2015

Okay, this is the last thing I (O’Leary for News) have to say on the subject of doctors and evolution, and fitness for public office: Once, about forty years ago, one of my kids was hit on the head by a car. She was taken immediately to the local ER. I flagged down a cruiser to follow. Even in those days, one could get immediate updates by cruiserphone (… so far okay … so far okay … um, check with medical resident … ) So the cops and I rushed through the ER doors. It wasn’t hard to find her; I could hear her screaming from four emergency rooms away. Later, a medical attendant told me to carry her upstairs Read More ›

I passed by and noted a dismissive comment (or a few) regarding US Presidential candidate, retired neurosurgeon Dr Ben Carson: CASE A: he’s running for President of the United States of America; he’s a politician who’s put religion and science into his platform. He willingly exposed himself to criticism and does not deserve a pass because he did good things as a surgeon. CASE B: Dr Carson. He is clearly a talented physician, but get him talking about evolution or cosmology and he turns into Ken Ham. Looks like a classic case of willful ignorance to me; he should know better. Is that acceptable for the president of a world power? CASE C: Surgery is to science what carpentry is Read More ›

When John Ray refused to conform to the 1662 Act of Uniformity—aimed mainly at the Puritans—and so was forced to leave his position at Cambridge University, he roamed Europe for three years doing what he loved: observing nature. Ray and his companions were in for a surprise: unfathomable diversity. They found thousands of different kinds of insects, animals and plants. Every place had a different flora and fauna, and with different interactions. Life did not seem to follow the kind of compact formulas Isaac Newton was discovering for the new physics. With the overthrow of Aristotelianism, physics was becoming more parsimonious in line with Occam’s Razor. But biology was headed in the opposite direction. Were all these organic life forms Read More ›

Why does anyone care what any US Prez thinks about evolution? If it is really a science topic, shouldn’t it be like the Large Hadron Collider or Pluto’s  geography? So how is it the Prez’s business? Why ask him in particular? Doesn’t he mainly deal with domestic and foreign crises? I first wondered about this when I saw four hairstyle models (oh, excuse me!, highly paid US broadcast media reporters) puzzling over former prez  contender Scott Walker’s views on “evolution.” People who, I realized, knew nothing whatever of the issues and would consider it their professional duty not to know anything. Their duty is just to look concerned. You bought, you paid. Fine. Glad you like the hair. If it Read More ›

Ben Carson, pediatric neurosurgeon, saved children’s lives. Here is a typical Darwin follower’s’ response, demanding worship of their idol: So imagine it’s 1970 or so, and you’re young Ben Carson, sitting in a biology class at Yale University. With your sharp mind and strong study habits, you don’t have much problem understanding the material, grasping the copious evidence underlying the theory of evolution, all the fossils going back millions of years, how it all fits together in an endless process that affects everything from a towering redwood down to a microscopic virus. And yet, the whole thing sounds like an attack on the beliefs about the universe you were taught your whole life from your family and your church. How Read More ›

From 365 Million-Year-Old Fossil Catches Trilobite in the Act of Molting: In shedding it’s armored exoskeleton, the fossilized creature was molting. Molting is without a doubt one of nature’s most incredible acts. Every so often, certain creatures cast off parts of their bodies in a process of biological renewal. Cats and dogs do it with their fur (often shedding hair all over your sofa). Chickens do it with their feathers. Snakes do it with their skin. Most remarkably, many arthropods, including spiders, crabs, and insects, discard their entire exoskeleton! Ripping themselves out of their bodies in an unnerving and alien manner, they emerge revitalized and renewed, leaving behind a near-complete husk of their former selves. This happened 365 million years Read More ›

Some claim we can. We are told, It is important to keep in mind that the multiverse view is not actually a theory, it is rather a consequence of our current understanding of theoretical physics. This distinction is crucial. We have not waved our hands and said: “Let there be a multiverse”. Instead the idea that the Universe is perhaps one of infinitely many is derived from current theories like quantum mechanics and string theory. Any time people must talk this way, they have a bad theory. Popular, but bad. But the critical question is, what if they discovered it wasn’t true? Would they just keep the baffle going? Well, let’s see … Follow UD News at Twitter!

