01.31.11
Evolution: the historical clue
http://history-and-evolution.com/whee4th/chap3_3.htm
We are so used to thinking evolution will explain history that we fail to see that it is the other way around: history will give us the clue to evolution.
Open sesame for history/evolution as science
Is There A Science Of History?This is the question that does ‘open sesame’ on the confusions, not just of history, but of evolution, showing the way to an understanding beyond the basic paradoxes.
Tutorial for material on the eonic effect
In Search of History: Using the Text
Although the eonic effect is not hard, it has a number of unfamiliar ideas, as the discussion in the comments section makes clear. I need to create a tutorial here of linked posts to highlight some of the confusing aspects.
Thus one of the things that confuses people is the absence of emphasis on ‘civilizations’, focussing instead on temporal intervals of short duration: the transitions.
Flores: giant storks, little people
http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/01/25/133178380/killer-storks-eat-human-babies-perhaps
Nabokov, Lepidopterist and Darwin-doubter
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/01/nabokov_lepidopterist_and_darw043301.html
Asteroid Deflection
Asteroid Deflection: What If a Huge Asteroid Was Going to Slam Into Earth?
ScienceDaily (Jan. 31, 2011) — So you think global warming is a big problem? What could happen if a 25-million-ton chunk of rock slammed into Earth? When something similar happened 65 million years ago, the dinosaurs and other forms of life were wiped out.
Skin cells to heart cells
Adult Skin Cells Converted Directly to Beating Heart CellsScienceDaily (Jan. 31, 2011) — Scripps Research Institute scientists have converted adult skin cells directly into beating heart cells efficiently without having to first go through the laborious process of generating embryonic-like stem cells. The powerful general technology platform could lead to new treatments for a range of diseases and injuries involving cell loss or damage, such as heart disease, Parkinson’s, and Alzheimer’s disease.
Molybdenite
New Transistors: An Alternative to Silicon and Better Than Graphene
ScienceDaily (Jan. 30, 2011) — Smaller and more energy-efficient electronic chips could be made using molybdenite. In an article appearing online January 30 in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, EPFL’s Laboratory of Nanoscale Electronics and Structures (LANES) publishes a study showing that this material has distinct advantages over traditional silicon or graphene for use in electronics applications.
Cheap, Clean Ways to Produce Hydrogen
Cheap, Clean Ways to Produce Hydrogen for Use in Fuel Cells? A Dash of Disorder Yields a Very Efficient Photocatalyst
ScienceDaily (Jan. 30, 2011) — A little disorder goes a long way, especially when it comes to harnessing the sun’s energy. Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) jumbled the atomic structure of the surface layer of titanium dioxide nanocrystals, creating a catalyst that is both long lasting and more efficient than all other materials in using the sun’s energy to extract hydrogen from water.
On the Wrong Side of History
Published on Monday, January 31, 2011 by Focal Points Blog (Foreign Policy in Focus)
On the Wrong Side of History in the Middle East
by Adil E. Shamoo
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/01/31-7
For over sixty years, the U.S. and the West wanted stability in the Middle East while dividing and conquering the area. They installed and supported puppets, despots, and corrupt and totalitarian regimes as long as they did our bidding. The West had no plans to bring freedom and democracy to Middle Eastern countries. Granting sovereignty to Middle Eastern countries was furthest from the minds of Western leaders.
‘Mega Protest’ Planned in Egypt
Published on Monday, January 31, 2011 by Al Jazeera English
‘Mega Protest’ Planned in Egypt Opposition movement calls for one “million people demonstration” on Tuesday in a bid to topple president Hosni Mubarak.
Egyptian protesters have called for a massive demonstration on Tuesday in a bid to force out president Hosni Mubarak from power.
What Corruption and Force Have Wrought
Published on Monday, January 31, 2011 by TruthDig.com
What Corruption and Force Have Wrought in Egypt
by Chris Hedges
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/01/31-0
The uprising in Egypt, although united around the nearly universal desire to rid the country of the military dictator Hosni Mubarak, also presages the inevitable shift within the Arab world away from secular regimes toward an embrace of Islamic rule. Don’t be fooled by the glib sloganeering about democracy or the facile reporting by Western reporters-few of whom speak Arabic or have experience in the region. Egyptians are not Americans. They have their own culture, their own sets of grievances and their own history. And it is not ours. They want, as we do, to have a say in their own governance, but that say will include widespread support-especially among Egypt’s poor, who make up more than half the country and live on about two dollars a day-for the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic parties. Any real opening of the political system in the Arab world’s most populated nation will see an empowering of these Islamic movements. And any attempt to close the system further-say a replacement of Mubarak with another military dictator-will ensure a deeper radicalization in Egypt and the wider Arab world.
