History, Evolution, and the Darwin Debate
Ancient Body Clock Discovered That Helps Keep All Living Things on Time
ScienceDaily (Jan. 26, 2011) — The mechanism that controls the internal 24-hour clock of all forms of life from human cells to algae has been identified by scientists.
Chemists Turn Gold to Purple – On Purpose: Color Change Confirms a New Way to Harvest Energy from Sunlight
ScienceDaily (Jan. 27, 2011) — Professor Richard Watt and his chemistry students suspected that a common protein could potentially react with sunlight and harvest its energy — similar to what chlorophyll does during photosynthesis.
No Leftovers for Tyrannosaurus Rex: New Evidence That T. Rex Was Hunter, Not Scavanger
ScienceDaily (Jan. 26, 2011) — Tyrannosaurus rex hunted like a lion, rather than regularly scavenging like a hyena, reveals new research published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Committee to Protect Journalists: Journalists Beaten and Detained, Websites Blocked, Amidst Massive Protests in Egypt
http://act.commondreams.org/go/4196?akid=357.96588.U9GBrX&t=50
Michele Simon: Why the Happy Meal is a Crime—and Not Just a Culinary One
http://act.commondreams.org/go/4190?akid=357.96588.U9GBrX&t=38
Scott Harris: Keith Olbermann’s MSNBC Departure a Wake-up Call to Fix Broken US Corporate Media System
http://act.commondreams.org/go/4188?akid=357.96588.U9GBrX&t=34
Laura Flanders: Trade is NOT the Answer!
http://act.commondreams.org/go/4187?akid=357.96588.U9GBrX&t=32
Robert Scheer: Hogwash, Mr. President
http://act.commondreams.org/go/4186?akid=357.96588.U9GBrX&t=30
Glen Ford: The Obama/GOP Consensus
http://act.commondreams.org/go/4183?akid=357.96588.U9GBrX&t=24
US Supports Mubarak as Thousands Call for His Ouster
http://act.commondreams.org/go/4181?akid=357.96588.U9GBrX&t=20
Mubarak Faces Historic Challenge
http://act.commondreams.org/go/4179?akid=357.96588.U9GBrX&t=16
RG mail
GMOs: Myths, Falsehoods, Superstitions
Submitted by Annie White on January 19, 2011 – 10:35 pm
http://foodfreedom.wordpress.com/2011/01/10/gmos-myths-falsehoods-superstitions/
RG mail
by Robert Fisk
Published on Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Independent UK
The Palestine Papers are as damning as the Balfour Declaration. The
Palestinian “Authority” – one has to put this word in quotation marks -
was prepared, and is prepared to give up the “right of return” of perhaps
seven million refugees to what is now Israel for a “state” that may be
only 10 per cent (at most) of British mandate Palestine.
And as these dreadful papers are revealed, the Egyptian people are calling
for the downfall of President Mubarak, and the Lebanese are appointing a
prime minister who will supply the Hezbollah. Rarely has the Arab world
seen anything like this.
To start with the Palestine Papers, it is clear that the representatives
of the Palestinian people were ready to destroy any hope of the refugees
going home.
It will be – and is – an outrage for the Palestinians to learn how their
representatives have turned their backs on them. There is no way in which,
in the light of the Palestine Papers, these people can believe in their
own rights.
They have seen on film and on paper that they will not go back. But across
the Arab world – and this does not mean the Muslim world – there is now an
understanding of truth that there has not been before.
It is not possible any more, for the people of the Arab world to lie to
each other. The lies are finished. The words of their leaders – which are,
unfortunately, our own words – have finished. It is we who have led them
into this demise. It is we who have told them these lies. And we cannot
recreate them any more.
In Egypt, we British loved democracy. We encouraged democracy in Egypt -
until the Egyptians decided that they wanted an end to the monarchy. Then
we put them in prison. Then we wanted more democracy. It was the same old
story. Just as we wanted Palestinians to enjoy democracy, providing they
voted for the right people, we wanted the Egyptians to love our democratic
life. Now, in Lebanon, it appears that Lebanese “democracy” must take its
place. And we don’t like it.
We want the Lebanese, of course, to support the people who we love, the
Sunni Muslim supporters of Rafiq Hariri, whose assassination – we rightly
believe – was orchestrated by the Syrians. And now we have, on the streets
of Beirut, the burning of cars and the violence against government.
