Mokele

Well, the idea is that because the DNA sequences for most vertebrates are very similar, and that if you have the code of one organism, you have most of the code of others. Of course, this ignores the fact that if you have 10% of an organism's genome, you're probably missing both 90% of the common stuff but also 90% of the "special" genes that make that organism different. Frogs were used because Xenopus laevi (the African Clawed Frog, which can change sex as described in the movie) is a common "model system" for developmental genetics. Movement generates a strong feeding response in reptiles (most of whom are predators), but they can see non-moving objects just fine. They just don't care as much, if at all, unless it's food. Mokele

If only that was real....

Not so far as I know. Delicate things tend of fossilize badly, even bones. Shed skins are far more delicate, and are composed of nothing more than keratin, so are pretty biodegradable too. Mokele

Made up plot device. AFAIK, there are no animals with vision that bad who don't live underground or in caves. IIRC, even bats have better vision than that. Actually, reptiles (aside from burrowers) have pretty good vision, including color vision. In fact, IIRC, gater snakes have an all-cone retina. Crocodilians *definitely* have good color vision; they can recognize keepers by clothing, and will approach visitors wearing similar colors. Side-to-side: that was just made up. It's possible, and it's a strategy employed by some group-hunters today, to it's not impossible, but there's no actual evidence for that method in particular. Raptor pack hunting: shoddy evidence that's actually somewhat questionable. The only direct evidence we have is one find, a Tenontosaurus with 3 Deinonychus skeletons around it and with bite marks on the bones and broken teeth. However, this doesn't prove the raptors didn't just group together by chance because the 3 or more individuals found some yummy carrion. This doesn't mean they *didn't* hunt in packs, only that it's nowhere near the iron-clad fact people think it is, and is really more of a vague guess. Actually, the only know dromaeasaur trackway appears to be of a solitary individual. Oh yeah. Dilophosaurus didn't have a frill, and there's no evidence of venom apparatus. Brachiosaurus couldn't rear up onto its hind legs. Actually, aside from the find mentioned above, the only other find showing raptor hunting behavior is a lone velociraptor attacking a lone protoceratops. And the study about the claw being for clinging was so massively flawed as to be worthless. Unsuprisingly, it was funded by a TV station. Mokele

Highly unlikely, for two reasons. First, fresh-water areas had numerous predators too, including sharks and giant coelocanths. Second, most of the early tetrapods were large predators in their own right, fully capable of taking on most of the other organisms in the ecosystem. Some, such as Greererpeton, exceeded 20 feet long, and were possibly the apex predators of their ecosystems. It's all about what you call "amphibian". If you define it is "all extant amphibians and the descants of their most recent common ancestor", yes. You could be sloppy and call the first tetrapods "amphibians", but that brings up the messy subject of the validity of paraphyletic groups in taxonomy. Honestly, sometimes Linnean taxonomy is just more trouble than it's worth. Possibly. We don't know how soon tetrapods-amphibians lost their scales; it could be anytime between their fish ancestor and the last common ancestor of all extant amphibians. AFAIK, we don't have any fossils of tetrapods that preserve integuement, so it's sort of an open question. Mokele

It's universal human selfishness/stupidity when faced with a large predator. The Southern US has the same problem, just with alligators, and the Western US has the same thing, just with cougars. Africa has that problem with their local big cats. In every instance, the human reaction is the same. Ironically, people still deny that the same species saying this is responsible for the massive die-off of large mammals at the end of the last ice age. Mokele

