02.23.10
Posted in Evolution, The Eonic Effect at 6:21 pm by nemo
Mysterious Drumbreat
The debate over natural selection is carried out by biological Darwinists who have been systematically miseducated and led to believe that NS will explicate evolution in general. It is a fallacy that dies hard, and one can only recommend a careful look at the eonic effect: you will see that natural selection just can’t do the things claimed for it, and that the evolution is vastly more complicated than random process.
Just tracking evolution of any kind over five thousand years is extremely difficult. The eonic effect warns us of a similar problem in earlier stages of evolution.
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Posted in Booknotes, In the News at 6:17 pm by nemo
Publishing: The Revolutionary Future
By Jason Epstein
The transition within the book publishing industry from physical inventory stored in a warehouse and trucked to retailers to digital files stored in cyberspace and delivered almost anywhere on earth as quickly and cheaply as e-mail is now underway and irreversible. This historic shift will radically transform worldwide book publishing, the cultures it affects and on which it depends. Meanwhile, for quite different reasons, the genteel book business that I joined more than a half-century ago is already on edge, suffering from a gambler’s unbreakable addiction to risky, seasonal best sellers, many of which don’t recoup their costs, and the simultaneous deterioration of backlist, the vital annuity on which book publishers had in better days relied for year-to-year stability through bad times and good. The crisis of confidence reflects these intersecting shocks, an overspecialized marketplace dominated by high-risk ephemera and a technological shift orders of magnitude greater than the momentous evolution from monkish scriptoria to movable type launched in Gutenberg’s German city of Mainz six centuries ago.
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Posted in Evolution at 6:07 pm by nemo
Phryngula on Fodor/PP’s book
Is anybody else marveling at the irony of the philosopher Fodor complaining that his critics aren’t part of the field that he is criticizing?
With Darwinian evolution it is not the case that biologists are more competent than the critics (who are admittedly often incompetent).
In many ways Darwinists are incompetent on evolution, for the simple reason that they have the wrong definition of evolution, no data for natural selection, and a philosophical attitude that is completely confused.
So the chance that an outsider can offer a better view is considerable.
Fodor has to endure a lot of abuse for his critique, and his complaint is not surprising.
The frustrating thing is that the hard-core Darwinists are so pretentious in their false certainty and always regurgitate the same old Darwin cliches.
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Posted in Evolution at 6:02 pm by nemo
Link Between Marine Algae and Whale Diversity Over Last 30 Million Years, Study Finds
ScienceDaily (Feb. 22, 2010) — A new paper by researchers at George Mason University and the University of Otago in New Zealand shows a strong link between the diversity of organisms at the bottom of the food chain and the diversity of mammals at the top.
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Posted in neuroscience at 6:01 pm by nemo
Brain System Behind General Intelligence Discovered
ScienceDaily (Feb. 23, 2010) — A collaborative team of neuroscientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), the University of Iowa, the University of Southern California (USC), and the Autonomous University of Madrid have mapped the brain structures that affect general intelligence.
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Posted in Evolution, The Eonic Effect at 5:59 pm by nemo
Limits of Observation
Debates over natural selection are a series of abstractions about what might be the case. The actual science of evolution would require tracking evolutionary sequences over time to see how evolution actually occurred.
Natural selection is the surface of evolutionary dynamics. The real process of evolution is rarely if ever observed.
A look at the eonic effect can clarify this point: we discover, to our shocked surprise, what evolution is really like as we track it over time.
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Posted in Evolution at 1:33 pm by nemo
Misunderstanding Darwin
Natural selection’s secular critics get it wrong
Is Kitcher stupid? I have to wonder. Darwinism is unique in the way in which smart people get brainwashed to defend it obsessively.
I am glad to see a reply to Fodor/PP, but this type of argumentation, it seems, is really sophistical and fails to see the crisis of theory that haunts Darwinism. Critiquing Darwinism is thus difficult and critics end up in these quagmires where clever true believers like Kitcher (if he is not in fact a brazen liar, as I suspect) defend natural selection as if doubt were abnormal.
In fact, not doubting this superficial theory is abnormal.
It is hard to make the case that Fodor attempts to make, and I am amazed he got this far.
Surely, if you stand back, the point should be obvious. In the immense complexity of organismic evolution, the logistics of piecemeal change via natural selectioin is going to not work right, and end up in confused situations, of which the spandrel is a mere foretaste.
