04.26.10
Posted in you've got mail at 12:17 pm by nemo
mxmail
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14048
Instead of Real Financial Reform, Obama’s Plan capitulates to Wall Street
by Prof. Michael Hudson
The story is worse than just “Pres. Obama labored, and brought forth a
mouse.” He is morphing into Joe Lieberman in reaching across the aisle
for Republican support – and no doubt future campaign contributions from
the financial sector. There also is a touch of Boris Yeltsin in
sponsoring a financial “reform” disturbingly similar to what advisor
Larry Summers backed in Russia – relinquishing government power to a
banking elite (the notorious “Seven Bankers” in post-Soviet Russia). The
Financial Regulatory Reform proposal promotes Wall Street’s “product,”
debt creation, at the expense of the economy at large, and lets
financial chieftains continue to self-regulate the debt industry – and
by the way, to keep all their gains from the past decade’s worth of
fraudulent lending, scot-free.
(clip)
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Posted in you've got mail at 12:14 pm by nemo
gnxp
Diane Ravitch is without rival as a historian of modern American schooling. Her newest, most sensational book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education takes aim at imposing targets. It won’t be ignored
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/apr/19/how-save-schools/
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Posted in you've got mail at 12:13 pm by nemo
gnxp
How could a Croatian girl speak German but forget her native language after coming out of a coma?
http://news.discovery.com/human/coma-croatian-girl-german.html
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Posted in you've got mail at 12:05 pm by nemo
RG mail
Israel’s Big and Small Apartheids: The Meaning of a Jewish State
by Jonathan Cook
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Posted in you've got mail at 11:55 am by nemo
RG mail
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/guns-vs-butter-2010_b_548620.html
April 22, 2010 Guns vs. Butter 2010
*Obama is on track to spend more on defense, in real dollars, than any other
president has in one term of office since WWII. In that time we’ve had
Korea, Vietnam, the massive military buildup under Reagan, and Bush’s
funded-by-tax-cuts invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, but in the most trying
economic times since the Depression, Obama’s out-gunning them all.*
Arianna Huffington
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04.25.10
Posted in Evolution, you've got mail at 1:37 pm by nemo
The whole of Coyne’s review suddenly appeared via email from Science For The People, where this propaganda will get instant applause from the left peanut gallery there, totally uncritical.
Scroll down for our posts critiquing Coyne today and before.
Posts on Coyne’s review
The premise of Coyne’s review, the ‘improbability pump’ is complete nonsense, pseudo-science, and we discussed this in another context last week, Coyne’s confusion, not helped by Wikipedia’s, over statistics.
Clearly Dawkins and his generation of followers have been completely miseducated on statistics.
Posts on Hoyle’s (so-called) Fallacy
Darwinists are constantly preaching against the pseudo-science of others, but on the question of statistics they are among the worst offenders.
And the damage done by Dawkins here is tremendous, almost beyond repair.
What sci org will even attempt the job, content no doubt to let deluded followers stay confused.
Some science!!!
://www.thenation.com/doc/20100510/coyne
The Improbability Pump
By Jerry A. Coyne
This article appeared in the May 10, 2010 edition of The Nation.
April 21, 2010
Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Evolution at 12:54 pm by nemo
Coyne’s review at The Nation
The basic claiim for the fact of evolution should be a no-brainer, but Coyne can’t even this part right. The reason is that he wants to bait and switch. The fact of evolution, the evidence of the fossil record, makes a strong case for the reality of evolution. But nothing in that record so solidly proves anything whatever about natural selection. But Coyne wants to say that the ‘theory of evolution’ is a fact, as noted already, and then slip in the question of natural selection, the theory, as another incontestible fact.
It is small wonder the already beseided and confused public should demur.
The reality of evolution as a chonicle suggested by the fossil record does not leave us with any certain grounds for claiming its mechanism. If scientists could bring themselves to be honest on this point the public’s ambivalence on the question of evolution might decrease.
Coyne tells us how obvious it all its. But the overwhelming nature of the evidence suddenly becomes non-existent for some of the key issues, e.g. the evolution of consciousness, the evolution of ethics, and so on. There is not clear picture as to the way these evolved at all, as Alfred Wallace was enough to admit.
