The View from Jamul

It's confirmed

2009-10-08T16:45:00.000-07:00

The dead Phantom Hill wolf is Jewel.

Some people object to the personification of wild animals. But this wolf, Jewel, was not a faceless and interchangeable unit. She was a young wolf who helped take care of her younger siblings, who curiously explored her environment, who no doubt enjoyed her life and her family and wanted to go on living.

And now she is dead, her life sold for $11.75 and the cost of a couple of bullets.

The inevitable happens

2009-10-06T18:42:00.000-07:00

From the Idaho Mountain Express this evening:
-------------------------------------

Phantom Hill pack wolf shot

By :JON DUVAL

Idaho Fish and Game Senior Conservation Officer Lee Garwood confirmed that a member of the Phantom Hill wolf pack was killed on Monday in Eagle Creek, just north of Ketchum.

This is the first wolf to have been killed in the Wood River Valley since the wolf hunt opened in the Sawtooth Zone on Oct. 1. On Monday, another wolf was reported killed in the Southern Mountain zone, which extends east across the Pioneer, White Knob, Lost River, Lemhi and Beaverhead mountain ranges to the Montana border.

Garwood said that the Phantom Hill pack wolf had a radio collar and was a female around two years old.

Idaho Fish and Game spokesman Ed Mitchell said that the other wolf was killed in hunting unit 51, which is northeast of Mackay, on the opposite side of Trail Creek pass from Sun Valley.

-------------------------------------

Maybe she was Jewel, who was collared in 2008.

Photo by Lynne K Stone, Copyright 2009

As an observer wrote-

During my recent eye-to-eye encounter with B445, I was never for a moment afraid. What I observed, was that B445 was very curious of us (my dog and self), as we were intruders into her pack's territory. I thought of B445's older sister, B326 - Judith, and how that this younger wolf, was certainly a jewel. Her beautiful silky movements, her intelligent, inquiring amber eyes -- well, the name Jewel seemed to fit her.

Requiem for the Phantoms

2009-10-02T13:38:00.000-07:00

Near Ketchum, ID, a unique project has been taking place. The Wood River Wolf Project brought together livestock producers and environmentalists in an attempt to keep an iconic wolf pack safe.

The Phantom Hill Wolves, an all-black pack, share the landscape of the Sawtooth Hill National Recreation area and surrounding lands with thousands of sheep, most grazing on public lands. Unlike in many areas of Idaho, where the wolves are scapegoats for all that is loathsome and cruel, the Phantoms were viewed by many residents (including many in the resort town of Sun Valley) as a valued addition to the wild landscape. When the pack denned and had pups in the hills near Ketchum, they became local celebrities.

The Phantoms nearly became statistics win 2007, when they killed 9 sheep and Wildlife Services and IDFG supported killing them if depredations recurred. In a unique collaborative project, the three biggest lamb producers in the area teamed with Defenders of Wildlife to form a coalition to prevent wolf depredation on sheep. Defenders volunteers worked to help make safe night pens for the sheep, and to teach sheepherders to use methods such as fladry and sound devices to scare off wolves. In all of 2008 and most of 2009, only one sheep was lost to the Phantoms.

In August of 2009, a local rancher who was not part of the project turned loose his sheep band without notifying the volunteers who were doing sheep protection duty, and 12 sheep were killed. Unsurprisingly, IDFG immediately issued permits for the Phantoms to be killed. Never mind the project, never mind the wolf tourism this pack created- killing was the prescribed answer. Only with the protests of the rancher himself, who joined the project, was the kill order lifted- although IDFG was quick to state that they would be back with guns blazing if another sheep were to fall.

It is now October 2. Yesterday, hunting season opened throughout the state of Idaho for wolves, and the territory of the Phantoms was not exempted. Despite the pleas of those who have worked so long and diligently to create a balance between the needs of ranchers and the needs of wolves, despite the importance of continuing the study of what works to keep the wolves away from sheep, despite the residents who value wolves more as live participants in the local ecosystem than as trophies for the wall, IDFG refused to make even this tiny portion of the wolf range in Idaho a protected area.

The reports yesterday were that camo-clad hunters were streaming into the Wood River Valley, all eager to get shots at those famous black wolves whose presence is so widely known. After all, if you want to hunt a wolf, you go where the wolves are known to be...

So thus, in all likelihood, will the project end. The Phantoms will be gunned down, the IDFG will get their $11.25 blood money for the wolf license, the hunter will get the "unique" trophy of a rare black wolf pelt.

When questioned about why the entire state was open to wolf hunting, and why not even a tiny portion of the state was devoted to wolf conservation, IDFG employee Mark Gamblin stated, "The suggestion that only by closing areas to wolf hunting can the public be properly served, I believe is a narrow view that would not serve the greater Idaho public well."

Yet, somehow, allowing the tiny proportion of Idaho residents who bought a wolf tag to overrun the entire state serves the public. Yet, somehow, denying the most well-known pack in Idaho protection serves the public. Yet, somehow, killing the Phantoms is a sacrifice for the greater good.

I, for one, do not believe him.

The brave wolf hunters

2009-09-09T11:56:00.000-07:00

I noticed this morning that the location of one of the four reported wolves killed in Idaho on the IDFG website was moved from the Sawtooth zone, which is open, to the McCall-Weiser zone, which is not. I reported this on Ralph Maughan's excellent Wildlife News blog, wondering if it was an illegal kill, and, later today someone posted a news story confirming that it was.

Some brave hunter hid behind his pickup, in the middle of the road, in an area where wolf hunting was closed, and blasted a five month old female pup. I just hope this gets as much publicity as the first hunter who shot a wolf in Idaho did- because this is much closer to the reality of wolf hunting.

Now let's see whether this man is actually charged with a crime and convicted- or whether he is lauded as a local hero and gets off without a penalty. I know which one I'd bet on.

Cowering conservatives

2009-09-05T12:41:00.000-07:00

Now you ask me why I'm here.
The same as you, I'm scared - it's fear.

"Hand Me Downs"
The Indigo Girls

About a year ago, there was a bit of a media uproar over a study that showed that conservatives are far more fearful than liberals. Conservatives, of course, decried the study- not by supplying any data of their own, but by their usual mud-slinging and obfuscation.

The current flurry of stories on how right-wing parents are refusing to let their school-aged children watch Obama's speech on education brings this back into focus, all too clearly.

It seems on every hot-button issue I can think of, the motivation of conservatives is fear. This impetus is only strengthened when the conservative is also an evangelical Christian and fear of Yahweh is added into the mix.

Obama? He's gonna indoctrinate your kids! He's gonna take away your guns!
Evolution? Those atheists are going to teach your kids that God doesn't exist! If evolution is true, we have no purpose and no afterlife!
Health care? They're gonna kill Gramma!
Wolves? They will eat your kids!
Gay marriage? They're gonna turn your kids into homos!

And so on, ad nauseam.

This does, however, explain one phenomenon I have noticed- the distinct slant of political urban legends towards right-wing lunacy. Fear again. I checked out the politics section of Snopes.com and looked at all of the stories, in most of the sections, that were found to be either true or false (rather than undetermined or a mixture of both.) I left out the sections, like Humor and Satire, that weren't meant to be spread as truths, as well as the sections like Traffic and Gasoline that cross party lines. Here is what I found:

Number of rumors: 227
Total number of untrue rumors- 159
Right-leaning untruths- 144
Left leaning untruths- 15

Total number of true rumors- 68
Right-leaning truths- 45
Left leaning truths- 23

Percentage of all rumors spread by conservatives that were untrue: 76%
Percentage of all rumors spread by liberals that were untrue: 60%
Percentage of untrue rumors spread by conservatives: 91%
Percentage of total rumors spread by conservatives: 83%

So- conservatives spread far more rumors overall, and far more of them are untrue. And, compared with the true rumors spread by liberals, those spread by conservatives reflect far more fear over silly things- such-and-such a store taking "Christmas" out of its ads, for example.

So there you have it. The conservative mindset is one dominated by fear- especially fear of the unknown, the new, the different.

When your vision stays clear
In the face of your fear
Then you see turning out a light switch
Is their only power

"Let It Be Me"
The Indigo Girls

Rambling in Idaho- the view from Craigslist

2009-09-01T22:00:00.000-07:00

Want to know the thoughts of a local populace? The "Rants and Raves" section of their local Craigslist site will give you a glimpse into what the locals really think. People feel free to let loose and express their true feelings. What this reveals about wolves in Idaho is sobering. In fact, as i read these comments, I had to keep up a façade of humor and sarcasm, lest I be bowled over by sickness and rage.

Check out the fine command of English displayed by this poster from Twin Falls (PostingID: 1345834732):
I thought that we or the feds didnt want non native species here in idaho they are checking boats and everything they threw these gray wolves in on top of the few timber wolvrs we had and now are imbred and yes there was wolves here before they brought these imbeds in they tell allthese tree huggers what they want to hear i am not againist the wolves being here but they need to be controledor they will kill off all the game then die off them selves because of nothing to eat the wolves are here to stay but the hunters need not be the only ones to lose in this so all you tree huggers out there just shut up and let the dam plan work

The following post (PostingID: 1341208195) from Twin Falls was accompanied by four graphic photos of bloody dead wolves. This person not only has a grammar problem, as do nearly all of the anti-wolf posters; he has a serious, serious anger problem- and homophobia to boot. Doesn't it make you feel all warm and fuzzy to know that raving armed lunatics like this one are out there?
Did you see how many wolf tags were sold monday morning? You think a federal injunction with protect your precious wolves? Thousands of Idahoans are set on exterminating these viscous animals. Call us rednecks call us what you will but you know nothing. Say what you want about your night vision cameras, and your helicopters searching for wolf poachers. If you are so set on protecting the enviroment why are you flying around wasting fossil fuels in order to protect an animal that does nothing but kill other innocent animals? Wolves were exterminated from this country for a reason and they will be exterminated again. Oh yes I will crack open my beer and slaughter your wolves that come to my dieing rabbit call. Then I will hang that animal in Sun Valley where all you wolf loving faggots live.
The slaughter has begun, and will never stop. Beware Peta, these pics could be you next.

This Twin Falls resident (PostingID: 1340967548) needs to take a breath and find a period:
Ms or Mrs Peta are you going to pay to feed these wolves when they have killed all the wild game out there and as you know that has already start with more livestock kills 12 cows in stanley 40 sheep in the baker creek area and what about the kills in camas county the numbers keep rising across the state every year what are you going to do when they come into your yard and kill your dog or cat and they will the game is getting harder to get and they will go for the easier kills and what happens when they kill a child ask yourself why they killed them off once before and why were they lying about no wolves being out there before they brought them in they were there I sen them and there tracks so why don't you get a real job and stop living off of rich people who don't know what is going on in this state

Now on to Boise, where the wolves are apparently responsible for all of those "Missing Child" posters at your local grocery store (PostingID: 1354225746).
It was killed in Idaho, most people don't realize that the wolves the idiots relocated are hybrids. They are the size of african lions and since we have no hippos, rhinos or water buffalos in Idaho, our big game are easy pickings. Adult deer and elk don't have a chance of escaping a working pack of these devils. If they were native to Idaho, they would be a third the size of the one in the pic, then the rest of the animals would have fair chance of survival. They will start eating a elk or deer's intestines while they are still alive. They just don't kill for food, they also kill for the fun of it. If something isn't done about the wolf population soon, the only deer or elk you will see will be in the zoo. Although there are no documented case's of wolves attacking humans, how many people disappear every year, without a trace?
The young female wolf who lost her life today and is the one referred to as being "in the pic" weighed 80 pounds and was less that two years old. A fearsome monster indeed.

Many, many posters all over the Internet have stated that not only do they want wolves to die- they want them to die slowly and cruelly (PostingID: 1352320728).

I for one plan to gut shoot as many as I can before they declare the 220 has been met.
What a deal for 11.75 huh? Ahhh I love this state. I can't believe it took me so long to
get away from the Inland Empire.
Life is good:)

Boise also has its share of ranting lunatic homophobes, adding in some racism for good measure (PostingID: 1347719973):

First off the guy said it was" NEARLY" 1000 yards so what if he was off by 120 yards big fucking deal , the fact is shoot at him or me and your ass is OPEN SEASON you TREE HUGGING WOLF LOVING MEXIKALI FAGGOT. I can't wait to shoot a wolf and tack it's hide to your door, wolves should have never been brought back to the lower 48 and that's all there is to it. This is NOT the 1800's anymore the UNITED STATES has grown in population and there just isn't room for wolves here anymore , get over it and live with it. If you want to see a wolf go to the zoo or go to Alaska. It's not just about the Elk and Deer they kill but livestock, people have to eat and we need livestock for that unless your a TREE HUGGING GRANOLA EATTING WOLF LOVING MEXIKALI FAGGOT!!! If were such redneck back wood dumb fucks then go get out of here and leave us to out backwoods ways... GET!!!!! NOBODY IS STOPPING YOU LEAVE!!!....I'm so pissed now i hope to God one of you DUMBSHITS does shoot at me and see what happens . THEY ARE FUCKING KILLING MACHINES and they don't care who or what they kill or EAT!!!

And they are even proud of their ignorance (PostingID: 1346580374):
You are all morons spreading stupidity and showing how simple minded all of you are. I really like the post where you are worried about the spelling and grammar and you take the time to tell them- that's funny WHO CARE'S about spelling and grammar it CL dumb ass. One more thing that's funny is people that are more outdoorsy that anyone else. OK I'm happy for you once again WHO CARE'S. The fact remains wolves will be hunted and shot the eco-nuts will tie themselves to a wolf to help protect it and people will still show there stupidity by posting on cl. I didn't use grammar or spell check.

So there you have it. This is the mentality of the wolf hunters.

Dire Wolf

2009-08-31T11:48:00.000-07:00

The wolf came in, I got my cards
We sat down for a game
I cut my deck to the Queen of Spades
but the cards were all the same
Don't murder me
I beg of you don't murder me
Please don't murder me

Dire Wolf
The Grateful Dead

Today is a pivotal day for the wolves of the Northern Rockies. As I write this, a court hearing in Missoula to determine whether or not the wolf hunts scheduled to begin tomorrow in Idaho and Sept. 15 in Montana can go on has just finished, and Judge Donald Molloy did not issue an immediate ruling. Thus, barring a last-minute opinion from him, tomorrow it's open season on the wolves of Idaho.

Over 9000 tags have been sold to shoot 220 wolves. Reports are that the summer woods, usually the province of hikers on a last calm, peaceful stroll before returning to school or enjoying the last days of the summer, are instead filled with hunters scouting for wolves, gleefully anticipating the chance to kill.

Standing in the pouring rain

All alone in a world that's changed

Running scared, now forced to hide

In a land where he once stood with pride

Will The Wolf Survive
Los Lobos

The rhetoric over the pending slaughter has been painful, frightening, and immensely frustrating. Those who seek to kill wolves are not driven by a desire to put food on the table, a need to commune with nature, or any of the other rationalizations that are often used to justify hunting. Instead, the statements point to an atavistic, bloodthirsty, revenge-filled lust, a murderous impulse driven by fear, loathing, hate and retribution.
In Idaho, the elk herds in a number of regions have already been pulled down by nearly 30-percent - thanks entirely to wolf depredation. And sickened by the carnage of wildlife populations that took so long to rebuild, some sportsmen have tired of all the governmental foot dragging...and they've taken the matter back into their own hands. Dead wolves are beginning to show up with some regularity.
LOBO WATCH salutes those of you with the passion for our outdoors and the drive to maintain healthy deer and elk numbers to actually take charge of this situation, and who have the ability to...Shoot...Shovel...And Shut Up!
From "Lobo Watch," an anti-wolf website

[T]he wilds of Idaho are being "patrolled" by one of the largest and meanest wolf sub species in the world. Additional photos and live video support claims that these huge predators are not food chain balancers as some contend but vicious, pathological killers.
Article in the Idaho Observer

Sorry, folks- it isn't the wolves who are the vicious, pathological killers.

As I write this now, the clock inches towards midnight. Tomorrow, many wolves will die, and many people whose ethics and rationality have been subsumed by blood lust will celebrate their deaths.

And it will all be in vain. Wolf hunting won't prevent livestock depredation; it may well increase it. Remove a territorial pair that haven't touched sheep and the newcomers may not be so conservative. Kill the breeding female and her starving pups may turn to lambs. Canids also have a built-in response to control- they have more pups. And more pups to feed means more likelihood of livestock depredation.

And then, of course, we have the incredibly hypocritical argument:
Questioner: Why do deer and elk need to be hunted?
Hunter: Because if we don't control their populations, there will be too many of them.
Questioner: And why do you want to kill wolves?
Hunter: Because they reduce deer and elk populations!

How dare the wolves kill deer and elk to survive! They should be the sole property of hunters! That is certainly what the hunters seem to think...

Get off this damned "Political Correctness" and start taking care of our herds. I guess I would like to think that the "new" wolf hunting season is a start to eradicating wolves completely, but I have NO confidence in IDF&G of that happening. Wouldn't want to piss anybody off. You've seen the bumper stickers that read "Save 100 Elk Kill a Wolf". Well the new bumper stickers are going to read "Gut Shoot A Wolf".

Get rid of these sport-killing vicious killers.
Save Elk

In the mountains and forests of Idaho, families are gathering tonight, under the nearly-full moon, in joyous celebrations with their half-grown children, truly in touch with the land around them. After decade upon decade of persecution by poison, trap, dog and gun, they enjoyed, for a while, a modicum of solitude and peace.

Tomorrow, the war begins again. Tomorrow, we show, as a species, that we have yet to learn tolerance or acceptance. Tomorrow, wolves will die.

We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes - something known only to her and to the mountain. I was young then, and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters' paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.
"Thinking like a Mountain"
Aldo Leopold

Coming Soon!

2008-04-23T22:14:00.000-07:00

Well, my husband Mike has been on me for quite a while now to have me add something to the blog. So here goes.

On a long drive home form Oregon a couple of weeks ago, I started thinking about a couple of evolutionary issues. I'd heard some explanations for them, but I wasn't convinced that they were good ones. I had a lot of time to think and develop my own theories, so I could research them when I got home. I haven't finished my work on these theories, but as a favor to Mike I'll post a bit about them now, and more later when I finish my research.

So these were the questions that struck me. Why do human males have such large penises? And what, if anything, is the evolutionary significance of female orgasm?

As to the first question- human males have penises that are much larger than one would expect for animals of our size- about 5 3/4 inches. The male gorilla, by contrast, is three times larger but is gifted with only three inches. Why are human males so well-endowed?

As to the second- if orgasm serves any useful evolutionary function in females, what could it be and why has selection for it been so weak? The majority of human females cannot reach orgasm through intercourse alone, and many women never reach orgasm through any means.

So, the theories that I came up with were these.

As far as the male penis, I theorized it evolved much as the antlers of a deer- to serve as an advertisement of "status" to other males and as an advertisement of mate quality to females. Other primates often use their penises in display; I recalled a picture of a colobus in a primate behavior textbook that I own "threatening the photographer" with an erection. I'd also read that bonobos practiced "sword fighting" while hanging from the trees by their toes.

As evolving human males lost hair and their canines shrank, they lost the primary signaling devices that other primates have. So something else needed to take their place. What better than the penis? In an upright, non-hairy hominid, it stood out quite nicely. In addition, the exposed glans of an erect penis added a bit of color to the display, which any mandrill could appreciate. A patch of pubic hair also helped draw attention to the display.

So there we go. Want to threaten the other males with how big and virile you are? Shake that at them. Want to impress the females with your health and quality? You've got a nice visual signal ready for display.

So that explained a lot-especially the still-existing fascination among both sexes for large penises (codpieces, anyone?), and the fact that so many males feel inadequate if they think theirs is not up to spec.

Female orgasm was trickier. None of the theories I could think of for its evolution could explain its spotty distribution. So perhaps it hadn't evolved at all.

No, I'm not turning creationist. But it struck me that female orgasm could be just a lucky accident of development. Both the male and the female genital organs develop from the genital tubercle. If you're male, some of that sensitive, blood and nerve-filled tissue becomes the glans penis. If you're female, it becomes the clitoris. The tissue is ideally situated to become the glans. There is strong evolutionary pressure for the development of sensitive tissue in the male, because male orgasm is necessary to reproduce. Making it pleasurable makes it even more likely that the male will ensure that his genes are propagated.

So, as a female, you still have that sensitive tissue. But, because it evolved to become the tip of the male penis, it's located some ways away from the vagina. It's not ideally situated for stimulation through intercourse. There hasn't been active selection for women who orgasm easily because, alas, it's not necessary for female fertilization.

So, female orgasm could be just a lucky accident of development; an embryological leftover.

Next installment- what the research showed. As it turns out, I wasn't the only one to come up with these ideas.

Marcsana shows his true colors

2007-09-04T19:02:00.001-07:00

Even after being informed of how unethical and indefensible quote mining is, Marcsana continues to do it.

I promised to call you out every time you quote mine, Marcsana. I cannot believe that, despite the exposition of quote mining for what it is, you continue to do it. This is nothing short of a mind-bogglingly unethical act. If you wish to call something “disgusting,” then such actions will fit the bill quite nicely.

From his comments on my post on Answers in Genesis:

But, as David Raup (Curator of Geology, Field Museum of Natural History) stated in 1979: “... some of the classic cases of darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information ...”.( 'Conflicts between Darwin and paleontology', Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin, Vol.50 No.1, January 1979, p. 25.) The horse argument has lost some of its zip in modern day thinking.

