What follows is in response to an article on the use of white phosphorus (WP) by US marines during the siege of Fallujah that appeared in the North County Times.

As a chemist, I find the debate about WP as a “chemical weapon” sort of amusing. One might as well claim that we’re engaged in “chemical warfare” because the lead we use to make bullets is toxic.

It’s like that question they ask me sometimes at the post office: “Does your package contain any chemicals?” Well, OF COURSE IT DOES, because the universe is made of chemicals and if there’s any damn thing at all in the package, there’s chemicals in it. In that sense, any weapon that EXISTS is a “chemical weapon,” and the word becomes totally useless. The chemistry of WP is simply oxidation/combustion, which is the same chemistry that propels bullets and shells down gun barrels and causes fire in general, and the use of fire in warfare is as old as warfare itself. It just so happens that WP burns very hot and is self-igniting in air.

If “chemical weapons” is to remain a useable term, it’s best reserved for toxic compounds which are employed primarily to exploit their toxicology.

That being said, it seems likely to me that in the future, as war continues to be “humanized,” we will begin to see moral and eventually legal proscription of the use of burning as a means of offensive war. Destruction of uninhabited materiel or facilities is one thing, but the deliberate destruction of live human beings by combustion is pretty appalling. Think of the little Vietnamese napalm girl, or the fire-bombing of Dresden or Tokyo, or of the use of the flamethrower in trench warfare. Burning is agonizing, indiscriminate, and not terribly efficient versus shooting or blasting to bits. Burning is a frightening way to die (or, perhaps worse, to not die), and for this reason it is frequently employed as a psychological weapon.

I’m not necessarily advocating its regulation, because I think war is just nasty and efforts to “soften” it are hypocritical, but I can see it coming in the future anyway.

Essentially, to “catastrophize” is to overreact in a negative way to a setback, such as the one who is stood up for a date and becomes upset that he or she will never find love. Broadly, catastrophization is a habit of mind that’s commonly identified in the anxious and depressed. I don’t know enough to speculate about what causes the formation of such a habit, but I can admit to recognizing it in myself. I have often characterized my depression as “an inability to control negative thoughts,” and by these negative thoughts I essentially mean overwhelming catastrophization. When I’m depressed, even the smallest and most innocous event or impression can become symbolic of my total failure as a human being.

Recognizing the process as a habit, as something that can be lost or changed or replaced like any other habit, is itself very valuable to me. Even the simple fact that there exists a word to describe the phenomenon brings me considerable comfort–in the first place, it shows that I’m not alone in experiencing it, and in the second, well…everyone knows that to name a thing is to have power over it. The next time I begin to “catastrophize,” the word itself will occur to me, and in matching the sign to the signified I will be reminded that the catastrophe I perceive is in my head and not in the world. Maybe, in time, I’ll even be able to laugh about it, to find some humor in the extent to which I can blow things out of proportion, but of course there’s a fine line to be walked here. I can already hear myself thinking: “I’m catastrophizing again. It’s so like me to do that. No wonder I’m a such a TOTALLY WORTHLESS LOSER.”

As in learning to meditate, the trick to changing habits of mind like catastrophization is probably to avoid trying too hard. Instead of recognizing catastrophic thoughts and working really hard to stop, it’s probably better to just recognize those thoughts, release them, and then casually replace them with something else. Those three Rs could become a mantra: Recognize your negative habits, Release them in the moment, and Replace them with something more constructive. Perhaps there’s even a fourth R: Repeat the process until they change.

This week my father preserved for me a series of editorials from the Wall Street Journal by Charles Murray, of The Bell Curve fame, arguing his thesis for the reality of g, which he identifies as an inherent and inherited “intelligence factor” that differentiates the smart from the dumb. Distribution of g in the population follows a normal, or “bell,” curve, and he points up many of the oft-touted depressing statistics of U.S. public education and explains them–convincingly, in my view–in terms of the normal statistical distribution of intelligence in our population. He revives the spectre of the IQ score, and although he acknowledges quibbles about the accuracy of the tools used to measure it, he also advocates its phenomenological legitimacy. He deals summarily with Gardner’s multiple intelligences theory, citing relatively convincing evidence that g is a real phenomenon and can’t be wished away by egalitarian reformers. He recognizes how the notion of uneven distribution of g chafes agains our ideals of equality and the political difficulties attendant to making policy decisions based on a worldview which is in this sense elitist.

