08.31.09
Posted in The Eonic Effect at 4:11 pm by nemo
The Old Testament: An Eonic Riddle
One of the great ironies of the Darwin debate is that the design argument doesn’t work with Old Testament history. For that a look at the eonic effect is needed.
Our understanding of the Old Testament is in crisis. The tide of Biblical Criticism and archaeology has eroded our sense of divine action, or of divinity acting in history. Traditionalists are frozen in biblical literalism, and heading over a cliff oblivious to their situation, while arrogant Darwinian reductionism only compounds the confusion by offering no insight into religion beyond the Social Darwinist vulgarity of the cadres of scientism.
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Posted in Evolution at 4:07 pm by nemo
The Evolution Conspiracy now appears to be out.
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Posted in The Eonic Effect at 4:03 pm by nemo
Scientists have forgotten the history of the idea of a a ’science of history’, with the result that the reductionist version of scientism has taken hold, to the extent that scientists bother with history at all. Actually there is no ’science of history’ in the conventional sense, and the relationship of history to evolution, their deep connection, suggests the same must be true of (human) evolution.
Critique of Historical Reason
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Posted in Booknotes, Evolution at 3:35 pm by nemo
Advance reviews of Darwin books
(from NCSE, hence probably propaganda)
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Posted in archaeology at 3:32 pm by nemo
Explaining the Spread of Agriculture into Europe
The practice of growing food and keeping livestock was invented numerous times throughout the world. One ‘center’ of agriculture is said to be the Middle East. Despite the fact that calling the Middle East a “center” in this context is a gross oversimplification, it is true that agriculture was practiced in Anatolia and the Levant for quite some time before it was practiced in Europe, and it seems that the practice more or less spread from the middle east across Europe over a fairly long period of time.
Archaeologists have long asked the question: Was this a spread of agricultural people, or the spread of the practice of agriculture, or, even, the independent invention of agriculture by various groups independent of earlier manifestations of this practice elsewhere?
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Posted in General at 3:24 pm by nemo
Darwin’s Dilemma
A 71 minute video documentary
The evidence of the Cambrian is compelling, but just what is the conclusion, apart from doubt about Darwin’s theory? The attempt to hijack the Cambrian mystery for ID seems likely to backfire.
The final film in Illustra Media’s long-planned Intelligent Design trilogy is Darwin’s Dilemma.
This documentary will examine what many consider to be the most powerful refutation of Darwinian evolution—the Cambrian fossil record. Charles Darwin realized that the fossil evidence did not support his theory of gradual, step-by-step evolutionary development. He hoped that future generations of scientists would make the discoveries necessary to validate his ideas. Today, after more than 150 years of exploration fossil evidence of slow, incremental biological change has yet to be excavated. Instead, we find a picture of the rapid appearance of fully developed, complex organisms during the outset of the Cambrian geological era. Organisms that embody almost all of the major animal body plans that exist today. This remarkable explosion of life is best explained by the existence of a transcendent intelligence.
Darwin’s Dilemma will be released on September 15, 2009.
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Posted in Evolution, Science & Religion at 3:16 pm by nemo
Toward a secular postdarwinism
One of the great confusions of the debate over evolution is its polarization around religion and secularism. The question of evolution, or rather Darwinian pseudo-science, is one of science vs pseudo-science. The religious opposition to evolution simply makes the defenders of Darwinian pseudo-science stronger.
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Posted in General at 3:01 pm by nemo
Are climate change deniers like creationists?
Whatever the answer to the question, the fact remains that critiquing Darwinism is a legitimate and necessary scientific activity attempting to expose the pseudo-science of Darwinism. This has nothing to do with conservative/creationist initiatives, e.g. climate change denial.
Looks like it’s time to bring back Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan: The US Chamber of Commerce wants to subject the science of climate change to a “Scopes monkey trial.” Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in you've got mail at 2:26 pm by nemo
RG mail
Let them eat (organic) cake
Amy Muldoon takes on Whole Foods CEO John Mackey’s “alternative” to health care reform–blame the victims for having unhealthy lifestyles.
August 31, 2009
Whole Foods CEO John Mackey addresses a press conference about healthy eating
FREE-MARKET ideologue and Whole Foods CEO John Mackey stirred a public outcry with his self-serving guest editorial in the Wall Street Journal on August 12. Bold even by the standards of a pro-corporate mouthpiece like the Journal, Mackey’s arrogantly titled “The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare” argues against any social or governmental responsibility for not just health care, but food or shelter.
More
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Posted in Evolution at 11:12 am by nemo
The Pure Society: From Darwin to Hitler
27 August 2009
Allocating blame in a selective way
Simon Underdown disagrees with the premise that racism is part of evolution, rather than a crime
Of all the names that echo across the 20th century, it is interesting that perhaps the two loudest should belong to men born in the 19th; Darwin and Hitler. They occupy the diametric positions of what evolution has allowed human intelligence to achieve – sublime beauty and sublime evil. But once you’ve chucked in a shared penchant for facial topiary, that is where the similarities end. Darwin had arguably the greatest idea to ever occur to a human being, with a simple elegance comparable to any great work of art, and Hitler, well, he had a moustache. The theory of evolution by natural selection has only ever been a scientific idea and has never been a guide for how society should organise and conduct itself.
Andre Pichot, in his book The Pure Society: From Darwin to Hitler, somehow misses this important point and tries to make the case that Darwin’s idea is somehow responsible for all manner of dangerous policies from Nazism to racial apartheid. This fundamental error means that an impressively researched and passionately argued book, and a readable example of history of science covering a remarkable breadth and depth of material, ultimately falls down.
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Posted in Booknotes, Evolution at 11:01 am by nemo
Biochemist follows footprints of evolution
Sunday, August 30, 2009 3:23 AM
By Margaret Quamme
British biochemist Nick Lane isn’t afraid to tackle the big subjects.