Where’s the Protest at Home?
Published on Monday, January 31, 2011 by Huffington Post
by Robert Kuttner
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/01/31-4
On Saturday, I crossed paths with a few hundred protesters marching from Cambridge to Boston to call for the resignation of Egyptian President Mubarak. By appearance, they were a mixture of Arab-Americans, locals, and people from assorted other backgrounds.
FBI Intelligence Violations
Published on Monday, January 31, 2011 by Deeplinks Blog / EFF
EFF Uncovers Widespread FBI Intelligence Violations
by Mark Rumold
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/01/31-0
EFF has uncovered widespread violations stemming from FBI intelligence investigations from 2001 – 2008. In a report released today, EFF documents alarming trends in the Bureau’s intelligence investigation practices, suggesting that FBI intelligence investigations have compromised the civil liberties of American citizens far more frequently, and to a greater extent, than was previously assumed
The Egyptian revolution threatens an American-imposed order of Arabophobia and false choices
RG mail
http://mondoweiss.net/2011/01/the-egyptian-revolution-threatens-an-american-imposed-arabophobic-order.html
Mondoweiss January 29, 2011
The Egyptian revolution threatens an American-imposed order of Arabophobia
and false choices
This is the great fear, in Israel and in Washington, too: that revolution
in Egypt will reveal the despotism of the existing order for the Palestinian
people, who have seen their rights and properties and security and water
taken from them during an endless peace process that Egypt has helped
sustain.
The year of living dangerously
RG mail
Rising commodity prices and extreme weather events threaten global
stability
by Michael Klare
Le Monde diplomatique (January 25 2011)
Get ready for a rocky year. From now on, rising prices, powerful storms,
severe droughts and floods, and other unexpected events are likely to play
havoc with the fabric of global society, producing chaos and political
unrest. Start with a simple fact: the prices of basic food staples are
already approaching or exceeding their 2008 peaks, that year when deadly
riots erupted in dozens of countries around the world.
It’s not surprising then that food and energy experts are beginning to
warn that 2011 could be the year of living dangerously – and so could
2012, 2013, and on into the future. Add to the soaring cost of the grains
that keep so many impoverished people alive a comparable rise in oil
prices – again nearing levels not seen since the peak months of 2008 – and
you can already hear the first rumblings about the tenuous economic
recovery being in danger of imminent collapse. Think of those rising
energy prices as adding further fuel to global discontent.
http://mondediplo.com/openpage/the-year-of-living-dangerously
‘Planned Anarchy’
RG mail
‘Planned Anarchy’ Playing Into Mubarak’s Hands
By Cam McGrath
Inter Press Service
January 30, 2011
CAIRO – The city squares where protesters battled riot police for four
consecutive days were unexpectedly quiet late Sunday night, as Egyptians
fighting to topple the Mubarak regime returned home to defend their
neighbourhoods from looters and thugs.
Read the rest of this entry »
“I know now that revolution is possible”
“I know now that revolution is possible”
Olivier Besancenot gives his impressions on Tunisia
International Viewpoint
January 2011 – IV432
Read the rest of this entry »
We are descended from monkeys…!
We are descended from monkeys. There is no other explanation.
by Fred Reed
Information Clearing House (January 13 2010)
Pondering Whither America, I reflected on a story, probably apocryphal but
which I am going to believe because I like it, about catching monkeys.
Tribesmen somewhere craft a heavy pot with a hole in it large enough that
a monkey could insert an open hand, but not withdraw a closed fist. They
then put monkey food in the pot. The monkey reaches in, grabs the food
and, refusing to let go when the hunters approach, is caught and eaten.
Read the rest of this entry »
Smith legacy
Theory and Ideology: Das Adam Smith Problem
Economic ideology has run rampant in modern civilizaton creating a fictitious universe of exploitative capitalism. The whole mystique from Adam Smith can’t manage his skeptical stance, and his refusal to make economic systems the basis of a whole civilization.
Macroevolution to lead genetics?
http://history-and-evolution.com/whee4th/chap5_1_1.htm
The influence of reductionist Darwinism has produced a misunderstanding of what evolution is: in the evolutionary background to world history we see that a macro process of great abstraction leads genetics.
It is probably the same at all stages.
