lucaspa

http://www.vealfarm.com/industry-info/facts.asp http://www.britishmeat.com/veal.html Seriously Lekgolo, I just did a Google search using "veal calf" and these were the #1 and #3 websites. Took me a minute. If you do science, you need to do searches to find knowledge. Come to us when your search fails to find the information you want. This is projecting your own feelings onto the animals. Ask any combat veteran, especially the ones that were good at it, if they got a "certain joy" in killing people. As you noted, the dogs are trained to be aggressive. Remember that the adorable friendly dog on The Little Rascals was a pit bull. So someone made the fighting dogs the way they are. Right? Woudn't those dogs have been just as happy playing with kids and being petted than fighting? You can't ignore the intervention of humans to influence the behavior of the dogs and turn them into "trained athletes"/killers. Is that intervention moral? After all, a human boxer gets a conscious choice. The dog didn't. Its owner forced it to be this way. What would be your ethical attitude toward a trainer who purchased young teenagers and then forced them to be boxers? Turning gentle, kind kids into agressive, violent kids who would attack another teenager on sight? (Remember your comments about putting a pet poodle in with one of the trained dogs.) Would that be moral for a human to do? Why do you think it ethical for people to do this to dogs?

That isn't going to change the amount of UV radiation. I haven't seen any studies on incipient speciation involving Inuits. However, there are indications if incipient speciation in the !Kung. There is very limited gene flow there and it flows only one way: out of the !Kung. When !Kung mate outside the tribe, they must leave and live with the spouse's people. There are studies indicating that the !Kung have several unique alleles in the population and, if the movie The Gods Must Be Crazy is accurate, neither Europeans nor !Kung view the other as desirable mates -- an early sign of reproductive isolation.

The recognition that EQ is so crude as to be worthless. Certainly comparing intelligence between individuals within a species and very probably comparing intelligence between species. "Pretty much" does not mean EVERY website, does it? Which supports my argument that EQ is worthless because of the variability of calculating it! If it were a reliable variable, you wouldn't see the variability between websites. How many of those websites were .edu? Is it? Or is it evidence that EQ is chosen as the measurement precisely because it places human intelligence at the top of the pole? IOW, is EQ used because it gives the answer we want for one species -- our own -- not because it is reliable in evaluating the relative intelligence of all the other species out there? Here are some other resources: http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/kinser/Int3.html If you choose to read only 1, read this one. Notice that if you take the simplistic ratio of brain size to body size, birds have a much higher ratio than humans! It takes fiddling with the constants to get the EQ to come out to the tables you quote. And YES! a table that comes from an .edu site! http://content.karger.com/ProdukteDB/produkte.asp?Aktion=ShowPDF&ArtikelNr=102973&Ausgabe=233218&ProduktNr=223831&filename=102973.pdf http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VH9-4FVJC1J-1&_user=5751&_coverDate=05%2F31%2F2005&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000001378&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=5751&md5=893b7ef3d55a21b0ebde4547fa9044d0 "In 1973, Jerison attempted to establish a quantitative measure of intelligence with his concept of the encephalization quotient (EQ), which was the ratio of actual brain size to expected "average" brain size. The latter was defined by the allometric function for brain:body relations initially proposed by Snell (1892) in the form of E = kP, where E and P are brain and body weights, respectively, and k and are constants. For example, a taxon with an EQ of 6, the actual value calculated by Jerison for humans, would have a brain six times larger than that in the "average" mammalian taxon. Jerison (1973) assumed that since the brain size of an "average" mammal was sufficient to maintain basic sensory and motor functions, the "excess" brain weight represented neurons that could be utilized for higher mental functions. The concepts of intelligence and the encephalization quotient have been repeatedly questioned, however. First of all, it has proven difficult if not impossible to establish a definition of intelligence, as a biological property of an organism, that is free of value judgment (Butler and Hodos, 1996). Secondly, the actual value of an expected brain size will depend on the choice of a reference group, and an expected brain size can therefore change substantially, depending on the taxonomic level selected (van Dongen, 1998)." http://icb.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/42/4/743 http://www.anthro.ucdavis.edu/faculty/mchenry/Chapter23.pdf This one has EQ for extinct hominoids. I notice the the EQ for habilis is higher than the EQ for erectus! "Taxona EQ Pan troglodytes Extant 2.0 Ardipithecus ramidus Australopithecus anamensis Australopithecus afarensis 2.4 Kenyanthropus platyops Australopithecus africanus 2.7 Australopithecus aethiopicus Paranthropus boisei 2.7 Paranthropus robustus 3.0 Australopithecus garhi Homo habilis 3.6 Homo rudolfensis 3.1 Homo ergaster 3.3 Homo sapiens Extant 5.8 More information on the variability of EQ, this time embedded in the math: "Clearly, since the line of best fit (regression, major axis, or reduced major axis) is calculated based on the data, it should be possible to calculate exactly how far each point is from the line; it is, and these numbers are called residuals. One can then use these residuals in one way or another to calculate an index of brain size relative to what is predicted for an animal of that body size. Different researchers use different indices (two you might run into are "comparative brain size" or CBS, and "encephalization quotient" or EQ). Animals with large EQs are thought to be relatively "smart" and those with small EQs are... not (for example, the siamang in the figure below). CAUTION: There are 3 possible lines of best fit, and since this is empirical of course the exact line--and hence residuals--will depend on which species are in the sample, AND there are different ways to calculate the EQ (should you base the human EQ on all mammals, on just "primitive" mammals (compare to a baseline), or on just primates?). Hence values of EQ or CBS in the literature range widely; I've seen between about 4 - 8 for humans (one of, if not the most, encephalized animals). Just be careful when comparing results across studies, and read the methods carefully! http://weber.ucsd.edu/~jmoore/courses/allometry/allometry.html But the SPECIES doesn't have an "unconscious". To have an "unconscious" you have to have a brain. A species is a collection of individual organisms. No separate brain. And it is the individuals that die! Now, do you see yourself volunteering to be the the variability that isn't going to make it in the future? Why would any individual do that? So how can there be an "unconscious" intellect at work picking variability? However, how long is that life expectancy? Long after the individual has kids! If you don't die until your 40s or 50s, natural selection is blind to whatever variation caused that death. Why? Because you've already passed those inheritable traits to your children. You are misusing teleology here. And that comes from sloppy language. There is no "cleverness" involved. If there were, would life be so stupid as to have 99.99% of all species go extinct? But that is what happens. No, the variability is chance without any intelligence at all. It is pure luck -- either good or bad. You don't choose the genes you are born with. Neither does anything else "choose" (as in an intelligent choice). The species does not sit around and decide "Dichotomy will have a fat body type and lucaspa will have a thin one, that way the species will be prepared for a possible ice age." Where is this "possible collective unconscious intellect" housed? All intellect has a material container -- such as a brain. What is the material container of the "unconscious intellect". I think you are mistaking the fact that natural selection is an unintelligent process that gives design. Natural selection does not involve intelligence, yet the product of natural selection -- adaptations/designs -- might look like they are the product of intelligence. No. Life has no "unconscious" desire of any kind. But our "unconscious" is still in our brain, isn't it? You are proposing a disembodied, non-material "unconscious". No, what you are mistaking is that evolution is a combination of chance and determinism. The chance is the variation. Selection is determinism. For you and me, we are lucky or unlucky in the alleles we inherit from our parents or get by mutation. However, selection is very deterministic at picking the alleles that do best in the current environment. The result is an unintelligent process that gives design. An algorithm is a series of steps that, if followed by a servile dunce, always gives a result. Long division is an algorithm. You don't need intelligence to do long division -- any calculator can follow the steps. But the answer is guaranteed. With natural selection, the guaranteed outcome is design. You are trying to get "intelligence" into evolution. There isn't any. 1. So you have no contrary data about the beavers. You don't necessarily have to go out and do tests. Just be aware of someone else that has already done so. However, in the absence of contrary data, my statements stand. 2. Can you be more specific about the studies? What methodologies do you think are flawed? 1. You did state what you considered "intelligence". However, that doesn't negate my argument that humans are already in that ecological niche and, therefore, it is impossible for another species to evolve comparable intelligence/technology as long as humans are around. 2. The data from several independent lines of evidence refutes this theory. Sapiens and neandertals were two different species and did not interbreed to produce fertile offspring. 1. neandertals and sapiens co-habited Mt. Shkul in Syria for 60,000 years. There have been hundreds of sapien and neandertal fossils found there. No sign of interbreeding. 2. mtDNA extracted from neandertal fossils (4 different ones) all show differences in base sequences outside the range of sequences for H. sapiens. Separate species. 3. Y-chromosome and mtDNA studies all show that the oldest Y-chromosome and mtDNA sequences in sapiens are no older than 100,000 years. But neandertals were a species 250,000 years ago. If sapiens and neandertals had merged, then there would be older Y-chromosome and mtDNA sequences. There aren't. Therefore sapiens and neandertal did not merge. Instead, the fossil data says that both species evolved from H. erectus: sapiens in Africa and neandertals in Europe. Classic allopatric speciation.

