Lucy: Some 'splaining to do?

The fossil known as Lucy has been labeled as one of the "Icons of Evolution" by creationists. One of the claims: the fossil has been modified in order to make it "fit" the evolutionary story.

During the question-and-answer session after the talk, it was asked how alleged human ancestors like “Lucy” fit into this framework. The speaker said he had seen a video in which a scientist (perhaps the discoverer of “Lucy”) “allowed himself to be filmed” using a rotary saw to modify the pelvis or femur of the fossil to make them fit together in a manner consistent with a bipedal posture. Although one attendee expressed surprise that the original fossil bones would be tampered with in this manner, the general sense in the room seemed to be that this was not too surprising, because scientific work is not really objective. These people had no trouble believing that, since the scientists assumed that “Lucy” was a human ancestor, they felt justified in modifying the evidence to conform to what they knew the answer “had to be.” As the speaker later wrote to me, “The assumption of naturalism and belief in the evolutionary model is the lens through which all evidence is examined and interpreted.”

So has the evidence been faked? G.P. Jellison, with the Alliance for Science, looks at what really happened.

My experience has given me a different perspective. Although scientists are human beings, I have found that they generally exercise high standards of intellectual integrity and professional ethics (with, of course, some lamentable exceptions). “Cooking evidence” is unacceptable, and forging evidence is career suicide. The self-correcting nature of scientific culture weeds out arguments based on faulty reasoning or evidence. I also found it inconceivable that the original “Lucy” fossils would be mutilated in the manner described. It was clear that this creationist physics professor had seen something and honestly believed what he was saying, but I was sure there was more to the story.

And indeed, there is.

In this report, I won’t try to prove that A. afarensis was bipedal or an evolutionary ancestor of Homo sapiens. Although I have opinions on these matters, I am not an anthropologist and have nothing to say that isn’t available in any mainstream anthropology textbook. Rather, I address the narrower question: why was the 288-1 pelvis cast cut up with a rotary saw and reassembled? In particular, was this the result of “evolutionary assumptions” as the creationist speaker said, or was it driven by objective scientific criteria? I do feel I have something to say about this because I’ve obtained information from the scientist who did the work, Dr. C. Owen Lovejoy.

Dr. Lovejoy is a professor of anthropology at Kent State University. He is also an adjunct professor of anatomy at the Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine and a member of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at Case Western University. He is a Technical Advisor to the Coroner’s Office of Cuyahoga County (Cleveland); people’s lives literally depend on the integrity and accuracy of his scientific analysis. He has published more than 100 articles in scientific publications, and was recently elected into the National Academy of Sciences, one of the top scientific honors in the nation.

Jellison e-mails Lovejoy to learn what went on with the Lucy fossils.

When all is said and done, the reconstruction is far from arbitrary:

Clearly, the reconstruction was not done cavalierly; it was, rather, guided by objective constraints of the most obvious sort – the pieces had to fit together! Lovejoy wrote to me:

I was simply doing what any human will do if they want to keep a teacup that they've dropped and broken....The kinds of procedures we have done here would be admissible in any court (I also do forensics) because anyone could easily reproduce the result in an entirely independent way (give two experts two of the same [broken] teacups and see what they look like when they've been glued back together).

The correctness of the reconstruction could be verified by the “fit” that was achieved. As Figure 3 shows, the front and back sides of the pelvis were fractured in different ways. They were reconstructed independently of each other; when the task was finished, the front and back segments had to fit closely along a curved interface. The reconstruction passed the test.

In other words, Lucy stands up quite well as evidence for the evolution of something.

Secession and Slavery

Volokh Conspiracist Ilya Somin has a couple of posts on the role slavery played in the secession of the Confederacy from the United States. His assertion is that slavery was the major issue for most of the Southern States.

Some commenters on my posts on secession (here and here) doubt my claim that the southern states seceded in 1861 for the purpose of preserving slavery. After all, they point out, Abraham Lincoln and the Republicans had promised not to abolish slavery in the states where it existed. This is a common point advanced by those want to claim that slavery was not the main cause of the Civil War. Indeed, it was first advanced by apologists for the Confederate cause in the immediate aftermath of the War in order to paint the Confederacy in a more positive light by demonstrating that it was fighting for "states' rights" rather than slavery. But the claim doesn't withstand scrutiny

Confederate leaders repeatedly stated in 1861 that the threat Lincoln's election posed to slavery was the main reason for secession. In January 1861, soon-to-be Confederate President Jefferson Davis said that his state had seceded because "She has heard proclaimed the theory that all men are created free and equal, and this made the basis of an attack upon her social institutions; and the sacred Declaration of Independence has been invoked to maintain the position of the equality of the races." Davis was referring to well-known speeches by Lincoln and other Republicans citing the Declaration in criticism of slavery. Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens similarly said that "slavery . . . was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution" and that protecting it was the "cornerstone" of the new Confederate government. Many other Confederate leaders made similar statements.

It's not like the CSI TV show

Lots of uncontrolled science takes place in court.

