04.29.10
Chimps and humans
Recent Genetic Research Shows Chimps More Distant From Humans, Neanderthals Closer
Asteroid ice
Astronomers find loads of ice on big asteroid
by Seth Borenstein – AP
http://richarddawkins.net/articles/5509WASHINGTON – Scientists have found lots of life-essential water — frozen as ice — in an unexpected place in our solar system: an asteroid between Mars and Jupiter.
…density of transposable (jumping) elements…
New research about human genetic diseases and human development
New theory…
I click on a google ad: A New Theory of Evolution: The Untold Story
It’s radically different from Darwin. It leaps forward in just a few generations, not thousands. Discover how DNA holds the secret to a radical new wave of technologies and advances in Computer Science
Making ribs
Researchers Reveal Process of Making Ribs
ScienceDaily (Apr. 29, 2010) — Like all vertebrates, snakes, mice and humans have in common a skeleton made of segments, the vertebrae. But a snake has between 200-400 ribs extending from all vertebrae, from the neck to the tail-end, whereas mice have only 13 pairs of ribs, and humans have 12 pairs, in both cases making up the ribcage.
Melting sea ice and arctic warming
Melting Sea Ice Major Cause of Warming in Arctic, New Study Reveals
ScienceDaily (Apr. 28, 2010) — Melting sea ice has been shown to be a major cause of warming in the Arctic according to a University of Melbourne, Australia study.
Environmental calamity looms
Published on Thursday, April 29, 2010 by Associated Press
Officials: Leaks Spewing More Oil Into Gulf
by Cain Burdeau
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/04/29
NEW ORLEANS – A massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is even worse than believed and as the government grows concerned that the rig’s operator is ill-equipped to contain it, officials are offering a military response to try to avert a massive environmental disaster along the ecologically fragile U.S. coastline.
‘The Exxon Valdez is going to pale in comparison’
Published on Thursday, April 29, 2010 by BBC News
US Military Joins Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Effort
‘The Exxon Valdez is going to pale in comparison’
The US military has joined efforts to stop an oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico as fears rise about its scale.
Twin study surveys genome for cause of multiple sclerosis
tnxp
Mapping milestone emphasizes complexity of disease
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100428/full/4641259a.html
Building brains?
gnxp
Sooner than you think — and the race has lately caused a ‘catfight’
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=when-build-brains-like-ours
Data driven
gnxp
What happens when technology can calculate and analyze every quotidian thing that happened to you today
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/magazine/02self-measurement-t.html
Peak everything?
gnxp
Forget peak oil. What about peak lithium, peak neodymium, and peak phosphorus?
http://reason.com/archives/2010/04/27/peak-everything
Terrorism ‘research’
gnxp
Social scientists do counterinsurgency
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2010/04/26/100426crbo_books_lemann
Booknotes: Anatomy of an Epidemic
RG mail
http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2010/04/27/interview_whitaker_anatomy_of_an_epidemic
Tuesday, Apr 27, 2010 20:20 ET
“Anatomy of an Epidemic”: The hidden damage of psychiatric drugs
An award-winning science reporter looks at the history of mental illness in America — with disturbing results
Iran a threat?
RG mail
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25327.htm
*Iran a Threat? I Mean, Really?*
*By Ray McGovern
**April 27, 2010 “**Information Clearing
House*
*”** — With *all the current hype about the “threat” from Iran, it is time
to review the record — and especially the significant bits and pieces that
find neither ink nor air in our Israel-friendly, Fawning Corporate Media
(FCM).
Chernobyl Radiation Killed Nearly One Million People
RG mail
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/apr2010/2010-04-26-01.html
Environmental News Service April 26, 2010
*Chernobyl Radiation Killed Nearly One Million People: New Book* *NEW YORK,
New York* – Nearly one million people around the world died from exposure to
radiation released by the 1986 nuclear disaster at the Chernobyl reactor,
finds a new book from the New York Academy of Sciences published today on
the 24th anniversary of the meltdown at the Soviet facility.
The book, “Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the
Environment,” was compiled by authors Alexey Yablokov of the Center for
Russian Environmental Policy in Moscow, and Vassily Nesterenko and Alexey
Nesterenko of the Institute of Radiation Safety, in Minsk, Belarus.
Era of anti-nuclear imperialism
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/8520/
Spiked Wednesday 14 April 2010
Welcome to the era of anti-nuclear imperialism
Obama’s much-applauded war against nuclear weapons is about boosting
Washington’s moral authority, not securing world peace. What this effort
really implies is that some nations are morally responsible enough to
possess nuclear weapons and others are not. Some are mature and civilised
enough to possess the means to destroy the planet, while other more volatile
nations, full of volatile, immature people, are not. The old, racially
inflected imperial superiority, often backed by a pride in military
capability, was reframed in non-racial, explicitly moral terms.*
Greek crisis
RG mail
/story/gam/20100428/ECONOMYEUROPEDEBTATL
Globe and Mail Report on Business Wednesday, April 28, 2010
*Jitters spread as bailout doubts grow*
ERIC REGULY
The worry / As debt-laden Greece awaits a €45-billion bailout, its weak
economy prospects are making a debt default highly likely
The downgrade / Greek bonds were slashed to junk grade, which means it faces
higher borrowing costs to fund its €300-billion debt
The fallout / Global stock markets fell and oil prices slid as it appears
Greece’s financial troubles were spreading in Europe*
04.28.10
More on TNS futilities
The debate over the Theory of Natural Selection (TNS) is confusing because the endless debate makes it sound more complex than it is. That is why I have plugged for Fodor/PP’s book (see Amazon review) and then stepped back from the question as they discuss because I take a slightly different, far simpler, view of the question.
