New one..

Como bien sabéis, desde Efecto Corconte siempre hemos sido inquebrantábles  con los páganos y blasfemos que han osado criticar las creencias de nuestra Santa Madre Iglesia. Por eso, qué mejor fecha que esta, aniversario de la publicación de la Biblia Apócrifa (llamada por los progres “El origen de las especies”, como si hubiese duda de dicho origen) para conmemorar la lucha contra Darwin y sus acólitos. Os dejo con un hermoso video que relata de la mejor forma posible el amor por nuestro señor.

Dramatic tension is essential for holding the interest of jack russells

Years ago, when my daughter and I first began drawing faces together, she discovered how easily tears could be added, and she would implore me, “Mommy, draw girl crying!” and I would do the round circle head, the eyes, the down-turned mouth, and last of all, the tears. My daughter is, and was then, a happy, sociable, energetic child, but during that phase she would have watched Bambi every day if I let her. Among her favourite books were the ones I mentioned in my last post, which have happy endings but go to dark places along the way — the threat of being eaten or embedded in stone. Such stories are still the ones she wants to hear again and again, long after the cute, sweet, light stories have been shelved and forgotten.

Babar is riding happily on his mother's back when...

I like to muse about why children want these stories; when (if) they can be too much; how parents should handle the emotions they expose, and the inevitable questions they instigate. For instance, it took my daughter a long time to understand what the gunshot meant in Bambi, and to know what to do with the knowledge. When we read Babar, the story of an elephant whose mother is killed by a hunter, she immediately stopped me and asked, “Do hunters take moms away? Are there hunters in Toronto?” And for the rest of the book, she kept flipping back to that page where Babar’s mother was shot.

For weeks after the Bambi penny dropped, she’d ask, “Did you lock the door?” as soon as we got home. And then I started to hear her role-playing with her stuffed animals, and having one say to the other, “Your mother is not coming back. Your mother is never coming back.” (For a time I worried, but she is turning out just fine.)

Bambi, A Life in the Woods, by Felix Salten

First released in 1942, the movie Bambi holds up well today, and the book, originally published in Austria in 1923, is considered a classic and often referred to as one of the first environmental novels. Apparently its author, Felix Salten, wrote the story with an adult audience in mind, and indeed the Wall Street Journal reported that “you’ll find it in the children’s section at the library, a perfect place for this 293-page volume, packed as it is with blood-and-guts action, sexual conquest and betrayal.”

Salten was in his fifties by the time he wrote Bambi, A Life in the Woods, and had been writing plays, short stories, novels, and essays for years. But his books were banned by the Nazi regime in 1936, and as a Jew he was forced to leave Austria for Switzerland, where he remained until his death in 1945 — just three years after Disney released the animated version of his story, featuring a white-tailed deer rather than a roe, but retaining the heartbreaking scene in which “your mother can’t be with you anymore.”

Plate I from Darwin's Expression of the Emotions

I once met a grandmother who told me she didn’t think her toddler grandson should read How the Grinch Stole Christmas because she believed it was best to expose him only to happiness at his tender age. So that he would only be happy, I guess. But not even babies are “only happy.” In fact, you might argue that happiness is one of the more rare baby emotions. It takes weeks for a baby to smile; the wait is longer for laughter. (Said Charles Darwin, upon observing his own babies for The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, “In this gradual acquirement, by infants, of the habit of laughing, we have a case in some degree analogous to that of weeping. As practice is requisite with the ordinary movements of the body, such as walking, so it seems to be with laughing and weeping. The art of screaming, on the other hand, from being of service to infants, has become finely developed from the first days.”)

Actually — if one is looking for good messages in children’s literature, the Grinch is a stellar example. This is one of the rare Christmas stories in which the protagonist comes around not out of self interest or self preservation, but simply because he is moved by goodness. But I’ll save that for a December post.

A teoria evolutiva que alterou os rumos da ciência. As ideias evolucionistas são bem antigas, escrito por filósofos na Grécia antiga. No entanto, somente entre os séculos XVIII e XIX que alguns naturalistas passaram a adotar essas ideias. Começou com o françês Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. Ele lançou, em 1908, na obra Philosophie Zoologique, a primeira teoria para explicar a evolução Biológica. Em seguida o importante estudioso Charles Robert Darwin também naturalista que viajou o mundo em um navio inglês chamado H.S.S Beagle. Durante cinco anos de viagem visitou a Autrália e a América do Sul, inclusive o Brasil, além de vários arquipélogos tropicais. Ao retornar sua terra natal Londres (Inglaterra), Darwin passou a estudar o material coletado e as anotações realizadas. Esses estudos convenceram de que as espécies de seres vivos se modificam no decorrer do tempo e a força que promove essa transfomação é a seleção natural. Esses pontos são confirmados pela ciência conteporânea e serve de base até os dias de hoje.

