Evolution

So, a fascinating interview with Douglas Richard Hofstadter last year, now translated into English. In it, he makes the following comments concerning Ray Kurzweil's notion of achieving effective immortality by 'uploading' a personality into a machine hardware:

I think Ray Kurzweil is terrified by his own mortality and deeply longs to avoid death. I understand this obsession of his and am even somehow touched by its ferocious intensity, but I think it badly distorts his vision. As I see it, Kurzweil's desperate hopes seriously cloud his scientific objectivity.

OK, just in case you haven't seen this over at PZ's or elsewhere, here's a hilarious and brilliantly done satire:

It takes some deconstructing, but the consensus is that it is indeed pro-science/skepticism.

UPDATE: Here are the lyrics, and here is a brief bit on the 'cast' - kudos to both authors!

Jim Downey

Has anyone bothered to go see the new movie 10,000 BC? I know some people have because it's the #1 box office movie of the weekend, but that doesn't mean it's any good. I can't decide if it's worth the $67 ($9 for the ticket, $58 for the popcorn, snocaps and softdrink).

I wonder how many creationists have their panties in a wad over the title? After all, wouldn't that be like 6,000 years before gawd created the earth? How come Bill Donohue isn't protesting this movie?

Wooly Mammoths and Saber-Toothed Tigers in Egypt, huh? Going to movies like this is a little like believing in a religion, a willing suspension of disbelief is required. Doing this for a few hours is alright, but your whole life?

My good buddy Carl Buell was on NPR this morning.

Check out the Mastodon-y goodness and listen to Carl on NPR's "Krulwich On Science" show here.

The biotech industry inserted a gene from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) that is responsible for creating a toxic protein into cotton to protect it against the bollworm moth. So now we have fields of human genetically modified cotton in fields across the south. Talk about putting pressure on the bollworm moth caterpillars. In response they have evolved a resistance to the Bt protein!

So either
1. God is taking time out of controlling world affairs and answering prayers to mess with the genetics of the bollworm moth so they can live to destroy the US cotton crop. (Maybe God really wants to break out his polyester from the 70's again.)
or
2. We have some more compelling evidence to add to the evolution "debate".

Back in 2005, Stephen Darksyde published a fantastic article here at UTI called "Ancestral Magnitudes". It used the metaphor of the "generation", and colorfully described human evolution in terms of our ancestors.

[DarkSyde] If the idea of a flat-earth or the Sun-god is a part of that faith then you either ignore the science and live in willful ignorance-at least in regard to that conflict-and trust to faith, or you adjust your theology. Those really are your only two choices as far as I can see.

What your objection more than likely reveals is that you don't like the idea of being the product of 'random' physics and biochemistry, that you feel there is no room for a Creator in such a scenario. I cannot imagine greater natural evidence for the Brilliance of a Creator than complex process unfolding over billions of years through countless steps in exquisite order spanning the entire Cosmos. The technical skill and artistic vision of such is to be admired in awe, and in that context evolution should be worthy of your devotion, not your disdain.

I encourage you to read the whole thing if you haven't already. It'll blow your mind.

A few days ago, Xavier Onassis from the blog "Doubting Faith" published the same sort of mind-blowingly cool article about our universe, and it puts our place in that universe into stark, unflinching perspective.

[Xavier Onassis] Just for the sake of argument, let's assume that a universe this vast, and this spectacular could not be a random occurrence. Personally, I don't have a problem with it being one big coincidence. But, let's just say it's not.

Do you really think that a hypothetical all-powerful, all-knowing God, responsible for the creation of EVERYTHING in this incredibly vast universe would really give a flying fuck how you voted in the last election? Whether or not a couple of gay guys get married? Whether or not you keep Kosher or go on The Hajj?

Get over yourselves. You're not that fucking important. You need to look at the Big Picture and put things in perspective.

Just excellent. Highly recommended. Great job, Xavier.

Eighth Place:
In Detroit, a 41-year-old man got stuck and drowned in two feet of water after squeezing head first through an 18-inch-wide sewer grate while trying to retrieve his car keys.

Seventh Place:
A 49-year-old San Francisco stockbroker -- who often bragged he was "totally-zoned when he ran" -- accidentally jogged off a 100-foot high cliff on his daily workout.

Sixth Place:
While at the beach, Daniel Jones, 21, dug an 8-foot hole for protection from the wind and had been sitting in a beach chair at the bottom when it collapsed, burying him beneath 5 feet of sand. People on the beach used their hands and shovels trying to get him out but could not reach him. It took rescue workers using heavy equipment almost an hour to free him. Jones was pronounced dead at a local hospital.

Fifth Place:
Santiago Alvarado, 24, was killed as he fell through the ceiling of a bicycle shop he was burglarizing. Death was caused when the long flashlight he had placed in his mouth to keep his hands free rammed into the base of his skull as he hit the floor.

