History, Evolution, and the Darwin Debate
Strike On Iran Still Possible, US Tells Israel
by Paul Richter and Julian E. Barnes
WASHINGTON – Bush administration officials reassured Israel’s defense minister this week that the United States has not abandoned all possibility of a military attack on Iran, despite widespread Israeli concern that Washington has begun softening its position toward Tehran.
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Obama and the Empire*
*-Allen Ruff*
*
[The following article is scheduled to appear in the forthcoming
/*AGAINST THE CURRENT*/, issue 136 (September-October 2008). For current
and back issues of /*ATC*/, including analyses of the significance of
the Obama campaign, go to www.solidarity-us.org
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Tom Dispatch 2008-07-27
Tomgram: Chalmers Johnson, Warning: Mercenaries at Work Read the rest of this entry »
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Since its introduction during World War II as a measure of wartime
production capacity, the Gross National Product (now routinely measured
as Gross Domestic Product – GDP) has become the nation’s foremost
indicator of economic progress. It is now widely used by policymakers,
economists, international agencies and the media as the primary
scorecard of a nation’s economic health and well-being.
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A group of scholars thinks evolutionary science can reinvigorate
literary studies
http://chronicle.com/free/v54/i47/47b00701.htm
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Naci H. Mocan, an economist at Louisiana State University, gathered
information on 89,000 people in 53 countries to draw a map of
vengefulness. What he found was that among the most vengeful are
women, older people, the poor and residents of high-crime areas.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/29/arts/29veng.html
A common gene variant seems to play a part in female-to-male
transsexuality, although upbringing also has a role, say researchers
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14424-transsexuality-gene-boosts-male-hormones.html
When we are in a pinch, surprising factors can affect our moral judgments
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=thinking-about-morality
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July 30, 2008– nytimes.com
U.S. Blacks, if a Nation, Would Rank High on AIDS
By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN
If black America were a country, it would rank 16th in the world in the number of people living with the AIDS virus, the Black AIDS Institute, an advocacy group, reported Tuesday.
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Evan Kornfeldt reports on a police attack on nonviolent environmental protesters in Eugene, Ore.
July 30, 2008
THE U.S. government is continuing its campaign against the environmental movement in the Pacific Northwest, with the latest attack in Eugene, Ore., on nonviolent protesters demonstrating against pesticide spraying.
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World History And The Eonic Effect is now on sale at Amazon!
Go for it.
This article deserves a lot of commentary, but for now…
Breeding for God
by Prospect Magazine.
From Dawkins site.
http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=7913
A discussion of ‘evolution’ and its New Age confusions at The Gurdjieff Con: Gurdjieff/Ouspensky confusion on evolution
One of the strains of the Gurdjieff corpus is the play of isolated remarks on evolution. Here we confront a tricky question. The issue of Darwinism is one thing, check out Darwiniana, the blog, for a series of critical views of Neo-Darwinism. A critique of Gurdjieff/Ouspensky on evolution is not intended as a plus for standard Neo-Darwinian views.
The views of Gurdjieff here reflect the revolt against Darwinism of Blavatsky and the Theosophists, et al.
But Gurdjieff embroiders this with his own questionable interpretation in terms of the seven stages of man. That rubric sounds convincing on one level, at least to some, but surely ‘evolution’ can’t work that way. The idea of man evolving from man number 1,2,3 to man number 4,5, 6, … is a stilted and cliched formulation that confuses evolution with self-development.
The fault is one inherited from nineteenth century New Agers such as we see in the legacy of Theosophy.
Darwinism and “Mass Men”
Evo-News, egged on by First Things (see link at article), wants to blame the ‘mass man’ on materialists, and Darwinists. I blame Darwinists for a lot of things, but that charge is misleading.
The problem here (and Ortega’s analysis seems to me flawed) is that every civilization that ever existed has shown the phenomenon of ‘mass man’, and this has nothing to do with beliefs about materialism.
I cannot think of any better example of ‘mass man’ than the history of degenerated Christianity. If ever the ‘mass man’ entered a religion and wrecked it was Xtianity.
Anyway Ortega was an anti-democratic elitist, and his ‘mass man’ is mostly a slander against democratic equality (from the age of fascism).
A group of scholars thinks evolutionary science can reinvigorate literary studies
This old chestnust joins mimetics as one of the failed, and probably useless, academic tired horses. I fail to see how Darwinism is going to produce anything of value here if Darwin’s theory itself is wrong, and if those plying it are incapable of seeing this fact.
The relationship of language and literature to evolution is carefully explored in the study of the eonic effect, and some of the results here would easily fulfil the task set, but only if these literary critics can disentangle themselves from the Paradigm.
From Dawkins site
Council ban on atheist websites
by BBC
A city council has blocked its staff from looking at websites about atheism.
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Brain That Changes Itself: into the abyss
by Telegraph
From Dawkins site
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/main.jhtml?xml=/health/2008/07/26/sm_brain126.xml
Faith is not the answer
by Terry Sanderson, Guardian
From Dawkins site
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/29/religion.anglicanism
Faith is not the answer
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How a libertarian individualist was recast as a social Darwinist
Damon W. Root | July 29, 2008
In 1944, historian Richard Hofstadter published Social Darwinism in American Thought, an aggressive and widely influential critique of the libertarian philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) and his impact on American intellectual life. Read the rest of this entry »
Published on Tuesday, July 29, 2008 by The Guardian/UK
Eaten Up
Raj Patel’s book Stuffed and Starved predicted the current global food crisis – spiralling food prices, starvation and obesity. Ed Pilkington meets the soothsayer of agro-economics and talks about what will happen when all the food finally runs out
by Ed Pilkington
Acts of War
By Scott Ritter
The war between the United States and Iran is on…
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Written by The Real News
Monday, 28 July 2008
http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=1911
by The Real News Read the rest of this entry »
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Children carrying the first gene that has been clearly linked to
obesity find it harder than others to tell when they are full,
London-based researchers say.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7525347.stm
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Did the Polynesians or Columbus make it to the Americans first? A new
study contradicts previous evidence of a link between Chilean and
Polynesian chickens.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/07/080728-polynesia-chicken.html
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A milder type of mental decline that often precedes Alzheimer’s
disease is alarmingly more common than has been believed, and in men
more than women, doctors reported Monday.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080729/ap_on_he_me/med_pre_alzheimer_s;_ylt=AlBahwpMtfU2I0DQ.H8bBPJZ24cA
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July 29, 2008– nytimes.com
A Conversation With Steven A. Farber
To Teach Genetics, Zebra Fish Go to School
By CLAUDIA DREIFUS Read the rest of this entry »
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The tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan has created a new way to define
prosperity: by measuring actual well-being rather than consumption.
by Rajni Bakshi
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