Norse sagas and Tolkien/Dawins thumbs up his nose
We have already challenged Dawkins’ use of the term ‘magic’, and here the reference to Norse sagas is amusing: these ancient tales are packed with a set of mysteries, as Tolkien found out, trying to advance the genre for modern times.
I think that in an age when the ‘magic’ of Aleister Crowley is proliferating, and amateur black magicians have online chats at yahoogroups, the works of Tokien on Frodo the hobbit seem more relevant than ever.
It should be noted, as WHEE points out, that the ‘evolutionary potential’ of myth and poetry is part of the infancy of the human species, one of the most mysterious ‘software upgrades’ to the human framework that occurred in the emergence of homo sapiens.
Richard Dawkins puts his scientific ‘Magic’ on a tablet By ALAN BOYLE – COSMIC LOG
Added: Thursday, 29 September 2011 at 12:41 PMFor decades, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins has worked to separate myth and religion from hard-headed facts, through science books such as “The Greatest Show on Earth” as well as philosophical tracts such as “The God Delusion.” But until now, he’s mostly been talking to the grown-ups. In a new work titled “The Magic of Reality: How We Know What’s Really True,” Dawkins goes after the younger set as well.
“Magic” is notable for three reasons:
It casts the search for the explanations behind natural phenomena as a progression from supernatural stories to natural reasoning, throwing biblical stories in the same bin with outdated tales of Egyptian sky gods and Norse deities. (Would you expect anything less from Dawkins?)
Pinker: A history of violence
http://richarddawkins.net/videos/643281-a-history-of-violence
We will wait to discuss this issue, but for starters, check our the STRONG correlation of rising compassion in civilization with the eonic effect.
‘Evolution Implies Intelligent Design’
Two groups of True Believers control the debate over the origin of life. The Evolutionists believe that life could only have developed from one original cell through a slow process of gradual changes that was not controlled by any type of Intelligent Being. Creationists believe that God created life and the only way God could have created life was to zap each individual species into existence fully developed.
ID group rejects ‘false claims’ of Dawkins and Attenborough
http://www.inspiremagazine.org.uk/news.aspx?action=view&id=5649
Centre for Intelligent Design rejects ‘false claims’ of Dawkins and Attenborough
Richard Dawkins and Sir David Attenborough want the Government to ban creationism and Intelligent Design (ID) theory from the classroom. Such a move shows a disturbing lack of understanding of both the nature of scientific theory and of science education, responds the Centre for Intelligent Design.
“If this was about the integrity of science education,” says Dr Alastair Noble (pictured), director of the Centre, “then they would be campaigning for students to have access to all the scientific evidence about evolution and origins – including the positive evidence for design in nature and the evidence both for and against evolution.
Alternative to Diesel Fuel
New Advanced Biofuel Identified as an Alternative to Diesel FuelScienceDaily (Sep. 28, 2011) — Researchers with the U.S Department of Energy (DOE)’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) have identified a potential new advanced biofuel that could replace today’s standard fuel for diesel engines but would be clean, green, renewable and produced in the United States.
Fish Uses Tool
Fish Uses Tool to Dig Up and Crush ClamsScienceDaily (Sep. 28, 2011) — The first video of tool use by a fish has been published in the journal Coral Reefs by Giacomo Bernardi, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Millisecond Memory
Millisecond Memory: ‘Teleportation’ of Rats Sheds Light On How the Memory Is Organized
ScienceDaily (Sep. 28, 2011) — You’re rudely awakened by the phone. Your room is pitch black. It’s unsettling, because you’re a little uncertain about where you are — and then you remember. You’re in a hotel room.
Confirming General Theory of Relativity
Light from Galaxy Clusters Confirms General Theory of RelativityScienceDaily (Sep. 28, 2011) — All observations in astronomy are based on light (electromagnetic radiation) emitted from stars and galaxies and, according to the general theory of relativity, the light will be affected by gravity. At the same time all interpretations in astronomy are based on the correctness of the theory of relatively, but it has been difficult to accurately test Einstein’s theory of gravity on scales larger than the solar system. Now astrophysicists at the Dark Cosmology Centre at the Niels Bohr Institute have managed to measure how the light is affected by gravity on its way out of galaxy clusters. The observations confirm the theoretical predictions.
Mace in the Face
Is the US a Police State?
by JOHN GRANT
http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/09/29/is-the-us-a-police-state/
Honorable people like to debate whether the United States of America is a “police state,” but when it comes to shutting down the expression of ideas on the political left, there’s little room for argument.
We are inundated in this country with propaganda boilerplate about being the greatest democracy in the world. No, we’re not a police state like our friends in Saudi Arabia or our former friends, and current enemies, in Iran. Our police agencies have figured out how to accomplish police state repression in a “softer,” more sophisticated manner.
Look at the video in the September 26 report by Lawrence O’Donnell of MSNBC on what he describes as a “violent burst of chaos” caused by armed “troublemakers” from the New York Police Department.
Torture Prosecution of George W. Bush
Human Rights Groups to Urge Torture Prosecution of George W. Bush in Anticipation of October 20 Visit to Surrey, B.C.
http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2011/09/28-2
Meaningful Democratic Primaries
Ralph Nader: Obama Must Face Meaningful Democratic Primaries
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/09/28-5
A Crisis of Policy, Not Debt
Mark Weisbrot: The Eurozone: A Crisis of Policy, Not Debt
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/09/28-0
What’s Behind the Scorn
Glenn Greenwald: What’s Behind the Scorn for the Wall Street Protests?