No ano do bicentenário do nascimento de Cherles Darwin e dos 150 anos da publicação da obra “A origem das espécies” o Museu de zoologia da USP, no Ipiranga, apresenta a mostra “Charles Darwin: evolução para todos”. Em cartaz até o final de fevereiro.

A mostra reúne elementos, e réplicas de fósseis, fotografias, objetos diversos, mapas, livros, documentos, filmes além de raridades e exemplares científicos que pertence ao Museu.

Não percam a oportunidade de conhecer um pouco mais sobre as grandes aventuras e descobertas do grande Darwin. Ele foi o primeiro  a dizer que o homem é parente do símios, isso causou tanta confusão  que até hoje leigos acreditam que nossa espécie originou-se de macacos.

O Museu de zoologia tem o acervo mais completo da fauna da região Neotropical do palneta que abrange da Patagônia ao México. Possui mais de 8 mil exemplares de animais.

 Museu de Zoologia da Universidade de São Paulo

Av. Nazaré, 481, Ipiranga – telefone 2065-8100

Horário de funcionamento: terça a domingo das 10 às 17 hrs

Ingresso R$4 e meia R$2 menores de 6 anos e maiores de 60 entrada gratuita.

Kurt Stüber vom MPI für Züchtungsforschung in Köln hat haufenweise alte wissenschaftliche Bücher eingescannt, zum Beispiel solche von Charles Darwin, Ernst Haeckel, Gregor Mendel, Alexander von Humboldt und Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck. Seine virtuelle BioLib ist ein wunderbares Beispiel, wie ein kulturelles Gemeingut öffentlich verfügbar gemacht werden kann. Man kann nur hoffen, dass Stübers Aktivitäten öffentlich gefördert und weiter ausgeweitet werden. Eine wunderbare Ressource! Viele der Bücher sind hier auch als pdf Files zugänglich. Schade, dass die Seite durch den Satz “© Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften e.V., Munich. All rights reserved.” geziert wird, was ja nun wahrlich nicht erforderlich wäre – oder was will die MPG hier schützen?

Für mich ist diese schöne Internetseite ein Grund mehr, die Petition von Lars Fischer Wissenschaft und Forschung – Kostenloser Erwerb wissenschaftlicher Publikationen zu unterstützen.

Perhaps we humans are sort of cancer on the world.. we are destroying the planet, we are destroying ourselves… pretty much like some terrible virus.. and religion is the controlling system on the virus(Us).. what drives us to destroy ourselves and our host, the earth, religion tells us there is another place/host where we can go..AFTER DEATH 

Menurut rumah lelang yang menjual buku karangan Charles Darwin “ The Origin of Species”, buku ini ditemukan di toilet milik salah satu warga di Britania selatan.

Buku, yang pertama kali dicetak pada tahun 1859, dibeli dengan harga murah di sebuah toko sekitar 40 tahun yang lalu. Dan selanjutnya buku tersebut disimpan di toilet yang dihususkan untuk para tamu.

Buku ini akan dijual bertepatan dengan hari raya yang ke 150 tahun, memperingati hari kelahiran teori evolusi. Buku ini adah buku yang pertama kali dicetak, dan akan dijual sekitar 66000euro atau 99000 dolar.

I was going to write about something else today, something to go in line with the Thanksgiving Americans are celebrating this weekend (don’t they know it’s in October? ), but instead came across this interview on my morning stop at Atheist Central.

I found it interesting.

Ray Comfort was recently interviewed at The Friendly Atheist about his distribution of Charles Darwin’s book, On Origin of Species, to university students on Nov. 18. To date, some 175,000 copies have been given away. It was also revealed in the interview that a third printing of a more million copies is taking place.

You can read the interview here.

As well, you are more than welcome to comment here at this site. My request, however, is for no language and for things to remain civil. Thanks.

“A menudo decía que era imposible ser buen observador sin ser a la vez un teórico activo. Esto me devuelve a lo que he dicho antes sobre su instinto para captar las excepciones: era como si estuviese cargado de un poder teorizador dispuesto a fluir hacia cualquier canal a la menor alteración, de tal forma que ningún hecho, por pequeño que fuera, podía evitar liberar un torrente de teoría, y en consecuencia la importancia del hecho se magnificaba. Así fue como se le ocurrieron naturalmente muchas teorías insostenibles. Por suerte, su riqueza de imaginación era equiparable a su poder de juzgar y condenar las ideas que se le ocurrían. Era justo con sus teorías; y nunca las condenaba a quedar desatendidas, y era por eso que estaba dispuesto a someter a examen lo que a mucha gente no le parecería merecedor de ser examinado. Eran las pruebas que él calificaba como “experimentos de loco”, y de las que disfrutaba en extremo. Como ejemplo mencionaré que al descubrir que los cotiledones de un determinado tipo de planta eran muy sensibles a las vibraciones de la mesa, pensó que a lo mejor percibían las vibraciones del sonido; en consecuencia me colocó junto a una planta y me hizo tocar el fagot”.

