bascule

Pointless

Holy shit those are awesome

GMO crops have been rejected due to GM alarmists clamoring about potential dangers that don't really exist

When will people learn that non-ionizing radiation can't cause cancer?

If that's the case this guy is ten years ahead of the curve:

We'll probably never know, but it certainly seems like the most likely possibility! (Also, excuse the abiogenesis thread in the evolution forum, but uhh, where else is this supposed to go?) I really hadn't heard much regarding the issue of abiogenesis beyond the Miller/Urey experiment. Then in The Ancestor's Tale (do you get the idea that I loved this book yet?) about experiments performed by Julius Rebek and his colleagues at the Scripps Institute in California. In it they combined amino adenosine and pentafluorophenyl ester with the autocatalyst amino adenosine triacid ester (AATE, which, being an autocatalyst, catalyzes the combination of the afforementioned chemicals into more amino adenosine triacid ester) According to Dawkins: Really neat stuff!

I don't know about you, but where I live (in America), when gas spiked to $3/gallon post-Katrina something amazing happened: people started riding bikes again. That's not to say they ever stopped, but $3/gal gas made people realize that perhaps you don't have to use a car to go everywhere and that bikes are a healthier and sometimes even more convenient alternative (especially if you're going anywhere which gets swamped with cars) Since that time, gas has gotten cheaper and the weather's gotten colder, and our brief flirtation with a more bicycle oriented society diminished. But I have no doubt that it will rise again with increasing oil prices.

Bingo. I don't deny that our oil output is eventually going to start dropping each year as supplies are depleted. I certainly object to the assertions that this is a situation humanity is incapible of dealing with, or asserting outright that the problem won't be solved by market forces alone. I find the former to be laughably ridiculous and the latter to be groundless and overzealous. The problem with alarmism is that the signal to noise (or should I say, signal to bullshit?) ratio drops dramatically. When people are spreading a meme out of fear they tend to be less discerning as to the validity of the arguments they are presenting as they would be if the discourse was motivated by sound reasoning rather than emotion. The more misinformation that is presented to me the less likely I am to trust the source that presented it.

Yeah, beaten to the punch Anyway, regarding this little tidbit: I thought I'd post this: http://www.cdc.gov/nip/vacsafe/concerns/thimerosal/faqs-thimerosal.htm#7 http://www.cdc.gov/nip/vacsafe/concerns/autism/autism-research.htm

I'll be the first to call: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36703-2004May18.html I'm sure you're very desperate to discover the reasons behind autism. I have an autistic spectrum disorder myself. But they do not lie in vaccines containing thimerosal. It sounds like there were three instances among a small population, not zero. Have you ever considered that heredity may have a role to play, and this is the reason why Silicon Valley is currently undergoing something of an autism 'outbreak'? I would conjecture that there are a number of genes which afford certain attributes of higher intelligence which, when combined, also produce autistic-like tendencies. Maybe the "geek genes" which the BBC article conjectures contribute to autism aren't particularly prevalent among the Amish? That's nice. Have a link? Clearly the Institute of Medicine does.

http://www.rsc.org/ej/GC/2005/b415317k.pdf http://www.salemsbdc.org/FMAs/Industry-analyses/Fuel-cells_market-analysis.htm http://www.proformance.com/portal_mojo/pcg/CUSTOM/UBC_FILES/NEWS_BALLARD_97AR_ALLIANCE_STRUCTURES.PDF At the very least, I don't think we'll see < 3,000 hour lifetimes on any fuel cells after they have been ramped into volume production. So are you still worried about platinum supply issues, or the feasibility of a hydrogen infrastructure as a successor to our present gasoline driven one?

There is no proof. That's the problem. The major limitations that prevent hurricanes from reaching their full potential includes vertical wind shear, dry air intrusion, and less than optimal outflow aloft in the upper portion of the hurricane circulation. In idealized hurricane modeling it is relatively easy to create hurricanes that attain their maximum intensity, since these limitations are not prescribed in the model initialization or boundary conditions. This is a key problem with some recent papers which were misinterpreted and overblown by the media to show an increase in intensity in recent years, most notably the Webster et. al paper recently published in Science. In the real world, however, one or more of these limitations almost always exists (fortunately!). Hurricane Katrina is an example where a particularly effective outflow aloft, moist tropical air, and a lack of vertical wind shear, along with the elevated SSTs, pemitted the cyclone to attain a category 5 intensity. Where are you getting that date from? http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050912/full/050912-11.html The article says "September 15, 2005" But obviously the analysis runs only through the 2004 hurricane season. Though the pressure of a hurricane is the best indicator of its strength since it can be precisely measured whereas winds have to be estimated, it is still important to note that it is actually the difference in the hurricane's pressure and that of its environment that actually gives it its strength. This difference in pressure is known as the "pressure gradient" and it is this change in pressure over a distance that causes wind. The bigger the change is, the faster the winds generated will be. If two hurricanes have the same minimum pressure, but one is in an area of higher ambient pressure than the other, that one is in fact stronger. That hurricane had to work harder, so to speak, to get its pressure that low, and its larger pressure gradient would make its winds faster. The Saffir-Simpson scale exists for a reason. 7/10 of the top ten most intense hurricanes on record, with (mostly inaccurate) records dating back to the late 19th century.