You're quote mining, Marcsana. Blatantly so.

Here is the real quote:

Well, we are now about 120 years after Darwin and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the situation hasn’t changed much. The record of evolution is still surprisingly jerky and, ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin's time. By this I mean that some of the classic cases of Darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information — what appeared to be a nice simple progression when relatively few data were available now appears to be much more complex and much less gradualistic. So Darwin’s problem has not been alleviated in the last 120 years and we still have a record which does show change but one that can hardly be looked upon as the most reasonable consequence of natural selection. Also the major extinctions such as those of the dinosaurs and trilobites are still very puzzling.

And here are some more real quotes from the real article.

Part of our conventional wisdom about evolution is that the fossil record of past life is an important cornerstone of evolutionary theory. In some ways, this is true -- but the situation is much more complicated. I will explore here a few of the complex interrelationships between fossils and darwinian theory. . . Darwin's theory of natural selection has always been closely linked to evidence form fossils, and probably most people assume that fossils provide a very important part of the general argument that is made in favor of darwinian interpretations of the history of life. Unfortunately, this is not strictly true. We must distinguish between the fact of evolution -- defined as change in organisms over time -- and the explanation of this change. Darwin's contribution, through his theory of natural selection, was to suggest how the evolutionary change took place. The evidence we find in the geologic record is not nearly as compatible with Darwinian natural selection as we would like it to be.
Page 22

Now let me take a step back from the problem and very generally discuss natural selection and what we know about it. I think it is safe to say that we know for sure that natural selection, as a process, does work. There is a mountain of experimental and observational evidence, much of it predating genetics, which shows that natural selection as a biological process works.
Page 25

So what was this article really about?

It was about whether natural selection alone can account for all the changes we see in the fossil record. Raup argued (as have many other evolutionists, Stephen J Gould being perhaps the most prominent) that it cannot. He hypothesizes several ways in which such changes can be explained. He spends some time on a hypothesis he is well-known for (he later wrote a book on it entitled Extinction- Bad Genes or Bad Luck?)- that evolutionary change is often driven by causes such as meteor impacts that natural selection does not influence.

He is clear that he does not think he has all of the answers.

The ideas I have discussed here are rather new and have not been completely tested. No matter how they come out, however, they are having a ventilating effect on thinking in evolution and the conventional dogma is being challenged. If the ideas turn out to be valid, it will mean that Darwin was correct in what he said but that he was explaining only a part of the total evolutionary picture. The part he missed was the simple element of chance!
Page 29

And what does Dr. Raup think of creationists? He has written several essays pointing out the follies of creationism, among them "The Geological and Paleontological Arguments of Creationism" in Scientists Confront Creationism (one of my old favorites, recently re-released as Scientists Confront Intelligent Design and Creationism) One quote sums up his feelings quite well-

As I will show here, the rocks and fossils say YES to evolution!
Page 147

A sticky situation for Marcsana

2007-09-04T18:17:00.000-07:00

Marcsana’s latest response in A creationism vs. evolution discussion,. Part 2 is extremely lengthy and wordy. I feel no need to address most of it here, as it’s just beating a dead horse- most of it is rehashing of the same arguments that have already been presented over and over again- truly “no new information!”- irrelevant side excursions, and failure to address most of the points I’ve already made. I’ll sum up Marcsana’s points in my next post.

However, the last section is so egregious as to demand addressing. It is apparent, when looking over this discussion, that most of Marcsana’s material consists of canned quotes and paraphrases from AIG. When he attempts to deal with something outside of the limited realm of AIG’s predigested responses, it is often obvious that he really does not know what he is talking about. This quote shows a profound lack of understanding of the subject at hand, an ignorance that is truly so appalling as to cast extreme doubts on any of Marcsana’s opinions on anything having to deal with matters biological.

Once again, Marcsana's original is plain text, my responses are in bold.

Let’s look at this quote line-by-line.

Not so fast. Your iron-sulfur surface does not capture and store the energy.

We have already shown that iron sulfide membranes generated in conditions simulating those of the early Earth can hold a tension of 500 millivolts," says Russell. "(That's) quite enough to drive a primitive metabolist
Metal cells may have held the chemicals of life's origin captive

Nor can the conversion mechanism be so simply stated. First, look at my post on your thermal vents. Then remember BOTH posts on Thermodynamics.

None of those posts have anything to do with this system.

The iron-sulfur surface more or less deals with acetate. This is for all intents and purposes an adhesive.

I must ask, Marcsana- have you ever taken a college-level class in any of the life sciences or in organic chemistry? You are somehow confusing acetate (a salt or ester of acetic acid, a vital compound in many organic reactions) with something like polyvinyl acetate, which is an adhesive. This is not a mistake that anyone with any training or education whatsoever in basic biology would make. If you don’t understand something as fundamental as the bare-bones basics of biology, how can you possibly make educated statements on any matters biological? Please don’t try to explain this away as a simple typo or a meaningless slip-up. This is somewhat Zen-like, but if you don’t realize how grave an error you made, you don’t have the knowledge necessary to realize how grave an error you made.

Let’s take a simple lesson in biochemistry and look at acetates and why they are important.

In order for life to exist, metabolism (chemical processes that occur inside cells) must exist. These processes convert energy into energy forms usable by cells (catabolism) or into components of the cells such as proteins (anabolism.)

These conversions occur through what are called “metabolic pathways,” through which the chemicals are transformed by enzymes. These pathways may be linear, such as photosynthesis (converting sunlight, carbon dioxide and water into glucose and oxygen) or cyclical, such as the Krebs cycle.

Many of these metabolic pathways show extreme conservation across phyla. For example, the Krebs cycle (often known as the citric acid cycle) is found in all organisms that utilize oxygen for cellular respiration. Cellular respiration has nothing to do with breathing; it’s how a cell obtains and uses fuel and disposes of the resultant wastes.

Glycolysis is the process through which cells break down glucose into pyruvate, in the process also releasing ATP, the currency of cellular energy. . In the presence of oxygen, the pyruvate is then converted, via pyruvate decarboxylation, into acetyl CoA, which is used in several cellular processes, but primarily in the Krebs cycle, where it provides carbon that is oxidized to form energy. The Krebs cycle is a vital part of the metabolic pathway that transforms nutrients (protein, fat and carbohydrates) into energy, carbon dioxide and water.

So what does this all have to do with acetates? Well, as you might guess from its name, acetyl CoA has something to do with acetates. An acetyl group is formed from acetate. So acetate is a vital compound in the chemistry of life, with the pyruvate decarboxylation reaction just one example of its use. And, quite obviously, it has nothing to do with “adhesives!”

So what does this all have to do with thermal vents?

One of the foremost authorities on the possibility of life first forming in bubbles at thermal vents is Dr. Michael J Russell of NASA and the University of Glasgow. All of the papers which I cite can be found here .

Russell postulates that the precursor to acetyl CoA pathway formed when carbon dioxide and hydrogen reacted with metal sulfides (such as iron sulphate) at hydrothermal vents.

Geologists have suggested that life might have emerged at hydrothermal vents, chemists have shown that metal sulphides such as FeS and NiS can catalyse biochemical reactions in the absence of proteins, and biologists have suggested that the acetyl-coenzyme-A (CoA) pathway of CO2 fixation might be very ancient. New findings from the enzymes at the heart of the acetyl-CoA pathway, carbon monoxide dehydrogenase (CODH) and acetyl-CoA synthase (ACS), indicate that metals and metal sulphides go the biochemical work of CO2 fixation. Here we propose that biochemistry got started when the two volatiles that were thermodynamically furthest from equilibrium on the early Earth – namely, marine CO2 from volcanoes and hydrothermal H2 – met at a hydrothermal vent rich in metal sulphides. In this ‘hydro-
thermal reactor’ hypothesis, a primitive, inorganically catalysed analogue of the exergonic acetyl-CoApathway, using H2 as the initial electron donor and CO2 as the initial acceptor, was instrumental in the synthesis of organic precursors to fuel primordial biochemical reactions. We suggest that primordial biochemistry was housed in an acetate-producing hydrothermal reactor that retained reduced carbon compounds produced within its naturally forming inorganic confines.

“The rocky roots of the acetyl-CoA pathway”

This theory helps explain not only the origin of various metabolic pathwhays that use acetates, but of enzymatic metal clusters that are very similar to those still used by many organisms today.

The slow trickle of hydrogen and carbon dioxide through such chambers and across the iron sulfide catalyst promotes formation of acetate, according to Russell and Martin. Acetate is a key intermediate in virtually all biosynthetic pathways, and in modern cells, enters these reactions tethered to sulfur. In modern bacteria, the two enzymes that make acetate depend on a catalytic core of iron, nickel, and sulfur, arranged almost exactly as they are in the free mineral itself. “In other words,” Russell and Martin have written, these enzymatic metal clusters “are not inventions of the biological world, rather they are mimics of minerals that are indisputably older, and which themselves have catalytic activity in the absence of protein”
Jump-Starting a Cellular World

These vents provided gradients of both pH and temperature that were more favorable to the production of organic molecules than hotter “black smoker” type vents.

The seepages are caused by convection of ocean water through hot crust composed mainly of magnesium and iron silicates (5). Exothermic hydration of hot rock would have maintained the convecting waters at ~100°C and pH ~10 (3). Gradients within such a porous seepage mound, from hydrothermal fluid to ocean, would have been from pH ~10to ~6 and from ~100°C to <20°c.>
“The Importance of Being Alkaline.”

And, to get back to the acetate…this theory also helps explain the origins of two different types of lipid membranes in prokaryotes (bacteria and other life forms without a nucleus) and eukaryotes (all other living things.)

[T]he scientists say that the prokaryotic branches of bacteria and archaea split while still contained within the iron sulfide birthplace. The ancestors of today's bacteria made one kind of lipid membrane, while the ancestors of the archaea generated lipids in a completely different way.
"Both the fatty acid lipids for bacteria and the isoprenoid lipids for archaea start from acetyl-coenzyme A, a truly universal intermediate," says Martin. "The function of the fatty acid and isoprenoid lipids is the same, but the route to get there differs. As a modern example, think of wings in insects and birds; those wings arose completely independently."
Metal cells may have held the chemicals of life's origin captive

Furthermore, the half-lives of adenine, uracil, guanine or cytosine won’t allow for a simple capture.

What in the world are you talking about? Where and how did the nucleobases come into this? Are you somehow thinking that the iron-sulfur system was postulated to “capture” bases? Again, do you understand what you’ve been reading? What you have written is meaningless gibberish.

You haven’t provided anywhere near a sufficient enough response to satisfactorily explain requirements three and four

As I have previously explained rather thoroughly, these “requirements three and four” are obstructionist creationist fabrications, not science. I will deal with them even more thoroughly in my next post.

In short, you need a “machine” already in place that can convert geothermal energy. This, of course, would take time to evolve. But it can’t evolve if the raw geothermal energy is bombarding whatever is in those vents.

Once again, you totally fail to understand the theory- both of the Second Law of Thermodynamics and of thermal vents. Please read what I have written above, plus the various quotes from Dr. Michael Russell, and if you care to address them, please address the exact specifics of the theory that I am discussing and that he has researched.

Think of the skin cancer analogy.

Yes- let’s think about that skin cancer analogy. Thinking about it- questioning its logic, whether it makes sense, whether it is used approipriately or is logically flawed, is exactly the right thing to do!

Hmmm…. “If a person stands out in the sun too long, he or she won’t get more complex. He or she will get skin cancer. Why? Because we can’t harness raw solar power.”

This analogy is utterly meaningless on several points-
- We cannot generalize from humans to the universe. Our abilities to handle raw solar power have nothing to do with the rest of the universe’s ability to do so. A seedling, for example, easily transforms that solar energy into complexity. All over the world, plants provide proof of local increases in complexity.
- It’s wrong, even when applied to humans. We may not be photosynthetic, but we can and do harness raw solar energy! Sunlight –specifically ultraviolet rays- is needed to produce vitamin D in the skin. Sunlight stimulates melanocytes to produce melanin and increase tanning.
- Like it or not, cancer can be an increase in complexity. Thus, cancer cause by sunlight can be viewed as an overall increase in complexity.

So I thought about your analogy. And I found it wanting, illogical, and irrelevant.

DNA and RNA are almost unimaginably complex and this proposed model can’t explain the rise of information. It is far too simplistic.

This argument is called “”the argument from incredulity” or “the god of the gaps.” Just because you cannot explain something doesn’t mean it cannot be explained. Throughout history, various gods were claimed to be the cause of all sorts of things that people could not explain, such as plagues, volcanic eruptions, and mental illnesses. As our scientific knowledge has grown, we have replaced such outmoded beliefs with scientific ones.

Responding to Marcsana on post 1

2007-09-02T23:13:00.001-07:00

The discussion is getting a bit long in the comments to post 1 of our discussion on evolution, so I'm posting the comment and my response here. Marcsana's original is plain text, my responses are in bold.

Before I write about what the thermal vents theory presented, I would like to point out that this theory is far from agreed upon within the evolutionary community. In fact, origins is still a hot topic among evolutionists and there are many different theories out there competing for the prize, so to speak. Furthermore, this particular variant of the thermal vent theory is only one of several. If this theory was so solid, then everyone would agree on it. They do not.

This comment shows ignorance of what the scientific method is all about. Creationists often pounce on scientists for disagreeing about a theory, when such disagreement is at the heart of true science. Origin-of-life theory is a hot topic right now in science; as mentioned, there are several competing theories.

This is not a drawback of science. It is how science operates. It evolves- it gets better and more accurate as more information is discovered and incorporated into theories. Theories that don’t work get thrown out. Lack of agreement on a theory in no way invalidates it- only scientific evidence against it can do so.

And next, regarding Yockey. Isn't there another possibility? Can there be a chance that I'm not either dishonest or misinformed? What could I possibly be referring to? Oh, right. The fact that he is one of several scientists who hold to the idea of an old Earth AND a Designer. A creationist is someone who holds to a literal 6-day creation. We do differentiate. You also have an amazing ability to twist what I say or disfigure and misrepresent the creationist position. To that, I say that you should read what I write more carefully or be more honest. You have done this several times and I will deal with each one as I write the posts on various topics. Did I say Yockey was a "non-biased source?" NO! There is no such thing when it comes to origins which I treated in great detail. Maybe you didn't read it thoroughly. Origins deals with the unobservable, unrepeatable past. As such, one must have a preexisting bias toward a particular theory. Evolutionists prefer long ages and Christians hold the idea of a Creator. The question is interpreting the evidence we have which is what our discussion is about. Before you accuse me of dishonesty or misinformation, you better make sure that you have correctly understood what I wrote. I will call it out every time. Dr. Yockey is no friend to creation science and yet he still recognized the validity of the probability argument. That is why I chose the quote. He is not alone. I will treat probability again in another post.

The point still stands. Yockey is a biased observer; his word cannot be taken as impartial. As to the differentiation you attempt to make between various types of non-scientific belief systems regarding the origin of life- they are summed up very well by a quote from Leonard Krishtalka, director of the Natural History Museum at the University of Kansas-“Intelligent design is creationism in a cheap tuxedo.” As to “A creationist is someone who holds to a literal 6-day creation”- really? What about old-earth creationists, day-age creationists, gap theory creationists…

Let's take a closer look at thermal vents.

I wish that we would. Unfortunately, you don’t.

First of all, the theory of thermal vents posted here is not enough in and of itself.

I never claimed that it was. It is one small part of one possible mechanism for the evolution of complex organic molecules.

The following quote is from article at http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0030396&ct=1.
"This metabolism-first model is not an alternative to life based on RNA. “We can't work without an RNA world either,” says Martin. But it does propose that geology at hydrothermal vents provided the structure in which life emerged, and suggests that understanding prebiotic organic chemistry at these vents may provide the key to understanding the emergence of life from nonlife."

I am baffled by the purpose of this quote. No one- including myself- posits that thermal vents are the only mechanism. And, as this quote clearly states, “understanding prebiotic organic chemistry at these vents may provide the key to understanding the emergence of life from nonlife.”

You asked me if I think acetates can form on an iron-sulfur substrate. Probably. But this has little to do with adenine, uracil, guanine or cytosine.

“You ask me if silicon can be smelted into glass. Probably. But that has little to do with strawberry jam, Kool-Aid, strawberry shortcake or Neopolitan ice cream.” You’re avoiding the question. No one thinks that RNA formed from nothing. There is no such theory. And thermal vent theories are very specifically not about RNA.

There are, broadly, two different realms of theories for the formation of the first complex organic molecules- RNA-first (as the paper you quote is concerned with) and metabolism-first (the theory I was discussing in my post) They are totally different (although not incompatible!) theories.

I will back up for a second.

You aren’t backing up. You are introducing a completely different topic. This is not a discussion of RNA-first theories.

Many evolutionists favor the "warm little pond" origin-of-life theory or the thermal vent theories because they postulate that the oldest known organisms are hyperthermophiles that would have required temperatures between 80 and 110 degrees Celsius.

A major problem for any of these theories is that adequate concentrations of certain complex compounds necessary for life are not accounted for. There has to be a requisite level of stability so that synthesis is at higher levels than degradation. What you proposed is an attempt to cover for these lacking components. By saying that those chambers function like cell walls is overly simplistic to say the least. While the vents you speak of may themselves be more stable (the one article mentioned they'd be stable for thousands of years...this is highly argumentative to say the least), we haven't yet touched the biggest problems with this proposed model. They have also been highly criticized because experimental research has shown that the half-lives of many vitally important compounds to be “too short to allow for the adequate accumulation of these compounds” (Levy and Miller, 1998, p. 7933)."

Once again- RNA-first and metabolism-first scenarios are totally different. Levy and Miller’s research has nothing whatsoever to do with metabolism-first theories. If anything, it actually supports such theories!

Levy and Miller go on to say that, "“unless the origin of life took place extremely rapidly (in less than 100 years), we conclude that a high temperature origin of life... cannot involve adenine, uracil, guanine or cytosine” because these compounds break down far too fast in a warm environment. In a hydrothermal environment, most of these compounds could neither form in the first place, nor exist for a significant amount of time (Levy and Miller, p. 7933)." They continue, "the rapid rates of hydrolysis of the nucleotide bases A,U,G and T at temperatures much above 0° Celsius would present a major problem in the accumulation of these presumed essential components on the early earth” (p. 7933). Below is the website:
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/95/14/7933

You are showing a grave misunderstanding of the theory I am discussing. I don’t think you actually read the article you quoted from above, other than to pull an out-of-context unexplained quote from it. Once again- this theory is not about the evolution of RNA. It’s about the evolution of metabolic cycles before RNA. The article you discuss is totally irrelevant to this theory.

Can you please stick to the topic at hand and respond specifically to this article?

As a result of this, they theorized that either a two-letter code or an alternative base pair was used instead. This has the distinction of demanding an absolutely different kind of life was formed. This is not only highly speculative, but likely impossible because only A, U, G and T have the requisite properties for life. So now, life would have had to evolve completely differently than we know it today, and then re-evolve into the known code of life we see today. This change, by the way, appears to be impossible based on current knowledge of molecular biology.
And lastly, the authors found that given the minimum amount of time needed for evolution, cytosine is unstable even at temperatures as cold as 0 degrees Celsius. If Cytosine is lacking, then it is impossible to have DNA. It is also impossible to have RNA.

Again, the main thing that your argument does is strengthen the case for metabolism-first theories such as the one I discussed. You also have some misunderstandings and misrepresentations of the research. For example, the authors gave several possible theories of how nucleobases could have developed; some of which are possible at higher temperatures. The main point of this article is to present a theory that the nucleobases probably developed in frozen oceans rather than in a greenhouse atmosphere.

In addition, in the almost ten years since this paper was published, many theories have arisen that could allow development of nucleic acids in a prebiotic world- the PNA (favored by Levy and Miller) GNA and TNA , -first hypotheses and the PAH-first hypothesis . These theories can also explain the origin of self-replicating molecules at higher temperatures.

For a related source, see below:
http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/articles/36/36_4/abiogenesis.html

Interesting. I had never heard of the author, “Jerry Bergman, PhD” or of his college, “Northwest State College.” A little research showed that Bergman probably shouldn’t be using the term “PhD”- In 1992 Bergman received his Ph.D. in human biology from Columbia Pacific University, a now defunct nonaccredited distance learning school. Columbia Pacific University lost its state approval to operate in 1995 and was ordered to close permanently in October 2000 by the State of California.
In another incident, he lied to the staff at Bowling Green State University, claiming he had a PhD when he did not. When he was fired for this and other ethical improprieties, he responded with a flurry of lawsuits complaining of “religious discrimination”- all of which he lost, in four different venues.

Of course, we cannot base our evaluation of the material in this article on his personal shortcomings- facts can be judged only on their own merits. As for the article - it’s typical creationist claptrap, composed almost entirely of quote mining, with no original research whatsoever. All of the points made in this article have been refuted many times, (check the Index to Creationist Claims as a start)

In conclusion, the thermal vents theory speculated on is nowhere near as strong as presented and it is clearly seen why not everyone in the evolutionary community is ready to jump on board.

You never discussed the thermal vent theory. The entirety of your comment on it was the word “Probably.” You discussed a totally different theory.

We also have the problems of the Second Law of Thermodynamics and probability. These will be treated again in other posts.

