David Warren comes to some interesting conclusions on the decay of current legacy media, conclusions that you can mull over for yourself. But these are the observations I chiefly wish to note: Nothing is new under the sun, not even decay, but the slide of mainstream journalism — not merely into partisanship, but into the assertion of falsehoods and the hiding of truth — has become a public issue. Polls show declining public trust: Journalists often rank below politicians. More to the point, I have myself noticed the collapse of standards from within the trade, over several decades.One way to put this would be: “There are no broadsheets any more, only tabloids.” News media have become indistinguishable from the media Read More ›

Apparently you have, … if you are not designed. Over at MSNBC.com, Alan Boyle asked yesterday, What would happen if we found out that we are not alone in the universe? Or, on the flip side, what would happen if we decided that we really were alone? Experts provided updated answers to those age-old questions, from a scientific as well as a religious angle, during a Sunday session at the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s annual meeting. But one of the most intriguing questions had more of a personal spin: What would you ask E.T. if you had the chance? Well, what would you ask, readers? And, as for what would happen if we decided that we really Read More ›

I am currently reading New Zealand journalist Suzan Mazur’s excellent Altenberg 16, which, among other things, gives you a good look at the underbelly of the Darwin racket. For example, at the Rockefeller University Evolution Symposium (May 2009), Mazur, who has interviewed a number of prominent scientists who think that self-organization is one form of evolution, asked Eugenie Scott of NCSE (the Darwin lobby) why self-organization was not represented in the books that NCSE was promoting. She responded that people confuse self-organization with intelligent design and that is why NCSE has not been supportive. (P. 101) But later, NCSE responded “NCSE does not recommend specific textbook publishers to ensure that their treatment evolution is extensive, pervasive, and up-to-date, and we oppose Read More ›

Here, Matt Kaplan explains (Nature News, 20 February 2011), Twenty years ago the palaeontological community gasped as geoscientists revealed evidence for the oldest bacterial fossils on the planet. Now, a report in Nature Geoscience1 shows that the filament structures that were so important in the fossil descriptions are not remnants of ancient life, but instead composed of inorganic material. The finding … is not stirring feelings of jubilation. “After nearly 30 years of effort at pushing evidence for life to or beyond 3.5 billion years ago, we are reminded that the ancient record is more fraught with complications than we ever thought,” says geologist Stephen Mojzsis at the University of Colorado, Boulder. But hope springs eternal: Although the filamentous structures Read More ›

A friend put me onto a “neat” summation of the “Hox paradox” in Bioscience last year: “Taken together, these findings presented researchers with a paradox. On one hand, the basic machinery underlying early development, such as the Hox genes, is widely conserved among divergent phyla. But at the same time, these genes also underlie the development of distinct morphologies between more closely related species. The resolution of this “Hox paradox” is that the general role of many genes in patterning the embryo has been preserved, but the precise pattern of their expression or their influence on later events of development have both changed. These modifications are possible only through changes in regulatory interactions, whether mediated through changes in protein or Read More ›

From ScienceDaily (Feb. 18, 2011) this news, “Promise of Genomics Research Needs a Realistic View, Experts Urge”

Unrealistic expectations about genomic medicine have created a “bubble” that needs deflating before it puts the field’s long term benefits at risk, four policy experts write in the current issue of the journal Science.

Ten years after the deciphering of the human genetic code was accompanied by over-hyped promises of medical breakthroughs, it may be time to reevaluate funding priorities to better understand how to change behaviors and reap the health benefits that would result.

You mean, the dead shall not rise again in this life?

And,practically speaking,

After all, while advances are being made in personalized medicine through the tools of pharmacogenetics, “the most powerful predictor of drug efficacy is whether a patient takes the drug.”

In my own country, tens of thousands end up in the emerg every year due to beggaring around with powerful prescribed meds.

Reality check: If it’s powerful enough to help you, when taken right, it’s …

In many diseases a large number of genes play a role, making meaningful predictions difficult both for individuals and in public health.

To say nothing of all the other factors, like environment and age of first onset. Now this zinger: Read More ›

Recently, I purchased and read Daniel Fairbanks’ relatively recent (February 2010) book, Relics of Eden — The Powerful Evidence of Evolution in Human DNA. There was a time when I would have been compelled by many of the arguments for common descent articulated in that book. I have always been skeptical, in large measure, of the proposition of the unlimited causal efficacy which is often so casually ascribed to the neo-Darwinian synthesis. But there was a time when I would have strongly favoured a paradigm consistent with common descent. More recently, however, a deeper delve into the scientific literature has given me cause for caution with respect to these types of argumentation, as compelling to the uninitiated as they may at first glance superficially appear. As with many modern popular science writers, Fairbanks provides a gripping read, and is a very effective communicator to a lay audience. Having read the book, however, it quickly became clear that, on multiple levels, Fairbanks was seemingly out of touch with much of the scientific literature which succeeds in providing potent counter-examples to many of the arguments for common descent which he raises (an example of which is detailed below).