For those of you who haven't seen this, it's a fun and interesting read: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dover/kitzmiller_v_dover.html Especially the cross-examination of Michael Behe: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dover/day11pm.html#day11pm132

Observation alone, perhaps. We're talking observation within the context of the scientific method. A theory must be a testable explanation of all the evidence or why it doesn't explain a particular piece of contradictory evidence. No, evolution has been observed repeatedly. Bottom line: Evolution has been observed. God has not. Here's some material for you to look up and mull over before you continue this line of questioning. Kudos to lucaspa for this list. This list details observed events of macroevolution (i.e. speciation): General 1. M Nei and J Zhang, Evolution: molecular origin of species. Science 282: 1428-1429, Nov. 20, 1998. Primary article is: CT Ting, SC Tsaur, ML We, and CE Wu, A rapidly evolving homeobox at the site of a hybrid sterility gene. Science 282: 1501-1504, Nov. 20, 1998. As the title implies, has found the genes that actually change during reproductive isolation. 2. M Turelli, The causes of Haldane's rule. Science 282: 889-891, Oct.30, 1998. Haldane's rule describes a phase every population goes thru during speciation: production of inviable and sterile hybrids. Haldane's rule states "When in the F1 [first generation] offspring of two different animal races one sex is absent, rare, or sterile, that sex is the heterozygous [heterogemetic; XY, XO, or ZW] sex."Two leading explanations are fast-male and dominance. Both get supported. X-linked incompatibilities would affect heterozygous gender more because only one gene." 3. Barton, N. H., J. S. Jones and J. Mallet. 1988. No barriers to speciation. Nature. 336:13-14. 4. Baum, D. 1992. Phylogenetic species concepts. Trends in Ecology and Evolution. 7:1-3. 5. Rice, W. R. 1985. Disruptive selection on habitat preference and the evolution of reproductive isolation: an exploratory experiment. Evolution. 39:645-646. 6. Ringo, J., D. Wood, R. Rockwell, and H. Dowse. 1989. An experiment testing two hypotheses of speciation. The American Naturalist. 126:642-661. 7. Schluter, D. and L. M. Nagel. 1995. Parallel speciation by natural selection. American Naturalist. 146:292-301. 8. Callaghan, C. A. 1987. Instances of observed speciation. The American Biology Teacher. 49:3436. 9. Cracraft, J. 1989. Speciation and its ontology: the empirical consequences of alternative species concepts for understanding patterns and processes of differentiation. In Otte, E. and J. A. Endler [eds.] Speciation and its consequences. Sinauer Associates, Sunderland, MA. pp. 28-59. Chromosome numbers in various species http://www.kean.edu/~breid/chrom2.htm Speciation in Insects 1. G Kilias, SN Alahiotis, and M Pelecanos. A multifactorial genetic investigation of speciation theory using drosophila melanogaster Evolution 34:730-737, 1980. Got new species of fruit flies in the lab after 5 years on different diets and temperatures. Also confirmation of natural selection in the process. Lots of references to other studies that saw speciation. 2. JM Thoday, Disruptive selection. Proc. Royal Soc. London B. 182: 109-143, 1972. Lots of references in this one to other speciation. 3. KF Koopman, Natural selection for reproductive isolation between Drosophila pseudobscura and Drosophila persimilis. Evolution 4: 135-148, 1950. Using artificial mixed poulations of D. pseudoobscura and D. persimilis, it has been possible to show,over a period of several generations, a very rapid increase in the amount of reproductive isolation between the species as a result of natural selection. 4. LE Hurd and RM Eisenberg, Divergent selection for geotactic response and evolution of reproductive isolation in sympatric and allopatric populations of houseflies. American Naturalist 109: 353-358, 1975. 5. Coyne, Jerry A. Orr, H. Allen. Patterns of speciation in Drosophila. Evolution. V43. P362(20) March, 1989. 6. Dobzhansky and Pavlovsky, 1957 An incipient species of Drosophila, Nature 23: 289- 292. 7. Ahearn, J. N. 1980. Evolution of behavioral reproductive isolation in a laboratory stock of Drosophila silvestris. Experientia. 36:63-64. 8. 10. Breeuwer, J. A. J. and J. H. Werren. 1990. Microorganisms associated with chromosome destruction and reproductive isolation between two insect species. Nature. 346:558-560. 9. Powell, J. R. 1978. The founder-flush speciation theory: an experimental approach. Evolution. 32:465-474. 10. Dodd, D. M. B. and J. R. Powell. 1985. Founder-flush speciation: an update of experimental results with Drosophila. Evolution 39:1388-1392. 37. Dobzhansky, T. 1951. Genetics and the origin of species (3rd edition). Columbia University Press, New York. 11. Dobzhansky, T. and O. Pavlovsky. 1971. Experimentally created incipient species of Drosophila. Nature. 230:289-292. 12. Dobzhansky, T. 1972. Species of Drosophila: new excitement in an old field. Science. 177:664-669. 13. Dodd, D. M. B. 1989. Reproductive isolation as a consequence of adaptive divergence in Drosophila melanogaster. Evolution 43:1308-1311. 14. de Oliveira, A. K. and A. R. Cordeiro. 1980. Adaptation of Drosophila willistoni experimental populations to extreme pH medium. II. Development of incipient reproductive isolation. Heredity. 44:123-130.15. 29. Rice, W. R. and G. W. Salt. 1988. Speciation via disruptive selection on habitat preference: experimental evidence. The American Naturalist. 131:911-917. 30. Rice, W. R. and G. W. Salt. 1990. The evolution of reproductive isolation as a correlated character under sympatric conditions: experimental evidence. Evolution. 44:1140-1152. 31. del Solar, E. 1966. Sexual isolation caused by selection for positive and negative phototaxis and geotaxis in Drosophila pseudoobscura. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (US). 56:484-487. 32. Weinberg, J. R., V. R. Starczak and P. Jora. 1992. Evidence for rapid speciation following a founder event in the laboratory. Evolution. 46:1214-1220. 33. V Morell, Earth's unbounded beetlemania explained. Science 281:501-503, July 24, 1998. Evolution explains the 330,000 odd beetlespecies. Exploitation of newly evolved flowering plants. 34. B Wuethrich, Speciation: Mexican pairs show geography's role. Science 285: 1190, Aug. 20, 1999. Discusses allopatric speciation. Debate with ecological speciation on which is most prevalent. Speciation in Plants 1. Speciation in action Science 72:700-701, 1996 A great laboratory study of the evolution of a hybrid plant species. Scientists did it in the lab, but the genetic data says it happened the same way in nature. 