That is done also. All fossils get a particular name. The calvaria and upper jaw in the study in this thread do have specific names. For instance, the upper jaw is KNM-ER 42703. However, we are stuck with the Linnean classification. EVERY fossil gets put in a genus and species. There is no place in Linnean taxonomy to say "intermediate between H. habilis and H. erectus". So sometimes the species name is inaccurate and you have to ignore it and look for the reality of the description of the fossil. Also, species are real entities. Once most species become adapted to a niche, they stay pretty much the same for until they go extinct. So there are a LOT of fossils that are definitely H. habilis (and are the same) and many that are H. erectus and are the same. It's when you find the transitionals that things get dicey. In the Nature paper, of course, the authors have a bias against the fossils being transitional because their hypothesis is that there should be different transitionals from a common ancestor of both erectus and habilis. Therefore the authors argue very strongly that these fossils are just like all the others of the species. It's difficult, but not impossible. Especially for invertebrates, there are fossil records fine enough that you can trace the transitional individuals. In the hominid lineage, no one doubts that H. erectus is our immediate ancestor. The data in the form of transitional individuals is overwhelming. Up until this Nature paper, the data was clear that H. habilis was the ancestor of H. erectus. Again, there are transitional individuals and even in one place. As I noted, I've read descriptions of fossils from Bed I at Olduvai that have Habilis at bottom, then fossils with a perfect mixture of characteristics of habilis and erectus, and erectus at top. F. Clark Howell, Early Man, 1980, pg 81. Now, those fossils are from before 1980 and this paper only references the Dmansi find from 2001 (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/d2700.html). I don't understand how the reviewers let the authors ignore the earlier data. Maybe they were unaware of it. But the Leakey's certainly are, since most of that earlier data is theirs! There are also transitional individuals linking A. afarensis to H. habilis. That doesn't mean there aren't side branches. H. erectus in Asia is a side branch. So are neandertals and H. rudolfensis. So is the entire genus of Paranthropus. But until this paper the direct line back thru 2 species to A. afrarensis was pretty well established. And I think the data in the paper is really too weak to challenge the other evidence.

More than enough time! This is a common argument that creationists use, especially when they are arguing for a young earth. The reasoning is: if the earth is less than 20,000 years old, then evolution must be false because there is not enough time for evolution to work. However, if you accept the overwhelming data that the earth is 4.55 billion years old and that the first fossilized life is 3.8 billion years old, there is way more than enough time. One thing that shook up the evolutionary world was a recent study showing that natural selection can work up to 10,000 times faster than is commonly seen in the fossil record! Which means that the question got turned around from: "Can natural selection work fast enough to produce the diversity of life we see today?" to a new question: "Why has natural selection been so slow when it can be so fast?"

I'm not sure what work of Mayr you are reading, but you did get him accurately! "The equivalent of biological species of sexually reproducing organisms does not exist in asexual organisms. ... In such cases, one is forced to fall back on the typological species definition and recognize these species, so-called agamospecies, by the degree of difference." Mayr, What Evolution IS, pg 173. Of course, this is because Mayr has already boxed himself in on page 167 by saying "Are these new species concepts legitimate? To summarize my conclusion, they are not. ... Up to now, only two qualifying concepts have been proposed: ... " So, having limited himself to only 2 concepts, Mayr has no choice but to put prokaryotes in one of them! You can argue both that genetics are a variant of "typology" and a "different concept". After all, the genetic concept does use "clumps" of different alleles and thus defines a "population" of "clades", which in turn is a modification of the biological species concept. (according to Mayr pg 167) So you can persuasively argue that the Genetics Species Concept (which is applied only to asexually reproducing organisms) is a third species concept that is a hybrid between typology and biological species. Hmmm. I'm not sure what that means. It seems to me that you are not convinced, but cannot find a way to disagree. If it helps (or hurts), I got the discussion from Futuyma's Evolutionary Biology. I really think you would both enjoy that book and find it immensely useful. It will provide the knowledge base you need to ask all the questions you have (and many you haven't yet thought about) on evolution.

You need to cite this. Saying "any book will tell you this" isn't sufficient. The Qing Dynasty went from 1644-1911 A.D. Actually, it was China ruled by foreigners -- the Manchus. "In terms of government, the Qing Dynasty adopted the form of government used by the Ming, with only minor adjustments. For example the positions were all dual positions, one Manchu and one Chinese were in the same position, with the Manchu having more power." http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/prehistory/china/later_imperial_china/qing.html This has nothing to do with scores on the test. The Manchu was ALWAYS going to have a higher position. Also, if you go back to the Ming dynasty, you find: "While retaining the Confucian view that being a merchant is an inferior occupation, Hongwu discarded the belief that military too was inferior and developed a militant class that ranked higher than any civil servant." http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/prehistory/china/later_imperial_china/ming.html Intelligence has nothing to do with anything; it's all philosophy. What's more: "Hongwu wanted to control all aspects of government so that no other group could gain enough power to overthrow him. With this goal in mind, he eliminated the prime minister's office and secretariat, leaving himself incredible amounts of work. As a result of this, the emperors were forced to rely on eunuchs for more administration purposes. This led to the eunuchs, for the first time, being educated. Families that weren't as wealthy or influential as they would have liked, often gained power when one of the males voluntarily became a eunuch." Nothing here based on intelligence, but only on wanting to gain influence and willing to have your balls cut off. Your comments on farmers being less intelligent were not limited to China in the Qing dynasty. You made the universal statement that farmers were not intelligent. You said: "our hunter gatherer ancestors were just as not smart as we are." Post # 18 in this thread. Sorry, but you should be more careful to assert what you said when we have written record of what you said. Your own words refute you. Of course it has to do with time! You admit it yourself: "we have learned from every generation before us". 50,000 years ago, there weren't very many generations "before" them of humans! Technology follows an asymptotic curve which starts out with a small slope for a long time and then the slope gets very steep. It takes quite a bit of time to accumulate the basic knowledge necessary -- along with the technology to have spare resources so that people can be devoted to nothing but gaining knowledge. That has nothing to do with intelligence. Not all of us are Einstein or Hawking, either, are we? That a macaque (not a "macaw") had that level of intelligence shows that the species has intelligence. That's the same thing. So, to be intelligent a being needs at least to 1) comprehend and 2) invent. The problem is that animals that we don't consider "intelligent" also invent -- like the macaque. Cite your source, please. I don't find any generality about the qualifications to be a teacher in the Qing Dynasty. I do find something in Wikipedia about the examination system in general: "Theoretically, any male adult in China, regardless of his wealth or social status, could become a high-ranking government official by passing the imperial examination, although under some dynasties members of the merchant class were excluded. In reality, since the process of studying for the examination tended to be time-consuming and costly (if tutors were hired), most of the candidates came from the numerically small but relatively wealthy land-owning gentry. However, there are vast numbers of examples in Chinese history in which individuals moved from a low social status to political prominence through success in imperial examination. Under some dynasties the imperial examinations were abolished and official posts were simply sold, which increased corruption and reduced morale. In late imperial China the examination system and associated methods of recruitment to the central bureaucracy were major mechanisms by which the central government captured and held the loyalty of local-level elites. Their loyalty, in turn, ensured the integration of the Chinese state, and countered tendencies toward regional autonomy and the breakup of the centralized system. The examination system distributed its prizes according to provincial and prefectural quotas, which meant that imperial officials were recruited from the whole country, in numbers roughly proportional to each province's population. Elite individuals all over China, even in the disadvantaged peripheral regions, had a chance at succeeding in the examinations and achieving the rewards of holding office." http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=27789 So, it's not all about "intelligence". It's about knowledge and economic advantage, in that a rich family can hire tutors to enhance the knowledge base of an average family member so that he can pass the exam. If you have contrary data, please post it with the relevant citation. Thank you. No, I was testing your assertions that 1) intelligence is related to technology and 2) that Qing Dynasty assigned jobs based on intelligence. Now, IF those are true, then the deduction is that Chinese technology should have been equal to or in advance of the European. But it wasn't: Lucaspa: "And did China "grow technologically very quickly"? NO! It was say behind the Europeans when they showed up in the 1700 -1800s. So, by the data you presented, the Chinese system really did NOT assign jobs according to intelligence!" You are making ad hoc hypotheses to avoid falsification.: "they were much more refined than us. they were advanced in different ways but did not care for technology and possessions the same way the europeens did. there are alot better ways of using intelligence than to invent silly trinkets." You haven't provided any evidence or examples for your "much more refined than "us" (altho I certainly was not a European of the time) or "advanced in different ways". For one thing, the Chinese didn't invent the novel until the Qing Dynasty, whereas the Europeans had it long before. Why? The Mayan example doesn't cut it, because the reality is they didn't have the appropriate technology in the form of crop rotations and fertilization to maintain the fields. IOW, it's not that the Mayans developed technology, but that they did NOT develop agricultural technology. Oh, but you don't need intelligence to farm, do you? Hoist on your own petard! ALL populations will procreate so that they outstrip their resources. What technology does is expand resources faster than population. Biology ensures population increase. Intelligence causes resource increase. We aren't talking morals/ethics here, but intelligence. The ability to win a war and gain resources for your people does indicate intelligence. The inability to see the danger in opium would reflect on the relative intelligence of the Chinese (by your criteria), wouldn't it? After all, if the Mayans were not intelligent for failing to see the disconnect between population growth and agricultural resources, wouldn't the Chinese be equally deficient for failing to recognize the connection between opium addiction and social collapse? Sauce for the goose. Of course, I avoid that slanderous indictment of the Chinese by simply not tying "intelligence" to either technology or foresight. This has nothing to do with any style of government! This is about testing individual statements you are making. Are those statements true? Is there data out there that refutes them? Remember, my thesis is that there is no statistical difference in intelligence between ANY human population. The bell-curves of individual IQ scores (or any other measurement of intelligence) is statistically identical between populations. Any "difference" is due to methodological errors of the analysis and/or cultural bias of the tests. YOUR thesis is that there is difference in intelligence between populations, whether that population is occupation (farmers vs teachers) or government -- Chinese. All I'm doing is testing your thesis and I find it wrong. The evidence that I am doing a good job at showing your thesis (not YOU, but your THESIS) wrong is that you have tried to turn this aside to the irrelvancy of government and then making it personal on what I think: " is it because you live there? because you were born there? because everyone else around you thinks that way? you don't think you (your people i mean) are smarter than your ancestors. do you think you are smarter than the germans? you are not susceptible to being mistaught? " If the system had "flaws", then it didn't do what you say it did, did it? Since I am not advocating any superiority of Western philosophy, I have no "case" to help. Western Europe (unconsciously) adopted a different method to encourage people to use their intelligence: they would be monetarily (materially) rewarded under capitalism. Have you ever looked at Burke's TV series Connections? He traces the series of inventions (your final criteria of intelligence) that led to many of our advanced technologies. The incentive for much of that was material gain. People were rewarded for intelligent thinking and the "examination" was the marketplace. That as much as anything accounts for the rapid advancement of European technology, combined with a difference in philosophy with the Chinese. The Chinese insisted, based on their philosophy, on looking at things as a whole. Therefore their inventions, while impressive, were accidents. Gunpowder is a prime example. It took the Europeans to make 1) practical cannon, 2) individual firearms and 3) better explosives because they could take the system apart and see how it worked. Not "more intelligent", but a different philosophy. Since the merchant class was looked down upon by Chinese philosophy, there was no way to get advancement by coming up with new inventions and ways to do anything: no one would listen to merchants. But Europe was all about merchants and anyone with a better way of doing things -- inventions -- was going to do better both monetarily and socially. Again, no difference in "intelligence" between Europeans and Chinese, but a huge difference in motivation.