So, let me get this straight: Someone points out that non-aqautic apes and monkeys (and even dogs) can hold their breath, which casts doubts on the AAH, and you respond by asserting they can't because of the AAH? You're kidding, right? Sorry, but evidence takes precedence over theory. If data shows that non-aquatic apes can hold their breath, that punches some big holes in the AAT, which cannot be circumvented by simply denying the data. This coming from someone who wants to ignore evidence because it conflicts with their pet hypothesis? And, FYI, it's a hypothesis, not a theory. Only once fossil evidence supports it will it become a theory. Please support this assertion. The only animals I am aware of which undergo neoteny in response to adapting to an aqautic life are salamanders. Even reptiles don't. Given that there is no fossil evidence concerning the hairiness of any hominin, that cannot be used to support any theory. Hair may have been lost immediately after the split or only after H. sapiens evolved; we have no fossil skin impressions to tell us anything more. You've got it wrong-way around. We have flipped-shpaed feet because feet evolved *from* flippers, back in the Devonian when vertebrates first crawled out of the sea. Wrong. Valves that seal the nostrils are a *VERY* common adapation, seen is just about every aquatic and amphibious species. Why don't we have them? So can dogs, and they're *definitely* not adapted for an aquatic life. Actually, we naturally float face down. See corpses. I don't think sweating as actually any worse than any other method mammals use. Panting and sweating *both* use evaporative cooling, so you'll need to dump just as much water either way. Mokele

Ali, this is actually the best you can manage for insightful political discourse?

Bye bye, revprez. I find it amusing you went so far as to change your name, yet didn't change any of the attitude that got you banned in the first place.

Oooh, thanks for the link!

Awesome!

Ok, now how about a post that makes some sort of gramatical sense?

So, if it's structural/physical constraints that are the problem, could a rhizome-based plant live forever, given ideal conditions? I'm specifically thinking of my pitcher plants, who grow from a horizontal rhizome which lengthens and branches as they grow (and dies behind them). Since such growth is more or less one-dimensional, they wouldn't run into any major structural issues. Mokele

IIRC, part of the reason Kansas reversed it's first ID decision is that the students were being treated like lepers when it came time for college admissions. If you're not going to even read the prior posts, don't bother responding to them. And this means precisely dick when it comes to the merits of a biology course, kid. From now on, every time you simply repeat a previous arguement without adressing the counter, you'll get a strawman warning. On what basis? Because 18% of those denominations are creationist? What about the possibility of bias, that creationist students might be less willing or able to go to med school. False dichotomy. The arguement that macroevolution is distinct and separate has been dead for a long time. Oh, look, strawman warning #2 for the same post. Read what's written. The portion you quoted answers the question. I did. I noted that for the average pill pusher, not much, but possibly greatly for someone actually doing research medicine. After all, how can they do medical work without lab rats? If they use lab rats, they admit to common ancestry and homology. The same reasoning that a chemist could not do their job without understanding atoms. Coming from you? That's like Hilter giving a talk on the value of tolerance and peace. To geology, it is, as it explains the present distribution of geological features and the processes which produce them. Mokele

Eh, I actually put it more in the "rip-off of Brave New World" category.

Actually, Sev's hypothesis has more to do with teaching ID. Just breaking the schools down by religion is meaningless, since so many catholic schools teach evolution, while many public school teachers either won't for fear of controversy, or don't just because they don't get to that chapter in time. Hands up everyone with a degree in biology. Hands up those who've taught it. Right. Guess whose opinion on the worth of a biology course has more weight? Without the overarcing concept behind the fact, you might as well have learned nothing. Meaningless statistics; you cannot assume all or even most of those individuals are creationists/IDiots. In fact, when antibiotics first came out, there was an accompanying discussion of "Do not over-perscribe these or the bacteria *will* evolve to face this challenge". Or how about the fact we've made great progress towards solving many gentic diseases that previously eluded our grasp due to not being in normal genes, but rather switches for the genes (which are considerably harder to find)? Guess how we did it? Good old ape-human common ancestry. they figured any truly "junk" DNA with no use would simply mutate at the usual background rate, while anything important (like switches for developmental genes) would be acted upon by selection to keep it functional, and would show a much lower rate of change. Using this method, they were able to rapidly narrow down the search to certain promising loci. I don't recall you being given the authority to dictate what everyone else is talking about. See above. If they'e just a pill-pusher who's sole use is to make diagnoses and treat people, it problably doesn't any more than computer repair person needs to know electrical engineering in exquisite detail. But in order to actually devise the treatments? To find the genes that cause problems? To know what species are worth bioprospecting for new drugs? A lack of knowledge of evolution would severely hamper that. Because they'll fail to adequately grasp biology. Even if this has no effect on other majors, it means a certain percentage who do go into biology will be at a severe disadvantage. False analogy except for the first part (and CS *do* have to take some level of EE courses). A better analogy would be how many branches of chemistry out there don't require knowing what atoms are. ---------- As for the court stuff, why not just cite Edwards v. Aguillard and be done with it. Even though the Lemon test was used to decide it, it's pretty clear that just plain "establishment of religion" would be enough, with no further elaboration, to evict creationism from schools, let alone the fact that it lacks any merit whatsoever as a scientific concept. Because evolution is the basis for all study of living things? Mokele