A New Model of History
A New Model of History: Eonic Evolution
The eonic effect shows a spectacular process of evolution in action, but the focus is not on cultures or civilizations, but on a master sequence that transcends those, operating on transitional pivot areas in short different time-slices, as with the Axial Age.
Repost: more on Eurasia, or Afro-Eurasia, or Afro-America-Eurasia?
Repost/update:
Eurasia, or Afro-Eurasia, or Afro-America-Eurasia?
http://darwiniana.com/2011/01/15/booknotes-the-10k-year-explosion/comment-page-1/#comment-356193
This post was an opportunity to show a side of the eonic effect that often stumps readers. I don’t think the seeming bias against non-Europeans cultures is in any way a minus against this study of history.
The point is that the eonic effect and eonic sequence show a macroevolution of global proportions on the entirely of the human species. Advanced and less advanced makes no difference.
Further, most of the great achievements we see in the pivot areas are correlated with the eonic sequence, so cultural superiority is meaningless.
Finally, the process is not complete. For all intents and purposes African modernity begins in the nineteenth century under very bad conditions. The charge of being primitive was once levelled against the peoples of Europe by Julius Caesar, et al.
In a thousand years, at the outside, the eonic action will have produced a global mix of cultures that rival Archaic Greece. As for Africans, anyone who has travelled there knows the latent potential emerging from the peoples there, if even string theory is not their forte, at least for the moment.
Post—————————
Good comment, and you raise a difficult issue. The question of the eonic effect and the eonic sequence is not in principle required to give a pat on the back to all cultures. It is a master sequence of developmental acceleration in a series of isolated regions which then globalize greater wholes via diffusion. It always jumps to a new region outside of its previous zone, and we can see that modern Europe falls into that pattern. It is so exact that we see modernity emerge not in ‘Europe’ but in the precise crescent zone at the fringes of the Roman Empire that were on its frontier: Germany, Holland, England, France and Spain.
We can see that the process starts at the center of gravity of Eurasia in the Middle East and proceeds from there.
The next Axial Age is confusing because it is a broad spectrum in parallel. Any globalizaling process of this type would produce lateral branches on its way to a univalent global culture.
The question of the New World is ambiguous: the emergence Maya is in exact synchrony with the Axial Age in the Old World. Plus there is clear evidence of diffusion from that Old World.
As to Africa, we simply lack evidence. But it is forgotten that Africa, as the source of human evolution, was occupied by the peoples related to the San (Hottentots) and/or Pygmies until historical times. Let me note that the Neolithic is part of the eonic effect, but still too fuzzy to analyze properly. With the right data we would very likely see the direct connect to the eonic effect in the spread of Neolithic agriculture throughout the continent from West Africa via the Bantu and other peopes. We often forget the direct connection thus of Africa to the mainline of Eurasian history. Next, Egypt was African! fact. And, the elements of African culture from the southern continent entered the mixmaster in the emergence of Egyptian civilization, and its continuation. In fact, the Nubian element was evident in the last phase of Egyptian history. So, while the impression is of a lack of African connections, that can be misleading. We may be lacking a lot of important data from the Neolithic.
It is also important to remember that most non-African travellers to that continent were dead from disease in a matter of weeks in most of its sub-Saharan territory, greatly delaying many diffusionist influences (as opposed to the New World case where the indigenous populations died off catastrophically confronted with European diseases).
Recall the extreme difficulty of nineteenth century explorers in simply trying to nagate across Africa, Livingstone et al.
A close look shows that African cultures of the Bantu type (which includes a complex of differing linguistics, but non-San) have all the elements of a basic Neolithic substrate culture and beyond, making them members of the master sequence of emergent civilization in good standing. The problem is mostly imaginary therefore, and caused by the impossible difficulties of constructing complex civilizations at the level of state formation in the sub-continent.
Again, the eonic effect shows energy minimalization: it proceeds in a few core areas and lets the results diffuse. The Axial Age is misleading in that respect because it seems like a balance of cultures. But it is only a balance of regions, to ensure a balanced diversity prior to full globalization.
A further discussion of the influence of Islam on Africa, and its diffusionary function. We forget that high sufism existed in Africa long before the idea diffused to America! So appearances can be misleading.
The eonic effect is not about any particular culture, but the differential time-slices of cultures in the direct path of the eonic sequence. The result, in spite of the confusing case of the Axial Age, develops the whole via the part. The result may leave those in its wake thinking they are superior, but most of their achievements appear only in relation to the mainline. Mozart and Beethoven: the whole western musical modernity (classicism) is a direct correlate of the eonic action and wanes immediately in the late nineteenth century as the transition sequence interval is over.
