Many years ago, my then-wife’s adoptive mother snapped at me about the topic of Sickle-cell disease (SCD). She told me that she had SCD, and that it was an example of how the government of the United States had silent intentions on killing off blacks because they’re very susceptible to SCD and there was no studies being done to find a cure. At the time, I didn’t have any real knowledge on the subject and wound up essentially listening to her but knowing she was mistaken on the subject. However, it’s an interesting example of one of the aspects of evolution that I wanted to jot down a few thoughts about, so it serves as a good starting point.
SCD is a genetic issue, and it’s an adaptation that has a seriously positive payoff. You see, people with only a single sickle-cell gene are much better equipped to survive malaria. Sure, your lifespan gets cut shorter and there are some serious health issues that go hand in hand with it, but it’s a hell of a lot more genetically advantageous than dying in childhood with malaria, and from a pure evolutionary perspective, people who die as children do not have the potential to be parents. If a genetic abnormality causes death in middle age and prevents death in childhood, then the odds are greater that the person in question can live long enough to pass on their genetics.
It’s not a new idea, but there are still those who believe that before they die, they could download their brains into a computer and live on forever. Someone in a conversation with me not that long ago was talking about this, and I thought they were kidding, but there are still people who would actually consider this living forever. I guess the threads on Ray Kurzweil at Pharyngula have triggered comments that led in this direction, and 
PZ Myers has 
The say that rules are meant to be broken. They say the exception proves the rule (though when they say that, they’re saying it wrong). Most of our rules hold up to these tests, but when we find legitimate exceptions, it means we have to fix our rules a bit. This is true of any scientific premise, but not of matters of faith. When it comes to faith, things that violate it are either dismissed as false or the adherents simply pretend the two things don’t conflict.
I hadn’t really thought much about Sarah Palin’s ridiculous comment about how 
I had never heard of salps before a few days ago reading a 
The brain’s just neat. And really, we don’t all the way give it credit for how neat it is, and how much it does for us. Sure, it gives us cool things like our deep thoughts and our ability to do crossword puzzles, but it does so much more for us, and much of the things it does we’ve attributed to other body parts. We don’t think of our brain as being a part of a rousing game of football, but every catch, every step, and every shoulder-check we throw into some big fat bastard’s stomach while blitzing the quarterback, that’s all our brain interpreting who knows how much information every moment, controlling our physical form, keeping us safe and clear-headed, and spotting those holes in the defensive line we need before we even know we’re aware of them.
I’ve always believed that the notion of race was irrelevant. I was raised by liberal Christians who felt that everybody should be equal, and to this day I take a same-but-different stance. My opinion, honestly, is that there are a lot of adjectives to describe a person. Race is one of them. Gender another. I am apathetic to the sum total of those adjectives. If I was hiring a person for a job, I would base my opinion on those adjectives, looking for the combination that best suited the job in question. Race very rarely comes into this equation, unless the job was something that actually related directly to qualities possessed by a particular race. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of one. without really stretching, like pretending I had to hire someone to perform experiments on for a study on sickle cell anemia, a disease that is statistically more common in people who’s ancestors lived in malaria-ridden tropical and sub-tropical climates. But that’s a weak example at best, as race wouldn’t be the issue, presence of sickle cell anemia would be.
Back when I was a lad, I had a thing for horror novels. In fact, I imagined that one day I would write horror novels as a career. It wasn’t until years later that I published two short stories in a horror magazine and then read the other entries in the magazine that I changed this opinion. Horror, it dawned on me, was lame. However, in those formative years I read a tremendous amount of horror fiction from a variety of sources. One of my favorite sets of books was The Exorcist, and later Legion, by 
I just thought I’d share a link I found quite interesting from ScienceDaily. The article is called