Category: Uncategorized

New Scientist declares that St. Darwin is more wrong… again:

For much of the past 150 years, biology has largely concerned itself with filling in the details of the tree. “For a long time the holy grail was to build a tree of life,” says Eric Bapteste, an evolutionary biologist at the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris, France. A few years ago it looked as though the grail was within reach. But today the project lies in tatters, torn to pieces by an onslaught of negative evidence. Many biologists now argue that the tree concept is obsolete and needs to be discarded. “We have no evidence at all that the tree of life is a reality,” says Bapteste. That bombshell has even persuaded some that our fundamental view of biology needs to change.

So what happened? In a nutshell, DNA.

To me, the most interesting thing about this article isn’t the fact that it declares evolutionary biologists have spent most of their efforts over the last 150 years on a futile endeavor. Nor is it the fact that as I have been predicting since I first started reading up on ND-TENS, it should be DNA evidence that is turning Darwin’s theory on its ear again, as genetics is genuine science versus the sort of fill-in-the-blank series of tautological fairy tales that evolution increasingly appears to be.

No, what’s interesting is the way that the Tree of Life-supporters are still fighting to preserve their increasingly outdated model, in precisely the way we are told scientists simply don’t behave. The following passage explains why one is always advised to be skeptical of the theoretical model when persistent gaps remain:

By the mid-1980s there was great optimism that molecular techniques would finally reveal the universal tree of life in all its glory. Ironically, the opposite happened.

I expect a similarly ironic discovery to eventually blow apart the greater part of the oft-revised theory because although biologists don’t like to admit it, every time a x-million year old “fossil” is discovered swimming or crawling around, it demonstrates how wildly inaccurate their theoretical model is. Daniel Dennett illogically tried to argue that we should trust biologists because physicists get amazingly accurate results, but what he should have concluded if he had followed the logic properly is that if a division of doxastic labor is justified in the case of science because it gets amazingly accurate results, then evolutionary biology cannot be science. Popper need not even enter into the discussion as one can very reasonably ask: what are the amazingly accurate results predicted by evolutionary biologists that justify a doxastic division of labor here?

If anyone now thinks that biology is sorted, they are going to be proved wrong too. The more that genomics, bioinformatics and many other newer disciplines reveal about life, the more obvious it becomes that our present understanding is not up to the job.

It is still far too soon to declare victory over the biology experts now, as they’re clearly not ready to junk the entire theoretical model yet. Biologists are still in the “drawing deferents and epicycles” stage in attempting to revise TENS in order to fit the observations. What they fail to grasp is that the more complex their model has to be, the more likely it is that the entire foundation upon which it is based will turn out to be incorrect.

The problem with those who are accustomed to kid gloves is that they never learn how to deal with adversity. Obama has never faced a hostile press throughout the entirety of his political career, and, unsurprisingly the initial signs are that he’s not going to handle one well:

President Obama made a surprise visit to the White House press corps Thursday night, but got agitated when he was faced with a substantive question. Asked how he could reconcile a strict ban on lobbyists in his administration with a Deputy Defense Secretary nominee who lobbied for Raytheon, Obama interrupted with a knowing smile on his face.

“Ahh, see,” he said, “I came down here to visit. See this is what happens. I can’t end up visiting with you guys and shaking hands if I’m going to get grilled every time I come down here.”

Pressed further by the Politico reporter about his Pentagon nominee, William J. Lynn III, Obama turned more serious, putting his hand on the reporter’s shoulder and staring him in the eye. “Alright, come on” he said, with obvious irritation in his voice. “We will be having a press conference at which time you can feel free to [ask] questions. Right now, I just wanted to say hello and introduce myself to you guys – that’s all I was trying to do.”

No doubt the usual suspects in the ABCNNBCBS cabal will attempt to run interference for him, but Obama isn’t going to be able to get away with evasions forever now that he is in possession of the office.

Rachel Lucas rightly beats down one of the blights of blogdom:

The mommybloggers get a lot of this sort of criticism, and their defense is always the same: we’re building a community. We’re sharing and helping each other through the trials of motherhood. Good for you ladies, but you could do that without using your kids’ real names or posting their pics. I’m just saying. These kids have no say or control over any of it and it’s wrong to make that decision for them. I’d be pissed if my mom had done that to me. The thought that I could be sitting here now as an adult knowing that thousands of photos of me as a child were all over the internet, along with thousands of blog posts about my behavioral problems, temper tantrums, and pooping habits, makes me feel sick to my stomach. Privacy, people. Privacy.

I don’t think it’s any great surprise that while I am a fan of mothers, I’m not a fan of mommybloggers and their need to share not only their reliably dim-witted thoughts, but far too much information about their family with the rest of the world. I think it is not only wrong, but reprehensible to shred the privacy of one’s own children this way; I don’t even like to see children’s pictures on Facebook which is at least somewhat limited. I can understand the laudable urge to chronicle their lives, but not at the price of sharing those chronicles with the rest of the world.