‘If there were a basic principle of matter which somehow drove organic systems toward life, its existence should easily be demonstrable in the laboratory. One could, for instance, take a swimming bath to represent the primordial soup. Fill it with any chemicals of a non-biological nature you please. Pump any gases over it, or through it, you please, and shine any kind of radiation on it that takes your fancy. Let the experiment proceed for a year and see how many of those 2,000 enzymes [proteins produced by living cells] have appeared in the bath. I will give the answer, and so save the time and trouble and expense of actually doing the experiment. You would find nothing at all, except possibly for a tarry sludge composed of amino acids and other simple organic chemicals. How can I be so confident of this statement? Well, if it were otherwise, the experiment would long since have been done and would be well-known and famous throughout the world. The cost of it would be trivial compared to the cost of landing a man on the Moon… . In short there is not a shred of objective evidence to support the hypothesis that life began in an organic soup here on the Earth.’

Sir Fred Hoyle, British physicist and astronomer, The Intelligent Universe, Michael Joseph, London, 1983, pp. 20-21, 23.

I should add that Sir Fred Hoyle was a proponent of 'intelligent cosmic control.' This quote is very much in line with the context.

Again, this quote has absolutely nothing to do with the theory that I am discussing.

I also hope you do realize that science is not a quote contest. A quote by itself is meaningless and proves nothing. Instead, one must look at several factors- who said the quote, is that person an authority on the subject, are that person’s views being represented fairly and completely, and (perhaps most importantly) how does the scientific community as a whole regard that person’s words and work?

Hoyle’s quote fails here on several counts. He was not a biologist or chemist; he was an astronomer. His pronouncements on biochemical theories are thus no more authoritative than a chemist’s speculations on whether Pluto is a planet.

As for his authority- he was well-known for clinging to theories that had no real backing. Creationists often claim that scientists cling tenaciously to outdated and disproven theories even in the face of massive evidence against them. While this is not true of scientists as a whole, it was true of Hoyle.
In the end, mounting observational evidence convinced most cosmologists that the steady state model was incorrect and that the Big Bang was the theory that agreed best with observations, although Hoyle clung to his theory, mostly through criticizing the interpretation of astronomers' observations. In 1993, in an attempt to explain some of the evidence against the steady state theory, he presented a modified version called "quasi-steady state cosmology" (QSS), but the theory is not widely accepted.

The evidence that resulted in the Big Bang's victory over the steady state model, at least in the minds of most cosmologists, included the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation in the 1960s, the distribution of "young galaxies" and quasars throughout the Universe in the 1980s, a more consistent age estimate of the universe and most recently the observations of the COBE satellite in the 1990s, which showed that unevenness in the microwave background in the early universe which corresponds to currently observed distributions of galaxies.
While creationists delight in quoting Hoyle’s words on abiogenesis, they neglect to tell the full story behind his remarks- he was an atheist and believed that life on Earth originated from material such as bacteria, viruses and insects spread by comets and interstellar debris, perhaps intentionally by intelligent extraterrestrial beings. As for his specific arguments against abiogenesis, they have been refuted so often that they are known as “Hoyle’s fallacy.”

The answers about Answers in Genesis-part 2

2007-08-27T21:57:00.000-07:00

To the quote mines we go- part 1

Is Answers in Genesis, probably the site most highly-regarded by young-earth creationists and much used as a source by Marcsana, a reliable and reputable source that is above quote mining?

Um- no.

To start with, AiG touts the book That Their Words May Be Used Against Them – Quotes from Evolutionists Useful for Creationists, a 500-page book of nothing but hundreds of quotes, without context or information. It’s clear from the title of the book what its purpose is- and that purpose is most definitely not careful, thoughtful scholarship. Indeed, of the four quotes from scientists that I discussed in my first installment on quote mining, all four appear in this book! Undoubtedly, many of the creationist quote mines in existence are drawn totally from this compendium. No scholastically-responsible organization would promote such a book; this is even lower than a Cliffs Notes of creationism in scholarship.

This book-shilling takes place on AiG's own quote mine page. To explore all of the problems here would take a book- not only are the usual out-of context quotes offered here, there are quotes over a century old, quotes from sources that have nothing to do with evolution at all,
vicious personal attacks

Both of these statements [on atheism]^1,2 were made by an arch-enemy of creationists, scientist and science fiction writer Isaac Asimov. His irrational atheism, the reason for his opposition to creationism, showed quite plainly in these two statements that the argument over creation/evolution is not about facts. When it comes to science, Asimov claimed to be interested in reducing the lack of knowledge, but when it comes to God, Asimov preferred to remain ignorant. And let’s not forget that this is exactly what Asimov was—deliberately ignorant. He was always interested only in the facts which suit him, not in all the facts, as is plainly shown in these two quotes.

and even quotes from mass murderers .

The first link on this page, after the book sale, is “99 Quotable Quotes.” A quote mine within a quote mine! The vast majority of these quotes have absolutely nothing to do with science and are not from scientific sources, unless one considers the Satanic Bible or News of the Weird works of science. I will take a look in my next posting at some of the ones that sound even marginally scientific.

In addition. AiG also has a series of webpages, variously called “Quotable Quotes” and “Quotes to Note,” featuring the latest quotes they have mined, again, with no context or explanations. In many cases, the true origin of these quotes is impossible to track down- many are said to be from lectures, often given in another language.

Many of the quotes that AiG cites are remarkable in their lack of context. Without any explanation or background, these quotes are so innocuous- or so true- as to puzzle non-creationists as to their reasons for inclusion- are they objectionable simply because they mention evolution or the political machinations of creationists? These are a few such quotes, presented in their entirety as they are on AiG's webpages.:

From “99 Quotable Quotes.”

43 “Human beings are made up mostly of water, in roughly the same percentage as water is to the surface of the earth. Our tissues and membranes, our brains and hearts, our sweat and tears—all reflect the same recipe for life, in which efficient use is made of those ingredients available on the surface of the earth…”
“But above all we are oxygen (61 percent) and hydrogen (10 percent), fused together in the unique molecular combination known as water, which makes up 71 percent of the human body.
So when environmentalists assert that we are, after all, part of the earth, it is no mere rhetorical flourish. Our blood even contains roughly the same percentage of salt as the ocean, where the first life forms evolved. They eventually brought onto the land a self-contained store of the sea water to which we are still connected chemically and biologically. Little wonder, then, that water carries such great spiritual significance in most religions, from the water of Christian baptism to Hinduism’s sacred water of life.”

Al Gore, “Earth in the Balance”, pp. 99-100

45 “Human evolution, of course, is responsible for our very long period of childhood, during much of which we are almost completely dependent on our parents. As Ashley Montagu first pointed out decades ago, evolution encouraged the development of larger and larger human brains, but our origins in the primate family placed a limit on the ability of the birth canal to accommodate babies with ever-larger heads. Nature’s solution was to encourage an extremely long period of dependence on the nurturing parent during infancy and childhood, allowing both mind and body to continue developing in an almost gestational way long after birth.”

Al Gore, “Earth in the Balance”, p. 229

59 “As for the claim that evolution is an unproved theory, that’s nonsense, Evolution is a fact, established with the same degree of confidence as our ‘theory’ of disease, and the atomic ‘theory’ of matter. Yes, there is lively debate about the particular evolutionary mechanisms that caused particular changes, but the existence of evolutionary change is not in doubt. Our own bodies provide walking evidence.”

Jared Diamond, “Who Are the Jews?”, Natural History Vol. 102, No. 11, November 1993, p. 19

60“Actually, there is superabundant evidence for animals evolving under our eyes: British moths becoming darker since the Industrial Revolution (industrial melanization), insects evolving DDT resistance since World War II, malaria parasites evolving chloroquine resistance in the last two decades, and new strains of flu virus evolving every few years to infect us.”

Jared Diamond, “Who Are the Jews?”, Natural History Vol. 102, No. 11, November 1993. p. 19,

From Quotable Quotes:

The problem won’t go away—we face a highly organized, well financed effort to legislate creationism—religious doctrine—into public education. … individuals opposing this effort to introduce theology masquerading as science into biology classrooms desperately need the help and support of professional biologists

Wayne A. Moyer
Executive Director
National Association of Biology Teachers (U.S.A.)
in Bio Science March 1980

Taken completely out of context, as AiG did, these quotes, if anything, support the theory of evolution. Of course, in many cases, AiG has convoluted arguments elsewhere on their site that attempt to refute the premises behind some of these quotes. But, standing alone without background, explanation, or reason, these quotes in and of themselves seem like statements of reason, not the ranting of the disillusioned.

Changes and memories

2007-08-24T15:55:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, as part of my research on creationist quote mining, I visited parts of the UCSD campus I haven't seen in years. I planned a trip first to the Undergraduate Library on Revelle campus (they should have Science and Smithsonian) and then a jaunt to the Science and Engineering Library in Urey Hall. While I've paid several visits over the years to old haunts on Muir campus, it has been many years since I've been to Revelle.

I parked behind the Revelle dorms near the Undergraduate Library building, on a summer day where even the La Jolla coast was 95 degrees. Not a day for hiking. I headed up the ramp to UgLi...which was now some sort of computer lab. No books in sight. I guess the undergrads at UCSD don't need their own library any more...

Ah well, on to Urey. I knew they had remodeled the building a while back when earthquake-retrofitting it. There were new buildings behind and in front of it, all that stood out as glaring inaccuracies in my old visions (that shouldn't be there!) On my way, I passed the Revelle Commuter Lounge- a place that holds more memories for me that any other save the stairwells of Muir Campus. The endless impromptu bridge games, political punditries on the blackboard, birthday parties, first meetings... I was relieved to see it still existed- larger now, the couches looked comfier, and the walls were covered with murals.

So I got to Urey, walked in the glass doors (same whoosh, same distant elevator sounds, same smells of old paper and cement) and found that where the library once stood were now offices for the Bio department. I knew the library still existed... I had looked up the hours to make sure it was open on a Sunday. But where did it go? I poked around, wilting in the heat, and finally spied a grad student with a red Mohawk, who gestured in the distance and stated "They moved it to Geisel."

Geisel? Perhaps that was one of the new buildings? No, wait...I had seen a story in the paper a while back- that was the new name for Central Library, the architectural symbol for the whole campus. Of course, Central was also a fair walk from Revelle! So off into the heat...and into more disruptions of my mental maps! Gone were the wood-paneled buildings of the Student Center between Muir and Revelle; they were in the process of being replaced by a gigantic glass edifice from which wafted smells of curry and cinnamon buns. Mandeville was refreshingly unchanged; even the art galleries looked the same. As I descended into the Rectilinear Forest behind Mandeville, I could see that the Ugly Bird remained on his perch, but the bare stone arch was now completely covered with ivy.

Very little of the Rectilinear Forest remained. The then-new Staff Center was encroaching on one edge when I left UCSD, now a scramble of buildings had invaded from the Warren side as well. If anything, the remaining eucalyptus trees seemed scrawnier than I remembered. The Purple Volleyball Net still meandered through the forest- but now it was blue. The Talking Trees still murmured; one seemed to be giving a recitation of bird calls from a field guide.

I finally made it to Central- oops, Geisel- and into air-conditioned bliss. The card catalogs had changed; the black and green terminals of Melvyl had matured into the full-color Internet-enabled Roger- but the hunt remained the same. The atavistic joy of lifting down a musty old volume of bound journals, turning the yellowed pages until I found what I sought- that, at least has not changed in the past 20 years, no matter how the surroundings have changed in the interim.

The answers about Answers in Genesis-part 1

2007-08-23T22:21:00.000-07:00

Anyway, if you want a good angle, stop treating this as a matter of a religious organization making a brave effort against the forces of godless science. It's not. It's an exceptionally lucrative business organization profiting off the ignorance of large numbers of people making a major push to increase their influence and income.
Pharyngula

Answers in Genesis (AiG) is perhaps the best-known of the creationist organizations in the US. It maintains a huge and attractively-designed website, sells an entire library of creationist materials, and runs the "Creation Museum" in Petersburg, KY. AiG is registered with the IRS as a 501c3 tax-exempt charity and pulled in over 13 million dollars in revenue in fiscal year 2005-2006. Of that 13 million, almost six million was paid out in salaries to board members and employees.

Charity Navigator, one of the most well-respected evaluators of charities, gives AiG 2 out of 4 possible stars, a rating that equals "Needs Improvement." For 2006, AiG performed worse than over 70% of other charities in how much it spent on programs and services, and its program expense growth was greater than its primary revenue growth, resulting in a net negative working capital ratio. AIG's rating has dropped steadily for the last 3 years, even as it has taken in more and more money.

Ministry Watch, which reviews only Christian ministries, although it names AiG one of its favorite ministries on the strngth of its evangelical fervor, rates AiG 405th of 430 organizations in financial efficiency.

So where is the money coming from, and where is it going? As a 501c3, AIG files Form 990 with the IRS every year. I looked at the data from 2002-2006.

Several interesting points can be made. AiG's chief staff are making an extremely comfortable living from their "ministry." Here are the highest-paid staffers and board members for 2006:

Ken Ham-President/CEO $124,615
Dale Mason- Vice President $114,301
John Pence-Director of planned giving/legal counsel- $96, 577
Mike Zovath-Vice President $88,269
James Hatton- Controller $88,269
Mark Looy-VP of Ministry Relations- $88,269
Kathy Ellis- Director of Administration- $82,038
Carl Kerby-Board Member $80,580
Patrick Marsh- Director $75,288
Dan Zordel- Director of Product Development $67,916
Mike Riddle- Speaker $67,769
Paul Varnum-Director of Video Productions $67,570
Tom Miller- Director- Events Outreach $66,269
Rod Martin- Director of Internet Services $64,848

In contrast, of the 22 religious charities in the same expense bracket as AiG that were rated as four-star charities by Charity Navigator and had Form 990s on file, none had the number of highly-paid board members and employees that AiG does. While AiG has 28 employees or board members with salaries of over $50,000 a year, only one organization, World Harvest Mission, had as many people with salaries over $50,000- but they were all employees; all of its board members served at no cost. Across all of the 22 organizations, the average number of board members paid over $50.000 was 2 and the average number of employees paid over $50,000 was 4. Ten of the organizations had no employees who received compensation over $50,000 and six had no board members who received any compensation at all. In contrast, AiG had 9 board members and 19 employees who received salaries of $50,000 or more in 2006.

In the following table, "Year" is the year of the Form 990 on file, "BM" is the salary of the highest-paid board member, "Employee" is the salary of the highest-paid employee, "Emp. 50K" is the number of employees paid over $50,000 yearly, and "BM 50K" is the number of board members paid over $50,000 yearly.

Examination of Form 990s reveal some other interesting patterns as well. For example, in 2003, former CEO Bill Wise bought a 2002 Toyota Camry from AiG. Although the car was valued at $15,089, Wise payed only $7.00- yes, seven dollars- for it. That same year, Wise received a computer worth $1105 for zero dollars. It is interesting that 2003 was Wise's last year on the board...

In future installments, I will look at some even more unsavory practices of AiG, such as their numerous ventures into quote mining and their legal woes.

The quote mine collapses

2007-08-19T16:35:00.000-07:00

In our discussion of evolution, Marcsana has made generous use of quotations, mostly unreferenced. However, in discussion of the second post in the series, he presented a list of quotes titled "Scientific Authorities speak on the 2nd Law [of Thermodynamics]." When called to task on the veracity of these quotes, his response was simply "Ignore the quotes at the end then if you want to."

No, I will not ignore them. They are prime examples of creationist quote mining, and they absolutely mandate a response. The use of such quotes is not fair debate; it is unethical and indefensibly shoddy scholarship.

Quote mining is defined as

...the use of a (usually short) passage, taken from the work of an authority in some field, which superficially appears to support one's position, but [from which] significant context is omitted and contrary evidence is conveniently ignored.
- The Quote Mine Project

Quote mining is so common in creationist propaganda as to be ubiquitous. There are dozens of sites that contain little content other than such disjointed, out-of-context quotes.

Obviously, such quote mining is not ethical, reputable or tolerable scholarship. Why, then, do creationists do it?

There are three possible reasons that I see:

Deliberate misrepresentation

It is clear that the original users of these quotes deliberately and knowingly used them inappropriately. There can be no other conclusion when the quote is taken out of context, and all material contrary to the creationist's point is deleted.

Ignorance

Some creationists truly may be unaware that some of the material that they read is deceptive or untrue. They may believe that those who write creationist materials would never be deliberately deceptive or misleading. They may be so unaware of the scientific method or of the process of logical thought and debate that they believe that lists of quotes can, by themselves, somehow prove something.

Laziness

Undoubtedly, much of the creationist quote mining is due to simple mental sloth. Fact-checking quotes and making sure that they actually are a true representation of an author's viewpoint can be hard work. Documenting the five quotes I discuss below took a couple of hours of Internet research and trips to two university libraries, plus time to actually read the original source materials. However, even a cursory search for the originals would have turned up enough information to document that the quotes were most likely not being used in an appropriate, context-sensitive way. For example, anyone who had even a vague understanding of the work of Ilya Prigogine would know enough to realize the usage of the quote discussed below was not accurate, and a very short search would have documented that the quote was taken from a paper on how evolution under the Second Law of Thermodynamics is possible. This would be enough to cast doubt on the usage of such a quote.

The following is a discussion of each of the quotes Marcsana used. The "References on creationist websites" is how many hits I got on Google for the complete quotation. In many cases, other websites exist that use different versions of the quotation. In the "Actual Quote" section, text missing from Marcsana's quotes appears in blue. "Selective quotation" refers to whether only those portions favorable to a creationist viewpoint were quoted, thus distorting the quote.

Marcsana's quote: There is thus no justification for the view, often glibly repeated, that the Second Law of Thermodynamics is only statistically true, in the sense that microscopic violations repeatedly occur, but never violations of any serious magnitude. On the contrary, no evidence has ever been presented that the Second Law breaks down under any circumstances.
Purported to be from: A.B. Pippard, Elements of Chemical Thermodynamics for Advanced Students of Physics (1966), p. 100.
References on creationist websites: 3, example Institute for Creation Research
Actually from: The source is correct.
Actual quote: Although very few hypothetical experiments employing fluctuations have been analyzed in such detail, it appears most probable that they all fail to violate the second law on account of the necessary entropy generation by the observer who controls the process. There is thus no justification for the view, often glibly repeated, that the Second Law of Thermodynamics is only statistically true, in the sense that microscopic violations repeatedly occur, but never violations of any serious magnitude. On the contrary, no evidence has ever been presented that the Second Law breaks down under any circumstances, and even the entropy law appears to have an almost universal validity, except in such futile experiments as we have discussed above, the removal and reapplication of constraints.
Selective quotation: Yes. This quote is discussing an entirely different concept than the common, unspecific definition of "entropy," and, as it applies only to closed systems, is even more irrelevant to discussions of evolution.
Out-0f date: Yes. This is a quote from a textbook that is 50 years old- first published in 1957. Explanation: As is fairly obvious, this quote is from a physics textbook. The entire textbook is searchable online. The chapter it is in, titled "The Thermodynamic Inequalities," is specifically about the effects of entropy in closed systems, not open ones. In addition, this discussion is strictly about the strict physics definition of entropy as the unavailability of energy to do work. Nothing in this quote (or in this book) has any relevance to the probability of evolution. In fact, the word "evolution" appears nowhere in this book.

Marcsana's quote:No matter how carefully we examine the energetics of living systems we find no evidence of defeat of thermodynamic principles.
Purported to be from: Harold Blum, Time’s Arrow and Evolution (1962), p. 119.
References on creationist websites: 8. Example: Scientific Evidence for Creation
Actually from: The source is correct.
Actual quote: No matter how carefully we examine the energetics of living systems we find no evidence of defeat of thermodynamic principles, , but we do encounter a degree of complexity not witnessed in the nonliving world. As compared to the in vitro photochemical and autoxidative reactions with which the chemist is more familiar, the complexity of autotrophic processes seems obvious, as is also the complexity of the step reactions in biological oxidations compared to the direct combustion of the same substances. To be sure, it is altogether probable that as investigation continues a relatively simple theme will be found connecting all the more or less isolated facts regarding energy metabolism in living systems, and indeed we have already evidence of that theme. But it seems certain that, simple or not in a general sense, quite complex molecules are involved. To be convinced of this one need only recall the role of enzymes in both the expenditure and accumulation of free energy. Most of the steps in biological oxidation require these substances, and their presence is also obligatory for CO2 reduction, whether by photosynthesis or chemosynthesis. The enzymes themselves are highly complex molecules, the specificity of their action being apparently associated with this complexity. But such molecules, and the reproduction of their complex patterns, is a subject to be taken up in the next chapter.
Selective quotation: Yes. This chapter was discussing some implications of the First Law of Thermodynamics (matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed) and how they related to energy production and storage in living systems. The chapter following this discusses how complex molecules are formed.
Out-0f date: Yes. This book was first published in 1951 and is now 56 years old. Explanation: This book, while now significantly outdated, was perhaps the first to attempt to explain how evolution was possible under the Second Law (the "Time's Arrow" of the title.) It went into quite a bit of detail on how complex molecules could form, for example. Here are some of the author's discussions on the Second Law.:

(page 204) The second law of thermodynamics says that left to itself any isolated system will tend toward an increase in its entropy or randomness. Yet we see living sytems developing and maintaining what appears to be high complexity and organization, out of what seem relatively random surroundings. Does this mean that they do not obey the second law of thermodynamics, which we take for granted applies to all nonliving things? It has been pointed out repeatedly in the foregoing chapter that such a question only arises if we fail to grasp what is implied in the term "isolated system" when used in a thermodynamic sense, that is, a system which is isolated from exchange of energy with its surroundings. [He then goes on to give the example of sugar crystals forming in a cooling saturated solution, where the orderliness of the crystals is set off by the increase in entropy as heat is lost from the reaction.]