You do realize that there is also a Genetic Species Concept, which is used for microorganisms? This has come into play in the neandertal/sapiens debate since both mtDNA and genomic DNA has been recovered from neandertal samples. Cladistics isn't really about assigning individual species. It's about determining a lineage and relationships between species. That is, are species cousins/siblings or is there an ancestor-descendent relationship here. That is what the debate is about in the new Erectus-Habilis paper in Nature: Is erectus the descendent of habilis or are they both sibling species from a common ancestor? Hennig first proposed cladistics and argued that phylogenetic relationships and classification ABOVE the species level should NOT reflect degree of adaptation or overall similarity. Of the 3 kinds of similarity -- homoplasty (convergence), similarities based on common primitive characters, or shared derived (advanced) characteristics -- only the last is going to provide the basis of making phylogenetic conclusions. Hennig's principle is that monophyletic groups are defined by shared, uniquely derived character traits. Therefore, Hennig 1) proposed a method for inferring the true branching patterns of evolutionary history and 2) presented an opinion on criteria for classification. These very different proposals are known as cladistics. Monophyletic groups are called "clades" and monophyletic groups are nested within more inclusive monophyletic groups. Most systematists accept the method of inferring phylogeny, but not all subscribe to the cladistic philosophy of classification. So, CDarwin, you seem to have mixed the two responses: accepting the methodology and accepting the philosophy of classification. There are limits to cladistics: 1. Scoring characters. How many independent characters are there? Second, determining which character states are homologous can be very difficult. The computer programs available that use cladistics use discrete character states and cannot handle measurements that vary continuously. (in the Nature paper on erectus-habilis, the authors asssert that some character states are not really character states) 2. Homoplasy is very common. 3. The process of evolution may make it difficult to determine relationships. If the divergence happened long ago, finding homologous characters can be difficult. OTOH, if the species arose by adaptive radiation in a short period of time, then there was little opportunity for the ancestors of each monophyletic group to evolve distinctive derived character states shared by 2 or more taxa. Now, back to determining whether individual fossils or a small group of fossils represents an individual speciation by the Morphological Species Concept. When you have enough samples of a species, you can make a bell-shaped curve and track the gradual separation into 2 separate bell-shaped curves over time. This is done in the following papers: 1. Williamson, PG, Paleontological documentation of speciation in cenozoic molluscs from Turkana basin. Nature 293:437-443, 1981. 2. PR Sheldon, Parallel gradualistic evolution of Ordovician trilobites. Nature 330: 561-563, 1987. 3. Kellogg DE and Hays JD Microevolutionary patterns in Late Cenozoic Radiolara. Paleobiology 1: 150-160, 1975. When you don't have enough samples to reliably do that, then the cladistics method is used. You look for different "derived" characters between the fossils. A difficulty comes in that transitional individuals are often "mosaics". That is, they have some features of the ancestor and some of the descendent. Rarely do you see in-between features. Remember that cladistics is based on multiple morphological criteria. For instance, on group inferred the phylogeny of 11 species of sea urchins using 81 morphological characters! They then checked it against 380 base pairs of the gene for 28s ribosomal RNA. This provided an independent check for the morphological data. And it worked! There are many such studies. It's more common to look at appearance (morphology) because sampling the biochemistry is a LOT more work. However, once amino acid sequencing of proteins became common and cheap, there were dozens of studies done looking at regional differences within the proteins. That is often included in the particular papers of a fossil. For instance, in the Nature paper on Erectus and Habilis at Turkana, much is known from other studies. Figure 3 looks at a cross section of the geology: "Figure 3 | A composite stratigraphic section of strata in the Ileret area. Components are taken from sections PNG-06A and PNG-08A of ref. 27, adding only the Chari Tuff to section PNG-06A. 40Ar/39Ar ages are from ref. 26. The placement of calvaria KNM-ER 42700 and partial maxilla KNM-ER 42703 are shown. Section in meters (m)." In the References you find: Feibel, C. S., Brown, F. H. & McDougall, I. Stratigraphic context of fossil hominids from the Omo groups deposits: northern Turkana Basin, Kenya and Ethiopia. Am. J. Phys. Anthrop. 78, 595–622 (1989). Manega, P. C. Geochronology, Geochemistry, and Isotopic Study of Plio-Pleistocene Hominid Sites and the Ngorongoro Volcanic Highlands in Northern Tanzania. PhD thesis, Univ. Colorado (1993). Phenotype plasticity doesn't affect the major characteristics of bone. Phenotype plasticity involves differences in musculature. This shows up in bone looking that the insertion sites of tendons, but doesn't affect the major parameters. I think what you meant was the diversity within the population in terms of morphology. Again, there is no hard and fast line. Reproductive isolation happens over generations. The genes for hybrid fertility are known, and thus changes to those genes results in hybrid sterility. However, reproductive isolation can happen before then. The most common method is simply mate recognition: the members of one population simply don't recognize the members of another population as mates. The Morphological Species Concept simply realizes that with enough morphological change, reproductive isolation will have occurred. The MSC is actually very conservative. It is likely to underestimate the number of species. In one famous example of snails, the shell of 2 different species are identical and, if all we had were the fossil shells, the MSC would say they are the same species. But one species is hermaphroditic and the other uses normal sexual reproduction. Two separate species. Define what you mean by "genes". Do you mean that humans have 300 genes that mice don't have, or do you mean that humans only have 300 genes with different alleles from mice? On the basis of alleles (forms of genes), we differ from mice by far more than 300 genes.

