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] CDarwin has a more realistic picture when he refersto monkeys and chimpanzees. Both drive off predators today by yelling, screeching, posturing, and even throwing stones. Predators, by necessity, must be "cowards". It can't risk a fight each and every time it hunts because, if it is injured in a fight, then it can't hunt again. It starves. So predators can be driven off by a group without the use of tools. Now, this doesn't say that A. afrarensis couldn't also have used branches as tools to help in the intimidation of predators. It's just saying that it's not a requirement that they did so. 1. It's historical tradition to associate stone tools with Homo. As I said, H. habilis is not very physically different from A. afarensis (and there are transitional fossils linking the two species), but Leakey put habilis in a the Homo genus because of the stone tools. So yes, you can view this as somewhat arbitrary and anthropocentric. 2. Can you give me the citations for P. robustus and boisei being associated with stone tools? I haven't seen that. Weren't the brains of the genus Paranthropus smaller than H. habilis? Also, isn't it pretty well established by teeth and musculature that they were obligate hervibores?

It looks like we've pretty well exhausted the topic. In brief, getting cancer treatments is tough because cancer cells are subject to Darwinian evolution. Cancers are populations of cells, each of which varies slightly from the others. By the time a cancer is clinically noticeable, that population is hundreds of millions/billions of cells. A treatment based on the property of cancer cells runs into the problem that a few of the cells are going to be resistant. So the treatment might kill all but 1,000, all but 100, all but 10. However, the remaining cells are not going to multiply and, after 2-5 years, the cancer is going to be back to where it was in size except now the treatment won't work. Because all the cancer cells are descended from those who were resistant and, by inheritance, are also resistant. Don't you just hate it when evolution is true?

Didn't you do this thread in "Genetics"? A search on ask.com on "evolutionary psychology" turned up these: http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/projects/human/evpsychfaq.html http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/primer.html BTW, this course has a different idea of what EP is than you do: "The goal of research in evolutionary psychology is to discover and understand the design of the human mind. Evolutionary psychology is an approach to psychology, in which knowledge and principles from evolutionary biology are put to use in research on the structure of the human mind. It is not an area of study, like vision, reasoning, or social behavior. It is a way of thinking about psychology that can be applied to any topic within it. " http://www.ulm.edu/~palmer/

Yes, a bright and motivated lay person can read the literature and learn a subject to the same level that a Ph.D. does. Getting a Ph.D. is also about jumping thru the hoops to get the degree that equals the work/thinking that you are capable of. As a Ph.D. research associate at UC Davis, I knew a research assistant (BS) that was doing lab research for the clinical guys. He was functioning as a Ph.D. -- thinking up projects on his own, stating hypotheses (or often re-stating the vague ideas the clinicians came up with), designing the experiments, conducting them, writing up the results for publication. I was so very happy to hear that he had finally gone back to grad school and gotten his Ph.D. so that he could be paid commensurate with the work he was doing. Yes, both. Ph.Ds in the experimental sciences spend a good portion of the first 2 years doing classwork. The breadth of that classwork depends on the area you are getting the Ph.D. in. At NYMC where the degree is in "biomedical science", the classwork is VERY broad, including biochemistry, cell biology, molecular biology, physiology, pharmacology, immunology, and neuroscience. Once you join your mentor's lab, then the focus narrows quite a bit -- to the mentor's area and then to your own research. At that point you aren't reading gigantic textbooks but literally hundreds of 4-6 page primary papers in the literature.

The issue is whether "not in a state of deception or ignorance" is subsumed under the first 2, since we both agree that there is no way, within science, to disprove either Last Tuesdayism or The Matrix. Sanity: "the quality or state of being sane; especially : soundness or health of mind" I would say that deception violates sanity. You are not of "soundness of mind". In Last Tuesday your mind is telling you that the earth is old and the events you remembered really happened, but that is not "sound". In The Matrix your mind is telling you that you are walking around on the earth when you are really plugged into machines under the surface and not moving. Basically, being sane means perceiving reality. If you perceive that you are Napoleon Bonaparte, that is insanity. Perceiving a history that never happened or a "reallity" that is not the case (The Matrix), then you are not sane. In fact, since we need to be sane to trust our senses, since senses are not to be trusted in The Matrix, then the people there are insane by that criteria, also. OTOH, if you think "sanity" is limited to reasoning correctly, then you need the 3rd statement.