And so where are we going? Could it be, perhaps, that the Arab world is
going to choose its own leaders? Could it be that we are going to see a
new Arab world which is not controlled by the West? When Tunisia announced
that it was free, Mrs Hillary Clinton was silent. It was the crackpot
President of Iran who said that he was happy to see a free country. Why
was this?
In Egypt, the future of Hosni Mubarak looks ever more distressing. His
son, may well be his chosen successor. But there is only one Caliphate in
the Muslim world, and that is Syria. Hosni’s son is not the man who
Egyptians want. He is a lightweight businessman who may – or may not – be
able to rescue Egypt from its own corruption.
Hosni Mubarak’s security commander, a certain Mr Suleiman who is very ill,
may not be the man. And all the while, across the Middle East, we are
waiting to see the downfall of America’s friends. In Egypt, Mr Mubarak
must be wondering where he flies to. In Lebanon, America’s friends are
collapsing. This is the end of the Democrats’ world in the Arab Middle
East. We do not know what comes next. Perhaps only history can answer this
question.
© 2011 The Independent
Robert Fisk is Middle East correspondent for The Independent newspaper.
He is the author of many books on the region, including The Great War for
Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East.
RG mail
By Issandr El Amrani
The Arabist
January 27, 2011
To date, apart from Foreign Ministry spokesman Hossam Zaki’s phoned-in
appearances on CNN and al-Jazeera to explain that a) the protests are being
exaggerated by the media and b) they prove that Egypt is democratic, I have
not seen any reaction by the Egyptian government to the biggest protests in
decades.
The explanation is simple: Mubarak does not want to stoop to responding to
these protests.
http://www.arabist.net/blog/2011/1/27/mubaraks-radio-silence.html
Practical Full-Spectrum Solar Cell Comes CloserScienceDaily (Jan. 25, 2011) — Solar cells are made from semiconductors whose ability to respond to light is determined by their band gaps (energy gaps). Different colors have different energies, and no single semiconductor has a band gap that can respond to sunlight’s full range, from low-energy infrared through visible light to high-energy ultraviolet.
http://history-and-evolution.com/whee4th/chap7_4.htm
The discovery of evolution was one of the most revolutionary turning points in man’s perception of himself and the cosmos, but this breakthrough, by becoming the province of reductionist scientism, was immediately turned into a narrowed perspective of flatlanders. The formulation of Darwin was a severe contraction of the full shotgun spectrum of proto-evolutionary speculations that appeared, along with so much else, near the Great Divide. As so often with the eonic effect the first attempts show ‘System Action’ and had a quality that the later work lost. The insight of Lamarck despite its still inchoate form saw the essential structure of evolution, not unlike our ‘evolution formalism’. The attempt to produce ‘science’ in the age of Darwin and beyond succeeded in one way, but lost its contact with the full complexity of evolution.
The great freedom sutra
Religions who are anti-modernists and secularists who are anti-religion have both missed the point. ‘Religion’ in essence is not an organizational phenomenon and is eminently suited to secularism.
A Rebirth of Freedom…Cycle, System Return
Democracy appears in Axial Greece (if not in ancient Sumer) then dies out, then reappears exactly on schedule in modern times.
So much for man’s democratic sentiments.
http://history-and-evolution.com/whee4th/chap4_3.htm: Neolithic beginnings
If we look at the Axial Age, then at sociological theories of the Neolithic, we realize the danger of wrong generalizations. An ‘axial age’ or two is lurking in the interval in question, the data too thin to see the real dynamics.
http://history-and-evolution.com/whee4th/chap3_3_1.htm
Current accounts of the evolution of man are incoherent, and untruthful, as they hide the real entities to be explained, e.g. language, self-consciousness, and the rest of it.
Using science to make the hard problem reducible to oversimplifications is also dishonest
http://history-and-evolution.com/whee4th/chap2_2_4.htm
The Dover trial was a fraud. The real trial should include ‘Darwin on trial’ to use the phrase of Philip Johnson.
Failing that scientists should stage a mock trial with real lawyers putting ‘Darwin on trial’. It should be easy to reverse-Scopes the Darwin theory as a critique of bad science.