Absolutely. One of my favorite quotes from the anthropology literature is: "This primitive configuration of pongid and hominid traits has led the discoverers and describers of these early Australopithecines to assign them to a new species. If the first Australopithecines to be discovered is properly Australopithecus africanus, the early ones, they suggest, should be Australopithecus afarensis. Not al scholars agree. I have to confess that, although I have had the opportunity to handle both the Ethiopian and the South African material with which it is being compared, and although I agree with virtually all of what its describers say in regard to its tendency to be more primitive in a series of traits, I am not convinced that the differences are pronounced enough to warrant separate specific recognition. ... "Our disagreement is merely a matter of the assignment of names. This is based on the judgement of the individual scholars and is a trivial matter, but it does point up an issue of fundamental significance. In an evolutionary continuum, change occurs more or less gradually through time. At the early and late ends of such change, everyone agrees that different names are justified, but when one form slowly transforms into another without break, the point where the change of name is to be applied is a completely arbitrary matter imposed by the namers for their convenience only - it is not something compelled by the data." C. Loring Bruce, "Humans in time and space." In Scientists Confront Creationism, edited by LR Godfrey, 1983, pp. 254-255. See above. There are intuitive standards for designating species by morphology, BUT no specific ones. In bones, these aren't as different as you think. One thing to remember is that many of the metrics are ratios, not absolute measurements of one variable. But ratios of 2 variables, such as length vs diameter of the femur. This eliminates many of the differences. Also, much of the time you are looking at angles, and again this is size independent. For instance, from the paper describing the calvaria: "The mandibular fossa is deep but small, with well developed postglenoid and entoglenoid processes, the latter formed by the temporal bone, not the sphenoid. The tympanic is coronally oriented (tympanomedian angle2, 100°) whereas the petrous portion of the temporal is more sagittally oriented (petromedian angle2, 34°). The tympanic shows a faint petrous crest, which is well anterior (8mm) to the short, slender mastoid process. CT imaging reveals a relatively thin cranial vault, a small frontal sinus, a well developed sphenoid sinus, and a flexed cranial base (basion–sella–foramen caecum angle, 138°)." You may not know the exact anatomical terms, but you can look to see that angles are being measured. Again, these are fairly easy to detect. They have multiple diagnostic symptoms that show up in the bones. The argument over H. floresiensis and microcephaly is being settled by looking at the long bones, not the skull. Recent reports show that the long bones are inconsistent with the individuals having microcephaly. That is, the long bones look normal, with the normal parameters (ratios and angles).

I do have access to Nature and have read the article. I'll give you my conclusion first and then the reasons for it: I speculate that Nature published the article in order to generate a discussion in the anthropological community about the hypothesis of erectus and habilis having a common ancestor instead of erectus evolving from habilis. The article is VERY poor, ignoring a LOT of data that I, who know some but not all of the literature, am aware of. The article looks ONLY at the Dmansi fossils as intermediates between habilis and erectus and ignores whole series of fossils from Bed I at Olduvai. Remember, they are only working with a calvaria, not a whole skull. "Endocranial capacity, measured from computed tomography (CT) scans and corrected for deformation, is estimated at 691 cm3. ... Although it is closer in overall size to H. habilis (Supplementary Note 1.1), we assign KNM-ER 42700 to H. erectus." Notice this: the brain size is within the range for HABILIS, not erectus. "Features suggesting this attribution include frontal and parietal keeling, the mediolaterally narrow temporomandibular joint, the distinct coronal and sagittal orientation of the tympanic and petrous elements, respectively, and a posterior midsagittal profile with a low occipital upper scale and opisthocranion positioned close to lambda" So this is why they assigned the calvaria to erectus. BUT, there are features that contradict this. Notice how the authors try to handwave them away: "2.1.1). Some characters often considered diagnostic of this species (for example, a thick cranial vault and supraorbital torus, and strong occipital angulation) are lacking in KNM-ER 42700, but scaling analyses of H. erectus and H. habilis crania suggest that these features scale allometrically with cranial size13, and in any event do not clearly differentiate the two taxa" Really, "diagnostic characters" that "do not clearly differentiate the two taxa"? Come now, who are they kidding? So, how to account for the small brain size of this erectus, which the authors admit: "In external dimensions, KNM-ER 42700 is the smallest known adult cranial vault attributed to H. erectus." The authors state: "This degree of variation may well imply that H. erectus showed marked sexual dimorphism, rather than the reduced levels that characterize the derived condition in H. sapiens (contra ref. 17)." Now, they don't know whether the calvaria is from a male or female. However, a quick search around the web showed that, when the appropriate bones were present (hips for instance) the conclusion is that sexual dimorphism in H. erectus is small -- 20-30%. Far too small to account for the small cranial volume of KNM-ER 42700. So, let me propose a different hypothesis: this is NOT an erectus calvaria. Rather, it is a calvaria from a transitional individual between habilis and erectus. After all, it does show a mosaic of habilis and erectus features. An individual that wandered into the Lake Turkana region from Olduvai, where the evolution of habilis to erectus was taking place.

The transitional fossils from H. erectus to H. neandertals ALL occur in Europe! This contradicts any other circumstantial evidence you have of African origin of H. neandertals. SOME of the transitional fossils are: Erectus to neandertalis: Stenheim and Swanscombe, 250 Kya: called H. heidelbergensis but have characteristics of both erectus and neandertalis. Large brows and small cranium ( ~1200cc) but otherwise looks like neandertalis Petroloma skull (complete): brow ridges and low forehead like erectus but not quite as primitive but not as derived as sapiens or neandertalis. Back of head resembles sapiens. 250 Kya Ehrendorf in Germany and Saccopestore in Italy: mixture erectus and early neandertals, classed as archaic H. sapiens or H. heidelbergensis. Please cite the specific articles. Have you ever read Nature? It is not an "evolution magazine" but rather a peer-reviewed scientific journal covering all disciplines of science. Eating liver does. Liver is an excellent source of vitamin D -- because mammals convert Vitamin D (cholecalciferol) to 25 hydroxycholecaliferol in the liver. http://courses.washington.edu/bonephys/opvitD.html#metab This is because vitamin D is not really a "vitamin". Vitamin D is made by the action of UV radiation on cholesterol in the capillaries of the skin. The UV cleaves cholesterol to make cholecalciferol (vitamin D). Skin color evolved because humans get a lot more UV radiation in Africa than in northern latitudes. Therefore lighter skin is an adaptation to ensure that the individual makes enough vitamin D. So, in Africa blacks would get enough sunlight but in the colder climate and higher latitude of England, they don't. Sorry, but the data contradicts the conclusion. Neandertals evolved in Europe and, because of adaptation to getting enough UV light, were probably lighter skinned. They were completely replaced by H. sapiens 30-40,000 years ago. BTW, H. sapiens evolved 150,000 years ago, not 30-40,000. Most anthropologists are calling members of ANY species within the genus Homo "human".

But now you are saying "intelligence = survival time". That isn't true, either. Survival time for a species or a lineage is not linked at all to intelligence, but adaptation to an environment and the available competition for that ecological niche. Intelligence, OTOH, is something conscious. It may be the result of adaptation but it does not follow that adaptation = intelligence since adaptation occurs without conscious thought. That is simply a byproduct of technology, which in turn is a byproduct of what we consider intelligence: the ability to manipulate abstract thoughts and the ability to communicate those thoughts to others thru the use of language. It is entirely possible that sapience is NOT a long term adaptation. That doesn't make the intelligence any less "intelligent". As you noted, it's not an "assumption". It's a conclusion. Natural selection does not happen at the will or desire of the individual. If it did, there would be a LOT more deer born with longer fur in a climate getting colder. Instead, what is observed is that just as many deer are born with shorter fur than longer fur. It's just that survival is selective. Again, the data is against some form of "unconscious smarts". People -- particularly population genetecists -- have tracked variations in wild populations and populations subjected to selection pressure in the lab. As you noted at "looking at the odds", if there were an unconscious smarts we would see more favorable variations than the "odds" would predict. But that isn't what is observed. Remember: hypothesis, deductions, testing. You hypothesis of "unconscious smarts" has deductions that we can test. When we find results to the contrary of those deductions, then the hypothesis is refuted. The forager ants are what I mean by "unconscious intelligence". They do what, in humans, is regarded as very difficult mathematical calculations requiring a high degree of intelligence -- in humans. Yet the ants do so with the most primitive of brains. So, this type of ability can be unconsciously developed by natural selection. Remember, natural selection is an algorithm to get design. It is so good at it that humans use natural selection when the design problem is too tough for them. As far as I know. Do you have any data to the contrary? We don't necessarily have a monopoly on "intelligence". Monkeys, chimps, orangutuans, etc. are very "smart": 9. E Linden, Can animals think? Time 154: 57-60, Sept 6, 1999. (the "prison breaks" from zoos are as clever as anything humans have come up with to break out of prison) However, we do have the combination of intelligence and technology such that it is going to be impossible for any other species to break into our particular ecological niche. But that applies all across evolution: it would be impossible for any fish to challenge sharks in their ecological niche. Sharks are simply very good at that niche. That's why you see widespread adaptation only when species invade an ecology with lots of empty niches: such as the tortoises and finches on the Galapagos or the mammals after the KT extinction. As a population adapts to a niche, of course they are not going to be as good at it as a species that has already adpated to the niche. When we see a replacement of a species, it is when species B has evolved in some other location and is now invading the area of species A. For whatever reason at the other location, species B is better at filling the niche than species A. But you don't see species B evolving in the same area and trying to replace species A. That doesn't work. This replacement is what happened as H. sapiens migrated out of Africa. It was better at filling the niche of Homo than either H. neandertals in Europe or H. erectus in Asia and therefore outcompeted them for the niche. Of course, H. sapiens is now all over the planet.