(pages 5 and 6) Within our short span of life we are continually aware of the irrevocable passage of time- aware that the same events never exactly repeat themselves whether we wish or no. Viewed in perspective, evolution is characterized by the same one-wayness in time, occasional statements as to its reversibility notwithstanding. It would be useful to us, as evolutionists, if there were some measure of this one-wayness of events. Science offers only one widely general principle which seems applicable; the second law of thermodynamics. One way of stating this law is to say that all real processes tend to go toward a condition of greater probability. Sir Arthur Eddington showed insight into the bearing of this law upon our problem when he described it as "time's arrow." This implies that the second law of thermodynamics points the direction of all real events in time, although giving no indication of the speed with which they happen. It should be tempting, then, to explore the relationship between time's arrow and organic evolution. Few, if any, physical scientists would hesitate to apply the second law of thermodynamics to the evolution of the nonliving world; yet even here its applicability may be worth examining. For the second law is in a sense an empirical and pragmatic law which owes its acceptance to the fact that it has worked whenever it has been put to test. The second law can be tested by setting up a self-inclusive system, deducing the changes that should occur, and accurately measuring these changes to see if they agree with prediction. In a sense, we may be accused of rigging the data to obtain agreement, but the fact that we have never failed to obtain it encourages our belief that we deal with a universal principle. Before any claim of a failure of the second law of thermodynamics with regard to any aspect of the nonliving world could be taken seriously, there would have to be absolute assurance that the system involved had been properly set up for examination. There have been numerous successful applications of the second law of thermodynamics to different aspects of living systems; these encourage the belief that this principle also applies there in a more general sense. Nevertheless, there are from time to time assertions that living organisms manage in some way to violate this principle. In such instances it does not appear that the system has been set up in such a way that it would be possible to reach the conclusion implied, but such statements are likely, because of their dramatic character, to have unwarranted influence on general thought.

In short, then, Blum explains yet again what has been detailed many, many times- evolution does not violate the Second Law.

Marcsana's quote: Another way of stating the second law then is: ‘The universe is constantly getting more disorderly!’ Viewed that way, we can see the second law all about us. We have to work hard to straighten a room, but left to itself it becomes a mess again very quickly and very easily. Even if we never enter it, it becomes dusty and musty. How difficult to maintain houses, and machinery, and our bodies in perfect working order: how easy to let them deteriorate. In fact, all we have to do is nothing, and everything deteriorates, collapses, breaks down, wears out, all by itself -- and that is what the second law is all about.
Purported to be from: Smithsonian Institute Journal, June 1970, p. 6
References on creationist websites: 7. Example: ChristianAnswers
Actually from: Isaac Asimov, "In the Game of Energy and Thermodynamics, You Can't Break Even" Smithsonian, August, 1970
Actual quote: Another way of stating the second law then is: ‘The universe is constantly getting more disorderly!’
Viewed that way, we can see the second law all about us. We have to work hard to straighten a room, but left to itself it becomes a mess again very quickly and very easily. Even if we never enter it, it becomes dusty and musty. How difficult to maintain houses, and machinery, and our bodies in perfect working order: how easy to let them deteriorate.
In fact, all we have to do is nothing, and everything deteriorates, collapses, breaks down, wears out, all by itself -- and that is what the second law is all about.
You can argue, of course, that the phenomenon of life may be an exception. Life on earth has steadily grown more complex, more versatile, more elaborate, more orderly, over the billions of years of the planet's existence. From no life at all, living molecules were developed, then living cells, then living conglomerates of cells, then worms, vertebrates, mammals, finally man. And in man is a three-pound brain which, as far as we know, is the most complex and orderly arrangement of matter in the Universe. How could the human brain develop out of the primeval slime? How could that vast increase in order (and therefore that vast decrease in entropy) have taken place? The answer is it could not have taken place without a tremendous source of energy constantly bathing the Earth, for it is on that energy that life subsists. Remove the Sun and the human brain would not have developed-or the primeval slime, either. And in the billions of years that it took for the human brain to develop, the increase in entropy that took place in the Sun was far greater- far, far greater- than the decrease represented by the evolution of the brain.
Authority of authors: Asimov is extremely well-known and wrote many books on science for the layman. He was a professor of biochemistry.
Selective quotation: Yes- very much so! As can be seen, all of the text following the quote is extremely relevant, but was omitted in its entirety.
Out-0f date: Yes, but still relevant - published 37 years ago, but on some fairly basic facts about thermodynamics.
Explanation: This one is pretty clear, It's an extremely egregious selective quotation. In addition, the source citer is obviously wrong, as there is no such thing as the " Smithsonian Institute Journal" and few sites even attribute the quote properly to Asimov.

Marcsana's quote: The point is that in a non-isolated [open] system there exists a possibility for formation of ordered, low-entropy structures at sufficiently low temperatures. This ordering principle is responsible for the appearance of ordered structures such as crystals as well as for the phenomena of phase transitions. Unfortunately this principle cannot explain the formation of biological structures.
Purported to be from: I. Prigogine, G. Nicolis and A. Babloyants, Physics Today 25(11):23 (1972)
References on creationist websites: 6. Example: Darwinism Refuted
Actually from: I. Prigogine, G. Nicolis and A. Babloyants, "Thermodynamics of Evolution (I)" Physics Today 25(11):23 (1972)
Actual quote:

The point is that in a non-isolated [open] system there exists a possibility for formation of ordered, low-entropy structures at sufficiently low temperatures. This ordering principle is responsible for the appearance of ordered structures such as crystals as well as for the phenomena of phase transitions.
Unfortunately this principle cannot explain the formation of biological structures.
The probability that at ordinary temperatures a macroscopic number of molecules is assembled to give rise to the highly ordered structures and to the coordinated functions characterizing living organisms is vanishingly small. The idea of spontaneous genesis of life in its present form is therefore highly improbable, even on the scale of the billions of years during which prebiotic evolution occurred.

The conclusion to be drawn from this analysis is that the apparent contradiction between biological order and the laws of physics--in particular the second law of thermodynamics--cannot be resolved as long as we try to understand living systems by the methods of the familiar equilibrium statistical mechanics and equally familiar thermodynamics.

Selective quotation: Yes; note how carefully the creationists left out the actual title of the journal article! This two-article series, as detailed below, is actually an explanation of how evolution does not violate the Second law; part of the body of work that earned Ilya Prigogine the 1977 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In addition, this quote is simply a prologue to Prigogine's explanation of how evolution is possible with non-equilibrium thermodynamics.
Out-0f date: No. Although quite old, this research is still a valid explanation of how evolution does not contradict the Second Law.
Explanation: The above quote explains how it is difficult to reconcile standard thermodynamic theory and evolution. Therefore, a different way of looking at the problem is needed. Prigogine proposed that "nonequilibrium thermodynamics describes how such systems come to terms with entropy." He described the theory of "dissipative structures" which are systems that lose (dissipate) heat while increasing order. Thus, in a non-equilibrium (open) system, such systems can be examples of increasing order, as they produce more entropy (heat dissipation) than the order that they gain, even as they become more orderly. As some examples, he gives patterns of convection in heated liquids and generation of light by lasers. There is much more to the theory than this, but it explains it in a nutshell without becoming too technical.

In specific regards to evolution, he states:

What is the thermodynamic meaning of prebiological evolution? Darwin's principle of "survival of the fittest" through natural selection can only apply once pre biological evolution has led to the formation of some primitive living beings. A new evolutionary principle, proposed recently by Manfred Eigen, would replace Darwin's idea in the context of prebiotic evolution. It amounts to optimizing a quantity measuring the faithfulness, or quality, of the macromolecules in reproducing themselves via template action. We here propose an alternative description of prebiological evolution. The main idea is the possibility that a prebiological system may evolve through a whole succession of transitions leading to a hierarchy of more and more complex and organized states. Such transitions can only arise in nonlinear systems that are maintained far from equilibrium; that is, beyond a certain critical threshold the steady-state regime becomes unstable and the system evolves to a new configuration. As a result, if the system is to be able to evolve through successive instabilities, a mechanism must be developed whereby each new transition favors further evolution by increasing the nonlinearity and the distance from equilibrium. One obvious mechanism is that each transition enables the system to increase the entropy production.

Marcsana's quote: As ice forms, energy (80 calories/gm) is liberated to the surroundings... The entropy change is negative because the thermal configuration entropy (or disorder) of water is greater than that of ice, which is a highly ordered crystal... It has often been argued by analogy to water crystallizing to ice that simple monomers may polymerize into complex molecules such as protein and DNA. The analogy is clearly inappropriate, however... The atomic bonding forces draw water molecules into an orderly crystalline array when the thermal agitation (or entropy driving force) is made sufficiently small by lowering the temperature. Organic monomers such as amino acids resist combining at all at any temperature, however, much less in some orderly arrangement.
Purported to be from: C.B. Thaxton, W.L. Bradley, and R.L. Olsen, The Mystery of Life’s Origin: Reassessing Current Theories, Philosophical Library, New York, 1984, pp. 119-120.
References on creationist websites: 1. Example: True Origins
Actually from: Source is correct
Actual quote: Presumably the same.
Authority of authors: Authors are advocates of creationism/intelligent design. From the review mentioned below-"The authors are listed on the cover as PhDs in chemistry, materials science, or geochemistry. Not one is listed in American Men and Women of Science, 14th edition."
Selective quotation: Unknown.
Out-0f date: Yes; book was published 23 years ago.
Explanation: This is the one book I was unable to find; however, I found plenty of information about it. This quote is not from a scientific text. The quoted book was written by creationists.It received scathing reviews from scientists due to its extensive quote mining rather than presentation of any original work. As Dr. Sidney Fox, a professor at the Institute for Molecular and Cellular Evolution at the University of Miami, wrote in the journal The Quarterly Review of Biology:

Many of the negative criticisms consist of citing one "origin-of-lifer" vs. another; such literature is of course abundant in scientific journals in a frontier field. Although the presentation of such objections is thorough, a number of published rebuttals of statements conforming to the authors' thesis are not cited. For many readers the frequency of such omissions will raise thoughts about the ethics of such asymmetric scholarship.

So, in closing, in just these five quotes we have seen a wealth of selective quotation and misrepresentation. The prevalence of such shoddy scholarship in creationist works truly casts a very poor light on their efforts.

No birdbrains here

2007-08-16T15:26:00.000-07:00

I ran across this fascinating article today- BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Cleverest crows opt for two tools.

It discusses the New Caledonian crow, a bird whose toolmaking and tool-using skills put even the great apes to shame. These clever birds recognize the need for a tool, then manufacture it in order to get the specific job done. They also realize which tools are best for which job. In the research described in the BBC article, the birds were presented with a short stick, a long stick in a cage, and a piece of meat in a Plexiglas box which could not be reached with the short stick. On the first trial, four out of six birds tested immediately picked up the short stick, used it to fish out the long stick, and then used the long stick to get the meat out of the box. There are incredible videos of the crows at work.

In other experiments, the crows bent wire into hooks that they used to retrieve small buckets of food from a pipe, and showed that they had a preference for using tools on one side or the other of their beaks.

In the wild, the birds fashion tools from the leaves of the pandanus (screw pine) tree, which have serrated edges. They carefully snip out sections of leaf- wide, narrow, or skillfully-crafted "stepped" tools that taper- and use them to extract grubs from holes. They also make hooked tools by whittling small branches- there is video of this process at the same link as above.

The videos are amazing not just for the skill of the birds, but their obvious attention to detail. In the film of the crows making hooked tools, we see them eye candidate twigs from every angle, then stop frequently while fashioning the hooks to check their progress. There is obviously much more going on here than simple instinct.

These crows are, of course, the object of much scientific study. One of the most intriguing theories being examined is the the crows have a toolmaking culture, where young crows have an inborn propensity for tool use which is developed by watching older crows. Older crows develop better tools and then pass the skill on to younger crows. Researchers believe that the "stepped" pandanus-leaf tools came about in this fashion.

Why are these crows so smart? Research is focusing on that now. It may be that the same evolutionary method is at work here as with keas- extreme generalization. It may also be that these crows are just good tool-users and not so smart in other areas. The researchers are hoping, as they put it, "to test between the adaptive specialisation and general intelligence accounts of the evolution of complex cognition." Studying crows may help us learn how we evolved intelligence as well.

News Flash! Common Garden Hose Shows The Earth is Really, Really Old!

2007-08-08T09:46:00.000-07:00

Interviewer (yeah, really me, talking to myself) So what's all this then?

Cris: Well, I had this epiphany while watering my goats....

Interviewer: Um, does it involve any burning bushes or signs from Heaven?

Cris: No, nothing of that sort. You see, I turned on the hose, and it has a leak, you see. A little leak. I've tried to fix it, but it sprung another leak. It's had this leak for ages.

The hose in question

Interviewer: Okaaay...and this has what to do with geology?

Cris: Well, I live in Southern California. The ground is really, really hard here. Harder than lots of sedimentary rocks. So hard you need a backhoe to dig your garden. I could spend all day with a shovel and never get anywhere, certainly not to China.

Interviewer: That's a bit geological, then. Is there more?

Cris: Of course, we haven't even gotten to the best part! You see, the water comes out of the leak pretty slowly, and the hose is only on for 5-10 minutes at a time. But look at the canyon it's carved! I predict that, in 4.7 million years, if I let the hose trickle all the time, I could have the Grand Canyon in my backyard. But I think my husband would complain about the water bill.

Jamul Canyon

Wow, look at that steep bank!

The real Grand Canyon

Interviewer: That really does look a bit like the Grand Canyon in miniature. Why not just bring in a big tanker truck full of water and let it all loose here? Then you might at least have enough of a canyon to go whitewater rafting in.

Cris: I don't think that would work too well. I think if you dump out all the water at once, it won't carve a nice canyon. It will spread out over the ground and drain away. It might form some small channels, but not the Grand Canyon. Here, let's try it. OK, I have a large volume of water here, scientifically equal to the amount necessary to fill one empty Tidy Cat container. So here comes the deluge! Thunder and lightning please!

Experimental apparatus

The flood begins!
Aftermath of the flood

A closeup

Interviewer: Hmm, that doesn't look like the Grand Canyon at all, does it?

Cris: Not at all. It does look a bit like the area surrounding Mt. St. Helens, though.

Mt. St. Helens

Interviewer: That it does.

Cris: Well, I am just glad that a leaky old garden hose could give such an eloquent lesson in geology.

A creationism vs. evolution discussion, Part 10

2007-08-07T22:25:00.000-07:00

And now for the last of Marcsana's original comments:

Question 20:
What is the main argument given by scientists for why creationism should not be given 'equal time' in our science classes?
Possible answers:

Scientists do not believe in God
Most scientists accept creationism
Scientists think that they have all the answers
Science is not a democratic process

The correct answer is Science is not a democratic process.
We should decide which scientific theory is superior and should be used in education by its power to explain successfully, not on how popular it is. Creationism is not a science, it is a religious belief system. As such, it may have its place in a humanities class, alongside other religious belief systems, but not in a science class.

Marcsana’s response:

20. Science, if anything, has displayed massive evidence and proof for creationism. Mount St. Helens destroyed many evolutionary myths about many things ranging from the formation of canyons to the making of fossil fuels. Science is not a democracy. Rather than revamp the theories to make room for the new information, evolutionary scientists cling to evolution without letting anything else in...no matter the strength of the evidence.

My response:
The first statement, “Science, if anything, has displayed massive evidence and proof for creationism” is simply absurd. As has been shown throughout this discussion, creationists have no scientific basis whatsoever for their claims, which use twisted and flawed interpretations of science, not science itself. The distance between science and creationism is made even greater by the fact that less than 1% of scientists working in the fields of earth or life science believe in creationism.
A humorous illustration this is Project Steve. In answer to an Answers in Genesis webpage that currently lists 193 scientists who oppose evolution, the National Center for Science Education, in honor evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould, started Project Steve, a list of scientists who support evolution…all named Steve (or some cognate of Steve, such as Stefan or Stephanie.) As of this writing, 810 scientists have signed on to Project Steve. And, unlike the AiG list, which includes dentists, science teachers and linguistics specialists, some with only bachelor’s degrees, the Project Steve list is composed only of scientists with a Ph.D. in biology, geology, paleontology, or a related scientific field. According to the NCSE, census figures show that approximately 1.6% of males and approximately 0.4% of females -- so approximately 1% of U.S. residents have names that would fit the Steve criterion, so by extrapolation at least 81,000 scientists support evolution. In contrast, AiG's list contains only 4 Steves...

As for the argument that “Rather than revamp the theories to make room for the new information, evolutionary scientists cling to evolution without letting anything else in...no matter the strength of the evidence”- it is a classic of double-speak. In many other places, the AiG writers criticize scientists for changing their theories when new information invalidated old theories! As we have discussed earlier, while creationists cannot afford to have their belief system threatened, science is not afraid of change. Scientists do not support evolution due to orthodoxy; they support it because it’s the best explanation for how things came to be.

And now onto Mt. St, Helens…

A view of Mt. St. Helens from Hidden Gardens Nursery in Camas, WA

For those unfamiliar with the creationist viewpoint, they believe the following about the 1980 eruption:

Claim: The eruption showed how coal or fossil beds with trees protruding from them could form very rapidly, because trees were found floating roots-down, with layers of debris on top of them. Geologists had previously believed that trees found in coal beds were buried slowly as the beds formed.
Rebuttal: This claim surprised me because, for the first time, I actually found a publication by a creationist in a scientific journal (albeit an obscure one) that advanced this argument.
However, this argument has been criticized on several fronts. Such trees are called “polystrate fossils” by creationists (it is not a geologic term) as they cross multiple fossil strata. There are many very reasonable explanations for their formation, and geologists have never claimed that quick burial and subsequent fossilization cannot occur. “All known upright fossils were buried in days, a year or so, or else periodically across perhaps a few decades. They occur all over the world, because swamps, river deltas and volcanoes also occur all over the world.” In addition, it is very clear from the fossil record if trees were buried as they grew or ripped up and deposited elsewhere. Trees buried as they grew have their rootlets intact, ripped-up trees do not. A detailed explanation of how polystrate trees occur can be found here. An incredibly detailed analysis and refutation of AiG’s articles on coal can be found here.
One also must ask- industrial geologists have as their greatest stake finding coal or oil-bearing strata for their customers and estimating their yields. They have no reason to support conventional geology that states that the Earth is billions of years old if it doesn’t improve their ability to locate such strata. So why then, when writing about finding coal and gas deposits in the Pacific Northwest, do they use the conventional timetable and explanations of scientific geology? If the creationist theory truly gives better insight into when where and how coal and gas are produced, why hasn’t it become the standard?

Claim: Heat and shock such as occurred at Mt. St Helens can turn trees to coal in a very short time.
Rebuttal: There is more to the formation of coal than this. Coal is found in sedimentary rock- in fact, it is classed as a sedimentary rock; the layers formed at Mt. St, Helens are igneous. The Pacific Northwest, while having a great number of volcanoes, has very little coal.

Coal deposits in the US

Claim: Sunken tree bark formed peat beds that were before thought to take thousands of years to form at one inch of peat per thousand years.
Rebuttal: It is actually quite common for thick layers of peat to form very quickly; up to a foot every six years. However, the material at the bottom of Spirit Lake is not peat, and does not resemble peats that typically form coal.

Claim: Volcanoes erupt due to water pressure. Most of what comes out of a volcano is water vapor, showing that many volcanoes spewing at once could produce a great flood.
Rebuttal: Water vapor is vapor, not liquid water. It doesn’t take a tremendous amount of water vapor to put a system under great pressure; certainly not enough produce a huge flood. In addition, the number of volcanoes throughout the world (many of which show no signs of having erupted) would not be enough to produce such a great amount of water. Again, common sense alone can refute this argument.

Claim: The rapid reappearance of life at Mt. St. Helens after the eruption demonstrates that animals from the Ark could easily repopulate the Earth.
Rebuttal: Plant and animal populations have not fully recovered, even nearly 30 years later even though they are repopulating an area of just over 200 square miles surrounded by good habitat, not billions of acres of barren earth as the flood story would have it.

[Botanist John] Bishop said it could be at least 200 years for a forest to take root in the harsh environment of the pumice plain… The [invasive, willow-eating] beetle is far from the only hurdle vegetation must overcome. At 4,000 feet above sea level, plants and animals must overcome winter snow and 80 inches of annual precipitation. In normal terrain, even dead plants offer the spark of life to the next generation by leaving behind basic elements such as nitrogen and phosphorous.
"Here, there is virtually no soil," Bishop said. "When lupine dies, nutrients in the lupine don't have a chance to be taken up by anything else. Nitrogen washes out of the dead matter in rain during the winter."

Without a healthy plant community in place, animals cannot thrive. While some animals, such ar rodents and amphibians, have recolonized quite successfully, others have not.

Only the initial stages of succession have occurred among birds in the Mount St. Helens blast area… forests have not developed yet in the blast area… streams [in the blast area] had not developed conditions suitable for fish, and decades will likely pass before these streams can support fish.