Instead of war, how about...

A friend of mine, Tom Digby, once proposed that instead of going to war over disputes, countries could field football teams, and the results of the game would determine the winner. (In practice, I think the losing side would start a shooting war.)

Steve Sailer has a solution for disputed border territories.

On the other hand, if it's assumed something has to be done about a disputed territory, the optimal way to settle it is often via a mutual auction. If both Russia and Georgia want South Ossetia, they should put their money where there mouths are. Auction off South Ossetia with the highest bidder paying that sum to the loser of the auction.

In a way, of course, war is an auction. Each side imposes costs on the other, in terms of casualties, destruction, and suffering, until one side or the other drops out of the bidding. Sailer's proposition would have the auctions limited to the payments of goods, rather than the infliction of bads. But what mechanism would there be to keep the bidding parties from throwing bads into the mix? If one side says, "if you outbid us, we'll bomb your factories," there must be some mechanism to impose a cost that makes taking that step very much not worth it.

We like to say war should be the last resort. Practically speaking, war is always the last resort, even if only because no one's come up with anything worse.

Doublethink

Gagdad Bob has a post, entitled "Evolutionary Creationism", where he looks at inconsistencies.

How do we reconcile God and Darwin, Adam and evolution, kings and chimps, Elvis and Scatter?
....

Let me preface this by saying that I am more or less willing to adopt what science determines to be "true" -- within sharp philosophical limits, of course -- for the same reason that I am willing to accept the advice of my doctor that if I don't take insulin I will die.

I mean... put it this way. As it so happens, my mother was a Christian Scientist, and I attended Christian Science Sunday school until the age of 10 or so. In fact, you could say that my mother was a devout Christian Scientist, with the exception of the Christian Science part. That is, when we left the plane of theological abstraction for the world of concrete reality, we took medicine and went to the doctor, just like anyone else...

One fertile source of inconsistencies turns out to be Barack Obama.

The other day, I heard a brilliant analysis of Obama by Rush Limbaugh. He was pointing out that the reason he is reduced to such a stuttering prick (to quote Tommy DeVito) when off the teleprompter, is that he is a deeply divided person, either consciously or unconsciously (and undoubtedly both, in my opinion). He is the polar opposite of, say, Ronald Reagan, who always knew what he thought and could answer any question, for it was simply a matter of returning to first principles and applying them to the problem. Very scientific, if you will.

But one of the intrinsic problems in being a liberal is that you can never reveal your first principles, because if you explicitly articulate them, people will be repelled at what a contemptuous and supercilious asshat you are. Therefore, you must always couch them in terms of "compassion," or "helping the little guy," or "healing the planet," or "unity," or some other such blather. So in that regard, Obama is dealing with a more general problem that is intrinsic to liberalism, which is How to Fool the Idiots. One must be very cautious, because even the idiots are only so stupid. Thus Obama's constant verbal ticks: "uh, uh, uh, let me, uh, say this, uh, uh, I've been completely, uh, consistent about this, blah blah blah."
....

Anyway, in Rush's analysis, he was pointing out that Obama is running several campaigns simultaneously, and that it is obviously a struggle for him to keep them all straight in his head, thus the great difficulty in being consistent and giving straight answers. Because of this, he is always one gaffe away from a major meltdown. For example, he's running one campaign for blacks, but an entirely different one for whites. (I won't even review the whole list, because it would take too much time, and I've already made my point; here is a list of the various irreconcilable positions which Obama must hopelessly try keep straight in his mind.)

Those Unused Oil Leases

Newt Gingrich responds to the charge that oil companies aren't drilling on the oil leases they already have.

Bingaman, Rahall and fellow drilling opponents accuse the oil industry of “sitting on” 68 million acres of “non-producing” leased land. They want to force energy companies to “use” this leased land within ten years – or lose all exploration and drilling rights.

America can only hope the proposed law is Bingaman and Rahall’s clumsy attempt at political jujitsu. The alternative is that the politicians in charge of committees that determine US energy policy are confused and ludicrously disconnected from reality.

First, lease agreements already require that leased land be used in a timely manner. The 1992 Comprehensive Energy Policy Act requires energy companies to comply with lease provisions, and explore expeditiously, or risk forfeiture of the lease. So the Bingaman-Rahall “solution” effectively duplicates current law.

Second, and more disturbingly, Bingaman and Rahall’s groundless accusation and proposed legislation rely on the absurd assumption that every acre of land leased by the government contains oil. Obviously, that’s not the case.

The truth is, finding oil is a long, complex, cumbersome, expensive process.

....

Most of the time, all this painstaking, expensive initial analysis concludes that the likelihood is too small to justify drilling an exploratory well, since the cost of a single well can run $1-5 million onshore, and $25-100 million in deep offshore waters. Only one of three onshore wells finds oil or gas in sufficient quantities to produce it profitably; in deep water, only one in five wells is commercial. Thus, only a small percentage of the leased acres end up producing oil.

