experience with ants and brain cells tells us that the intelligence of individual neurons is not an important component of network intelligence. Individual neuron intelligence has little effect on group network behavior. We brilliant human neurons seem to be as willing to run off the cliff of overpopulation as any species made up of more stupid neurons like...shall we say...lemmings?

Anthills that are successful branch out by sending new queens to form sub-colonies in the suburbs, so to speak. In time, if these colonies are successful, they create more colonies. There is a single ant colony in California that extends all the way from the southern part of the state to the north over five hundred miles away. You can pick up an ant in Sacramento and drop it off in San Diego, and it will go to work happily without even noticing that it has moved. It is home wherever it is because all the colonies combined are really just one very large colony--even if distant parts of the colony are not in direct communication with each other.

The essence of the anthill brain is that it is made up of living beings and acts as if it were a non-verbal intelligence. In a sense, it is intelligent in a way that mimics animal intelligence. Animal intelligence is non-verbal too. Animal intelligence--and living network intelligence--is based on trial and error and then "selecting" what works by repeating it (like neurons that fire in response to a stimulus "learn" to fire in response to that stimulus in the future). This is not natural selection; it is selection based on learning what works--what one might call "learning selection."

Don't forget this. The living network _is_ the brain!

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CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: INFINITE BANDWIDTH

The planet-wide microbe bandwidth is so vast as to be unimaginable. The reason for this is that its neurons--bacteria--are really, really small. There are typically a _billion_ bacteria cells in an ounce of soil or a quart of fresh water. The weight of all the bacteria on earth is thought to be greater than the weight of all the plants and animals on the planet _combined!_

Bacteria loiter together in groups called bio-films.* In essence, bio-films are collections of single-celled microbes that can act as if they were a multi-celled creature. Bio-films exchange a variety of molecular signals for communication between cells, and they engage in coordinated behavior. Slime molds, for example, spend most of their lives as individual cells out grazing like cattle that never even bother to form into a herd. But when food is scarce, slime molds release a chemical into the air that is a signal for them to assemble into a cluster called a slug that acts like a coordinated multi-cellular creature. The slug crawls to an open well-lit place (primitive sight--the third sense) and grows a protrusion called a fruiting body, which can detect airborne chemicals that indicate food (primitive smell--the fourth sense). When it detects food, these fruiting stalks explode releasing countless spores light enough to be carried by the wind or to hitch a ride on a passing animal. As with an anthill, we see a living network acting as if it were a brain, but there is obviously no brain involved. Once again, the living network _is_ the brain.

For three billion years, the only life on earth was microscopic life. The bandwidth available in a small box of dirt is greater than that of a modern super-computer, which has bandwidth that is currently around twenty gigabytes per second. A box of dirt can do twenty gigs in its sleep. The microbe bandwidth of the entire planet is sufficient to create an intelligence that would approach God's intelligence in bandwidth, which is to say that it is practically infinite.

Of course, this doesn't mean that microbes are infinitely practical. They aren't. Microbes love to take risks, and they learn by breaking things. They like to experiment, and they prefer trial and error to reading the manual (in all fairness, they can't read). They might as well be high-school dropouts on skateboards--or worse, motorcycles.

* Bio-films also refer to documentary movies made about the wild life led by some bacteria bio-films. They're the reality programs of the bacterial world like (Snooki shields unborn baby from) The Germs of Jersey Shore!

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CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: TALKING MICROBES

Can microbes talk? "Can you get them to shut up?" might be a more appropriate question. The problem is that we don't speak their language (although we're beginning to learn). Microbes speak a variety of languages actually, but they don't speak any human language, which has been a challenge for them. They can talk to each other but not to us. They're like those irritating people who can speak half a dozen languages flawlessly, but unfortunately, you don't understand any of them. Still, you can admire their skill even if you don't know what they're saying.

Microbes speak DNA. DNA is perhaps the simplest language ever invented. If it were written in numbers, it would be 1-2-3-4. To make it super-simple, 1 is always paired with 2, and 3 is always paired with 4. So the whole language is 1-2, 2-1, 3-4, 4-3. DNA stores information in permanent memory storage for access by RNA (1-2-3-5; 1-2, 2-1, 3-5, 5-3). DNA is also the master blueprint for genome duplication to be used by "She, the Master Builder."

DNA's language codes for just one thing--amino acids. The amino acids are strung together on DNA in the correct order to form proteins, but DNA has no idea that this is the case. DNA doesn't know anything about amino acids or proteins. DNA is a library where the information is organized so that when RNA--the librarian--arrives with a work order, she can access the information that she needs. DNA duplicates all of this information whenever a cell divides in two; and it corrects duplication errors that occur during division. That's what DNA does--and does brilliantly--but DNA doesn't even speak DNA.

Cells speak DNA. Like "She, the Master Builder," cells possess the intelligence to use the data stored in DNA. Cells can read DNA and use amino acids to assemble proteins. Cells manufacture enzymes and catalysts to regulate their internal reactions (slow or fast--the static/dynamic of the cellular world), and they stimulate activity in other cells with chemical signals.

We know that microbes can talk amongst themselves, but can they talk to us? If they do, it would probably be the same way the Toxo talks to us--by screwing with our brain chemistry. If they listen, they would listen to the electrical message inside our brain and not the audible translation inside our head. They don't speak any human language.

You can see how language is a big stumbling block between them and us. The Microbe Mind is the largest intelligent supercomputer imaginable; but it cannot speak, and it doesn't understand human language. That's how God got into the bio-film.

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### PART THREE

### AND TELL

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CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: THE NEURON ROSETTA STONE

_The basic building block of life is the neuron._ That single sentence is the Rosetta stone that allows us to translate between the language of cells (DNA, amino acids, proteins, enzymes, catalysts, etc.) and human language. The neuron Rosetta stone was discovered by a brain surgeon--Dr. Frank T. Vertosick, Jr.--who documented his discovery in his book _The Genius Within: Discovering the Intelligence of Every Living Thing._ This translation is an extraordinary accomplishment. Like all translations, the neuron Rosetta stone isn't perfect, but it's "close enough for government work," if you know what I mean. The human brain, when all is said and done, is but an imperfect copy of the near-infinite Microbe Mind that created us.

Here's the Rosetta stone. Life is a network; the basic building block of life is the network neuron, which we'll call the neuron. Before there was DNA, there were networked neurons. Nobody knows what they were like, but we know what they were doing--networking. Networking was the original, in the immortal words of Maynard G. Krebs, "Work!"

There are two very different kinds of networks, and they evolve in very different ways. Rule-based networks (created by human beings) evolve from the simple to the complex (as they add rules). Non-rule-based networks (life--and some networks without rules created organically by living beings or pre-life) evolve from the complex to the simple (as they get smarter). To understand the distinction, let's look at some examples.

