09.27.10
Posted in Evolution at 11:08 am by nemo
Speakers challenge Darwin’s theory
The screening of “Darwin’s Dilemma” on Thursday evening in the Hughes-Trigg Theater generated a lively discussion on the Darwinian Evolutionary theory. The documentary film brought a large crowd to the student center.
Charles Darwin, an English naturalist, published his theory of evolution in his 1859 book “Origin Species.” According to Darwin, human, animal and plant life descended from a common ancestor through a process called “natural selection.”
Beneficial mutations were passed from generation to generation, known as survival of the fittest, resulting in entirely different creatures over time.
The documentary shows the origin of life according to Darwin with a running commentary posing contrasting questions on this evolutionary process.
While some who study geology believe in the Cambrian explosion, in which animals did not evolve from small organisms but were created by a 60-million-year long explosion, Darwin thought otherwise. The film cites the existence of the other animal types in the fossil record, dating back to the Pre-Cambrian period.
The speakers stated that Darwin realized that the Pre-Cambrian fossil evidence did not support his theory of gradual, step-by-step evolutionary development but hoped that future generations of scientists would make the discoveries necessary to validate his ideas.
Moderated by Stephen Meyer, author of “Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design,” renowned biologists Douglas Axe, Richard Sternberg, Jonathan Wells and Paul Nelson presented new evidence from molecular biology, genetics and related fields that challenged Darwin’s theory. They cited population genetics and combinatorial problems as some of the major developments negating Darwin’s theory.
The speakers stated that Pre-Cambrian fossil discoveries in the last century have continued to raise more questions than answers, noting that 90 percent of earth’s fossils date back to the Pre-Cambrian era- the period that Darwin’s step-by-step evolution fails to explain.
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Posted in Critique of Evolutionary Economy, Social Darwinism at 11:05 am by nemo
Republican Economics as Social Darwinism
By Robert Reich|Sep 26, 2010, 2:30 PM|Author’s Website
http://wallstreetpit.com/45808-republican-economics-as-social-darwinism
John Boehner, the Republican House leader who will become Speaker if Democrats lose control of the House in the upcoming midterms, recently offered his solution to the current economic crisis: “Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmer, liquidate real estate. It will purge the rottenness out of the system. People will work harder, lead a more moral life
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Posted in General at 10:55 am by nemo
Light Workout: Scientists Use Optogenetics to Effectively Stimulate Muscle Movement in Mice
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Posted in biology at 10:54 am by nemo
How Molecules Escape from Cell’s Nucleus: Key Advance in Using Microscopy to Reveal Secrets of Living Cells
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Posted in Evolution at 10:50 am by nemo
The Joy of Sets: For Ants and Trees, Multiple Partners Are a Boon
ScienceDaily (Sep. 26, 2010) — In the complex world of ant-plant partnerships, serial monogamy can help trees maximize their evolutionary fitness, a new University of Florida study shows.
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Posted in General at 10:46 am by nemo
Published on Monday, September 27, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
Replace the War System: Why and How
by Michael Nagler
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/09/27-2
About the murderous rampage of U.S. soldiers from the 5th Stryker Combat Brigade who killed and dismembered Afghani civilians, evidently “for sport,” the Santa Rosa Press Democrat reported on September 20th, “Army officials have not disclosed a motive” for the outrage. Let me try.
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Posted in you've got mail at 10:44 am by nemo
Published on Monday, September 27, 2010 by TomDispatch.com
Prisoners of War: Bob Woodward and All the President’s Men (2010 Edition)
by Andrew Bacevich
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/09/27
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Posted in you've got mail at 10:42 am by nemo
Published on Monday, September 27, 2010 by The Real News Network
Austerity Not a Solution: Why the “Deficit Hawks” Are Wrong
http://www.commondreams.org/video/2010/09/27-1
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Posted in you've got mail at 10:39 am by nemo
The SEC’s Rocket Scientist: He Aimed for the Stars, He Hit …
Scientists, Secrets and Wall Street’s Lost $4 Trillion
By PAM MARTENS
http://www.counterpunch.org/martens09272010.html
Thanks to an ever growing influx of Ph.D.s from the Ivies and an insatiable demand for an algorithmic trading edge by secretive hedge funds and proprietary trading desks at the largest firms, Wall Street has become part physics lab, part casino, part black hole.