This is important because it means most of those 68 million acres Bingaman and Rahall want to force oil companies to drill actually don’t have enough oil to make it worth drilling. Either they know that, and are trying to deceive us; or they don’t know it, because they haven’t done their homework.

....

That’s hardly “sitting on their leases.” But those leases will be “non-producing” until 2010. Clearly, a “use it or lose it” law will do nothing to change these hard realities.

Further complications often stymie energy companies from obtaining and using leased land.

Every step in the process must be preceded by environmental studies, oil spill response plans, onsite inspections, and permits. The process takes years, and every step is subject to delays, challenges – and litigation.

....

We don’t need a “use it or lose it” law – or more cheap-rhetoric, big-oil conspiracies. Congress simply needs to allow drilling on the 60% of onshore federal oil and gas prospects and 85% of Outer Continental Shelf prospects that it has placed off-limits.

Furthermore, instead of a “drill it or lose it” law, we need a “permit or pay” rule:

* When the government sits on permit applications for more than six months, companies no longer have to pay lease rents; instead, they get interest on their bonus payments and expenses to date, and lease terms are extended.

* When environmental groups lose their legal actions, they pay the companies for the court costs, delays and attorney fees.

When you go to the ballot box this fall, remember who’s really behind the outrageous prices you’re paying for the energy that makes your job, home, car and living standards possible.

Remember the simple solution: Issue leases and permits. Drill here. Drill now. Pay less.

Myths about Drilling for Oil

(Hat tip: Betsy Newmark)

You've heard them – arguments raised to oppose granting oil companies access to ANWR and the Outer Continental Shelf for drilling. This editorial from the Washington Post looks at these statements with a critical eye:

But there are three "truths" masquerading as fact among drilling opponents that need to be challenged:

Drilling is pointless because the United States has only 3 percent of the world's oil reserves. This is a misleading because it refers only to known oil reserves. ... By 2006, after major advances in seismic technology and deepwater drilling techniques, the MMS resource estimate for that area had ballooned to 45 billion barrels. In short, there could be much more oil under the sea than previously known. The demand for energy is going up, not down.

The oil companies aren't using the leases they already have. As we pointed out in a previous editorial, the five leases that have made up the Shell Perdido project off Galveston since 1996 are not classified as producing. Only when it starts pumping the equivalent of an estimated 130,000 barrels of oil a day at the end of the decade will it be deemed "active." Since 1996, Shell has paid rent on the leases; filed and had approved numerous reports with the MMS, including an environmentally sensitive resource development plan and an oil spill recovery plan that is subject to unannounced practice runs by the MMS; drilled several wells to explore the area at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars; and started constructing the necessary infrastructure to bring the oil to market. The notion that oil companies are just sitting on oil leases is a myth. With oil prices still above $100 a barrel, that charge never made sense.

Drilling is environmentally dangerous. In 1971, the Interior Department instituted a host of reporting requirements (such as the resource development and oil spill recovery plans mentioned above) and stringent safety measures. Chief among them is a requirement for each well to have an automatic shut-off valve beneath the ocean floor that can also be operated manually. According to the MMS, between 1993 and 2007, there were 651 spills of all sizes at OCS facilities (in federal waters three miles or more offshore) that released 47,800 barrels of oil. With 7.5 billion barrels of oil produced in that time, that equates to 1 barrel of oil spilled per 156,900 barrels produced. That's not to minimize the danger. But no form of energy is perfect or without trade-offs. Besides, if it is acceptable to drill in the Caspian Sea and in developing countries such as Nigeria where environmental concerns are equally important, it's hard to explain why the United States should rule out drilling off its own coasts.

People who think the earth is flat

From the BBC News Magazine:

On 24 December 1968, the crew of the Apollo 8 mission took a photo now known as Earthrise. To many, this beautiful blue sphere viewed from the moon's orbit is a perfect visual summary of why it is right to strive to go into space.

Not to everybody though. There are people who say they think this image is fake - part of a worldwide conspiracy by space agencies, governments and scientists.

Welcome to the world of the flat-earther.

Flat earth theory is still around. On the internet and in small meeting rooms in Britain and the US, flat earth believers get together to challenge the "conspiracy" that the Earth is round.

"People are definitely prejudiced against flat-earthers," says John Davis, a flat earth theorist based in Tennessee, reacting to the new Microsoft commercial.

"Many use the term 'flat-earther' as a term of abuse, and with connotations that imply blind faith, ignorance or even anti-intellectualism."

Mr Davis, a 25-year-old computer scientist originally from Canada, first became interested in flat earth theory after "coming across some literature from the Flat Earth Society a few years ago".

"I came to realise how much we take at face value," he says. "We humans seem to be pleased with just accepting what we are told, no matter how much it goes against our senses."

Mr Davis now believes "the Earth is flat and horizontally infinite - it stretches horizontally forever".

"And it is at least 9,000 kilometres deep", he adds.

James McIntyre, a British-based moderator of a Flat Earth Society discussion website, has a slightly different take. "The Earth is, more or less, a disc," he states. "Obviously it isn't perfectly flat thanks to geological phenomena like hills and valleys. It is around 24,900 miles in diameter."