Claim: Just as hunting drove elk into Mt. St Helens, human pressure could have influenced the post-Flood spread of animals.
Rebuttal: This argument strains credulity. Replacement stock of all native animals was located right next to the blast zone. It’s a much quicker trip from Cougar, Chehalis, Cinebar or Castle Rock to Mt. St. Helens than from Turkey to Trinidad, Taiwan or Tennessee! There are a lot fewer oceans in the way, too :>)

Claim: The deposition of layers of ash after the eruption shows that layers of shale in the Grand Canyon could have formed in the same way.
Rebuttal: Layers of ash will form igneous rock. The method of formation of igneous rocks and of sedimentary rocks like shale and sandstone are very different. In addition, the layers of ash found at Mt. St. Helens form what one would expect of vast quantities of material released at once- the heaviest components are on the bottom, middle-weight in the middle, and lightest on top. This is opposed to most geologic strata, where the layers are not sorted by size or weight; layers of very fine-grained material can be below heavy large rock layers.

Claim: The release of water at Mt. St. Helens carved 150-foot deep canyons through hard rock in less than a day. This demonstrates that canyons like the Grand Canyon could have been created in a very short time.
Claim: The rapid formation of badlands, rivers, and other geographic features at Mt. St. Helens showed that they could have formed that way in the rest of the world as well.
Rebuttal (to both above claims)There is a huge difference between water cutting through soft igneous rocks and through hard shale or limestone. Badlands and scablands have long been known to be created by sudden catastrophic events (such as the channeled scablands of Eastern Washington formed when the Columbia River burst.) There is a huge difference between the topography of the Channeled Scablands or the braided, sediment-choked channels of the Toutle River and the gentle meander of the Grand Canyon. The Grand Canyon is formed from sedimentary rocks, not igneous.
A local geologist provides further refutation for comparions to the Grand Canyon :

First, there are no comparisons to Step Canyon (What YECers like to call the “Little Grand Canyon”) and the (real) Grand Canyon. Step Canyon goes through fields of unconsolidated pyroclastic flow deposits that is subject to easy erosion from the wet Pacific Northwest climate and there is a 2000 foot elevation drop within 1 mile, further adding to the erosion. The claim that there are fossilized trees at Mount St Helens is also nonsense. The trees in Spirit Lake has not fossilized because there had been no exchange of silica and since Spirit Lake has no silica, it is very unlikely that any of the trees in the lake will fossilized anytime soon. Mount St Helens had been active for 50,000 years and there are buried trees around the mountain from past eruptions and mudflows(about 17 explosive eruptions in the last 4,000 years), but none of these trees have fossilized either. They have however, served as a useful tool date previous eruptions of the mountain. Finally, I would hold off on filing a mining claim at Spirit Lake for coal. The bottom of the lake is 33 degrees F, which is far to cold for the microbe activity needed to form peat, let alone coal.

Let's compare!
(all pictures courtesy of Google Maps)

The Grand Canyon

Grand Canyon again

Mt. St. Helens crater, Step Canyon to the north
Land between the crater and Spirit Lake

They don't look all that similar, do they...

Claim: The eruption produced layers of sedimentary rock that already contain fossils.
Rebuttal: The rock produced by the eruption is, of course, not sedimentary. Furthermore, studies have shown that the deposits, due to high acid content, are unlikely to produce fossils.
Trees buried by ash from previous eruptions over 4000 years ago also have not yet fossilized. Spirit Lake does not contain the silica necessary for fossilization.

Claim: Rocks formed in 1980 by the explosion have radiocarbon dates of millions of years old.
Rebuttal: The rocks involved were dated using the potassium-argon method. This method is rarely used by scientific geologists any more, and is almost always used in combination with other, more accurate tests such as uranium-lead concordia-discordia dating or rubidium strontium dating. None of these other methods were used as independent verification in the creationist tests. The creationists who chose this method most likely did so deliberately, knowing that K-Ar dating would likely give false results, as it is not an accurate method for dating young rocks. In addition, they did not perform 40Ar/39Ar dating to eliminate test errors from nonradiogenic argon.

The creationists admit that they used deception when submitting the samples.

These were submitted for potassium-argon analysis to Geochron Laboratories of Cambridge, MA, a high quality, professional radioisotope dating laboratory. The only information provided to the laboratory was that the samples came from dacite and that "low argon" should be expected. The laboratory was not told that the specimen came from the lava dome at Mount St. Helens and was only 10 years old.

This was done even though the Geochron labs website clearly stated "We cannot analyze samples expected to be younger than 2 M.Y."

A snapshot of the Geochron website from 1998 (read the text in the grey box!)

K-Ar dating cannot be used accurately on very young rocks because they may still contain air, which is 1% argon. Some young-Earth proponents recently reported that rocks were dated by the potassium-argon method to be a several million years old when they are really only a few years old. But the potassium-argon method, with its long half-life, was never intended to date rocks only 25 years old. These people have only succeeded in correctly showing that one can fool a single radiometric dating method when one uses it improperly. The false radiometric ages of several million years are due to parentless argon, as described here, and first reported in the literature some fifty years ago. Note that it would be extremely unlikely for another dating method to agree on these bogus ages. Getting agreement between more than one dating method is a recommended practice.

In addition, the submitted samples contained xenoliths- inclusions of older rocks. These will, of course, affect the supposed age of the rocks.

So there we have a shining example of creation "science"- intentional, willing deception for the sake of propaganda.

A creationism vs. evolution discussion,. Part 9

2007-08-05T13:25:00.000-07:00

Now back to Marcsana’s comments on my quiz.

Question 17:
Creationists claim that fossils are the remains of the living organisms that perished in Noah's Flood. The Karoo Formation in Africa contains the remains of over 800 billion vertebrate animals. If this were a true representation of how many vertebrates were killed in the flood, how many vertebrate animals would each acre of land on Earth have held at the time of the flood?

Possible answers:
2100
134
12
2
The correct answer is 2100.
Obviously, this would be a very crowded Earth!

Marcsana’s comment:

17. You may want to recheck yourself on the Karoo fossil graveyard. There is no problem here at all. IF the 800 billion number is accurate (which is an educated guess at best), there is still not a problem.

My comments:
First of all, just a FunTrivia editorial comment- I don’t allow numerical questions in Sci-Tech any more (this quiz was written in 2001) as numbers are so subject to quibbling.

Secondly, note that Marcsana provides absolutely no evidence to show that this is “not a problem.” As usual, his probable source turns out to be Answers in Genesis- “The Karoo vertebrate non-problem- 800 billion fossils or not.”

The article is primarily an example of what I mentioned above- quibbling over numbers. As usual, it lacks any scientific merit.

This is an in-depth explanation of the Karoo problem:

Too Many Animals

Whitcomb and Morris cite with approval a paleontologist who estimates that the Karroo Formation of southern Africa is believed to contain 800 billion fossil vertebrates with an average size of the fox.38 There are 126 billion acres on the surface of the earth. Only 30 percent of this area is land, giving a land area of 38 billion acres. If 800 billion animals were spread over the 38 billion available acres, there would be 21 animals with an average size of a fox, per acre, from this deposit alone. This does not include all the vertebrate fossil deposits throughout the rest of the world. Assuming that the Karroo beds are only 1% of the fossil vertebrates in the world (the Karroo beds occupy much less than 1% of the sedimentary column) means that 2100 animals per acre occupied the preflood world. Since an acre is 4840 square yards, each animal would have only 2 square yards, or 18 square feet, of territory. That is an area only 4.2 wide by 4.2 feet long. This can be put in a setting that most Americans can understand. The average house lot is about a quarter acre. Can you imagine every house in your neighborhood surrounded by 525 hungry animals the size of a fox? I, for one, would not venture out of doors. Obviously this is far too many animals. [I don't believe Morris' numbers but if they are right, then this is the consequence .]

In the article that Marcsana cites, the creationists claim that there is no problem because there would have been plenty of food for all those hungry reptiles:

Those anti-creationists who proclaim that such
population densities are impossible are in for a rude shock.
Simple studies of actual reptile population densities show
that the requisite densities of reptiles not only are possible
but do in fact exist even on todayís earth.11 It should be
stressed that these are locally-supported populations and
not local congregations of animals. And such population
densities are nowhere near the levels needed to tax the
requisite vegetation required to support such a highly-
populated food chain, much less the sunlight necessary
to support the ecosystem.12

Unfortunately, cites 11 and 12 in this paper are to another creationist paper authored by one of the authors of this paper, not an independent cite to verifiable information. Without any independent verification, these claims are far too ludicrous to be taken at face value.

So let’s make a brief review of what is known about the Karoo animals’ sizes and how that compares with reptile densities today.

A table of the main reptiles found in the Karoo formation lists the following genera- I have added comparisons to the sizes of modern-day animals:

Aulacephalodon- cow
Cistecephalus- mole
Cynognathus- wolf
Daptocephalus- otter
Diademodon- small cow
Dicynodon- wolf
Diictodon- fox
Dinocephalian- rhinoceros
Endothiodon- wolf
Eodicynodon- wolf
Kannemeyeria- cow
Lystrosaurus- wolf
Pareiasaurus- cow
Pristerognathus- wolf
Procolophon- lizard
Robertia- rabbit
Tapinocephalus- rhinoceros
Thrinaxodon- fox
Tropidostoma- wolf
Whaitsia- wolf

So, most of the species found in the Karoo were actually quite a bit larger than a fox. Of course, if 99% of the animals were the lizard or rabbit-sized ones and only 1% were the larger animals, then that could skew things a bit. So it’s important to know which fossils are most commonly found in the Karoo. Sources state that the fox-sized diictodon and wolf-sizd dicynodon are the commonest fossils.

So an estimate of at least fox-size for the average animal size appears accurate. The average red fox weighs around 6-15 pounds; let’s take an average of 10 pounds for simplicity’s sake. So, 2100 fox-size animals per acre would weigh 21,000 pounds, or 10.5 tons. That’s an elephant on every acre!

Well, what about the assertions that some areas support huge populations of reptiles? They do- but those reptiles are very small. I did some research looking for very large densities of reptiles, and found a couple of studies:

Individual and population energetics of a lizard on a Mediterranean islet

Population density in the lacertid lizard Podarcis lilfordi on the Mediterranean islet of Nitge, Menorca, Balearic Islands, was found to be 12 190 ind · ha-1 (SE, ±2135), exceeding densities reported for other island or mainland lizard populations.

This equals 30,109 lizards per acre.

10 grams would be a large weight for one of these lizards (the average is about 5-9 grams) but even with this generosity, 10 grams per lizard x 30109 lizards = 66 lbs per acre.

Population Density and Energetics of Lizards on a Tropical Island

This study looked at the weights and numbers of lizards in a fertile tropical habitat.
Population density and biomass estimates of these populations were
1318, 561, and 4200 individuals/ha and 4.2, 15.4, and 3.5 kg/ha, respectively.
Although these densities are not exceptional for other Carribbean islands,
they greatly exceed lizard densities reported for mainland communities.

That’s 19-83 pounds of lizard per acre for this study. We are a long way from an elephant!

So the creationists have a long way to go to explain the density of the Karoo fossils. There are other problems with their theories that we have not even dealt with here, such as why such a gigantic accumulation of fossil remains contains only reptiles (and a few amphibians,) all of which are now extinct, if it supposedly represents a nearly-instantaneous burying of all living animals in the area? Why are there no fossils of lions, impalas, Cape buffalo, kudu, or any other animals that now live in the Karoo?

Information, please- Part 3

2007-08-05T10:33:00.000-07:00

In this installment, let’s actually look at the genetic basis for showing that new information in organisms has appeared many, many times.

First of all, let’s discuss some principles of population genetics that relate to the definitions of information we discussed last post.

Evolution does not act upon individuals, it acts upon populations. As a population evolves, new alleles (types of a single gene) will appear due to mutation and other events. Some of these alleles will increase fitness, some will decrease it, and some will have no effect at all. As natural selection acts upon the population over time, the frequency of these alleles will change. And that, in a nutshell, is evolution.

Mutations, gene duplications and other events that change the genome can be seen as adding Shannon information. The added information may or may not “make sense,” but it increases the randomness of the genome while decreasing compressibility- the definition of Shannon information. Then, as natural selection acts upon the variation produced by such events, randomness and compressibility is decreased- an increase in complexity information. But this is a dynamic process; as complexity increases in one area of the genome, mutation may cause randomness to increase in another. There is plenty of information here, and it is ever-changing.

A common misconception is that the information content (either in terms of Shannon information or complexity) of a genome is directly related to how “simple” or “advanced” we perceive that organism to be. There is no such relation. Some very interesting data on animal genome size measured in picograms shows this easily.

The organism with the largest genome isn’t us humans. It isn’t even a primate or a mammal. It’s an amoeba, Chaos chaos, with a whopping 1400 pg genome (the average mammal has a wimpy 3.47 pgs)! Among vertebrates, the award goes to the marbled lungfish (talk about primitive animals!) with 132.83 pg. Among mammals, the winner is the red viscacha rat with 8.40 pg. How about the primates? The winner is the tarsier, a bushbaby-like critter with a genome of 5.26 pg.

So how do we stack up with the apes?

Human- 3.50 pg
Chimpanzee- 3.46 to 3.85 pg
Gorilla- 3.52 to 4.16 pg
Orangutan- 3.6 to 4. 1 pg.

So, as this shows, size isn’t everything.

It is also a common misconception that the “purpose” or “trend” in evolution is to produce increasingly-complex organisms. There is no trend in evolution towards ever-increasing complexity, nor is there a reason to be one. Evolution favors what works, not what is most complex. If what works in a population is simple, then simple will be favored, and evolution will show increasing simplicity. This explains, for example, the loss of some features in parasitic organisms. Evolution also has no “purpose” or “direction.” It isn’t headed anywhere in particular.

All right then. The information in genomes changes over time as information is added or subtracted then acted upon by natural selection. So how about some examples of how this happens?

One of the commonest scenarios for the evolution of completely novel information is gene duplication, where part or all of a gene is doubled. When this happens, the organism can often keep functioning normally, as no genetic material is lost. However, as there are now extra copies of some genetic material, that material is free to mutate, as the original copies retain the original function. This is the most common method by which totally new genes are created. These genes are definitely “new information” in any meaningful sense of the word; they often code for proteins never before observed. As we discussed last installment, as long as one accepts that writing sentences in the English language can lead to new information, one has to accept that writing new sentences in DNA leads to new information.

I decided to query the Medline database, which indexes most journals having to do with genetics, for “gene duplication”, and turned up thousands of studies. Here are just a handful of them- all published in the last four months from April 2007 onwards! In each case, I’ve given a very brief synopsis of the research, along with what the authors had to say about the role of gene duplication in evolution, if stated.

Venom and coagulation factor in Australian snakes

(also here and here)

“Proteins with new function originate through gene duplication followed by divergence.”
In several Australian elapid snakes, two similar proteins exist. One codes for a clotting factor very similar to that found in many vertebrates, the other is a venom. The venom arose from a duplication and subsequent mutation of the clotting factor.

Butterfly color
At least four separate duplications of the L-opsin gene and subsequent changes are responsible for blue colors in two families of butterflies. Each duplication has resulted in a different color.

Cichlid potassium channel genes
Thus, the evolution of kir7.1 genes in cichlids provides a typical example of gene duplication-one gene is conserved while the other becomes specialized for a novel function.
Many families of cichlid fishes have an extra copy of the inward rectifier potassium channel gene, kir7.1. This copy arose in a cichlid ancestor through duplication. It has evolved to perform different functions and ins found in different tissues than the original gene.

Fish colors
Fish have more types of pigment synthesis genes than any other vertebrate. This is due to duplications and subsequent modifications of various genes in the different pigment production systems in fish.

SKP in angiosperms
Gene duplication plays important roles in organismal evolution, because duplicate genes provide raw materials for the evolution of mechanisms controlling physiological and/or morphological novelties.
SKP-1, an enzyme that mediates protein degradation, has undergone multiple duplication events, resulting in at least 47 different genes. It is one of the most rapidly-evolving plant genes known.

Shrimp antimicrobials
Penaeid shrimps (the group including most commercially-harvested shrimp) produce several different peptides that fight microbes and funguses. Each of these peptides arose from a novel gene duplication.

Chordate evolution
Internal duplication can enhance the function of a gene or provide raw material for the emergence of a new function in a gene.
The number of duplications present in the genome increases with increasing complexity of the organism. Chordates have more duplication than worms, which have more than fungi.

Corn borer sex pheromones
Female corn borers, a species of moth, attract mates with pheromones. One genus of corn borer, Ostrinia, has an “entirely novel class” of genes producing the pheromones, derived from duplication of one gene that then fused with a retroposon.

Yeast enzymes
Gene duplication in one species of yeast led to “a 'novel' transaminase enzyme” which has a wider range of function than the original.

MHC genes in bank voles
Our findings suggest a snapshot in an evolutionary process of ongoing birth-and-death evolution.
Bank voles are in the process of evolving better parasite resistance. They have at least 26 different alleles of one of the most important genes in the parasite-fighting process, with up to 4 duplications of the gene involved. One group of genes has lost function, one group is being lost due to parasite resistance, and one group functions well.

Mosquito pesticide resistance
Gene duplication is thought to be the main potential source of material for the evolution of new gene functions.
The common house mosquito has, at least three times in the past 40 years, developed pesticide resistance through gene duplication events.

Fish eggs
Ray-finned fishes are the most successful group of vertebrates in terms of species diversity. They evolved with great speed. Originally a freshwater group, hey were able to colonize the oceans when they began to lay eggs adapted to seawater. This adaptation arose when gene duplication and modification produced a modified protein that allowed eggs to survive in seawater.

And, if that’s not enough for you, here are a few more examples from other sources that I found interesting and compelling:

Fish antifreeze
A duplicated gene for a protease (digestive enzyme) mutated into a gene that produces an antifreeze that allows Arctic cod to live in freezing waters.

Leaf-eating monkeys
As scientists piece together the genomes of more and more life forms---from fruit flies to humans---they're finding ample evidence that new genes have often been created through the duplication of existing genes. Of the more than 40,000 genes in the human genome, for example, about 15,000 appear to have been produced by gene duplication.
A duplicated an mutated RNAase gene produces a new enzyme that helps leaf-eating monkeys digest their food.

Bicoid gene in flies
The bicoid gene, which affects egg development, arose from gene duplication.

Looking at all of these examples- which are just a tiny fraction of the articles available on one tiny facet of the possible ways that information arises in evolution- the fact that evolution can and does create new information is blindingly obvious. The only way to deny it is for the creationists to come up with yet more warped definitions of "new" and "information" that will be simply verbal games that ignore what is obvious scientific fact. But those new sophistries, by the creationists' own definitions, cannot be "new," as they will create them from the same tired alphabet of 26 letters which gave rise to the ancestral deceptions.

Information, please- Part 2

2007-08-04T21:48:00.000-07:00

As mentioned last post, the newest tack that the creationists use is to claim that evolution cannot create any new information.

For evolution in the molecules-to-man sense to occur, there must be a mechanism for information that did not previously exist to arise from non-information. No one has ever observed such a phenomenon occurring.

There are two ways to look at this claim. First of all, what is meant by “new information”? Secondly, does evolution produce new information? I’ll look at the first claim this time around, and examine the evidence for new information next time..

What is “information”? This question is not as simple as it seems.

For example, consider these strings-

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

5kmfd vj=mkrp3

The car is red.

All three of these strings contain 15 characters. So which one has the most information?

In the scientific sense, information is described in one of two ways- Shannon information and complexity. Shannon information refers to how much raw information a string contains; its “meaning” is irrelevant. That raw information is equal to the length of the description necessary to recreate the entire sequence accurately- in other words, the compressibility of the string. The string “aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa” is extremely compressible- “write “a”16 times” or a(16). The string “5kmfd vj=mkrp3” is not very compressible at all- I need to write a much longer description to recreate the sequence- “write a “5”, then a “k”…” and so on. In terms of Shannon information, a book composed of entirely random letters, symbols and numbers contains more information than a copy of a real book with an equal number of characters, because the random characters are harder to recreate and less compressible. An actual experiment that reflects Shannon information is using a file compression algorithm such as WinZip to compare the compressibility of equally-long text files. One such experiment, compressing 100,000 copies of the letter “a,” 100,000 random letters, and 100,000 letters from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, found compression rates of 99.3%, 2.5% and 58.4%.

Complexity information, on the other hand, looks at how much non-random, non-compressible information a sequence has. The greater the amount of non-random, non-compressible information, the more complex the sequence is. Using these standards, the sequence of 100,000 copies of the letter “a”is highly compressible, but non-random information. The sequence of 100,000 random letters is not very compressible, but highly random. The Tempest has medium compressibility, but very low randomness and thus contains more complex information.

Can we state that addition of information to an organism’s genome cannot occur? It seems obvious that information in the sense of Shannon information is constantly added to genomes through processes such as mutations and gene duplication. The common creationist response to such processes is that they do not add “new” information. So what type of information are creationists talking about when they state that organisms “contain no new information” or that mutations can never increase information, only decrease it? Very few creationists bother to make a distinction between the two types of information. When they do, they invariably mix up the definitions up into something meaningless or (not surprisingly) create their own definition of information:

For there to be information, there must be a multiplicity of distinct possibilities any one of which might happen. When one of these possibilities does happen and the others are ruled out, information becomes actualized. Indeed, information in its most general sense can be defined as the actualization of one possibility to the exclusion of others.
William Dembski- Intelligent Design as a Theory of Information

An elegant study using a very similar concept to this along with the Shannon definition of information shows that, using such a measure, information most certainly increases, using the value that is standard for measuring information- the bits of information contained at one site. The paper is too complex for a short explanation; this ten-minute video
is a great synopsis of the study (you may want to turn off your sound first!) This video is a good prerequisite.