En Recuerdos de la vida cotidiana de mi padre de Sir Francis Darwin

On Monday at 8:30 am on the campus of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC I was approached by a bland-looking 20-something man who held up a book and asked, “Free book?”.  Coming from the US, my knee jerk reaction was to glare at this man who I assumed to be an Evangelical creep.  Continuing forth, I was approached by another man 20 paces away from the first, who had the same book and the same question.  After my glare, I heard him say to the back of my head, “Come on, it’s Charles Darwin.  It’s a good book.”

Exhibit A: Was this lamb duped?

After another 20 paces or so, I reached an intersection of two main campus roads which featured 3 more of these book givers.  It occurred to me that there had recently been various celebrations and educational events on UBC’s campus commemorating the 150th Anniversary of the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species.  Feeling like I had allowed the American Jesus nuts to harden me into an irrevocably cynical person, I approached one of the book people and asked, “What book is that?” To which she replied “Darwin’s On the Origin of Species“.  I asked her why they were giving it away and she said “Because it’s a great book and people should read it.”

I said, “Oh” and accepted a book from her, which I examined on the way to where I was going.  It appeared like a cheap, paperback edition of Darwin’s book  with the words “150th Anniversary Edition” under the title.  It was the kind of paperback that an organization would purchase if it wanted to give out copies of a book by the wheelbarrowful.  I showed up to my destination on campus feeling like I had learned a valuable lesson about trust.  I noticed other people had the book and I chatted with them about how cool it was that a group of Vancouverites decided to take it upon themselves to spread the ideas of one of the 19th Century’s greatest thinkers.

I felt ashamed that I had allowed my heart to harden to a point of not being able to trust anybody — even like-minded thinkers.  I thought, “I’m in Canada — a place that appreciates the scientific method and freethinkers and not so much the blind religious zealotry.  It’s okay to trust people here.”

Later that night, when I had returned home, I pulled out the copy of Darwin’s most famous work, and decided I would read the introduction.  Guess what?  Yep, you guessed it: there are assholes everywhere, even in Canada.  I had been the victim of a classic bait and switch.  These nuts had published an edition of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species with an introduction that flouts Intelligent Design and instructs the reader to give his or her soul to Jesus, lest he or she burn in hell forever.

Contemplating our next scheme, are we? Hmm?

The lesson, as always: keep your hearts hard and don’t accept free books on the street.

This close encounter happens to correspond with a very entertaining recent episode of This American Life, an NPR show that never ceases to titillate.  The episode is called “Bait and Switch” and it even features an interview with an ex-Evangelical discussing bait and switch tactics employed in the name of Jesus that are very similar to those I fell victim to recently on the campus of UBC.

I’m sorry, but if you need to trick people into listening to what you have to say, perhaps there’s a problem with what you’re saying.  Also, the last time I checked, lying was a sin.  You know, a falsehood, as in when one portrays Jesus (an African man) as white-skinned.

You can stream the “Bait and Switch” episode of This American Life by clicking here.  Enjoy, and Happy Thanksgiving!

[BBC] Galapagos- Nacidas del fuego
Hace unos cinco millones de años, las erupciones volcánicas iniciaron la formación de unas pequeñas islas en la inmensidad del Pacífico: las Galápagos. Las gigantescas tortugas de aspecto prehistórico, las iguanas, los piqueros y otros animales de una belleza excepcional desarrollan su actividad en una zona que parece olvidada por el tiempo. Y lo hacen igual que años atrás, cuando el naturalista Charles Darwin encontró aquí inspiración para formular sus teorías sobre la evolución. Patrimonio de la Humanidad, las Galápagos conservan una de las reservas biológicas más importantes del mundo.

Rare Darwin Edition Found

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091122/ap_en_bu/eu_britain_darwin

Yesterday, November 24th was evolution day: the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charle’s Darwin’s revolutionary book, The Origin of Species.

The book was one of the best books of 2009 according to the Times Literary Supplement. (H/T Uncommon Descent via Apologetics 315)

Excerpt:

Stephen C. Meyer’s Signature in the Cell: DNA and the evidence for Intelligent Design (HarperCollins) is a detailed account of the problem of how life came into existence from lifeless matter – something that had to happen before the process of biological evolution could begin. The controversy over Intelligent Design has so far focused mainly on whether the evolution of life since its beginnings can be explained entirely by natural selection and other non-purposive causes. Meyer takes up the prior question of how the immensely complex and exquisitely functional chemical structure of DNA, which cannot be explained by natural selection because it makes natural selection possible, could have originated without an intentional cause. He examines the history and present state of research on non-purposive chemical explanations of the origin of life, and argues that the available evidence offers no prospect of a credible naturalistic alternative to the hypothesis of an intentional cause. Meyer is a Christian, but atheists, and theists who believe God never intervenes in the natural world, will be instructed by his careful presentation of this fiendishly difficult problem.