Except I never made that point. By "child" I refer to anyone up until 18. Grade school is likely too early; at that point kids are still learning stuff like what a mammal is and how to mulitply. I'd also like to note that many private religious schools (predominantly catholic) teach evolution in their science classes, from what I've heard, with the religious aspect being the concept of god working *via* the laws of nature. So just because it's not required, it's not worth knowing? I guess all that time in HS making me culturally literate by forcing me to read Hamlet and such was a waste, then? Then your education in biology is abysmal, and not even worth calling an education. You're a cheap version of google, able to merely spit out facts without any understanding of the concepts behind them. Biology without evolution is just stamp collecting; amassing a pointless series of unconnected facts for no purpose or effect. Without evolution, one cannot actually understand genetics, physiology, behavior, morphology, development, medicine, ecology, biogeography, exercise, epidemiology, nutrition, sex, growth, parasitology, or any other aspect of biology. Understanding is not the same as being able to vomit forth facts on command. Understanding *why* things are the way they are, how they got that way, and what makes certain avenues of investigation interesting and useful requires a knowledge of evolution. Mokele

Basically it's sampling error. Like if you have a bag full of 1000 decks of playing cards, a large enough sample should give the same proportions as in the bag, namely just as many of each suit and number. But if you take a small sample, say only 20 cards, you aren't going to have the right proportion. Same thing here: if the population size is small enough, not all genetic combinations can be played out, and there is "sampling error" (aka genetic drift) that alters the frequency of genes. The smaller the population/sample, the more extreme the effects. Well, planets don't evolve in the same sense as animals, in that they don't reproduce, but they certainly do change, often dramatically, and these changes can have huge effects on life. Humans, however, are a single species, capable of interbreeding. By definition, two separate species either a) cannot interbreed effectively (hybrids may be stillborn or sterile, or maybe the different species have different mating displays) b) will not under regular circumstances (females might view males from the other species as inferior since they lack special characteristics of males of their species) or c) do not exchange significant genetic information overall (they do interbreed, but not enough for it to matter). Even if some species interbreed, there's no way you could unify all species; there's just too much difference. What you're referring to is called "hybrid vigor", which occurs because hybirds generate novel and often beneficial combinations of genes. But this usually is restricted to within-genus matings; crossing a cat and dog simply will not work; the genetic and developmental instructions are just too different to generate a viable fetus. Well, it depends on the questions you ask. Science asks questions about the material world. Could God be speaking to people through their dreams? Sure. But that doesn't actually alter the *material* world, thus science is unconcerned with it. Well, what has philosophy accomplished in the past 300 years. Compare that to putting a man on the moon, eradicating smallpox, curing hundreds of other diseases, and making the computers we are now using. I once heard it put that science stopped dealing with the philosophical questions about "The Truth" and meaning of life and suchlike, which probably can't be answered, and concentrated on things we can answer, like why do the planets move like they do, or why do people get sick. As a result, science flourished (billions of dollars in grant money and a society nearly totally dependent upon it). Not oversight, but specialization. We don't *deny* that non-observable things could exist, we just don't care and leave it to other people to deal with. Something that can be repeatably observed and agreed upon regardless of perspective. Dropping a ball and measuring the speed, as opposed to the meaning of a dream. Actually, I have. But whatever happens with that doesn't matter to science, because that's not science's problem. Think of it like this: I'm a biomechanicist; I study the mechanics of how living things move, eat, etc. That doesn't mean I deny, say, genetics, only that it's not of interest to me and my studies. Similarly, science doesn't *deny* such things, only say they aren't relevant to the scientific understanding of the world, which is how the material world acts. How so? I'm merely pointing out that scientific theories are inherently tentative, and we always know that someday they might be overturned and replaced with something new and better. We also secretly hope they will be, because new shiny theories get loads of grant money, if you get on the boat soon enough. Ever hear of Alan Fedducia? Probably not. He's this paleontologist who doesn't believe birds evolved from theropod dinosaurs, but rather believes (without any major evidence) that they arose from a non-dinosaurian line of archosaurs. Basically, he's the last gasp of an old idea. Old scientists do this, cling to ideas long past their time. There's even a saying that "a scientific revolution occurs one funeral at a time." Scientists are human, but over the broader timescale, things get corrected when there is need to do so. Ok, I'm guessing you know the idea that