Creationists will complain that this is not “new” information. They do not, however, define “new” in any meaningful sense. They imply that such information is not “new” because it is a variant of genetic material that already existed in the organism (or in another organism in the case of such things as horizontal gene transfer.)

A little biology is in order here. Most people are aware that the genetic code of organisms is contained in genes, which encode instructions in DNA. Many people are not aware that genes do not specify things like “build a leg” or “color this yellow.” Instead, genes code for the production of proteins by specifying how and when they are made, and the proteins themselves are responsible for patterns of growth and development.

Just as any statement written in the English language is composed of 26 letters, 10 numerals and a handful of symbols, new information in the genome is written with the existing “letters” of amino acids in DNA. Many of the documented changes in the genomes of organisms involve creation of novel DNA sequences that did not before occur in that organism. Changing a few “letters” in the DNA code can lead to huge changes in the function of the organism as new proteins are produced. It is difficult to conceive of any reasonable definition of “new” that excludes such events. Any creationist who states that events such as these do not represent “new information” must then agree that the production of any “new” information in the English language is similarly impossible. Let us look at two similar events:

ATG GTG GCT GTA GGA ATC TGT CGC ACA GAT GAC
ATG GTG GCT GTA GGA ATC TGT CAC ACA GAT GAC

You must not eat that apple.
You must now eat that apple.

The first two “sentences” are portions (nucleotide sequences 40-50) of the 374-codon sequence that codes for alcohol dehydrogenase, the enzyme that breaks down ethyl alcohol. The “word” CGC in the first sequence at position 47 codes for the amino acid arginine, while the “word” CAC in the second codes for the amino acid histidine. This difference results in two different functional enzymes. The difference in codon 47 is the only difference between the two. This simple difference results in different rates of alcohol metabolism. People with the first variant, known as ADH Beta 1, the most common variant in Caucasians, metabolize alcohol more slowly than people with the second version, ADH Beta 2, found more commonly in people of Oriental descent. People with ADH Beta 2 are more likely to display the alcohol flush reaction when they drink. This causes hangover-like symptoms such as facial flushing, nausea, and vertigo. Such people drink less alcohol due to these unpleasantries, and are thus less likely to become alcoholics. The one-“letter” change in this case has produced significant new information.

In the second example, changing one letter in a sentence leads to two sentences with completely different meanings. Again, the one-letter change has produced significant new information.

If rearranging the letters of DNA to create new messages with different meanings than the old messages does not produce new information, then neither does rearranging the letters used in English.

Creationists also claim that if a genome is simplified by removal of some genetic material, no new information is produced and evolution does not occur. Note that simplification can actually increase the complexity information content of an organism (decreasing randomness and compressibility) especially if the removed genetic material was duplicative “junk DNA.”

Well, that’s quite a bit of heavy info for one post. In the next posting, I will examine just one method of increasing information in organisms- gene duplication.

Information, please- Part 1

2007-08-03T21:20:00.000-07:00

Evolution and elocution

I know you want to
change the truth
oh we were made by nature's fools
- Amy Ray
(of the Indigo Girls, of course, for those not in the know- it’s been too long without an IG quote!)

It seems that, for creationists, while species may not evolve, definitions certainly do! One of the tactics that creationists often take in their discussions is to redefine common terms to be a meaning that is only used by creationists and signifies something far different than what a dictionary or other reference would offer.

I believe that is due to the differing worldviews of those involved in the discussion. Those approaching it from a scientific angle tend to value using clarity and logic in discussions, and to require reputable references to back up assertions- they do not take things on faith. If reputable scientific sources change part of a theory, the theory changes to accept that new information- as I will discuss later, this is a vital part of the scientific method, and occurs frequently.

I believe that young-earth creationists, on the other hand, cannot allow even tiny chinks in their theories, nor can they admit that any parts of their theories are wrong. Because their belief is that their source is completely accurate, to admit any inaccuracy is to invalidate their belief system, and since that belief system is the most important part of many creationists’ lives, (and also, perhaps, because they are utterly convinced that they have found absolute truth) such a possibility is unfathomable. In contrast, someone using scientific thought processes will not have his or her entire existence and belief system threatened by admitting a theory is wrong.

So what does the creationist do when confronted with undeniable problems with a theory? As mentioned above, they often just change definitions into something only creationists believe. Then, they can claim that their theory has not been invalidated, because it still fits the definition that they have created.

Here is a definition of evolution, from the American Heritage Dictionary:

Evolution (Biology)
Change in the genetic composition of a population during successive generations, as a result of natural selection acting on the genetic variation among individuals, and resulting in the development of new species.

A century or so ago, the creationist’s position was “All species were created in exactly the same form that they now have and do not change or evolve. There is no such thing as evolution.” That was simply not a tenable position, as change could be seen in living things over time. So, the definition changed, and now creationists accepted natural selection as a force for change in organisms.

Creationists are firm believers in natural selection. This is not evolution in the sense that most people use the word—the rise of new, complex organisms, the sort of change which in principle could be capable of changing one-celled creatures into pelicans, pomegranates and people.

So then the creationist position changed to “Microevolution can happen, macroevolution cannot. They are two entirely different things.” Well, they never defined how they were different, so that explanation didn’t work. So they dropped that line.

The main scientific objection to the GTE [general theory of evolution] is not that changes occur through time, and neither is it about the size of the change (so I would discourage use of the terms micro- and macro-evolution)

So then they had to come up with some other definition…

Evolution is the proposed process by which living things gain entirely new characteristics that were never before present in their genetic make-up, not even in a latent or ‘hidden’ form.

So now, evolution requires getting something from nothing. This is tied into the main topic I want to discuss in this series- the creationist idea that evolution is not evolution unless “new information” is created. Notice that this definition is not anything that even vaguely resembles the dictionary definition, or any definition from any reputable scientific source. It is a definition chosen by creationists specifically to set up yet another hurdle that they think that science cannot explain, and to confuse and mislead people who may not have the scientific background to realize just how wrong the creationist definition is.

Here are two more non-creationist definitions of evolution from reputable sources. Note that neither even vaguely resembles the creationist conception.

Biological evolution ... is change in the properties of populations of organisms that transcend the lifetime of a single individual. The ontogeny of an individual is not considered evolution; individual organisms do not evolve. The changes in populations that are considered evolutionary are those that are inheritable via the genetic material from one generation to the next. Biological evolution may be slight or substantial; it embraces everything from slight changes in the proportion of different alleles within a population (such as those determining blood types) to the successive alterations that led from the earliest protoorganism to snails, bees, giraffes, and dandelions."

- Douglas J. Futuyma in Evolutionary Biology

Biological evolution, simply put, is descent with modification. This definition encompasses small-scale evolution (changes in gene frequency in a population from one generation to the next) and large-scale evolution (the descent of different species from a common ancestor over many generations). Evolution helps us to understand the history of life.
Understanding Evolution for Teachers

I’ll discuss the information “problem” in my next posting- stay tuned!

A creationism vs. evolution discussion,. Part 8 wrap-up

2007-07-31T23:53:00.000-07:00

I could have gone on and on…AiG also uses several other species to bolster its claims that all animals were once vegetarian and can become so again- piranhas, spiders, vampire bats, Darwin’s finches…

I collected vast amounts of research on all of these topics (I recommend “A Test Of Pollen Feeding By A Linyphiid Spider” for a truly gripping read) and was about to launch into yet another dissertation.

But enough is enough. All of these articles share the same similarities- AiG badly misconstruing the original research, citing only what they thought would support their views and conveniently ignoring the rest. I can only repeat myself so many times.

So, in conclusion and review:

The adaptations of carnivores cannot be explained away by stating that carnivores somehow miraculously transformed after the Fall as entirely new genetic material was inserted into them. This is an unscientific fairy tale, not anything that can be supported by any amount of research. Nor can today's carnivores easily adapt to a vegetarian diet. The papers that AiG cites (when they are not busy basing their speculations on 50-year-old first-person anecdotes about vegetarian lionesses) invariably come to conclusions far different than those that AiG draws. And those conclusions firmly support evolution as the mechanism for the production of carnivorous adaptations. As carnivores evolved, so did their prey, in an endless dance where one has shaped the other over countless millennia.

As Robinson Jeffers wrote: in “The Bloody Sire”:

What but the wolf's tooth whittled so fine
The fleet limbs of the antelope?
What but fear winged the birds, and hunger
Jewelled with such eyes the great goshawk's head?

A creationism vs. evolution discussion,. Part 8D

2007-07-30T23:21:00.000-07:00

“"They embrace each day with curiosity, mischief, and the desire to eat."

Keas and Answers in Genesis

I will admit, off the bat, to a bias here. I have an inordinate fondness for keas, the clever New Zealand parrots who are both natural comics and inveterate experimenters. I happen to own a copy of the book that AiG references in their article on keas- Kea-Bird of Paradox by Judy Diamond and Alan Bond. On their webpage, though, AiG conveniently left out the subtitle of this fine book:
The Evolution and Behavior of a New Zealand Parrot

So what does AiG say about these mischievous birds? They do get several points right- keas are indeed very intelligent, playful, destructive parrots who have an odd predilection for mutton that once led to their destruction as sheep-killers. However, when it comes to the account of how and why the kea became such an omnivorous, manipulative, clever animal, the explanations of the kea researchers who spent three years in the field observing and documenting kea behavior and uncounted more hours recording behaviors of captive keas and studying kea remains in museums definitely part ways with those of the AiG article author Paula Weston, a journalist with no biological training listed in her bio.

The AiG article claims that the feeding behavior of keas is not related to their evolutionary history.

The diet changed simply because of the kea’s general adaptability, intelligence, curiosity and mischievousness.
The latter is the most likely theory, and has nothing to do with ‘evolution’.

AiG misses the boat entirely. Kea feeding behavior- as well as their intelligence, playfulness and exploratory nature- has everything to do with evolution.

The kea and its close New Zealand relative, the kaka, form a parrot group which diverged from the other groups of parrots long ago. They are not closely related to any existing parrots and diverged from the ancestral parrot stock 15-20 million years ago, shortly after the first parrots evolved 20-23 million years ago.
Page references in the following are from my copy of Kea- Bird of Paradox. Unlike most other parrots, both the kea and the kaka are omnivorous. The kea evolved in a world very different from the one it inhabits today. New Zealand, as an isolated island, had a unique fauna, with many species unrelated to any others anywhere in the world. Among its now-extinct fauna was the moa, a gigantic flightless bird, and the Haast’s eagle, the largest eagle that ever existed, which fed on the moas. Moa carrion provided a source of food for keas.(12) Although AiG claims “Naturalists believe keas were originally herbivores, like other parrots, and that we can look at their current feeding patterns to help understand the past.” Diamond and Best state “At the time of the moas, keas probably fed much as they do today.” (14) Keas did not depend on any one particular foodstuff- although New Zealand beeches were a main food source. Keas are opportunistic feeders, who compete with many other native species for most of their food, and their lives depend on being able to find and take advantage of anything edible that becomes available. . If moa carrion wasn’t available, sheep carrion would do, and if sheep carrion was not available, live sheep would do- keas simply pecked holes in their backs and scraped out the fat underneath the skin. (32) As Diamond and Best wrote, “In a world of dietary specialists, the kea survived as the ultimate generalist.” The kea is what the authors called an “open-program species, (148)” a pattern that has evolved several times, a notable American example being the coyote. Open- program species evolve in environments where there is fierce competition for available resources, where an animal never knows where its next meal is coming from. A more common response to such situations is to specialize- if you are the best adapted to exploiting one particular resource, you will survive as long as that resource is available. This is the path taken by koalas and pandas. The open program species, on the other hand, survive by being intelligent and curious enough to find and recognize any available food source in their environment and take advantage of it.

The authors are quite clear that the open-program behavior is a result of evolution. “Open-program animals evolve in response to a particular constellation of features.(149)” They also discuss how the kea has evolved another behavior- social play.

Unlike mammals, most birds do not exhibit social play. Keas are members of one of only three of the 27 orders of birds that have species that have been observed in social play.
In these orders, only a few species of birds actually show social play- “thirteen species of parrots, seven species of corvids, and several hornbills and Eurasian babblers.” Keas and some corvids (members of the crow family) are by far the avian masters at social play.

What does research show that the birds who engage in social play have in common? They live in groups, adults take care of the young for long periods of time and continue to associate with their young even after they become independent, and they breed later than other birds. Thus, the birds that do exhibit social play are not just random species; they share characteristics that allowed social play to evolve independently in each family of birds. In addition, these characteristics are the same ones that are apparent in mammals that show the most complex social play, such as wolves and primates. “Because birds and mammals share only a very remote evolutionary history, it seems likely that social play has evolved convergently in these groups, with possibly several independent origins.”

So it is not creation that shaped the kea, but evolution. As Diamond and Best conclude:

One can create a sort of evolutionary “recipe” to describe the factors that promote flexibility in animals. For the kea, the first ingredient is a lineage predisposed to sociality. Next comes the relatively low food abundance, so the animal has to be prepared to accept an enormous range of foods. Add to this the short-term limitations on food availability, so the animal must constantly shift food sources. And finally, include delayed maturation and lenience by adults toward the young, so the young have time to play. Against the dramatic backdrop of the formation of the New Zealand islands, this recipe transformed a rater ordinary forest parrot into one of the world’s most unusual birds; a species so flexible that it managed to survive even the extermination of much of its original ecosystem.

A creationism vs. evolution discussion,. Part 8C

2007-07-29T21:10:00.000-07:00

Lions and tigers and cantaloupes- oh my!

In yet further installments of their idea that carnivores can easily turn vegetarian, Answers in Genesis presents several articles and makes some broad statements to support their idea that, even today, lions and tigers can be vegetarians.

Many pet owners speak of the capacity of meat-eating animals to live on vegetarian diets…we have heard that during World War II, when meat was expensive and in short supply, zookeepers successfully kept lions and other carnivorous species alive by supplementing their diet with vegetables.

“Tigers and pigs…together?” states that, at the Sriracha Tiger Zoo in Thailand, tiger cubs have nursed on pigs, and piglets on tigresses. This much is, actually, true. The article then goes on to state that this is done because the cubs grow better on pig milk. As usual;, no scientific source is provided for this statement; their citation is just a link to a news article touting the tiger zoo’s economic success.

In reality, this cross-fostering is being done as a show for tourists- along with these popular exhibits, visitors to the park can watch a circus complete with tigers jumping through flaming hoops, feed a tiger a bottle or watch women wrestling crocodiles. And the “successful tiger breeding program” isn’t adding tigers to the wild- in fact, the Tiger Zoo has sold over 100 of its tigers to China for use in making traditional medicines.

Incidences of animals adopting young of another species are extremely common, so much so as to be a staple of “feel-good” nightly news stories such as a cat raising a squirrel or a cheetah raised with a golden retriever.

There is a great deal of scientific study of this phenomenon, known as “cross-species fostering.” It is commonly used, for example, to raise more individuals of endangered species and to study which behaviors in a species are instinctive and which are learned.

The article concludes in its footnotes, “The scenes at Sriracha Zoo demonstrate that if nutritional needs are satisfied, there is no need to hunt.” This is an utterly puzzling conclusion. Cubs do not hunt anyway, and the adult tigers are not being fed salad for dinner- they subsist on meat. “The staple of these tigers’ diet is raw chicken carcasses from a nearby poultry processing plant."

Well- that may no longer be true, since avian influenza killed 80-100 tigers at Sriracha. One notices that in dozens of photos and films of the tigers online, there are never any adult pigs…

AiG next tries to convince us that lions can be vegetarians. They offer us a story of a lion that supposedly never ate meat. This book, “Little Tyke-The Amazing True Story of the World Famous Vegetarian African Lioness ” by Georges Westbeau , was first published in 1956 but recountied a story that happened many years before, and, as one reviewer noted, “no explanations offered. Ripley's believe it or not is offered as a witness.”

A reading of the full text shows us several things. The author starts out by claiming the story is “to remind us of Biblical prophecy.” Biblical references are sprinkled throughout the story. The lioness was used extensively as a spectacle to draw tourists to the town.

In the years that followed, Little Tyke brought thousands of visitors to the town. She appeared in practically every magazine and newspaper throughout the world, as well as in news-syndicate stories and over television.

They even used her in contests-

We advertised the fact that we were willing to pay one thousand dollars in cash to any person who could come up with a formula including meat that Little Tyke would eat, but nothing worked.

They do not, of course, give any information on how such a contest was judged!

She also appeared in parades, helicopter dedications, hotel press conferences, etc,
She was even made to pull a sled though snow for the press value.

I quickly took several more pictures, for this was another historical and unbelievable "first." Later that afternoon I developed the negatives in my darkroom and then made several large prints. I then called a friend of mine who worked for the newspaper, and I was proudly and pleasantly surprised the next day when I saw the fruits of my efforts displayed on the front page of a newspaper in the
largest city in our state.The following day the wires of the Associated Press picked it up and carried it to the far corners of the earth.

They made money by selling pictures of her lying down with a lamb.

There had been so many requests for pictures of Little Tyke and the lamb lying down together, that we had thousands printed to sell at a nominal cost.

After a television appearance in which, as part of the filming, she was made to stand in the sun for most of two days while retake after retake was done of her pulling a child in a cart, she developed a respiratory problem and died.

The author firmly believed that animals were carnivorous not by physiology, but because of starvation.

There, in their shipwrecked state, without sufficient God-given food of the fields, they have learned to devour each other in their pitiful flight, just as man has repeatedly done and will do this day if circumstances bring him to a tragic plight without food.

And, of course, even if the Westbeaus really didn’t feed meat to Little Tyke, they admit that much of her diet consisted of milk and eggs- which are animal proteins. Cats cannot survive without a source of animal protein; they absolutely cannot be vegans. For example, cats require taurine, an amino acid found only in animal proteins. Without it, they go blind and develop fatal heart enlargement. The remainder of her diet was said to be cooked grain. The cooking would be essential as cats cannot digest uncooked grain. Even if one makes the rather feeble claim of "yes, but that's still a vegetarian diet and could be possible in Eden!" one still has to account for where all the milk and eggs will come from, and who will cook the grain for the wildcats!

It certainly appears that the Westbeaus were out to create a story of the gentle, Biblical lioness laying down with the lamb. In their day, they certainly received enough publicity. However, using a more than 60-year-old tale as evidence for the ability of lions to become plant-eaters is ludicrous.

So, once again, AiG has made some outlandish proofs but offered no real support for them.

A creationism vs. evolution discussion,. Part 8B

2007-07-29T17:25:00.000-07:00

Not a hard nut to crack…

Now, back to more of explanations from Answers in Genesis as to why carnivores should, in a pinch, be able to go back to eating fruits and vegetables…

Palm vultures
In their article on palm vultures, AiG claims that the palm nut vulture uses the same tool that other carnivorous vultures have- a sharp beak- to consume palm nuts rather than meat. It states that “Perhaps such observed behaviour is a legacy of a time when animals and birds gorged themselves peaceably on 'every green plant',” and implies that other carnivores can be vegetarian as well-“many pet owners speak of the capacity of meat-eating animals to live on vegetarian diets”- a claim we will be returning to later.

Unfortunately, the link that AiG provides to its source of palm vulture information, is defunct. The article, now found here, tells a bit of a different story than what AiG claims. While AiG states “But for the palm nut vulture, oil palm husk is such a favoured food, that when it is available, all meat options are rejected,” this article states “The Palm Nut Vulture eats the husk of oil palm nuts and raphia fruit husks as well as wild dates, upas and some other fruit. It also eats crabs, molluscs, etc, picked up on the sea shore, and stranded and occasionally live fish which are snatched from the water surface. Giant snails and locusts also feature occasionally. The diet of the adult will be up to about 60% fruits”.” Nowhere does it state “all meat options are rejected.”

In reality, palm nuts are not what we typically think of when we imagine “every green plant”- nutritionally, they are far different from leafy vegetables or most fruits. Palm nuts, like many other nuts, are an extremely rich source of fat and protein, made easily accessible because the oil-rich layer is on the outside of the fruit, not inside a hard shell like other nuts. Oil palm nuts are, as one would expect, even richer in oils than most other palm nuts. In addition, unlike most other fruits, palm fruits stay on the tree for long periods of time and are available when other nutritious foods are scarce. As one expert on the topic noted, “Clearly, the fruits of palms, often rich in oils or carbohydrates, have not gone unnoticed by hungry animals.”

Palm nuts are such a valuable food source that even animals who do not normally eat other plant material will feed on them. One study in Brazil (Seasonal Variation In Fruit Pulp Consumption And Fruit
Removal Of Syagrus Romanzoffiana- (Arecaceae) By Non-Flying
Terrestrial Mammals In A Semi-Deciduous Forest Fragment In
Botucatu, Sao Paulo, Brazil, found here ), for example, found that animals that were attracted to and consumed palm fruits included mountain lions and tayras (a type of weasel.) Another review, just of new reports of palm-seed eaters made since 1989, added maned wolves, badgers, coyotes, bush dogs, dung beetles, and caracaras (a falcon relative) to the list, along with hundreds of other species.

In one fascinating study, when oil palms were planted in a region of Colombia, in which they are not native, local black vultures began to feed on the fruits, and even ignored carrion left out in an attempt to lure them away from the plantations.

So, in closing, palm fruits are a rich source of nutrients, and it is far from unusual for otherwise- carnivorous animals to use them as a food source. A vulture that eats palm nuts is in no way physiologically equivalent to one that lives on lettuce.

