In another lifetime, I was living in San Francisco, CA, and vaguely associated with the San Francisco Bay Guardian Online. The G21 was there, too. But I was more a political fixture than a publisher. Somehow, because I was single, an afficionado of single-malt Scotches and great martinis ("....Shaken not stirred.") and had a storied-history, certain of the 20-something crowd determined that I was a representative of "the Swinging Lifestyle."

I was the older guy who would spring for the cocktails, tell a few good funny stories, and smile back at you with those Dino "bedroom eyes."

In my case, green rather than blue.

I could afford to pay for the cab home and had enough class not to hit on your chick.

I've always been pretty much a Literary Hermit, but it's easy for people seeing me in a pub, with the latest woman I won't connect with, to assume otherwise. Thus, seeing me in those venues, a few kids assumed that --- like Dean Martin --- I could be considered an icon of the Swinging Lifestyle. Not.

NOW to go somewhere else, to change the channel for a second, I'm upset --- angry, disgruntled, mad-as-hell --- with my old friends from the past.

Why?

In the most technically advanced, self assured country on earth, a cleric of some sort was maintaining that 'Creationism' be taught in class alongside evolutionary theory.

I soon became aware of an intensely interesting debate between the Rev. Jerry Falwell and the science populariser, Stephen J. Gould. They were debating the 6-4 decision of the Kansas School Board not to award credits for school work on 'The Big Bang' and evolutionary theory.

Gould's first point, which he made much more politely than I will, was that Falwell either has never read or does not understand Darwin, or even the excellent recent biography by Desmond and Moore which conclusively shows that the only event which shook Darwin's Christian faith was the death of his eldest daughter, Annie, in tragic circumstances.

For Darwin The Origin of Speciesdid not call into question the existence of a Supreme Being, as taught by the Anglican church, it simply threw out Bishop Ussher's tabulation of the creation at 4004 BC. In fact it was Darwin's geology which threw out the Bishop's calculations before he turned to biological evolution.

That Darwin waited almost two decades between framing his evolutionary theory and publishing it, however, says a lot for his fear of critics like the Rev. Falwell; and without the threat of the imminent publication of an almost identical theory by Alfred Wallace he might never have brought himself to it...