Fourth Place:

I hate Democrats. I don't want to hear another effing word from Democrats complaining about the war or the lack of health care or the big oil companies or torture or any other stupid-ass complaint Democrats have about our government.

NH Primary Results
In yesterday's primary the only two candidates who are convincingly anti-war got 1% of the vote. Kucinich got 3,845 votes and Gravel got 397 votes. Are you kidding me? To all registered Dems, please STFU from now on. I just don't want to hear it.

Dems: You overwhelmingly cast your votes for Hillary Clinton (110,550). The same Hillary Clinton who voted for us to get into this war. The same Hillary Clinton who didn't bother to read the NIE before voting to go to war over Saddam's non-existent WMDs. The same Hillary Clinton who will not apologize and admit a mistake for that vote. The same Hillary Clinton who just recently cast a vote to classify Iran's Republican Guard as a terrorist organization (which is just another gold plated invitation for Bush to start another war).

I wrote this personal item for my blog this morning, but then realized that it was in many ways a perfect summation of how I see the world. Feel free to ignore.

Jim D.

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I commented via email to a close friend yesterday about the persistent fever my MIL has been running, 2 to 2.5 degrees above her normal. We'd seen fevers come and go for the last several months, but this one seems to have settled in for a while. I got back this:

Any particular reason for it, or is she just being like a star that's going into its final flameout?

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Yes it's true. Is anyone really that surprised? Why is it that the most famous people to endorse Ron Paul are Vox Day (of WorldNutDaily) and Tucker Carlson? Oh, I almost forgot about the John Birch Society.

In his latest rant Vox claims that PZ Myers "doesn't even try to make sense" (about Paul):

PZ needs to travel more. Living as he does in rural Minnesota, he has absolutely no idea how migration - not immigration - is completely destroying civilized cultures everywhere from Scandinavia to San Antonio.

Let me be clear. I don't think our current border control policies amount to anything more than lip service, but Vox is suffering from a severe bout of xenophobia. Completely destroying civilized cultures? Yes, illegal immigration should be an issue to be concerned about but let's try to keep the hysteria under control. More ranting about PZ:

Back in September my friend Carl Buell accidentally let it slip that he was working on a super secret painting of an early ancestor of whales for Nature magazine. I was intrigued, but no matter how much I wheedled him about it, he wouldn't give up any more details.

Well, in today's issue of Nature, the details have arrived - and how!

[link] Although the first ten million years of whale evolution are documented by a remarkable series of fossil skeletons, the link to the ancestor of cetaceans has been missing. It was known that whales are related to even-toed ungulates (artiodactyls), but until now no artiodactyls were morphologically close to early whales. Here we show that the Eocene south Asian raoellid artiodactyls are the sister group to whales. The raoellid Indohyus is similar to whales, and unlike other artiodactyls, in the structure of its ears and premolars, in the density of its limb bones and in the stable-oxygen-isotope composition of its teeth. We also show that a major dietary change occurred during the transition from artiodactyls to whales and that raoellids were aquatic waders. This indicates that aquatic life in this lineage occurred before the origin of the order Cetacea.

Florida State Board Of Education member Donna Callaway gets it so wrong that it's painful to read.

[link] Donna Callaway, a former middle school principal from Tallahassee, told the Florida Baptist Witness that evolution "should not be taught to the exclusion of other theories of origins of life."

She also said she hoped Christians would pray over the issue. "As a SBOE member, I want those prayers," Callaway said. "I want God to be part of this."

Evolution is not a "theory of origins of life", number one, and number two, the Christian God cannot, by law, "be a part of" the Florida State Board Of Education - unless you rescind the United States Constitution, or secede from the union.

But you've all heard this before, time and time again. It's been said, over and over, a thousand times or more. The facts are always the same; ignorant Christian creationist who does not understand what evolution is, or what science is gets elected to the school board. Then they convince other ignorant Christian creationists on the school board to "teach the (nonexistent) controversy" by reading the religious tracts put out by the Discovery Institute, WoTM, or Dr. Dino. Overworked civil-rights defenders like the ACLU and FFRF take the school board to court and win. Many indignant news stories and op-ed columns are written about the evil atheist plot to persecute innocent Christians by teaching science instead of Christian mythology in - ahem - science classes. Overwrought email chain letters get forwarded to everyone and their grandmother shouting about the nasty atheists and their evil plan to barbecue all the Christian children in the public school system for the crime of being Christian.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Things like this make me tired. It feels like we're bailing out a leaky boat with plastic beer cups. I mean, were doing something, going through the motions, making a lot of noise and fuss, but the reality of the situation is that the boat is filling up too fast. I fear that we are sinking, and that there is not a lot we can do to prevent it.

