Same ”Mathematx” prof, same bilge, more publicity, but no action: A U.S. professor who teaches future public school teachers will “argue for a movement against objects, truths, and knowledge” in a keynote to the Mathematics Education and Society conference this coming January, says her talk description. “The relationship between humans, mathematics, and the planet has been one steeped too long in domination and destruction,” the talk summary says. “What are appropriate responses to reverse such a relationship?” We can already guess University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign professor Rochelle Gutierrez’s answer, from reviewing her published writings and comments. Her plans for “an insurgency by the people” to subvert public institutions and American self-rule through “ethnomathematics” will knock your eyebrows off your Read More ›

Recently, we noted the peculiar state of affairs by which atheists, who appear to dominate Top Science, have disproportionately progressive views and yet seem oblivious to the current progressive war on science. Here are two more shots at math: Rochelle Gutiérrez Title: Mathematx: Towards a way of Being The relationship between humans, mathematics, and the planet has been one steeped too long in domination and destruction. What are appropriate responses to reverse such a relationship? How do we do work now (inside and outside of schools) that will reverberate and touch the lives of future generations? Drawing upon Indigenous worldviews to reconceptualize what mathematics is and how it is practiced, I argue for a movement against objects, truths, and knowledge Read More ›

This is a very complex subject, so as usual I will try to stick to the essentials to make things as clear as possible, while details can be dealt with in the discussion. It is difficult to define exactly the role of the Ubiquitin System. It is usually considered mainly a pathway which regulates protein degradation, but in reality its functions are much wider than that. In essence, the US is a complex biological system which targets many different types of proteins for different final fates. The most common “fate” is degradation of the protein. In that sense, the Ubiquitin System works together with another extremely complex cellular system, the proteasome. In brief, the Ubiquitin System “marks” proteins for degradation, Read More ›

No help for materialism. – Reflecting light off satellite backs up Wheeler’s quantum theory thought experiment – October 26, 2017 – Bob Yirka: Excerpt: Back in the late 1970s, physicist Johan Wheeler tossed around a thought experiment in which he asked what would happen if tests allowed researchers to change parameters after a photon was fired, but before it had reached a sensor for testing—would it somehow alter its behavior mid-course? He also considered the possibilities as light from a distant quasar made its way through space, being lensed by gravity. Was it possible that the light could somehow choose to behave as a wave or a particle depending on what scientists here on Earth did in trying to measure Read More ›

In response to our recent reprise of “Are viruses alive?”, a friend writes to draw our attention to a passage from Carl Woese (1928-2012), who first identified the archaea as a separate kingdom of life: in a paper: During the past few years, an even more astonishing example has come to light, prompted in part by the attempt to find the cause of colony collapse disorder—the dramatic reduction in the honey bee population (in the United States, losses of adult workers were 23% during 2006- 2007 and 36% during 2007–2008) (124). One of the potential pathogenic causes, the Israeli acute paralysis virus, was found to be able to integrate harmlessly its genome into that of the bee host, and thus Read More ›

From Denise Chow, the list includes Hillary Clinton Hillary Clinton has a long political history advocating for children and families, gender equality and health care reform, but in 2016, during her bid to secure the Democratic nomination for president, Clinton turned her attention to the paranormal. In a radio interview and then later on “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” Clinton said she wants to review files about UFOs and the mysterious Area 51 site in Nevada and make them public. “I would like us to go into those files and hopefully make as much of that public as possible,” she told Kimmel. “If there’s nothing there, let’s tell people there’s nothing there.” Area 51, located about 80 miles (130 kilometers) northwest of Read More ›

As new techniques arise in sequence analysis, as well as in genetic engineering, new frontiers open up to test the direction and power of natural selection. A new such experiment has been performed by a team including Joe Thornton. Here’s the opening sentences from the paper: We generated a large alignment of ADH sequences, determined the best-fit evolutionary model, inferred the maximum likelihood phylogeny and calculated the posterior probability distribution of amino acid states at key ancestral nodes. We synthesized coding sequences for the maximum a posteriori sequence of AncMS, which was inferred with high confidence and only one ambiguously reconstructed amino acid (Fig. 1b, Supplementary Fig. 1), and for an alternative version of AncMS (Alt-AncMS), which contained the other plausible Read More ›

