History, Evolution, and the Darwin Debate
Social Networking Helps Hermit Crabs Find Homes
ScienceDaily (Apr. 28, 2010) — Everyone wants to live in the nicest possible house, ideally with regular upgrades. A recent study by biologists at Tufts University’s School of Arts and Sciences and the New England Aquarium reveals that hermit crabs may locate new and improved housing using previously unknown social networking skills.
New Monitor Lizard Discovered in Indonesia
ScienceDaily (Apr. 27, 2010) — A newly discovered species of monitor lizard, a close relative of the Komodo dragon, was reported in the journal Zootaxa by a professor at UC Santa Barbara and a researcher from Finland.
Claude Allègre: The Climate Imposter
Filed under: Climate Science skeptics— group @ 28 April 2010
Guest Commentary by Georg Hoffmann
In mathematical proofs, it’s a well-known fact that if at some point you divide by zero accidentally or on purpose, then you end up being able to prove absolutely anything you want – for instance, that 2+2=5 or that 1+1=0. The same phenomena appears to govern any number of publications that conclude that climate science is all a fraud – at some point, an impossible calculation is performed and from then on, anything (and everything) can be proven. Critical thinking appears to vanish.
Published on Wednesday, April 28, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
The Death of Self-Interest Fundamentalism
Self-interest fundamentalism was the economic religion of the 20th Century. We are now in the midst of an economic reformation on par with the Enlightenment as we enter the new millennium.
A Conversation with Robert Whitaker
The Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America
By BRUCE E. LEVINE
In 1987, prior to Prozac hitting the market and the current ubiquitous use of antidepressants and other psychiatric drugs, the U.S. mental illness disability rate was 1 in every 184 Americans, but by 2007 the mental illness disability rate had more than doubled to 1 in every 76 Americans. Robert Whitaker was curious as to what was causing this dramatic increase in mental illness disability. The answers are in his new book, Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America (Crown Publishers, April 2010).
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Carl Zimmer: Edward M. Marcotte and colleagues have found hundreds of genes involved in human disorders
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/science/27gene.html
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Deciphering what death means to chimpanzees has always been difficult, as they usually die without a human witness. Two new papers in Current Biology offer a glimpse into the minds of chimps as they confront death. In one case, when an older matriarch died, the researcher says the chimps were subdued for several weeks after she passed
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126278183
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Dr. Howard Shapiro’s new book, Eat & Beat Diabetes with Picture Perfect Weight Loss: The Visual Program to Prevent and Control Diabetes is an action plan for both adults and children
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1984938,00.html
A Middle East Peace That Could Happen (But Won’t)
In Washington-Speak, “Palestinian State” Means “Fried Chicken”
By Noam Chomsky
http://tomdispatch.com
The fact that the Israel-Palestine conflict grinds on without resolution might appear to be rather strange. For many of the world’s conflicts, it is difficult even to conjure up a feasible settlement. In this case, it is not only possible, but there is near universal agreement on its basic contours: a two-state settlement along the internationally recognized (pre-June 1967) borders — with “minor and mutual modifications,” to adopt official U.S. terminology before Washington departed from the international community in the mid-1970s.
The basic principles have been accepted by virtually the entire world, including the Arab states (who go on to call for full normalization of relations), the Organization of Islamic States (including Iran), and relevant non-state actors (including Hamas). A settlement along these lines was first proposed at the U.N. Security Council in January 1976 by the major Arab states. Israel refused to attend the session. The U.S. vetoed the resolution, and did so again in 1980. The record at the General Assembly since is similar.
There was one important and revealing break in U.S.-Israeli rejectionism. After the failed Camp David agreements in 2000, President Clinton recognized that the terms he and Israel had proposed were unacceptable to any Palestinians. That December, he proposed his “parameters”: imprecise, but more forthcoming. He then stated that both sides had accepted the parameters, while expressing reservations.
Israeli and Palestinian negotiators met in Taba, Egypt, in January 2001 to resolve the differences and were making considerable progress. In their final press conference, they reported that, with a little more time, they could probably have reached full agreement. Israel called off the negotiations prematurely, however, and official progress then terminated, though informal discussions at a high level continued leading to the Geneva Accord, rejected by Israel and ignored by the U.S.
RG mail
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/ebx/learning-medicine-the-cuban-way/Content?oid=1564592
East Bay Express January 20, 2010
Learning Medicine the Cuban Way
The Bay Area is a hub for new doctors who want to practice family medicine
and help the poor, yet had to leave the country to learn how to do it.
Friends of The Earth: Oil Spill Continues to Leak 1,000 Barrels Per Day into Gulf of Mexico
http://act.commondreams.org/go/385?akid=42.96588.hLjmBB&t=28
John Buell: Coal and Predatory Capitalism
http://act.commondreams.org/go/384?akid=42.96588.hLjmBB&t=26
Big Oil Fought Off New Safety Rules Before Rig Explosion
http://act.commondreams.org/go/375?akid=42.96588.hLjmBB&t=8
RG mail
Will Pay Zero in Taxes – and Get $33 Billion in Refunds
by David DeGraw, Amped Status
AlterNet (April 18 2010)
Journalist David DeGraw has put together a devastating report {1}
detailing how Wall Street continues to pillage the economy with the
government’s help. “The staggering level of theft continues
unabated”, writes DeGraw. “Our future is going up in flames and our
government isn’t even making the slightest effort to put out the
fire. In fact, they are purposely pouring gasoline all over it.”