Computers are rule-based networks, and they are infinitely more complex today (although smaller due to progress in miniaturization) than they were when they were first invented. The law is a rule-based network; compare the Code of Hammurabi's 282 laws with, say, the current IRS Code or any Building Code. In spite of the common sense acknowledgement that "the government that governs the best governs the least," government is a rule-based network that only increases in complexity over time, even if it drives itself bankrupt in the process. Corporations are rule-based networks. In the world of corporations, growth (increased complexity) is literally a mantra chanted by stockholders. Wall Street (remember ticker tape?) is a rule-based network where the rules are now so complex that nobody understands them and where trading is so complex that it can only be done well by high-speed computers. Science is, perhaps, the best example of a rule-based network's imperative to grow unchecked and become more and more complex. Complexity is inevitable in science where the more we learn, the more we learn how much we don't know. And there is no known way to rein in _the_ _beast that wants to know more._ _The beast that wants to know more_ goes all the way down in the story of life--and it wants to go all the way up!

And what are some non-rule-based networks? Language is a good example. Language was created organically without a rule book. Rules were only applied to language after it existed. The earliest languages (think Egyptian hieroglyphs or Chinese calligraphy) were far more complex than more modern languages (like the Romance languages). The simplest language of all is the most recent--English. English has grammar, but it isn't that important. No matter how badly somebody butchers the English language, you can usually still understand what they're trying to say. "Go me train help you find me?" works just fine for, "Can you help me find the train station?" Now, that's a language! Over time, in non-ruled based networks, the complex becomes simpler.

Another example is revolution. A revolution is a non-rule-based network of members of a society that is opposed to the rule-based government. Revolutions evolve from the complex to the simple. The principled analysis of the American Revolution's Declaration of Independence evolved in just a few short years into the French Revolution's far simpler, "Off with their heads!" Revolution is mob rule, and mobs are non-rule-based networks that get simpler by disbanding as soon as the lynching is over. Neighborhoods are also non-rule-based networks (but not neighborhood associations, which are rule-based). Modern unions are rule-based networks that began life as workplace revolutions (non-rule-based networks).

Spirituality is an example of a non-rule-based network that started as a rule-based network--religion. It almost seems like it was a mistake to make religion into a rule-based network from the beginning. Look at what has happened to the rules of religion over time; they didn't get more complicated as they should have. Instead, they got simpler. The Old Testament was a door stop; you could slip the New Testament into your back pocket. Ten Commandments gave way to one Golden Rule. The most complex rule-based religious network ever constructed--the Catholic Church--seems to have been collapsing in slow motion from its own complexity for, quite literally, five hundred years.

Today, some people are abandoning the rule-based structures of religion for the non-rule-based structures of spirituality in part _because_ the complex yields inevitably to the simple in these structures. In today's environment, for many people, spirituality is better suited to its subject--the good--than religion. Spirituality avoids religion's rule-based controversies. Individual human beings are non-rule-based networks of cells. This might explain why we favor non-rule-based solutions (like spirituality) as individuals but rule-based solutions (like religion) when in rule-based groups like society.

Network language is the language of life, and the basics of network language are easy to understand (lucky me, lucky you). Thank you, Frank! The Philosopher Brain Surgeon--who would've thought?

Although he does spend a lot of time around all kinds of strange bacteria...

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CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES

Since a neuron is, essentially, an on-off switch, you might wonder how a working neuron decides to turn on or off when it is connected to many other neurons. Basically, the neuron determines the weighted average of all the inputs. I know that sounds like math _and_ Greek so let's talk about a non-rule-based network we all have some experience with--a neighborhood. A neighborhood is a network where the neurons are human beings and their connections lie in their geography; they live close to each other. Like anthills, neighborhoods follow rules, but they are organic rules not written rules. Neighborhoods matter because they're about real estate, which is important to all living things. This is still confusing; let's talk _Desperate Housewives._

Wisteria Lane is, perhaps, the world's most famous neighborhood. The four main characters in the story are neighbors--and friends. Each of these characters has the same dominant trait--they are constitutionally incapable of controlling their own personality even when it is to their advantage to do so (sound like somebody _you_ know?). In this sense, they are perfect "ants;" they respond predictably (but not inevitably) to the same input. The "not inevitably" is the interesting part--the fun part. Why would an ant do something that runs contrary to its own programming? _This is an important secret, so pay attention._

Here's how it works on Wisteria Lane. The four friends have more-or-less equal connection weights--there are no "best friends" here. Their connection weights to their husbands or boyfriends are stronger than their friendship weights--as they should be. Their connection weights to their children are even stronger than to their husbands or boyfriends--as Mother Nature programmed them to be. Their connection weights to other neighbors are weaker than their friendship weights and vary widely. They are also connected to their jobs, the laws of the land (the police), and the government (voting, taxes, etc.). Only one is overtly religious, but three out of four have strong moral codes. The one with a weak moral code will be our dynamic neuron today.

Imagine the beginning of an episode when the connection weights amongst the characters are for the most part static. It's morning, and people are just waking up. Later that morning, our housewife with the weak moral code decides to sleep with her young stud gardener--something she's been fantasizing about for a while. This dramatically increases her connection weight to the gardener, of course, but the interesting thing is the way it affects all the other neurons that are connected to her--friends, husband, neighbors and police. Did I mention that the gardener is only sixteen and that their relationship is legally, as well as morally, rape? Now imagine that our weak moral neuron is confronted by the mother of the sixteen-year-old gardener (a new strongly connected neuron)...or his girlfriend (another new neuron). Now imagine that the girlfriend proposes a threesome to help her win her boyfriend back.

You can see how the shifts in connection weights might cause a person to act in a way that they might not normally act. If the connection weights are votes, the results of the vote change as connected neurons switch on and off. In the gardener example, a desperate housewife might act contrary to her own personality to not lose a friend, to maintain or recover her reputation, to avoid going to jail, or out of concern for the young gardener. She might _act_ morally, even though she has not _become_ a moral person in the process. More significantly, she has learned something, even if it hasn't changed her core personality. She's no longer the same person with loose morals; she's a _different_ person with loose morals. As the connection weights between the neurons shift, the neurons learn and change. When a neuron changes, it does not change its core structure (its personality)--it's still the same neuron. What has changed is the way that it relates to other neurons. Connection weight change is relationship change not personality change. That's why real change occurs at the network level--not at the individual level. The network makes the loosely moral neuron a better neuron without changing it.

Now you can see how the changing connection weights amongst a group of neighboring neurons can cause the individual neurons in the network to shift their current positions in response to the new weighted average of all their neighborly inputs. Whew! There won't be enough room on my tombstone to chisel all that! Anyway, votes change as circumstances change; you knew that. That's how dramatic plotting works--and how the world works. _A_ _ltruism is a natural by-product of selfish networked individuals._

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CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: THE HOUSE NEURON, THE SENATE NEURON, AND THE INTELLIGENT DESIGNERS

This is a tale of two neurons--the static neuron and the dynamic neuron. A neuron can be almost anything. Cells are neurons in bodies. Neurons are neurons in brains. Ants are neurons in anthills. People are neurons in neighborhoods and offices. To understand how neurons work, we need to better understand the difference between static neurons and dynamic neurons. In a corporation, for instance, the majority of its workers need to do essentially the same job, the same way, day after day. They are the static neurons; they are the equivalent of memory in a computer. They do not change much, but a corporation _needs_ to grow and change. It needs dynamic neurons that can change, and it has them. Quality Control, Research and Development, and Marketing are pockets of dynamic neurons whose job is to change the corporation to grow and improve it.