Get Meyer’s book. This is the best thing that got published this year. Buy it!

Previous posts

• Stephen Meyer explains what intelligent design is in a CNN editorial.
• Stephen Meyer’s Signature in the Cell in top ten science books on Amazon.com
• Stephen Meyer debate against Michael Shermer on Lee Strobel’s TV show
• Stephen Meyer is debating Michael Shermer on November 30th, 2009 in Beverly Hills, CA

The Morton Arboretum has completed celebrating the 200th anniversary of the birth of one of biology’s key thinkers and experimenters.  We strove through a series of invited lectures to highlight some of his seminal work in various fields of study.  Dr. Robert Martin, Field Museum of Natural History, spoke on February 12 (Darwin’s birthday anniversary) to an overflow audience of about 60 people in the library’s beautiful reading room about primate and hominid evolution — his area of expertise.  Dr. Martin had a hand in designing the “Evolving Planet” permanent exhibit at the Field Museum, which is well worth several visits.

Drs. Peter Bernhardt and Retha Meier, on March 10, spoke to a very interested audience in our Cudahy Auditorium about their field of research — orchid biology, which field was pioneered in many ways by Darwin’s book on the “Fertilisation of orchids” that he published in 1862 (revised edition in 1877).  Bernhardt and Meier have worked on orchids and their pollinators on several continents, but primarily in Australia and the United States.  Bernhardt also has written several books of essays on plant topics, the latest being his Gods and Goddesses in the Garden (2008).  Check our online catalog for his other titles — he has a wry sense of humor that is not hidden in his essays.  Bernhardt and Meier teach at St. Louis University and hold adjunct research appointments at the Missouri Botanical Garden.

Professor Spencer Barrett, University of Toronto, gave a splendid presentation of research into one of plant biology’s mysterious set-ups in flowers for cross-pollination — called heterostyly.  Darwin researched into this area intensely, beginning with some of England’s most beloved group of plants — the primroses.  The oxlip. cowslip, and common primrose have flowers in some populations with short stamens and long styles (pin form), while others have long stamens and short styles (thrum form).  Darwin’s botany mentor at Cambridge, John Stevens Henslow, pointed this phenomenon out to young Charles, but it wasn’t until the latter began devoting himself to plant study that he worked out in great detail the “legitimate” and “illegitimate” crosses between these different flowers, as well as many other heterostyled plants.  When he came to study the odd situation in Lythrum salicaria (the hated loosestrife introduced into our marsh habitats that has caused such havoc with native vegetation), he wrote to Asa Gray at Harvard that his studies of its trimorphic flowers “practically drove me stark raving mad.”  Professor Barrett gave the audience many examples of dimorphic and trimorphic flowers across many different families.  Darwin reported his extensive researches in these areas in two books:

He claimed in his Autobiography that “no little discovery of mine ever gave me so much pleasure as the making out the meaning of heterostyled flowers.”

Rounding out the guest lecturers for the series we called “Trees of Life” was the September 24th talk by University of Chicago Professor Trevor Price, who had just published his book Speciation in Birds (2008) and who spoke about what “Darwin’s finches” tell us about bird evolution.  Then he elaborated on his work with colleagues and graduate students on a particular group of warbler species that live in and around the Himalaya Mountains.

Finally, on the evenings of 11 and 18 November, Michael Stieber gave two talks through the Education Program on Darwin’s life and works – emphasizing his work as a botanist — jumping off from the library exhibit on Darwin’s Flowers.

It is worth mentioning a couple of books that were very helpful in preparing these talks and the two Darwin exhibits this year.  You may recall that the first exhibit focused on Darwin’s exploratory preparation for his major research and writing — namely, “Humboldt and Darwin Explore New Worlds: 1799-1836″ — an exhibit with some lovely images from the library’s Suzette Morton Davidson Special Collections.  Besides Janet Browne’s two-volume biography of Darwin, and Darwin’s own Voyage of the Beagle, the following were particularly helpful to me: 1, Darwin and his Flowers – the Key to Natural Selection by Mea Allen (1977) & 2, The Aliveness of Plants : The Darwins at the Dawn of Plant Science by Peter Ayres (2008).  I highly recommend these books for browsing.

We at The Morton Arboretum do hope that the Darwin commemorative year will stimulate investigation into some of the life and works of Charles Darwin and of his successors.  Uncover for yourself the mysteries of plant life — especially of trees — sign up for a class at the arboretum or your own natural history resources near your home!  Remember all animal life depends on plant life — which is why it is so important to preserve natural areas & endangered species.  Without the diversity of plant life to sustain us via the ecological web we call the biosphere – we are doomed.  Simple as that!