I submit that you have mixed up two separate ideas: intelligence and adaptations. Adaptations -- like the Scottish thistle -- isn't "intelligence" because individual thistles never decided to "spread its species around the world". Instead, a few individuals were lucky enough to be born with the alleles (forms of genes) that allowed them to survive in many environments. The unlucky individuals died. There was no "intelligence" -- unconscious or otherwise -- involved on the part of the individual plants. However, "intelligence" can be unconscious. Forager ants in Africa basically do complex spherical trigonometry to figure out where they are and the shortest path back to the nest -- but don't do so consciously. Instead, the intelligence to do those calculations is embedded in their genes. Humans can do spherical trigonometry, but we have to do so "consciously". Someone mentioned beavers as changing the environment. Making a dam is fairly "intelligent" behavior, but it appears to be unconscious for the beavers. That is, their genome makes a brain such that it has modules on how to make a dam, but they don't sit down like human engineers and think thru the placement of the dam, the thickness of the logs needed, their individual placement, etc. Instead, it is all programmed at the genetic level. Again, those individual beaver ancestors lucky enough to have the alleles to build successful dams did better and had more offspring. Those individuals unlucky not to get those alleles had their dams fail, failed to get food and/or mates, and died. As I recall, Einstein's brain was not that large. Therefore your comparison of EQ within a species doesn't seem to work. Also, for humans, EQ is going to vary with obesity, isn't it? So the EQ of Neil De Grasse Tyson is going to be much smaller than for Stephen Hawking, but is that really a measurement of their relative intelligence? After all, Hawking's body mass is low due to Lou Gehrig's disease while Tyson is a healthy eater. How about for small animals? In your list the oppossum is a lot smaller than the others, but you claim the EQ is accurate for it. BTW, didn't we already show that your EQ of Australopithecus was wrong in another thread? Why did you repeat the same flawed data in this one? Now, is it possible that the EQ was set up to get this result? IOW, are you touting the reliability of EQ because it seems to give intelligence to the species you think have it? As you admitted, it doesn't work for whales. It may not work for smaller animals, either. What is the EQ of mice and rats, for instance? Much of the brain of the bottlenose dolphin is devoted to echolocation. Does EQ take that into account? What might be a better indication of conscious intelligence (between species) is the size of the frontal lobes. Correct. "Intelligence" is one of those concepts that we have an intuitive feel for, but no precise definition. There's a good (small) book entitled The Origin and Evolution of Intelligence edited by AB Scheibel and J W Schopf that is very good at illustrating this. BTW, what we have been calling "unconscious" intelligence they call "prerational" intelligence.

It is a correlation, but another correlation we have is increasing outside presssure on the Japanese to stop whaling. We don't have another viable hypothesis for causation. So, when you have eliminated all but one hypothesis, that is the one you (provisionally) accept as true until new data contradicts it. It doesn't look like they are adding more hunters, just that the ships are more active. It's just not economical for individual Japanese to get into the whaling business. What is happening is providing work -- and income -- for the whalers already in the business. Since the whalers can't do commercial whaling, then they do "scientific" whaling. And yes, the Japaneses are known for "crazy ass pride". Their culture does not work the same as Western culture, despite the Westernization. Never in Western culture were people expected to commit ritual suicide upon failure, but they were for centuries in Japan. That type of "crazy ass pride" that demanded ritual suicide and thought it was acceptable is not part of the Western mindset.

The difference being that a 5 year old already has all the organs and cognitive ability of an adult. A blastocyst does not. I agree that this debate isn't about science, it's about a moral/ethical decision. Because "human" here isn't a biological term; it's a moral/legal/ethical term about when to assign the "rights" we as a society assign to humans: the right to life, to liberty, free speech, etc. I find it absurd to think of a mass of undifferentiated cells as a "being". If that were the case, I'd have to think of the multipotent adult stem cells in the culture dish as a "being". A blastocyst MAY become a "being" someday, but it isn't a "being" now. And a lot can go wrong between a blastocyst and a newborn. Fully 25% of blastocysts are flushed out (aborted) with the next menstrual cycle. Do we mourn the deaths of "beings" when that happens? You can also take the approach of whether applying the law we apply to "beings" works when applied to a blastocyst. If our moral laws don't work on blastocysts, then we can conclude that blastocysts are not persons. For instance, it is illegal to poison a person, either accidentally or on purpose. Alcohol is a teratogen -- poison -- because it screws up development. If a blastocyst is a person, then we would have to say that it is illegal/immoral for any woman of childbearing years to drink alcohol because of the potential for poisoning a blastocyst. Think about it. You don't know when the woman is going to get pregnant -- either by consensual sex or rape (and that doesn't matter to the blastocyst anyway, does it?) -- and thus she can never have that poison in her system. That law/morality is absurd, which shows that we do not really consider a blastocyst to be a "being" because we do not consider the law to protect the blastocyst to be ethical. And there are other examples you can think of; laws that we would never think of applying. One would be that women would be required to take pregnancy tests at least once a month. Remember that 25% of blastocysts that are flushed with the next menstrual period? EACH of them would have to be investigated as a possible crime. Every miscarriage would have to be investigated as a possible crime. Did the woman do something that might have precipitated the miscarriage? We investigate every accident that involves injury or death to a human for negligence or criminal intent. My view is that we do not have a person in the legal/moral sense until birth. Then you might want to reconsider your position. If you can't figure out WHY it isn't "right", then maybe it isn't. The problem may not be in your articulation, but in the lack of support for the conclusion.

Have you done any research on treatment of food animals on big ranches on your own? If not, why not? You might try USDA because they do have some rules on housing and treatment of large animals. The treatment of juvenile cows so that their meat will be "veal" is widely regarded as cruel. Free range cattle seem to have a life equivalent to any herbivore. Humans simply act as the predator. In between those extremes are cattle raised in feed lots.

You keep ignoring what people are saying: Japanese have a lot of pride. Their culture is such that they will not do something if it appears that they are being FORCED to do so. That's one reason why they started WWII. Their campaign in China was already in trouble, but the USA tried to use economic force (sanctions) to get them to stop. Then, by their internal culture, they could not give in. Same thing here. Fattyjwoods, you haven't addressed the FACT I have posted: despite Greenpeace's activity, Japanese scientific whaling has increased 4x in the last 10 years. Greenpeace's confrontational tactics are not working; in fact they are making the situation worse. If you care about the whales, then you advocate changing tactics. In this case, the change is to stop the confrontation. The economics of the situation will then have the Japanese stop whaling on their own. If they don't, the situation isn't any worse off than it is now and then it's time to try different tactics. The main thing to remember: Greenpeace's tactics are making the situation worse, not better. The logic here -- from Bascule -- is that whales are sapient -- like humans. Cows are not sapient. Using sapient animals as food is morally wrong. Remember, cannabilism is wrong. Now, if you decide that whales are not sapient, then eating whales is not morally wrong. Nutritionally, of course, we can eat whales. The Inuit have whale meat as a staple part of their diet. The difference is that the Inuit do not kill enough whales to threaten the population with extinction. Commercial whaling did drive many species to the brink of extinction and Japanese whaling still threatens many populations. And yes, regulating hunting of whales can have an effect in reducing the risk of extinction. Remember that ANY species, including whales, can produce more offspring than the environment can support. Right now whales (due to previous hunting) are far below that level, but reproduction rates are such that they will get to that point in a couple of hundred years. Then you will see whales starving because there is not enough food for them all. Hunting can be used as a means of keeping a population in check so that the point of starvation is never reached. It takes a lot of research to figure out the numbers to be hunted for each species in each location, but it can be done. It appears that whale meat is not considered tasty outside of Japan and not even there anymore. People would rather eat bovine steak than whale steak. So you could probably issue licenses to a few whalers to hunt the small number of whales necessary to meet the market for whale meat. Economics would determine how many whalers that is.