we know how fast something decays, and we know the initial ammount, so we can use the current amount to determine how old it is. The current amount in measurable, so what we need to know is the original amount. Usually, this is derived from both present amounts (how much of an isotope is in something new) combined with understanding how it forms so we can predict when we'll see anomalies. Then there's the rate. There's no reason to expect it to vary, since it's pure physics, but just to be sure, we check it. For instance, we can use it to date the eruption of Vesuvius in the Roman times. The key is we know precisely when that happened from ancient histories, so we can check our answers. Now the important thing is that the rates are all different for the different methods (carbon 14 versus uranium or argon based methods). So if there's an error, it'll become dramaticly worse as time goes by, and the estimates given by the methods will diverge. On the other hand, if the methods and rates are correct, we'll see them consistently agreeing, which we do (to the limits of statistical analysis). But what presupposition does it require beyond the same fairly basic ones upon which all of science rests? You mean have we actually found the missing link, the single individual? No, and we never will, for two reasons: 1) fossilization is actually *very* rare; less than 1 in a billion skeletons ever fossilizes, and most of those are subsequently destroyed by erosion before we ever find them. The chances of finding that individual are astronomically tiny 2) even if we did, fossils don't preserve DNA, so we can't tell if the individual is the missing link, or the link's brother who never had kids and thus couldn't be the link. However, as you yourself note, the data does indicate very strongly that a common ancestor exists. Without direct evidence to the contrary, there's no good reason to think otherwise. Considering their rate of convicting the innocent, I wouldn't use the courts as a measure of how to do anything. The trick is that multiple eyewitnesses are all unreliable and innacurate, but you can cancell the errors out. Like if they all argee the subject was 6'5", but recall different jacket colors, you can't convict based on jacket color, but you can say he matches the height described. The point is that witnesses are not perfectly reliable, and must be taken with a grain of salt. Or a barrel-full. But since science doesn't bother with the non-material world, what does that matter? Those aren't "theories" in the sense I'm using the term. Science has particular definitions for *everything*, and "theory" specifically means a tested hypothesis supported by evidence. Well, to go back to the balls, if I theorize that the bag has all blue balls, and I get nothing but blue balls in 1000 samples, I have a theory now. But someone else might come along and take 100,000 samples and find that one very rare red ball, disproving my theory. Another good example is mammal reproduction. For a long time, it was the dominant theory that all mammals have live young. When biologists got to Australia and found the Platypus and Echidna, which lay eggs, this previously supported theory had to be discarded. But why would you expect it to be any different? There's no reason to expect so, no substantial difference beyond simply the timescale involved. I've dropped lots of small household objects before (often on my foot). Does size alone warrant skepticism that if I let go of a 200lb weight, it might or might not fall? Factually incorrect. The fossil record of insects is actually extremely well-known and well-studied. They arose from sea-dwelling ancestors that were actually much larger, and many of the original insects were *huge*. We're talking 6 foot long millipedes and dragonflies with 2 foot wingspans. Specifically mesonychids, who evolved from the same ancestor as modern hoofed mammals, yet became carnivores. The tooth structure is basically identical between mesonychids and early whales. So what? I don't read genetics journals. Doesn't mean I don't believe it or think it's important, only that it's not my speciality, so why bother? Not by you, but by ID in general and most of it's proponents. Presented with conclusive evidence they're wrong on specific assertions (like showing them a transitional fossil they claim doesn't exist), they'll simply go on denying it. So? Given the evidence, they're very strong inferences. Nothing's wrong with inference so long as you recognize it as such. To all evidence in science. Any singular data point is evidence. It's then combined and analyzed using statistics that make most people's heads hurt (which is why we do it by computer now). Well, I was sort of trying to use that paragraph to insinuate to other readers that I'm not happy with the tone of their responses in an indirect way, and that you shouldn't take them to be representative. Subtlety has never been my strong point. OT: I was under the impression "Mega" was "greater than" while "Meta" mean something more like "beside" Well, that's why the "results" section of most science papers is basically nothing but the substantiation. But even in such supernatural levitation, one could still infer that gravity is acting, but merely that another force is acting to lift with a greater magnitude. And astral projection wouldn't matter; gravity is mass-dependent, so anythng without mass won't be affected. But if we can't percieve it, why does it matter? To use The Matrix, one could consider the Matrix to be a reality, albeit not the only one. First, the 10% thing is an urban legend. We only use 10% of