Once you understand neurons, it's easy to understand government. You still may not like it, but at least you'll understand it. To illustrate, I'll tell the story of the House neuron and the Senate neuron. House neurons are weighted (a state with a large population gets more House neurons than a state with a small population); weighted neurons are dynamic neurons. Senate neurons are not weighted (two per state to level the playing field); neurons that are not weighted are static neurons. Because static neurons are used for memory storage, they resist change. They can change, but not easily (the Senate is known for its long memory). Both the House and the Senate use the same process to come to neuron decisions--the vote--but because the House is dynamic, it tends to propose change, while the static Senate tends to resist change. As a metaphor, the Young Turks in the House are held back by the Old Men of the Senate.

Fortunately, there are Intelligent Designers that oversee both houses of Congress and intervene at regular intervals. The Intelligent Designers in this system are the voters who elect the members of Congress. When the people vote, they decide if they need more dynamic neurons (new members) or more static neurons (old members). They chose between the thrill of change and the comfort of a reliable old anything (this is usually the preferred choice of the static majority). You'll notice that the definition of dynamic and static has changed. It's not House neurons or Senate neurons to the Intelligent Designers; it's the ratio of new neurons to old neurons in both institutions. If more new members are added, the House will become more dynamic and the Senate will become less static--and vice versa. This is how life always is--a confusing overlay of dynamic and static competing all the way up and all the way down, like the branches of the same tree competing for sunlight.

There's even the equivalent of a corporation's Quality Control department in government--the Supreme Court. The Supremes will hopefully prevent the most egregious mistakes that Congress makes from becoming law permanently. The Court is made up of mostly static neurons (appointed for life). New life is only breathed into the Court when one of its members retires or dies, and a new member is appointed. Because it consists of mostly static neurons, the Court is designed to be a brake on change, but not necessarily one that will slow it to a complete stop. Again, change can happen, but it isn't easy.

You'll notice that political party affiliations are largely irrelevant in this analysis. Lots of dynamic neurons will accelerate change. Lots of static neurons will resist change. Parties determine the kind of change, but the balance between dynamic and static neurons determines whether or not the change will be adopted. You might also notice that while the Intelligent Designers (the voters) have an effect on the outcome, they do not control the outcome. All decisions are actually made at the highest level possible--the network level--based on the weighted average of the vote of all the inputting neurons.

All networks seek stability but need to change to learn and grow. Life learns by adapting to change, which leads to the central contradiction of all life: life wants stability but needs instability, or it will go extinct. Ambition and the risk-taking it entails dance in tandem with laziness all the way down in all forms of life. As soon as life achieves stability, the pendulum swings in the "Let's party!" direction; but when the party's over, the pendulum swings in the La-Z-Boy direction.

The youth revolution of the sixties started as "all change all the time" and ended in a big outdoor concert at Woodstock where dramatic weather instability convinced us all that we had reached our limit. We realized that while we might be able to change the world that we couldn't change the weather, and nobody likes to be wet and muddy and overcrowded--even if the sex is free. Over one long, damp, miserable weekend, the sixties ended. All neurons--even the most dynamic ones--are inherently lazy, especially once "the thrill is gone."

Aren't yuppies just the static (La-Z-Boy) version of the dynamic ("Helter Skelter") hippie neuron?

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CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: THE DOOMSDAY MACHINE AND THE HOUDINI ELECTRON

We've seen that the brain contains mostly static neurons that are occasionally dynamic, and some hard-working dynamic neurons that long to be static. Now that you understand how unlikely it is that any explanation will go all the way down and all the way up, I would like to convince you that this one does. Instead of neurons, let's take a look at science. Hold on to your hats!

There is a static part of the world of science. You can find it in the science textbooks that are written for non-scientists. Science textbooks written for non-scientists rarely change (are static), while science textbooks written for scientists constantly change (are dynamic). The static part of science includes the laws and accepted theories of science (mostly static) and the history of science (completely static but imperfectly known). The laws of science occasionally change (Newton had to make room for Einstein in the gravity wing of the edifice, for example). Like the static neurons in the brain, the static part of science is mostly static but with some dynamic elements.

The dynamic part of science is what most scientists do when they go to work in the morning. The essence of the dynamic part of science is the theory or hypothesis. Working scientists are either working on current hypotheses (practicing scientists) or developing new ones (theoretical scientists) or attempting to disprove hypotheses (contrarian scientists) or simply adding to the accumulation and storage of data--a static task (these are the worker bees of the science world).

The dream of all dynamic neurons is to become static neurons (less work equals efficiency in nature). The ambition of all dynamic science is to become static science, isn't it? Scientists want their dynamic theories to be accepted by other scientists because they are considered correct, and once they are accepted, they become the static part of science. At night when the lights are out and nobody's around, scientists dream that their dynamic theories will one day be etched in stone (the most static possible) like Newton's laws or Darwin's theory.

Now let's look at our science theories--big and small (all the way up/all the way down). Our theory of the universe is that it's a static place that follows strict rules discovered by Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Einstein and others. But at the center of every law-abiding galaxy, scientists believe that there is a black hole. A black hole is a star-swallowing monster that draws anything nearby inexorably into it like "The Doomsday Machine" on _Star Trek_ (googlewik). When something enters a black hole, it passes through what is called an "event horizon," which is nothing but a neutral-sounding name for a place where gravity is so intense that the laws of the universe vanish, everything collapses into zero space, and time stops. You just gotta say, "Wow!", no? A star entering a black hole enters a lawless frontier--the gigantic maw of an instability that is both dynamic (it sucks everything in) and static (reread "event horizon" definition above). A black hole is the unstable center of an otherwise stable galaxy--like the sticky fudge center of a hard candy Tootsie Pop.

At the subatomic level, of course, we have quantum weirdness (the original "don't ask, don't tell"), which is an unstable element added to an otherwise stable subatomic mix. For example, if you put a trillion electrons in a box that is made of a material from which electrons cannot escape, quantum theory states that since all things quantum are probable rather than 100% certain, that some electrons have to be outside of the box even though there's no way for them to get there. The exact number is determined by extremely precise quantum equations--I know, math, yuck! For simplicity, let's say it just happens to be one electron in this case. Like Houdini (or Toxo), this electron is expected to escape from its inescapable prison--somehow. If you measure with great precision outside the box, you will find that there actually _is_ one electron there that shouldn't be. If you then count the electrons you put into the box, you will discover that there are now one trillion _minus_ one--to the amazement of all and a standing ovation! In the world of quantum physics, that one electron is referred to as the Houdini Electron. It's an island of instability in a sea of quantum equilibrium.

Our mostly stable universe is supposed to have popped out of into an itty-bitty quantum instability (the Big Bang). Our stable galaxy might one day vanish into the instability (black hole) at its center. Even our stable atoms that make up our stable elements and chemical compounds have, in their chewy Tootsie Galaxy Pop centers, itty-bitty quantum instabilities. Small instabilities at the heart of large stabilities--all the way up and all the way down!