Yep. But I doubt Pioneer would test that out himself thinking he was the 1:1,000,000. Even the airman didn't: after all, he had a parachute! I can understand people who get their science from TV news or talk radio being frustrated: eat eggs, don't eat eggs, eat eggs, don't eat eggs, etc. I get frustrated when I hear stories saying "the risk is doubled". That doesn't tell me anything unless I know what the original risk was. If the risk was 1 in a million, then 2 in a million doesn't concern me. OTOH, if the risk was 1 in 100, then increasing to 1 in 50 means something. A colleague wants news stories to print a line showing relative risks with some landmark risks -- such as being struck by lightning -- and then showing where the risk being talked about falls on the line. I agree and wish all news stories would have a "Risk Line".

In fact, Naturalist, if you look at the radioisotopes that can't be produced by decay from other isotopes, the earth only has those long-lived nucleotides: There are 64 nuclides that have half-lives in excess of 1,000 years. Of these, 47 have half-lives in the range 1,000 to 50 million years. Seven must be excluded from this analysis because they are being generated by interaction with cosmic rays or the decay of other nuclides. If the earth were new (within 10,000 years) then there should be significant amounts of all 40 nuclides in the earth's crust. If, on the other hand, the earth is billions of years old, then these 40 nuclides should have decayed, leaving no trace. We would then be able only to find nuclides with very long half-lives. So how many of the 40 short half-lived nuclides can we find in the crust? None. Zip. Of the 17 nuclides with half-lives greater than 50 million years, we can find detectable amounts of all 17. This makes no sense. The decay rate is constant, with each isotope having its own half-life, but the rate of decay of that isotope never changes. Also, only a few radioisotopes have fission ("detonation"). What happens for those radioisotopes generated by other means -- such as C14 from N14 in the atmosphere -- you eventually reach an equilibrium where the rate of decay = rate of formation.

It's been done. IDers are very good at avoiding testable statements (because they don't want ID exposed to falsification), but they can't avoid it entirely. Yes, ID is a scientific theory. When it has made testable statements: such as that irreducibly complex structures and complex specified information can ONLY be manufactured by an intelligent entity, those statements have been tested and shown false. I'll walk you thru exactly how if you want. So ID is a falsified scientific theory, like young earth creationism, Special Creation, and Flood Geology before it. Now, if you make a general theological statement "God created", that is not a scientific theory. For the simple reason that, since no physical mechanism is specified, you can have God creating by the mechanisms discovered by science. No theory should be ignorantly questioned. That is, artificially create a "problem" for it. That just wastes time and energy that could be put to betteruse. Wormwood, what happens in science is that hypotheses/theories garner so much support that we treat them (provisionally) as fact! We then use that "fact" in formulating other theories. Since theories are tested in large bundles, the theory accepted as "fact" is also tested. The testing NEVER STOPS. For instance, heliocentrism (the theory that planets orbit the sun) is so strongly supported that it is "fact". NASA and others use that fact to plot the paths of planetary probes. Those paths are new hypotheses. That the probes arrive where and when they are calculated becomes even more support for heliocentrism. After all, if heliocentrism were wrong, the probes wouldn't arrive as calculated! History says you are wrong. Evolution has been modified considerably since Darwin,and it has always been an evolutionist that has done so. IOW, it was evolutionists that showed Darwin's idea of "disuse" and "blended characteristics" of heredity were wrong. No, because there is no such theory. Instead, endosymbiosis is used to explain some organelles -- particularly mitochondria and chloroplasts -- in eukaryotic cells. And it's not speculation: there are ways to test the theory. The explanation for multicellularity involves cooperation between cells, and there are several intermediate stages seen in living organisms. For instance prokaryotes act cooperatively and you need to do some reading on the amoeba Dictolystelium. Only if you are questioning the high school biology people who do not have access to the relevant information. And here you are talking about particular PEOPLE and not SCIENCE. I don't get upset or confused, do I? I simply do some literature research and provide the information for you. SCIENCE is not dogmatic nor corrupt. Some people advocating particular theories -- particularly the ones used to support or challenge non-scientific faiths and beliefs -- sometimes do get dogmatic. Separate the people from the hypothesis/theory. In this context it means working as a professional research scientist and pubishing in the peer-reviewed literature. After all, you are claiming that it is these people who are "corrupt" and are "corrupting" science. There is a difference between "science" and "currently accepted scientific theories"; you are confusing those. The hypotheses/theories that are considered valid change over time, but the discipliine that is "science" does not. I would personally not call your record keeping very good science, because you never stated a hypothesis that you were testing. Yes, sometimes you can just go out and gather data without a hypothesis to test, but science is much better when data is gathered in regard to a specific hypothesis to be tested.

Yes. Because every Ph.D.program requires that the student have ORIGINAL research in order to get a Ph.D. And to do that they have to ask questions and be inquisitive to find something that no one else has ever done. Evolution is a special case because there are people who work hard to mistakenly cast doubt on evolution for emotional or other reasons. The major questions regarding the origin of the diversity of life have been answered. For instance, we know apes and humans share a common ancestor and that H. sapiens evolved from H. erectus. THere is considerable data in the form of transitional fossils that H.erectus evolved from H. habilis. However, that didn't stop the recent Nature paper from questioning that. Being fringe is not a bad place to be. Being fringe and ignoring data that falsifies your position is a bad place to be. But then, ignoring data that falsifies your position is ALWAYS a bad place to be in science. Foodchain, look at all the famous scientists. They are the ones that "thought outside the box" and showed the old ideas to be wrong. Darwin with Special Creation; Einstein with Newton's Laws; Hawking with Einstein, Gould with PE questioning phyletic gradualism; Dawkins with the "selfish gene", Smolin with String Theory, etc. I think the problem may be that many amateurs who want to think outside the box want people to just agree with them and say they are right. They don't understand that ideas are tested to see if we can show them to be wrong and they get upset when their pet ideas are shown to be wrong. The problem is not with science, but with them.

As Swansout pointed out, it is the TESTING of ideas that count. Every scientist has a million ideas. They all have to be tested, and it's important HOW you do the testing: you must test the ideas trying to show them wrong. Yes, you heard me. You don't test them trying to show how they are possible, but how they are IMpossible. You do this first against known data. Are there data already known that simply can't be there IF the hypothesis is correct? If so, then you admit the hypothesis is wrong and move on to another one. Quite frankly, over 50% of ideas are lost at this stage. Another huge percentage is lost when you broach the idea to someone else, because it turns out HE knows of falsifying data that you haven't found yet. Another huge chunk of ideas fail at the experimental level. Basically, Foodchain, it is estimated that 99.99+% of all hypotheses are WRONG! It's called the Duhem-Quine Thesis if you want to look it up. This means that you have to be willing to admit your idea is wrong if you want to be a good scientist. I don't see that. When I first began publishing on adult stem cells in 1991, I was alone. Now the existenced of adult stem cells are generally accepted. Creativity is encouraged among the graduate students everywhere I've been. The word is human-made, but are you going to argue that "oxygen" does not refer to a physically real entity? Please be specific. There are lists of symptoms that correspond to genetic diseases -- such as achondroplasia (dwarfism) or Duchenne's muscular dystrophy. Are you saying the symptoms don't fit? I don't see science as "stale and sedated". Instead I see a proliferation of journals, offering more and more opportunity to get published. I still see that the most famous scientists are the ones that showed an idea to be WRONG! For instance, last week a paper in Nature challenged the accepted theory that H. erectus evolved from H.habilis. The paper itself is very poor but it still got published in one of the 3 premier scientific journals. What more do you want?