But that’s fiction, right? Well, not entirely, for it applies precisely to another “theory” that is also a fact: the theory of evolution. Over the past quarter-century, poll after poll has revealed that nearly half of all Americans flatly reject evolution, many clinging to the ancient superstition that the earth was created only 6,000 years ago, complete with all existing species. But as Richard Dawkins shows in his splendid new book, The Greatest Show on Earth, the theory of evolution is supported by at least as much evidence as is the germ theory of disease–heaps of it, and from many areas of biology. So why is it contemptible to reject germ theory but socially acceptable to reject evolutionary theory?
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Posted in Booknotes, Evolution at 12:44 pm by nemo
Coyne review at The Nation
We have commented on this several times already.
But here is Coyne’s master gesture of deception and/or stupidity, an unbelievable regurgitation of the peppered moth nonsense. I find it hard to believe that Coyne believes what he is saying here.
For the record, this data was originally the source for a strong critique of Darwinian claims for natural selection, but the counterattack was so ferocious and sophistical that Darwin diehards actually regained the ground here, able to get away with this example as an instance of ‘evolution’.
That natural selection might occur among peppered moths is not proof that the result is evolution (speciation). This example shows the puzzle of the Darwin mindset in action, and the ease with which they can confuse the public.
I find it sad that The Nation cannot extricate itself from the confusion over Darwinian ideology. It casts a very dark light on the pretensions of the magazine to objectivity and the intelligence necessary to see through con-men like Coyne.
I should note, by the way, that this particular Dawkins book under review was different from other Dawkins books in downplaying the emphasis on natural selection, as I noted when the book came out. Dawkins refreshingly looked at the evidence for the fact of evolution.
But sure enough Coyne has to ignore this and press the case against Fodor/PP with this book of Dawkins. It is a completely wrong set of books to contrast.
Here’s a more realistic example. Perhaps the most famous case of natural selection in action is the color change that occurred in Britain’s “peppered moth” over the past 150 years. Before the Industrial Revolution, these moths had white wings speckled lightly with black, although avid collectors found a few all-black mutants. As pollution from manufacturing increased the concentration of suspended particles in the air, black moths became more numerous, and eventually predominated in many places. When clean air laws reduced Britain’s pollution in the 1950s, the evolution of wing color reversed, and in most places the white color once again became common. The difference between white and black moths was shown to reside at a single gene.
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Posted in Evolution at 12:13 pm by nemo
Darwin Tried and True
It takes courage for academics to challenge Darwin, the reason outsiders tend to carry the field, because the distortions of the counterattack by Big Science drones, as here, is relentless and a warning to anyone else with the nerve to dissent.
The review is the usual baloney. Darwin’s book, plagiarized from Wallace letters in the years just before 1859, caught the tide of opinion and made the idea of evolution popular, confusing the issue however with the overemphasis on natural selection. Many scientists at the time warned of the danger of this spreading confusion at the beginning (among them Huxley), but the vice of bad theory caught on and has remained ever since, it seems, despite a near regaining of perspective at the start of the twentieth century.
Why is it so contentious to critique natural selection? This theory is not hard science like physics. The issue of the mechanism of evolution is prone to oversimplification. Correcting that is vital for good science to proceed. Instead we get this near-religious obsession with Darwin dogma.
It has become almost pathetic to watch.
Fodor/PP are first in a long while with the courage to set the record straight here, whatever the limits of their conservative argument.
Before that, Robert Wesson’s Beyond Natural Selection was perfectly respectable production from MIT twenty five years ago attempting the same thing. I recommend readers graduate to that book.
The standard Darwin paradigm is delusive and is destroying science, as the Bible Belt looks on, unable to grasp their good fortune they can outsmart science.
Thus the effort by Fodor/PP to critique natural selection, and that in a restrained and careful way, should be welcomed by mainstream science. No such luck.
The Darwin groupies can’t restrain themselves.
Big Science is running out of time on this. It is a job that needs to be done. Failure to succeed here will destroy the credibility of science.