Still, we'll keep on bailing because what else can we do?

I, for one, welcome our new super-intelligent Chimpanzee masters.

[link] Young Chimp Outscores College Students in Memory Test

Malcolm Ritter in New York
Associated Press
December 3, 2007

Japanese researchers pitted young chimpanzees against human adults in two tests of short-term memory, and overall, the chimps won.

That challenges the belief of many people, including a number of scientists, that "humans are superior to chimpanzees in all cognitive functions," said researcher Tetsuro Matsuzawa of Kyoto University.

"No one can imagine that chimpanzees—young chimpanzees at the age of five—have a better performance in a memory task than humans," he said in a statement.

Matsuzawa, a pioneer in studying the mental abilities of chimps, said even he was surprised. He and colleague Sana Inoue report the results in Tuesday's issue of the journal Current Biology.

Damn dirty apes!

Brilliant:

About Project Pterosaur
Mission Statement

The goal of Project Pterosaur is to mount an expedition to locate and bring back to the United States living specimens of pterosaurs or their fertile eggs, which will be displayed in a Pterosaur Rookery that will be the center piece of the planned Fellowship Creation Science Museum and Research Institute (FCSMRI). Furthermore, the rookery facility will establish a breeding colony of pterosaurs in order to produce specimens that could then be put on display by other regional institutions or church groups.

By doing all this, we hope to accomplish three goals:

1. Support Creation Theory by showing the incorrectness of the philosophy of Evolutionism.
2. Educate the population about Creation Science.
3. Create excitement about Creation and the Bible in the public.

Absolutely brilliant satire. Here's another taste:

Ol' Joe Smith may have had the right idea about polygamy, after all. Well, at least the evolutionary historical idea, anyway.

Men age faster 'because of Stone Age sex'

The reason that women outlive men by an average of around five years is due to sex, harems and violence in the Stone Age, according to a study published today.

Scientists have struggled to understand why men only tend to live to an average age of 75 while women live to an average of 80.

Now it seems that the reason is that our prehistoric male ancestors kept female harems and fought over them to procreate: because male life was nasty, brutish and short, evolutionary forces focused on making males big and strong, rather than long lived.

See? He really was just trying to get back to the way our ancestors lived. Man, talk about your "old time religion"...

Jim Downey

Ah, some Lewis Black on "Fossils: The Devil's Handiwork":

Hat tip to Ken! Thanks!

Jim Downey

There's a neat article on msnbc.com today having to do with migratory birds. From the article, "Magnetic sensing molecules in the eye, known as cryptochromes, appear to stimulate photoreceptors depending on the orientation of the magnetic field."

I see this as another clear example that God is not necessary to explain the world around us. We are capable, as a species, of figuring out life's mysteries.

PZ is being sued for libel in New York Southern District Court by Stuart Pivar, author of the "Lifecode" books. Apparently because PZ reviewed them and found them wanting.

Wow. Suing someone for a bad review. That's the way to do real science, Stuart. Nice job.

A good write-up from Scientific American.com here.

PZ comments here:

[link] Huh. I'd heard some noise from Pivar threatening to sue, but this is the first I've heard of any formal action being taken. Since I'm a defendant (one who hasn't been notified of his status!) I suppose I should just shut up at this point and let justice run its course.

Since I'm a blogger, though, I can't completely shut up. I will just say that this is Pivar's attempt to squash a negative review of his book, which I posted here. Nothing in the review was motivated by personal malice, and I actually am inclined to favor structuralist arguments in evolution ... but I'm afraid my honest assessment of Pivar's work is that it does not support his conclusions. I still stand by my review, and now I'm a bit disturbed that someone would think criticism of a scientific hypothesis must be defended by silencing its critics.

Via Pandagon, a nice little news story tied to our friends at the Creation Museum:

Columbus, Ohio (AP) --
The man who plays Adam in a video aired at a Bible-based creationist museum has led a different life outside the Garden of Eden, flaunting his sexual exploits online and modeling for a clothing line that promotes free love.

After learning about his activities Thursday, the Creation Museum in Kentucky pulled the 40-second video in which he appears.

Yup, because you know, he can't have had a life at all prior to being Adam. But here's the best, and funniest, bit:

"For the Creation Museum, I did what I did as an actor. It doesn't necessarily mean I believe in evolution or a believe in creation," Linden said. "I'm hired to get a point across. On the flip side, if I was hired to play a murderer, that doesn't mean I'd go out and kill somebody. It's make-believe."

Yesterday we went to a service for a deceased friend. It was followed by a great lunch at his favorite restaurant. His death was not totally unexpected given age & chronic condition....but nonetheless it was a surprise as he wasn’t in a noticeable decline. We will miss him.....but it is the service...the catholic mass I want to talk about... and what the priest had to say.