So I think that WHEE is a means for many to defend themselves against Eurocentrism.
Richard said,
January 29, 2011 at 1:53 pm ·
I don’t mean to ignite something controversial, but can’t your ideas be used to justify some sort of discrimination between Eurasians and non-Eurasians. WHEE admits that all of the action happened/is happening in Eurasia.I’m certainly not racist, but it must be admitted that we see no significant cultural achievements among those of African descent (full admission: I enjoy jazz, but it is a minor 20th century invention…nothing comparable to Beethoven, Mozart, etc.). Are we supposed to display a patronizing compassion for African culture? I only say this because it is always easy to expose a politically correct facade (see the infamous link below). What are your views on this topic?
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/10/james-watson-tells-inconvenient-truth_296.php
Six Signs of Scientism
Susan Haack – Six Signs of Scientism
http://www.uncommondescent.com/science/philosopher-offers-six-signs-of-scientism/#more-16733
Here are her six signs: 1. Using the words “science,” “scientific,” “scientifically,” “scientist,” etc., honorifically, as generic terms of epistemic praise.And, inevitably, the honorific use of “science” encourages uncritical credulity about whatever new scientific idea comes down the pike. But the fact is that all the explanatory hypotheses that scientists come up with are, at first, highly speculative, and most are eventually found to be untenable, and abandoned. To be sure, by now there is a vast body of well-warranted scientific theory, some of it so well-warranted that it would be astonishing if new evidence were to show it to be mistaken – though even this possibility should never absolutely be ruled out.
Always remember that Ptolemy’s model of the solar system was used successfully by astronomers for 1200 years, even though it had Earth in the wrong place.
2. Adopting the manners, the trappings, the technical terminology, etc., of the sciences, irrespective of their real usefulness. Here, Hack cites the “social sciences”, quite justifiably, but evolutionary psychology surely leads the pack. Can anyone serious believe, for example, that our understanding of public affairs is improved by the claim that there is such a thing as hardwired religion or evolved religion? No new light, just competing, contradictory speculation.
3. A preoccupation with demarcation, i.e., with drawing a sharp line between genuine science, the real thing, and “pseudo-scientific” imposters. The key, of course, is the preoccupation. Everyone wants real science, but a preoccupation with showing that a line of inquiry is not science, good or bad – apart from the evidence – flies in the face of “The fact is that the term “science” simply has no very clear boundaries: the reference of the term is fuzzy, indeterminate and, not least, frequently contested.”
4. A corresponding preoccupation with identifying the “scientific method,” presumed to explain how the sciences have been so successful. ” we have yet to see anything like agreement about what, exactly, this supposed method is.” Of course, one method would work for astronomy, and another for forensics. But both disciplines must reckon with evidence, to be called “science”.
5. Looking to the sciences for answers to questions beyond their scope. One thinks of Harvard cognitive scientist Steve Pinker’s recent claim that science can determine morality. Obviously, whatever comes out of such a project must be the morality of those who went into it.
6. Denying or denigrating the legitimacy or the worth of other kinds of inquiry besides the scientific, or the value of human activities other than inquiry, such as poetry or art. Or better yet, treating them as the equivalent of baboons howling for mates, or something. It discredits both arts and sciences.
87% of US biology teachers advocate Darwin propaganda?!
13% of US biology teachers advocate creationism: Welcome to 2011
That’s ominous, but much worse is that 87% teach Darwin propaganda, unwitting dupes of a pseudo-science.
Cocaine and rain forests
Cocaine Production Increases Destruction of Colombia’s RainforestsScienceDaily (Jan. 29, 2011) — Scientists from Stony Brook University are reporting new evidence that cultivating coca bushes, the source of cocaine, is speeding up destruction of rainforests in Colombia and threatening the region’s “hotspots” of plant and animal diversity. The findings, which they say underscore the need for establishing larger protected areas to help preserve biodiversity, appear in ACS’ journal Environmental Science & Technology
Climatic Fluctuations and Social Upheavals
Climatic Fluctuations in Last 2,500 Years Linked to Social UpheavalsScienceDaily (Jan. 27, 2011) — It would seem that there are striking chronological parallels between significant variations of climate and major historical epochs, such as the Migration Period and the heyday of the Middle Ages. This is the conclusion reached following a study undertaken by researchers from Switzerland, Germany, Austria, and the USA, in which they were able to reconstruct the summer climate in Europe over the last 2,500 years from the information provided by annual tree rings.