Being firm believers that one can never (or almost never) speak enough about evolution, especially in view of the numerous and increasingly vocal groups whose world concept has insuffficiently, ahem, evolved to embrace the fact, we felt obliged, though admittedly tardively, to remind all of you that yesterday (24 november) was the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s masterwork “On the Origin of Species”.  Leaving others to debate whether or not someone else may have had the idea prior to Darwin, we’d like to point out an article written by the wise and lovely Olivia Judd entitled “An Evolve-By Date” in the Opinion (!!, see what we mean, not the Science) section of The New York Times (online).  Being exhaustively trained artist-scientists, as we are (right!), we would like to suggest that evolution is as much of an opinion as death is.  On second thought, that’s probably not a good comparison as it appears that there are many people who have an opinion about death, too.  In any case, evolution theory, in its contemporary form, though theory, is based on an enormous body of data derived from detailed study and is without any doubt the best framework for understanding the biological world in which we live.  So there.  Any questions?

In case you have just landed on our planet, or would like to learn a bit more about Darwin and evolution here is a Wikipedia link.

nothingisinvisible@live.fr

I organized my closet and desk. I moved away papers that had lost their importance, and brought out pens flowing fresh ink and blank post-its. I tacked colored unicorns and drawn memorabilia to my bulletin board. I moved books I had read to the top shelf of my closet, and filled the left corner of my desk with new books I plan on reading sometime soon.

All for what? The holiday season is approaching and with that, coming gifts from loving family members and friends. All come appreciated and appear to be hand selected. Mine; generally come in the form of books, they are the quickest way to my heart no matter what genre or author. Books, books, books to add to my plethora of books.

With all the classics that have been on shelves for years, and the new books that are virgins to my reading eyes, I cannot help but think which books would please me best.

In the latest months, I have found myself venturing in to the philosophy section of bookstores. My latest purchase: The Symposium by the thinker Plato. Now, in somewhat of a switch, I think I would like to take a journey through some Charles Darwin, or Greek plays, maybe something more religious and controversial or possibly something more recent such as Under the Dome.

Every title I see provokes my interest in one way or another, I could argue any which one to the death of whether or not I would actually read it. It may sit, but the sitting and being unread is still a comfort in my heart. At least I have another book, I say to myself, and I love the gift thoroughly.

As I shuffled through my books, my two young cats wrestled beneath my feet with no idea of the compromises I was making in my head. I made choices of what books I was most likely not going to read anytime soon; these books feel to the deepest but still very fluorescently lit part of my closet. Other books built the foundation for mediocre piles of books I thought I might read soon. Through each decision, Oscar and Char continued to bicker.

Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, published 150 years ago Tuesday, opened the book on our evolutionary past, which has since been traced by scientists back to fossil apes.

[Via National Geographic]

But where is evolution taking us? Will our descendants hurtle through space as relatively unchanged as the humans on the starship Enterprise? Will they be muscle-bound cyborgs? Or will they chose to digitize their consciousnesses—becoming electronic immortals?

And as odd as the possibilities may seem, it’s worth remembering that, 150 years ago, the ape-to-human scenario in On the Origin of Species struck many as nothing so much as monkey business.

(Related pictures: “Evolution vs. Intelligent Design: Six Bones of Contention.”)

PREDICTION ONE
Human Evolution Is Dead

“Because we have evolved, it’s natural to imagine we will continue to do so, but I think that’s wrong,” anthropologist Ian Tattersall of New York’s American Museum of Natural History said in an email.

“Everything we know about evolutionary change suggests that genetic innovations are only likely to become fixed in small, isolated populations,” he said. For example, Darwin’s famous Galápagos finches each evolved from their mainland ancestor to fit a unique habitat on the isolated islands in the Pacific.

(Take a Darwin quiz.)

Natural selection, as outlined in On the Origin of Species, occurs when a genetic mutation—say, resulting in a spine suited to upright walking—is passed down through generations, because it affords some benefit. Eventually the mutation becomes the norm.

But if populations aren’t isolated, crossbreeding makes it much less likely for potentially significant mutations to become established in the gene pool—and that’s exactly where we are now, Tattersall said.

“Since the advent of settled life, human populations have expanded enormously. Homo sapiens is densely packed across the Earth, and individuals are unprecedentedly mobile.

“In this situation, the fixation of any meaningful evolutionary novelties in the human population is highly improbable.” Tattersall said. “Human beings are just going to have to learn to live with themselves as they are.”

Steve Jones, a genetics professor at University College London, put forward a similar scenario during a recent lecture series marking the bicentenary of Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of On the Origin of Species at the University of Cambridge.

The human population will become more alike as races merge, he said, but “Darwin’s machine has lost its power.”

That’s because natural selection—Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” concept—is being sidelined in humans, according to Jones.

The fittest will no longer spearhead evolutionary change, because, thanks to medical advances, the weakest also live on and pass down their genes.

When On the Origin of Species was published in 1859, only about half of British children survived to 21. Today that number has swelled to 99 percent.

In developed countries, “the fact that everybody stays alive, at least until they’re sexually mature, means ['survival of the fittest' has] got nothing to work with,” Jones said. “That part of the Darwinian fuel has gone.”

