A Cactus Without Chlorophyll

I'm not sure how the genetic engineers at HEB did it, but there are now cacti that don't have chlorophyll in parts. One kind has a green stalk, and a round red top. The red part has no chlorophyll. I call them redius headius, which is Latin for "cactus altered by genetic engineers at HEB to have a red top". I got three of them for the back porch, because it gets lots of afternoon sun. I really like them; they're like a little flower, but with thorns on the pedals. I had three of them, each in their own little pot, but one died over the winter. Actually, I think he was murdered by one of the others: the tragic, but inevitable result of a redius headius cacti love triangle.

The other two, perhaps thriving in their new love, are doing well this spring and putting out new little red bulby things. Can you tell I know nothing about biology? It's true. So I went back to HEB to ask the produce guy what he thought about genetic engineering, about redius headius, and about other things of cosmic significance.For those of you who have not met produce guy, he is a skateboard riding, eyebrow ring wearing, master of produce, philosophy, and all things spiritual. Rumors of his being a fictitious product of my imagination are purely a fictitious product of my imagination.

Me: Hi Produce Guy, how have you been?

Produce Guy: Like, woah dude, you've been MIA for like, many moons.

Me: I know, I know, I've been blogging, you see. Takes up all my spare time.

Produce Guy: Here to pick some fresh vegetation, yo?

Me: No, I came to ask you a question. You see I have these cacti without chlorophyll...

I went on to explain my confusion about how a cactus, or any other plant, could be bred or mutated or nuked or whatever, so that it would be "like, all red on top". The conversation went on for some time. I asked him where the genetic engineers were and he said they did most of their work in the ice cream cooler behind sporting goods.

Me: Of course! That's where I would do my genetic engineering, if I ever did any.

Produce Guy: So dude, is something else like, troubling you, yo?

Me: Yeah, it's just that I'm not sure what to think about genetic engineering. I mean, is it safe? I don't think eating genetically engineered foods is going to make you sick or anything, but as an engineer I know that there are often unintended consequences of our technologies. These can be, but are not always, harmful to people or the environment or... I don't know. You just never know I guess. That's the point.

Produce Guy: Man, you worry too much dude. Every time you come here you're like, a big sack of potatoes all full up. But instead of potatoes, you're like, full of worries. Dude.

Me: I know, I know, I just don't have the wisdom and peace that you have.

Produce Guy: Look dude, a wise man with long hair like mine once said, "Do not worry about what to eat or drink, or about what to wear, yo. Consider the lilies of the field, and dress like them, or something like that..."

Me: Huh?

Produce Guy: Look man, I don't have any lilies in produce, see the floral department for them, but consider this instead. I have a fine selection of genetically engineered cassava roots, yo, and do you see them worrying? No way, man. So take some schoolin' from them, yo, and...

At that point, one of the cassava roots split in half with a crack like a whip. A long, purple tendril shot out of it and wrapped itself around the neck of produce guy. It started pulling him towards it, constricting and choking my insightful friend. Produce guy fought back with a box cutter, but the tendril was too strong. More cassavas started opening up and lassoing produce guy's arms and legs, not to mention an old lady that had been picking out tomatoes.

It was all happening so fast I didn't have time to think. I just reacted with instinct. Anyone would have done the same thing, really. I ran to the home and garden section and grabbed two big bottles of Roundup. Riding a shopping cart like a Humvee, I crashed through a display of bananas and did an aeriel summersault over the red tipped lettuce. With both barrels blazing, I peppered the cassava with blasts of Roundup until they released my friend with a hiss.

The store had to be evacuated. It was all over the news. The SWAT team came out with their riot gear on. The old lady is suing. Produce guy is in stable condition. As for me, I got an endorsement contract with Roundup - I'm their new spokesman. But I still don't understand biology.

Wookin Pa Nub

A close call today! I came into the front of the house and saw the front door standing wide open. There was no sign of Gracie, my cat who is very much in heat. Arg! We just finished giving away the first litter of kittens and now she's out making more! Wake up and smell the pheromones. How could I let this happen?