I've taken several physics classes. A year of standard physics, a year of physical chemistry (which was heavy into quantum mechanics), and a semester of physical biochemistry in grad school. So let's stop with the condenscending attitude, please, and find that paragraph or some other material that you can use as "data".

That's one idea. However, I am thinking that humans have been using virtual reality in the form of masturbation for millenia. How well does it work?

Not at all. I was just curious. Was it a mistake on your part to write "Lab"? If so, just say so. BTW, I'm still waiting for that polite "thank you".

Saying that EP is "just" the study of how natural selectoin has influenced human cognition and behavior leaves out nurture, since nurture is not natural selection! So your post contains an internal contradiction. And my caution still holds: very few specific behaviors have been shown to be due, even in part, to natural selection. And none of them have been shown to be due solely to natural selection.

I have to think about that one. The energy released is calculated based on the relativistic mass of the spacecraft, That energy has to be the same for both frames of references. But if, as you say, the people in the spacecraft think the planet is travelling at relativistic velocity, then the collision should release a lot more energy, shouldn't it? Because the planet would be REALLY massive. That means 2 different amounts of energy released -- one for each frame of reference. That doesn't sound right. Swansout, it will hurt you if you are under the point of impact!

You misunderstood or I was not clear. I never said "ignore it". Remember, I said "Do we have a conflict with people who think Western secular democracy should be destroyed? Yes." Should we combat the people who want to destroy Western secular democracy? Of course. However, the police and intelligence agencies are doing a good job of that. And, remember, altho they want to destroy our way of life, they can't. They simply don't have the power to do so. They can kill a few of us, but can't come anywhere close to destroying our way of life on their own. The only way they can destroy us is like you said: if we act stupidly. I never said ignore it, but tone down the hysteria and treat it for what it is: a chronic problem that we've had for decades and that can be handled by existing law enforcement and intelligence agencies: if they are alerted to the threat. The only reason they got away with 9/11 is because the relevant agencies weren't looking or thinking about terrorist attacks. Even then, FBI agents in Minnesota were sounding the alarm because known enemies were taking flying lessons. The alarm wasn't listened to. It's not that I don't care, but in a "war" you have to keep perspective. Losing people is second to losing the battle or war. So yes, you are going to have casualties. The important consideration is whether those casualties are going to result in the enemy winning. In the case of Al Qaida, the answer is "NO". As heartless as it sounds to you, Paranoia, New York could be nuked and the USA would be just fine. Flight 93 could have hit the White House and killed Bush and the USA would have been fine. We lose the war if we place such a high value on individual life that we destroy our own liberties to protect those lives. IOW, if we give in to our fears of our own death. Which is why I said from the first that we lost a battle against Al Qaeda the moment we invaded Iraq! We had just deprived Al Qaeda of state protection in Afghanistan. Hussein wouldn't let them into Iraq. But then we invade and open the country to chaos and offer Al Qaeda the possibility of state protection that we had just deprived them of in Afghanistan! From the intelligence reports our own government has published, Al Qaeda already has safe areas in Iraq. We simply don't have enough troops there to occupy the entire country. Al Qaeda and Iran can agree in their desire to hurt the West. That may be enough to overcome the Sunni-Shiite difference. Or the Shiites could simply let Al Qaeda have training camps, Iraqi passports, etc. without providing funds or caring if they are Sunnis. The number of Al Qaeda operatives is small and offers no military threat to the Shiites. After all, this is pretty much what was done in Afghanistan. The point Lieberman misses is that all this is going happen if we stay. We are in a war we can't win. We can delay the day all his fears come to pass by keeping troops there, but it will come to pass. And all the troops killed in the interim will be killed to no purpose. IMO, time to admit we got into a war we couldn't win, pull out, start preparing for the consequences, and trying to set up a situation where we can win. We lost this battle. Time to get ready for the next one.