I see Murray as one of a small but growing vocal minority of intellectuals who are prepared to acknowledge that human beings are in most meaningful ways determined by their genes. As biology and neurobiology advance, we come to understand more and more how even very complex human behaviors can be predicted genetically. This is certainly not the first time in history that a deterministic elitist movement has surfaced, but it may well prove to be the first time that the unpleasant awareness of genetic determinism is answered by an ethical technical solution. Before long, it seems obvious to any scientifically-informed observer, biochemistry will allow human beings to achieve meaningful control of their genetic destinies, at which point a political battle will ensue between the forces that advocate non-intervention in genetic fate and those who recognize biochemical eugenics as an escape from determinism.

Brief meditation on human nature leads me to predict that the battle will be a short one. Voices in favor of accepting determinism–such as Murray, et. al.–run up against the ubiquitous phenomenological fact of choice: Whether it is real or not, human beings experience a process of decision making that causes them to behave as if they have some measure of control over their fates. Although most rational adults can be persuaded to admit, if pressured, that there are things in life over which they have no control, most of them would also prefer that it not be so. If offered a choice between the certainty of a brilliant and beautiful and happy child and the luck of the draw, which of us would leave it to fate?

Practical eugenetic technology is not with us now, and may well not materialize until twenty years hence. Even if it takes that long, however, it still seems likely that we will find ourselves living with a technology that can correct our genes before we find ourselves living in a political culture prepared to accept that they determine our fates. In that most probable case, Murray’s arguments, though convincing, come too late on the scene. Even if we begin now to implement the policy regime he advocates, it’s likely that by the time reforms come into place the biology on which they are founded will become subject to the same socioeconomic pressures which corrupt the system now. Western culture has lived in denial of biological determinism for decades now, and in resentment of it for millenia–are we going now to give in and accept it on the very eve of our liberation? Better now to begin preparing for that future culture of eugenetic control, to begin steering now toward’s Keillor’s Lake Wobegon, where all the children are above average, and away from Huxley’s Brave New World, where minds are manufactured to meet the demands of industry.

I propose the prefix “cylo-” to describe all matters pertaining to “cylon biology,” in other words that “cylo-” be used analogously to “bio-” to describe any subject pertaining to cylon biology rather than normal human biology. The show, after all, has established that cylon biology (“cylology,” under my new system), although generally indistinguishable from human biology at the macro-level, is chemically distinct. Which explains how Dr. Baltar can build a cylon detector and how cylons, though histologically identical to humans, can exhibit all the unique characteristics that they do, i.e. running for days without tiring, spinal bioluminescence, group consciousness, unusual RF susceptibility, etc. Thus “cylo-” can be assumed to denote that aspect of cylon physiology which is analogous to, but not identical with, human physiology.

Which gives us all kinds of great new words like “cylogenetic,” “cylochemistry,” “cylological,” “cylonic,” “cylosphere,” “cylome,” “cylophysics,” and my personal favorite, “cylohazard.”

In honor of this last term, I’ve made up a “cylohazard symbol,” which is derived from the analogous human biohazard symbol, differing in that it is based on a five-fold axis of radial symmetry, instead of a three-fold axis. This decision is in keeping with the established significance of the pentagon and the nested pentagon as a symbol of cylon hegemony in both the old and the new Battlestar Galactica series. Material which is infectious of cylons, such as samples of the “cylon plague” from Season 3, would rightly bear the cylohazard symbol, regardless of whether or not it was also infectious of humans. Material which is infectious of both species should properly bear both symbols.

Someday I might write a pseudoepistolary “ANSI standard” from the BSG universe describing the layout and appropriate use of the cylohazard symbol by itself or in conjunction with the biohazard, chemohazard, and or radiological hazard signs.

There is a road that begins, in my heart. with the general disdain I feel for most specimens of homo sapiens, and ends, in my spleen, with the blackest hate that one man can feel for another, the kind of hate most people, including myself, are fortunate enough never to experience, the kind reserved for a villain who has destroyed a loved one and witnessed by actions of murderous revenge. Arrayed along this road, like Burma-Shave ads on the highway to Abilene, are signposts, behaviors, that mark the boundaries between the states of disdain and dislike, dislike and loathing, loathing and hate.