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CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME

If bacteria form a living network, a living super-computer, then where is the network hard drive? Individual genomes are stored in DNA, but where is the network history stored in case it's ever needed? Or to return to our squirrel-nut analogy, where does the network hide its nuts for the winter? Quite remarkably, scientists have recently discovered the location of what appear to be life's nuts--it's barely alive hard drive. They contain a DNA library that may go back to the beginning of life almost four billion years ago. I know you're curious so here's their story.

Danish scientists drilled a hole 100 feet below the floor of the Pacific Ocean to locate a soil sample from 86 million years ago--long before the dinos went extinct. The soil was red clay that was almost completely devoid of oxygen or organic nutrients or any of the things that are thought to be necessary to support life. What they discovered in the clay were bacteria living in a state that appears to us to be suspended animation--one in which time passes much more slowly than it does for you and me. How slowly, you ask? The metabolism of these bacteria is so slow that it would take one of them 1000 years to reproduce, instead of the "quickie" twenty minutes that some bacteria take. That is, if these bacteria reproduce at all. As remarkable as it might seem, the scientists believe that these bacteria might be millions of years old.

Imagine what it would be like for a single cell to take 1000 years to reproduce. At the 500-year point, a reproducing bacterium would appear frozen in mid-division (like those drawings in biology books of one cell dividing into two), and it would stay that way for hundreds of years before it separated into two cells! It's a living slow-motion camera! You can see how these slow bacteria could contain genetic information that goes back almost to the very beginning if not all the way. In four _billion_ years, they would only reproduce four million times, while normal bacteria would reproduce four million times in a few hundred years.

The scientists who discovered these slow bacteria suggested that we may need to rethink the way that we think about life to understand them. They believe that bio-films of these molecules might have characteristics similar to those of traditional organisms. In other words, we might be looking at an anthill and not just at individual ants frozen in a kind of suspended animation. Why would scientists think this? _Because it is true of all living things._ All living things function both as individuals and as members of a networked group--their species. It's just that these individuals function on a time scale that dwarfs our own. By way of analogy, you could say that we think in light years while they think in long, slow, lazy days. Clearly, they have a very different view of the world based on this one factor alone. For them, the world appears to be a crystalline solid in which nothing ever moves.

From a network point of view, these slow bacteria are the long memory of the microbe computer--memories that go all the way down. They are the Old Men of the Senate. The bacteria that we know are the Young Turks of the House. Our Microbe Mind has its dynamic switches for action (Young Turks) and its static switches for memory (Old Men).

Think of them as the Ents of Middle Earth (googlewik). They're Old Souls.

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CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: LET THERE BE LIGHT!

"Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter."

Yoda to Luke

The Empire Strikes Back

Since bacteria often live in dark places, the ability to create light can be a big advantage--but for whom? Bacteria can't see, of course. They don't have eyes, but remember that the slime-mold slug climbed to "a well-lit place" to find food. Bacteria can sense light, but why would they make light since they can't see? Enter _vibrio fischeri_ (we'll call it Vib, for short). Vib is a bacterium that can manufacture lux--a chemical that will, under the right circumstances, glow in the dark. Making lux is labor intensive for Vib, so unless it has some good reason to produce it, it doesn't. The most interesting thing is that if only one Vib makes lux, there will not be enough light to see anything. It takes a Vib village; outdoor lighting is a network activity.

Vib may have been the first blind bacterium in history to stand on an underwater street corner with a sign hung around its neck that read: "Will Illuminate for Food!" A passing fish picked Vib up and agreed to feed Vib if Vib would produce lux. The fish would feed Vib for free while Vib reproduced until there were enough Vibettes to make enough lux for there to be a fish-useful light. The fish would then use the light to help it see other fish to get more food for them all. Vib consulted with its Union representatives--who complained mightily about the change in the work load just when they all had families to raise--but they ultimately signed the contract. Fish that employ Vib say that the light always seems dimmer on Mondays and Fridays.

You'll notice that it wasn't Vib who said, "Let there be light!" It was the fish. Vib created light, which Vib had no use for, _because_ the fish had a use for it and was willing to pay. Vib did it for food--and for a warm, safe place to live (real estate).

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CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: THE WORLD MAP

The Microbe Mind is everywhere. It's _in_ every living thing and _on_ every living thing. It's in the air we breathe and the water we drink. It's buried in successive layers deep in the earth going back almost four billion years. It thrives in the oceans and waits patiently playing solitaire while frozen in ice. There is hardly anything that it cannot adapt to eat--and certainly nothing it hasn't tried. It floats aloft in the atmosphere as bacteria mist. Ice crystals form around this mist, and it falls to the earth as snow and rain, distributing it everywhere like manna from heaven. The Microbe Mind is substantial; _it weighs more than all the rest of the life on earth combined._ Because the Microbe Mind is everywhere, it _is_ the world map. It permeates everything; its form is the world's form. It thinks that it _is_ the world. How else could it possibly be? It is one with the world. There is no place where it ends, and the world begins. There may have been once, but that moment has been lost to history forever.

At the same time that it is huge, the Microbe Mind is a triumph of miniaturization. Computer scientists dream of having a switch as small as an individual bacterium. Because they are so small, they can be compressed into a very tiny space. They can take on almost any architecture that they might want to adopt. Because of their small size, they can permeate absolutely everything. And because they communicate by chemical signaling they do not have to deal with all the problems that hard-wired connectivity entails. They are, quite literally, the largest, most complex, living parallel computer ever conceived.

They even have their own web site: www.microbes-mind.net

Does the Microbe Mind exist? Certainly by now, I hope you're willing to consider the idea (not to believe it--which would be un-scientific--but to consider it). And why shouldn't it exist? Our mind is of a fairly recent vintage (less than 250,000 years old) and is supposedly the result of the "whole brain activity" of ten billion neurons with trillions of hard-wired connections. The planet-wide Microbe Mind is of near infinite size, is four billion years old, and uses chemical signals that link to incalculable numbers of other neurons. The Microbe Mind in any individual creature (plant, animal, human, whatever) consists of trillions of cells with gazillions of connections. _There are ten times as many bacteria in our own bodies as human cells!_ What is it about the human brain that makes it so special that it can think while the Microbe Mind can't? The answer might lie in the organization of the human brain, but we have absolutely no idea how the Microbe Mind is organized so it's hard to say that it's less organized than a human brain. It may be that the only thing that prevents the Microbe Mind from thinking is human chauvinism. The Microbe Mind can think; we just don't think that it can.

Just think about it--when you're done laughing!

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CHAPTER THIRTY: PROPHETS AND LOSS

The bible is a tale with two beginnings. The Old Testament starts, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." But the New Testament insists that, "In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Why does the bible start twice? Doesn't it sound like someone is trying to elevate language up to the level of the creation of the heavens and the earth? As a writer, that always struck me as odd. I mean if the bible had started, "In the beginning there was Paint, and the Paint was with God, and the Paint was God," you'd think it was odd, wouldn't you, _especially_ if you were a painter? I mean, what is it about language?