our brain at once, but it all gets used. Secondly, as above, why does a reality we cannot perceive matter? If it matters, that means it has some effect, which in turn means it can be observed. First, the "physical frequency" thing is incorrect. Second, how do we know these observations are accurate? We see things that aren't there all the time (see any of the many sites online dedicated to optical illusions). Actually, I meant if there was any evidence for this historical cycle you mentioned being something more than just caused by political shifts and wars. As for their ancient understanding, we've found things that show understanding of various concepts known to us, but nothing that directly contradicts scientific knowledge and has any real material evidence. Note that non-materialistic stuff doesn't contradict science, but is simply outside of science. Furthermore, I think it's disrespectful to modern scientists to say the ancients knew more. Find me one single ancient manuscript on snake musculature or biomechanics. They were smart, but so are we. Except that in the context of science, non-empirical data *IS* meaningless and irrelevant because that's not what science studies. Just like a paper of microbial genetics is irrelevant to me, because I don't study that. Why should I accept data I cannot check, data that I have no reason to believe? It could be real, but it could also just be the rantings of a madman. But they still *see* the same thing, and *that* is evidence, in the scientific sense. For instance, we don't know how snakes evolved. The two main theories are from burrowing ancestors or from swimming ones, and neither has enough evidence to overthrow the other (though it's learning more towards swimming these days). Now, let's say we look at a snake's eye. You say "aha, the lens focuses differently from other animals! This supports the theory that they were burrowers who mostly lost their eyes and then re-evolved them". I say "Aha, the lens focuses differently from other animals! This supports the theory they were swimmers and they adapted this method so they could see in water and on land". We both have different interpretations, but the *evidence* (the oddity of how snake eyes focus) remains the same, despite our biases. But the two are freely interconvertible, so simply changing the units does not dispute the observation. Precisely. Well, ancient people only had a rudimentary idea of how inheritance worked. They worked wonders with what knowledge they had, but some aspects always remained puzzling, such as why a trait the father had would not appear in the offspring, but then suddenly re-appear in some (but not all) of the grandkids. Starting with Mendel, science began to elucidate the rules that governed inheritance, and with the discovery of DNA, began to not only truly understand how it works, but also how to influence it (genetic engineering). Why is it a lapse? As mentioned before, science is simply a speciality. It doesn't preclude other things, but merely doesn't care, much like how I just fell asleep in a lecture about the olfactory genetics of fruit flies. No, science is merely saying that the human brain does not work like a tape recorder or computer, and that memory and perception are biased and can produce erroneous results. Science does not even use a double standard. When I talk about what I've seen snakes do, I *always* preface it with "This is just subjective eyeballing, and I can't be sure until I actually measure it, but...." And I've actually been wrong about things that way, when the data has proven me wrong. Might there be biases in the recording devices? Sure, but we're pretty sure what those biases are and how to minimize them. You're strawmanning me. I never said all eyewitness evidence is invalid, only that it is very prone to error and should be treated as such. Your above statement even idicates you agree, since you acknowledge these inconsistencies. Think of it this way: Imagine you have a map that's wrong 50% of the time (hey, it's Mapquest!). That doesn't mean it's *all* wrong, but it *does* mean you have to use caution and skepticism when using it. *All* sources of information have biases and error margins, but some are better than others. Incorrect. My own project is an excellent example of why. Basically, I'm analyzing a mode of snake locomotion used in climbing, and have predictions based on a superficially similar mode used for moving through tunnels. My eyes never come into the picture. I videotape everything, analyze it digitally via computer, then feed those results through spreadsheet calculations and statistics programs. It's admissible based on precedent from the dark days before we knew just how bad witnesses are at accuracy. How about the *millions* of times such tests have performed accurately? there is an error rate in all things, but we *know* the error rate (we calibrate our instruments before we use them, basically). Wrong, prove it. Seriously, you need to actually back off and look at science, not just what you think science is. Your tone is frustrating me, and while I understand others have made you defensive, I'd appreciate it if you didn't just voice baseless assertions like this. Claim this in any subsequent post and you will be warned for strawmanning. That is *NOT* what I said. Scientists can make mistakes, but the procedures used are *less* error prone than simple witness observation. Yes and sometimes they wander too far. You want to know my job here? Have you noticed that my username is in bold? That means I'm a mod. It's my job to make sure topics don't wander too much. Mokele