. . . that is, the design inference vs. the broader scientific investigation of a world of life and cosmos that are infused with complex, functionally specific information and complex, functional organisation? In the Turing test thread, just now, I raised this issue in responding to GP and SA . . . and I think this is worth headlining: ______________________ >>Perhaps, it is time to look at ID in a micro sense and a macro/general sense — a fashion that is now 100+ years old in the sciences, with Relativity as the leader (as is proper and fitting). The micro theory of ID is focussed on the design inference and its empirical/analytical warrant. This is the core, when can we Read More ›

Our Physicist and Computer Scientist from Russia — and each element of that balance is very relevant — is back, with more.  MOAR, in fact. This time, he tackles the “terror-fitted depths” of thermodynamics and biosemiotics. (NB: Those needing a backgrounder may find an old UD post here and a more recent one here, helpful.) More rich food for thought for the science-hungry masses, red hot off the press: _________________ >>On the Second Law of Thermodynamics in the context of the origin of life Rudolf Clausius (1822-1888) This note was motivated by my discussions with Russian interlocutors. One of UD readers here has asked me to produce a summary of those discussions, which I am happy to do now. I Read More ›

Professor Naomi Oreskes, the author of an influential 2004 study titled, Beyond the Ivory Tower: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change, has penned a remarkable piece in The Guardian, in which she accuses top climate scientists of “climate denialism,” for publicly declaring that we need to expand nuclear energy to stop global warming, as renewable sources won’t meet our energy needs. “Climate denialism” is a term which smacks of a witch-hunt. But in this case, Professor Oreskes has bitten off more than she can chew. (H/t Eric Worrall, Judith Curry.) Oreskes defies the consensus: most serious reviewers agree with the pro-nuclear scientists whom she criticizes A couple of weeks ago, four leading climate scientists – Dr. James Hansen (professor at Read More ›

It is time to move on from preliminary logical considerations to key foundational issues relevant to design theory. Of these, the challenge of complexity, information and functionally specific organisation is first and foremost. Hence this post. We live in a technological age, and one that increasingly pivots around information. One in which we are surrounded by trillions of technological entities showing how what we can describe as functionally specific, complex organisation and/or associated information (FSCO/I for short) is a characteristic result and highly reliable indicator of intelligently directed configuration. That is, of design. For simple illustration, we may examine the exploded view of a 6500 C3 baitcasting reel: . . . which shows the characteristic pattern of a network of Read More ›

Kirk Durston writes Biological life requires thousands of different protein families, about 70% of which are ‘globular’ proteins, each with a 3-dimensional shape that is unique to each family of proteins. An example is shown in the picture at the top of this post. This 3D shape is necessary for a particular biological function and is determined by the sequence of the different amino acids that make up that protein. In other words, it is not biology that determines the shape, but physics. Sequences that produce stable, functional 3D structures are so rare that scientists today do not attempt to find them using random sequence libraries. Instead, they use information they have obtained from reverse-engineering biological proteins to intelligently design Read More ›

In my initial post about the Pope’s environmental encyclical, Laudato si’, I highlighted its positive aspects: its affirmation of human uniqueness, its rejection of biocentrism and its firm insistence that each species of living creature was designed by God to play its own special part in the order of Nature. The Pope also rejects population control, but what he fails to realize is that population growth cannot be sustained simply by living in harmony with Nature. If we are to continue growing, we need to redefine our whole relationship with Nature. While we can never be totally independent of Nature, we must use our human intelligence to reduce our dependence on Nature, in order to prevent our ecological footprint from Read More ›

A few days back, sparc objected: How often have we seen this very thread before? I am not interested in fishing but even I realize that I’ve seen the Abu 6500 C3 reel before (according to Google it appears 42 times on this site). Just opening another thread will not bring the stillborn FSCO/I to life. Didn’t you read what WE had to say about it? And what about Dembski, Meyer, Behe, Marks et al.? Do you think they even consider FSCO/I? FSCO/I just dead and never lived. The substance of this is of course that I have repeatedly used an exploded view of the Abu 6500 C3 reel: . . . as an apt, concrete example of the hard, Read More ›

It seems to be time to call in the energy audit police. Let us explain, in light of an ongoing sharp exchange on “compensating” arguments in the illusion of organising energy thread. This morning Piotr, an objector (BTW — and this is one time where expertise base is relevant —  a Linguist), at 288 dismissed Niwrad: Stop using the term “2nd law” for something that is your private misconception. You’ve got it all backwards . . . This demands correction, as Niwrad has done little more than appropriately point out that functionally specific complex organisation and associated information cannot cogently be explained away by making appeals to irrelevant energy flows elsewhere. Organisation is not properly to be explained on spontaneous Read More ›