It is worth considering Hoyle’s now seminal critique. The statistics of NS is completely hopeless. As Hoyle notes, getting one polypeptide right is hopeless for natural selection.
Thus these other complex critiques tend to make the obvious less than obvious by venturing into Darwinist territory where delusion reigns unchecked.
The point is that Fodor/PP end up having to prove that NS is false. The burden of disproof is put on the critic.
But NS is a highly implausible thesis to begin with, as Hoyle noted decades ago.
It should be the other way around: the burdern of proof is on the Darwinist to make some sense of the hopeless confusions of this theory, starting with the statistics issue, and proceeding to the logistics question, among others.
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Posted in Evolution at 1:19 pm by nemo
Fodor at Salon
Most children learn about natural selection by learning the example of the giraffe’s long neck, which supposedly evolved because it allowed animals to graze higher branches. Does this mean that we’re giving schoolchildren the wrong information?
The inference runs that there’s this creature that has a long neck, so this creature was selected for having a long neck. That inference is clearly invalid. A creature that has a long neck may have that neck because a different trait was selected, and the long neck came along with it.
And in a sense, there are no such things as traits. The environment selects creatures. Animals can have long necks and toenails, but if you try to break such creatures apart into traits and you say, OK, “What selected this trait?” and, “What selected that trait?” you’ve made a mistake right from the beginning. The disintegration of the organism into traits is itself a spurious undertaking. Biologists have said for a long time that organisms aren’t like Swiss apples, you can’t tap them on a table and have them fall apart into distinct wedges. Selection is operating on whole organisms.
It is unbelievable that the giraffe’s neck question continues in all seriousness as a support for Darwinism.
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Posted in Evolution, The Eonic Effect at 1:16 pm by nemo
What is your beef with natural selection?
The main thing Darwin had in mind with natural selection was to come up with a theory that answers the question, “Why are certain traits there?” Why do people have hair on their heads? Why do both eyes have the same color? Why does dark hair go with dark eyes? You can make up a story that explains why it was good to have those properties in the original environment of selection. Do we have any reason to think that story is true? No.
According to Darwin, traits of creatures are selected for their contribution to fitness [likelihood to survive]. But how do you distinguish a trait that is selected for from one that comes along with it? There are a lot of interesting structures in creatures that have nothing to do with fitness.
Some variants in selection are clearly environmental. If you can’t store water you’ll do worse in a dry environment than if you can. But suppose that having a high ability to carry a lot of water is correlated for genetic reasons with skin color. How do you decide which trait is selected for by environmental factors and which one is just attached to it? There isn’t anything in the Darwinist picture that allows you to answer that question.
This kind of criticism of natural selection is long overdue, but the diehards are addicted to oversimplifications and the ‘paradigm’ is constantly made to persist. So I wonder if Fodor/PP et al. can really make a dent in the Darwin propaganda machine.
I think that the best and most comprehensive critique of natural selection lies in the study of the eonic effect: it is a unique glimpse of ‘evolution in action’, albeit in history, and this shows dramatically how silly the NS obsession is. It is a projection of the reductionist imagination onto deep time, without real evidence.
Thus I think that the Fodor/PP critique, while immensely valuable, can provoke return quibbles by defenders. The point is simply that NS is not scientifically observed in deep time. We never track evolutioanry sequences in detail to see how they occur.
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Posted in Evolution at 12:54 pm by nemo
Michigan State uses NSF grant to study evolution in action
STC award will help study evolution in natural and virtual settings
Michigan State University announced today that it was awarded a $25 million grant from the National Science Foundation to establish a center, bringing together scientists from across the nation to study evolution in action in both natural and virtual settings.
MSU has been awarded one of five highly coveted NSF Science and Technology Centers, officially titled “BEACON, an NSF Science and Technology Center for the Study of Evolution in Action.” It will serve as a resource for academics and industry, performing basic research while helping create new technologies to solve real-world problems, ranging from the development of safer, more efficient cars to systems that detect computer intrusions.
BEACON is short for the “Bio/computational Evolution in Action CONsortium.”
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Posted in biology at 12:53 pm by nemo
Genetics and Proposition 8
Human sexual orientation has deep biological roots.