The reason is that once you see the ‘eonic effect’you can see that NS, and biochemistry, are marginal to explaining evolution, strange as that might seem. Biochemistry is like a subroutine in a computer program. The real ‘evolution’ is on a higher level, operating with unseen laws of nature about which we are ignorant. This abstraction is one reason the design people plug design. But that is probably just another distraction, like TNS. ‘Design’ in a naturalistic explanation is something else, and something that is so far beyond our powers.
Physics is getting hard, string theory, and evolution probably stands beyond that, harder still.
But whether or not that is true, the methodology of science can’t handle evolution as yet, for a reason Stuart Kauffman suggests (without getting very far), that the level of life/evolutioin just doesn’t reduce to physics. Period.
The attempt to reduce it a la the TNS is what is getting scientists hung up on the wrong approach.
Next chapter of Lovtrup’s Darwinism: Refutation of a Myth
Chapter 2 of Lovtrup, with link to Introduction
The Pioneers
-
Precurseur est, sans doute, celui qui court devant tous ses contemporains, mais
c’est aussi celui qui s’arrete sur un parcours oil d’autres, apres lui, courront
jusqu’au terme.!
Georges Canguilhem
What is a precursor? As it turns out, when this concept is
scrutinised, it becomes quite ambiguous.’ I shall here suggest three
alternative answers to the question which, without being general,
may form the basis for the following discussion: (i) A is a precursor
to B, if he in a vague and imperfect fashion has advanced notions
which are part of a comprehensive theory later stated by B; (ii) A
is a precursor to B, if the latter independently submits a theory
previously advanced by A; (iii) A is a precursor to B, if B submits
a theory previously advanced by A, and known by B.
What are the merits of being a precursor of the second kind?
After all: ‘A man might unaided rediscover Euclidian geometry
tomorrow and still not receive much thanks for his pains. ,3 In fact,
a claim on independence of existing knowledge is difficult to prove,
and is more likely to raise suspicions of ignorance or dishonesty.
Yet it may be imagined that, owing to particular circumstances,
a certain contribution may be overlooked, collectively, as it were;
in such a situation I think the rediscoverer might deserve a share in
the honour. The only biological example I know of that approx-
imates this hypothetical case is the rediscovery of Mendel’s laws in
1900 by Correns, von Tschermak and de Vries. The three of them
declared that they had rediscovered the Mendelian laws, that is, that
they had arrived at their results without knowing of Mendel’s work.
Suspicions have been raised on this point; in fact, de Vries was
accused by Correns of attempting to conceal the existence of a
precursor.” So if there had not been three rediscoverers, anxiously
watching each others steps, perhaps ‘Mendelism’ would today be
known as ‘de Vriesism’? Read the rest of this entry »
Fodor/PP reply on review(s) & natural selection
Letters to the Editor
The Theory of Natural Selection, The Two Roberts, The and a, etc
The Theory of Natural Selection
Sir, – Samir Okasha’s review of What Darwin Got Wrong (March 26) contains a number of serious criticisms of a line of argument the conclusion of which is that there is something radically wrong with Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection (TNS). Since we do think that there is something radically wrong with TNS, this would worry us a lot if the argument that Okasha deconstructs were even remotely like the one to which our book is committed. But it’s not. Okasha’s review is a really egregious misreading of the book; we don’t hold (and didn’t publish) the views that Okasha says we do. In fact, we explicitly don’t hold these views, and we devote a lot of the book to explaining why no one should. We know from experience that reviewing is hard work and that it conduces to fast reading. But still.
Read the rest of this entry »
Elephants Have Word for ‘Bee-Ware’
Elephants Have Word for ‘Bee-Ware’
ScienceDaily (Apr. 28, 2010) — For the first time elephants have been found to produce an alarm call associated with the threat of bees, and have been shown to retreat when a recording of the call is played even when there are no bees around.
What is a grass?
What is a grass?
Chloroplast DNA reveals that a grass may not be a grass
A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, but it would no longer be a rose. If a grass is booted out of the grass family, where does it go?
Ruse: atheist educators
Darwinist defends atheist educators
By Gin A. Ando | The News Record
New Pterosaur
Rare 95 Million-Year-Old Flying Reptile Aetodactylus Halli Is New Pterosaur Genus, Species
ScienceDaily (Apr. 27, 2010) — A 95 million-year-old fossilized jaw discovered in Texas has been identified as a new genus and species of flying reptile, Aetodactylus halli.
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