It's easy to think that language was the goal of evolution (if you're fond of thinking that evolution has a goal). If just fits the picture so well. In the five billion year history of the earth, language is the most significant invention since DNA. DNA and language are both ways to preserve knowledge, but language is far more powerful than DNA when it comes to preserving knowledge. With language we can preserve all human knowledge, including our still very limited knowledge of DNA, on a few pen drives--and what a treasure trove of knowledge it would be! If evolution was looking for a better way to store information, we just might have been the first combination of ingredients that worked to create language, which is what it was after.

Whether language was the goal of evolution or whether it just happened in the way that "shit happens" (chance and circumstance)--language happened. When language happened it posed a problem for God. God doesn't understand language--not the way we do. As an analogy, if you think of words as written in binary language (zeros and ones--000110010), the way a computer would store them, that's how God would understand language. God can find patterns and make sense out of the zeros and ones, but it is not sense that any human being could understand--it's not English or Japanese or Sanskrit. Because God lacks the experience that forms the basis of human language, only God knows how God understands human language. That's the problem! In the immortal words of _Cool Hand Luke,_ "What we've got here is a failure to communicate."* We have a tendency to talk past each other. God speaks one language while we speak another.

That's how the Prophets of the Old Testament got into the bio-film. Like Toxo, God is a great experimenter. And God permeates every nook and cranny of our body--inside and out. As speaking human beings formed the first human societies, God had a message for us. We had to learn to control our primitive (individual neuron) instincts for the good of the network whole. Family and tribal units had to evolve to live in larger societies. God got inside people's heads to convince them that they had to change so that the world would be a better place for everybody ("I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony").

Those who heard this message and transmitted it to the rest of society (the Prophets) received God's aid in the form of miracles--to help them convince the rest. Let's face it; if bacteria are intelligent and capable of manipulating our bodies and our brains from the inside, then miracles should be a piece of cake for them--especially healing, no? It's been said that a sufficiently advanced technology would be indistinguishable from magic. The same can probably be said for a sufficiently _different_ technology, especially when it's an inside job that can make us think things that we wouldn't think otherwise. From a rat's point of view, isn't having Toxo like being possessed by the Devil?

But language wasn't the end of the line. Within a few thousand years, humans managed to translate human language into a language that bacteria _could_ understand. I honestly think that God was surprised, although the other possibility is that it was all part of God's plan.

You know what the new language was, don't you? You hated it in school. From the moment of its discovery, the Greeks elevated it to the level of the gods--above the level of the gods actually. In its presence, Zeus seemed...almost...petty. Got it yet? Think, "the square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of its sides." That's right, Pythagoras!

Mathematics was the new religion, and Pythagoras was its first High Priest. It's easy to understand why. Mathematics is a language that God _can_ understand. Of all our languages, it's the one that God understands best. Physicists and mathematicians tend to think that math is God's language. Turns out they might be right--even if God didn't invent it!

In time, mathematics led to science, and science was another language that God could understand, although much more imperfectly than math. Not surprisingly, God is a whiz at genetics and the study of microbes. The reason that God stopped talking to the Prophets may have been that God started talking to mathematicians. That would make this the story of how we lost the Prophets to gain profit and loss--of how rule-based religion gave way to rule-based accounting. If you think about it, that might explain our current devotion to our _new_ one true God--Capitalism.

* The microbes love the part where Luke ("Sometimes nothing is a real cool hand!") eats the fifty hardboiled eggs.

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CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: THE VAGINA AS A WHOLE

With language, knowledge can be preserved that God does not understand. This must make God suspicious, don't you think? You can see that the problem is inevitable. How can single-celled life, no matter how complexly it is networked, ever understand why the question:

"And what do you think of the vagina as a whole?"

is funny? With language, God saw its own flaw clearly; God doesn't understand why people laugh. God understands why monkeys laugh, but it knows that we don't laugh for the same reason. Simply stated, God lacks a sense of humor and knows it needs one. Enter, the Trickster.

The Trickster is God's way of exploring humor. The Trickster is a god, goddess, spirit, man, woman or animal with human characteristics that plays tricks or otherwise disobeys normal rules and conventional behavior. The Trickster deity breaks the rules of the gods or nature--sometimes maliciously--but usually (often unintentionally) with positive results. The Trickster screws around with us, but it all works out for the best. We'll see that this is a recurring theme with God--good ends, no matter what the means--even if it's just trying to get the joke. The Trickster is an element of instability entered into the situation to provoke change to help God understand humor.

Now, of course, you understand the answer to the question, "Why fiction science _humor?"_

To help God learn to get the joke!

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CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: THE TENTH MUSE

The Greek Muses were babes who performed poetry and history orally before there was writing. Later, they wrote poetry, drama, comedy and tragedy; wrote and performed songs, music and dance; and, when they had some spare time with nothing to do, created astronomy. First, there were three; then, as the work load increased, there were nine; now, there's only one. Here's why.

When a living being is faced with some change or challenge that it has never faced before, what does it need to succeed--to survive? An idea, no? It needs inspiration! That's the name of the current, the tenth, Muse--Inspiration! And she's one sexy Muse!* In a sense, all the other Muses were really just over-defining the problem. Once you have Inspiration, you don't need the other nine.

Isn't inspiration the necessary response to almost any unique challenge? "They might be giants!" "Let there be light!" "Eureka!" Inspiration strikes like a lightning bolt! It's the absolute certainty that you know what to do. Even when inspiration is wrong, it's equally sure of itself. This is exactly as it must be for survival. Inspiration has no way of knowing that it is correct, but it has an absolute need to act now--and to act with confidence! _Inspiration inspires inspired over-confident risk-taking in the face of difficult challenges._ The Tenth Muse could earn a good living on Wall Street.

Artists who have experience with the inspiration Muse know that she is not a part of them. She is an outsider. She is not me! Every artist knows this. But if the Muse is not me, then who is she? I propose that she might be an inner bacterial helper (an inside job) who prods me with inspiration when I'm in a suitably receptive state to receive her generous gift. In the old days, she was God inspiring Prophets. Today, when she isn't busy inspiring Wall Street traders with new accounting tricks, she expends what energy she has left on artists--which might help explain the modern deteriorated state of the arts.

You gotta admit that you've thought more than once that this book was inspired by a very small mind, no?

* Sharon Stone plays her in the movie.

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CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: THE WORLD WE ALL SEE

Remember the game called "telephone? " In a room with a dozen people seated in a circle, one person whispers in the ear of the person next to him, "John Adams was the second president of the United States." This person then whispers the same thing to the next person, who whispers to the next person, who whispers to the next person...until the message arrives at the last person. This person then repeats the message out loud to everyone present, "The Adams Family lived on Second Street."

In his book _My View of the World,_ the physicist Erwin Schrodinger explored the ancient Vedic question, "Why do we all see the same world?" As an analogy, if you think of vision as a game of telephone, how is it that a vision message manages to travel around the room without changing? Why do we all see the same world? And it's not just us! Remember those Greeks and Romans that we're sure existed in the past. They saw the same world too--even if the world they saw existed in a totally different time and no longer exists today. Flies see the same world too. Flies see it through eyes that are nothing like human eyes. The world they see is translated in a brain that is totally unlike ours. We are certain that they see the world in the most fundamental ways very _differently_ than we do, yet we are certain--absolutely certain--that we both see the same world. A fly can land on the eraser on the tip of my pencil with great precision because it sees the same pencil (in a different way) that I see, no? Even prehistoric flies saw the same world (but not my pencil). The idea that we all see the same world is something that we believe goes all the way up and all the way down in the living world. It's one of Godel's "truths that you can know but not prove." All living creatures see the same world. How else could they survive in it?

