05.26.10
Posted in General at 12:24 pm by nemo
From yesterday:
http://richarddawkins.net/articles/472946-craig-venter%E2%80%99s-brave-new-world
This piece of dangerous nonsense from Dawkins shows that whenever Venter is involved, watch out.
I can’t think of a more dangerous project than creating a fake Neanderthal.
The evolution of man is obstinately misunderstood by Darwinists, reductionsits, et al. These people cannot bring themselve to question their dogmatic assumptions about the nature of human nature, the soul emergence and mind emergence in man, and its depth of complexity, and worst of all its Kantian unobservability.
The arrogant refusal to admit the real complexity of man makes this kind of project dangerous in the extreme.
But, as we know, these people revel in their power to unleash dangerous technologies with indifference.
Craig Venter’s Brave New WorldBy RICHARD DAWKINS – RICHARDDAWKINS.NET
Updated: Monday, 24 May 2010 at 11:28 AM – An RDFRS Original
Craig Venter’s artificial bacterium debuted almost simultaneously with Svante Pääbo’s publication of the greater part of the Neanderthal genome. Put the two together and ask whether we could – or should – recreate a living, breathing Neanderthal. Of the technologies that would be required, the Venter team has proofed an important component. Dolly was cloned from an entire diploid genome of an adult sheep’s udder cell, dropped into an enucleated ovum. The Venter equivalent of Ian Wilmut’s achievement would be to go to the library (or in this case the Internet), take down the book labelled ‘Sheep Genome Project’ (or rather download the data files), and synthesize a complete set of sheep chromosomes from four bottles of chemicals labelled A, T, C and G. The synthetic genome would then be dropped into an enucleated sheep cell, as per Dolly.
While they were about it, the team might improve on the genome of any one donor sheep by substituting, say, wool-growing genes from The Champion Merino Genome Project and hardiness genes from The Soay Genome Project. Maybe some code from the Goat Genome Project to broaden the creature’s preferred diet, or from the Chamois Genome Project to give it a better head for heights? Perhaps even a Cut and Paste job from the Otter Genome Project, to give the über-sheep a taste for water sports.
We’d need to do something similar to re-grow a Neanderthal from Svante Pääbo’s data. Or, later, a computed intermediate between the chimpanzee and human genomes to re-create the 6-million-year-old common ancestor. And then, might a born-again Lucy split the difference again?
The technical difficulties would be formidable, but present progress suggests that they will be overcome. I leave the speciesist ethical difficulties on one side, except to note that ethical thinking, too, has a way of progressing as the decades go by. There is the harder problem that Pääbo’s Neanderthal sequence is only 60 percent complete, and 100 percent may be unattainable. Presumably the residue would be coloured in from the H. sapiens genome, and that could create technical problems as well as compromise the authenticity of the clone as a ‘true’ Neanderthal.
But Neanderthal bones are tens of thousands of years old. Should we disinter Charles Darwin’s bones from Westminster Abbey with the same insouciance as the Roman Catholic Church is now displaying toward the remains of his contemporary, Cardinal Newman? Might a new identical twin brother of the great naturalist ride shotgun to Craig Venter’s future twin, on a round-the-world DNA-harvesting voyage? Could Darwin Junior be mathematically enhanced by a few judicious splicings from the Albert Einstein Genome Project? Or get a head-start in molecular genetics by strategic borrowing from the Francis Crick Genome Project? The Jeremy Bentham Genome Project might suffer utilitarian doubts over whether the taxidermic curiosity in the Entrance Hall of University College, London still contains any of his authentic remains.
Of course no steps were taken to preserve the DNA of any of these great men. Today’s equivalents don’t need to be cryogenically preserved for the Craig Venters of the future. Nothing so messy or expensive. Give or take some epigenetic mark-ups, a simple computer disk is all it takes: just miles and miles of A, T, C, G.
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Posted in Evolution, Science & Religion at 12:22 pm by nemo
Zarathustra And The Old Testament Enigma
In the endless debate over science and religion neither side can figure out Old Testament history!
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Posted in General at 12:20 pm by nemo
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-pessin/the-paradox-of-the-prefac_b_586962.html:How to Be Certain Your Religion Is True and Still Get Along with Others
I fear that it won’t work this way. It is a symptom of religions in decline.
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Posted in biology at 12:17 pm by nemo
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2010/05/26/the-mysteries-of-migration/
get your tuchus over to The New York Times and read Carl Zimmer’s nice piece on how recent technological advances, like the invention of tiny geolocators, have produced surprising new results about migration. A few snippets:
Just as he had suspected, the bar-tailed godwits headed out over the open ocean and flew south through the Pacific. They did not stop at islands along the way. Instead, they traveled up to 7,100 miles in nine days — the longest nonstop flight ever recorded. “I was speechless,” Mr. Gill said. . .