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Posted in Evolution at 12:50 pm by nemo
Misunderstanding Darwin
Natural selection’s secular critics get it wrong
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Posted in Evolution at 12:49 pm by nemo
“What Darwin Got Wrong”: Taking down the father of evolution
A new book dares to attack the theory of natural selection by using — surprise! — science
http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2010/02/22/what_darwin_got_wrong_jerry_fodor/
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Posted in Evolution at 12:44 pm by nemo
Link Between Marine Algae and Whale Diversity Over Last 30 Million Years, Study Finds
ScienceDaily (Feb. 22, 2010) — A new paper by researchers at George Mason University and the University of Otago in New Zealand shows a strong link between the diversity of organisms at the bottom of the food chain and the diversity of mammals at the top.
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Posted in biology at 12:42 pm by nemo
Flightless Mosquitoes Developed to Help Control Dengue Fever
ScienceDaily (Feb. 23, 2010) — A new strain of mosquitoes in which females cannot fly may help curb the transmission of dengue fever
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Posted in biology at 12:41 pm by nemo
Is an Animal’s Agility Affected by the Position of Its Eyes?
ScienceDaily (Feb. 23, 2010) — New research from scientists in Liverpool has revealed the relationship between agility and vision in mammals.
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Posted in General at 12:39 pm by nemo
Mouse With Human Liver: New Model for Treatment of Liver Disease
ScienceDaily (Feb. 23, 2010) — How do you study-and try to cure in the laboratory-an infection that only humans can get?
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Posted in In the News at 12:38 pm by nemo
All eyes on Bloom Box fuel cell launch
Anticipation and suspicion run high before launch of Bloom Box, claimed to be a cheap source of clean energy from a device the size of a loaf of bread
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Posted in you've got mail at 12:36 pm by nemo
Published on Tuesday, February 23, 2010 by The Capital Times (Madison, Wis.)
Recalibrating Our Goals on 40th Earth Day
by John Heritage
Forty years ago, we celebrated the first Earth Day. I was the environmental assistant to the late Sen. Gaylord Nelson, who founded the event and charged me to make it happen.
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Posted in In the News at 12:35 pm by nemo
Published on Tuesday, February 23, 2010 by YES! Magazine
Beyond Tea Party Politics
Oregon voted to increase taxes on corporations and the wealthy to help fund programs that assist low and middle-income families.
by Altaf Rahamatilla
Last month, Oregonians overwhelmingly approved ballot initiatives to increase taxes on high-end personal and corporate income. Only the richest individuals and corporations, or 2.5 percent of the state, will be affected—while Oregon generates $700 million in the upcoming year to protect vital services.
The debate around the issue was extremely contentious, but advocates effectively articulated the necessary message: increasing income tax rates at the top only affects a small number of state residents, and is economically sound, politically feasible, and popular with the public. This is especially true when compared to the alternative: massive cuts in education, infrastructure, and health care that endanger a state’s economic and social vitality.
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Posted in General at 12:32 pm by nemo
Mossad’s Rogue Assassins
The Dubai Hit
By URI AVNERY
FROM TIME to time I ask myself: what would happen if the world’s governments decided to abolish all their spy agencies simultaneously?
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Posted in you've got mail at 12:29 pm by nemo
CLIMATE AND CAPITALISM
An online journal focusing on capitalism, climate change,
and the ecosocialist alternative.
February 23, 2010
Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in you've got mail at 12:27 pm by nemo
RG mail
http://www.truthout.org/major-fallout-predicted-over-obamas-nuclear-power-proposal57088
Major Fallout Predicted Over Obama’s Nuclear Power Proposal
Monday 22 February 2010
by: Grace Huang, t r u t o u t | Report
While President Obama has announced an offer of $8.3 billion in loan guarantees for two new nuclear reactors, worries about potential cost overruns, health risks and safety concerns lead many to believe his proposal may cause far more harm than good – assuming that the reactors can be successfully built.
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Posted in you've got mail at 12:26 pm by nemo
Cornucopia Institute: Corporate Baking Giant Sara Lee Hijacks Organics
http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2010/02/22
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Posted in you've got mail at 12:25 pm by nemo
Sean Gonsalves | Gimme That Ole Time Religion
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/02/22-7
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Posted in you've got mail at 12:23 pm by nemo
Chris Hedges | Boycott FedEx
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/02/22-2
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Posted in you've got mail at 12:19 pm by nemo
RG mail
The truth about factory farming
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2010/0218102stack1.html#theLink
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02.22.10
Posted in you've got mail at 7:21 pm by nemo
RG mail
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/aids-is-the-end-in-sight-1906467.html
February 22, 2010
Aids: is the end in sight?
By Steve Connor, Science Editor, in San Diego
Mass prescription of anti-retroviral drugs could eradicate the disease within 40 years, scientist says
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