What Wall Street bears no relationship to any longer is its primary mission in the U.S. economy: to be a fair and efficient allocator of capital to worthy businesses and innovators to propel job growth while also providing a medium for allowing investors to buy or sell stocks and bonds of those businesses at a fair price.
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Posted in you've got mail at 10:38 am by nemo
NY Times September 23, 2010
When Did Gekko Get So Toothless?
By JOE NOCERA
THERE is something a little incongruous about hearing Oliver Stone, the
left-leaning, blunt-talking film director, dropping arcane Wall Street
terms like “credit default swaps” and “collateralized debt obligations.”
But that’s just what he was doing a few weeks ago when trying to explain
why his new movie, “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps,” was not the
fictionalized version of the financial crisis of 2008 I had expected
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Posted in you've got mail at 10:36 am by nemo
World in Revolt: The Global Backlash Against Budget Cuts
Sunday 26 September 2010
by: Anthony DiMaggio, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed
http://www.truth-out.org/world-revolt-the-global-backlash-against-budget-cuts63465
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Posted in you've got mail at 10:34 am by nemo
RG mail
NY Times September 27, 2010
U.S. Wants to Make It Easier to Wiretap the Internet
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
Read the rest of this entry »
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09.26.10
Posted in Critique of Evolutionary Economy at 12:28 pm by nemo
http://darwiniana.com/2010/09/26/two-comments-on-swedish-model/
Robert points out something that I actually agree with, the importance of the German model. I find it remarkable how little discussion of any of these success stories appears in public discourse here. The issue of Sweden arose here after Castro’s ambivalent critique of the Cuban model. I merely wished to point out the case of Sweden in that context. It is not, was never, necessary for Cuba to put itself in a pseudo-socialist straightjacket for so long: the Swedish example, as a close match to socialism of some kind, shows how the much hated ‘social democratic’ model actually worked for a long time.
It seems that kind of thinking is beyond the capacity of the dumbed down left, frozen in the issues of the Second Internationale, what to say of Leninism. I meant to to try and shake someone, but in vain, I am sure.
But Cuba apart, the Americans aren’t much smarter, it seems. We have had a good picture of the way theories can wreck economies, and worse. How could that happen? Isn’t it all science? NOT! So what’s going on?
Your reference to Germany exposes the weakness of theoretical economics and its baneful effect on those who study and apply it. Economies require intelligent people not mesmerized by theories who can think in terms of reality, not mathematical fictions.
I don’t know if you have ever examined a library shelf in a university filled with mathematical economics texts. They are sucker bait for students with high IQ’s who are like trained seals who have learned the arcana of these models. But the strange reality is that NONE of them apply to reality in strict terms. But they are too complicated for anyone to really realize that, it seems. The trained seals get rewarded step by step as they enter that intellectual realm, and begin to figure economical realities out inside that bubble. The extreme case is with the derivatives models that were after my time, and which ended up being a devil’s bargain indeed.
But in general economic models do NOT ever apply to reality, for simple reasons, e.g. the Kantian critique of historical determinism, etc…
Determinism works well with computers, but not so well if you stick a mouse on those computers. Moral: there is no science of economics, strictly speaking. So economists can do nine to five for a good while, but in the end they encounter reality.
What an economy is must be known by surveying the terrain of real cases, not figuring how differential equations might predict their behavior.
The German case is the difference between real intelligence and the smarts/idiocy of hot house nerdy noops who are trained seals in a meritocratic reward system where illusions reign. That should be clear from Ayn Rand, the classic false intelligence, and her disciples, e.g. Greenspan, who was brilliant with the math stuff, but look at his end game.
The same is happening with Darwinism, a culture poison that is defended by the same kind of trained seal meritocracy that is rewared stage by stage for getting it wrong.
But it is more than a matter of math. Too much money is held by non-math types who enforce reality to some degree, at least some of the time.
So the real problem, as Marx foresaw, is ideology, the intangible mystique of the market, and its corollaries of selfishness, greed is goodism, social darwinism, and plain darwinism. These theories are deadly delusions operating on half-truths.
I recommend a book by Robert Kuttner, Everything for Sale, where he discusses these issues of economic theory with a critical, indeed sarcastic, vein.
Pray you don’t get IQ tested at a high level early in school. You will never survive the subsequent sugar does conditioning you to be a conforming ‘smart’ expert with his head up his ass.