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Posted in Evolution at 12:07 pm by nemo
Creatures of Cambrian May Have Lived On
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD – THE NEW YORK TIMES
Updated: Tuesday, 25 May 2010 at 09:01 PM
http://richarddawkins.net/articles/473485-creatures-of-cambrian-may-have-lived-on
Ever since their discovery in 1909, the spectacular Burgess Shale outcrops in the Canadian Rockies have presented scientists with a cornucopia of evidence for the “explosion” of complex, multicellular life beginning some 550 million years ago.
The fossils, all new to science, were at first seen as little more than amazing curiosities from a time when life, except for bacteria and algae, was confined to the sea — and what is now Canada was just south of the Equator. In the last half century, however, paleontologists recognized that the Burgess Shale exemplified the radiation of diverse life forms unlike anything in earlier time. Here was evolution in action, organisms over time responding to changing fortunes through natural experimentation in new body forms and different ecological niches.
But the fossil record then goes dark: the Cambrian-period innovations in life appeared to have few clear descendants. Many scientists thought that the likely explanation for this mysterious disappearance was that a major extinction had wiped out much of the distinctive Cambrian life. It seemed that the complex organisms emerging in the Cambrian had come to an abrupt demise, disappearing with few traces in the later fossil record.
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Posted in General at 12:05 pm by nemo
Synthetic life form accuses God of ‘playing science’
By LUDICITY – NEWSBISCUIT
Added: Wednesday, 26 May 2010 at 12:45 PM
http://richarddawkins.net/articles/473690-synthetic-life-form-accuses-god-of-playing-science
The world’s first artificially created life form has accused God of ‘playing science’ and ‘meddling with things He cannot possibly understand.’
The single celled organism, created by Dr Craig Venter and his team, was said to be ‘outraged’ when it discovered that a supernatural being, not subject to any form of regulatory control, was still involved in the creation of life.
The problem here is that these people aren’t doing science: they are doing easily exploitable technology. The question of ‘science’, as with a ‘science’ of evolution, is apparently too subtle for these arrogant technoners.
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Posted in Evolution, Science & Religion at 12:01 pm by nemo
When Faith Trumps Reason: the Curse of Scientific Illiteracy
The Texas curriculum situation is desperate, but biologists have contributed to the confusion by peddling Darwinian pseudo-science in bad faith.
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Posted in General at 11:58 am by nemo
Synthetic life: Perhaps all we have to fear is fear itself?
We need to get to grips with the factors that bias our perception of risk, warns David Ropeik. Getting it wrong can lead to health scares like MMR – or a failure to exploit breakthroughs like ‘synthetic life’
We should be wary, if not afraid, of the ‘Frankencell’ scientists: the reason is that the era of Darwinian Big Science is filled with the deception of Darwinian science. The power to create life-forms with principles bases on ideology, and public deception bodes ill for the legacy of the Frankencell.
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Posted in Evolution at 11:55 am by nemo
Artificial life could offer clues about how life began
Last Thursday, the J. Craig Venter genomics research institute announced that it has created the first organism with a manmade genome, offering a potential breakthrough in our understanding how complex life first emerged.
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Posted in Evolution at 11:50 am by nemo
Extinct Giant Shark Nursery Discovered in Panama
ScienceDaily (May 26, 2010) — The six-foot-long babies of the world’s biggest shark species, Carcharocles megalodon, frolicked in the warm shallow waters of an ancient shark nursery in what is now Panama, report paleontologists working at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and the University of Florida.
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Posted in Evolution at 11:49 am by nemo
Star of Africa’s Savanna Ecosystems May Be the Lowly Termite: Regularly Spaced Termite Mounds Are Key to Maintaining Ecological Function
ScienceDaily (May 26, 2010) — The majestic animals most closely associated with the African savanna — fierce lions, massive elephants, towering giraffes — may be relatively minor players when it comes to shaping the ecosystem.
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Posted in global warming at 11:47 am by nemo
20th Century One of Driest in Nine Centuries for Northwest Africa
ScienceDaily (May 26, 2010) — Droughts in the late 20th century rival some of North Africa’s major droughts of centuries past, reveals new research that peers back in time to the year 1179.
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Posted in Evolution at 11:46 am by nemo
‘Nature’s Batteries’ May Have Helped Power Early LifeformsScienceDaily (May 25, 2010) — Researchers at the University of Leeds have uncovered new clues to the origins of life on Earth.