Mr McIntyre, who describes himself as having been "raised a globularist in the British state school system", says the reactions of his friends and family to his new beliefs vary from "sheer incredulity to the conviction that it's all just an elaborate joke".

So how many flat-earthers are around today? Neither Mr Davis nor Mr McIntyre can say.

Perhaps we should require that "both sides" be taught in the science classes of our schools.

Orson Scott Card on Same-Sex Marriage

A number of people seem to be ticked off at Card's latest column.

The lightning rod in his piece seems to be:

What these dictator-judges do not seem to understand is that their authority extends only as far as people choose to obey them.

How long before married people answer the dictators thus: Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down, so it can be replaced with a government that will respect and support marriage, and help me raise my children in a society where they will expect to marry in their turn.

Biological imperatives trump laws. American government cannot fight against marriage and hope to endure. If the Constitution is defined in such a way as to destroy the privileged position of marriage, it is that insane Constitution, not marriage, that will die.

School Vouchers in Sweden

STOCKHOLM, Sweden -- Schools run by private enterprise? Free iPods and laptop computers to attract students?

It may sound out of place in Sweden, that paragon of taxpayer-funded cradle-to-grave welfare. But a sweeping reform of the school system has survived the critics and 16 years later is spreading and attracting interest abroad.

"I think most people, parents and children, appreciate the choice," said Bertil Ostberg, from the Ministry of Education. "You can decide what school you want to attend and that appeals to people."

Since the change was introduced in 1992 by a center-right government that briefly replaced the long-governing Social Democrats, the numbers have shot up. In 1992, 1.7 percent of high schoolers and 1 percent of elementary schoolchildren were privately educated. Now the figures are 17 percent and 9 percent.

In some ways the trend mirrors the rise of the voucher system in the U.S., with all its pros and cons. But while the percentage of children in U.S. private schools has dropped slightly in recent years, signs are that the trend in Sweden is growing.

Before the reform, most families depended on state-run schools following a uniform national curriculum. Now they can turn to the "friskolor," or "independent schools," which choose their own teaching methods and staff, and manage their own buildings.

....

Barbro Lillkaas, a 40-year-old accountant, is considering putting her child in a private school, and has no problem with the profit motive.

"If you run a good operation then you make a profit. But you won't get any students if you are bad," she said. "You have to do a good job to get money; that is even more important for a private school."

....

Some Swedes say the private system drains funds from public education, but officials say independent schools have forced public schools to raise their own standards and improve efficiency.

"Today, I think we have at least as good quality if not better than some independent schools because we have really joined the battle and use our money in a much better way," said Eva-Lotta Kastenholm, who is in charge of public schools in Sollentuna, a suburb of Stockholm.

Competition has forced Gardesskolan, a public school in Sollentuna, to put two teachers in each class of 30 children instead of one. Its student body has risen more than fivefold to 400 since 1992.

Batman vs. al Qaeda

A movie review comparing Batman with Bush.

Film unmasks Bush as the real Batman

FINALLY Hollywood makes a film that says US President George W. Bush was right. But director Christopher Nolan had to disguise it a little, so journalists wouldn't freak and the film's more fashionable stars wouldn't walk.

So he hides Bush in a cape. He even sticks a mask on him, with pointy ears for some reason.

Sure, when the terrified citizens of Gotham City scream for Bush to come save them, Nolan has them shine a great W in the night sky, but he blurs it so it looks more like a bird.

Or a bat, perhaps.

And he has them call their hero not Mr Bush, of course, or even "Mr President", but . . . Batman.

....

Mind you, the same excuses for violence, and for defying the public's will, is used by vigilantes and tyrants. And Nolan is so careful to sugar his pill that some critics, and not only of the Left, have taken his film as an attack on Bush instead.

Take Variety.com's deputy editor, Anne Thompson, who seizes on the scene in which the Joker taunts Batman: "What would I do without you? You complete me . . . To them (the public) you're just a freak. Like me."

Concludes Thompson: "The film-making suggests the Joker has, like a Shakespearean fool on PCP, hit on a harsh truth: Batman has more in common with his killer-clown foe than with the normal people he means to protect. So should we conclude The Dark Knight argues that Bush and bin Laden are two sides of the same coin?"

Answer: are you kidding? In fact, the Joker is saying that without Batman's great good to oppose, his great evil would never be realised in its horrific glory.

It would be like Hitler being allowed to exterminate nothing more than mosquitoes. Who'd care?

What's more, Batman clearly has more in common with the people he tries to protect than does the Joker with people he tries to destroy, or the audience wouldn't be cheering him, and the next film in the series wouldn't be Batman III but The Joker II.

No, the cinema audience understands what the Gotham citizens do not - Batman's dilemma and the awesome imperatives of responsibility. And they are with him, not his critics.

So why don't Americans in particular leave the movie cheering Bush as they cheered Batman?

Because in leaving the cinema they stopped being that audience and re-entered their own real Gotham City - with a real Batman they once more feel driven to hate for all the hard things he's had to do to protect them.