The M and I walked and drove around the neighborhood shaking a container of cat food like some kind of duck call or giant baby rattle, but to no avail. How could she resist such a hypnotic shake-o-shake noise? Shouldn't she come running out from the bushes where she must be hiding? Alas, she was nowhere to be seen. My shaking arm was getting tired so I gave up and went home. But just as I pulled into the driveway she come trotting across the yard to the front door. I was relieved but concerned. She was only gone for 20-30 minutes, so maybe we won't have more kittens. But man! no more procrastination; I've got to finish reading those DIY spay kit directions I found online.

Later, at HEB doing some shopping, I ran into my new friend, the produce guy with the eyebrow ring. I casually mentioned our little adventure with the cat while I fondled the butternut squash.

Produce Guy: waoh dude, you had a close call, yo?
Me: Yes I did, our family would have been really sad if she hadn't come home. "Inside" cats are especially eager to get outside when they're in heat.
Produce Guy: yeah, she was like, driven, to get out and connect; make like, a cosmic connection, yo
Me: er... yeah I guess so.
Produce Guy: all of us are like, hard-wired for connection, yo

He then went on to explain how people (and cats, by implication) are universally social, that we need connections with other people, and how this is on account of the Trinity, but I didn't understand what he meant by that last part. He said this desire, this drive, can be motivation for healthy connections, or good relationships, but also for self-destructive ones. He went on to explain how romance novels and pornography are essentially the same thing: a self-destructive embodiment of the universal desire for relationship.

At this point he rolled his produce cart over to the tomato section and started softly humming Johnny Lee's "Lookin' for Love in All The Wrong Places" from the Urban Cowboy soundtrack. I just stood there in stunned silence.

The Blogability of Predestination and Free Will

In an earlier post I discussed, perhaps confusingly, the four levels of contradiction. I have received questions and requests for clarifications regarding the Mystery and the Paradox categories. However, despite the advice in Blogging for Dummies that says I should be nice to both of my readers, I am going to politely ignore these requests for now and post a thought on the Temporary Agnosticism.

Consider, if you will, the New Testament doctrine of predestination. Why should you? Mostly 'cause I'm an amateur on the subject and I like to stir up controversy to build my readership. Predestination is when the you forget to change your clocks for daylight savings time and you accidentally arrive at your destination one hour early. This is not to be confused with re-destination which is when you miss your exit on the freeway and have to double U-turn to get back to it. At least that's what I used to think...

Until the produce guy with the eyebrow ring told me otherwise. It went something like this:

Me: Excuse me, but can you help me pick out a good butternut squash? I can't seem to choose.
Produce Guy: dude, you have to like, thump it and roll it over in your hands, yo, and like, smell it (he takes a big sniff)
Me: But what am I feeling for? I mean, how is it supposed to smell? What does a good one sound like?
Produce Guy: woah, that's like, a lot of questions dude, ultimately you just have to pick one
Me: But how do I know which one is best?
Produce Guy: well dude, really what you need to do is let the squash pick you, yo, yeah, let it pick you (at this point he mumbled something I couldn't understand and began adjusting the bell peppers)
Me: So which is it then? Do I pick it or does it pick me?
Produce Guy: (with yoda-like seriousness) yeah dude, you got it.

So there it is, a temporary agnosticism. Still don't see it? Let me elaborate. The New Testament insists on two seemingly contradictory viewpoints. One is that God is in ultimate control of everything and that even if we "choose" to follow him we have done so only because he made us to, or predestined us to. But the New Testament also says that we are responsible to God for our choice to follow him or not. Therein lies the apparent contradiction. Do we have freedom to choose or not?

Instead of trying to answer this question, a question that has eluded an answer that can be agreed upon by all (or even most) Christians for centuries, a question that has received lifetimes of scrutiny by smarter folks than I (like John Calvin in the painting), instead of embarrassing myself by giving an answer, let me just tell you what has brought me some phycho-peace about the subject. You guessed it: the wave-particle duality of light.

