Okay, okay, but it’s August, breathless around here, and this is too good not to share: Further to Fri Nite Frite: Truly venomous frogs: From CBC News: 150 crocodiles and alligators removed from Toronto home “I couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” Loyst, who is the curator of the Peterborough-area reptile zoo, told CBC. “I could not believe that somebody had that many crocodilians and raised them to adulthood. These were not baby little crocodiles, they were adults.” According to Loyst, some of the reptiles were more than 3 m long, and some had been kept by their owner for as long as 10 years. More. Note: Loyst told the Star the animals had been well kept, and their owners Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Heads of Brazilian frogs are venomous weapons It’s no surprise that some frogs secrete poison from glands in their skin. But researchers have discovered the first two species of frog, both living in Brazil, that are actually venomous. Not only do the frogs produce potent toxins, but they also have a mechanism to deliver those harmful secretions into another animal using bony spines on their heads. … The researchers’ calculations suggest that a single gram of the toxic secretion from the other frog species, A. brunoi, would be enough to kill more than 300,000 mice or about 80 humans. “It is unlikely that a frog of this species produces this much toxin, and only very small amounts would Read More ›

First, we hear something sensible: Paul Davies: Search for alien microbial life on Earth: (= He advocates a search for evidence where there is a good chance it may be found, instead of the usual faint hope feeding frenzy and unmoored speculation.) Now, just to prove silly season is here, we also learn the latest hot weather story abut intelligent aliens from New Statesman: Be careful what you say to aliens Seeking alien contact could be the thing that triggers our own implosion. … But even the benign scenarios about alien signals could be disruptive, in Davies’s view. Knowledge from an advanced civilisation would “change the economic and technological balance of the planet”, he says. And that’s what makes the Read More ›

Further to: Physicist Paul Davies’ killer argument against the multiverse (Vincent, Torley), here’s physicist and author Davies on the search for extraterrestrial life: A huge investment into the search for intelligent alien life has renewed public interest in the question of whether we’re alone in the universe. Paul Davies tells Late Night Live why he’s sceptical of the current search, and why he thinks we should look for ‘life as we don’t know it’ on our own planet. … Professor Davies is a supporter of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI)—in fact, he’s chair of the SETI Post-Detection Science and Technology Task Group, the body charged with responding if Earth is contacted by aliens. However, he thinks we may need Read More ›

From Eurekalert: Stripes might not offer protection for animals living in groups, such as zebra, as previously thought, according to research published in Frontiers in Zoology. Humans playing a computer game captured striped targets more easily than uniform grey targets when multiple targets were present. This rebukes assumptions that stripes evolved to make it difficult to capture animals moving in a group. Rebukes? Hey, guys, this is St. Darwin of Sandwalk we are talking about! Anna Hughes, University of Cambridge, says “We found that when targets are presented individually, horizontally striped targets are more easily captured than targets with vertical or diagonal stripes. Surprisingly, we also found no benefit of stripes when multiple targets were presented at once, despite the Read More ›

Ironically enough, materialists are a mystical lot. They say they reject irrational and superstitious beliefs, but when one pushes them past their ability to explain life, the universe and everything in materialist terms, they are very quick to resort to obscurantist pseudo-explanations. And “it emerged” is their favorite dodge. As we have explained many times before, “it emerged” is the explanatory equivalent of “it’s magic.” But like bugs scattering when the lights are turned on, we have to stomp on this one again and again. Like today for instance. In my Why there is no Meaning if Materialism is True post I argued that on materialist premises – that nothing exists but space, time, particles and energy – there can Read More ›

From The Scientist : After spending more than a decade developing tools to study patterns in gene sequences, bioinformaticians are now working on programs to analyze epigenomics data. Just a decade ago, epigenetics researchers used classic biochemistry to reveal key modifications involved in the control of gene expression. These days, discoveries in epigenetics are as likely to be made with a computer as they are to rely on freezers full of cells or stacks of petri dishes. Researchers working to understand the intricacies of methylation marks, histone patterns, and chromosome structure must use computational approaches. More. Epigenetics is not going away. It’s getting bigger equipment. See also: Experts: “Epigenetics can drive genetics” As opposed to natural selection acting on random Read More ›

Professor Paul Davies is no friend of Intelligent Design. Nevertheless, he puts forward a formidable argument against its best scientific alternative, the multiverse, in an interview with Robert Lawrence Kuhn, creator and host of “Closer To Truth,” and author of a recent article titled, Is our universe a fake? (Space.com, July 31, 2015). Kuhn summarizes Davies’ argument as follows: “If you take seriously the theory of all possible universes, including all possible variations,” Davies said, “at least some of them must have intelligent civilizations with enough computing power to simulate entire fake worlds. Simulated universes are much cheaper to make than the real thing, and so the number of fake universes would proliferate and vastly outnumber the real ones. And Read More ›