This is what gave me the idea that you would trade liberty for life: I had said: "But "victory" for al-Qaeda is destruction of the government of the USA and our tolerant, secular society. Can al-Qaeda achieve those objectives? " You said: "Sure. Why not? How many nuclear warheads going off on our soil would it take to defeat us? " You are saying that if Al-Qaeda kills several thousand Americans, we will give up our liberties and tolerant, secular society. That is trading our liberty for our lives: stop killing a few of us and we will give up our liberty. If a lot of people feel like you do, then Al-Qaeda can win. If most Americans adhere to Patrick Henry -- "Give me liberty or give me death" -- then they can't. Now, if you really didn't mean that a few nuclear weapons would cause us to cave in and give up our way of life, then say so. But please don't accuse me of making strawmen when I am simply following what you are saying. If you are mispeaking, that is your problem, not mine. Please listen carefully: Al-Qaeda is a problem, but not a CRITICAL problem. IOW, al-Qaeda cannot acheive their objectives ALONE without us making a huge error. We tolerate a low level of violence in our society, from crime to automobile accidents. They are "problems", and we actively try to prevent them. But we realize that these problems are not going to destroy our way of life or government. Al-Qaeda and other terrorists (such as the Weathermen in the 1960s or the Unibomber) fall into that category of violent problems that we can survive and live with. I object to elevating al-Qaeda to a higher level threat than what it is. Yes, underestimating your enemy is not good. Overestimating your enemy, losing your head, and letting panic force you into a major mistake is worse. And now who's making strawmen? Sauce for the goose. We actively try and stop criminals. The FBI was actively trying to prevent terrorists attacks before 9/11. Al-Qaeda has several problems with a mult-warhead attack in the US. The first problem is getting several nuclear bombs. There are agencies around the world that work to prevent that; that try to keep nuclear weapons and the material to make them secure. That is just the first line of defense. The findings of the 9/11 Commission disagree with you. They got lucky in that the people tracking the situation simply didn't make the correct hypothesis from the data. That's not a systems failure; it's a failure in individuals. No. And I haven't advocated a system for it! I don't know where this argument is coming from or why you are making it. I said our intelligence services were asleep. That is a failure of individuals -- not a system. How you got from my statement to this rant I have no idea. I know. You can't stop these attacks completely -- not and maitain a free society. That is what I'm saying. However, I'm looking beyond the inability to completely stop terrorist attacks and asking: if there a few attacks and far between, what is the effect? I'm saying that the effect is that some Americans -- perhaps including you and me -- will die. But AMERICA will be fine. You seem to disagree with that when you claim a few nuclear detonations would have al-Qaeda "win" as I defined the term. Are you sticking with that claim? If so, then I'm puzzled by your current insistence thatwe can't stop attacks. If you also maintain that, then in conjuction with your earlier claim, you are conceding that al-Qaeda is going to win in the long term. Is that what we are disagreeing about? You saying al-Qaeda will inevitably destroy America and my saying that they won't? Yes, apples and oranges. OBL is hiding in a population that won't give him up and that we can't penetrate. Nuclear warheads, OTOH, are items that can be very carefully tracked and guarded. It's not like they are AK-47s. They can't just make a whole bunch of nuclear weapons disappear without people noticing. You said: "Don't think we're unbeatable just because we got fancy war toys." I said: "You are confusing losing a few battles or suffering casualities with losing the war. " Now you say: The context was NOT Iraq. The context was a minimal number of terrorist attacks within the USA. Please try to keep in context and stop making strawmen. The context was your statement above that exploding a few nuclear warheads on US soil would "defeat" us the way I defined it: causing us to give up our way of life and government. Yes, al-Qaeda can launch an occasional successful attack. But LOOK at the number of attacks outside Iraq and Afghanistan since 9-10-2001. Two in the US (on the same day), one in Spain, one in Bali, two in Great Britain. That is 6 attacks in as many years. You can't win a war this way. Especially when, in the country that is your greatest enemy (US) you have only (essentially) one attack in 6 years. You simply can't destroy a country that way. Again, before you make another strawman, let me emphasize that this doesn't mean we don't oppose al-Qaeda, or stop reasonable security measures, or tell the FBI and CIA to take a vacation. It is simply asking you, and everyone, to step back and look at this from a strategic military perspective. When you do that, the situation is a lot less scary and dangerous. Tell me, HOW exactly is our country going to be "destroyed" by terrorism? Are we going to formally surrender to al-Qaeda? Are we going to be occupied by al-Qaeda, like we occupied Germany and Japan after WWII and dictated their government? Are we voluntarily going to change our laws to "sura" laws and make our nation an Islamic state like Iran? Please, tell us how terrorism will destroy us. The data says otherwise. Read the NIEs. You say we lose part of ourselves. Who do we become like in that process? Al-Qaeda, right? If we become indistinguishable from al-Qaeda, isn't that what they want? For all the world to become just like they are? And didn't you say that terrorism wins when they get what they want? I'm just following the logic. If you disagree, show me where the logic fails. Please look at what has been happening. BECAUSE the government declared al-Qaeda members to be enemy combatants, they said they could imprison them forever without trial. And they captured several al-Qaida members overseas and imprisoned them at Guantanamo without trial. Then the Bush government claimed that Jose Padilla, a US citizen living in the US, was a member of al-Qaeda. What did they do? Declared him an enemy combatant and imprisoned him without trial. The only reason Padilla got a trial was that the Supreme Court demanded it and the Executive Branch (thank God) was not willing to ignore the Judicial Branch. But let me point out a strawman embedded in your argument: "for wearing the wrong uniform". THat's not the reason that the government shot the guy in the head in Iraq, was it? After all, al-Qaeda in Iraq is not wearing uniforms,but civilian clothing. No, the reason the guy gets shot in the head is because the government says he is a member of al-Qaeda. So, if the government says YOU are a member of al-Qaeda, why shouldn't they shoot you in the head? Aren't you even more dangerous to the US being an al-Qaeda member here than if you were in Iraq? So, if shooting a al-Qaeda prisoner in the head is justifiable in Iraq, why is it not justifiable in the US? The problem is with "your enemy". Who is that "enemy"? This war isn't with a "government", is it? It's against "terrorists". But who gets to say who is a terrorist and who isn't? If you say this behavior is OK toward "terrorists", and accept that a person is a terrorist because someone in the government says so, then what is to prevent that someone from declaring YOU a "terrorist" and behaving that way toward you? Remember, the al-Qaeda "terrorists" in Britain were home grown; they were not agents smuggled into the country. The question to you is: does being a US citizen confer differences on how the government treats al-Qaeda members? If so, why? What is your reasoning here. Are you equating killing in combat with murder? The same way that Nazi and Soviet atrocities and maliciousness contributed to the defeat of Nazi Germany or the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan. The Nazis were treated as liberators when they entered the Ukraine in 1941. Their "despicable and malicious" behavior turned the popuation against them and caused the formation of very effective Partisan bands. In this case, if our behavior is despicable and malicious to Muslims in general, then we turn all the countries that have a Muslim majority against us AND make guerilla bands of Muslims living inside the US and other Western countries. Uniting the Muslim world against us provides the population, resources, and industrial base to wage conventional war that al-Qaeda lacks. However, a coalition of Muslim countries would be able to wage conventional war -- and destroy the USA in the time-tested ways nations are destroyed in conventional wars. They get a prize or something? Does that somehow translate to americans 1. I agree with your last statement. But compare that to your statements about al-Qaeda being able to "destroy" the US with a few nuclear weapons. The only way for the US to be "destroyed" in that situation is for you and others to decide they would rather be alive than dead. 2. There are 2 ways al-Qaeda wins if we become them. Please address those ways instead of assertions of denial. As you say, we lose everything we stand for as a country and society and end up with a society that is indistinguishable from Iran or Taliban Afghanistan. By your own standards, that is a loss for us but isn't it also a "win" for al-Qaeda. After all, don't we define "winning" in Iraq as establishing a government and society similar to ours? Second, as I outlined above, we make all Islam our enemy. That produces a coalition of nations that can defeat us in a conventional war,occupy us, and force us to have a Taliban government. Wouldn't you agree that al-Qaeda wins in that situation? I'm trying to understand the contradictory statements here. You start by stating that al-Qaeda is being PREVENTED from destroying our country by terrorist attacks. But then you state that it is impossible to stop/prevent terrorist attacks. Do you see the logical contradiction here? By your argument that neither any system nor the people in intelligence services can stop a terrorist attack, then why do you think we can prevent a multi-warhead attack? If we can't prevent one, then by your premise, we will be destroyed. The logical question then is: why are we fighting terrorism? Just what do you consider an effective strategy to be? From your statements, unconditional surrender would be one option. But if we rule out surrender, what are you advocating? Now remember that my positions are: 1. Even a 5 warhead attack on the USA would not "destroy" us. 2. Our current level of prevention is fairly effective since we haven't had a terrorist attack in the USA since 2001 -- 6 years. And it had been 6 years then since the last Islamic attack (also on the World Trade Center in 1995).