Darwin on trial. Let the virtual theory trial proceed on a philosophical basis. Given its record Darwinism is certainly on trial, and we need not gush with scientific enthusiasm confronted with the real legacy of the potential ‘repeat offender’. Since Darwinists are often more ethical than the violent religionists supposed the upholders of the sacred, we may be forced to dismiss the case on the grounds of ‘theoretical idiocy’. We can proceed with Darwingate, what they knew and when they knew it, to sort the dupes from the hypocrites, and many texts here are transparently deceptive, especially once we see how peer review and the Darwin book market influence veracity. So the record speaks for itself. And the supine accessories in the social sciences bludgeoned into bad jargon by the ‘Two Cultures’ debate won’t get off lightly either. Given the legacy of eugenics and the Holocaust, we must be at all points vigilant promotion of this theory means what its adherents say it means, which means ‘genocide’ in the pursuit of population tampering in some conspiracy of evolution. The legacy of eugenics warns us these are not idle speculations. Darwin’s theory is an accident waiting to happen.
http://history-and-evolution.com/whee4th/intro1_1_1.htm
Dobzhansky frequently talked about the meaning of evolution, but the strange fact is that Darwinists don’t have that meaning.
The Meaning of Evolution We are so accustomed to Darwinian or reductionist definitions of genetic evolution that we forget the meaning of the term: evidence of developmental emergence by any process or dynamic. By that definition history shows a clear pattern of non-random evolution in the development of civilization (and the parallel development of human individuality).
The science/religion debate (which mostly means Xtianity vs Scientism/Darwinism) is played out, due to the narrowness of both sides. We need to be able to critique Xtianity without that being about religion in general, and to steer clear, whether scientists or atheists from the New Atheist cult, which is close to braindead on its own subject.
Both sides have reached the blahblahblah phase and share a common stupidity.
Science cannot legitimate atheism, which has to be taken on faith, and Christianity is a two-thousand year old bully that has destroyed real religious consciousness.
We need intelligent religion, post-Axial, intelligent secularism, and intelligent science.
Since noone defines the term ‘god’ its usage should be sidelined for new concepts, definitions and histories so that real theism and real atheism can come to the fore.
We need to top buying into Darwinian foundationalism to buttress atheism, and slit the throat of ethics to make the economy safe for the ‘greed is good’ gangsters.
Science need to stop being the whore of economics, and tell the truth. Christianity needs to free its slaves to something like a renewed search for a new religious understanding.
In a word, shut up the blah blah blah.
New Book Shows How Evolution’s Co-Discoverer Rejected Darwinism, Embraced Intelligent Design
SEATTLE, Jan. 25, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Evolutionary theory’s co-founder ultimately rejected Darwinism on scientific grounds in favor of an understanding similar to modern intelligent design (ID). In a new biography published by Discovery Institute, Alfred Russel Wallace: A Rediscovered Life, University of Alabama science historian Michael Flannery tells how Wallace grew disenchanted with natural selection as a theory capable of explaining life’s complexity. Wallace (1823-1913) concluded that many features of living organisms could best be explained as the product of design by a “directive Mind.”
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-book-shows-how-evolutions-co-discoverer-rejected-darwinism-embraced-intelligent-design-114591894.html
Evolution by Mistake: Major Driving Force Comes from How Organisms Cope With Errors at Cellular Level
ScienceDaily (Jan. 25, 2011) — Charles Darwin based his groundbreaking theory of natural selection on the realization that genetic variation among organisms is the key to evolution.
Mathematical Model Could Help Predict and Prevent Future ExtinctionsScienceDaily (Jan. 25, 2011) — In an effort to better understand the dynamics of complex networks, scientists have developed a mathematical model to describe interactions within ecological food webs. This research, performed by Northwestern University physics professor Adilson Motter and his student, Sagar Sahasrabudhe, is published in the January 25 issue of Nature Communications. The work illustrates how human intervention may effectively aid species conservation efforts.
Biologists’ Favorite Worm Gets Viruses: Finding Means C. Elegans May Aid Studies of Human Infections
ScienceDaily (Jan. 25, 2011) — A workhorse of modern biology is sick, and scientists couldn’t be happier.
Human-Made DNA Sequences Made Easy: New Method for Rapidly Producing Protein-Polymers
ScienceDaily (Jan. 25, 2011) — Duke University bioengineers have developed a new method for rapidly producing an almost unlimited variety of human-made DNA sequences.
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