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Posted in Fourth Edition at 11:16 am by nemo
Chapter Five of WHEE/4th edition coming tomorrow online. Meanwhile digest the foundations for a new kind of world history with the ‘theory’ integrated in the background.
A Short History of the World
Darwinism will never work on world history, and I think this passage makes it clear why. But if that is the case, the same is going to be true of man’s evolution throughout.
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Posted in General at 11:04 am by nemo
Two comments from Robert on ‘Ignorance and Agnosticism’
Robert said,
September 25, 2010 at 4:32 pm ·
I think the word “religion” should be jettisoned. Judeo-Christians/monotheists want to use this tactic of grouping all of these very different systems of thought together in order to gang up on the New Atheists because of their own insecurity and obsolete arguments. I seriously doubt that the major beef of New Atheists is with Plotinus, Vedanta, Samkhya, etc.
Robert said,
September 25, 2010 at 4:38 pm ·
I would maintain that Christians are much more ignorant and lacking in imagination than the New Atheists (quote from an old post if nemo doesn’t mind):
“I mention this only because, while I always attack design arguments produced by Xtians, I hold in reserve the types potential to the philosophies of Schopenhauer, and J.G. Bennett. The cosmic actions of ‘being, function, will’ on the many levels of cosmological being could be involved in the bootstrapping of consciousness and ethical action. Such a thing would be a hybrid of ‘will’ a la Schopenhauer and mechanical laws.
The point here is that Samkhya (atheistical) design arguments remind us that design is too metaphysical, and cosmic physics too mechanical. A whole new category must exist that reconciles these opposites.”
http://darwiniana.com/2010/08/16/ethics-consciousness-evolution-and-the-eonic-effect/
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Posted in Critique of Evolutionary Economy at 11:01 am by nemo
Comments on Swedish model
Robert said,
September 25, 2010 at 4:16 pm ·
Sweden is actually not the best example of a possibility for America. The real example should be Germany (the linchpin of the entire European economy that sustains, directly and indirectly, the peripheral countries).
Robert said,
September 25, 2010 at 4:18 pm ·
The major dysfunctions in the German economy are mostly related to the problems of attempting to absorb East Germany. The German leadership has still done a remarkable job even with the weak link of East Germany.
Nemo: good points. The puzzle is the way that crackpot capitalist ideology and theory has wrecked the American economy.
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Posted in General at 10:42 am by nemo
Increasing Taxes on Alcoholic Beverages Reduces Disease, Injury, Crime and Death Rates, Study Finds
ScienceDaily (Sep. 26, 2010) — Increasing the costs to consumers of beer, wine, and hard liquor significantly reduces the rates of a wide range of alcohol-related deaths, diseases, injuries, and other problems, according to a new study published in the online edition of the American Journal of Public Health and scheduled for inclusion in the November print edition.
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Posted in Evolution at 10:40 am by nemo
Training the Trainers: How to Minimize Stress When Horses Are First Ridden
ScienceDaily (Sep. 26, 2010) — The horse was domesticated many thousands of years ago and has been hugely important in the development of human civilization. It is hard to overstate its role in agriculture, in transport and communications and even in military operations. More recently, equestrian sports have gained markedly in popularity, so even though the horse has largely been superseded in modern farming and military practice its connection to man remains as close as ever.
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Posted in General at 10:38 am by nemo
Dust Models Paint Alien’s View of the Solar System
ScienceDaily (Sep. 23, 2010) — New supercomputer simulations tracking the interactions of thousands of dust grains show what the solar system might look like to alien astronomers searching for planets. The models also provide a glimpse of how this view might have changed as our planetary system matured.
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Posted in General at 10:35 am by nemo
Published on Sunday, September 26, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
Pick Your Poison: America’s Election-Year Politics
by Jerry Lanson
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/09/26-3
I was at a party at my brother’s house last weekend when I got into a conversation with a woman who I knew to be a moderate Republican.
“A lot of my friends in the Midwest are firmly convinced Obama is a socialist,” she told me earnestly.
“Really,” I replied. “I’ve always found him rather moderate. Can you give me an example of why they feel that way?”
“Well, no,” she replied. “But my friends have lots and lots of evidence.”
So goes the disconnect called politics in the United States today. It’s impossible to argue with a phantom, to provide contrary evidence to “proof” that’s no more than a proclamation.
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