It is somewhere around Wichita Falls, by my reckoning, that the countries of true hate begin. In mapping these infernal regions, I have found it useful to apply what I call “the sweve test,” which is really a pair of tests: Driving along, I mount a rise to discover the person of my enemy, standing in the road a short distance ahead, and put to myself the question, “Do I swerve to avoid him?” If the answer is yes, then he has not yet passed into the territory of loathing; if no, then the second test must be applied: Mounting a second rise, I discover the person of my enemy standing beside the road a short distance ahead, and put to myself the question, “Do I swerve to hit him?” If no, he is loathed; if yes, hated.

The swerve test has much to recommend it. First, it is accurate: In the best tradition of Skinner, it avoids murky subjectivity by addressing only behavior. While my own estimation of the extent of my distaste for a particular person may vary with the weather, the proximity of my next meal or the quality of my last, or whether or not I remembered to take my medication that morning, the volition to actually effect his destruction, either passively or actively, is much less mutable.

Second, the swerve test is precise: We may imagine the swerve as a kind of behavioristic quantum–the smallest act measurable as evidence of intent. Here is a heavy mass, moving with great speed, having tremendous inertia, and by a small motion of my hand I can deflect its course and thereby choose to spare or destroy my enemy. In the first test, I must expend this minimum effort to save him, and in the second, to destroy him. The two outcomes differ only by a quantum.

Third and finally, the results of the test are easy to interpet: At the end of the day, the subject of the swerve test, like Schrodinger’s cat, is either alive or dead.

for 48 hours or so, now. Nothing fascinates me; the greatest curiosity I can achieve is a kind of abstract Orwellian intellectuality: We’re all doomed, and I can express the sentiment with excellent prose. I find myself straining to visualize a blueprint or a mechanical drawing of some revolutionary object which is just barely beyond my powers. I have fantasies of inventing bold new weapons, based on heretofor unknown principles of science, by an act of profoundly original innovation, of the type which only naive laymen and children are really capable: A new route, perhaps, to a fusion bomb, without the use of a fission primary–a garage-scale process unlocking megatons, realized secretly by Einstein, hinted at by Oppenheimer, and ruthlessly suppressed by history. The hardware store thermonuclear bomb. A manipulation of plywood and foam rubber that creates momentary access to new dimensions. Necronomignosis. When it finally comes to me I will have relief, and the world will tremble.

This holiday season found me stretched out in front of the giant TV at my parents’ house watching Stanley Kubrick’s first movie Spartacus, a fictionalization of the Third Servile War of 73 BC with Kirk Douglas in the eponymous lead, on cable one evening. As I drifted in and out of consciousness, I was reminded of the last time I saw the movie, which was 17 years ago, at Westwood Junior High, in my Freshman Latin class. I cannot for the life of me remember the teacher’s name, but although I disliked her at the time, looking back as an adult I recall her as a patient and diligent instructor.

We watched the movie, Spartacus, in her class, including the famous climactic scene in which the defeated slave army refuses to identify their leader to the conquering Romans in exchange for leniency and, as a consequence, is crucified en masse along the Appian Way.

Some days later, Ms. What’s-Her-Name was conjugating verbs on the chalkboard, with her back to the class, while my friend Lee, who sat beside and slightly ahead of me, was practicing spinning, tossing, and juggling his pen a la David Letterman. The pen slipped out of his control and flew toward the chalkboard, impacting just beside the teacher and falling into the chalk-tray. She picked the pen up, turned slowly, and presented it to the class.

“Who threw this?” she asked quietly.

There was a long pause, pregnant at least with triplets. Lee squirmed in his seat.

“I’m Spartacus!” I cried, suddenly.

A wicked grin spread across Lee’s face. A second later, he echoed, “I’m Spartacus!”

“I’m Spartacus!” called an unknown voice from the back of the room.

And then the whole class joined in: “I’m Spartacus! I’m Spartacus! I’m Spartacus!”

She was beaten, and she knew it. Her anger melted into an amusement she tried, unsuccessfully, to conceal from us, and class went on with a wonderful feeling of light good humor.

It is one of my fondest memories from that otherwise-traumatic period of my life.