A creationism vs. evolution discussion,. Part 8

2007-07-29T09:24:00.001-07:00

It's all in their heads...

I'll answer this question in more than one part, as this will get a bit long.

Question 14:
Why do carnivores present a problem for creationist theory?
Possible answers

They don't
Supposedly, all animals were originally designed as herbivores, so why were the carnivore modifications (like fangs and claws) created in the original animals?
Why would a just God have created killer animals?
They aren't mentioned in the Bible

The correct answer is Supposedly, all animals were originally designed as herbivores, so why were the carnivore modifications (like fangs and claws) created in the original animals?
In the supposed idyll of Eden, all animals were herbivores, implying that all were created as herbivores and were to remain so. Then, of course, Adam messed things up. But, if all the original animals were herbivores, why would they need fangs, claws, poison, webs? And why would herbivores need great speed, chemical defenses, quills or bad tastes?

Marcsana;s reply:

14. There are a few proposed models for carnivores, venom, and other such phenomena after the fall. One of them include [sic] genetic variation, that is, this was revealed in the genetic code after the fall. This poses much less of a problem for creationists than spontaneous generation and information-adding mutations is for evolutionists.

My reply:
This argument makes little sense and truly strains the bounds of credulity.

Let us look for just a moment at how many species would have had to change after the fall, according to this argument:

All living things that eat other animals, of course- that means not only carnivorous mammals, but the vast majority of bird species, almost all reptiles, all amphibians, and almost all fish (if fish are counted as “beasts of the earth,)
All parasites- and almost half of all species on Earth today are parasitic
All saprophytes- living things that survive on dead matter- all fungi, many invertebrates and some vertebrates

In other words, the vast majority of living things on earth.

Marcsana postulates that there are “a few proposed models” for such changes. As his primary information source appears to be the creationist website Answers in Genesis, (hereafter referred to as AiG) I looked up what they had to say about such models. So, rather than focus on the many, many problems with Marcsana’s theory (which would be a a treatise much too long for this blog!), I will focus specifically on those models.

The kinkajou
Kinkajous are South American members of the order Carnivora. AiG tells a story of a kinkajou researcher who needed to trap kinkajous for radiocollaring and tried many baits. Chicken didn’t work, nor did hard liquor. Finally, he hit upon using bananas- which worked. And his studies showed that the kinkajou was, after all, a fruit-eater.
AiG claims that “just because an animal has teeth usually associated with meat-eating, it doesn’t mean that it has to eat meat.” and thus implies that kinkajous are vegetarian but retain the skull structure of a meat-eating carnivore.

Let's play "Find the Kinkajou Skull!

Here are the skulls of various small members of the orders Carnivora and Primates. One of these skulls is of a kinkajou. Which one? Remember, according to the creationists we are looking for the one with long pointy teeth...

Now, let's look at three of these skulls more closely.

This skull is a marten, a member of the weasel family that is almost exclusively carnivorous. Note the length of the skull, which provides plenty of jaw attachments for strong muscles. Also note the very pointed molars, which serve as efficient meat-slicing knives. The canines are quite long, reaching down below the incisors.

This skull is a golden-headed lion tamarin, a small South American primate that feeds primarily on fruit. Note the more-rounded skull shape and the much smaller, non-pointed molars. The canines are still large, but not as big as the marten's.

This is a kinkajou skull. Note the rounded shape, smaller canines and small molars. The skull of the kinkajou definitely shows adaptations to a frugivorous way of life. The dentition of the kinkajou resembles the tamarin's more than the marten's.

Kinkajous are procyonids- members of the raccoon family. None of the procyonids are totally carnivorous; all eat at least some plant matter, and their skulls show adaptations to this.

Also, lest a totally incorrect myth be started, Roland Kays, the subject of the National Geographic article that inspired AiG , is no creationist. His scientific publications have been on topics such as how evolution shaped the social structure of kinkajou groups and how the kinkajou and primates are examples of convergent evolution.

Oh- and the answers to the skull quiz...
Row 1- American badger, black-footed cat, brown lemur
Row 2- Palawan stink badger, island gray fox, marten
Row 3- Ring-tailed lemur, kinkajou, golden lion tamarin

A creationism vs. evolution discussion,. Part 7

2007-07-28T16:12:00.000-07:00

Unintelligent design

I am going to group the next four questions together, as they all cover the same topic- imperfect design.

Question 12:
We humans have lower back pain, varicose veins, and childbirth difficulties- what do these have to do with evolution?
They are shared with chimpanzees
Nothing
They cannot have evolved because they are harmful
They are examples of inferior design
The correct answer is They are examples of inferior design.
One would expect that if humans were created by a perfect creator , in his image, as the pinnacle of his creation, that they would be examples of perfection in design. Alas, it isn't so. We, along with all other living things, have plenty of 'jury-rigged' and non-optimal designs that do the job, but lack elegance. Our aching backs and varicose veins are legacies of our four-footed ancestors. Humans are relatively recent bipods, and our structure is still very much like a four-legged animal. We lack the necessary musculature to strengthen our backs, and our veins are not well-designed for the pressures that an upright stance puts on them. Female pelvises are not optimally designed for the passage of large-headed infants, as the human species has only recently undergone a tremendous spurt in brain growth.

Marcsana’s response:
1

2. Our aching backs have nothing to do with four-legged ancestors! I would recommend researching a bit into what all is involved with walking. Bipeds and quadripeds [sic] have vastly different structures; There is no way to compare the two with any accuracy. We are created in the image of God. You do quote that correctly. But something happened in the Genesis accounts that accounts for defects. That is called sin. The curse fell on all creation which is why everything has a propensity toward death. Our DNA code was spoiled giving us our problems which have been getting progressively worse since the fall. Vericose [sic] veins are formed because the valves don't operate the way they should.

My response:
I thought we were having a discussion of science here. Do you have a non-supernatural explanation for any of this? Otherwise, it is just unanswerable speculation. If you are to take this line of defense, you might as well simply adopt the saying I have seen on bumper stickers- “God said it, I believe it, and that settles it”- it would certainly cut down on your writing load!
I am not sure what research (other than on creationist websites) you have done into the biomechanics of human locomotion.
One of the best reviews of this problem is AG Fuller’s “Emergence and optimization of upright. posture among hominiform hominoids. and the evolutionary pathophysiology of. back pain”
In this article, he postulates that the muscle stresses that lead to back pain are a result of transformation of the vertebrae. As we became upright, the transverse spinal process, to which muscles that stabilize the back attach, moved from the front of the vertebrae, where it is found in monkeys and most other primates, towards the back of the spine. While this transformation helped us carry our babies on our backs, it also led to stress on our backs. As he explains,

The human lumbar anatomy differs from the anatomy
in cercopithecoid monkeys in three major ways: 1) dorsal
repositioning of the lumbar transverse processes that oblit-
erates osseoligamentous mechanisms of spinal support; 2)
conversion of the iliocostalis lumborum muscle to a high-
leverage lateral flexor muscle; and 3) conversion of the
longissimus lumborum muscle to a high-leverage extensor
muscle. The first of these changes is shared with all the
hominiform hominoids, the second is shared with the
great apes, and the third is a feature mostly in members of
the genus Homo.
The effects of these three major types of transformation
is an increase in the degree of dynamic, muscularly driven
compressive forces on lumbar disks and a greater risk for
strains and tears in the muscles of the lumbar region be-
cause of their increased leverage. These features are evo-
lutionary innovations that suit the human body plan as
well as the evolutionary path and lifestyle of the human
lineage. They have supported an upright bipedal species
capable of carrying heavy objects and the young across
great distances, whether walking or running. In this fash-
ion they have helped our species to more or less conquer
the world. Nonetheless, these changes seem to be the prin-
cipal suspects for any relative increase in the susceptibili-
ty to back pain that humans may exhibit relative to the
other mammalian species.

You actually hit one statement right on the money- varicose veins are indeed “formed because the valves don't operate the way they should.” And why don’t they? Because these valves evolved in four-legged animals, where the trip up to the heart put less pressure on them. The purpose of our leg valves is to prevent blood flowing backwards on this trip. Because we are upright, the pressure on these valves is much greater than it was in our four-legged forebears and the valves cannot handle the increased pressure very well.

Question 13:
Which of the following animals has the most ideally-engineered eye-i.e., from an engineering standpoint, the eye that makes the most "sense" in the arrangement of its structures?
Fly
Human
Squid
Eagle
The correct answer is Squid.
The eyes of mammals, including humans, have retinas that are are inside-out. The nerves and blood vessels come out through the light-sensitive area of the retina, producing a blind spot. They then spread over the light-sensitive area of the retina, providing a barrier to light entering the eye. An ideal design would be to have these nerves and capillaries behind the retina. Human eyes aren't designed this way- but squid eyes are. Once again, why should the pinnacle of creation have an imperfect design?

Marcsana’s response:

13. This design in the eye actually protects us from damaging effects of light.

My response:
Really? Then why is the same design present in all nocturnal mammals and birds? They certainly do not need the shielding. And many squids are diurnal shallow-water or surface feeders. Why don’t they have the same protection?
In addition, even if there were some protection against excess light conferred by this design there are still significant disadvantages. Our blind spot is due to this design, as is susceptibility to blindness caused by retinal problems (not just in humans, but in other animals as well- progressive retinal atrophy, for example, is the most common cause of blindness in dogs)
As for Marcsana’s claim that “this design in the eye actually protects us from damaging effects of light,” I must presume that his argument is derived from claims made on creationist websites such as “Is Our ‘Inverted’ Retina Really ‘Bad Design’?” This page claims that the choroid (the net of blood vessels over the retina) acts as a “heat sink” dissipating away heat generated by light striking the retina, at the same time that it brings nutrients to the energy-demanding retinal cells.. It references several papers (most published over 40 years ago) on this issue- but, as is usual for creationist articles, provides no direct links to the articles cited. Actual articles on the choroid, such as this one paint a different story. While the choroid does dissipate heat, much of the heat it dissipates is from the choroid itself. The choroid is pigmented, and this pigment absorbs the light that does not reach the photoreceptors. It is excess heat, not light itself, that is damaging to the retina. In fact, the choroid’s blood flow doesn’t increase in response to light alone.
The role of the choroid in providing energy is important. However, octopus retinal cells are also energy-hungry, and their nutrition is provided quite adequately by blood vessels located behind, not over, the retina.
And here’s an interesting little tidbit on eye evolution. Modern-day vertebrates have one type of photoreceptor cell, insects have a different one. Scientists decided to look at the animal that is the modern-day descendant of the last common ancestor of vertebrates and insects, a marine annelid worm called a ragworm. And what did the scientists find? That the ragworm contains both types of photoreceptors…

Question 14
What one characteristic below do all mammals share?
Five digits per limb- either complete or vestigial
Give birth to live young
Hair at all stages of development
Well-developed sense of sight

The correct answer is Five digits per limb- either complete or vestigial.
Yes, that includes whales that have five digits per flipper, bats that have five digits per wing, horses and antelopes that have vestigial remains of five digits, etc. Five digits isn't the most effective design for many of these creatures- so why should all show the remnants that are easily explained by theorizing that they all descended from a five-toed ancestor? The answer is not "Give birth to live young" because the monotreme mammals, the platypus and echidna, lay eggs.

Marcsana’s response:

5. Evolutionists frequently hop on the poor-design bandwagon before all the facts are in. It is only supposed that these creatures have a weaker design.

My response:
So what are the facts, Marcsana? Note I didn’t state that the design is weaker- but it is suboptimal. Fish don’t have any bones in their flippers; why do whales have five? Goats end up with two usable hooves, horses with one, tapirs with three- why do they all have five digits? Even though some aren’t used? Pandas have five digits, but they need a “thumb” to strip bamboo- why do they have a “thumb” that’s really a radial sesamoid bone and not a true digit? While it makes perfect sense for all mammals to have five digits if a common ancestor did, it doesn’t make any sense at all to create them that way. It certainly doesn’t confer any design advantages.

Question 16:
Why do men and other male mammals have nipples?
Some male mammals give milk
As embryos, all mammals start out phenotypically female
Males need them to produce hormones
There is no reason, they were just created that way
The correct answer is As embryos, all mammals start out phenotypically female.
Only later in development, after the nipples have formed, does a hormonal surge form male sexual structures. This would be an odd thing for a perfect creator to explain, as male nipples are not only useless, they can be dangerous (males can get breast cancer!)

Marcsana’s response:

16. Nipples serve as a sexual stimuli. They have a purpose on men. Furthermore, cancer came after the fall not before.

My response:
Well, there’s a reason for the old saying “as useless as tits on a boar.” Are you seriously stating that nipples on a boar or an elephant or a mouse serve to generate sexual pleasure? Even in men, studies have shown that only about half of males are aroused by nipple stimulation.

If anyone would like more information on the fascinating topic of suboptimal structures, please see my quiz Evidence for Evolution- Unintelligent Design.
There, you'll find many more examples, such as my favorite...humans can't produce vitamin C because the gene needed to do so is broken (most mammals can produce their own vitamin C. ) Well...the gene is broken in the great apes as well- in exactly the same way. So now you know the answer to at least one of the questions on that quiz! :>)

A small break for a new fact

2007-07-27T22:31:00.000-07:00

As I continue this discussion with Marcsana about evolution, one of the joys of the effort lies in the fact that I am constantly finding new and wonderful facts (something, alas, that would threaten creationists rather than delight them!)

I ran across a random fact this evening in a Science Week article- a mention that "It is of interest that a cell-surface sugar modification that is lost in the human lineage due to genomic mutation is reported to reappear in human cancers."

Hmmm- interesting! And not something I had heard before. So I delved a bit more into this fascinating statement- and here is what I found.

Cells are covered with chains of complex sugars. At the end of these chains are often various compounds called sialic acids, which help, among other things to regulate water metabolism in cells.

One particular sialic acid, N-glycolylneuraminic acid, is found widely throughout the animal kingdom, including in the great apes. However, humans do not normally produce this particular sialic acid. This isn't because we have lost or never had the gene necessary to do so; instead, this gene has been deactivated by a mutation, and genetic analysis showed that this mutation is approximately 2.9 million years old- after we split from the branch of the primate tree that went on to become chimpanzees and bonobos, and about the same time that a tremendous growth spurt in hominid brain size occurred.

Several scientists have speculated that this mutation helped allow the growth of human brains and also may have allowed human populations to grow due to conferring some disease resistance.

In another fascinating implication, scientists studied the prevalence of variants of this gene in different human populations , which supported a multiple African origin for all human races.

Research has also shown that some tumors can turn the gene back on and produce N-glycolylneuraminic acid.

So there you have it. One short sentence led to a world of discoveries, all supporting evolution in varied and interesting ways. Life is so much richer when you are open to new knowledge, rather than fearing it as something that may threaten your worldview.

A creationism vs. evolution discussion,. Part 6

2007-07-25T20:07:00.000-07:00

Question 10:
The hair stands up on the back of our necks when we are afraid. What does this have to do with evolution?
Possible answers
Only humans have evolved this gesture
Nothing
Our ancestors looked bigger when they were frightened if their hair stood up
It shows our muscular structure is similar to that of apes
Correct answer: Our ancestors looked bigger when they were frightened if their hair stood up
To get an example of this physiological phenomenon, one need look no further than the family cat when it's scared by a dog, puffing up and hissing. This 'piloerection' is nearly universal among mammals- chimpanzees do it too. However, in modern-day short-haired humans, the gesture has lost its original significance. If it is not an evolved response, why should we have it at all?

Question 11:
What do goosebumps have to do with evolution?
Possible answers:
Nothing
Our ancestors were warmer when they fluffed up their hair
They prove we are related to birds
They are unique to humans
Correct answer: Our ancestors were warmer when they fluffed up their hair
Again, this is easily observable in modern-day birds and mammals. Also, again, it's easily explainable by evolution, but not by creation. As one scientist put it, 'Goosebumps were obviously 'created' to erect and 'fluff up' the hair or fur on a hairy or furry mammal ancestor, thereby improving its insulation value against the cold. Since most of us nowadays have so little body hair as to render it useless for insulation purposes, goosebumps are another vestigial reaction whose tool (fur) is no longer with us.'

Marcsana’s response (to both questions)

You say that the hair standing on our necks is evidence of our ancestors. This is preposterous. Before making such a bold claim, one must first PROVE evolution, which can't happen. This question assumes evolution to be true and is, therefore, argumentative. Before stating evolution as fact, you should show a mechanism that ADDS information to an organism. Not one has been found. You also need to show some transitional fossils in the record, and yet there are none. You could probably also make a reasonable case how life can from nothing. But there's not. There is also that huge information hurdle to jump over. Nothing in nature adds or gives information. An intelligent source must add information and since our DNA is packed with untold libraries of information, we need a source. But non-living things do not give rise to information. Just a few problems. Having hair stand up is not good evidence of millions of years of man's evolution.

My response:
Firstly- I am going to do two things here. So far, both in this conversation and in email correspondence, Marcsana has been less than attentive to answering direct questions. I’ve tried to address all of his. So I have a few such questions to start with. I’d appreciate direct answers to these questions in your own words, Marcsana. I’ll also happily answer any direct questions you ask of me in return.

Why do we have piloerection at all?
Why does the hair stand up on our necks when we are frightened or otherwise experiencing extreme emotion?
Why do we have goosebumps at all?
Why do we have goosebumps only when we are cold or experiencing extreme emotion?

Secondly- as to the information argument (which has absolutely nothing at all to do with goosebumps or piloerection) I have been preparing a post about creationist language, and I’ll discuss it there.

Transitional fossils also have exactly squat to do with our prickly neck hairs. In the interest of not taking up vast megabytes of Internet space on topics that simply aren’t relevant to this discussion (but are immensely important aside from it) , I refer anyone interested in this topic to my quiz Evidence for Evolution- Transitional Fossils.

A creationism vs. evolution discussion,. Part 5

2007-07-24T16:26:00.000-07:00

So that's how I got those stripes on my head???

OK, I need to inject a little levity into this discussion...

My Question:
Bacteria and viruses are mentioned in the Bible.

Possible answers: True or false

Correct answer: False

Marcsana’s response:

9. Actually, Scripture mentions round earth ideas, expanding universe, and dark matter.

My response:
Again, a nimble sidestep. The question was whether or not bacteria and viruses are mentioned in the Bible. They aren’t.

Creationists have only two choices when it comes to Biblical inerrancy. Either every single word in the entire Bible is irrefutably, absolutely true, or at least one statement in the Bible is allegorical, exaggerated, or otherwise untrue. If there is at least one untrue statement, then the Bible is not an infallible resource.

If every word in the Bible is true, then much of what we currently believe- inside and outside of the scientific realm- is untrue. Just a few examples of what must be true if every word in the Bible is inerrant fact:

If you place mating goats in front of streaked branches, they will produce streaked kids. (Genesis 30:37-39)
Rabbits are ruminants that chew the cud. (Leviticus 11:5-6, Deuteronomy 14:17)
Ostriches abandon their eggs and do not raise their young (Job 39:13-16)
Mustard seeds are the smallest seeds in existence (Mark 4:31)
Insects have four legs (Leviticus 11:20-23)

And I could go on, we should all be out killing witches, men should marry those they have raped and never, ever divorce them, it’s OK to set bears upon kids who tease you for baldness…

And let’s not even get into the matter of verses in the Bible that are contradictory (just how many of each kind of animal were on the Ark?)!

Now, of course, Biblical apologeticists come up with counterarguments for most of these…for example, they claim that grasshoppers were stated to have four legs because their hind legs didn’t count as legs or that the Hebrews really didn’t mean to say that rabbits were chewing the cud - but that’s all splitting hares- er, hairs. And no one’s got a really good explanation about those streaky goats…as a goat breeder and student of the genetics of goat color, I’d really like to get that one working for me!

The point still remains. These statements are in the Bible. No matter how you explain them, they are incorrect. If there is some information in the Bible that is not correct, the doctrine of inerrancy fails.

The Bible is full of wonderful allegories and stories that reflect the knowledge of a pastoral people in Mesopotamia. However, it fails utterly as a science textbook.

And I think I'll resort to my studies of the codominance of alleles at the Agouti locus in goats when I want to have some striped kids rather than tossing around some firewood.

A creationism vs. evolution discussion,. Part 4

2007-07-24T09:12:00.000-07:00

Here’s a shorter one…

The question
Male humans have one less pair of ribs than female humans.
True
False
Correct answer- False
Although the Bible states that Eve was created from Adam's rib, males have exactly as many ribs as females.

Marcsana’s response:

8. Ribs can grow back. Basic biology.

My response
The question specifically asks if males have fewer ribs than females. They don’t. No dispute.

But as for Marcsana’s claim- ribs regrowing after removal may be basic biology…if you are a salamander. Mammals, including humans, do not regrow removed ribs.
Mechanics of bone regeneration

Bone has the capability to regenerate, forming new osseous tissue at locations that are damaged or missing. Although this capability extends to regeneration of whole limbs in some animals, in humans regeneration is on a more limited scale and occurs during defect healing, e.g., after the removal of bone screws; fracture healing; distraction osteogenesis (during limb lengthening), and integration of orthopaedic implants with the host bone.