2. Hybrid speciation in peonies http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/061288698v1#B1 3. http://www.holysmoke.org/new-species.htm new species of groundsel by hybridization 4. Butters, F. K. 1941. Hybrid Woodsias in Minnesota. Amer. Fern. J. 31:15-21. 5. Butters, F. K. and R. M. Tryon, jr. 1948. A fertile mutant of a Woodsia hybrid. American Journal of Botany. 35:138. 6. Toxic Tailings and Tolerant Grass by RE Cook in Natural History, 90(3): 28-38, 1981 discusses selection pressure of grasses growing on mine tailings that are rich in toxic heavy metals. "When wind borne pollen carrying nontolerant genes crosses the border [between prairie and tailings] and fertilizes the gametes of tolerant females, the resultant offspring show a range of tolerances. The movement of genes from the pasture to the mine would, therefore, tend to dilute the tolerance level of seedlings. Only fully tolerant individuals survive to reproduce, however. This selective mortality, which eliminates variants, counteracts the dilution and molds a toatally tolerant population. The pasture and mine populations evolve distinctive adaptations because selective factors are dominant over the homogenizing influence of foreign genes." 7. Clausen, J., D. D. Keck and W. M. Hiesey. 1945. Experimental studies on the nature of species. II. Plant evolution through amphiploidy and autoploidy, with examples from the Madiinae. Carnegie Institute Washington Publication, 564:1-174. 8. Cronquist, A. 1988. The evolution and classification of flowering plants (2nd edition). The New York Botanical Garden, Bronx, NY. 9. P. H. Raven, R. F. Evert, S. E. Eichorn, Biology of Plants (Worth, New York,ed. 6, 1999). 10. M. Ownbey, Am. J. Bot. 37, 487 (1950). 11. M. Ownbey and G. D. McCollum, Am. J. Bot. 40, 788 (1953). 12. S. J. Novak, D. E. Soltis, P. S. Soltis, Am. J. Bot. 78, 1586 (1991). 13. P. S. Soltis, G. M. Plunkett, S. J. Novak, D. E. Soltis, Am. J. Bot. 82,1329 (1995). 14. Digby, L. 1912. The cytology of Primula kewensis and of other related Primula hybrids. Ann. Bot. 26:357-388. 15. Owenby, M. 1950. Natural hybridization and amphiploidy in the genus Tragopogon. Am. J. Bot. 37:487-499. 16. Pasterniani, E. 1969. Selection for reproductive isolation between two populations of maize, Zea mays L. Evolution. 23:534-547. Speciation in microorganisms 1. Canine parovirus, a lethal disease of dogs, evolved from feline parovirus in the 1970s. 2. Budd, A. F. and B. D. Mishler. 1990. Species and evolution in clonal organisms -- a summary and discussion. Systematic Botany 15:166-171. 3. Bullini, L. and G. Nascetti. 1990. Speciation by hybridization in phasmids and other insects. Canadian Journal of Zoology. 68:1747-1760. 4. Boraas, M. E. 1983. Predator induced evolution in chemostat culture. EOS. Transactions of the American Geophysical Union. 64:1102. 5. Brock, T. D. and M. T. Madigan. 1988. Biology of Microorganisms (5th edition). Prentice Hall, Englewood, NJ. 6. Castenholz, R. W. 1992. Species usage, concept, and evolution in the cyanobacteria (blue-green algae). Journal of Phycology 28:737-745. 7. Boraas, M. E. The speciation of algal clusters by flagellate predation. EOS. Transactions of the American Geophysical Union. 64:1102. 8. Castenholz, R. W. 1992. Speciation, usage, concept, and evolution in the cyanobacteria (blue-green algae). Journal of Phycology 28:737-745. 9. Shikano, S., L. S. Luckinbill and Y. Kurihara. 1990. Changes of traits in a bacterial population associated with protozoal predation. Microbial Ecology. 20:75-84. New Genus 1. Muntzig, A, Triticale Results and Problems, Parey, Berlin, 1979. Describes whole new *genus* of plants, Triticosecale, of several species, formed by artificial selection. These plants are important in agriculture. Invertebrate not insect 1. ME Heliberg, DP Balch, K Roy, Climate-driven range expansion and morphological evolution in a marine gastropod. Science 292: 1707-1710, June1, 2001. Documents mrorphological change due to disruptive selection over time. Northerna and southern populations of A spirata off California from Pleistocene to present. 2. Weinberg, J. R., V. R. Starczak and P. Jora. 1992. Evidence for rapid speciation following a founder event with a polychaete worm. . Evolution. 46:1214-1220. Vertebrate Speciation 1. N Barton Ecology: the rapid origin of reproductive isolation Science 290:462-463, Oct. 20, 2000. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/290/5491/462 Natural selection of reproductive isolation observed in two cases. Full papers are: AP Hendry, JK Wenburg, P Bentzen, EC Volk, TP Quinn, Rapid evolution of reproductive isolation in the wild: evidence from introduced salmon. Science 290: 516-519, Oct. 20, 2000. and M Higgie, S Chenoweth, MWBlows, Natural selection and the reinforcement of mate recognition. Science290: 519-521, Oct. 20, 2000 2. G Vogel, African elephant species splits in two. Science 293: 1414, Aug. 24, 2001. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/293/5534/1414 3. C Vila` , P Savolainen, JE. Maldonado, IR. Amorim, JE. Rice, RL. Honeycutt, KA. Crandall, JLundeberg, RK. Wayne, Multiple and Ancient Origins of the Domestic Dog Science 276: 1687-1689, 13 JUNE 1997. Dogs no longer one species but 4 according to the genetics. http://www.idir.net/~wolf2dog/wayne1.htm 4. Barrowclough, George F.. Speciation and Geographic Variation in Black-tailed Gnatcatchers. (book reviews) The Condor. V94. P555(2) May, 1992 5. Kluger, Jeffrey. Go fish. Rapid fish speciation in African lakes. Discover. V13. P18(1) March, 1992. Formation of five new species of cichlid fishes which formed since they were isolated from the parent stock, Lake Nagubago. (These fish have complex mating rituals and different coloration.) See also Mayr, E., 1970. _Populations, Species, and Evolution_, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press. p. 348 6. Genus _Rattus_ currently consists of 137 species [1,2] and is known to have originally developed in Indonesia and Malaysia during and prior to the Middle Ages[3]. [1] T. Yosida. Cytogenetics of the Black Rat. University Park Press, Baltimore, 1980. [2] D. Morris. The Mammals. Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1965. [3] G. H. H. Tate. "Some Muridae of the Indo-Australian region," Bull. Amer. Museum Nat. Hist. 72: 501-728, 1963. 