But where does that single-minded vision of a world that remains unchanged by time and changing circumstance come from? Schrodinger favored the solution that the Hindu's proposed in the Vedas--that we all see the same world because there is only One Mind to see it, and we all share that mind somehow! The Vedic One Mind was not thought to be a physical mind like a human mind--that's how we could all could share it.

Now we have another possible explanation--that the Vedic One Mind might be a _physical_ mind. The Vedic One Mind might be the Microbe Mind that is in each and every one of us individually and is the World Map _at the same time._ We all see the same world because the Microbe Mind, which is the Mother Mind that we all share, is one with that world.

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CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR: G-THEORY AND THE GOD GERM

The Good Germ is the one that gets inside your brain (like Toxo but with better intentions) and tries to convince you that you ought to "do the right thing." The Good Germ is your conscience and is the source of spirituality. The network form of the Good Germ is the God Germ. The God Germ is the source of religion. Originally, the God Germ wanted us to be good because it was necessary for our survival as a civilization. We had to _be_ good to _become_ civilized.

In much the same way that we have abandoned religion for spirituality, we have abandoned the simple distinction between good and evil as good _versus_ evil. We live in the age of moral relativity. Rule-based villainry ("Villains are bad!") has given way to the non-rule-based realization that good and evil exist side-by-side in all of us. The modern hero is good--and bad. And what good is a _villain_ with a good side? This has writers up in arms, of course. Writers live and breathe villains. Fighting against morally relative villains is like taking up arms against a sea of tapioca. Needless to say, this has created something of a crisis in literature.

For some people in an age of moral relativity, all that's left of God is our conscience. God may be dead, but that voice inside our heads insisting that we "do the right thing" is alive and well. And the song remains the same!

The standard definition of God--in everyone, in everything, everywhere, all-knowing, all-loving, perfect--gets most of the particulars right. The Microbe Mind knows enough for us to think that it knows all, even if it doesn't. It "knows things" in a non-verbal way that is infinitely mysterious to us even though we were non-verbal ourselves throughout most of our history. _Language is a bell that can't be un-rung._ All spiritual systems claim that while spiritual knowledge is real physical knowledge that it is _non-verbal._ It cannot be expressed in words; it is _ineffable._ When a neurosurgeon--Dr. Eben Alexander III--had a bacterial infection _(E. coli_ meningitis) that effectively shut down all of his conscious brain activity, he experienced what he described as a visit to the afterlife. A prominent feature of his experience (which he documented in his book _Proof of Heaven)_ was that while communication took place with a higher being that it was _not_ communication in words--it was _ineffable._ He had to translate the messages that he received into words as best he could.

Perfect is clearly wrong; perfection and life cannot exist together. Imperfection (instability) is the signature characteristic of all life--of the entire universe. The fuel of life and evolution is error and imperfection. Life's motto could easily be, "Trial and error! Less than perfect!" The all-loving part needs to be taken with a grain of salt too. The Microbe Mind is all-loving in the way that government loves all its citizens. The story of God asking Abraham to kill his son Isaac illustrates this point. At the network level, children are cannon fodder. Remember how desperate housewives can act contrary to their own personalities simply because they are part of a network? Isn't it obvious that parents send their children off to war because such decisions are made at the network level--and not at the parent level? You act contrary to your own self-interested programming when you are part of a network. That's network life!

On November 16, 2012, in an article titled "Network Cosmology," _Nature's Scientific Reports_ published the surprising results of a computer simulation that indicates that the entire universe may grow in an organized network fashion much like a human brain. The authors suggest that the natural growth dynamics of all networks may be the same. Everything--from the network firing of our brain cells, to the functioning of social networks, to the Internet, to the expansion of the galaxies--may follow the same fundamental laws. We may not understand these laws yet, but if they really exist, they seem to indicate that Dr. Frank Vertosick's revelations about the importance of understanding network behavior may go all the way up and all the way down in the universe that we inhabit.

Is God infinite? That's a toughie. Without knowing where the universe comes from and why there's life in it, it's hard to say. If there are gazillions of universes--as many scientists now suspect--then perhaps each universe is nothing more than a thought in the mind of God. Our earthly Microbe Mind might be in intimate contact with the Universal God Mind that is the source of all matter, energy and life. Or not. It knows, but we don't. It wants us to think that it is, but we have no way of knowing how trustworthy it is. Faith means giving it the benefit of the doubt, no?

To capture the dual image of God as all-knowing and God as tinkerer, you just have to imagine Morgan Freeman in the role, as he's played both parts. Then, think of yourself as Batman. God tinkers for you in his spare time! Holy bat cycle!

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### PART FOUR

### BITTEN BY THE LOVE BUG

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CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE: THE DICE MAN

Something happened to the story of science during the twentieth century. Scientists lost control of the narrative, and the world hasn't been the same since. It all started at the turn of the century with Einstein when he asked us to believe that time slows down, length contracts, and mass approaches infinity (infinity!) when things speed up fast enough. As if that wasn't enough, he tossed in the twin paradox for good measure. It turns out that two people will age at different rates depending on how fast they are travelling relative to each other ("I'm my twin's grandpa!"). Just to add insult to injury--and contrary to our puritan expectations--fast women age slower. Then, to round out the picture, Einstein served up gravity that curves space-time for dinner.

When we'd finally managed to digest all that, we were asked to accept quantum incomprehensibility. We're supposed to believe that, if you haven't measured it, an electron can be in two places _at the same time._ The only words that scientists have to explain how the electron accomplishes this miraculous feat are nonsense words that would have made Lewis Carroll proud. In this case, it's "superposition," which is science-speak for "We do not know." In this new world of science, cats can be dead and alive _at the same time!_ I mean, ex...cuuuuuu...se me! Whatever happened to Kepler's laws and Galileo's laws and Newton's laws? Why did natural laws give way to squishy incomprehensible explanations and nonsense words?

The worst part was the way that anyone who wasn't willing to bow down before such nonsense was treated! Like a praying mantis, scientists have always favored eating their own when they stray from orthodoxy. The story goes that Bohr ate Einstein for breakfast over quantum controversies, even though Einstein's challenge to the theory proved true. _When you tickle an electron here, its twin on the other side of the universe laughs!_ That's even better than the twin paradox, don't you think? Scientists even have some nifty nonsense words for it--"quantum entanglement." Around the lunch room, they just call it the Giggle Theory.

Today, scientists believe that quantum entanglement is true--even if they think that Einstein was wrong about God. Contrary to Einstein's opinion, they insist that "God _does_ play dice with the universe." I forgot to mention Albert "The Dice Man" Einstein earlier. He actually started the whole _understanding what God is up to_ part of science that has confused us ever since.* Until now, of course.

