Origins of....Species (Life Sciences)

[nemesis8]

Excellent.

Brilliant Inspired.

Loved it.

Would have suggested Haper & Lee, (one who lives near a laye) but yours is a lot better.

Damn you etc.

PS I quit.

[Grant]

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/250006.php

I'm sure you all noticed the biggest science story of the year - junk DNA is no longer junk. Apparently, it's just as important as the "real" thing. But no-one here has commented on the fact that this means that the genetic clock, so beloved by biologists, must be bullshit. Their justification for the accuracy of the clock was that junk DNA is not subject to the rigours of Darwinian selection to the same extent as "real" DNA, and that explained the regularity of the clock. But if junk DNA is no more, the genetic clock cannot be reliable. It cannot possibly tick to a fairly regular beat if it's subject to selection pressures.

So all the calculations about when man split from the apes etc can no longer be trusted.

[Grant]

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/250006.php

Why has no-one commented on the biggest news story this year? Either the genetic clock doesn't work or Darwinism has been debunked. Why?

Some scientists are saying that junk DNA doesn't exist. Now junk DNA was essential for an accurate genetic clock. DNA which changes regularly enough to be used for dating cannot be subject to selection pressures because selection pressures normally prevent change. (In the past it was postulated that as 90% of DNA was pointless it changed at a regular rate, thus justifying the genetic clock.)

If we try to hold on to the clock we have to assume that regular change is due to something other than Darwinian selection.

[Mick Harper]

You're forgetting that the whole theory was just back-of-the-envelope stuff to start with. What happened was that the biological clock theory came along and in order to get a hearing they used the existing time-frame (ie palaeoanthropology) as their hypothetical rate. (You can't check the genes of fossils at this level,)

But of course the palaeoanthropologists were highly desirous of a 'scientific' underpinning for their own theories (based mainly on strata theory and peer review) so they seized on the biological clock.

When it's a question of hanging together or being hanged separately the turkeys have not been voting for Christmas ever since.

We have now reached the absurd position that (for instance) Out-of-Africa is based on the ticking clock even though it's an inescapable fact that everybody on earth has exactly the same clock that has been ticking for exactly the same length of time! Doh!

[Mick Harper]

A fascinating piece of Darwinian careful ignoral occurred on Britain's Big Wildlife Revival last night (watch here:) http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0392d0s

Earnest experts were bemoaning the fact that adders were bound to die out fairly soon from the entirety of Britain because their habitats were being cut off from one another so that genetic diversity would soon be lost as populations became inbred.

Five minutes later the same experts were telling us that just two escaped (c 1870) American grey squirrels had managed to populate the entirety of Britain with such vigour that the poor old native reds were in danger of extinction. You can't get a more inbred breeding stock than that.

Solution to the snake problem: wait till the adders have died out completely. Then import a male and a female from somewhere else and let them escape. Wait a few years. Voilà! A Britain full of adders.

PS: Has anyone examined the genetics of the British grey squirrel? It will surely tell us a lot about genetics. Perhaps too much. Which may be why this remarkable opportunity has not been taken up.

PPS They also said that a grey squirrel disease that doesn't affect them but does affect reds is one of the reasons for the grey success. So apparently one of these two original squirrels had the disease. Funny that.

[Hatty]

Red squirrels starred in a Ray Mears tour of the Isle of Wight. Reds are usually found in pine woods but not here where the trees are deciduous and the undergrowth is undisturbed allowing more cover to a variety of animals. There are no deer on the island but there are of course predators, mainly aerial e.g. buzzards.

The precarious situation of red squirrels elsewhere may be less about inbreeding than loss of ground cover. They are clearly more visible than greys which must be a disadvantage.

[Chad]

[Ishmael]

This research ought to kill Darwinian Evolution by Natural Selection, but it won't. The old paradigm will cling on. It can't die until there's something to replace it (and nothing will replace it until the old paradigm is dead).