They have become the citizens of Gotham they were watching just minutes before with contempt.

But Bush would understand. As Alfred says: "He's not being a hero. He's being something more."

Ethical Fundamentalism

Lee Harris writes for Policy Review. In the linked article, he discusses what may be happening to the traditions that serve as a foundation for our society. Near the end of the essay, he introduces the notion that certain bases of civilization must be held as axiomatic, and that tinkering with them is extremely dangerous.

This is how those fond of abstract reasoning can destroy the ethical foundations of a society without anyone’s noticing it. They throw up for debate that which no one before ever thought about debating. They take the collective visceral code that has bound parents to grandchildren from time immemorial, in every culture known to man, and make of it a topic for fashionable intellectual chatter.

Ask yourself what is so secure about the ethical baseline of our current level of civilization that it might not be opened up for question, or what deeply cherished way of doing things will suddenly be cast in the role of a “residual personal prejudice.”

....

If the reflective class, represented by intellectuals in the media and the academic world, continues to undermine the ideological superstructure of the visceral code operative among the “culturally backward,” it may eventually succeed in subverting and even destroying the visceral code that has established the common high ethical baseline of the average American — and it will have done all of this out of the insane belief that abstract maxims concerning justice and tolerance can take the place of a visceral code that is the outcome of the accumulated cultural revolution of our long human past.

Marriage is one example of this visceral core. Marriage has always been defined as men marrying women. Sometimes one of one sex will marry more than one of the other, but no major civilization has ever defined marriage as between individuals of the same sex. Yet there is no particular reason why a society couldn't expand the definition of marriage to include same-sex couples -- that it hasn't is simply axiomatic. Harris contends some "just so" rules must be taken as axiomatic. We change them at our peril.

The intelligentsia have no idea of the consequences that would ensue if middle America lost its simple faith in God and its equally simple trust in its fellow men. Their plain virtues and homespun beliefs are the bedrock of decency and integrity in our nation and in the world. These are the people who give their sons and daughters to defend the good and to defeat the evil. If in their eyes this clear and simple distinction is blurred through the dissemination of moral relativism and an aesthetic of ethical frivolity, where else will human decency find such willing and able defenders?

Even the most sophisticated of us have something to learn from the fundamentalism of middle America. For stripped of its quaint and antiquated ideological superstructure, there is a hard and solid kernel of wisdom embodied in the visceral code by which fundamentalists raise their children, and many of us, including many gay men like myself, are thankful to have been raised by parents who were so unshakably committed to the values of decency, and honesty, and integrity, and all those other homespun and corny principles. Reject the theology if you wish, but respect the ethical fundamentalism by which these people live: It is not a weakness of intellect, but a strength of character.

Authoritarianism

Posted on google "knowl" by JJ Ray

http://knol.google.com/k/john-ray/authoritarianism-research/1a2p9co02fh9a/2#

Attack of the ID/IOTs

The Discovery Institute, home of a gaggle of Intelligent Design / Intelligent Origin Theorists, has taken up arms against Little Green Footballs.

Charles Johnson shows them to be, once again, the liars they have been, and continue to be.

(Also links to The Derb at NRO's Corner blog.)

Obama and Racism

 

Stop calling me a racist Barry

from BLACKFIVE by blackfive@gmail.com (Pundit Review Radio)

Obama and America.

The Democrat’s Achilles’ heel in this model is an inchoate sense among some voters that the new arrival on the national stage with the unusual biography — who’s the first black nominee from either party — isn’t American enough.

Prior to Obama’s trip overseas, though, McCain had instead employed, without appreciable effect, a more conventional critique of his opponent as an ordinary politician, a flip-flopper and, of course, a liberal.

On Saturday, though, McCain released a new television advertisement in which the announcer says that on his trip, Obama “made time to go to the gym, but canceled a visit with wounded troops. Seems the Pentagon wouldn't allow him to bring cameras.”

"John McCain is always there for our troops," adds the announcer, before concluding with the campaign’s new slogan: “McCain, country first.”

The slogan’s inverse implication for his opponent was made clear earlier in the week, when McCain accused Obama of placing the his political ambitions before the national interest.

Well if he doesn't place his ambitions above the national interest, he conflates the two in his, and his devotees, belief that his is the only change we can believe in. The arrogance of the Obama team is stunning. They have accepted that Barack is destiny and nothing can derail that.

I believe that Obama feels patriotic and compared to his wife he is an America-lovin' machine. But deep in Barry's political heart (the only one he has) he knows Michelle is right and America's soul is broken and it needs the Obama to resurrect us. That view shows how little the Obamas feel good about America. It is a place Michelle could only be proud of when it began kowtowing to her hubby, the chosen one. It is a reactionary place where the knuckle-draggers on the right cling bitterly to their guns, God, and hatred of all non-whites. A place where his wife was barely able to get preferential treatment and admission to top law schools explicitly because of her blackness. A place where a complete lightweight could rise to a position he has no business chasing based on the simple fact that he is a cute little nerd, oh and I don't know if you knew but he's technically black.