This is where FAPP comes in. FAPP is science-speak that means "for all practical purposes." Scientists say that God _does_ play dice with the universe, but not often enough for it to matter in the real world where we live. If one in a trillion electrons suddenly teleports to some distant location, what difference does it make? The sun will still rise in the morning! Just round the number off, and the problem goes away! Physical miracles happen, but not often enough to matter to us scientists! You'll notice that scientists who use the word FAPP are usually implying that physical miracles don't happen, even though _the word only exists because they do._ Scientists find it impossible to say the words, "miracles happen," even when they do and have been scientifically verified. Tickle an electron here and an electron on the other side of the universe laughs. If that isn't a miracle, I don't know what is!

Even our most impressive twentieth-century theory--the Big Bang--had gone off the track by the end of the century. This nice simple theory that neatly explained the origin of the universe in a quantum explosion has morphed into a massive manhunt (with lots of expensive new equipment needed) for missing matter and missing energy. Somehow, seemingly overnight, the bulk of the universe went missing; and then scientists discovered that the particles from the original explosion are still accelerating, as if they each had little rocket boosters attached that were still firing--how un-explosion-like! We may need Hawking's M-theory _and_ brane cosmology (double don't ask) just to sort it all out.

You gotta ask yourself--how could this possibly happen? Weren't we paying scientists a fortune to keep track of the universe? Haven't we installed expensive high-tech telescopes all over the planet for them for just that purpose? _And they lost most of it?_ Yet somehow, like Wall Street bankers, they've managed to keep their jobs--and their funding. And now they want more!

"If we _only_ had a brane!"

* Darwin's genius, of course, was to insist that God wasn't up to anything at all.

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CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX: BODY HEAT

Why are there no good stories about sex? This has always troubled me as a writer (undoubtedly with an overactive libido). Sex is always the subplot, but never the story. The written medium for sex is a special category of writing called pornography, which is near the bottom of the literary heap. The signature characteristic of pornography is that the story doesn't really matter; in fact, the story tends to get in the way. What is it about sex? It's not that it's excluded from stories. There are entire genres like romance novels that are full of sex, but they're not about sex. They're about romance, which is why men don't read them; if they were about sex, men would read them. There are also stories about adultery, jealousy, betrayal and crimes of passion. There are stories about evil women who use sex to get what they want, but they're stories about evil women who use sex to get what they want. They're not stories _about_ sex.

Need I say, "Ex...cuuuuuu...se me!" How can the thing that is central to all human existence and that dominates our thoughts like nothing else _not_ be central to the stories that we tell? The answer is simple. Bacteria--who are the source of our world view, our archetypes, and our stories--don't understand sex. Bacteria reproduce asexually, and while they understand what sex is all about, they don't understand--and probably never will--why people are so passionate about it. How could they? Sex isn't fun for them like it is for us. They understand the chemistry of sex, but they'll never understand the "chemistry" of sex. For them, it's just a mechanical act driven by hormones that leads to procreation--which is pretty much what pornography is, no?

Once you understand that our story plots are designed to satisfy the bacteria view of the world, they make a lot more sense. Joseph Campbell's "Hero's Journey" (googlewik)--a staple of adventure films--is an excellent example:

A hero ventures forth from his ordinary world into a region of supernatural wonder. Fabulous forces are encountered, and a decisive victory is won. The hero returns from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellows.

The world of supernatural wonder is the bacterial world. The fabulous forces are our friends, bacteria. The decisive victory is won because bacteria are on the hero's side helping! The hero returns home to share the boons that bacteria have bestowed on him. In theory, you could accomplish this journey in your bathroom!

There's another One Master Plot that drama writers especially like:

The hero must overcome his/her false self (ego) and discover his/her true self (deep inner being).

This plot is well summarized in the famous Obe Wan Kenobe line from the original Star Wars movie--"Go with the Force, Luke." In Star Wars mythology, the Force is the deep inner being of the entire universe, and it can act through us individually! In Chinese philosophy, this universe-generating force that can act through us individually is called the Tao. The Force is also a metaphor for our own deep inner being. We cannot know it, but we can use it if we can just learn to "go with it." And what might that Force be? Bacteria! Too bad they're puritan prudes!

Any screenwriter will tell you that the sex in science fiction always needs to be hidden in the subtext (kids see this stuff). In the movie, when Obe Wan tells Luke to go with the Force, Luke must pilot a needle-shaped spaceship through a long, narrow, winding passageway with the enemy in hot pursuit. Another pilot asks, "Luke, at that speed will you be able to pull out in time?"--always a concern for an anxious teen on his first big mission. When Luke finally reaches his destination, he must fire a rocket into a small hole in the surface of the Death Star. The rocket penetrates deeply into the interior where it erupts in a huge explosion that totally destroys the Death Star! The final visual image is not of Death Star debris ejected into space but of a large, glowing O-ring (like a giant pulsating smoke ring) filled with tiny white cell-like blobs floating in the blackness of space.

"Go with the Force, Luke!"

Does better advice exist?

While they might not understand sex, it's easy to understand why microbes are so fascinated with actors. What are actors, really? An actor is a person who can convincingly fake human emotions, no? They don't actually have the emotions; they just act like they do. You can see how microbes might find this endlessly fascinating, especially when viewing it from the inside as they do. Actors know what the microbe beast that wants to know wants to know. Actors know emotions--at least, microbes think that they do.

If you think about it, most people who claim that they have been abducted by aliens (a mind-boggling 4% of the population in the United States) say that the aliens conducted a detailed examination of their bodies, especially of their reproductive system.* This might very well reflect a genuine curiosity on bacteria's part to understand what all the fuss is about.

* This means that if you're on a bus with fifty people that two of them are otherwise "normal" people who believe that they have been abducted--and intimately probed--by aliens. You just gotta wonder which two, don't you? Assuming one isn't you, of course.

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CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN: THE FORCE THAT THROUGH THE GREEN FUSE DRIVES THE FLOWER*

Scientists think that because life does not break any natural laws that it is, essentially, a mechanical process. The signature feature of the "one mutation at a time" theory of evolution is that it seeks to define the evolution of all life as a mechanical process--chance (random mutation) and circumstance (natural selection)--and nothing else. At some level, it's an attempt to make biology more like physics and chemistry, more mechanistic.

Is the behavior of a living network--say, an anthill--mechanical? The behavior of its component elements (ants) is essentially mechanical, but the anthill's reaction to an external event--like a sudden flooding or an attack by neighboring ants--is not mechanical. Is war ever mechanical? Decisions have to be made. Because decisions are dependent on circumstance, they are not mechanical. If a choice was made a different way, the results might be different. How human beings would respond to a public alien visitation (say, with the alien ship landing on the White House lawn just in time for the evening news) is not something that is mechanical (in the sense that we can know what we would do in advance). We do not know how we would respond. A lot would depend on circumstance. I am assuming that they are not attacking or threatening us at any level, but that we are reasonably suspicious of their intentions nonetheless. What if they want something but aren't telling us? What would we do? Nobody knows!