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Posted in Booknotes, Evolution at 12:05 pm by nemo
The pile-on continues: Robert Richards reviews What Darwin Got Wrong
That Darwin fanatics and academic cowards should pile on the Fodor/PP book is neither surprising nor informative. The reviews of such people are totally unbelievable, if not mendacious.
Meanwhile Coyne is a problem case. He is obsessed with the Darwin paradigm, and defending natural selection ad infinitum. He is typical of the ‘smart’ geek types who are kidnapped at a young age with academic conditioning tactics that reward promote intelligent students into conformist science, bad Darwinism, and uncritical yet nimble thinking that makes them invaluable as dumb-smart propagandists for pseudo-science in the age of Big Science.
A mind is terrible thing to waste. Coyne is clever, but cannot rationally resolve the evolution issue. Such is the waste created by the Iron Cage of meritocracy.
The point here is not that What Darwin Got Wrong is a perfect book, but that it shows the limits of the natural selection thesis. The kind of hatchet jobs the ‘Darwin gang’ perform in the media is the usual disgrace of the propaganda machine in action.
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Posted in General at 11:59 am by nemo
Atheist Richard Dawkins backs campaign to arrest Pope
Professor Dawkins said the UK should not pay for the Pope’s visit
Leading atheist Richard Dawkins has backed a campaign to have the Pope arrested for “crimes against humanity” when he visits the UK later this year.
The idea of arresting the pope is silly, but then again, the idea of arresting Dawkins on his next American book tour has merit.
Far more dangerous than the Pope’s beliefs is the dangerous social ideology of reductionist Darwinism
The sad irony is that Dawkins has seeded the revival of religion, in some form, as a reaction to his bad science turned into veiled social darwinism and dleusive economics.
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Posted in Booknotes, Science & Religion at 11:53 am by nemo
Comment on Lovtrup book
Enezio E. de Almeida Filho said,
April 25, 2010 at 5:56 am ·
Unfortunately this book is out of print, and I don’t know if Soren Lovtrup’s wife would be willing to see it republished. I have a copy of this book, and I consider it to be one of the best critique of Darwinism by a scientist who was evolutionist, too.
His book is the way science should be, yet instead we have a hoard of cowering scientists who mouth a lot of Darwin cliches they often know to be false, although more and more the lie is being internalized by ‘scientists’ trained as Darwin parrots from a young school age.
I fear my scanning is a bit sloppy: it is hard to really get the whole text right without prodigious amounts of time. Still, a simple scan is enough for a general idea.
People need to free themselves of the endless sophistries of Darwin defenders and snap out of the Darwin deception.
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Posted in Evolution, Science & Religion at 11:48 am by nemo
Like Confessing a Murder
Actually, in 1844, Darwin was still a long way from his (Wallace’s!) theory of evolution, and was still closer to a strange brand of creationist evolutionism than to evolution. Confer the brilliant The Darwin Conspiracy by Roy Davies. Darwin was out in left field for decades, until Wallace began sending him letters.
Think you receive too much email? Charles Darwin and his friend Joseph Hooker exchanged over 1,400 messages (they called them letters back then). In all Darwin exchanged over 15,000 letters with his list (er, correspondents). Here’s one from January 11, 1844 in which Darwin raised the specter of his new idea:
At last gleams of light have come, & I am almost convinced (quite contrary to opinion I started with) that species are not (it is like confessing a murder) immutable.
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Posted in atheism at 11:44 am by nemo
Legal Victory Raises Profile of an Atheist Group
by Dirk Johnson – The New York Times
http://richarddawkins.net/articles/5494
MADISON, Wis. — Annie Laurie Gaylor clicked through a flurry of e-mail messages warning her to repent or she would burn in hell.
“Herod,” one messenger called her.
Ms. Gaylor leaned back and sipped from a cup of tea, unfazed and even a bit surprised at the relative tameness of the attacks. Fresh from her latest godless triumph, she had expected more vitriol.
“It used to be a lot worse,” said Ms. Gaylor, 54, an atheist whose organization, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, recently won a suit in federal court here that declared the National Day of Prayer to be a violation of the First Amendment. “Things are changing. Society is becoming more secularized. It’s becoming acceptable to be atheist and agnostic. And there are more of us.”
