RECORDING, AND POLITICS: The Firebox, and Ann Coulter

First of all, it appears my last post was in error. It is actually a combination of the super-quiet SM57 and the somewhat-weak preamps of the Firebox that's giving me headaches. I can't believe none of the Firebox reviews I read mentioned this. "It's great, but oh, by the way, it doesn't work too well with the most popular microphone ever made." I really like the sound I got with the 57 and a really cranked amplifier, but I tested out the XLR outs on my Behringer LX210 (use studio mode, it puts out higher levels through the jacks and lower levels through the speakers) and they sound just as good. They'll need less mixing, too, as the levels are HUGE. I have a lot of experimenting to do, but right now kudos to Behringer -- I was very skeptical that a computer program could simulate not only an amp's sound but a speaker's, too. Given my situation with the 57 and a Firebox (and parents who aren't always thrilled about concert-level volume), direct is looking like the way to go.

On to Ann Coulter's latest, Godless. It deals with intelligent design, an issue I'm very interested in (and confused about). I spent the last four years dealing with condescending college students who, though they had no idea what they were talking about, were ardent evolutionists. "But they've found fossils!" was the typical retort, and they'd treat me like some hillbilly redneck fundamentalist for simply saying I was skeptical of some of Darwin's ideas.

My basic thesis is that intelligent design works well as a polemic. It pokes holes in evolutionary theory that scientists really do have to start taking seriously. However, resorting to the idea that life was "intelligently designed" is a bit of a cop-out and not much of an alternative theory.

First of all, Coulter does herself and her readers a major disservice by scoffing at the difference between micro- and macroevolution. Microevolution is survival of the fittest -- if there are different colors of a certain animal, predators will kill off the ones that are easier to see. Microevolution, in other words, narrows a species down to its best-surviving genes. Though Coulter is right in that "survival of the fittest" is a tautology (with the fittest defined as those who survive), it is an absolute fact.

Macroevolution is where it gets difficult -- it actually expands the gene pool and creates new species. This is where random genetic mutations (which have been observed) happen to be beneficial (a situation that, Coulter alleges, has not been observed). Over time, these changes build up and new species are born.

Speciation is interesting. One theory I've learned makes sense to me. A species, through geographical change, gets divided into two groups. Each group evolves to its new geography, and eventually they don't even breed with each other because they're recognizably different. This would explain lions and tigers which, when forcibly cross-inseminated, can produce offspring they wouldn't in the wild (called "ligers").

But what I don't get, and what no sneering left-wing sociology major has ever been able to explain to me, is how evolution can create radical changes like different numbers of chromosomes. This would entail multiple offspring of both sexes with the same beneficial mutation (as different chromosome numbers won't match up in sperms and eggs) who reproduce with each other for each such mutation. I find that, at the very least, this takes a certain amount of faith.

One of the things I did realize, however, from my Human Origins anthropology class, is that the Earth is incredibly old. These changes, no matter how they took place, did so over a time span incomprehensible to a human being.

So of course this post isn't an answer. But it is a call for evolutionists to start explaining themselves instead of running away from the debate.

UPDATE: I found this article online. It says that different chromosome numbers don't necessarily halt reproduction, though typically the offspring of such reproduction are sterile. The whole situation still seems incredibly unlikely, but like I said, it's a ridiculous amount of time we're talking about.