(See “Was Darwin Wrong?” from National Geographic magazine.)

PREDICTION TWO
Humans Will Continue to Evolve

Other scientists see plenty of evidence that human evolution is far from over.

For instance, a study published last month in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggested that women of the future could become shorter and stouter.

A team led by Yale University evolutionary biologist Stephen Stearns found that, due to ovulatory characteristics, shorter, slightly plumper women tend to have more children than their peers. These physical traits are passed on to their offspring, suggesting natural selection in humans is alive and well.

Geoffrey Miller, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of New Mexico, believes Darwinian evolution in humans is actually speeding up. He highlighted sexual selection through mate choice as one key driver.

“You still have powerful mate choice shaping mental traits particularly … traits that are needed to succeed economically and in raising kids,” Miller said.

“We’re also going to get stronger sexual selection, because the more advanced the technology gets, the greater an effect general intelligence will have on each individual’s economic and social success, because as technology gets more complex, you need more intelligence to master it,” he said.

“That intelligence results in higher earnings, social status, and sexual attractiveness.”

Miller added that artificial selection using genetic technologies will likely accentuate these changes in the future.

“Parents could basically choose which sperm and egg get to meet up to produce a baby based on genetic information about which genes contribute to which physical and mental traits,” he said.

“If the rich and powerful keep the artificial-selection technology to themselves, then you could get that kind of split between a kind of upper-class, dominant population and a lower-class, genetically oppressed population,” he added.

“But I think it’s very likely the new genetic technologies will be widespread in their use, simply because that’s more profitable. So I think there will actually be a leveling effect, where both the poor and the rich are going to be able to have the best kids they can genetically.

“You will probably see a rise in average physical attractiveness and health,” he added. “You will probably get selection for physical traits that tend to be attractive in both males and females—things like height, muscularity, energy levels.”

But “regular” natural selection will also continue to play a major role, Miller believes.

“What you’re facing now is a global pathogen pool of viruses and bacteria that get spread around by air travel to every corner of the Earth, and that’s going to increase,” he said.

“We’re going to get a lot more epidemics,” Miller added. “That will increase the importance of the genetic immune system in human survival”—and result in a human species with stronger immune systems, he speculated.

(Meet the “other Darwin” in National Geographic magazine.)

PREDICTION THREE
Humans to Achieve Electronic Immortality

A philosophy known as transhumanism sees humans taking charge of their evolution and transcending their biological limitations via technology.

In essence, the old-fashioned evolution of On the Origin of Species may be beside the point: The future may belong to unnatural selection.

Nick Bostrom, director of the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford, said Darwinian evolution “is happening on a very slow time scale now relative to other things that are leading to changes in the human condition”—cloning, genetic enhancement, robotics, artificial intelligence, and nanotechnology, for starters.

Transhumanism raises a spectacular array of possibilities, from supersoldiers and new breeds of athletes to immortal beings who, having had their brains scanned atom by atom, transfer their minds to computers.

In addition to living forever, “uploaded” beings would be able to “travel at the speed of light as an information pattern,” download themselves into robots for the occasional stroll through the real world, think faster when running on advanced operating systems, and cut their food budget down to zero, Bostrom imagines in his paper “The Transhumanist FAQ,” available on the Humanity+ Web site.

If that were to happen, a new type of evolution would emerge, Bostrom said.

“Evolutionary selection could occur in a population of uploads or artificial intelligence just as much as it could in a population of biological organisms,” he told National Geographic News. “In fact, it might operate much faster there, because artificial intellects could reproduce much faster.”

Whereas the current human generational cycle takes some 20 years, a digitalized individual could replicate themselves in seconds or minutes, Bostrom said.

Of course copying yourself isn’t without complications, Bostrom acknowledges.

“Which one of them is you?” he writes. “Who owns your property? Who is married to your spouse?”

(Related: “Darwin Devotees Make ‘Father of Evolution’ Facebook Superstar.”)

PREDICTION FOUR
New Era of Evolution Awaits on Off-World Colonies?

“Some major new isolating mechanism” would be needed for a new human species to arise, according to John Hawks, an anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Despite up to 30,000 years of partial isolation among populations in places such as Australia and Papua New Guinea, human speciation did not occur, he noted.

But if, in the far distant future, habitable planets beyond our solar system were colonized by Earth migrants, that could provide the necessary isolation for new human species to evolve.

“If we had spacefaring people who went on one-way voyages to distant stars, that might be enough to trigger speciation,” Hawks said.

But, he added, “if you think about it, a small group of people went on a one-way voyage to [the Americas] 14,000 years ago, and then when new people [Europeans] showed up 500 years ago, they were still the same species.”

