09.30.09
Evolution and pigmentation
The Evolution of Human Skin Pigmentation
UD: Is this politically correct?
Looking for the absence of a cause
Looking for the absence of a cause….
Nature on ‘edge of evolution’
Nature Publishes Paper on the Edge of Evolution
Nature has published an interesting paper recently which places severe limits on Darwinian evolution. This is the first of several posts discussing it.
Richard Dawkins’s Jewish Problem
Richard Dawkins’s Jewish Problem
Tuesday September 29, 2009
The Anti-Defamation League, the country’s leading group dedicated to fighting anti-Semitism, is rightly sensitive to the offense of trivializing the Holocaust. Why, then, has the ADL said nothing in protest against the Darwinian biologist and bestselling atheist author Richard Dawkins and his comparison of Darwin doubters to Holocaust deniers?
Chasing the improbable
Evolution chases improbabilities
In the letter encouraging school boards to not waste time and money listening to and deciding between evolution and creation/intelligent design, none of the cases referred to involved such a decision. It attempted to address the weaknesses of evolution as well as its strengths, allowed only the “party line,” and only alluded to supporting facts of science (Rome News-Tribune, Sept. 22).
Booknotes: Ruse
Celebrate Darwin’s bicentennial by exploring how Darwin ‘defined’ evolutionary biology
Two hundred years later, have the ideas of Charles Darwin endured?
Michael Ruse is one of the foremost Charles Darwin scholars of our time. For forty years, he has written extensively on Darwin, the scientific revolution that his work precipitated, and the nature and implications of evolutionary thinking for today. Now, in the year marking the two hundredth anniversary of Darwin’s birth and the one hundred fiftieth anniversary of his masterpiece, On the Origin of Species, Ruse reevaluates the legacy of Darwin in this collection of new and recent essays, DEFINING DARWIN: ESSAYS ON THE HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY (Prometheus Books, $26.98).
Darwin was right–up to a point
Darwin was right – up to a point
September 30, 2009 – 11:52AM
Evolution had to lead to humans – or something like us – because it is very much more constrained than many scientists suggest, according to evolutionary biologist Simon Conway Morris.
In a view considered almost heretical by ultra-Darwinists such as Richard Dawkins, Conway Morris suggests that evolution cannot explain everything in biology, that the idea of evolution as entirely random is flawed, and that convergent evolutionary processes had to produce intelligence – as they have, not only in humans but apes, crows and dolphins.
“Evolution is true, it happens, it is the way the world is, and we too are one of its products. This does not mean that evolution does not have metaphysical implications; I remain convinced that this is the case,” he has written.
Sue felled by parasite?
Was Mighty T. Rex ‘Sue’ Felled By A Lowly Parasite?
ScienceDaily (Sep. 30, 2009) — When pondering the demise of a famous dinosaur such as ‘Sue,’ the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex whose fossilized remains are a star attraction of the Field Museum in Chicago, it is hard to avoid the image of clashing Cretaceous titans engaged in bloody, mortal combat.
Transgenic songbirds
Transgenic Songbirds Provide New Tool To Understand The Brain
ScienceDaily (Sep. 30, 2009) — The ability to manipulate songbird genes may yield the molecular secrets of vocal learning and neuronal replacement.
Feathery dinosaur
Feathery Four-winged Dinosaur Fossil Found In China Bridges Transition To Birds
ScienceDaily (Sep. 29, 2009) — A fossil of a bird-like dinosaur with four wings has been discovered in northeastern China. The specimen bridges a critical gap in the transition from dinosaurs to birds, and reveals new insights into the origin evolution of feathers.
4C rise in temperature could happen by 2060
Met Office warns of catastrophic global warming in our lifetimes
• Study says 4C rise in temperature could happen by 2060
• Increase could threaten water supply of half world population
Trying to quit
gnxp
Though roughly 70 percent of smokers want to stop, they’re likely to
fail unless they combine counseling and medication
http://www.boston.com/news/health/articles/2009/09/28/smoking_cessation_\
experts_prescribe_a_double_barreled_approach/
Thinking love
gnxp
A new study demonstrates that thinking about love–but not about
sex–causes us to think more “globally,” making it easier to come up
with new ideas
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=does-falling-in-love-ma\
ke
Poverty and obesity
gnxp
…Does poverty make people obese, or is it the other way around?
http://www.slate.com/id/2229523/
Concepts and hippocampus
gnxp
Brain regions have been identified that allow us to sort the world into
separate concepts – a defining feature of human intelligence
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17862-concepts-are-born-in-the-hip\
pocampus.html
Poll on Medicare for all
Published on Wednesday, September 30, 2009 by Black Agenda Report
Poll Shows Public Wants Medicare for All
by Glen Ford
Nuke story doesn’t add up
Published on Wednesday, September 30, 2009 by Inter Press Service
US Story on Iran Nuke Facility Doesn’t Add Up
by Gareth Porter
WASHINGTON – The story line that dominated media coverage of the second Iranian uranium enrichment facility last week was the official assertion that U.S. intelligence had caught Iran trying to conceal a “secret” nuclear facility.
But an analysis of the transcript of that briefing by senior administration officials that was the sole basis for the news stories and other evidence reveals damaging admissions, conflicts with the facts and unanswered questions that undermine its credibility.
Dawkins selection
The Angry Evolutionist
by Richard Dawkins – Excerpted from The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution
http://www.newsweek.com/id/216140
Dawkins’ evolving defense of Darwin
Dawkins’ evolving defence of Darwin
Robert Fulford, National Post
Published: Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Humans who are cold, frightened or emotionally stirred sometimes experience a prickly feeling creeping up the back of the neck. When that happens we should see ourselves as living fossils, walking remnants of prehistory.
Read more: http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/columnists/story.html?id=6e342103-7e71-420d-b1d7-f4e781034fbd#ixzz0SW9NDZM8
Electric fish
Electric Fish Plug In To Communicate
ScienceDaily (Sep. 29, 2009) — Just as people plug in to computers, smart phones and electric outlets to communicate, electric fish communicate by quickly plugging special channels into their cells to generate electrical impulses,
Hyena cooperation
Hyenas Cooperate, Problem-solve Better Than Primates
ScienceDaily (Sep. 29, 2009) — Spotted hyenas may not be smarter than chimpanzees, but a new study shows that they outperform the primates on cooperative problem-solving tests.
Light and bacterial action
Light, Photosynthesis Help Bacteria Invade Fresh Produce
ScienceDaily (Sep. 29, 2009) — Exposure to light and possibly photosynthesis itself could be helping disease-causing bacteria to be internalized by lettuce leaves, making them impervious to washing
Rattling the cage
RG mail
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1253627550527&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
THE JERUSALEM POST September 23, 2009
Rattling the Cage: Played for a sucker
Single-payer alternative
RG mail
http://socialistworker.org/2009/09/28/single-payer-alternative
Interview: Dr. Andy Coates
The single-payer alternative
September 28, 2009
The politicians declared one plan for health care reform “off the table” from the beginning: a single-payer system that would cover all Americans and cut out private insurance. But as Dr. Andy Coates explains, it remains the only alternative that can solve the crisis of the health care non-system.
09.28.09
From Darwin to Hitler (from Andre Pichot)
Pure Society: From Darwin to Hitler (Hardcover)
by André Pichot (Author)
A very good history of Social Darwinism, next to Weikart’s From Darwin to Hitler, translated from the French.