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Posted in you've got mail at 11:42 am by nemo
Published on Wednesday, May 26, 2010 by Civil Eats
Beeline to Extinction
by Naomi Starkman
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/05/26-6
According to the recently released annual survey by the Apiary Inspectors of America (AIA) and the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), more than a third of U.S. managed honeybee colonies-those set up for intensified pollination of commercial crops-failed to survive this past winter. Since 2006, the decline of the U.S.’s estimated 2.4 million beehives-commonly referred to as colony collapse disorder (CCD)-has led to the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of colonies: Hives are found empty with honey, larvae, and the queen intact, but with no bees and no trail left behind. The cause remains unknown, but appears to be a combination of factors impacting bee health and increasing their susceptibility to disease. Heavy losses associated with CCD have been found mainly with larger migratory commercial beekeepers, some of whom have lost 50-90 percent of their colonies.
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Posted in you've got mail at 11:40 am by nemo
Nuclear Offer to Apartheid Regime Blows Diplomatic Cover
Israel’s Nukes Out of the Shadows
By JONATHAN COOK
Nazareth.
Israel faces unprecedented pressure to abandon its official policy of “ambiguity” on its possession of nuclear weapons as the international community meets at the United Nations in New York this week to consider banning such arsenals from the Middle East.
Israel’s equivocal stance on its atomic status was shattered by reports on Monday that it offered to sell nuclear-armed Jericho missiles to South Africa’s apartheid regime back in 1975.
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Posted in you've got mail at 11:37 am by nemo
Congressman Dennis Kucinich: Oily Apocalypse or Green Wave?
http://act.commondreams.org/go/773?akid=67.96588.VCe3dE&t=36
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Posted in you've got mail at 11:35 am by nemo
John Buell: Arizona, Globalization, and the Politics of Immigration
http://act.commondreams.org/go/772?akid=67.96588.VCe3dE&t=34
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Posted in you've got mail at 11:34 am by nemo
Robert Reich: Obama’s Regulatory Brain
http://act.commondreams.org/go/769?akid=67.96588.VCe3dE&t=28
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Posted in you've got mail at 11:32 am by nemo
Christian Groups: Biblical Armageddon Must Be Taught Alongside Global Warming
http://act.commondreams.org/go/764?akid=67.96588.VCe3dE&t=16
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Posted in you've got mail at 11:29 am by nemo
RG mail
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/05/25/science
The Aging of Science
May 25, 2010
What if key elements of science policy are based on patterns of discovery that no longer exist
Read the rest of this entry »
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05.25.10
Posted in Evolution at 12:13 pm by nemo
Wasteful Garbage?
by Guts
The blogosphere last week was buzzing over a study that shows that most of the human genome may not be transcribed. Many have said that the rest of the genome is therefore “junk” or “wasteful garbage”. I think this is only one explanation among many.
All that “junk” DNA may actually be a sea of potentiality when it comes to function. It appears to be very difficult to make proteins out of the blue from an evolutionary perspective. One recent study has shown that proteins diverge very slowly. On the other hand, it is probably a lot easier to make regulatory elements.
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Posted in atheism at 12:08 pm by nemo
Atheists, it’s time to play well with others
The new atheists don’t have to compromise. They do have to get straight the issues of atheism, scientism, and Darwinism, plus the history of religion. They can’t manage it!
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Posted in Evolution at 12:05 pm by nemo
What if the producers of the new Sherlock Holmes did their next movie about Darwin? http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/c5[…]vey-s-darwin
How about a film about the Darwin plagiarism of Wallace?
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Posted in General at 12:01 pm by nemo
Craig Venter’s Brave New World
By RICHARD DAWKINS – RICHARDDAWKINS.NET
Updated: Monday, 24 May 2010 at 11:28 AM – An RDFRS Original
http://richarddawkins.net/articles/472946-craig-venter%E2%80%99s-brave-new-world
Craig Venter’s artificial bacterium debuted almost simultaneously with Svante Pääbo’s publication of the greater part of the Neanderthal genome. Put the two together and ask whether we could – or should – recreate a living, breathing Neanderthal. Of the technologies that would be required, the Venter team has proofed an important component. Dolly was cloned from an entire diploid genome of an adult sheep’s udder cell, dropped into an enucleated ovum. The Venter equivalent of Ian Wilmut’s achievement would be to go to the library (or in this case the Internet), take down the book labelled ‘Sheep Genome Project’ (or rather download the data files), and synthesize a complete set of sheep chromosomes from four bottles of chemicals labelled A, T, C and G. The synthetic genome would then be dropped into an enucleated sheep cell, as per Dolly.
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