Things happen/Origin of the specious

Heather Bruce, Sarah Palin's older sister, with whom Bristol Palin lived last spring, said that Bristol is "just a sweet girl and things happen in a family."

Apparently that is the family motto, on some things. Pregnancy happens. (When you don't educate kids about contraception and make it available.) Global warming happens, is not caused by humans. Sarah Palin is quoted as saying that the warming has affected Alaska, but "I'm not one though who would attribute it to being man-made."

I guess God willed it. Why? Who are we to judge or second-guess His ways? Maybe (this is Cancer Bitch speculating, not Palin) He's warning us about the fires of hell--therefore global warming is a kind of pre-emptive strike.

But the beginning of the world didn't just happen. Palin believes in creationism and thinks it should be taught in school, but pledged after her election as governor not to push it. "I believe we have a creator," she said, according to the AP. The story continues: "But she has not made clear whether her belief also allowed her to accept the theory of evolution as fact."

"I'm not going to pretend I know how all this came to be," she has been quoted as saying.

Ever cracked open The Origin of Species?

Our fellow Americans are even scarier. According to a 2004 CBS poll, only 13 percent of our citizens believe that God had nothing to do with evolution. A whopping 65 percent believed that creationism should be taught alongside evolution.

A Harris poll last year found: "Large majorities of the public believe in miracles (79%), heaven (75%), angels (74%), that Jesus is God or the son of God (72%), the resurrection of Jesus (70%), the survival of the soul after death (69%), hell (62%), the devil (62%), and the virgin birth (Jesus born of Mary) (60%)."

So why wouldn't they believe that Republicans have the answers?

The main problem, as I see it, is that it's very very very difficult for U.S. citizens to move permanently to Canada.

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Foot, Horns, Feathers

I was making plans yesterday to get together with my friend R, who I hadn't seen in several months. I don't have hair, I told her. She said, I'll recognize you. Then, joking, she added: Why don't you wear a red carnation in your cleavage? I said, I don't have cleavage. She said: Oh no.....

At dinner we talked about my ears, lately revealed to the public. She knew from anatomy study that the tops are called the helix. She said that human ears should be more curved to serve us better but they aren't. For some reason evolution hasn't caught up to them. Or vice versa. I told her about the lizard with horns that gets in its way while climbing. Another friend doubted that a lizard could have such ungainly and troublesome horns, that the species wouldn't have survived. She said that her study of nature has shown her that such seeming maladaptations usually have to do with mating. For example, the lyrebird can barely fly because of its long, heavy feather tail but it can attract a mate with that same tail. Perhaps it's the same with peacocks, though I do know they fly.

Which brings us, of course, to cancer. Why has cancer survived? Why have people susceptible to cancer survived? I think that's a horse of a different color. New studies show that so much of breast cancer is caused by contaminants in the environment. (In all fairness, I have to add that Susan G. Komen For the Cure, which I've criticized, funded the studies and will spend $5 million more on researching environmental causes of breast cancer.) Which brings us to this question: Why have humans survived who are destroying the environment? Somehow destructive tendencies are favored by evolution. Maybe Malthus was right.

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