06.26.10
Posted in you've got mail at 11:53 am by nemo
RG mail
by Gregory Clark
The Japan Times (June 25 2010)
Are they being manipulated by governments? Or, are they just plain lazy,
happy to go along with what everyone else is saying and what readers want
to believe without wanting to look too closely into relevant background?
I refer to the way the Western media, both lately and in the past, have
accepted blatant and often dangerous news distortions.
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/rss/eo20100625gc.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+japantimes_news+%28The+Japan+Times+Headline+News+-+News+%26+Business%29&utm_content=My+Yahoo
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Posted in you've got mail at 11:46 am by nemo
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/26/business/26salmon.html?hp
June 25, 2010
Genetically Altered Salmon Get Closer to the Table
By ANDREW POLLACK
The Food and Drug Administration is seriously considering whether to approve the first genetically engineered animal that people would eat — salmon that can grow at twice the normal rate.
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Posted in Evolution at 1:38 pm by nemo
Experts…
Strange, people will criticize experts, but waffle with ‘Darwinian experts’.
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Posted in General at 1:34 pm by nemo
Vegetarians Are Happier Than Meat-Eaters
A new study in Nutrition Journal finds vegetarians have lower incidence of depression, anxiety, and other mood problems than their meat-eating neighbors.
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Posted in Evolution, Science & Religion at 1:31 pm by nemo
Accommodationist or faitheist? Templeton will pay you big time!
Coyne is a problem case, thank god, he holds his nose at junk accomodationism.
The only way to deal with Coyne in the end is ‘off to the Zen slammer’.
Accomodationism requires something really novel: a new Protestant Reformation to advance Christianity to a more intelligent modernity, and a new postdarwinian science that can deal with religion in a right way.
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Posted in General at 1:26 pm by nemo
The Thinking Man’s Marxist
From Montreal youth to Oxford chair, G.A. Cohen became one of our era’s great philosophical minds.
http://reviewcanada.ca/reviews/2010/06/01/the-thinking-man-s-marxist/
Cohen deserves some commentary here, later: but we have often demanded a revamped Marxism. Of course, Cohen et al. have attempted just that.
His effort is puzzling: to replace Marx’s (confused) Hegelianism with analystic philosophy was an obvious wrong approach.
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Posted in Evolution at 1:18 pm by nemo
Junk DNA
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Posted in Evolution at 1:17 pm by nemo
Evolutionary Psychology as Maladapted Psychology
Robert C. Richardson
Table of Contents and Sample Chapters
Human beings, like other organisms, are the products of evolution. Like other organisms, we exhibit traits that are the product of natural selection. Our psychological capacities are evolved traits as much as are our gait and posture. This much few would dispute. Evolutionary psychology goes further than this, claiming that our psychological traits—including a wide variety of traits, from mate preference and jealousy to language and reason—can be understood as specific adaptations to ancestral Pleistocene conditions. In Evolutionary Psychology as Maladapted Psychology, Robert Richardson takes a critical look at evolutionary psychology by subjecting its ambitious and controversial claims to the same sorts of methodological and evidential constraints that are broadly accepted within evolutionary biology.
The claims of evolutionary psychology may pass muster as psychology; but what are their evolutionary credentials? Richardson considers three ways adaptive hypotheses can be evaluated, using examples from the biological literature to illustrate what sorts of evidence and methodology would be necessary to establish specific evolutionary and adaptive explanations of human psychological traits. He shows that existing explanations within evolutionary psychology fall woefully short of accepted biological standards. The theories offered by evolutionary psychologists may identify traits that are, or were, beneficial to humans. But gauged by biological standards, there is inadequate evidence: evolutionary psychologists are largely silent on the evolutionary evidence relevant to assessing their claims, including such matters as variation in ancestral populations, heritability, and the advantage offered to our ancestors. As evolutionary claims they are unsubstantiated. Evolutionary psychology, Richardson concludes, may offer a program of research, but it lacks the kind of evidence that is generally expected within evolutionary biology. It is speculation rather than sound science—and we should treat its claims with skepticism.
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Posted in General at 1:11 pm by nemo
http://richarddawkins.net/videos/483394-the-evolution-of-creationism
Evolution of Creationism
By GENIE SCOTT – NATCEN4SCIENCEED (NCSE YOUTUBE CHANNEL)
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Posted in In the News at 1:10 pm by nemo
Richard Dawkins and the atheist school
Dawkins has said he’d like to set up an atheist school. But would it really be able to teach religion as anthropology, without bias?
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Posted in Evolution at 1:08 pm by nemo
>>?Columns?>>Planet of the Apes: Part II
Much can change in 2.6 million years
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Posted in Evolution at 1:01 pm by nemo
It might help if the left could take up the burden of exposing Darwinian ideology, so that it is imposed on revolting religionists, whose response is anti-science.
The Texas / Russia Axis
Overthrowing Darwin
By CHRISTOPHER BRAUCHLI
The world has arisen in some way or another. How it originated is the great question, and Darwin’s theory, like all other attempts to explain the origin of life, is thus far merely conjectural.