"This is clearly some way from a living cell, and to obtain something indisputably alive the genetic material needs to copy itself, and the vesicles divide." This is the difference between synthetic life and abiogenesis. Humans think they have to include the genome to have "life". They want life with directed protein synthesis. However, directed protein synthesis is not necesary for an entity to be "alive". In terms of abiogenesis, get life first and THEN evolve directed protein synthesis.

Yeah, the second paper indicates tool use comparable to what chimps do today, but not manufacture. I'll let the anthropologists fight it out over those chipped stone tools. Making permanent stone tools is a big step in hominid evolution. Originally, that is why Leakey put Habilis in Homo. The brain size of H. habilis is not that much larger than A. africanus or afarensis. But the stone tools justified Homo, in Leakey's and others' opinions. So there is going to be resistance in accepting stone tools in a species not homo. Have to see how it turns out. I'll accept what they decide in the end.

"100% random" is a strawman invented by creationists. No scientist says the universe is "100% random" or "due solely to chance". In natural selection, "random" means only with respect to the needs of the individual or population. IOW, in a climate getting colder, just as many deer with shorter fur will be born as deer with longer fur. In terms of where they happen on the genome, mutations are not random. There are "hot" spots that are more prone to mutation. There are types of mutations that are more likely. But, for the effects on the phenotype in a given environment, variations are "random". In a coin flip, randomness means that, in a large number of flips, you will get an equal number of "heads" and "tails". No. Evolution is gradual and "descent with modification". The reason we are only slightly genetically different from our closest relatives is that the "modification" is gradual and thus is only minor. Sigh. Depends on what you are talking about. Evolution does take generations to occur, but for species with short generation times, you can get quite a bit of evolution in a few years. In one of my favorite experiments with Drosophila, they tested speciation by putting the flies in different environments for 5 years. That's 2500 generations for them (a generation per week). At the end they had new species and the new species were 3% different in their genes. Chimps and humans are less than 1% different. Of course, 2500 human generations would be 50,000 years. It is also dependent on how severe the selection pressure is. The more severe, the faster natural selection will change a population. The less severe, the more generations it will take. 1. Be careful of reduction. No, you can't "reduce" evolution to energy. Any more than you can reduce evolution to "changes in allele frequencies". 2. Evolution only applies to populations. The evolution we are talking about is not the new general definition of "evolution" which is, essentially, "change over time". You need to be careful which type of evolution you are talking about and not mistakenly flip back and forth. Biological evolution is not the same as stellar "evolution" or cosmic "evolution". Energy itself does NOT "evolve". It changes form. This approach is futile. Conservation of energy says that matter and energy are neither created nor destroyed, but change form. It doesn't tell you anything important about evolution. Yes, you can track how living animals use energy. Been done. After all, we have studied photosynthesis, glycolysis, and oxidative phosphorylation. All "encapsulate energy". 1. Change is VERY visible to natural selection. ANY change that is selectively advantageous or disadvantageous is subject to natural selection: no matter how small. The equations of population genetics, derived from Mendelian genetics, are crystal clear on this. 2. By "mutations that make it", do you mean the "advantageous" mutations? Yes, they are random. They "make it" because selection is not random. Yes, even today penguins are born with less adaptation to living in the water than others. Those with less adaptation are eliminated by natural selection and those with adaptations are selected for. You seem to have forgotten all about selection.