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… this is the result:

The Neuromarketing lesson from this research is that if you want to be perceived as more flexible in dealing with a prospect while at the same time increasing their flexibility in reaching a deal, take these steps:Seat them in a soft chair.

If you hand them anything, avoid hard objects.

As I described in Heat Up Sales – With Coffee! (not coincidentally, based on research by John Bargh), offer them a warm beverage.

The combined effect will let you relate better emotionally to your prospect, and increase the chance of reaching a deal.

On a side note, this topic relates to the broader concept of neuroarchitecture. Will architects and designers begin to formally include findings from neuroscience and behavior research in their projects.

Okay, so now you know, suckers.

Rules for prospects: Read More ›

I see where Danish ID proponent Leif Asmark Jensen has put out Rethinking Darwin: A Vedic Study of Darwinism and Intelligent Design (Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, 2011). Jensen I Hare Krishna, and his book offers a Hindu perspective. It includes some chapters by well-known ID theorists as well as his own work. Rethinking is a good companion and comparison piece to the book put out by Hungarian Hindus, Nature’s IQ which provides much excellent photography, including an ant carrying a computer chip. From the little I know about Hinduism, I can’t see it producing a materialist perspective on life, and there would be no reason not to assume that a cosmic mind accounts for design in nature.

“Foresight is an imperfect thing — all prevision in economics is imperfect. And, even more serious, the economist in high office is under a strong personal and political compulsion to predict wrongly. That is partly because of the temptation to predict what is wanted, and it is better, not worse, economic performance that is always wanted.” –John Kenneth Galbraith, MONEY (1975), pp. 269-70. This quote is relevant to the ID debate. People in high scientific office, whether in the straight-up secular world or in evangelical educational circles, would look bad if they were seen as endorsing a grand scientific theory, for which they are on record as saying that this theory contributes to science’s caché, that ends up being thoroughly Read More ›

Ian O’Neill tells us, “Milky way stuffed with 50 billion alien worlds” Discover (Feb 19, 2011) Making estimates may sound trivial, but it does put the search for ET into perspective. There’s at least 50 billion worlds, which have fostered the development of basic lifeforms? How many have allowed advanced civilizations to evolve?If there are any space-faring alien races out there, “the next question is why haven’t they visited us?” Borucki asked. He responded with: “I don’t know.” I wonder if we’ll ever know. One problem I have with statistics that start with a current sample of one is that it strikes me as difficult to compute the odds that there are two, no matter what the sample size is. Read More ›

At Philosophy Now, Christopher Norris offers more evidence that Stephen Hawking should either take courses in philosophy or refrain from commenting on its supposed uselessness: Stephen Hawking recently fluttered the academic dovecotes by writing in his new book The Grand Design – and repeating to an eager company of interviewers and journalists – that philosophy as practised nowadays is a waste of time and philosophers a waste of space. More precisely, he wrote that philosophy is ‘dead’ since it hasn’t kept up with the latest developments in science, especially theoretical physics. [ … ]Predictably enough the journalists went off to find themselves media-friendly philosophers – not hard to do nowadays – who would argue the contrary case in a suitably Read More ›

Elsevier has just published Granville Sewell’s “A Second Look at the Second Law” (Applied Mathematics Letters, June 2011): ABSTRACT: It is commonly argued that the spectacular increase in order which has occurred on Earth does not violate the second law of thermodynamics because the Earth is an open system, and anything can happen in an open system as long as the entropy increases outside the system compensate the entropy decreases inside the system. However, if we define ‘‘X-entropy’’ to be the entropy associated with any diffusing component X (for example, X might be heat), and, since entropy measures disorder, ‘‘X-order’’ to be the negative of X-entropy, a closer look at the equations for entropy change shows that they not only Read More ›

From Tina Hesman Saey, “Helpful Mutations Didn’t Sweep Through Early Humans”, Wired Science (February 18, 2011) we learn Humans probably didn’t get swept up in evolution.Scientists have favored a model of evolution in which beneficial gene mutations quickly and dramatically sweep through a population due to the evolutionary advantages they confer. Such mutations would become nearly universal in a population. But this selective sweep model may not be accurate for humans, a new study indicates. Human evolution likely followed a more subtle and complicated path, say population geneticists Molly Przeworski of the University of Chicago and Guy Sella of Hebrew University of Jerusalem and colleagues. [ … ] Good evidence does exist for some mutations that did undergo selective sweeps Read More ›

Further to Templeton Foundation’s attempts to make nice with Darwinists and where it gets them, Jerry “the inimitable” Coyne comments further on his anti-Templeton, no-accommodation-between-science-and-religion opinions stated there – strongly endorsing same opinions. He asks a darn good question too, “[W]hat the bloody hell does “progress in spirituality” mean?” Ah, a question I can answer. The classical spiritual direction literature on this subject is formidable, but one might usefully start with John of the Cross. However, where Templeton is concerned, the phrase probably means more grant applicants offering increasingly scrooier projects. By the way, Coyne’s combox is quite the little hatefest, I see. If you ever wondered whether new atheists like each other, have a brief look. It’s harmful to Read More ›