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Although Hugo von Mohl and Ludwig Palm had written in 1827 a couple of ground-breaking papers on climbing plants in Germany, Darwin after years of meticulous observations compiled data on various ways that species across a wide range of families and orders could climb over other objects, including other plants, to compete for light with their neighbors. He singled out stem twiners, those that used the petioles of leaves or developed actual tendrils, and others – like ivy – that produced rootlets to support his contention that natural selection had favored those species with these adaptations to survive in sun-deprived habitats.

To see examples of plants that Darwin discussed in his climbing plants studies, visit  Power of Movement: Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants in this online exhibit.

THIS IS HUGE. Maybe this CNN editorial will cause people to stop describing intelligent design as “the idea that life so complex that God had to create it”.

Story here at CNN.com.

His first argument is the Cambrian explosion:

We are told that a consensus of scientists supporting the theory means that Darwinian evolution is no longer subject to debate. But does it ever happen that a seemingly broad consensus of scientific expertise turns out to be wrong, generated by an ideologically motivated stampeding of opinion?

[...]Contrary to Darwinian orthodoxy, the fossil record actually challenges the idea that all organisms have evolved from a single common ancestor. Why? Fossil studies reveal “a biological big bang” near the beginning of the Cambrian period (520 million years ago) when many major, separate groups of organisms or “phyla” (including most animal body plans) emerged suddenly without clear precursors.

Fossil finds repeatedly have confirmed a pattern of explosive appearance and prolonged stability in living forms, not the gradual “branching-tree” pattern implied by Darwin’s common ancestry thesis.

And his second argument is the biological information in DNA:

Consider the implications, for example, of one of modern biology’s most important discoveries. In 1953 when Watson and Crick elucidated the structure of the DNA molecule, they made a startling discovery. The structure of DNA allows it to store information in the form of a four-character digital code, similar to a computer code.

This discovery highlights a scientific mystery that Darwin never addressed: how did the first life on earth arise? To date no theory of undirected chemical evolution has explained the origin of the information needed to build the first living cell.

Instead, the digital code and information processing systems that run the show in living cells point decisively toward prior intelligent design. Indeed, we know from our repeated experience — the basis of all scientific reasoning — that systems possessing these features always arise from an intelligent source — from minds, not material processes.

DNA functions like a software program. We know that software comes from programmers. Information — whether inscribed in hieroglyphics, written in a book, or encoded in a radio signal — always arises from a designing intelligence. So the discovery of digital code in DNA provides a strong scientific reason for concluding that the information in DNA also had an intelligent source.

You can see Stephen Meyer debate against a famous, qualified Darwinist here. That post also has links to other debates on intelligent design from the Cato Institute and PBS. And don’t forget that Stephen Meyer is debating Michael Shermer on November 30th, 2009 in Beverly Hills.

Ideas for Christmas gifts

If you guys are looking for Christmas gift ideas, I recommend Meyer’s “Signature in the Cell” for advanced students. For beginners, get the new intelligent design DVD “Darwin’s Dilemma” and the “Unlocking the Mystery of Life” DVD. The former covers the Cambrian explosion, and the latter covers the argument from DNA. If you still have money left over for more gifts, then get “The Privileged Planet” DVD, which compares the requirements for complex life forms and the requirements for scientific discovery. These can all be bought at Amazon.com.

By the way, just for fun, why don’t you guys print off this article, and then go to some of your atheist family and friends and ask them what intelligent design is. Compare what they think intelligent design is with what it actually is, according to Stephen Meyer. If you want, write it up and leave it as a comment to this post.

UPDATE: Atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel names Signature in the Cell one his two 2009 Books of the Year in the Times Literary Supplement. This will be in a separate post shortly. (H/T Apologetics 315)

- As a result of receiving a mallard and a treatise on species variation from his friend Alfred Russell Wallace, Mr Charles Darwin formulated the argument that became his Magnus Opus, The Origin of Species.

- In response to the spectacles available to see at their home town zoo, the Providence RI band The Low Anthem found the inspiration for the joyously celebratory and naively awestruck title of their newest album, Oh My God, Charlie Darwin.

- In recognition of the 150 years that have passed since Darwin’s achievement, and with something of the eulogistic acclaim that marks the Low Anthem’s album’s nomenclature, an exhibition entitled A Duck for Mr Darwin now graces the University of Warwick’s Mead Gallery after its inception at Gateshead’s Baltic earlier this year.

-And in response to the happy coincidence of returning home to see my parents in Coventry where this exhibition was showing (YES, Warwick University is in Coventry shocker), and finding the Low Anthem’s album for just £5 at the University record shop, I am writing this now, in order to wax lyrical about both, as well as their forefather of influence.

(I have thus further attempted to understand what I previously distinguished as a local art history as the result of happy coincidence, of life marching on: spiralling through and beside cultural stimuli which throws itself at you/me/all of us, and which might and can and should become internalised, putting oneself at the centre… a blog would then become the most appropriate home for such a self-involved/self-involving/self-EVolving rambling as this… and I am able to almost see in this sea of self-centred stories something actually tremendously down at heel. Art history takes on the mundanity of the everyday, the product of evolution and of living, experience as base in the most transcendental way possible, and to be celebrated on terms equal to breathing…[stop the manifesto] ).