Yes. I understand what you are saying: since all the sense impressions come thru neurons, then what the neurons present is a "model" of reality. In other words, what we perceive as "touching" is the signals of our neurons. BUT, the neurons themselves and their signals are in the physical universe. And, as you admit, it is the physical, material interactions of neurons that "defines us". The perception of the keyboard is not directly the cells coming in contact with the keyboard, but the end result of physical, material signals sent by the keyboard. But ALL of that exists in the physical, material universe. There is no disconnect. You did leave off "by humans". Go look. Your statement is "An answer that is unquestionable; a truth that cannot be doubted or disputed." So don't blame me for the "total contradiction" or try to wiggle out of my refutations of your original statement Sorry, but that isn't possible. Flat is in 2 dimenstions. No matter what dimensions are added, the earth still isn't 2 dimensional. The earth isn't flat in any theory or in anyone's consciousness. I've already stated, several times, that any search for truth starts with 2 statements that are taken on faith: 1. I exist. 2. I am sane. I have never used "I think therefore I am", have I? You are making a strawman. Have fun knocking it down, because it isn't my argument. You need to address what I say, not make strawmen. What you are missing is that, once those statements are taken as true, then there are undisputable facts or truths. You have to go back and deny one of those statements. You don't do that. You say "within my consciousness" referring to the idea that the earth is not flat. That means that you accept both statements. You exist because you say "my" and you say the earth isn't flat in your consciousness. Why not? Because you accept you are sane and can trust your sense impressions on the shape of the earth. Irrelevant. You are going off on a tangent here. This doesn't address at all that science limits itself to intersubjective experience. The taste is not intersubjective. You and I have different experiences. Another strawman. I never used the word "subjectivity". I've used "intersubjectivity" and personal experience. So I hope you had fun knocking apart your strawman, because you never got close to my argument. You still haven't dealt with the fact that our 2 material, physical sensing systems give different experiences. Science won't accept those as part of science. Science only accepts personal experiences that are the same for everyone under approximately the same circumstances. Nonsense. Everyone felt what the weather was on that particular day. Everyone saw and felt the sunshine or saw and felt the rain. You are confusing theory with "objective". People had different theories for the cause of weather -- usually involving some deity or other directly making the weather. That doesn't change that weather is objective or that weather patterns are objective. You are talking instead about theory evaluation. You've completely gone off the subject and are on an irrelevant tangent. Get back and discuss the topic. Science is a limited form of knowing. One of its limitations is that it accepts only a subset of personal experience. This is done deliberately because it makes science more reliable. However, the basic statements of faith of science are also ones that YOU accept as true. You accept your own existence, your own sanity, and that your sense perceptions give you an accurate picture of an objective universe outside yourself: the keyboard, for instance. Therefore, there is no "grand assumption of science" that religion or any other form of human knowing does not also have.

It's not quite like this. You have 2 halves of the same whole thing. What we have instead is 2 different things that can each be 2 different ways. Each photon can be either L or R. That is photon 1 can be L or R and so can photon 2. Your analogy has an "arbitrary" property L or R, but polarization isn't "arbitrary", it's a real physical property. A better analogy would be 2 cups of water. Each could be either hot or cold. You have entangled them so that they are both "lukewarm". Separate them by a room. Put your finger in one and it is hot. The other one instantly becomes cold. It's not that you know it has to be cold due to elimination. Instead, the water actually turns cold. How did it know to do that? Why didn't it become hot? Or even stay lukewarm? Is that better? Keep asking if you need to. The end point here is understanding. If you don't understand, you need to keep asking until you do.