Not at the  Economist, anyway. It’s mid-August and the pop science is in full bloom: Multiversal truths The idea of inflation was proposed in 1979 by Alan Guth. In the years after Dr Guth published his idea Andrei Linde extended it to suggest that the universe emerged from what he called an inflationary field. But if this field can spawn the universe humans see, there is no reason why it cannot spawn others. There is also no reason why the universes so spawned should have the same laws of physics as one another. Indeed, there is quite a good reason why they should not. This reason was worked out a decade or so ago by several physicists, including Leonard Susskind, of Read More ›

From the Atlantic: The Coddling of the American Mind In the name of emotional well-being, college students are increasingly demanding protection from words and ideas they don’t like. Here’s why that’s disastrous for education—and mental health. … Some recent campus actions border on the surreal. In April, at Brandeis University, the Asian American student association sought to raise awareness of microaggressions against Asians through an installation on the steps of an academic hall. The installation gave examples of microaggressions such as “Aren’t you supposed to be good at math?” and “I’m colorblind! I don’t see race.” But a backlash arose among other Asian American students, who felt that the display itself was a microaggression. The association removed the installation, and Read More ›

  From Horizontal gene transfer: Sorry, Darwin, it’s not your evolution any more: Richard Dawkins: For over a century, Darwinism was the “must be” explanation, the only “scientific one.” As Dawkins put it (p. 287, Blind Watchmaker, 1986): My argument will be that Darwinism is the only known theory that is in principle capable of explaining certain aspects of life. If I am right it means that, even if there were no actual evidence in favour of the Darwinian theory (there is, of course) we should still be justified in preferring it over all rival theories. But Darwinism is not “the only known theory that is in principle capable of explaining certain aspects of life.” Claims that were formerly merely Read More ›

Posted without further comment: Barry  eigenstate @ 45 keeps going on about how morality is like value. What we value is good simply because we value it. And what we don’t value is evil simply because we don’t value it. eigenstate  And even more fundamentally, “good” and “meaningful” and “valuable” are products of our mental processes, inherently subjective. If the referent you are thinking about is objective, it can’t be a “good” or a “value” these are intrinsically subjective concepts. Barry  A Zimbabwean dollar once had value; now it has no value. eigenstate  Right. Value, like meaning is a subjective function of the mind.  There’s nothing inherently valuable as currency about the piece of paper we may call a “Zimbabwean Read More ›

Over at Pharyngula, Professor P.Z. Myers has been ridiculing Senator Marco Rubio for declaring, “The science is settled, it’s not even a consensus, it is a unanimity, that human life beings at conception” – a claim he repeated at the GOP debate on August 6. Unfortunately for Myers, Senator Rubio is dead right: embryologists agree that an individual human life begins at conception. Here’s how Professor Myers attempted to dispose of Senator Rubio’s claim in a 2014 post: Let’s take that phrase “human life begins at conception” apart. What do you mean by “life begins”? Was there some step between your parents and you where there was a dead cell? Life is continuous — there hasn’t been a transition from Read More ›

The word “ethics” implies an ethical standard.  Under materialism there can be no standard that is objectively binding as between two people who disagree, because under materialism the only thing “good” can mean is “that which is subjectively preferred.” I will explore this concept in response to some objections raised by commenter Pro Hac Vice.  In a comment to my prior post I wrote: The first question that must be answered is whether the concept of “good” means anything other than “what I [or some group of people] happen to prefer at this particular time.” If it does not, then Hitler actually was doing good if he was doing what he preferred. Post Hac Vice tried to summarize my argument Read More ›

Generally, people who know them know that octopus/some squid are smart, compared to many similar life forms, but the mechanics by which their intelligence is mediated was unknown. Now, from Nature: Octopus genome holds clues to uncanny intelligence: DNA sequence expanded in areas otherwise reserved for vertebrates. With its eight prehensile arms lined with suckers, camera-like eyes, elaborate repertoire of camouflage tricks and spooky intelligence, the octopus is like no other creature on Earth. Added to those distinctions is an unusually large genome, described in Nature1 on 12 August, that helps to explain how a mere mollusc evolved into an otherworldly being. … Surprisingly, the octopus genome turned out to be almost as large as a human’s and to contain Read More ›