7. Stanley, S., 1979. _Macroevolution: Pattern and Process_, San Francisco, W.H. Freeman and Company. p. 41 Rapid speciation of the Faeroe Island house mouse, which occurred in less than 250 years after man brought the creature to the island. Speciation in the Fossil Record 1. Paleontological documentation of speciation in cenozoic molluscs from Turkana basin. Williamson, PG, Nature 293:437-443, 1981. Excellent study of "gradual" evolution in an extremely find fossil record. 2. A trilobite odyssey. Niles Eldredge and Michelle J. Eldredge. Natural History 81:53-59, 1972. A discussion of "gradual" evolution of trilobites in one small area and then migration and replacement over a wide area. Is lay discussion of punctuated equilibria, and does not overthrow Darwinian gradual change of form. Describes transitionals Overkill 20. Craig, T. P., J. K. Itami, W. G. Abrahamson and J. D. Horner. 1993. Behavioral evidence for host-race fromation in Eurosta solidaginis. Evolution. 47:1696-1710. 21. Cronquist, A. 1978. Once again, what is a species? Biosystematics in agriculture. Beltsville Symposia in Agricultural Research 2:3-20. 24. de Queiroz, K. and M. Donoghue. 1988. Phylogenetic systematics and the species problem. Cladistics. 4:317-338. 25. de Queiroz, K. and M. Donoghue. 1990. Phylogenetic systematics and species revisited. Cladistics. 6:83-90. 26. de Vries, H. 1905. Species and varieties, their origin by mutation. 27. de Wet, J. M. J. 1971. Polyploidy and evolution in plants. Taxon. 20:29-35. 28. Rice, W. R. and E. E. Hostert. 1993. Laboratory experiments on speciation: What have we learned in forty years? Evolution. 47:1637-1653. 42. Du Rietz, G. E. 1930. The fundamental units of biological taxonomy. Svensk. Bot. Tidskr. 24:333-428. 43. Ehrman, E. 1971. Natural selection for the origin of reproductive isolation. The American Naturalist. 105:479-483. 44. Ehrman, E. 1973. 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Genetic differentiation, sympatric speciation, and the origin of a diploid species of Stephanomeira. American Journal of Botany. 60: 545-553. 51. Halliburton, R. and G. A. E. Gall. 1981. Disruptive selection and assortative mating in Tribolium castaneum. Evolution. 35:829-843. 52. Karpchenko, G. D. 1927. Polyploid hybrids of Raphanus sativus L. X Brassica oleraceae L. Bull. Appl. Botany. 17:305-408. 53. Karpchenko, G. D. 1928. Polyploid hybrids of Raphanus sativus L. X Brassica oleraceae L. Z. Indukt. Abstami-a Verenbungsi. 48:1-85. 54. Knight, G. R., A. Robertson and C. H. Waddington. 1956. Selection for sexual isolation within a species. Evolution. 10:14-22. 55. Levin, D. A. 1979. The nature of plant species. Science 204:381-384. 56. Lokki, J. and A. Saura. 1980. Polyploidy in insect evolution. In: W. H. Lewis (ed.) Polyploidy: Biological Relevance. Plenum Press, New York. 57. Macnair, M. R. and P. Christie. 1983. Reproductive isolation as a pleiotropic effect of copper tolerance in Mimulus guttatus. Heredity. 50:295-302. 58. Manhart, J. R. and R. M. McCourt. 1992. Molecular data and species concepts in the algae. Journal of Phycology. 28:730-737. 59. Mayr, E. 1942. Systematics and the origin of species from the viewpoint of a zoologist. Columbia University Press, New York. 60. Mayr, E. 1982. The growth of biological thought: diversity, evolution and inheritance. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. McCourt, R. M. and R. W. Hoshaw. 1990. Noncorrespondence of breeding groups, morphology and monophyletic groups in Spirogyra (Zygnemataceae; Chlorophyta) and the application of species concepts. Systematic Botany. 15:69-78. 61. McPheron, B. A., D. C. Smith and S. H. Berlocher. 1988. Genetic differentiation between host races of Rhagoletis pomonella. Nature. 336:64-66. 62. Muntzing, A. 1932. Cytogenetic investigations on the synthetic Galeopsis tetrahit. Hereditas. 16:105-154. 63. Newton, W. C. F. and C. Pellew. 1929. Primula kewensis and its derivatives. J. Genetics. 20:405-467. 64. Otte, E. and J. A. Endler (eds.). 1989. Speciation and its consequences. Sinauer Associates. Sunderland, MA. 65. Rabe, E. W. and C. H. Haufler. 1992. Incipient polyploid speciation in the maidenhair fern (Adiantum pedatum, adiantaceae)? American Journal of Botany. 79:701-707. 67. Soans, A. B., D. Pimentel and J. S. Soans. 1974. Evolution of reproductive isolation in allopatric and sympatric populations. The American Naturalist. 108:117-124. 68. Soltis, D. E. and P. S. Soltis. 1989. Allopolyploid speciation in Tragopogon: Insights from chloroplast DNA. American Journal of Botany. 76:1119-1124. 69. Thoday, J. M. and J. B. Gibson. 1962. Isolation by disruptive selection. Nature. 193:1164-1166. 70. Thoday, J. M. and J. B. Gibson. 1970. The probability of isolation by disruptive selection. The American Naturalist. 104:219-230. 71. Thompson, J. N. 1987. Symbiont-induced speciation. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society. 32:385-393. 72. Waring, G. L., W. G. Abrahamson and D. J. Howard. 1990. Genetic differentiation in the gall former Eurosta solidaginis (Diptera:Tephritidae) along host plant lines. Evolution. 44:1648-1655. 21. Mosquin, T., 1967. "Evidence for autopolyploidy in _Epilobium angustifolium_ (Onaagraceae)", _Evolution_ 21:713-719 Evidence that a species of fireweed formed by doubling of the chromosome count, from the original stock. 23. Kaneshiro, Kenneth Y. Speciation in the Hawaiian drosophila: sexual selection appears to play an important role. BioScience. V38. P258(6) April, 1988. 24. Orr, H. Allen. Is single-gene speciation possible? Yes. Evolution. V45. P764(6) May, 1991 25. Rabe, Eric W.. Haufler, Christopher H.. Incipient polyploid speciation in the maidenhair fern (Adiantum pedatum; Adiantaceae)? The American Journal of Botany. V79. P701(7) June, 1992. 26. Rice, W. R. and G. W. Salt. 1988. Speciation via disruptive selection on habitat preference: experimental evidence. The American Naturalist. 131:911-917. 27. Ringo, J., D. Wood, R. Rockwell, and H. Dowse. 1989. An experiment testing two methods for speciation. The American Naturalist. 126:642-661. 30. Wright, Karen. A breed apart; finicky flies lend credence to a theory of speciation. Scientific American. V260. P22(2) Feb, 1989. 31. Ahearn, J. N. 1980. Evolution of behavioral reproductive isolation leading to speciation in Drosophila silvestris. Experientia. 36:63-64. 32. Barton, N.H. Hewitt, G.M. Adaptation, speciation and hybrid zones (includes related information) Nature. V341. P497(7) Oct 12, 1989. 34. Coyne, J.A. Barton, N.H. What do we know about speciation examples?. Nature. V331. P485(2) Feb 11, 1988.