Living networks make decisions, therefore, their behavior is not mechanical. For a living network, the equivalent of "I think, therefore, I am" would be "I _decide,_ therefore, I am." Networks don't break any of the laws of physics or chemistry or biology, but they do learn and change their behavior in ways that cannot be predicted, which means that they are not mechanical. Nobody could've ever _predicted_ that ants would _decide_ to farm aphids. Networked life is not mechanical even if the individual neurons in the system are mechanical--because decisions are made at the network level. Theoretically "selfish" neurons act contrary to their programmed behavior. Desperate housewives act in opposition to their own personalities. Ants ignore their own self-interest for the good of the anthill. Soldiers risk their lives to go to war. _Because networks adapt and learn as connection weights between neurons inevitably change, they are not mechanical._

This brings up an interesting implication. Is network behavior related to the ancient idea of vitalism? Is the behavior of a network equivalent to the _life_ force? It was a network of something that produced RNA and DNA and the first living cells. It was networks of those cells that transformed our atmosphere and oceans and made the planet suitable for multicellular life. It was networks of multicellular life that evolved into all the life that we currently see on earth. Every living creature is a network of cells. Every individual cell is an intricate network of enzyme-catalyzed reactions. Interacting networks seem to be a viable candidate for the "vital force" that distinguishes living beings (and networked pre-life) from inert matter.

As soon as the theory of evolution recognizes that networks learn and change, then the question of how genomes were built up in the first place is answered. The genomes built up as the networks learned. The genomes built up as species learned to eat more and different kinds of food. The genomes built up as species moved into new real estate developments. The genomes built up because they could learn through trial and error. The genomes built up because bored cells are sometimes curious _(the beast that wants to know)._ The genomes built up because microbe networks are smart enough to design and build new structures. How? How should I know? Ask them! I believe they're in a chatty mood.

So, why did microbes create multicellular life? If you think about it from their perspective, a human being is like a mobile five-star hotel that has fresh food delivered at regular intervals wherever it happens to be. Tens of thousands of bacteria species take up residence there. Animals are ski resorts on skis! Wilt Chamberlain (Wilt the Stilt) was the Empire State Building on a pogo stick! All multicellular life provides a reliable source of food and shelter for microbes--in the case of insects and animals, shelters that can move. You can think of us as living, migrating cities that microbes built. We're public transportation with a dining car--and when the ride is over, you can eat the car!

There is a tendency to think of an intelligent designer as the designer of an end product. That's because if God is the intelligent designer--and God is perfect--you would expect God to get it right on the first try, right? But we now know that God isn't perfect, that life and perfection are antithetical. Life isn't perfect; it's more like a custom chopper. When you look at a custom chopper, it's easy to think that it was "intelligently designed," but the reality is very different. Even if they draw a very detailed picture of the chopper that they are going to build (the picture is the design), the end product will be different than the picture. The chopper needs to be built, and building always changes design ideas. The chopper is a real-world object created out of metal in three dimensions. The picture is a hypothetical chopper rendered on paper in two dimensions. Once a custom chopper has been built, they could go back and change the drawings to reflect the chopper they actually built. That would be like programming the changes into DNA. Then they could build another one just like it.

Intelligent design is trial and error. You try something out to see if it works. When it works, you keep it. If it doesn't, you scrap it. That's how life works. It's a lot more than chance and circumstance. _It's neither predictable nor mechanical, nor does it break any of the laws of the universe._

* A poem by the other Dylan--Dylan Thomas.

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CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT: MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE

Scientists love to talk about the probability that there are other planets with life in our galaxy. They say that the probability is so high that it is a near certainty, but the reality is that we are the only life in the universe that we _know_ exists. If there are aliens out there, for some reason they haven't visited. If they're sending signals, we haven't received them yet. The one thing that we can be certain of is that we're here. What if we're the _only_ life in the universe?

Ever since science discovered that a universe exists, the microbes have puzzled over their place in it. They know what we don't--what pre-life was like before the first cell was created. They know because they were there; they are the product of that pre-life. But knowledge of this pre-life still does not answer the question, "Why does matter self-organize into life?" They know _how_ matter self-organizes into life, but not _why._ And _the_ _beast that wants to know_ wants to know.

The most important question for them seems to be, "Has the Universal Mind populated other planets?" What if they're the _first_ living manifestation of the Universal Mind? What if life is an extremely rare event rather than a commonplace one--even when all the circumstances are a Goldilocks' "just right." What if it's _their_ responsibility to spread life throughout the galaxy by populating other worlds? Even microbes have to deal with dilemmas; dilemmas are network phenomena that result from the competing interests of network neurons. Sometimes you just don't know what to do, but you still have to place a bet. Doing nothing is betting. Microbes know this; they're good at math.

It seems pretty clear that bacteria have bet on space travel--but for them not for us. For now, they're encouraging us "to boldly go where no one has gone before" (they have to start somewhere), but the impracticality of sending humans into space anywhere beyond our own solar system is already obvious. In the future, if we still have not received visitors or a message, there may come a point in time when it will occur to us that it is _our_ responsibility to seed the universe. We need to be the alien invaders!*

The things we make an incredible effort to keep off spacecraft today--microbes--want to be the payload of the future! Life is a dynamic instability at the _living heart_ (not the center) of the universe. Life wants to spread its wings and fly! You just gotta wish 'em luck, no?

And what is life's "message in a bottle" to take on this epic journey? We all know the answer to that one, don't we? We could etch it onto the side of their spaceships:

" _All you need is Love!"_

* In his book, Life Itself: Its Origin and Nature, Francis "The Central Dogma" Crick speculated that bacteria life on earth arrived on an alien spaceship almost four billion years ago. If true, it would bring our story full circle--like a tail-swallowing ouroboros. Perhaps they want to leave because they remember how they got here.

Ouroboros

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CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE: WHAT DO YOU DO WITH A DRUNKEN MICROBE?

He! Ho! and up she rises.

He! Ho! and up she rises.

He! Ho! and up she rises.

Early in the morning.

What do you do with a drunken microbe?

What do you do with a drunken microbe?

What do you do with a drunken microbe?

Early in the morning.

Put it in the longboat and make it bale her.

Put it in the longboat and make it bale her.

Put it in the longboat and make it bale her.

Early in the morning.

Put it in the guardroom till it gets sober.

Put it in the guardroom till it gets sober.

Put it in the guardroom till it gets sober.

Early in the morning.

What do you do with a drunken microbe?

What do you do with a drunken microbe?

What do you do with a drunken microbe?

Early in the morning.

We know that Toxo can cause a rat to become obsessed with the smell of cat piss. What if some people have bacteria that like to feast on alcohol? For them, it's food; for us, it's the Bloody Mary hangover cure. Could these bacteria possibly be reprogramming human brains to get themselves enough to drink? As with luminescent bacteria in fish, just a little would never do. They would need enough alcohol to properly "light up" the entire colony!

That would explain a lot, don't you think?

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THE END, AFTER ALL

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AUTHOR'S PHOTO

To maintain his anonymity, Nobody! likes to pretend that he's Steve Martin ("to throw the paparazzi off the scent"). To be clear, Nobody! is NOT Steve Martin.

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SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE!

"We think Nobody! should make a movie!" Nobody at the American Institute of Corn Porn ("Pornography made entirely from corn--for when the ethanol subsidies end! Think creamed corn--and COBS!")

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