The subtitle of his ambitious and stimulating Life Ascending is The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution. These are, in order, the origin of life, DNA, photosynthesis, the complex cell, sex, movement, sight, hot blood, consciousness and death. Not a ringer among them.
Reading this volume as a nonscientist can be challenging. At times I felt as if I were drowning in adenosine triphosphate, hydrophobic amino acids, polymerization and depolymerization, gerontogene mutations and actin filaments.
But Lane is quick to toss out life preservers in the form of metaphors that allow those who still have nightmares about the Krebs cycle to catch their breath. He speaks of “RNA’s nestling up like piglets on a sow’s nipples” or of the “astonishing catwalk of weird body plans” that appeared in the Cambrian era.
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Posted in Evolution at 10:55 am by nemo
We Are All Mutants
ScienceDaily (Aug. 27, 2009) — An international team of 16 scientists today reports the first direct measurement of the general rate of genetic mutation at individual DNA letters in humans. The team sequenced the same piece of DNA – 10,000,000 or so letters or ‘nucleotides’ from the Y chromosome – from two men separated by 13 generations, and counted the number of differences. Among all these nucleotides, they found only four mutations.
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Posted in History at 10:54 am by nemo
Milk Drinking Started Around 7,500 Years Ago In Central Europe
ScienceDaily (Aug. 27, 2009) — The ability to digest the milk sugar lactose first evolved in dairy farming communities in central Europe, not in more northern groups as was previously thought, finds a new study led by UCL (University College London) scientists published in the journal PLoS Computational Biology. The genetic change that enabled early Europeans to drink milk without getting sick has been mapped to dairying farmers who lived around 7,500 years ago in a region between the central Balkans and central Europe.
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Posted in neuroscience at 10:51 am by nemo
Neuroscientists Find Brain Region Responsible For Our Sense Of Personal Space
ScienceDaily (Aug. 31, 2009) — In a finding that sheds new light on the neural mechanisms involved in social behavior, neuroscientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have pinpointed the brain structure responsible for our sense of personal space.
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Posted in Evolution at 10:49 am by nemo
Model Suggests How Life’s Code Emerged From Primordial Soup
ScienceDaily (Aug. 31, 2009) — In 1952, Stanley Miller filled two flasks with chemicals assumed to be present on the primitive Earth, connected the flasks with rubber tubes and introduced some electrical sparks as a stand-in for lightning. The now famous experiment showed what amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, could easily be generated from this primordial stew. But despite that seminal experiment, neither he nor others were able to take the next step: that of showing how life’s code could come from such humble beginnings.
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Posted in General at 10:47 am by nemo
Fishy Sixth Sense: Mathematical Keys To Fascinating Sense Organ
ScienceDaily (Aug. 30, 2009) — Fish and some amphibians possess a unique sensory capability in the so-called lateral-line system. It allows them, in effect, to “touch” objects in their surroundings without direct physical contact or to “see” in the dark.
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Posted in global warming at 10:44 am by nemo
Published on Monday, August 31, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
Water, Water—Not Everywhere
by Olga Bonfiglio
Without water, nothing can live. And in the Western United States, there isn’t much of it because the region is a desert.
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Posted in you've got mail at 10:42 am by nemo
Published on Monday, August 31, 2009 by TruthDig.com
Go to Pittsburgh, Young Man, and Defy Your Empire
by Chris Hedges
Globalization and unfettered capitalism have been swept into the history books along with the open-market theory of the 1920s, the experiments of fascism, communism and the New Deal. It is time for a new economic and political paradigm. It is time for a new language to address our reality. The voices of change, those who speak in powerful and yet unfamiliar words, will cry out Sept. 25 and 26 in Pittsburgh when protesters from around the country gather to defy the heads of state, bankers and finance ministers from the world’s 22 largest economies who are convening for a meeting of the G-20. If we heed these dissident voices we have a future. If we do not we will commit collective suicide.
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Posted in you've got mail at 10:40 am by nemo
Published on Monday, August 31, 2009 by The San Francisco Chronicle
Swift-Boating Healthcare: Facts Are First Casualty in Health Care Debate
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Posted in you've got mail at 10:38 am by nemo
http://www.counterpunch.org/martens08312009.html
Will the IG Report Cover the Role of White Shoe Law Firms?
Madoff and the SEC’s Revolving Door
By PAM MARTENS
The long-awaited investigative report by the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) Inspector General on how the SEC bungled multiple investigations of Bernard Madoff is set for release this week. Unfortunately, according to media reports, the long suffering investing public will not receive the report until the SEC itself has had a chance to review it.
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Posted in you've got mail at 10:35 am by nemo
mx mail
The Wall Street Journal
THE OUTLOOK
AUGUST 31, 2009
Commercial Real Estate Lurks as Next Potential Mortgage Crisis
By LINGLING WEI and PETER GRANT
Federal Reserve and Treasury officials are scrambling to prevent the
commercial-real-estate sector from delivering a roundhouse punch to the
U.S. economy just as it struggles to get up off the mat.
Their efforts could be undermined by a surge in foreclosures of
commercial property carrying mortgages that were packaged and sold by
Wall Street as bonds. Similar mortgage-backed securities created out of
home loans played a big role in undoing that sector and triggering the
global economic recession. Now the $700 billion of
commercial-mortgage-backed securities outstanding are being tested for
the first time by a massive downturn, and the outcome so far hasn’t been
pretty.
full: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125167422962070925.html
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Posted in you've got mail at 10:34 am by nemo
mx mail
http://www.aftonbladet.se/kultur/article5691805.ab
Publicerad: 2009-08-26
“Our sons are plundered of their organs”
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