Evolution of Creationism - my upcoming radio piece

This coming Friday (2nd December 2005) I have been invited onto the ABC Radio National program "Perspectives" to deliver an essay on "The Evolution of Creationism".

Perspectives is a short segment appearing each weekday evening at 5:54pm, just before the news (or later, depending on where you are, check the website for air times). Various people, usually eminent in their field expound on every subject imaginable. I feel overwhelmed and privileged to be in their company.

The Perspectives program goes out Nationally and then Internationally via Radio Australia, plus whoever comes in over the Internet or reads the transcript on the ABC site. Listener figures in Australia approach six figures, and overseas even the ABC don't know.

Radio National is AM 576 in Sydney (here for other areas), or alternatively listen to the permanent streaming broadcast.

I will follow this post with a full transcript, additional commentary and audio shortly after the piece airs on the radio on Friday. Please feel free to check back here then.

A Bouquet for Jacarandas

Has anyone noticed it's been a glorious year for Jacaranda flowers? Jacarandas are native to South America and I'm not sure how widespread the species is elsewhere, so I'll describe them for my overseas readers. Jacaranda trees grow to a prodigious height of over 20m. The bark is flat & silvery on the boughs but rough at the bole. Leaflets are only 1cm long but are arranged into compound fronds up to 40cm, giving the tree one of its alternative names, the fern tree.

For maybe eight weeks a year, in late Spring, the Jacaranda blooms so heavily it's branches are bowed. Clusters of amethyst flowers shaped like long, curved bells change the complexion of the whole tree. Deciduous, the tree looks spare and skeletal over winter, but come Spring, I have always taken Jacarandas as the very harbinger of happy, outdoor times, warm afternoons and new growth. Then, in December, she sheds her mauve dress and it lays on the ground like a discarded shawl.

In my town, whole streets are lined with Jacarandas and for whatever reason they are a sight of special magnificence this year. It warms my heart to see them, for I feel a special connection with the Jacaranda.

When I was small, I grew up as much at my Grandparent's home as in my own. The family property at Glenhaven used to be a farm and orchard and my great-grandparents were the local postmasters.

Glenhaven Post Office, painted 1973.

Over time, urban development encroached and the property was whittled down from scores of acres to a single acre by the time I was born. But at the centre of that acre, imperial and defiant, was a giant Jacaranda.

This tree was so big people used to park outside the fence and paint it. She was a local landmark, a queen, and she marked the seasons of my life with her blooms from ages nought to fifteen, when my grandparent's ill health forced us to sell up the remaining plot after over 120 years. My sister and I had climbed her trunk and lain along her lower branches since we could walk. The dog's kennel was at her buttressed feet.

By the time we had to sell my Grandparent's property in the late 80's, even our acre was an aberrant luxury, an anachronism of lawns and groves, surrounded by grotesque McMansions on a quarter-acre or less. When we sold, it was on the condition that the property kept its boundaries, and that special features like our Jacaranda would be saved. This softened the blow. In fact, it was the real-estate agent himself that bought the property. Assurances were made. They were lies. All lies.

Naturally, within a short time the Jacaranda was chopped down and three more houses were built on the acre, with the real-estate agent laughing all the way to damnation.

We had taken some seedlings of the original tree and planted them at my parent's property, and a row of them line our front fence and are dotted elsewhere on the property, along with a real prize, a rare white Jacaranda.

A rare white Jacaranda

These trees are now about my age, 30+, and are doing well. I've noticed with some satisfaction that their blooms are deeper, more numerous and superior to those of some other Jacarandas that were already on the property, and in time will also make excellent climbing trees.

Jacaranda flowers give way to disc-shaped seed pods. When they are dry they open like bivalve molluscs to release their seeds. I've seen millions of such seed pods, but once, and only once, something different...

A regular two sided Jacaranda seedpod

Bizarro mutant three sided Jacaranda seedpod.

Years ago, the big Jacaranda threw a seedpod with an extra side, a "trivalve symmetry", if you will. We've kept it all this time, like a four leaf clover. I've never seen a mutation anything like it before or since.

- Nathan Zamprogno

Toddlers, Wood glue, Leprosy and Weltschmerz

I've always been brought up to believe that if something is worthwhile then you need to participate in it and not just attend it. Thus, my wife and I involve ourselves in the life of our local Church. Last Sunday I was on the video desk and my wife was running the toddler's program. Problem was, my wife was sick and no one could fill in for her. As I got up that morning, my wife gave me plaintive looks between bouts of volcanic upchucking, and she just knows I can't resist her when she does that. Metaphorically I felt tiny hands dragging me inexorably into the land of drool. I found someone to fill in on the computer for part of the service.

"These kids are between 2 and 4. I can do this", I thought. The children's program does run with a program from week to week, a glossy workbook with a dozen lessons drawn from the Bible, illustrated with "Miffy" style cartoons, and accompanying line templates for use in colouring in, games and so on.

It is entirely saccharine, and unbearably American, but it was the program and blast it, I was going to do my best to present it. Now where were we up to? Ah. Lesson Eight. I read the first line of the lesson plan, and no, I'm not making this up.

"Imagine Naaman's terror as he realised that the patch on his skin was Leprosy. It was a sentence to slow death (2Kings 5:1-16)"

Oh...Kay... It took me a minute to realise that this line is actually part of the teacher's preamble to the lesson, but really and truly this was the foundation of the study itself.

I ended up winging it and getting the kids to make crowns out of paper plates with the centres cut out and paddle-pop sticks glued around the edge like the Statue of Liberty. My scripture was "Receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised those who love Him" (James 1:12). I was pleased.

Observation which is undoubtably true for all time and across the Cosmos: Small children and PVA wood glue do not mix. Which is to say, they do mix, and all to well. Toddlers should come with warning labels for things like that.