I've been extremely curious about this though, as far as consciousness influencing random number generators goes: http://noosphere.princeton.edu/

I think what you're trying to say is that the universe is just a gigantic cellular automaton

Evolution is the grand unified theory of biology. It's a simple explanation for how everything we've observed in the biological sciences came to be. Physicists would kill for such a simple explanation that explains everything we've observed in the realm of physical phenomena. Furthermore human sociotechnological evolution (i.e. memetic evolution) follows very similar laws. Daniel Dennett explains consciousness in a way that parallels human sociotechnological evolution. Consciousness, fundamentally, works on very similar principles to natural selection (i.e. phenomenological objects "evolve" through the collective action of specialists who analyze them and reinject "improved" versions back into the global workspace) Evolution is a pattern which exists not only everywhere in nature (and possibly in the structure of the universe itself) but throughout all of human society as well, and in the very structure of our own minds. I think the real question is how can you see evolution everywhere around you and not believe? We haven't found the cure for AIDS yet, or the common cold, or the flu, or any RNA virus, because they evolve too fast. That is, unless you think the immunologists are "evolutionists" that care so much about protecting the evolution conspiracy that they would see human lives (and potential revenue from a permanent AIDS/rhinovirus/flu vaccine) sacrificed to the cause! Yeah, that's pretty damn ludicrous...

For the record, 1.5 billion troy ounces is 46.7 billion grams. Compare to the 7.7 billion grams that lifeaftertheoilcrash.net alleges. I don't think lifeaftertheoilcrash.net is going to pan out as a particularly reliable source.

Well, to address your little "even if they aren't triggered by global warming" part, I'd like to present this: http://www.techcentralstation.com/091605F.html I was under the impression that there were more trees on earth now than at any other time in the earth's history. And be aware that CO2 is one of the many forcings affecting the earth's radiative imbalance. Here is a chart:

Okay, first I should mention that Dawkins bends over backwards to apologize for even saying any of this, and I'm editing all of that out. Furthermore, the first chapter of the entire book was dedicated to "The Conceit of Hindsight" and how it's seen as foolish to look at evolution as being the least bit progressive at all (at which point Dawkins mentions that he'll address the idea again at the end of the book. See you there, reader, some 600 pages down the road!) But given that, here's Dawkins exhaustive definition of progress. I'll even throw in the bit about what he says regarding the Conceit of Hindsight: The Daily Express in 1937, under the headline 'Arms Race Worry,' naid, 'All were worried at the armament race.' It was not long before the theme found its way into the literature of evolutionary biology. Hugh Cott, in his classic Adaptive Coloration in Animals, published in 1940, deep in the Second World War, wrote: My Oxford colleague John Krebs and I took up the whole matter of evolutionary arms races in a paper given at the Royal Society in 1979. We pointed out that the improvements to be seein in an animal arms race are improvements in equipment to survive, not generally improvements in survival itself - and for an interesting reason. In an arms race between attack and defence, there may be episodes during which one side ore the other temporarily pulls ahead. But in general, improvements on one side cancel out improvements on the other. There is even something a bit paradoxical about arms races. They are economically costly for both sides, yet there is no net benefit to either, because potential gains on one side are neutralised by gains on the other. From an economic point of view, both sides would be better off coming to an agreement to call off the arms race. As a ludicrous extreme, prey species might sacrifice a tithe of their number in exchange for secure and untroubled grazing for the rest. Neither predators nor prey need to divert valuable resources into muscles for fast running, sensory systems for detecting of enemies, vigilance and prolonged hunts that are time-wasting and stressful for both sides. Both sides would benefit if such a trades union agreement could be reached. Unfortunately, Darwinian theory knows no route by which this could happen. Instead, both sides pour resources into competing with their own side to outrun the other, and individuals of both are forced into difficult economic trade-offs within their own bodily economies. If there were no predators, rabbits could devote all their economic resources, and all their valuable time, to feeding and reproducing more rabbits. Instead, they are forced to devote substantial time to looking out for predators, and substantial economic resources into building up escape equipment. In turn, this forces predators to shift the balance of their economic investment away from the central business of reproducing, and into improving their weaponry for catching prey. Arms races, in animal evolution and human technology alike, show themselves not in improved performance but in increased shifting of economic investment away from alternative aspects of life and into servicing the arms race itself. Krebs and I recognised assymetries in arms races that might result in one side shifting more economic resources into the arms race than the other. One such imbalance we dubbed the 'Life/Dinner Principle.' It takes its name from the Aesop Fable in which the rabbit runs faster than the fox because the rabbit is running for his life, while the fox is only running for his dinner. There is an asymmetry in the cost of failure. In the arms race between cuckoos and hosts, every individual cuckoo can confidently look back on an unbroken line of ancestors who literally never failed to fool a foster parent. An individual of the host species, on the other hand, can look back on ancestors, many of whom never even met a cuckoo, and many of whom met one and were fooled by it. Plenty of genes for failing to detect and kill cuckoos have passed successfully down the generations of the host species. But genes that cause cuckoos to fail in fooling hosts have a much more hazardous ride down the generations. This asymmetry of risk fosters another: an asymmetry in resources devoted to the arms race as opposed to other parts of life's economy. To repeat this important point, the cost of failure is harder on the cuckoos than on the hosts. This leads to asymmetries in how the two sides set their balance between competing calls otn their time and other economic resources. Arms races are deeply and inescapably progressive in a way that, for example, evolutionary accommodation to the weather is not. For an individual of any one generation, predators and parasites ust make life harder in pretty much the same way as bad weather does. But over evolutionary time there is a crucial difference. Unlike the weather, which fluxuates aimlessly, predators and parasites (and prey and hosts) are themselves evolving in a systematic direction, getting systematically worse from their victims' point of view. Unlike evolutionary tracking of ice ages and droughts, arms race trends are value-laden in the same kind of way as technological improvements in planes and weapons. Predators' eyes get sharper, though not necessarily more effective, because prey get harder to see. Running speeds increase progressively on both sides, though again the benefits are in general cancelled out by parallel improvements on the other side. Sabre teeth get sharper and longer as hides get tougher. Toxins get nastier as biochemical tricks for neturalising them improve. With the passing of evolutionary time, the arms race progresses. All the features of life that a human engineer would admire as complex and elegant become more complex, more elegant, and more redolent of the illusion of design. In Climbing Mount Improbable I distinguished design from 'designoid' (pronounced design-oid, not dezzig-noid). Spectacular feats of designoid engineering, such as the eye of a buzzard, the ear of a bat, the musculo-skeletal apparatus of a cheetah or a gazelle, are all climactic products of evolutionary arms races between predators and prey. Parasite/host arms races culminate in even more finely meshed, co-adaptive designoid climaxes. And now for an important point. The evolution of any complex designoid organ in an arms race must have come about in a large number of steps of progressive evolution. Such evolution qualifies as progressive by our definition because each change tends to continue the direction of its predacessors. How do we know there are many steps rather than just one or two? By elementary probability theory. The parts of a complex machine, such as a bat's ear, could be rearranged at random in a million ways before you hit another arrangement that could hear as well as the real thing. It is statistically improbable, not just in the boring sense that any particular arrangement of parts is as improbable, with hindsight, as any other. Very few permutations of atoms are precision auditory instruments. A real bat's ear is one in a million. It works. Something so statistically improbable cannot sensibly be explained as the result of a single stroke of luck. It has to be constructed by some sort of improbability-generating process, ratcheted up by what the philosopher Daniel Dennett calls a 'crane' (as opposed to a 'skyhook': the analogy is to the man-made lifting machine, not the bird). The only cranes known to science (and I would bet the only cranes there have every been, or ever will be, in the universe) are design and selection. Design explanes the efficient complexity of microphones. Natural selection explains the efficient complexity of bat ears. Ultimately, selection explains microphones and everything designed too because the designers of the microphones are themselves evolved engineers generated by natural selection. Ultimately, design cannot explain anything because there is an inevitable regression to the problem of the origin of the designer. Design and natural selection are both processes of gradual, step-by-step, progressive improvement. Natural selection, at least, could not be anything else. In the case of design it may or may not be a matter of principle, but it is an observed fact. The Wright brothers did not have a blinding flash of inspiration and promptly build a Concorde or a Stealth bomber. They built a creaking, rickety crate that barely lifted off the ground and lurched into a neighbouring field. From Kitty Hawk to Cape Canaveral, every step of the way was built on its predecessors. Improvement is gradual, step by step in the same continued direction, fulfilling our definition of progressive. We could, with difficulty, conceive of a Victorian genius designing a sidewinder missile fully formed within his Zeusian, side-whiskered head. The notion defies all common sense and all history, but it does not instantly fall foul of the laws of probability in the way we would have to say of the spontaneous evolution of a flying, echolocating, modern bat. A single macromutational leap from ground-dwelling ancestral shrew to flying, echolocating bat is ruled out just as safely as we can rule out luck when a conjuror successfully guesses the complete order of a shuffled pack of cards. Luck is not literally impossible in either case. But no gould scientist would advance such prodigious luck as an explanation. The card-guessing feat has to be a trick - we've all seen tricks that appear just as baffling to the uninitiated. Nature does not set out to fool us, as a conjuror does. But we can still rule out luck, and it was the genius of Darwin to rumble nature's sleight of hand. The echo-ranging bat is the result of an inching series of minor improvements, each adding cumulatively to its predecessors as it propels the evolutionary trend on in the same direction. That is progress, by definition. The argument applies to all complex biological objects that project the illusion of design and are therefore statistically improbable in a specified direction. All must have evolved progressively. The returning host, now unabashedly sensitive to major themes in evolution, notes progress as one of them. But progress of this kind is not a uniform, inexorable trend from the start of evolution all the way to the present. Rather, to take up the initial quotation from Mark Twain on history, it rhymes. We notice an episode of progress during the course of an arms race. But that particular arms race comes to an end. Perhaps one side is driven extinct by the other. Or both sides go extinct, maybe in the course of a mass catastrophe of the kind that did for the dinosaurs. Then the whole process starts again, not from scratch, but from some discernibly earlier part of the arms race. Progress in evolution is not a single upward climb but has a rhyming trajectory more like the teeth of a saw. A sawtooth plunged deeply at the end of the Cretaceous, when the last of the dinosaurs abruptly gave way to the mammals' new and spectacular climb of progressive evolution. But there had been lots of smaller sawteeth during the long reign of dinosaurs. And since their immediate post-dinosaur rise, the mammals too have had smaller arms races followed by extinctions, followed by renewed arms races. Arms races rhyme with earlier arms races in periodic spurts of many-stepped progressive evolution. Whew! When it comes down to it, here's the score as I see it: Evolution was progressive up to a point, and then it got stuck. All those goddamn mass extinctions! They've held evolutionary progress in check for quite sometime; each time creatures had evolved to be great survivers in the day to day year to year century to century world, WHAM! A catastrophic event out of nowhere kills everything, and all that beautiful complexity is lost. Well it seems that, at least in our case, evolution managed to solve that problem because unlike any other animal on earth we can plan on that kind of scale... a multigenerational scale when people can begin thinking about problems which will confound humanity centuries or millenia down the road. We can plan and prepare for a supervolcano eruption; we can blow up or divert asteroids before they hit the earth. The mass extinction problem is one that evolution has clearly been encountering repeatedly for quite some time, and we're it. We're the solution. And our evolution has been remarkably progressive... I can't wait to see where it's going (Singularity) (Ed: Apologies for the successive edits! Took me awhile to develop this properly...)