Here is the thing that could actually take the Obama down, you see us middle/working class white folks hate being called racists.

First of all the vast majority are not racists and they did not make decisions based on race until Obama and his surrogates started prepping the battlefield with "If you don't vote Barry, you are not post-racial". What a tremendous load of shite. I disagree with Obama on virtually every substantive policy position he has (to the extent that he has any). I think he would cause tremendous damage to our security by pandering to and chit-chatting with folks like the Iranians while they are busy building bombs. I also believe that he would bring PC requirements to further allow black and Muslim shysters to continue pushing BS discrimination cases and turn our country into a collection of accepted victim groups and then of course the white male oppressors who must be punished for any failings by any group.

You can maybe guess how angry it makes me for a pampered puss like Barry to stand on stage and tell a group in Florida.

They’re going to try to make you afraid. They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black.

You sir can kiss my ass. You and your cronies are the ones who keep playing the race card and you need to to keep your base of guilty liberals feeling bad about things they didn't even do. FFS my grandparents got here after the Civil War and because of my melanin deficit Barry O and the benighted left feel they can get away with blanket indictments of racism. Bullshit!

This tactic which he used to pacify and solidify his base on the hater left will come back to haunt him now in the general election. Americans are rightly proud of the tremendous strides we have made and we are without a doubt the most-racially integrated country ever. If that is not fast or comprehensive enough for Mrs. Obama, then she and Barack can take their kids anywhere else on earth. Why don't they head out to Old Europe and see how far Obama would get in politics. None of the places he did his ring-kissing tour would have given him the time of day, and it's because he's black. Take a look at the numbers of black pols in France, Germany and England v. population (The French have only one in Parliament) and tell me Barry could even get a job.

So spare us your bogus accusations of racism Barack. I don't oppose you because you are black. I oppose you because you are wrong on every important issue and because you and yours keep insulting me and mine by calling us heinous names. Trust me, your wife hates white people way more than I even bother to think about black people as different.

Shake, Rattle, and Roll!

Earthquake, at about a quarter to twelve on my clock. Felt like about a magnitude 4 here.

Of course, the USGS site was swamped. Turns out to be about a 5.8, almost 30 miles away. It's large enough, and close enough, to activate the DWP's emergency plan.

So far, all the dams and reservoirs have been checked, and they're OK. Next step is to look for any breaks in the major trunk lines. If these are broken, some areas of the city could be out of water, we might have to use some reservoirs that have been taken out of service, and the section where I work may get very busy checking for contamination from stuff getting in to broken water mains.

Fingers crossed, everybody. So far, no reports of "no water, should be on", which would show up if we had a bunch of broken mains. (Well, there's one in the customer call database. Maybe it's isolated to just that one address -- or maybe the neighbors aren't home to run water right now. Time will tell.)

Update: USGS reports the magnitude as 5.4.

Think of it as evolution in action

NY Times science writer offers examples of evolution that's taken place in the last 40 years. These include:

...Evolution of beak size in finches in the Galápagos archipelago: Over the course of 30 years, annual measurement of finches shows that both body size and beak size evolved significantly. But they didn’t do so in a smooth, consistent fashion. Instead, natural selection jittered about, often changing direction from one season to the next.

...For many plants, including field mustard (a scrawny annual plant with little yellow flowers), a drought means a shorter growing season. A shorter growing season means that plants that flower earlier are more likely to leave seeds than plants that flower later — which are in danger of dying before they’ve finished reproducing.

...In 1971, five pairs of adult wall lizards (Podarcis sicula) were brought to the tiny Croatian island of Pod Mrčaru from the nearby island of Pod Kopište. These five pairs have since given rise to a thriving lizard population — and one that has developed some interesting differences from the lizards that live on Kopište....This study is one of the most intriguing I’ve come across. It suggests that arrival in a new environment can result in dramatic changes to an organism within fewer than 40 lifetimes.

...I haven’t even begun to mention the countless examples of pests that have evolved resistance to pesticides and bacteria that have evolved resistance to antibiotics, nor the thousands of laboratory experiments showing evolution in the simple environments of test tubes and petri dishes. Also omitted: several examples of new species that are in the process of forming (I want to look at these in a future column).

...And this is our other candidate, Larry

Clayton Cramer notes that at least one Idaho paper seems to think people with the name Larry are interchangeable.

Larry LaRocco is the Democratic nominee running after Senator Larry Craig's seat. So what happened when someone printed up campaign buttons for LaRocco, hoping that some of the Obamamessiah magic would rub off? They put a picture of Obama next to a picture of a Larry--Larry Craig!

Our "responsibility" to learn Spanish

Barack Obama thinks we need to learn Spanish.

Instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English — they'll learn English — you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish. You should be thinking about, how can your child become bilingual? We should have every child speaking more than one language.

You know, it's embarrassing when Europeans come over here, they all speak English, they speak French, they speak German. And then we go over to Europe, and all we can say [is], "Merci beaucoup." Right?