Phobias may be memories passed down in genes from ancestors

Researchers at the Emory University School of Medicine, in Atlanta, found that mice can pass on learned information about traumatic or stressful experiences -- in this case a fear of the smell of cherry blossom -- to subsequent generations....

In the study, which is published in the journal of Nature Neuroscience, the researchers trained mice to fear the smell of cherry blossom using electric shocks before allowing them to breed.
The offspring produced showed fearful responses to the odour of cherry blossom compared to a neutral odour, despite never having encountered them before.
The following generation also showed the same behaviour. This effect continued even if the mice had been fathered through artificial insemination.

[Mick Harper]

The Megalithic Empire majors on (inter alia)
1. reindeer, a species prone to an existence somewhere between domestic, wild and feral
2. anomalous extinctions of species that are wild/feral now but the Megalithic Empire claims were once domesticated.

In North America reindeer are known as caribou and if you read this https://canadiangeographic.ca/articles/caribou-are-vanishing-at-an-alarming-rate-is-it-too-late-to-save-them/ they are undergoing an anomalous extinction. Or at any rate the experts haven't got a clue what's causing it but just say "Oh, you know, 'environmental factors' like we always say when we don't know."

[Mick Harper]

The World Just Got Stranger

I was always taught -- well, I discovered the other day -- that mycelia (or whatever they call fungi and stuff) were a sort of underground messaging network linking trees. Hence you see people carrying their baskets into the woods to gather mushrooms. Also Italians with their pigs going into the Abruzzi forest to dig up truffles which are worth n zillion pounds per gram and so forth.

Now I discover that every February and March Iraqis go into the desert (not a tree in sight) and dig up truffles by the wagon load which are sold in the local market as 'a good meat substitute'. This would seem to indicate that our overground world has nothing to do with their underground kingdom. It's war!

[Grant]

Have you seen The Last of Us yet? It’s basically another Zombie TV show but this time the cause of the business are fungi, which invade human bodies and turn us into zombies with green stuff growing out of our heads. Apparently it’s based on what the little perishers do to ants

[Mick Harper]

I had a nifty idea last night, so I tied it to an old one and put it up on Medium. It got some interesting responses which I'll deal with tomorrow.

-----------

Darwinian Evolution is a Crock

Evolution is supposed to be driven by a genetic mutation occurring in a single organism conferring a competitive advantage allowing that individual to have more offspring than other members of the species.

This advantage, being heritable, allows the offspring of the offspring to gradually displace non-mutated individuals until either (a) the whole species possesses it or (b) two populations are established, one with and one without the mutation. It depends on whether the original species formed a single breeding group or were separated by geographical factors.

This does not constitute speciation however. By definition the two groups are still one species. Further genetic mutations, further ‘survival of the fittest’ stages, are necessary before this is achieved. Since genes were unknown in Darwin’s time, this theory is called ‘neo-Darwinism’ and is taught by and believed by all educated people other than daft twats in the American Bible Belt.

And me. I like evidence before I believe anything. Or as they say, “He can’t be taught, that M J Harper.” I have a test that I set for any passing neo-Darwinist that goes like this:

Dear Passing Neo-Darwinist: According to neo-Darwinist theory all species must have undergone a period of time when they co-existed with the species that gave rise to it. That period of time might be short, it might be indefinitely long.
“Yes, sir.”

Dear Passing Neo-Darwinist: At any one time the species of the world must be divided into two types: those with ancestral species that are extant and those whose ancestral species is extinct.
“Yes, sir.”

Dear Passing Neo-Darwinist: The one time for which we have good evidence is now. There are reckoned to be several million species in the world today. They will be divided between those with ancestral species that are extant and those whose ancestral species is extinct.
“Yes, sir.”

Dear Passing Neo-Darwinist: Please provide an estimate of how many million, hundreds of thousand, tens of thousands, whatever number fall into the former group (ignoring any species that might have been affected by human domestication).
“Can’t, sorry.”

Dear Passing Neo-Darwinist: Failing that, a list will do.
“Can’t, sorry.”

Dear Passing Neo-Darwinist: Failing that, one will do.
“Can’t, sorry.”