Here. Gut reactions guide our judgements and behaviour, but those reactions, developed over millions of years of living in small groups, aren’t up to the grand challenges that face us in an interconnected world of billions of people. On the road ahead, this is a recipe for tyranny everywhere: Traditional moral instincts don’t work; we need some brand new scheme. Sound familiar? The main thing to see is, these people are serious. Follow UD News at Twitter!

From ScienceDaily: New research from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University has found that pairs of rabbitfishes will cooperate and support each other while feeding. While such behaviour has been documented for highly social birds and mammals, it has previously been believed to be impossible for fishes. “We found that rabbitfish pairs coordinate their vigilance activity quite strictly, thereby providing safety for their foraging partner,” says Dr Simon Brandl from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies. More. … “By showing that fishes, which are commonly considered to be cold, unsocial, and unintelligent, are capable of negotiating reciprocal cooperative systems, we provide evidence that cooperation may not be as exclusive as Read More ›

While it is doubtful whether Pope Francis’ speech to the United Nations actually ascribed rights to Nature, the Pope clearly denied that humans have the right to harm Nature: doing so harms humanity, he said. I believe this kind of thinking is dangerous for two reasons: it ignores the lessons of history and it will inevitably stymie human development in poor countries. (To give credit where credit is due, though, I was heartened that the Pope saw fit to mention the unborn in his latest speech – something he didn’t do in his speech to Congress.) What did the Pope actually say? For the benefit of readers, here is the relevant passage from Pope Francis’ United Nations speech (Al Jazeera Read More ›

You know, separate human species and all that. From BBC News: The conventional wisdom had been that Neanderthals did not have the capacities or technology that allowed them to capture fast-moving prey. Why was that the conventional wisdom? Does it not belong to an anthropology that is utterly without evidence and should be classified as wrong, along with eugenics? In order to validate Darwinism (fourth rate, tax funded science)? Only our own ancestors had these abilities, among them the skills to catch birds. Equipped with a package of skills, which included the exploitation of marine resources, our ancestors spread across the world from their African home following coastlines. Neanderthals are part of our ancestry. They aren’t a “separate species.” In Read More ›

Sounds like science fiction. But from ScienceDaily: New theory of stealth dark matter may explain universe’s missing mass A group of national particle physicists known as the Lattice Strong Dynamics Collaboration, led by a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory team, has combined theoretical and computational physics techniques and used the Laboratory’s massively parallel 2-petaflop Vulcan supercomputer to devise a new model of dark matter. It identifies it as naturally “stealthy” (i.e. like its namesake aircraft, difficult to detect) today, but would have been easy to see via interactions with ordinary matter in the extremely high-temperature plasma conditions that pervaded the early universe. “These interactions in the early universe are important because ordinary and dark matter abundances today are strikingly similar in Read More ›

Thinking about taking CHY 431—Structure and Mechanism in Biological Chemistry next semester at the University of Maine? If so you likely will be fed junk evolutionary science like this page:  Read more

No kidding. Further to New Scientist commands!: Adjust moral compass: Line up and listen (we’ll be hearing way more ), the ever obliging mag chimes in. We can’t rely on science alone to make us better people But even the tabloids know better than that. Our sense of right and wrong is often inadequate for modern challenges. But the combination of rationality and humanity can lead us to more effective morality Nope. What is lacking in these fatuous claims is free will, which most of their go-for-quotes people don’t likely  believe in. One would think centuries of bloodshed in favour of more “scientific” regimes would lead us to doubt. How come no one ever says more “evidence-based” regimes? Follow UD News Read More ›

… In an historic edict, Pope Francis warned that failing to act would have “grave consequences”, the brunt of which would fall on the world’s poorest people. His words came as a stark reminder that global climate change is among the most pressing moral dilemmas of the 21st century. It joins a long list. He could have added spiralling inequality, persistent poverty, death from preventable diseases and nuclear proliferation to the ethical challenges that define our times. Some are newer than others, but all could plausibly be fixed. The fact we’re struggling with all of them raises a troubling question: does our moral compass equip us to deal with the threats we face … One must apparently pay for more Read More ›