Sayonara made the point for me. Also consider: the elephant is already in a warm climate! What happens if you plunk that elephant down in a blizzard? The large area + no insulation means freezing to death. Now plunk a chickadee down in a blizzard. Smaller area for heat loss, insulation, AND it can get covered up with snow that also acts as insulation. Again, think igloos. But the body mass is so small! So, on an absolute scale, a shrew has to eat 5 gm per day. How much for an elephant? Several thousand times as much. SOC says more than that. It appears you are trying to change SOC to avoid falsification. Quite a bit of vitriol in your comments, too. Are you sure it is her misunderstandig and not yours? After all, she is a paleontologist. Again, more ad hominem. The reviewer is quite prominent also. Did you read her bio? But, of course, the question isn't Boulter's standing, but the ideas. Ironically,the reviewer comments that Boulter spends most of the book using ad hominem on other people. Is that true? I understand it's your opinion. I was just pointing out that your view is not universal. 1.There are species that are essentially modern birds from before the KT. As I said, birds had already diverged from dinos before the KT boundary. C Zimmer, A sickle in the clouds. Discover 19: 32, June 1998. New bird, primitive like Archy, 65-70 MYa, found in Madagascar. Has sickle claw like Velociraptor. Named Rahonavis ostrami. Primary article is: Forster, C A, Sampson, S D, Chiappe, L M, and Krause, D W. 1998. The theropod ancestory of birds: new evidence from the Late Cretaceous of Madagascar. Science 279:1915-1919. L Chiappe, Wings over Spain. Natural History 107: 30-32, Sept. 1998. Describes primitive birds from 115 Mya. KT was 65 million years ago. 2. Archeopteryx is a very bird-like dinosaur. But there is also this one: E Stokstad, Tiny, feathered dino is most birdlike yet. Science 290: 1871-1872, Dec. 2000. 3. Large feathered dinos could not fly. It appears that feathers first evolved for display -- sexual display. Feathers were later exapted for insulation and then exapted again for flight. There is a continuum of how much of the dinos were covered by feathers. There are fossils of dinos with only 1 or 2 feathers and then fossils where the entire animal is covered. Here, this is probably a good article for you: Kevin Padian When is a bird not a bird? Nature 393, 729; 1998 http://www.nature.com/Nature2/serve?SID=25602728&CAT=NatGen&PG=dino/dino2.html Here are some more: M Nowell, First came feathers. Natural History 107: 33, Sept. 1998. Summary of recent discoveries in China. Sinosauropteryx did not have true feathers; intermediates between scales and feathers. T Appenzeller, T. Rex was firece, yes, but feathered, too. Science 285: 2052-2053, Sept. 24, 1999. Discovery of down on dromeosaurs. "partial" feathers. http://research.amnh.org/vertpaleo/dinobird.html P J Currie et al., Two feathered dinosaurs from northeastern China, Nature 393, 753; 1998. (June 25). Reports summarized in A Gibbons, Dinosaur fossils, in fine feather, show link to birds. Science 280: 2051 (26 June) 1998. Theoretically possible, but the data says "no". Dinos were distributed thruout the globe. So if there had been an area were they survived, then we would have dinos today. Also, dino fossils stop VERY abruptly at the KT boundary. Many species of birds also disappear at the KT boundary. The enantiornithines (the dominant Cretaceous bird group of which Confuciousornis is a member) went extinct and only the neornithines made it through. In addition, the hesperornithoformes and the icthyornithoformes (the toothed seabirds) went extinct at the end of the Cretaceous. That last sentence makes no sense. Why would you have a "tailing off" for 10 million years before the meteor hit? If it was a catastrophic kill on a robust lineage, you should see the same populations up until the moment the meteor hits. So, can you please point us to your sources? We seem to have contradictory data -- decline in numbers of individuals and species before the KT implact and no decline. We need to look at the original papers to resolve this.

And it appears that many of Sean's criticisms are valid. I find these 2 comments by Sean and Smolin interesting: Sean "Lee, I never expressed doubt that the formulation was well defined, only that there’s any reason to expect it to relate to the real world. At least, no such reason is given. You can’t restrict to the spatially homogeneous case, and then claim there is no fine tuning. That is an infinite amount of fine tuning, which needs to be justified. I seem to be saying the same thing over and over, but I’ll try one more time. Unlike cosmologies in which the Big Bang is a boundary condition, bounce cosmologies feature a pre-bounce contracting phase. You need to tell me what happens during that phase, and why. Are there perturbations that are in their growing mode as they approach the bounce? If no, why in the world not? Generic gravitational collapse is expected to be highly non-linear and inhomogeneous, what is so special about this? And if yes, why don’t the perturbations grow and destroy the smoothness? Why in the world would we expect a homogeneous expanding cosmology to emerge from the other side? These are not annoying technical issues that can be addressed later. They are the Whole Big Problem that must be confronted by any attempt to honestly address the issue of initial conditions." Smolin: "I agree with you, the LQC models are only models, and the big question is if the singularity is replaced by a bounce also in the full quantum theory. This is under investigation, there are arguments but no firm results yet. And I also agree that it will be very interesting to know what happens to inhomogeneous degrees of freedom during the bounce. One should be cautious of reasoning that is too classical. One can see from the LQC models already that near and during the bounce the geometry is quantum and far from classical. There are also arguments, due to Markopoulou, that near Planck temperatures there is a phase transition to a non-geometric phase where locality is lost completely, see gr-qc/0702044 for more on this, hep-th/0611197 for a model of the phase transition and astro-ph/0611695 for possible consequences for CMB spectra. If this is the case then inhomogeneities may be lost during the phase transition for the same reason that you can melt down a sculpture and then get a homogeneous hunk of metal that when it cools again. " Smolin gives a possible answer to the inhomogeneities, but these appear ad hoc and not part of Bojowald's original work. I like that "if this is the case then homogeneities may be lost ..." As I read this it is even more tentative than the usual scientific tentativeness. Not only may Markopoulou arguments not happen but, even if they do, the inhomogeneities remain! Bojowald has a lot of work to do yet. Remember, Smolin is the main proponent of LQG. His support is very lukewarm considering that.