Dear Passing Neo-Darwinist: So something better is clearly required, wouldn’t you say?
“I’m listening.”

Dear Passing Neo-Darwinist: Every now and again an unusually powerful burst of solar radiation promotes genetic mutation in all organisms on earth. After that a whole myriad of possibilities are possible.
“Fuck off.”

Dear Passing Neo-Darwinist: Is that your final word on the subject?
“Yes.”

Dear Passing Neo-Darwinist: Thank you for your valuable time.
“Don’t mention it, it’s what we’re here for.”

[Mick Harper]

The results after twenty-four hours is unusually large (eight views), all of whom read it (unprecedented), three of whom responded (also way above average). I'll start with a coupla knockabout ones and then a substantive one.
--------------------

Barry Robinson (a regular)
"After that a whole myriad of possibilities are possible"
I have read this article and the responses. I have one question.
Couldn't you explain it in words I can understand? 😁😁😁😁

Mick Harper
You worry me. I was maybe overcompensating. Trying to carry the enemy with me.

Edwin Blake
Not a Darwinian of any stripe. So perhaps that's why I don't get the point of your question. I suspect it is meant to contain some sort of "gotcha". If it does, can you just come out and say it, for clarity's sake?

If the point is that there aren't any current species in the process of differentiation then my understanding is that that happens continually to unicellular organisms. For larger ones I believe the peppered moth is one that shows an example of colour change due to industrial pollution. Not sure that counts, yet, as a new species.

Mick Harper
You're right, it doesn't. It always gets trotted out though.
----------------------

Petejones (another regular)
How often are such solar radiation events happening? If Darwin requires uniformitarianism and billions of years, how much time (and time between radiation events) does 'Arperism take?

Mick Harper
Radiation events are happening all the time. As are genetic mutations. Actually the two are unified in all the fruit fly experiments going on everywhere. Without, as far as I know, producing a new species of fly.

My scheme gets over the one organism/ one mutation needing to (start to) change a whole species which has always struck me as unlikely in the extreme and certainly needing more than the billion years or so available. Uniformitarianism has always been the enemy. In the Earth as well as the Life Sciences.

Put it this way: if they believed in the solar radiation theory and I came along with a lucky mutation theory, how many fleas in my ear would I have got?

Petejones
This article of yours has got me thinking today. Was the one-mutation-at-a-time presentation of neo-Darwinism just a simplification for the sake of popular books? Or do they proceed in their researches as though that is how it happens in reality, rather than just an idealization of the "all-else-being-equal"-type? It seems like the same kind of error as mistaking a metaphor for the real thing. I wonder if it happens often.

The uniformitarian assumption seems to go hand in hand with the one-gene/one-mutation process. Both just seem like schematic tools for understanding how something COULD work which are now taken as literally HOW things work? It's easier to understand a sort of analytic, one-change-at-one-time scheme, rather than a big massive set of ongoing holistic integrated changes that never stop

Mick Harper
I assume it's based on the shift from Divine Intervention and five thousand years to sort everything out to five billion years and no-one to sort it out. But you'd think they'd have got over it by now.

Petejones
That makes great sense. Monotheistic creation has to give away to something else that is "mono-" (monomechanism?) in order to help the medicine go down. I've often thought that perhaps "science" arose out of Christian Europe (rather than a pagan society) because searching for physical causes for phenomena (one phenomenon one cause, as defined by some equation) was a natural next step from "One God Did It, Not Multiple gods". This is probably wrongheaded because of how little I can rely on the eurocentric history that I've been taught, along with all the other ways it might be wrongheaded

Mick Harper
There is too great a time gap between the establishment of monotheism and the growth of 'scientism'. Unless you accept my thesis about when that happened!

[Boreades]

[Boreades]

For those who can't wait for the book, here's a video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRFmCXBv5R4

You might wonder at his appearance. Some say he was an extra in Lord Of The Rings. Others wonder how much mushroom (and what kinds) he consumes. All we know is that a person's appearance is no barrier to producing a good book. Just look at Harpo!