A lot more than al-Qaeda can get its hands on. Does the United States cease to be the United States and turn the government into a Islamic theocracy if we lose 1, 2, 5, or 10 cities? No. Ain't gonna happen. Or maybe, with enough people like you around, maybe it does happen ... Would you trade your liberty for your life? Yes, al-Qaeda has the (unlikely) potential to kill several thousand Americans. Maybe even as many as a million. Out of a nation of 300 million. That's 0.003% of the population. We have more than that die from cancer each year. But that doesn't occupy the country or defeat our armed forces. So it's not defeating the USA unless the majority of our people decide to trade liberty and their way of life for their lives. If they do that, then they deserve the theocratic tyranny they are going to get. Me? I'll be emigrating or joining the Resistance. They got very lucky on 9/11. Lucky because our intelligence services were asleep. They don't have the manufacturing or technical base to produce their own nuclear armed missiles. So they have to try to get them from people who do have the industrial base. How many nuclear warheads do you think al-Qaeda can they get illegally? You are confusing losing a few battles or suffering casualities with losing the war. Did we torture prisoners? Did we set the FBI on our own people like the Gestapo? This is what is being discussed, not openly killing people in battle. The problem with this style of behavior is that we become the terrorists. Do you doubt that the Gestapo or KGB were terrorists to their own people? This is what is being advocated. That's why Abu Ghraib was so bad: we were the Gestapo running a Gestapo style prison. Yes, we still are "Americans", but it is a government that takes away our freedom just as effectively as an Islamic theocracy would. If we allow our government to take that type of power, where does it stop? Sure it is an indication! How naive can you be? Does it stop only with "terrorists"? Who decides who exactly are the "terrorists"? Why can't the government come into your home, kidnap you, take you to a secret prison, torture you, and kill you? All they have to say is that you are a "terrorist". Who checks up to see that this is true? The problem with freedom and rights are that they has to apply to everyone. If you start making exceptions, and particularly when you let the people in power in government start deciding without any checks and balances, then there is no way to stop them. Remember, Hitler and Mussolini were voted into office. Well, if we kill EVERYBODY on the planet, no one wins. However, if we decide to try and kill all Muslims, yes they do win. They also win if we turn despicable and malicious. Then we become them. That isn't what al-Qaeda wants. That's what a large proportion of the Iraqi insurgency wants. They perceive us as an occupying power. Unfortunately, they are correct. bin Laden and al-Qaeda have stated repeatedly that they want Western secular society to disappear. They perceive that society and way of life to be a direct threat to their desired way of life. They are correct. Given a choice, people prefer the tolerant, material Western lifestyle to the restrictive lifestyle imposed by radical Islam. It is impossible for us to simply "behave and live over here". Communications are global. Re-runs of "Dallas" and other TV shows are regularly broadcast in Islamic countries. They have short wave radios and access to the Internet. The wealthier of them travel to the West. They send their sons to be educated and many of them get used to women being in college with them and not wearing traditional dress. They like that lifestyle and want it when they go home. Our presence is simply an excuse. One of bin Lauden's propaganda efforts was that US troops had "defiled" Mecca. In fact, of course, NO US military personnel ever went to Mecca -- out of sensibility to the Saudis and the possibility of offending people like bin Laudin. It didn't work, so the "offense" is not being there, but existing at all and providing an example of a way of life preferable to the one bin Lauden and the conservative Islamists want people to live. Of course, you and I say "tough shit" to them. In the marketplace of ideas, the ideals of the Taliban and al-Qaeda are going to lose. Obama was talking small "covert ops" teams. But the important thing was using those teams WITHOUT permission of the Pakistani government. That's the big no-no. Yes, if you invite another country to use their military on your soil -- like the Free French or Dutch resistance in WWII, then it's OK. But the idea you propose -- a secret deal with Musharef to violate Pakistani territory with his covert permission but public opposition -- is a recipe for disaster. Both to us and Musharef. As a secret, it makes the USA a really bad guy to the average Muslim citizen of any and every Islamic country because we invaded a friendly soveriegn nation. When the secret deal gets out -- and it will eventually get out -- then Musharef is seen as betraying his own people (which he did) and the USA corrupted him. It means no Muslim can ever again trust any public figure who is friendly with the USA. So, no Muslim leader friendly to the USA can either stay or get into power. Only in large numbers. By that I mean the detonation of 100+ nuclear warheads within a couple of months. That's what the TAPPS study showed for nuclear winter. Otherwise, yes, they kill a large number of people by blast and thermal pulse, and more by increased incidence of cancer from the fallout. But they do not pose an "extinction risk". So the issue becomes one of deterrence vs extinction. N. Korea only needs 10 or so bombs total to be an effective deterrent. Why? Because Seoul lies only 30 miles south of the DMZ and no S. Korean politician is going to risk even a Hiroshima sized firecracker going off in Seoul. So having 10 ensures that one will get delivered. The same has applied to India and Pakistan. The best estimates I get are 20 nukes between them. But that's sufficient for a deterrence against invasion of one by the other. And that applies to Iran. Iran doesn't need the ability to wipe out 20 American cities, but only enough nukes to take out a carrier taskforce or a division of troops. That capability right there is enough to deter any US politician from aggressive action toward Iran. It's not enough for "extinction" of the human species. Yes, we would like Iran not to have nukes, because that would make it so much easier to intimidate Iran. Your only argument against this petty type of nuclear proliferation would be the possibility of a war between many 10-20 states, each being able to deliver 5-10 nukes. (Notice I said "deliver", not "have". The reason our and the Soviet Union's nuclear arsenals were so big is that, like most ammunition, most of it isn't going to get to target against opposition. Some bombs simply won't detonate, planes will get shot down, missiles will veer from course, etc. ) That is possible (witness the web of alliances that became WWI), but unlikely. And that is why the effort against nuclear proliferation is "weak". Anyone who has read the TAPPS paper and thought about it realizes that the threat just isn't anywhere as severe as you paint it to be. Therefore the threat doesn't justify the short term military cost to stop each and every country from becoming a nuclear power. For instance, the USA simply doesn't have the conventional power to really stop Iran if Iran is determined to become a nuclear power. Yes, we can perhaps bomb the facilities with B-2's and cruise missiles, but all the Iranians have to do is build new ones underground. We can set them back 5-10 years, but not stop them. We would have to invade and occupy the country, and our entire Army and Marines are not large enough to do that. We would have to reinstate the draft and triple the number of the Army and Marine combat divisions in order to have enough. Can you really see us doing that? Would you vote for it?

1. It is debated that H. erectus used fire. 22. B Weuthrich, Geological evidence dampens ancient Chinese fires. Science, 281: 165-166, July 10, 1998. Evidence for use of fire by H. erectus is challenged. First use of confirmed fire is by H. heidelbergensis 200,000 to 400,000 years ago. 2. http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/110482059/ABSTRACT?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0 TI: THE EVOLUTION OF BIPEDALITY AND LOSS OF FUNCTIONAL BODY HAIR IN HOMINIDS AU: WHEELER_PE NA: LIVERPOOL POLYTECH,DEPT BIOL,LIVERPOOL L3 5UX,ENGLAND JN: JOURNAL OF HUMAN EVOLUTION, 1984, Vol.13, No.1, pp.91-98 "By 1.6 million years ago, however, we see evidence that this pattern had begun to change dramatically. The famous skeleton of Turkana Boy—which belonged to the species Homo ergaster— is that of a long-legged, striding biped that probably walked long distances. These more active early humans faced the problem of staying cool and protecting their brains from overheating. Peter Wheeler of Liverpool John Moores University has shown that this was accomplished through an increase in the number of sweat glands on the surface of the body and a reduction in the covering of body hair." So we have hairlessness 1.6 mya but confirmed fire only 400 kya. 1. So our ancestors walked around in clothes that stank. 2. The clothing was primitive, so you can imagine thicker skins. Also, instead of the complex process, consider chewing the hide. Plains Indians used to do that to soften the hides for clothing and tents. 1. Remember that the competition is a metaphorical struggle for existence. Darwin made that very clear. It is not meant to always be direct competition between individuals of a species. 2. Think of lions. Males compete for access to the lionesses, but lionesses (and males on their own) cooperate when hunting. 3. Chimps compete against different tribes of chimps, but cooperate within their own group. Basically, you have to look to see when competition between individuals happens and when there is cooperation. There is no hard and fast rule. It all depends on environment and what works in that particular environment. No, you don't. Macaques invent but have no language. They learn a new technique by watching others use it. Therefore: this is wrong. Looking at evolution, it looks like our brain size increased before we evolved language. For instance, neanderals have pretty large brains and a good stone tool kit, but they lack the hyoid bone necessary for complex speech. No. What happens instead is that they encounter situations where the environment will support more individuals, so that more survive. However, you need to document that actual reproductive rate (# offspring born per year) increases. In order to have the spare resources to build space colonies, you must have birth control. You are talking a lot of technology and resources for a very few people -- the colonists. So if you increase our reproductive rate now, the increased number of people will consume the resources you plan on using to build the space colonies. Of course, on the colonies birth control is needed because the resources on any individual colony are very limited. Actually, it more the ability to detect cheating. Punishment comes only after you know the other is not cooperating as they should. And yes, it appears that the ability to detect cheating is a genetic module in our brain. Actually, NOW people do intend to be cooperative. Now cooperation is a choice -- altho a genetic disposition. But yes, cooperation was not a goal of evolution. Sexual orientation isn't a "behavior". Whether you find opposite sex or same sex sexually desirable (sexual orientation) is due to the genes. And people have had sexual desire long before they learned about evolution. I had my first crush on a girl when I was 6. "good" is a matter for ethics. There are rules we as a society have set up on what is "good" or "bad" in terms of expressing sexual desire. Walking up to a woman and grabbing her breasts is "bad". Saying she looks very attractive in that attire is OK or "good". Both are means of expressing sexual desire.