01.31.08
Intelligent Design Challenge
Dear Dr. Dembski
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Webalizer
Joomla 1.5
I linked the other day to my installation of Joomla 1.5. But there was some problem (I changed ftp client, and the problem was solved, upon reinstallation).
Scientists clueless
An Astronomer Attempts to Explain Spirituality
“I doubt that science will ever be able to give us the spiritual and emotional things we crave. So I think faith will always be with us.”
Scientists just don’t get it. People have beliefs in the supernatural because something at the limits of their representations seems to penetrate their consciousness. Getting to the bottom of this is hardly possible in terms of current science.
Consider the philosopher Schopenhauer on this point, if you don’t want mystical superstitions.
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Music and evolution
Music essential to human evolution: neuroscientist
People can disagree about what kind of music they want to listen to, but few doubt that music itself is an important part of being human.
Now a Perth neuroscientist is working on a theory that music has been central to the evolution of the modern mind.
Language evolution
Language development mirrors species evolution
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
The sudden emergence of American English is an example of how languages evolve rapidly when people want to carve out a new identity, and mirror the way that new species evolve, according to a new study.
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Chimp/human diets
Why Humans Aren’t Chimps: We Eat Better
By Brandon Keim January 30, 2008
Why did humans and chimpanzees diverge so sharply on the primate family tree?
Because of our diets, say German anthropologists.
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Loony theory
Another Loony Theory from the Wonderland of Evolution
My rejection of evolution has everything to do with rational thinking and nothing to do with my supposed revulsion for apes and monkeys. In fact, I find chimpanzees and their cousins immensely amusing – almost as amusing as people like Lee Harris and his sublimely preposterous theory.
If liberal Darwinists can’t figure out the problems with Darwinism, the conservatives will do it for them. Meanwhile the suggestion we dislike Darwin because we can’t stand comparison with apes is quite, quite off the mark.
E. Coli
E. Coli Bacteria: A Future Source Of Energy?
ScienceDaily (Jan. 31, 2008) — For most people, the name “E. coli” is synonymous with food poisoning and product recalls, but a professor in Texas A&M University’s chemical engineering department envisions the bacteria as a future source of energy, helping to power our cars, homes and more.
Cockburn on GW??
I am an intellectual blasphemer
When Alexander Cockburn, author of the forthcoming book A Short History of Fear, dared to question the climate change consensus, he was punished by a tsunami of self-righteous fury. It is time for a free and open ‘battle of ideas’, he says.
by Alexander Cockburn
Comment:
Cockburn contrarianism
Ape economics
A fascinating insight into human society comes from this study of
barter, reports Roger Highfield
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/earth/2008/01/30/sciape130.xml
DNA alphabet
Two artificial DNA bases that are accurately replicated by natural
enzymes have been created by US researchers
http://technology.newscientist.com/article/dn13252-artificial-letters-added-to-lifes-alphabet.html
Alternet: Edwards, 9/11 commish
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Two states or one?
From R-G
MER
Middle East Report
www.middleeast.org
Audio Interview of Miko Peled by Mark Bruzonsky
Miko Peled about Two States or ONE?
http://tinyurl.com/2u7xjh
Haiti
From R-G
Haiti’s wealthy prosper while the poor decline
http://www.haitiaction.net/News/HIP/1_29_8/1_29_8.html
HIP - Port au Prince, Haiti — Cite Soleil, a seaside shantytown of
more than 300.000 people residing in homes made of cinder blocks with
tin roofs, has been described as poorer than India’s infamous slums
of Calcutta. On any given day it teems with the life’s blood of
Haiti’s poorest citizens. Read the rest of this entry »
Gould legacy file
Gould legacy file
link from an email, SciftP
From the issue dated March 15, 2002 (Chronicle of Higher Ed.)
Revising the Book of Life
Only Stephen Jay Gould would dare to rewrite Darwin. But will America’s best-known scientist leave much of an imprint?
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10 best
Best Progressive Books of 2007
By Don Hazen, AlterNet. Posted January 31, 2008.
2007 was a banner year for progressive books, but two stand out as true groundbreakers: Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine and Jeremy Scahill’s Blackwater, published by Nation Books. They are co-winners in AlterNet’s 10 Best Books of 2007 contest.
Questioning Consciousness
Questioning Consciousness
To understand consciousness and its evolution, we need to ask the right questions.
by Nicholas Humphrey • Posted January 28, 2008 04:57 PM
No one doubts that our experience of phenomenal consciousness—the felt redness of fire, the felt sweetness of a peach, the felt pain of a bee sting—arises from the activity of our brains. Yet the problem of explaining how this can be so seems to many theorists to be staggeringly hard. How can the wine of consciousness, the weird, ineffable, immaterial qualia that give such richness to subjective experience, conceivably arise from the water of the brain? As the philosopher Colin McGinn has put it, it’s like trying to explain how you can get “numbers from biscuits, or ethics from rhubarb.” The philosopher Jerry Fodor recently claimed, “The revisions of our concepts and theories that imagining a solution will eventually require are likely to be very deep and very unsettling.”
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01.30.08
Postmodern creationists
PT cites an article: Reason and Common Ground: A Response to the Creationists’ “Neutrality” Argument
I can understand the rejection of the ‘postmodern’ argument that science is but one of many equally valid ways of knowing. Creationists have wrecked the basic argument.
The critique of methodological naturalism doesn’t require conclusions about relativity.
The point is simply that methodological naturalism is at best a framework, one that cannot yield new knowledge in and of itself. Thus its formulation is liable to prejudice our observations, and lead to a misanalysis of phenomena that don’t fit a narrow definition of naturalism.
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The illusion of debate
Dr. Geoff Simmons vs PZ Myers Debate
Something odd has happened to the Darwin debate (an effect visible in the New Atheism debates, also): the issue is NOT serious debate, but who gets to debate at all.
The candidates, at this point, are the ID group, and the Darwinists. Line them up in a debate situation, let them repeat their cliches, canned rebuttals, etc, and everyone goes home the same before, no serious debate having occurred.
It is really a dog-sniffing contest as territorial beasts stake out their turf (market-share).
I can certainly invite any and all parties to debate the question of history and evolution as seen in the eonic effect. That this data and its associated model shows where both sides are going wrong–well, I am sure they wouldn’t be interested.
The ‘debate’ is no longer interested in the truth of evolution.
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The Big Questions
Richard Dawkins on The Big Questions
Richard Dawkins, Nicky Campbell, Sonia Deol, BBC
Reposted from: Dawkins siste
http://atheistmedia.blogspot.com/2007/12/big-questions-bbc-live-debate.html
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Richard Dawkins on The Big Debate
Richard Dawkins on The Big Debate
Richard Dawkins, Jonathan Dimbleby, BBC
Alternate video link (thanks to Bill Pugsley):
http://www.teachers.tv/video/24057
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Charles Taylor and naturalism
may be the most important philosopher writing in English today. He is drawn to big issues like the evolution of the modern self, and his latest book defends religion from its critics
The critique of naturalism is something we have consistently been up to here, but that critique is not grounds for super-naturalism. Actually, all the public ideologies, religious or secular, are incoherent.
We need a naturalism done right, and the indications for that lie in something like a Kantian perspective.