This is the start of a quick flurry of brief posts of observations that I made during our recent visit to Disney World.
Now I want to clear the queue with a few comments that are relatively short and to the point before returning my full attention to a little more serious business.
We had begun an unfinished conversation on evolution shortly before the start of vacation.
I sincerely hope Dr. Leblanc and Andrey Pavlov will find the time to rejoin our conversation, as soon as their schedules permit.
But while vacationing in Orlando, I couldn’t help but notice that smart phones appear to make people act considerably more stupid than they might actually be.
It seems that Disney provides several applications for mobile phones that allow people to know which rides have the fewest people waiting in line, maps to the park with a handy “You are here” feature, which rides offer their “Fast Pass”, etc.
These Disney mobile apps seemed to do just about everything for you except slice the bagel and butter it with cream cheese in the morning.
Unfortunately, these apps proved so useful that many visitors were incapable of taking even a single step without staring at their phones.
It often gave one the sensation of playing bumper cars with human bodies, a particularly unpleasant experience when one is not intimately familiar with the instigator of the collision.
After several attempts to “turn the other cheek” and simply step out of the way, eventually I gave up and revised my park navigation strategy.
When the meanderer in question managed to mirror every evasive step I made like a heating seeking missile, I came up with a bold new plan.
Remembering the sage advice of Vince Lombardi–the best defense is a good offense, I took those words to heart..
Two football moves from the playbook of the old-school running back, the forearm shiv and the stiff arm, came in handy when circumstances necessitated such a drastic preventive measure to avert personal injury.
Smart-phone challenged people were lurking everywhere, wandering like zombies all over the place, without once looking to see where they were going.
Or who might be in their path.
A moment to breathe. I quite literally just finished my US Medical Licensing Exam (USMLE) Step 2 a mere 75 minutes ago and finally have a chance to… well… do nothing for a moment. I envy your holiday and will be embarking on my own tomorrow at my future brother-in-law’s graduation. However, it will only last a scant 48 hours before I wing my way to the opposite coast to present at the ATS conference in Philly and then finally back to my new home in, of all places, the South. New Orleans to be exact. At which time I will plunge head first into a sub-internship in neurocritical care.
So I will say again that I would very much like the chance to continue the conversation and I will as soon as I am afforded the opportunity. One of my goals will be to not only demonstrate to you the undeniable veracity of evolutionary theory, but also the difference between *legitimate* criticisms of the theory (a la Gould vs Dawkins) and the predominantly *illegitimate* criticisms which usually take some form of “teach the controversy,” revolve around attempting to poke holes in a theory by anomaly hunting and moving goalposts, and the very distinct, well elucidated, and sinister ideological motivation for doing so. Additionally, I would like to make you as excited about evolutionary theory as I am and demonstrate that it is not only useful to know so you can answer Jeopard! questions at home but as the principle that underlies, enables, and is necessary for any progression of *any* biologically based technology (i.e. medicine). And if *that* weren’t enough, the very same principles apply to literally *everything* we do – from engineering design to culture and society to designing industries like hospital systems (really anything “systems” based). Not the same mechanisms, of course, but the same principles. I hope that this will demonstrate why doing anything less than teaching evolution in as advanced and accurate a manner as possible is an active disservice to our youth and our country (don’t take this to mean I think that *only* evolutionary theory has this importance – it just happens to be within my field(s) of expertise and interest). And I further hope that, once the conversation is done, you will feel motivated to use your public platform to engender good science and aid in finally ending this nonsensical and purely ideological manufactroversy about evolution.
And yes, smart phones can make people quite “dumb” at times. There is even a thing called the “google effect” wherein people readily forget things they know they can google on their smart phones. I, for one, am wholeheartedly behind advancing and integrating technology into every facet of our lives. But, as with everything, there is a balance to be struck.
Best,
Andrey