Creationism in Texas

(Hat tip: Little Green Footballs)

The Texas State Board of Education has begun hearings on teaching the “weaknesses” of evolutionary science—which means, of course, teaching the “strengths” of the creationist flavor of the month, “intelligent design.”

While all science is tentative. All the conclusions of science are held until a better, stronger theory comes along. All scientific theories are subject to question and testing. A good course of study should make this clear to students.

However, when a proposed curriculum focuses only on the purported weaknesses of evolution, never addresses the real weaknesses of the proposed alternatives, and never even glances at any other branch of science, the conclusion is obvious.

The proponents are pushing an agenda which has nothing to do with science.

“The only theory they attack is evolution,” said Dan Quinn, Texas Freedom Network’s communications director. Heliocentricity, gravitational theory, and atomic structure all get the SBOE thumbs-up.

We can add the germ theory of disease, electromagnetic theory, and indeed, all of science.

Remnants of Viruses Past

(Hat tip: Little Green Footballs )

One of the most surprising developments in modern biology has been the discovery of just how tenuous the wall between species is. Primitive organisms apparently trade bits of genetic material back and forth with wild abandon. This is, among other things, one way bacteria acquire resistance to antibiotics. An infectious agent will acquire a snippet of genetic material from a harmless strain the way a friend might slip me a CD with the latest software patch.

Just as surprising is how much of the DNA of higher animals -- ourselves included -- is from another species.

A retrovirus stores its genetic information in a single-stranded molecule of RNA, instead of the more common double-stranded DNA. When it infects a cell, the virus deploys a special enzyme, called reverse transcriptase, that enables it to copy itself and then paste its own genes into the new cell’s DNA. It then becomes part of that cell forever; when the cell divides, the virus goes with it. Scientists have long suspected that if a retrovirus happens to infect a human sperm cell or egg, which is rare, and if that embryo survives—which is rarer still—the retrovirus could take its place in the blueprint of our species, passed from mother to child, and from one generation to the next, much like a gene for eye color or asthma.

When the sequence of the human genome was fully mapped, in 2003, researchers also discovered something they had not anticipated: our bodies are littered with the shards of such retroviruses, fragments of the chemical code from which all genetic material is made. It takes less than two per cent of our genome to create all the proteins necessary for us to live. Eight per cent, however, is composed of broken and disabled retroviruses, which, millions of years ago, managed to embed themselves in the DNA of our ancestors. They are called endogenous retroviruses, because once they infect the DNA of a species they become part of that species. One by one, though, after molecular battles that raged for thousands of generations, they have been defeated by evolution. Like dinosaur bones, these viral fragments are fossils. Instead of having been buried in sand, they reside within each of us, carrying a record that goes back millions of years. Because they no longer seem to serve a purpose or cause harm, these remnants have often been referred to as “junk DNA.” Many still manage to generate proteins, but scientists have never found one that functions properly in humans or that could make us sick.

How much of the remnants can be found in our DNA?

Enough.

Then, last year, Thierry Heidmann brought one back to life. Combining the tools of genomics, virology, and evolutionary biology, he and his colleagues took a virus that had been extinct for hundreds of thousands of years, figured out how the broken parts were originally aligned, and then pieced them together. After resurrecting the virus, the team placed it in human cells and found that their creation did indeed insert itself into the DNA of those cells. They also mixed the virus with cells taken from hamsters and cats. It quickly infected them all, offering the first evidence that the broken parts could once again be made infectious.

It's now possible to recreate viruses from the description of its genome. Polio has been built from parts in this way, as has the strain of flu responsible for the 1918 epidemic. The study of ancient retroviruses in human DNA could lead to the resurrection of old plagues, but it also shines a light on the process of evolution.

...a new discipline, paleovirology, which seeks to better understand the impact of modern diseases by studying the genetic history of ancient viruses.

“This is something not to fear but to celebrate,’’ Heidmann told me one day as we sat in his office at the institute, which is dedicated to the treatment and eradication of cancer. Through the window, the Eiffel Tower hovered silently over the distant city. “What is remarkable here, and unique, is the fact that endogenous retroviruses are two things at once: genes and viruses. And those viruses helped make us who we are today just as surely as other genes did. I am not certain that we would have survived as a species without them.”

He continued, “The Phoenix virus sheds light on how H.I.V. operates, but, more than that, on how we operate, and how we evolved. Many people study other aspects of human evolution—how we came to walk, or the meaning of domesticated animals. But I would argue that equally important is the role of pathogens in shaping the way we are today. Look, for instance, at the process of pregnancy and birth.’’ Heidmann and others have suggested that without endogenous retroviruses mammals might never have developed a placenta, which protects the fetus and gives it time to mature. That led to live birth, one of the hallmarks of our evolutionary success over birds, reptiles, and fish. Eggs cannot eliminate waste or draw the maternal nutrients required to develop the large brains that have made mammals so versatile. “These viruses made those changes possible,’’ Heidmann told me. “It is quite possible that, without them, human beings would still be laying eggs.”

