Review of What Is Life?: Investigating the Nature of Life in the Age of Synthetic Biology by Ed Regis

What Is Life?: Investigating the Nature of Life in the Age of Synthetic Biology 
by 

Ed Regis

"Despite the enormous fund of information that [biologists] have provided," wrote Carl Sagan in 1970, "it is a remarkable fact that...there is no generally accepted definition of life." This book provides a gripping, (very) brief tour of the present "enormous fund of information" we now have on living functions: 

1) Replication (the discovery of DNA in 1954; the breaking of the nucleotide/amino-acid Genetic Code in the 1960s--on through the Recombinant DNA revolution of the 1970s through "synthetic" viruses composed from genetic scratch in the 1980s), 
2) Metabolism (the Krebs cycle; the universal role of ATP), 
3) Evolution (the Modern Synthesis uniting genetics and natural selection)

Regis also describes attempts in this century to devise novel lifelike systems in the form of artificial "protocells" and chemical "chells"

Despite this veritable avalanche of information of how living systems work, it remains a baffling fact that the simple question, "What is life?" remains as disputed as ever. One begins to wonder whether this question might be an empty philosopher's quixotic quest. In this spirit, there might be something to be said for Edouard Machery's dilemma-diagnosis in his essay (discussed by Regis), "Why I Stopped Worrying About the Definition of Life...and Why You Should as Well" (2006): "the project of defining life is either impossible or pointless," he writes, since either 'life' refers to "a traditional and ill-defined 'folk notion'" or else the definition of 'life' is to be fixed by "a precise, scientific theoretical concept." If the former, then defining 'life' slides into Socratic silliness; but, if the latter, then *every* scientific sub-discipline will have its own 'fixed' definition...and there's nothing to be said beyond that (pp. 158-159).

I can't help but think that anyone who gives Regis's primer a read will soon be inspired to follow up by exploring many of the scientific vistas Regis points out.

Review of Lady Q: The Rise and Fall of a Latin Queen by Reymundo Sánchez, Sonia Rodríguez

Lady Q: The Rise and Fall of a Latin Queen 
by 

Reymundo Sánchez,

Sonia Rodríguez

 

Tim's review 

Aug 27, 2015

it was amazing

If you peer into the heart of a Bad Girl, you'll often find a Sad Story. So it is with "Sonia Rodriguez," the pseudonym of the woman who became Lady Q: the Queen of the Chicago Latin Kings in the 1980s. Reymundo Sanchez (author of "My Bloody Life," a memoir of his own life in the Kings) has transcribed Sonia's story with sensitivity and a gritty, unflinching eye.

It would be very difficult to make Lady Q's life into a movie, because it doesn't fit the hopeful Hollywood formula. I read this book expecting the formula--expecting that, after enough drug-and-poverty-fueled purgatory, Lady Q would purge herself of the pain of her past, and step into a New Life as a Transformed Woman.

But Lady Q never turns that corner. She has plenty of (what we'd melodramatically dub) wake-up calls, but she never really wakes up. At the close of the book, the Iron Law of Lady Q's life still holds: "Just when she was convinced that the bullshit phase of her life was over," Sanchez writes, "Sonia was pushed back into its core" (page 255).

Even her otherwise patient scribe, Reymundo Sanchez, grows frustrated with his subject: "I scolded her on several occasions about her dependency on others, [but] she failed to understand that people...don't want to be dealing with a forty-year old woman who refuses to get her shit together" (pp. 267-268). Sanchez describes trying, repeatedly, to point out Sonia's damaging patterns of living to her--and the effects these patterns were having on her children. But the result was just word-service: "Sonia agreed and promised, promised and agreed, but did nothing" (p. 268).

And yet, I personally find it impossible to judge Lady Q too harshly. I see a girl who tried, over and over again, to live constructively, only to have her nascent hopes dashed by larger forces. Sonia tried to be a good girl--but abusive parents beat her for every imagined flaw (pp. 15-19). She tried to be an innocent girl--but her uncle and cousin abusively stole that innocence from her (pp. 7-14). She tried to be a talented girl, choreographing for the Richmond Street Dancers--but the gangs chased her off the scene (pp. 29-34). She tried to be a loving woman--but her men left her body battered and her heart abandoned. And on and on it goes. And over and over again, I found myself asking one question: "With all of Sonia's human gifts--her magnetic personality, her sparkling charisma, her honesty, her loyal heart--what could she have become if only Life had dealt her a few fair cards?" 

Review of The Hate Factory: A First-Hand Account of the 1980 Riot at the Penitentiary of New Mexico by Georgelle Hirliman, W.G. Stone (As Told by)

The Hate Factory: A First-Hand Account of the 1980 Riot at the Penitentiary of New Mexico

by 

Georgelle Hirliman,

 

W.G. Stone (As Told by)

The more I read about riots, the more I remember the old saying: "The players might change, but the game remains the same."

In 1953, former assistant San Quentin warden Douglas C. Rigg was tasked with investigating the causes of violence at the New Mexico State Penitentiary. He concluded that the system had "an inadequate system of classifying inmates for placement and security...idleness, lack of education and recreation, insufficient medical services, untrained and underpaid guards, and little dissemination of information to the press and public" (p. 81)

A quarter-century later, on February 2, 1980, a riot engulfed the prison; thirty-three inmates were left dead, all killed by fellow inmates during the riot. 