I've got to say that the intellectual stimulation I got from wrangling that scripture with a bunch of three year olds had more meat to it than I've gained from a lot of paid pastors.

Take my three year old, for example. He's got absurdism down cold. When most of us argue with our kids then it's over something. My boy has grasped the nettle of the Nihilist Weltschmerz, even at his tender age, and has completely surpassed the need for an object to debate.

His new game goes like this:
(toddler walks into lounge room with revalatory sparkle in eye)
"Daddy?"
"Yes, my boy?"
"OK. OK. OK..." (pauses to draw breath for most important utterance ever made)
"You say 'No', and I say 'Yes'."
Me: (digests abstract significance of this suggestion) "...and, that's the game?"
"Yes. Go!"
Me: (sighs) "Ahem.... 'No.'"
Him: (delightedly and loudly) "YES!"
Me: "No."...

And so we go until The Wife is holding her ears and telling us we can stick our Weltschmerz where the sun don't shine. I don't know. Why can't I get my boy to take an interest in something useful, like superstring theory? I suppose there's always next week.

Is this the lamest joke in the Universe?

My old friend Scott Lawlor and I used to want to be comedians. We used to write skits and Scott, being more motivated than I, actually got gigs at theatre restaurants and on radio. I, by way of contrast, have pursued politics for arguably the same end.

If we wanted to do some writing, mostly we'd get together and fall about laughing at jokes we made up that were absolutely hysterical to us, but... not to anyone else. First rule of comedy: Other people must get the joke.

For reasons unknown one we did years ago has sprung back to mind. I've googled for it and it seems that no one, ever, anywhere has come up with anything as nearly as lame as it, which is astonishing and must be redressed. Therefore I must add it to the blogosphere at once.

"There was political intrigue inside the fridge. The 'conservative' foodstuffs faced off against their bitter Labour rivals, who were lead by a cooked chook. The left-leaning foods were determined to undo their foes, and so the drinks, from their exclusive vantage point in the door crisper, decided to infiltrate the conservative camp and report back with any information they could obtain. The other Labourite foods were skeptical at this plot, until the chook reassured them they had successfully placed a mole, a cunningly disguised bottle of Chardonnay in the conservative camp. Privately, the other Labour foods had misgivings about both the mole, and their leader. What did they say?

'Can a chicken catch a Tory with a white wine source?'"

Everyone I've ever told this too moans, some possibly to the point of hospitalisation. You have been warned. I blame Scott.

Blogger, heal thyself!

This blog has intentionally never sought to become a sinkhole for personal musings about my bodily functions. But sometimes biology intervenes, forcefully, and discussions of politics and metaphysics become trite and seem like just so much wordplay.

Recently, I had the flu. Not a take-to-your-bed-and-make-the-wife-pat-your forehead flu, just a bad case of the sniffles and aching joints. By, say Wednesday I was over the worst of it. On Friday, the family was over for dinner and I noticed a dull ache in my upper-left chest. I put it down to the last pangs of the flu, took some paracetamol, and tried to ignore it.

On Saturday it was still there, stronger, so I took some more painkillers and went into the City to see The Producers on stage (which was actually rather good).

By Sunday things had not improved, but I was on the roster at my Church. By now the pain had travelled up my neck and down my left arm. I looked awful, or so people told me. My wife asked me how many painkillers I had had by the time we were at a wedding reception after Church. When I realised I was popping Paracetamol and Ibuprofen like a junkie and the pain was as bad as it had ever been, she (how shall I say this?), tactfully and demurely suggested I seek medical attention.

Well, those who know my wife will see my last statement as a heroic euphemism. I married into a medical family, full of nurses, paramedics, midwives and such. When I, as a typical male, suggested that all I needed was a cup of tea and a lay down, she responded with a gesture that only our fairer sex are issued a hazardous materials license to dispense. Those of you who have received "the look" will sympathise, the look being a stare and posture of such withering scorn and do-not-argue-with-me-ness that I dared offer no resistance. So in short order I was laying in the Coronary Care Unit of Hawkesbury Hospital for two nights, poked with holes, dangling with leads, and rigged to machines that made rude noises if I rolled over too quickly because it made the traces go "burp" on my monitor.

By Tuesday I had convinced everyone I was not dying and was released. A visit to the Cardiologist since then has convinced me that sadists can gain a respectable face in such a profession. They invite you in with the promise of interesting machines and flashing lights but then put you on a treadmill, again wired like a substation, with the firm intent of making you go "pop". "We need you to keep going until you reach your target heart rate, Mr Zamprogno" she said. "Easy", I thought, as they started me off at a gentle stroll. "I did the Six Foot Track last year, and that's 42km from Katoomba to Jenolan Caves in two days with a 20kg pack, AND with people 10 years younger than myself". The treadmill kicked a notch in its program forcing me to a gait where it was hard to decide between a power walk and a jog. "But," my mental narrative continued, "you crashed and burned about 5km from the end and had to get a lift, remember?" Grrr. Click. I was running like I was trying to outrun a giant spider. "Can... I... stop... now?" I gasped. "No" was the curt reply. In the end, I made my target heart rate (which is 220 minus your age, if you ever wanted to know), but only just.

Then came the lecture. It turns out the pain is nothing permanent, but the unfortunate conjunction of work-stress, high blood pressure and the leftover effects of my Flu. I need to be more active, have less stress in my life, and eat right. With grudging acknowledgement, all these points are true. I've arrived at the point in my life where being young is no longer enough to preserve my vitality and health.

I need to start consciously getting out there and doing things for the benefit of my health in and of themselves, and I'd like to start by going swimming or to the gym regularly. I need some accountability partners. Any takers?