H·I.V., the only retrovirus that most people have heard of, has caused more than twenty-five million deaths and infected at least twice that number of people since the middle of the twentieth century, when it moved from monkey to man. It may be hard to understand how organisms from that same family, and constructed with the same genes, could have played a beneficial, and possibly even essential, role in the health and development of any species. In 1968, Robin Weiss, who is now a professor of viral oncology at University College London, found endogenous retroviruses in the embryos of healthy chickens. When he suggested that they were not only benign but might actually perform a critical function in placental development, molecular biologists laughed. “When I first submitted my results on a novel ‘endogenous’ envelope, suggesting the existence of an integrated retrovirus in normal embryo cells, the manuscript was roundly rejected,’’ Weiss wrote last year in the journal Retrovirology. “One reviewer pronounced that my interpretation was impossible.’’ Weiss, who is responsible for much of the basic knowledge about how the AIDS virus interacts with the human immune system, was not deterred. He was eager to learn whether the chicken retroviruses he had seen were recently acquired infections or inheritances that had been passed down through the centuries. He moved to the Pahang jungle of Malaysia and began living with a group of Orang Asli tribesmen. Red jungle fowl, an ancestor species of chickens, were plentiful there, and the tribe was skilled at trapping them. After collecting and testing both eggs and blood samples, Weiss was able to identify versions of the same viruses. Similar tests were soon carried out on other animals. The discovery helped mark the beginning of a new approach to biology. “If Charles Darwin reappeared today, he might be surprised to learn that humans are descended from viruses as well as from apes,” Weiss wrote.

(Here, it should be noted: This is a real case of a maverick scientist going against the conventional wisdom, and winning through in the end. He did so because he was able to make specific predictions -- in this case that the same endovirus fragments would be found in other fowl, separated from any possible infection in chicken coops in the US by thousands of miles.)

And the field is yet another proof of human descent from apes:

nothing provides more convincing evidence for the “theory” of evolution than the viruses contained within our DNA. Until recently, the earliest available information about the history and the course of human diseases, like smallpox and typhus, came from mummies no more than four thousand years old. Evolution cannot be measured in a time span that short. Endogenous retroviruses provide a trail of molecular bread crumbs leading millions of years into the past.

Darwin’s theory makes sense, though, only if humans share most of those viral fragments with relatives like chimpanzees and monkeys. And we do, in thousands of places throughout our genome. If that were a coincidence, humans and chimpanzees would have had to endure an incalculable number of identical viral infections in the course of millions of years, and then, somehow, those infections would have had to end up in exactly the same place within each genome. The rungs of the ladder of human DNA consist of three billion pairs of nucleotides spread across forty-six chromosomes. The sequences of those nucleotides determine how each person differs from another, and from all other living things. The only way that humans, in thousands of seemingly random locations, could possess the exact retroviral DNA found in another species is by inheriting it from a common ancestor.

U.S. or not?

Thomas Friedman looks at American power in the world, and whether the world would be better off without it.

Maybe Asians, Europeans, Latin Americans and Africans don’t like a world of too much American power — “Mr. Big” got a little too big for them. But how would they like a world of too little American power? With America’s overextended military and overextended banks, that is the world into which we may be heading.

Welcome to a world of too much Russian and Chinese power.

I am neither a Russia-basher nor a China-basher. But there was something truly filthy about Russia’s and China’s vetoes of the American-led U.N. Security Council effort to impose targeted sanctions on Robert Mugabe’s ruling clique in Zimbabwe.

The U.S. put forward a simple Security Council resolution, calling for an arms embargo on Zimbabwe, the appointment of a U.N. mediator, plus travel and financial restrictions on the dictator Mugabe and 13 top military and government officials for stealing the Zimbabwe election and essentially mugging an entire country in broad daylight.

In the first round of Zimbabwe’s elections, on March 29, the opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, won nearly 48 percent of the vote compared with 42 percent for Mugabe. This prompted Mugabe and his henchmen to begin a campaign of killing and intimidation against Tsvangirai supporters that eventually forced the opposition to pull out of the second-round runoff vote just to stay alive.

Even before the runoff, Mugabe declared that he would disregard the results if his ZANU-PF party lost. Or as he put it: “We are not going to give up our country because of a mere X” on some paper ballot.

And so, of course, Mugabe “won” in one of the most blatantly stolen elections ever — in a country already mired in misrule, unemployment, hunger and inflation. Some 25 percent of Zimbabwe’s people have now taken refuge in neighboring states.

....

Which brings me back to America. Perfect we are not, but America still has some moral backbone. There are travesties we will not tolerate. The U.N. vote on Zimbabwe demonstrates that this is not true for these “popular” countries — called Russia or China or South Africa — that have no problem siding with a man who is pulverizing his own people. So, yes, we’re not so popular in Europe and Asia anymore. I guess they would prefer a world in which America was weaker, where leaders with the values of Vladimir Putin and Thabo Mbeki had a greater say, and where the desperate voices for change in Zimbabwe would, well, just shut up.