Okay, here it goes, the universe is like a giant video game, when you (as a representative of conscioussness in the struggle against that-which-is-not-consciousness-or-controlled-by-consciousness) get to the end and beat it it just starts over again. Essentially, the universe is made out of two things: evolution and chaos. Chaos represents a set of unsolved problems in the universe, and evolution represents the universal problem solver algorithm which appears out of nowhere yet is somehow intrinsic! Yikes, how do you rationalize that? I guess you just say it's a spontaneous emergence of self-replicating order given the natural chaotic movement of the chaos, which through being chaos long enough is bound to eventually produce some self-replicating order, and slowly the replicators consume the chaos and replace it with order. Here's basically how evolution works as a universal problem solver: It's stochastic. When evolution "encounters" a problem, it "tries" over and over again to solve it, by making more replicators and having them be a little bit different each time. Well, asexual reproduction didn't do that, which was part of the problem. Asexual reproduction would try the same thing over and over until something messed up the record it kept so it actually tried something different. Evolution "solved" this problem by "creating" sexual reproduction and thus the gene pool. Or rather, after umteen gazillion iterations based on asexual reproduction alone, something new and different came along which increased the evolvability of the system. So through "arms races" of sexually reproducing organisms evolution builds up more and more solutions to problems. Given most of these problems are going to be caused by your partner in the arms race, either because you're a predator and your damn prey are getting too quick and cagey for you and thus you starve to death, or you're prey and your predators inch closer to your heels every day. If they get you before you can reproduce your genes are toast! Then evolution got stuck on a bigger problem: the Earth gets screwed up from time to time. A supervolcano erupts! An asteroid or other heavenly body collides with earth. Major climatological change occurs for some other reason. The energy chain breaks down: no sunlight means plants wither and die, no plants means herbavores starve, or freeze, and no herbavores means carnivores starve, etc. So clearly what's needed is some way of anticipating and avoiding mass extinction events. And given enough tries, isn't evolution bound to come up with the solution to this problem? It came up with the solution: us! And we increased the evolvability of the system. That's not to say that we've actually averted a mass extinction event, but I certainly think that man as a species is up to the challenge. We can knock potentially dangerous heavenly objects off a collision course with earth. We could build shelters and stockpile supplies to survive a supervolcano eruption, and hey, even pull a little Noah's Ark and keep all (or at least, the ones we like of) the creatures which have evolved since the last mass extinction event with us when otherwise they would die. We're constantly evolving to become a better and better problem solving machine. We now have point-to-point solution exchange between a majority of the members of our society via the Internet. Furthermore, we're getting better at organizing all the solutions into a global shared record via tools like WikiPedia, the Semantic Web, etc. The trend is towards every member of our species having instantaneous access to the sum total of human knowledge, and being able to contribute solutions to global problems through viral spread of ideas. And so we're about to increase the evolvability of the system yet again, by consciously freeing consciousness of all the limitations imposed upon it by the legacy of natural selection. There's all sorts of bottlenecks in the way consciousness operates now, and we're going to slowly go through and eliminate them one by one. This is eventually going to lead to a group consciousness of our entire species, with lots of AI mixed in, controlling everything. Eventually this group consciousness is going to create the Von Neumann Universal Constructor, and so the problem of transforming anything into anything else will be solved. And so you end up with an omnipotent superconsciousness which spreads throughout the universe and solves all the problems it encounters, and keeps on doing that until it gets to the final ultimate problem. When the last problem is solved, the combination of Godel's Incompleteness Theorem and the Halting Problem, evolution, having now consumed all of the chaos to the universe and found the solution to the final ultimate problem, reverts to chaos. * poof * Game over man. Reset. Well, isn't chaos just the universe doing something that consciousness doesn't want or understand? When consciousness takes over the entire universe, won't the entire universe be doing what consciousness wants? Then the only problems left to solve will be internal to consciousness itself. This all presupposes a finite number of problems that evolution must solve for the universe to be "complete", and that they are all solvable. Or rather, the universe becomes a "complete" system when consciousness decides to "halt" the universe and revert it back to chaos. Maybe the universe plays out the same way every time, or maybe it plays out differently each time but inevitably does the same thing over and over again. No, I'm talking about the union of collective want and understanding between all members of our species, at least until we merge into a group consciousness and our desires become the same. I guess I should say "want because you understand," representing a solution to a problem, as opposed to an irrational desire for chaos. I leave it to the reader to look inwardly and see if they contain within their own observations any evidence which corroborates this thesis. Yup. More of a thought experiment than anything else.

