Angels and Demons.

First, a confession. I never read the book, and I'm not a big fan. So I'm a lot less fussy about what is likely to be at most one of three or four movies than I am about Star Trek. Damn it Jim, I'm a Trekkie, not a symbolist!

I enjoyed Angels and Demons a lot. Happily, I never saw the plot twist coming, in spite of thinking it odd that people just shot the head of the Swiss Guards without giving him a chance to drop his weapon. I thought the critics were wrong in most of what they said. For example, I heard and read that the physics was idiotic. This only showed that the critics are unfamiliar with The Standard Model, which has formed the basics of particle physics since the 1970s. The great search for the god particle is real... it' the Higgs boson. It's not "Angels and Demons" that has particle physics wrong, it's the movie critics.

That said, Angels and Demons, while head and shoulders above The DaVinci Code in it's understanding of the Roman Catholic Church, is still infested by misguided notions about the relationship between the Church and scientific truth. the Roman Catholic Church is not against science, it just thinks that fertilized eggs are people, and you shouldn't kill people. Even 400 years ago Galileo didn't really get into trouble until he published a popular pamphlet in which the guy who stated the Pope's position was called "The Idiot." The insistence by atheists that since the Church punished Galileo 400 years ago (and more for insulting the Church than for disagreeing with it), the Church opposes science is, to paraphrase Galileo, idiotic.

And before you conclude I'm blogging for the Church, I'm not even a Christian. I just don't feel the need to insult Christians without cause or basis. I don't believe a fertilized egg has a soul. The traditional time a soul enters the body, for most of the last 2000 years, was at quickening. I see no reason to change that belief. However, that disagreement does not blind me to the fact that the Church believes it is saving lives, not stopping science. In Angels and Demons, cardinals and bishops that support science are identified as 'liberal'. In fact, this is not a matter of dispute in the Church. At least those in the Church that supported truth was shown to win in this film.

In sum, Movie good, critics bad.

What makes us human? Genisis 2:19,20 and the Herp Department at the American Museum of Natural History.

What makes us human?

Genisis 2:19,20
19 And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.
20 And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.
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Today, biologists of ever stripe all over the world are racing to find, and name, every living creature, before we destroy them.

We know the most about the creatures with backbones. Multi-cell life has existed only since the Cambrian Explosion, 540 Million years ago. For billions of years before that, life existed as single-celled organisms. Most variety is in single celled organisms. Entirely new kingdoms are being discovered in that area, just in the last 20 years.

We used to think there were plants, animals, and single-celled life. Today, we know single-celled life can live in compressed 300 degree water and in ice, can eat chemicals deep within the earth, and can have energy cycles entirely different than those found in plants and animals. These entirely different ways of making a living divide single-celled life into different kingdoms, just as plants are one kingdom and animals another.

Two new large mammals were discovered in Southeast Asia since 1990. An antelope and a miniature rhino.

The number of species of known amphibians and reptiles in Southeast Asia has gone from eighty-something to one hundred eighty-something.

And so, Adam is still finding and naming the animals.

Related New York Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/11/science/11naming.html?_r=1&hpw