Anyone care to guess what the causes of the riot were? Georgelle Hirliman's book describes, in great detail, how Rigg's factors persisted at NM State Penitentiary--even after a new facility was built (at great expense) and opened (with great optimism) on April 20, 1956. In short, this book is a story of how the State "was willing to provide money for literally concrete ["brick and mortar"] changes, but not for the people inside the concrete, not in terms of rehabilitation programs or in raises for corrections officers" (page 82).

As Hirliman's passionate Foreward to the Revised Edition (written in 2005) points out, it's unclear that the State has learned any lasting lessons from one of the worst prison uprisings in U.S. history (pages ix-xxi).

Review of "Debating Christian Theism"

Timothy Chambers

Debating Christian Theism. J.P. Moreland, Chad Meister, and Khaldoun A. Sweis (eds.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2013, xv + 554 pp. $35.00 pbk. ISBN 978-0-19-975543-1.

Chambers, Timothy (2015) "Review of "Debating Christian Theism"," Essays in Philosophy: Vol. 16: Iss. 2, Article 9. http://dx.doi.org/10.7710/1526-0569.1537

Timothy Chambers, "Reasonable Atheism a Moral Case for Respectful Disbelief" by Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse

Timothy Chambers, "Reasonable Atheism a Moral Case for Respectful Disbelief" by Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse

 https://www.scribd.com/doc/212590443/Timothy-Chambers-Reasonable-Atheism-a-Moral-Case-for-Respectful-Disbelief-by-Scott-F-Aikin-and-Robert-B-Talisse

Review of God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question - Why We Suffer by Bart D. Ehrman

God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question - Why We Suffer 
by 

Bart D. Ehrman

Aug 04, 2013

it was amazing

How does the Judeo-Christian Bible explain God's permission of innocent human suffering? Bart Ehrman devotes this book to two main tasks: (1) Locate and canvass answers to the question of God and human suffering and (2) Explain why Professor Ehrman finds (most of) these answers unsatisfying.

1) One interesting thing about the Judeo-Christian Bible is that, rather than give one answer to the reason for human suffering, it gives many answers. Perhaps the suffering is because the sufferer (or his community) was disobedient to God (Deuteronomy 28, Job's "friends"). Or maybe the sufferer is morally innocent, but God intends to make use of their season of suffering to clinch some Greater Good (Joseph's remark to his brothers: "Ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive" (Genesis 50:20)). Or maybe the suffering isn't (contrary to what the Scriptures say elsewhere) dispensed by God, but by supernatural evildoers--Satan and the demons. And God intends, at some later Judgment Day, to intervene and banish these evildoers from the world (Daniel 12, Revelation). Or maybe it's sinful to even ask the question (Job), or at least it's impossible for us to understand what the answer would be (Ecclesiastes). (Ehrman, by the way, approves of Ecclesiastes' honest agnositicism.)

Ehrman points out a very intriguing thing: Many Christians, when asked about the problem of innocent suffering, answer with some version of, "Well, God can't prevent all evildoing if he wants to respect human Free Will." And yet, this is one answer we do not find in the Scriptures. But that's a bit puzzling: If, as conservative Christians maintain, the Bible is Divinely authored and the source of all truth, and the Free Will Response is the true explanation of innocent suffering, then why didn't God place the "Free Will"-answer more prominently in the Scriptures?)

2) As can be guessed, Ehrman is dissatisfied with all of the Biblical explanations of God's permission of innocent suffering. Ehrman's arguments aren't entirely novel. Antony Flew once argued:

"[We're told that] God loves us as a father loves his children....But then we see a child dying of inoperable cancer of the throat. His earthly father is driven frantic in his efforts to help, but his Heavenly Father reveals no obvious sign of concern."

Ehrman's arguments are similar in spirit: judged by ordinary moral standards, God comes off as lackadaisical at best, and monstrous at worst. A religious person might reply that Ehrman's mistake is trying to judge God by ordinary moral standards. Okay; though, if we reject this premise, we're then left to wonder, "If God isn't to be judged harshly by ordinary moral standards, then how can we praise Him as 'good' in any ordinary sense of the word?" (We can't very well have it both ways: if we don't know enough to condemn God as an accomplice to evil, how can we know enough to know that God is an accomplice of goodness?)

Ehrman's book is an informative and thought-provoking one. As always happens with philosophical perplexity, Ehrman's book won't provide the Last Word for some people--but I think it's beyond dispute that his book is a worthwhile First Word on the issue.

Escape from Loneliness by Paul Tournier

Escape from Loneliness
by 

Paul Tournier

Tim's review

Mar 15, 2013

A really rewarding book to read...it outlines various
flawed ways peeps try to escape loneliness ('losing
oneself' in a job, trying to 'possess' pleasure-sources,
getting all legalistic about what "I got a *right* to
have", etc.)...Tournier claims that only in a "fellowship"
of some sort is there any hope of escaping the loneliness
that so many try to escape. Thought-provoking...