Physicists couldn't see how light (or electrons) could be both waves and simultaneously particles until someone eventually figured it out (Richard Feynman). Until he figured out QED theory physicists fell into one of three categories: wave guys, particle guys, and temporary agnosticism guys. The later could not dispute experiments that showed contradictory evidence, and yet they could not explain it, but they figured that one day someone would untangle the nasty mess. (See my other post about physicists and philosophers on November 27)

So perhaps those of us who take the New Testament seriously can agree to hold these two, seemingly contradictory views in tension for a while. It seems unlikely that humans will ever discover a way to reconcile them, but surely God can in heaven. So being a temporary agnostic, at least in this sense, is sounding pretty good to me. Does that sound like a cop-out to you?

Why Physicists Prefer Tee Shirts

Fresh out of self-contradictions, I went to HEB to restock. A highschool guy with a ring in his eyebrow was washing vegetables in produce and said to me, "dude, life is full of contradictions, yo". He is right. Some contradictions are the result of bureaucracies, some lies, and some are cosmic. A few years ago I read a book that, on page 86, provided a framework for levels of contradiction. Reading it saved me big money in therapy and here I am giving it to you for free. But first you have to read about physics and watch a video about quantum mechanics, so that's payment enough.

The video was sent to me by a physicist friend and former college roommate of mine (hi Danny, ahem, I mean Dr. Bruton). These mind blowing concepts were first presented to me as a college junior while I was taking Modern Physics.

The example in the video is about electrons, but the same is true for photons, the "particle" of light. Like electrons, the nature of light is sometimes self-contradictory. Is it a wave or is it a particle? It acts like both under different circumstances. Physicists argued about this for like, a long long time, before they finally decided it WAS both. That's when they made the t-shirt that says "I like the wave-particle duality of light" and had a physics party.

So are you ready for the four levels of contradiction? Are you ready to relieve some of the phycho-tension you carry around in the back of your mind but are afraid to expose to the conscious mind? Buckle your seatbelt my friend.

1) The Verbal Puzzle, the lowest level of contradiction,
Example: "one must die to live"
Explanation: The "contradiction" dissolves once terms are more clearly defined. A seed must "die" in order to "live" as a butternut squash plant.

2) The Mystery, the next level
Example: true but inexhaustive truth
Explanation: Some of the information is missing, there are no self-contradictory assertions, but you can't make full sense of it until someone gives you more information. When I write exam problems they usually, though unintentionally, fall into this category. It might go something like this:
a) Bob lives next door to Mary.
b) Mary lives next door to her brother.
At this point it is a mystery whether Bob and Mary are siblings; maybe so, maybe no. There is nothing contradictory in (a) and (b) but we don't have all the information. If we were later told that Mary's only has one neighbor, the mystery would be resolved.

3) The Temporary Agnosticism, the last resolvable level
Example: the wave-particle duality of light (and electrons, see the video)
Explanation: In this level, there are indeed full-blown contradictions; "light is ultimately a wave" and "light is ultimately a particle" for example. But these contradictions are held in tension temporarily with reason to hope that they will be resolved. In the case of light, the resolution was a new theory called QED (which secretly stands for Quick Earwax Dissolver, though physicists won't admit it publicly) which explained how light could behave as both. So a Temporary Agnosticism is when you mentally decide to accept two contradictory viewpoints in your head with the (perhaps unstated) hope that they will eventually be reconciled by physicists in t-shirts. It's agnosticism because you don't know how they could both be true, but you know they must be somehow, like the agnostic dyslexic who isn't sure if there even is a dog.

4) The Paradox, the irresolvable contradiction
Example: the square circle
Explanation: There is no reconciliation nor is there acknowledgement that the views are in contradiction. Yet there is an insistence that the square circle is just that, a square circle, not a squircle or some other new thing. It is like the Hindu-influenced idea that good and evil are the same thing or that they are both, in essence, the eyebrow-ring-wearing produce guy, yo.