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Posted in Science & Religion at 11:43 am by nemo
More on the National Prayer Day case
by Russell Blackford – Metamagician and the Hellfire Club
http://richarddawkins.net/articles/5493
As I reported about a week ago , a federal District Court in the US recently struck down a statute providing for a “national day of prayer”: Freedom from Religion Foundation v. Obama (15 April 2010). At the time, I said that I had no idea whether the administration would appeal, but it soon became obvious that an appeal would be lodged. Sure enough, this has now happened.
This case still strikes me as a no-brainer. An institution such as National Prayer Day clearly gives government endorsement to a form of religion, and any statute that underpins National Prayer Day is to that extent repugnant to the US Constitution – more specifically the First Amendment, which forbids any law concerning an establishment of religion.
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Posted in General at 11:41 am by nemo
NASA’s New Eye on the Sun Delivers Stunning First Images
by NASA
http://richarddawkins.net/articles/5491
NASA’s recently launched Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, is returning early images that confirm an unprecedented new capability for scientists to better understand our sun’s dynamic processes. These solar activities affect everything on Earth.
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Posted in Social Darwinism at 11:37 am by nemo
Survival of the Fuzziest
Social Darwinism, or destructive competition as a means of maintaining society, is an ethically bankrupt ideology and one the U.S. must abandon to remain competitive. “Too often in the United States, co-opetition is conflated with destructive, lowest-common-denominator competition, which has led to predatory lending, underregulated capital markets, and our costly and ineffective health care system. Our counterparts abroad, however, have more prudently (and prosperously) distinguished them.”
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Posted in Evolution at 11:33 am by nemo
‘This is not intelligent design’
I am often surprised, as here, at the way Letters to the Editor show greater clarity on evolution than the devious prose of nervous journalists.
Darwinian evolutionists now belong to the category of phrenologists and flat-earthers. You don’t have to be a creationist to realize that gradual evolution simply could not have occurred as Darwin proposed.
Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in you've got mail at 11:30 am by nemo
gnxp
Women with less picky uteruses may conceive more quickly but be more likely to miscarry – a finding that could lead to new drugs for the complication
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627574.500-miscarriage-blamed-on-nonfussy-uterus.html
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Posted in you've got mail at 11:29 am by nemo
gnxp
American college students are hooked on cellphones, social media and the Internet and showing symptoms similar to drug and alcohol addictions, according to a new study
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100423/hl_nm/us_internet_addicts_life
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Posted in Evolution at 11:23 am by nemo
Stone Age Scandinavians Unable to Digest Milk, Study Shows
ScienceDaily (Apr. 1, 2010) — The hunter-gatherers who inhabited the southern coast of Scandinavia 4,000 years ago were lactose intolerant, according to a new study carried out by researchers at Uppsala University and Stockholm University.
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Posted in global warming at 11:21 am by nemo
Topography of Mountains Could Complicate Rates of Global Warming
ScienceDaily (Apr. 25, 2010) — A new study concludes that the future effects of global warming could be significantly changed over very small distances by local air movements in complex or mountainous terrain — perhaps doubling or even tripling the temperature increases in some situations
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Posted in you've got mail at 11:19 am by nemo
gnxp
A cute infant will apparently attract attention no matter what the species
http://news.discovery.com/animals/barbary-macaque-monkeys-males.html
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Posted in you've got mail at 11:16 am by nemo
gnxp
Napping after learning something new could help you commit it to memory – as long as you dream, scientists say
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8638551.stm
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Posted in you've got mail at 11:13 am by nemo
Published on Sunday, April 25, 2010 by The Nation
Larry Summers: Professor Pants-on-Fire
by William Greider
How can I say this nicely? Larry Summers is a clumsy public liar. His noxious, condescending manner helps explain why he failed as president of Harvard. But it is the crude mendacity that ought to bother people now. The man is President Obama’s top economic adviser.
Watching Summers befog the mild-mannered interviewer on the PBS NewsHour the other night, I found myself yelling back at the TV. It takes real arrogance for the former Harvard professor to imagine he can away with such evasions and falsehoods. I lost count on the fibs. If this is how Summers explains the financial mess to the president, maybe that’s why Obama has been a reluctant reformer.
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