Jean Louis Agassiz, Evolution and Permanence of Type (1874)
http://www.counterpunch.org/brauchli06252010.html
Texans are probably feeling a touch despondent, not that it affects them directly. It would have been nice, however, if they could have pointed to Nebraskans instead of Russians as another example of enlightened thinking.
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Posted in Evolution, Science & Religion at 12:58 pm by nemo
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-ruse/can-a-darwinian-be-a-chri_b_618758.html: Michael Ruse
A Darwinian Can Be a Christian, Too
This new Huffpost forum is going to a dogmatic and celebrity run garbade dump for those who want to make it alright to be a confused Christian and Darwinist at the same time.
Ruse is not qualified to deal with this subject, but then who is. What is wanted is writer’s able to produce the right crap.
Don’t let Ruse determine your Christianity, which is certainly allergic to Darwinist explanations of ethics, consciousness and religious evolution.
People like Ruse want to ‘fix’ Christianity in others, even as they disbelieve themselves.
A Lot of good people could contribute here, but won’t get a chance for this adjunct to A. Huffington’s masturbation site for adolescent liberals.
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Posted in General at 12:52 pm by nemo
Researchers Develop Living, Breathing Human Lung-on-a-Chip
ScienceDaily (June 24, 2010) — Researchers from the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, Harvard Medical School and Children’s Hospital Boston have created a device that mimics a living, breathing human lung on a microchip. The device, about the size of a rubber eraser, acts much like a lung in a human body and is made using human lung and blood vessel cells.
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Posted in Evolution at 12:51 pm by nemo
Behavior Breakthrough: Like Animals, Plants Demonstrate Complex Ability to Integrate Information
ScienceDaily (June 25, 2010) — A University of Alberta research team has discovered that a plant’s strategy to capture nutrients in the soil is the result of integration of different types of information.
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Posted in global warming at 12:50 pm by nemo
Higher Wetland Methane Emissions Caused by Climate Warming 40,000 Years Ago
ScienceDaily (June 24, 2010) — 40,000 years ago rapid warming led to an increase in methane concentration. The culprit for this increase has now been identified. Mainly wetlands in high northern latitudes caused the methane increase, as discovered by a research team from the University of Bern and the German Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association. This result refutes an alternative theory discussed amongst experts, the so-called “clathrate gun hypothesis.” The latter assumed that large amounts of methane were released from the ocean sediment and led to higher atmospheric methane concentrations and thus to rapid climate warming.
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Posted in General at 12:48 pm by nemo
Was Venus Once a Habitable Planet?
ScienceDaily (June 24, 2010) — The European Space Agency’s Venus Express is helping planetary scientists investigate whether Venus once had oceans. If it did, it may even have begun its existence as a habitable planet similar to Earth.
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Posted in In the News at 12:47 pm by nemo
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-we-all-live-in-an-oil-slick-now-2009644.html: When the most powerful country on earth can’t stop a single leaking pipe, is it really clear that we’ll adapt to rising sea levels and super-charged hurricanes? …
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Posted in In the News at 12:44 pm by nemo
Published on Friday, June 25, 2010 by The Independent/UK
A Victory for the Whalers, a Defeat for Humanity
The IWC’s decision to retain its ban on whaling does not mean that the killings will stop. Quite the reverse
by Philip Hoare
My generation has witnessed a vast change in the way we see whales. When I was born, in 1958, Britain was still a whaling nation. Ships would arrive in my hometown of Southampton laden with processed whale oil and meat, destined for margarine, plant fertiliser and pet food.
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Posted in you've got mail at 12:36 pm by nemo
gnxp
Steve Jones takes issue with the argument that self-interest and private enterprise are in our DNA
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jun/19/rational-optimist-prosperity-evolves-ridley
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Posted in you've got mail at 12:35 pm by nemo
gnxp
Looking for a job? Print your resume on heavy paper, according to a new study that shows touch unconsciously influences our behaviors
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/06/100624-touch-emotions-brain-science/
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Posted in you've got mail at 12:34 pm by nemo
gnxp
The genetic diversity of Africa’s indigenous livestock needs to be tapped before it is lost forever, researchers have warned
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10403254.stm
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Posted in you've got mail at 12:33 pm by nemo
gnxp
The 10-year-old Human Genome Project has only just begun to bring to fruition its promise to transform medicine, its founders said on Thursday
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100624/sc_nm/us_genome_medicines
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Posted in you've got mail at 12:32 pm by nemo
gnxp
Enzyme structure reveals how cells avoid DNA damage caused by ultraviolet rays
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100623/full/news.2010.313.html
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Posted in you've got mail at 12:31 pm by nemo
Offshore Drilling Opponents to Stage Global Beach Protests
http://act.commondreams.org/go/1165?akid=88.96588.vMDmNK&t=2
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Posted in you've got mail at 12:26 pm by nemo
Venezuela to Nationalize US-Owned Oil Rigs
http://act.commondreams.org/go/1168?akid=88.96588.vMDmNK&t=8
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