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/09/28-9
Iraq: 100 Days of Solidarity
Medea Benjamin: Iraq: 100 Days of Solidarity
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/09/28-12
The Keystone Pipeline Revolt
Bill McKibben: The Keystone Pipeline Revolt: Why Mass Arrests are Just the Beginning
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/09/28-11
Humanitarian Guns for Hire
Humanitarian Guns for Hire: The West’s Mercenary Mission
http://www.commondreams.org/video/2011/09/28
Another Victim of Climate Change
Pakistan: Another Victim of Climate Change
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/09/28-2
29 Million Cubic Meters of Radioactive Soil
Japan Confronts 29 Million Cubic Meters of Radioactive Soil
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/09/28
Is Your Mobile Phone Helping Fund War in Congo?
Is Your Mobile Phone Helping Fund War in Congo?
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/09/28-1
How Revolution Turned Sour
How Revolution Turned Sour in Birthplace of the Arab Spring
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/09/28-0
The Movement Spreads
Occupy Boston: The Movement Spreads
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/09/28-5
The Revolution Begins at Home
Arun Gupta: The Revolution Begins at Home: An Open Letter to Join the Wall Street Occupation
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/09/28-6
09.28.11
Long-Lived Crops And Annual Crops
Do Long-Lived Crops Differ from Annual Crops in Their Genetic Response to Human Domestication?ScienceDaily (Sep. 27, 2011) — Most of what we have come to think of as our daily fruits, vegetables, and grains were domesticated from wild ancestors. Over hundreds and thousands of years, humans have selected and bred plants for traits that benefit us — traits such as bigger, juicier, and easier-to-harvest fruits, stems, tubers, or flowers. For short-lived, or annual, plants, it is relatively easy to envision how such human-induced selection rapidly led to changes in morphology and genetics such that these plants soon become quite different from their wild progenitors.
Evolutionary fields?
The suspicion arises that (just as ‘forces’ in physics come matched with ‘fields’) the driver of evolution (or drivers), these being visible in the eonic effect, are really mysterious global ‘evolutionary fields’ of some kind, a very difficult notion liable to its own errors (the reason you don’t read much on this in WHEE). But the clear evidence of global action over space and even time is overwhelming, whatever it means.
The universal incoherence on ‘evolution’
The debate over evolution never goes anywhere because the major parties to the debate are all confused: scientists, darwinists, and religionists.
And they are confused because they don’t know what evolution is, beyond the perception of the fossil record as a fuzzy chronicle in deep time. And that chronicle is the foundation of our (lack of) knowledge, not the theories trying to explain it. The reason the Darwinian theory arose can be seen in the way that Wallace (not Darwin) brought through the confusion by showing how divergence worked, thus making the idea of evolution clear. But the problem is that he overgeneralized (and Darwin took up his confusion), a situation he later self-corrected. But the point in any case is that all we can assume is the general reality of evolution. We cannot as yet create a theory of its mechanisms and dynamic. And here a study of the eonic effect can clarify why this is so.
The evidence for Homo sp. being polytypic all along
The evidence for Homo sp. being polytypic all along By HELGA VIERICH
Added: Saturday, 24 September 2011 at 9:37 AM
http://richarddawkins.net/discussions/643222-the-evidence-for-homo-sp-being-polytypic-all-along
Our general anthropological consensus is that modern humanity can trace most of its DNA to a small number of individuals who probably lived in subsaharan Africa between 200,000 and 150,000 years ago. Furthermore, there is broad agreement not only on the issue of when Anatomically Modern Humans (AMH) emerged out of the hodge-podge of genetic diversity that was evident in the genus Homo for millions of years, but where: what has been controversial until now is whether any of the other subspecies or, more correctly, local variants of a larger polytypic species of “archaic” Homo, made any subsequent contributions to our species after we became AMH.
That controversy is now being stilled. The evidence for gene flow right across the whole of the Homo sp. spectrum, whether it was through “intermarriage” or behind bushes, has become substantial, if not overwhelming. This does not really surprise me. If the giant North American Wapiti, imported to New Zealand, hybridized freely with the tiny Scottish Red Deer when the later was also imported to the same NZ forests, then we ought not be too shocked at the thought of Neanderthals being able to contribute a few genes to the stream of humanity (albeit, AMH, whoop-dee-do) that left Africa in the years following the eruption of Mount Toba.
What are the implications of this? I should think, for starters, that it is now very likely that all our real local differences are predominantly cultural ones.
Women Have Stronger Immune Systems
Women Have Stronger Immune Systems Than Men – And It’s All Down to X-Chromosome Related microRNA
ScienceDaily (Sep. 27, 2011) — As anyone familiar with the phrase ‘man-flu’ will know women consider themselves to be the more robust side of the species when it comes to health and illness. Now new research, published in BioEssays, seems to support the idea. The research focuses on the role of MicroRNAs encoded on the X chromosome to explain why women have stronger immune systems to men and are less likely to develop cancer.
Corn Domestication
Jumping Gene Enabled Key Step in Corn DomesticationScienceDaily (Sep. 25, 2011) — Corn split off from its closest relative teosinte, a wild Mexican grass, about 10,000 years ago thanks to the breeding efforts of early Mexican farmers. Today it’s hard to tell that the two plants were ever close kin: Corn plants stand tall, on a single sturdy stalk, and produce a handful of large, kernel-filled ears. By contrast, teosinte is branchy and bushy, with scores of thumb-sized “ears,” each containing only a dozen or so hard-shelled kernels.
« Previous Page — « Previous entries « Previous Page · Next Page » Next entries » — Next Page »