Charlie Brown and Snoopy as doctored by me

 

In Dorothy Cross’ video work Stage from the exhibition, the artist speaks to the actress Fiona Shaw (the fearfully flirty headteacher of a matriarchal all-girls school in the joyous Three Men and a Little Lady, to my mind) about life on the Galapagos where they visited on a Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and Galapagos Conservation Trust residency, extolling the infinite possibilities and potential of life; successes contained within the word if,

          IF stops you being trapped where you actually are… you can dream from IF.

The same work opens with footage of a tortoise’s throat bellowing with every breath, like a leather bouncy castle wall announcing a child’s ricocheting from it in slow motion. Here, the tortoise still possesses all the majesty which Mr Darwin found in it, and the enduring potential of evolution.

Marcus Coates, meanwhile, finds something equally enthralling about the tortoise, as a video work entitled Intelligent Design shows an adult male tortoise failing repeatedly in his endeavour to mate with a female. The work says everything it needs to about such a ridiculous challenge to Darwinian common-sense.

Marcus Coates-Intelligent Design

 

Coates’ video work Human Report, also the result of a Galapagos residency, further exposes something of the fall-out of Darwinian theory, and the lessons unlearnt; impactful human interjections in nature’s beautiful narratives, and our inability to adapt appropriately or with any respect to out surroundings, as told by the Galapagos’ lauded friend, the Blue Footed Booby, reported on Ecuadorian television.

Elsewhere, anthropology-cum-ecology prevails in pieces by Ben Jeans Houghton, Mark Dion and Andrew Dodds, all of whom play upon the idea of the most artistically resonant if somewhat staid patterns of humanity; collecting, researching, compiling, repeating, (reviewing even)… a social commentary of sorts.

For me, Jeans Houghton’s work is particularly successful, displaying a conceptual playground in a shed. That is, his life’s collection of things, assorted into colour ranges and displayed, yes, in a shed. Reminiscent of

a)Darwin’s shed (at it’s most obvious), and

b) the leisure time of the jobbing enthusiast, this piece is like an ode to the hobby, the collector, the anal amongst us. It is an ode to what my mother calls the autistic spectrum of man. What’s more, it provides an opportunity for us to consider things as things, where “commodities” become different to the minutiae of pointless collections. In Darwinian terms, this is the celebration of those animals no-one gave a shit about till Attenborough exposed them as godly (see previous blog entry on the Vogelkop Bowerbird!!!)

The Low Anthem’s work might unintentionally be classified similarly: a stunning appreciation of that least noticed in society till we are drawn to us it once. Just as Fleet Foxes returned harmonies to the mainstream with last years eponymous debut album, and Bob Dylan reminds us of America’s grand musical heritage on his theme time radio hour (his comprehensive knowledge of 50 years of American musically sits just beyond my brother’s inane knowledge of 90s pop trivia on the aforementioned spectrum), so do The Low Anthem recall a bygone era, and an attestation of the remarkable tranquillity to be found in simplicity. Pioneer trails, bar-room balladry and the wind-scorched, buffalo-filled acres of a pre-industrial hinterland infuse songs such as the near-perfect To Ohio.

Throughout the exhibition and the album, my thoughts were directed toward a picture of evolution concerned primarily with ancestral descent, and what lay before us. Charles Avery’s work, alternatively, is characterised by his forward/sidewards glance at an imaginary island to which he is an intruder, a collector, an outsider and an explorer. He presents for us an ever-growing narrative exposing life on the Island, one both eccentric and adept as it trundles along by way of an irony-laden and tongue-in-cheek appreciation of post-colonial theory, identity formulation, postmodernity and victorian anthropology. It offers hope in a crazy world where the One-Armed Snake is both a threat and a gambling den. The metaphors are full and complex, yet as fun as fun can be.

Charles Avery

 

Returning to Dorothy Cross’ acclamation of the wonder inherent in if, my resounding response to both this exhibition and this album continues to be what if? What if we really did live in a world where Darwin’s theories truly had the impact on they deserved, and juvenile sniggering at a tortoise attempting to make love to another under the banner of intelligent design? was, rather, hearty laughter at a bygone time when people actually believed in creationism? What if the rampant commercialisation of everything made way for a more simple, local appreciation of the things closest at hand? What if the lessons of our ancestors were actually learnt?

Mark Fairnington’s beautifully painted series of animal eyes affected me most noticeably, as I stared into the glassy irises and found only the reflection of museum rooms. Fairnington painted these works not from life, but from stuffed models in the Natural History Museum, where these once-noble now stuffed and stuffy beasts stood motionless. As wonderful as the works are, it made me want to go out a look at real animals.

GO ON, GO AND LOOK AT A COW!

Mark Fairnington - Bison