I actually used to be quite shy. Over time, I made progressively wider and wider circles of friends, especially in college, participated in more activities, and these days I've pretty much lost most of my shyness. As a result, I feel very weird around shyness, both because I can empathize with the person's discomfort, and because I feel a bit of pity that they haven't managed to overcome it as I have. Mokele

Well, this is all a moot point, since new forums are created in accordance with need, no want. For instance, we don't have a geology forum either, not because we look down on it in any way, or for lack of geologists, but because there simply aren't enough threads to warrant a separate forum. Now, if you've got lots of great thread ideas, please do post them, and if there's enough sustained interest in the general subject, a forum split could happen, but until then, splitting things wouldn't really serve any useful purpose. Mokele

I forget who originally said it, but: "All models are wrong. But some are more useful than others."

From what I understand it, all media has a single, undeniable slant: the position that puts the most money in their bank account. In conservative areas, papers and such tend to be conservative-biased, with liberal-biased papers marketing to that niche, and vice versa in liberal areas. If you tell people what they want to hear, and promise you'll keep doing so, people will listen to the intervening adverts and thereby make you money. Mokele

For the same reason they'd have trouble in college chemistry if they were taught that atoms were fake and made up, and Jesus magically makes one chemical into another. Not learning the fundamental theory which underlies all biology is a rather large omission in a child's education. Mokele

Haven't you seen Dawn of the Dead? I can easily imagine my response to Jesus's return being line Jay utters in Dogma: "He's the undead! Cut his freakin head off!"

No links on hand, but just google "vostok ice cores" or just "ice cores" and you can probably find a lot. Wikipedia should have stuff on ice cores too.