I’m (Not) A Believer

10 Mar

I’m still coming to grips with the loss of my dear friend, Davy Jones. I remember fondly our first meeting; I was just a young girl in high school, busy working on our Prom’s planning committee. As president of the local Davy Jones Fan Club, I was sure I could get him to play the gig. After a series of hilarious hijinks, Davy came through for me and actually accompanied me to the dance. Wait, that wasn’t me, that was Marcia Brady. Nonetheless, his death was a real blow.

So imagine how I felt when I saw this headline this morning:

As you know, I am a fair weather fan of science. Yes, things like electricity are great and all, and I respect most in the medical field, especially whoever it was who invented the pills I can slip into Christopher’s tea whenever he really starts trying my nerves.

But you don’t have to be a supersymmetric quantum mechanics physicist to be able to see that a lot of science is bunk. The world does not need to know at which part of a woman’s menstrual cycle she can most easily identify members of the reptile community—or at least certainly not before science shows us how to beat cancer, create environmentally-safe energy or handle documents with no threat of a paper cut. Perhaps there’s a hierarchy in the science research world of which I am unaware of: maybe the dumbos who somehow manage to get degrees are secreted into labs where they’re given little experiments to conduct to keep them busy while the big boy scientists are out doing important stuff. I don’t know. And confess I also don’t really care.

All I know is that in the last 48 hours, there have been incredibly important things happening in the world—including natural disasters, civil unrest, economic updates and the funeral of a lovely Manc who had beautiful lips—yet the “scientific headline” above was deemed newsworthy?

That said, if those wacky Japanese researchers had got a certain other lovely Manc with beautiful lips to inform me about the ovulation-snake connection this morning, I would have felt less let down by science. Especially if he did so after snuggling up next to me in bed. Then I’d have been willing to throw all my faith (and a surprising amount of early morning stamina) behind modern science.