DeGraw’s investigation {2} is a follow up to his previous report
The Economic Elite vs The People of the United States of America -
check that one out to get caught up {3}. AlterNet will run in a
series of articles based on DeGraw’s investigation. Here is part
one.
http://www.alternet.org/story/146509/
Fossil of Newly Discovered Species Found in Spain
ScienceDaily (Mar. 25, 2010) — In the ’80s, Spanish researchers found the first fossils of Cloudina in Spain, a small fossil of tubular appearance and one of the first animals that developed an external skeleton between 550 and 543 million years ago. Now palaeontologists from the University of Extremadura have discovered a new species, Cloudina carinata, the fossil of which has preserved its tridimensional shape.
Hawking’s concern about aliens (I am not familiar with the details) is not inappropriate, but probably is too close to the sci-fi rocket ship invaders (as with the film Avatar, the danger in reverse!) myths to get the point. The real aliens, if real, would not use rocketships, the disinformation joke, I suspect, about ‘UFO’s’ as rocket ships that aren’t rocket ships, so what are they?
Read the rest of this entry »
From the Gurdjieff Con: Who needs aliens, modern man enslaved by Darwin propaganda
But far more dangerous psychic domination exists in the realm of religious occultism.
I find it incredible, and significant that I am still the only reviewer of The Extended Synthesis, and Ruse’s latest on science/spirituality (of which I was .
critical for my own reasons)
Such is the hold of Darwin dogma that a simple effort to extend the paradigm is ignored, as is an effort to accomodate Xtiantiy and Darwinism. Frankly, I think Ruse’s effort is flawed, and my criticism is that the real subject should be ‘religion of some definition’ and ‘evolution’, post-darwinian. Then a way to accomodate them can be found.
I should perhaps amend my review (perhaps in the comments) at Amazon, at least to the degree of agreeing with Ruse that the current attacks on religion by the New Atheists are confused. We will see.
Meanwhile, The Extended Synthesis, if you can get past what I suspect is the packaging of Pigliucci, veiling the real meaning, you will find some harsh critics of Darwinism.
So, it is time for the Darwin die-hards to take note, and make some use of their last chances here.
If Aliens Exist, should we be eager to meet them?
Good question, but current scientism is so pathetically primitive that it can’t answer the question.
First, what is the difference between ‘polytheism’ and ‘alien advanced consciousness?”
(Darned if I know, but the confusion is obviously important)
Australopithecus sediba and the creationist response
Yeah, yeah, but Darwinists are pretty bad on human evolution themselves.
Chimps’ emotional response to death caught on film
Ian Sample – guardian.co.uk
http://richarddawkins.net/articles/5502
In the final hour, they huddled around, studied her face and shook her gently as if to revive her. And when the others had drifted away, one stayed behind to hold her hand.
As death scenes go, it has all the poignancy of human loss, but this was no everyday tragedy. The last breath was drawn before scientists’ cameras and represents one of the most extraordinary displays of chimpanzee behaviour ever recorded.
Video footage of the death of Pansy, who at fifty-something was the oldest chimpanzee in the UK, was released by scientists today. The film captures for the first time the complex reactions of our nearest evolutionary cousins to the death of a group member.
The tenacity of the Darwin belief system, like the belief in resurrection, is almost religious in its faith in the impossible.
Kenan Malik
PIGS WON’T FLY
What Darwin Got Wrong
By Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini (Profile Books 262pp £20)
Another idiot review of Fodor/PP. The emphasis is on recent genetics. So what? Nothing in the last generation of genetics has proved anything about natural selection, and the evo-devo discoveries should have made scientists wake up. No such luck.
It takes courage for academics to take on Darwinism, making the work mostly that of outsiders (as here at Darwiniana), because the Darwin establishment has achieved an almost frightening success in mass-producing Darwin dummies, even at Literary Reviews.
My impulse here is to say, give the critics a break. The situation has made science a laughingstock–with the Bible Belt.
The critique of Darwinian theory needs, finally, to find a place in mainstream academic/sci orgs. The alternative is the destruction of secularism.
You would think that a Literary Review might grasp that something is awry with reductionism scientism. The blight has taken over all sectors of academia.
But that is mostly hypocrisy and genuine fear or academic danger in dissent on this issue.
The question needs to taken up outside academia.
Reconciling the Doctrine of Original Sin with Evolutionary Biology Michael Ruse
A great idea, but who can get it right? Certainly not Darwinists. Darwinism almost seems like original sin itself.
Body’s Response to Repetitive Laughter Is Similar to the Effect of Repetitive Exercise, Study Finds
Research in Antarctica Reveals Non-Organic Mechanism for Production of Important Greenhouse Gas
ScienceDaily (Apr. 26, 2010) — In so many ways, Don Juan Pond in the Dry Valleys of Antarctica is one of the most unearthly places on the planet. An ankle-deep mirror between mountain peaks and rubbled moraine, the pond is an astonishing 18 times saltier than the Earth’s oceans and virtually never freezes, even in temperatures of more than 40 degrees below zero Fahrenheit.
Physicists Capture First Images of Atomic Spin
ScienceDaily (Apr. 26, 2010) — Though scientists argue that the emerging technology of spintronics may trump conventional electronics for building the next generation of faster, smaller, more efficient computers and high-tech devices, no one has actually seen the spin — a quantum mechanical property of electrons — in individual atoms until now.
Ancient Artifacts Revealed as Northern Ice Patches Melt
ScienceDaily (Apr. 26, 2010) — High in the Mackenzie Mountains, scientists are finding a treasure trove of ancient hunting tools being revealed as warming temperatures melt patches of ice that have been in place for thousands of years.
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