I see you are still cheerleading Bojowald. As I read the article, a new question pops up. Bojowald is saying that prior to the Big Bang (or Big Bounce as he calls it) was a contracting universe. This universe contracted down to the very small and very dense state at the Bounce, then shows up as our expanding universe. So, now where and how would you get a very large universe so that it can contract? That's even, in many ways, more miraculous than the BB. Our universe isn't going to contract, so either our universe is the end of the cycle of expanding/contracting universes (very unlikely) or somehow there was already a completely formed universe prior to this one. The BB and its aftermath at least gives us a series of causes to get a universe the size it is now. But the prior universe that Bojowald is saying is there doesn't have that.

I understand what you are trying to say: if you were aboard a spaceship traveling at relativistic speeds, you would not notice any increased mass. But this isn't just a "manifestation of measurement from another frame of reference". It's real even if the people on the spacecraft don't detect it. That increased mass produces real effects if that spacecraft collides with a planet or other object! And the effect on the spacecraft is the release of all the energy of that increased mass it had while traveling at relativistic speeds, not the "rest" mass detected by the people on board the spacecraft.

That wasn't Ku's intent in the OP. Instead, he was making the point that nations have been established or proposed to be established based on segregating ethnicity, religion, political ideals, or even race (Aryan nation). In all cases, the goals were 1) make the population of the nation more homogenous and 2) provide a nation for people who were like each other. He was wondering why a nation couldn't be established based on sexual ideas, instead of ideas about tribe, religion, political ideals, etc. IOW, have a nation solely of homosexuals, solely of heterosexuals, soley of pedophiles. And I can think of 2 cases off the top of my head in history where nationalism, sexism, and religion were all merged into one.

Yes, it's in the first couple of chapters. There's a lot about Dennett's book I don't like, particularly at the end. But his discussion that natural selection is an algorithm to get design is superb! It makes evolution and natural selection much more understandable, both as science and in the relation of Darwinian evolution to religion. Darwin discovered an unintelligent process to give the designs in plants and animals, thus negating the Argument from Design as a "proof" of deity. Didn't negate deity, but negated that particular argument as a "proof".

Some more resources: http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/projects/human/evpsychfaq.html http://cogweb.ucla.edu/ep/index.html http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/notebooks/evol-psych.html Be sure to look at the reference list for this one; lots of books listed. I provided some resources, now let me provide a caution. VERY FEW specific behaviors have been studied by evolutionary psychology and, even then, it is usually not the behavior that is explained, but that the decision making process, or how the situation is evaluated, is due to an inherited "module" in the brain. No specific behaviors, to my knowledge, have been shown to be totally genetically determined. Rather, there is a genetic component and a nuture component to each behavior.

Well then, you took away the logically correct message: the wry commentary on the irony of the human condition. Congrats. However, I have had 5 overtly and devoutly anti-AGW proponents post or circulate that article as a reason not to trust Gore or the movie An Inconvenient Truth. NONE of them acknowledge the irony you noted as the intent of the message (I tried). The intent of the message was to do an ad hominem attack on Gore as a way of discrediting AGW. Don't get me wrong. I'm very happy that you did not fall for the fallacious ad hominem argument. And I'm pleased that you can't see the fallacious argument and therefore think the motives were pure. It's just that I have been beaten up with this article too many times not to know that the intent of the author was the fallacious argument.

Thank you. I should give credit to Daniel Dennett for writing that natural selection is an algorithm to get design in Darwin's Dangerous Idea. However, the sequence of natural selection is the human brain is mine.