Yikes, someone infected me with a bullshit meme and I tried to spread it. I hate it when that happens. Let it be known throughout the forums that the population of Chinese children aged 0-14 is 53% male, not 80%!

Hooray for rational, skeptical, scientific thinking... Yes, symbiotic memes can be based upon misconceptions which are irrelevant to how the meme achieves symbiosis with humans, and this is pretty much how humanity managed to get anything done prior to the the spread of scientific methodology as a meme. If only the latter could fully replace the former the world would be a lot better off...

Okay, I'm getting really tired of responding to this peak oil alarmism, but I'll touch upon the most egregious of inaccuracies in this post. Not a lot of platinum left on earth? Why? Are we launching it all into space? Who says there isn't? Do you have a study, or are you just going to say that any technological solution to the peak oil problem is infeasible because it relies on raw materials, and if we're running out of oil than by fallacious logic we must be running out of everything. You heard it here first folks: Humans have no way of storing hydrogen. FEAR! Wait, does that even make a lick of sense? When I built my own Huffman apparatus, collected approximately 2L of hydrogen and combusted it, it made a bright white flash. According to WordNet: So what is the purpose of the semantic distinction between "fuel" and "energy carrier" that you're attempting to make? And it's not "heavy..to transport" gasoline? And gee, all this time I thought absolute zero was -273.15 C. Clearly an interim solution, perhaps kerosene, ethanol, biodiesel, or hundreds of other fuels which can work with existing vehicles is required. Fresh water is a renewable resource... I happen to work in climate science. Our research group studies global warming. Our hypothesis happens to be that CO2 is not a first order climate forcing. So, let me get this straight: The rate at which patents are filed is increasing, but because the number of patents per capita is decreasing "we're not gonna invent anything much in the future"? Okay, your point? So you weren't going anywhere with that schpiel about energy. Yes, Earth has finite mass with a particular statistical breakdown of given elements and their presence in the crust. Your point? Considering all of these "new elements" are extremely unstable, I don't see them being particularly useful to humanity. What's your point? Well, that's the end of that schpiel of yours. Guess you never ended up getting to the point... I already covered why that interpretation isn't particularly intelligent. Efficient in what terms? Volumetrically ethanol is 25% less efficient than gasoline. However ethanol is up to 50% cheaper by volume. So economically ethanol is more efficient: you simply require a larger gas tank. As to how much ethanol's energy outputs exceed the energy inputs of the production process, that's a matter of serious debate. An analysis conducted in 1988 concluded that at that time energy generated by the ethanol exceeded energy inputs by 16%. According to a more recent USDA study that figure is closer to 34%. Apparently you aren't aware that kerosene was originally known as "coal oil" Ugh, I can't take it anymore... make it stop.

WARNING!!! YOU MUST READ THIS!!! Klaxon, the internet Chicken Little, raises the alarm for each and every paranoid conspiracy theory, Federal Big-Brother scheme, internet hoax, and latest computer virus. No black helicopter alert is so ludicrous, no urban legend so implausible, that he will not pass it along as accepted fact (in ALL CAPS with multiple exclamation marks). Congratulations, you are recipient 16,747 of today's Urban Myth. CAUTION: Often Klaxon knowingly posts false alarms to foment mischief. So I've been noticing about 2 or 3 of these "peak oil" alarmists posting here quite regularly. Is anyone else as annoyed with them as I am? They seem to be alleging that market forces alone will be unable to bring about a technological solution to the problem, and will post for you the opinions of several ridiculously underqualified people to corroborate this claim. As a skeptic, I have to ask: how can you possibly know? The problem of oil depletion is so immensely complex that I would contend it's really anybody's guess as to how it will affect us in the future. I will certainly agree that if we do nothing about the problem, all of society will collapse. However, that can be said of a multitude of problems humanity encounters. Fear, Uncertainty, Distrust (FUD) is the colloquial classification of this kind of information... Fear - One of the energy infrastructures that humanity relies upon is reaching its end-of-life Uncertainty - What will happen as oil outputs drop worldwide? Will society collapse? Distrust - Everyone presently in a position of power able to deal with this problem is clearly incompetent! Human technological advancement will not provide us with a way to move away from the present oil infrastructure. FUD forms the basis of a pathological meme; it uses fear to motivate people into spreading it. Never mind the accuracy or completeness of the information, as long as it makes you afraid you'll want to warn others of the impending doom!!! That is, unless you're a level-headed skeptic. And in the end, that's all the peak oil fanatics are trying to do... spread FUD. In fact, most of them I've talked to seem convinced that there is no solution to the problem. So the alarmism doesn't even serve to motivate a move to solution, instead all they seem to want to spread is the idea that our present standard of living will be abolished following oil depletion. Working in climate science I am all to familiar with alarmism. Global warming alarmism has been enormously successful as a pathological meme. About the only benefit of it, as far as I can tell, is that it has ensured that our research group has remained funded That's good and all, but the drawbacks are likewise immense. Sadly, the largely incorrect information which has propagated along with the pathological meme has lead to skewed climate science reporting as a whole. The meme, not science, shapes not only the layman's perspective of the issue, but a great deal of policy decisions as well. I'm a liberal progressive and I hate most of what Bush is doing, but I wholeheartedly support his approach to the global warming issue. He's echoing the words of some of the top climate scientists in this country when he claims that more research is needed because our understanding of the problem is incomplete. Anyway, as a skeptic pathological memes are a great source of frustration to me, and I needed to air some of said frustration.