When I have warned of a violent end to European multiculturalism in the past, those who look favorably on cultural plurality have tended to dismiss the prediction as being somehow unthinkable or the product of my wild-eyed fever dreams. It will be interesting to see what they make of a similar warning from a very different source:

Yazid Sabeg issued a wakeup call to the French nation, which has already suffered major rioting from alienated immigrant youth in the country’s social housing projects. He stressed that the current financial crisis will hit those suffering from discrimination and lack of opportunity most severely. “We are creating a social civil war in this country,” said Sabeg. “I believe that today we are digging a ditch that leads straight into apartheid.”

Sabeg is the son of Algerian immigrants and is known for his efforts to bring equality to the workplace. President Nicolas Sarkozy appointed Sabeg in December to the newly created post of diversity and equality commissioner. He is to oversee a government action plan aimed at putting more ethnic minorities on TV screens, in political parties and in elite schools that lead to jobs in government and industry.

Sabeg is correct about the incipient problems, but his solution is akin to trying to burn out a cancer by pouring gasoline over the victim and setting him on fire. It will eventually come down to violence and expulsion or violence and occupation. Those are the two options that history has always presented humanity in the past.

Allabaster is annoyed:

If i hear one more self important uni drop out refer to Socrates and his bloody Euthyphro dilemma i’m going to go mental. BTW Vox good work including a nice refutation in the last chapter of TIA. Has anybody tried to refute your position or have they all stalled at chapter 3ish?

There has only been one half-hearted and wildly incorrect attempt that I’ve seen, and I don’t think it was an atheist who gave it a shot. Although some young university atheists encountering philosophy for the first time are infatuated with it, it’s tangential to the whole debate because it doesn’t really have anything directly to do with God’s existence. My strong suspicion is that no one has tried to address it because so few of those who cite it have actually read the dialogue. Even those who have read it probably haven’t grasped its logic; Beezle, for example, didn’t understand that he can’t possibly describe my refutation of Euthyphro as an evasion, (which is incorrect anyhow), because in addition to pointing out the way in which the “dilemma” can’t logically be applied to the Christian God, I also demonstrate how Socrates himself admits that he is cheating by artificially redefining terms in order to create a false dilemma.

While I’m far from the first to point out that whining about an arbitrary nature is not sufficient to preserve the weak horn of the “dilemma” from the assault of Thomas Aquinas and others, it is entirely possible that I may be the first to show that Socrates’s logic in constructing the false dilemma is flawed. I’ve yet to see anyone even attempt to address this point and would very much like to see someone do so.

Stanley Fish’s explanation for the death of the academic intellectual life is interesting, but somehow manages to miss the significant point:

One vision, rooted in an “ethic of productivity” and efficiency, has, he tells us, already won the day; and the proof is that in the very colleges and universities where the life of the mind is routinely celebrated, the material conditions of the workplace are configured by the business model that scorns it.

The best evidence for this is the shrinking number of tenured and tenure-track faculty and the corresponding rise of adjuncts, part-timers more akin to itinerant workers than to embedded professionals.

Humanities professors like to think that this is a temporary imbalance and talk about ways of redressing it, but Donoghue insists that this development, planned by no one but now well under way, cannot be reversed. Universities under increasing financial pressure, he explains, do not “hire the most experienced teachers, but rather the cheapest teachers.” Tenured and tenure-track teachers now make up only 35 percent of the pedagogical workforce and “this number is steadily falling.”

What Fish fails to note is the effect of what Bloom described as “The Closing of the American Mind”. The reason there is no place for the traditional liberal arts education is that there is nothing liberal, in the original sense of the term, about the liberal arts anymore. Having abandoned their original purpose of offering a broad-based education to students in favor of attempting to instill left-wing ideologies into them, the university system no longer provides anything of value to anyone except technical training.

It should come as no surprise, then, that since the demand for technical training has replaced the demand for the illiberal arts, the supply has readjusted itself in line with the requirements of the market.

This is going to be an amusing four years….

Are you prepared to take the oath, Senator?

I am.

I, Barrack Hussein Obama-

I, Barra….

Do solemnly swear

I, Barrack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear

That I will execute the office of President to the United States faithfully

That I will execute….(frown, blank look)

In the interest of sheer comedy, Obama should never be permitted the use of a teleprompter again. And it’s 43 presidents, Mr. President. 43. Remember that whole Bush ’41 and ’43 thing? That was the guy you just replaced.

Secular society and the triumph of free speech:

A total of 11 men, including three juveniles, appeared at Portsmouth Magistrates’ Court facing charges of indecent chanting. They relate to offensive remarks made at the Portsmouth defender during a match against Tottenham Hotspur at Fratton Park, Portsmouth, on September 28 last year.

Somehow, I have the impression that none of the ArabBritish demonstrators who recently attacked the Israeli embassy in London are likely to ever be charged with “indecent chanting”.