Edited to add:
I did some more research on this subject. Answers in Genesis claims that entire ribs, when removed, will regrow. However (as is, unfortunately, typical for the site) they had no checkable references or sources. So I did some research on my own.
Ribs do have some capacity for regeneration, consistent with the quote above. Free Bone Grafts states that the maximum donor size for rib grafts is 14 cm. (about 5.5 inches)- not the length of a whole rib. When entire ribs are removed, grafts or scaffolds are used to stimulate bone regrowth, such as a gel matrix
bone graft, or, esperimentally, beta-tricalcium phosphate cylinders. Without the scaffolding, rib regrowth may not occur at all. Nor is the bone that regenerates identical to the original- as an article in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery stated, "Regeneration after a proper costectomy [rib removal] is possible, but the regenerate is thin, flat, and lacking cancellous bone." So, in summary, as expected, some rib regrowth is possible, but easy regrowth of entire ribs is not.

A creationism vs. evolution discussion,. Part 3

2007-07-23T22:30:00.000-07:00

A tale of tails...

My question:
Human embryos have tails.
Possible Answers- True or false
Correct answer- True
A delicious (although not entirely accurate) witticism on this situation is that 'Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny,' or embryonic development mirrors the evolutionary process. Although the human embryo doesn't entirely follow the evolutionary path, it does in some respects. If we never had creatures in our background with tails, why would our embryos ever have them?

Marcsana’s response

7. Embryos don't have tails. You may want to do a bit more research and see how the whole of idea of vestigial organs is debunked.

My response:
There is absolutely no question that tails in humans do exist- both in all embryos and occasionally as vestigial tails in babies. Here are some links and information from scientific sources:

Fetal development: What happens during the first trimester?
“[At 9 weeks post-gestation] the embryonic tail at the bottom of your baby's spinal cord is shrinking, helping him or her look less like a tadpole and more like a developing person.”

The Fetus- Tail
“True vestigial tails… contain normal skin, connective tissue, muscle, vessels and nerves.”
“Fetal tail is a normal feature during embryonic development that should regress by the 8th week. Its persistence has been described beyond the 8th week… During the 5th-6th week, the human embryo has a tail with 10 to 12 vertebrae. Then, it starts to regress, reducing the number of vertebrae by fusion, leaving the vestigial coccyx. By this process, at 8 weeks, it disappears, although the exact moment varies. The persistent tail probably arises from the most distal non-vertebrate remnant of the embryonic tail.”

Human tails
“Bartels …described five types of rudimentary
caudal appendages in man: three of these are variations
of a “soft” tail presumably arising from the embryonic
tail, the fourth is a bony tail caused by hypertrophy of the
sacrococcygeal vertebrae and the fifth is a true animal
tail containing additional vertebrae. “

Human tails and pseudotails.
“The true, or persistent, vestigial tail of humans arises from the most distal remnant of the embryonic tail. It contains adipose and connective tissue, central bundles of striated muscle, blood vessels, and nerves and is covered by skin. Bone, cartilage, notochord, and spinal cord are lacking. The true tail arises by retention of structures found normally in fetal development.”

I should mention here an argument found on many anti-evolution and anti-abortion websites- claims such as “the end of the spine sticks out noticeably in a one-month embryo, but that's because muscles and limbs don't develop until stimulated by the spine . As the legs develop, they surround and envelop the coccyx, and it winds up inside the body”

This is a misstatement. See the source “The Fetus-Tail” above for an explanation of what really occurs- dynamic change in the structure that becomes the coccyx. The same source goes on to state that humans never have true tails- “It doesn't have any bones in it; it doesn't have any nerve cord either.” which is also proven false above.

Modern-day scientists do not claim that the coccyx is vestigial, in the sense of “now useless.” The point is, the coccyx evolved from vertebrae that were once part of a tail, now fused together into something that is called “a tailbone” for a reason.

A creationism vs. evolution discussion,. Part 2

2007-07-22T18:34:00.000-07:00

Continuing the discussion from below:

My question:
Evolution is impossible because it breaks the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which states that the entropy (disorder) of a system increases over time.
Possible answers: True or false
Correct answer: False
This misinterpretation of the Second Law is common. This law applies only to a closed system, with nothing going in or out. Environments on Earth are not such systems. In addition, nothing in the Second Law contradicts local reverses in entropy. For example, snowflakes and mineral crystals are more orderly than their components. As one scientist said, 'Everything in this world that works, works by temporarily and locally reducing entropy. ' All the Second Law says is that, for the system as a whole, entropy will increase over time. Ilya Prigogine won the Nobel prize in 1977 for his work on the Second Law. His papers include one on how the Second Law does not contradict evolution. Arch-creationist Duane Gish of the Institute for Creation Research responded 'Prigogine's theoretical ideas are buttressed with a large amount of complicated mathematics which few biochemists and molecular biologists can understand, but it all does look deliciously scientific.' This is a classic example of poor logic.

Marcsana's response:

6. The Second Law of Thermodynamics argument is a trick. The universe is a closed system. The Earth is not. What does this mean? Nothing. Evolution still can't happen. Why? Because two things are missing from this system. You need a mechanism to harness energy and you need something to convert it into a usable form. If you dump sunlight on scattered Boeing 747 parts for 2 million years, you will have wreckage. The parts can't harness or use harnessed energy. You can't take the parts of a cell and say they could use the sun's energy. You also posit a common mistake. You use snowflakes and mineral crystals as an example of something more orderly than its components. While they are complex structurally, they contain only tiny amounts of information. Therefore, this is called ordered complexity. Life is vastly different and falls under the category of specified complexity.
You can't use crystals and snowflakes as an example of how the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics doesn't violate evolution.

My response:
Note that Marcsana sidesteps the subject of this question- whether evolution contradicts the Second Law- and basically admits that it does not.

He switches the topic to a different one- very similar to the argument in Q. 5 discussed below. He seems to be stating that there are no natural systems to harness energy or to convert it into a “usable form” (whatever that means.) As discussed below, many such systems exist; the iron chloride world that allows acetates to form being just one of these.

Marcsana reiterates a rather tired creationist argument with slight rewording. They seem to be very fond of Boeing 747s, but the usual tirade is that a tornado in a junkyard (rather than sunlight) cannot produce a 747 from scattered parts. This story has been trotted out so often that there are innumerable websites devoted to it.

There are many problems with this story, as well as the sunlight variant. Here are just a few of them:

The tornado argument operates under the same fallacy I discussed in my last post- no scientist thinks that molecules evolved through entirely random processes. The evolution of some steps facilitated others. Look at our 747 this way- what if I could magnetize some of the parts so that they would be attracted only to parts they should connect to? Then, the tornado, by mixing the parts, could bring together some of the parts that “should” be together. This is similar to the processes discussed below, where iron-sulfur compounds provided a perfect substrate for acetates to form.
The originator of this argument, Fred Hoyle, claims that a yeast cell and a 747 have about the same level of complexity. Yet no scientist claims that a yeast cell arose from nothing- there were many intermediaries- just as Orville and Wright did not build a 747 in their garage!
People who set out to build a 747 have a target in mind- a 747. Producing an award-winning sculpture or a motorcar will not satisfy them. Yet evolution has no such directed goals. Thus we cannot complain that the tornado doesn’t produce a 747 when we can’t expect to look for one in the first place.
This argument also, of course, ignores any meaningful time scales.

The second argument- “crystals do not contain information, living systems do” is also deeply flawed.

First of all, the crystal example is intended to show that local reverses in entropy occur. This has nothing do with information storage. There is no doubt that a snowflake is much more ordered than water vapor.
Secondly- what is meant by “information”? After all, I am typing this on a computer, which most agree can store vast amounts of information- ultimately as ones and zeroes. DNA, our genetic blueprint, is constructed from just four bases. Every word in the English language is formed from 26 simple letters.
And again, this argument has very little to do with the reality of evolution.

A creationism vs. evolution discussion,. Part 1

2007-07-21T11:20:00.000-07:00

I am a chief editor and administrator for FunTrivia; the largest trivia site in the world. I have written many quizzes as well. Among those of which I am proudest are a series called “Evidence for Evolution” which explores and refutes various creationist arguments and claims. Naturally, these quizzes, as well as my first quiz on evolution, “Evolution and the Creationists,” have been the target of creationist criticism.

One recent writer , whose FunTrivia handle is “Marcsana,” took the time to write quite a long critique of that first quiz. I decided to explore some of that critique here. As it’s long, we’ll go question by question.

My question:
Question 5:
A popular argument by creationists is that evolution could never have occurred because it is so unlikely. As one example, they have stated,' There are n! (n-factorial: n x n-1 x n-2 x...x 1) ways of an enzyme or DNA strand of n parts forming prebiotically. Since the smallest proteins have at least 100 amino acids, the chance of forming a particular enzyme prebiotically is at most 1divided by 100!, which is small enough to be disregarded.' What is wrong with this argument?
Possible answers

Complex molecules don't form by chance alone
Larger proteins have fewer amino acids
The math is incorrect
Enzymes can only be formed in living things

The correct answer is Complex molecules don't form by chance alone.
While this argument correctly demonstrates that no given protein could have come into existence all at once by pure chance, such a demonstration is irrelevant to current origin-of-life research. As Iris Fry points out, 'origin-of-life theories rely on various organizing principles, including selection mechanisms and catalysis, that are supposed to have limited and constrained the wide scope of possible prebiotic possibilities, thus constructing the scaffolding out of which the living arch eventually emerged'

The critique from Marcsana:
5. You have the following explanatory material: [repeats Fry quote above.] Actually, such a demonstration IS relevant to current origin-of-life research. Complex molecules, proteins, or anything else can't just evolve because it is mathematically impossible. Iris Fry says that origin-of-life theories rely on various organizing principles including selection mechanisms and catalysts...but never mentions one. Why? Because no known mechanisms or catalysts exist. And natural selection can only go so far. This has been observed operating with existing information in a species. Never has it been observed changing a species into another one.

My response:
I’ll deal with the “we have never observed one species changing into another” argument in another post, as it isn’t specifically related to the main question- can complex molecules evolve? It seems Marcsana says no- it’s mathematically impossible, and no known mechanisms or catalysts exist that can facilitate what Fry claims, that such organizing principles allowed the evolution of complex molecules from simpler ones. Unfortunately, Marcsana gave no references, scientific or otherwise, to support his claim. Therefore, it’s difficult to understand what is meant by “no known mechanisms or catalysts exist.”

Let’s look at the potential for evolution of complex molecules. For a moment, let’s suppose “no known mechanisms or catalysts exist” (although they do, and we’ll discuss that later.)

The chief mistake that creationists make is thinking that, just because one event has a tiny probability, that event could never occur. The problem with this line of thinking is that, rather obviously, the probability of an event occurring rises dramatically when you have more opportunities for that event to occur. To put this in plainer English- if I buy one lottery ticket and have to guess 6 random numbers to win a prize, I am very unlikely to ever win. But I cannot therefore state that the probability of winning the lottery is so infinitesimally tiny that no one will ever win. There are millions of people attempting to win and guessing at the numbers, and thus millions of trials. And, as we know, someone usually does win the lottery.

The same is true of forming molecules. Even if the chances of forming a particular molecule are very tiny in one trial, if there are billions upon billions of trials, the chances of that molecule being formed are very great.

There is an elegant explanation of this in “Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics,and Probability of Abiogenesis Calculations”

To quote this fine article briefly:

Okay, you are looking at that number again, 1 chance in 4.29 x 1040, that's a big number, and although a billion starting molecules is a lot of molecules, could we ever get enough molecules to randomly assemble our first replicator in under half a billion years?

Yes, one kilogram of the amino acid arginine has 2.85 x 1024 molecules in it (that's well over a billion billion); a tonne of arginine has 2.85 x 1027 molecules. If you took a semi-trailer load of each amino acid and dumped it into a medium size lake, you would have enough molecules to generate our particular replicator in a few tens of years, given that you can make 55 amino acid long proteins in 1 to 2 weeks [14,16].

So how does this shape up with the prebiotic Earth? On the early Earth it is likely that the ocean had a volume of 1 x 1024 litres. Given an amino acid concentration of 1 x 10-6 M (a moderately dilute soup, see Chyba and Sagan 1992 [23]), then there are roughly 1 x 1050 potential starting chains, so that a fair number of efficient peptide ligases (about 1 x 1031) could be produced in a under a year, let alone a million years. The synthesis of primitive self-replicators could happen relatively rapidly, even given a probability of 1 chance in 4.29 x 1040 (and remember, our replicator could be synthesized on the very first trial).

Now let’s get back to the claim that “no known mechanisms or catalysts exist.” Not so. In fact, the scientific literature on this subject is overwhelmingly large and complex. There are two major theories for the mechanism of origin of complex organic molecules, and hundreds of experiments have been done and articles published on each one. One, often known as “genes first,” or “the RNA world,” deals with RNA, which can both store information and act as a catalyst for self-replication. As replicated molecules would have some mutations, selection would operate upon them. The second, known as “metabolism first,” or “the iron-sulfur world,” deals with the creation of organic materials in deep-sea hydrothermal vents. Let’s look at that hypothesis more closely.

In the ocean even today, deep-sea vents are areas of extreme chemical activity. In one type of vent, water warmed beneath the earth bubbles up through tiny chambers of iron sulfide. Each tiny chamber acts as a chemical reactor, as the iron sulfide surface provides a substrate for molecules to grow. One molecule that forms easily in such chambers is acetate, a vital molecule in many organic reactions. Living bacteria have an acetate-production mechanism almost identical to that which produces acetate in these vents. These tiny chambers also functioned much like cell walls, allowing chemical structures to be protected while they formed.

The chemistry of these reactions is quite complex, but here are some sources:

Jump-Starting a Cellular World: Investigating the Origin of Life, from Soup to Networks

The emergence of life from iron monosulphide bubbles at a submarine hydrothermal
redox and pH front

From geochemistry to biochemistry:
Chemiosmotic coupling and transition element clusters in the onset of life and photosynthesis

And this is only a tiny slice of the immense body of research surrounding just one of the mechanisms by which organic molecules evolved.

So, in closing, it is mathematically and scientifically possible for complex molecules to evolve, and several mechanisms have been shown to produce the proper conditions for such evolution to occur.

Nuts, flakes, and crunchy granola

2007-07-19T08:36:00.000-07:00

It all seemed so simple two years ago.. here we are with this beautiful property in a prime agricultural area. Three greenhouses (two of them with heating and fans and all that cool stuff) a shop with a loft and an apartment and a tractor shed, several acres of arable land, an orchard... heck, some farmer-type will want to lease the place, right? After all, it had been originally used as an herb farm... And the original owner said she'd help us, with all her contacts in the ag world, find suitable tenants. We could lease out the place for something close to the cost of our mortgage. What could go wrong?

Plenty.

The original owner did indeed find us some prospective tenants, who ran a farmer's market. Their grand idea was to convert the shop building into a home for themselves and their six children.

Home sweet home?

Well, we were foolish enough to actually consider the idea.

From the beginning, they balked at paying the rent we asked. They fought against signing a contract for the lease. They refused to agree to fix the aged septic system or test the well for bacteria yearly. They wanted a break on the rent so they could afford to "fix up" the shop. And on and on and on... And the original property owner said we weren't being fair to them, that we should just trust them...

After months of wrangling, concessions, stress and grief that I needn't describe in detail, but that involved lawyers and heated phone conversations, the deal was off. Phew.

And, several months later, we found out they lied to and ripped off the original property owner as well.

So there we were, trying to rent some greenhouses, a shop, some pasture space... Ads on Craigslist, ads in the local paper, fliers posted all over Clark and Mutnomah Counties, etc. etc. So what did we get?

"Um...is it private, man? Like....really private? Like, can I park my trailer there?"

Translation- "Can I turn your property into a meth lab?"

"I need some space for my horse and my daughter's horse. We'd like to rent your pasture."

Translation- We actually rented the pasture to this woman, who was consistently late with the rent. We found out when we called one day and her mother answered the phone that she was actually running a horse dealing operation and sending the poor critters to auction. Bye-bye.

"Can I rent the shop for my auto repair business?"

Um-no thanks.

"Can I park an RV on the property and live there with my whole family?"

Um-no thanks.

"Why not?"

(Sigh...)

And the place appeals to art studio types. The first one had plans for some type of glass gallery under the stars...that idea faded quickly. The second actually did rent our small apartment for part-time usage (yay!- a sane person!) And now we are in negotiations with someone who wants to start a small art commune on the place, complete with teepee installations and a recording studio... we'll see where that goes.

Meanwhile, the lovingly-renovated greenhouses stand empty and forlorn. Doesn't anyone just want to raise some nice petunias or something?

Life and the Indigo Girls

2007-06-05T10:32:00.000-07:00

Last night, I was at an Indigo Girls concert at Humphrey's by the Bay. It was my fourth IG concert at Humphrey's; kind of a summer ritual.

It was fifteen years ago that I first heard the Girls, at a summer concert at Oaks Amusement Park in Portland. It was beautiful as only summer in the Northwest can be; mild, green, light until late. I hadn't heard much of the Indigo Girls before this, and this was an ideal introduction- a concert in an old amusement park, complete with skating rink and kiddie rides, where the seating was blankets spread out upon the soft, green grass. I went home from that trip with a few tapes and an admiration for the work of the Girls that continues to this day. I've actually become a bigger fan as the years have gone by; it wasn't until five years or so ago that I really started collecting all of their albums.

I have found since then many times in my life where the lyrics of an Indigo Girls song melds with an incident in my life. The one that immediately comes to mind is when I first heard "Ozilline," from the Come on Now Social album. I had just lost my beloved dog Jet after a long illness, and I remember sitting in front of the speakers sobbing.

I had to put the dog down
before I hit the road
yeah, I watched that sweet old life
become a bag of bones

After that, it was a couple of years before I could listen to that song. To this day, I cannot listen to it without crying, and in concert, when Amy picks up the mandolin and Emily the banjo, and "Ozilline" is the next song on the setlist, the tears stream down my face. But today, I also realize the power and beauty of the song as an affirmation of the circle of life, of life's processes and ebb and flow.

When we bought our land in La Center, one of the first things I did was create an iMovie of the film and snapshots I had taken on that journey, with a soundtrack from the Girls.

Up on the watershed
standing at the fork in the road
you can stand there and agonize
'til your agony's your heaviest load
you'll never fly as the crow flies
get used to a country mile
when you're learning to face
the path at your pace
every choice is worth your while
"Watershed"

And, indeed, this was a watershed for us, filled with choices- the eventual move from San Diego County, where both Mike and I have spent most of our lives. And there was the physical presence of watersheds too- streams and rivers and waterfalls everywhere.

everywhere I turn
all the beauty just keeps shaking me
"World Falls"

And, lately, of course, the political climate and the hope for 2008...

What we get from your war walk
The ticker of the nation running down like a bad clock
I want the pendulum to swing again
So that all your mighty mandates were just spitting in the wind
"Pendulum Swinger"

And so it has gone, over the years. I hope there are many more concerts to come.

well I don't know where it all begins
and I don't know where it all will end
we're better off for all that we let in
"All That We Let In"

How green was my valley?

2007-06-05T10:11:00.000-07:00

This is how green my valley was in March, after we finally got a few drops of rain:

When we moved in here, this view was one of the big selling points of the house. Over 100 acres of dryland hay fields plus 80 acres of chaparral, stretching from below our house to Hwy 94 in the distance.

Even in drier times, the view is magnificent.

The dogs love walking through the fields, and some locals ride their horses there. I've watched our local coyote family hunting through the fields; Mom, Dad and last year's kids were out there yesterday, having a group howl-in at 6:30 AM before going off hunting (presumably this year's pups are in a den out there, somewhere...)

But this is all about to change. Of course. In our hectic, crowded, acquisitive society, there is no room for hayfields that, with our unending years of drought, don't even produce a good crop most years.

Plans for a new development were submitted to the county last month. They are going to call it "Peaceful Valley Ranch." 50 lots on that 180 acres, 2-7 acres each, for "estate homes." A polo field, an equestrian center, a new fire station, a sop of a few acres in biological mitigation, including the trees along the seasonal stream where the great horned owls nest.

Construction will probably begin 2 years from now. The plans state that their first act will be to grade the whole project; an endeavor that will take 180 days and involve moving 300,000 tons of dirt.

Somehow, I don't think this will be peaceful. And I am sure that the coyotes agree.

Who's gonna save the farmland
from the subdivision man?
Indigo Girls- They Won't Have Me"

Bury my heart at Melody

2007-06-01T11:09:00.000-07:00

Most people regard me as pretty much ultra-liberal. Animal rights, gay rights, environmental justice...I'm all for 'em.

But my town is embroiled in a dispute right now that tries my liberal bent.

Picture this. You are a Native American, at home in your house on the land where you were born. Suddenly, a group of armed thugs invades your house, starts seizing your belongings, and orders you off the land. A huge crowd gathers to defend your rights and your home, yet dozens of officers intervene to allow the sacking of your property to continue. A treaty is signed saying that your home will not be destroyed- yet less than two days later, it is razed to the ground. Is this yet another example of cruel European imperialism?

We got these energy companies
who want to take the land
and we got churches by the dozens
trying to guide our hands
and turn our Mother Earth
over to pollution war and greed
no no
"Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" Buffy Sainte-Marie
(as sung by the Indigo Girls)

A minuscule group here is seeking to benefit themselves at the expense of the residents and the environment of Jamul by building a giant complex in our tiny town at the corner of Melody and Highway 94, a complex that will cause traffic to clog our one access road, strain our already-overtaxed services such as fire and water, pollute our dark skies with nighttime lighting, and blight our views and nearby property values. It's the builders of this monstrosity that evicted the rightful residents and destroyed their homes.

What is being built? A Wal-Mart? A polluting factory? Another mega-mall? Another ticky-tacky housing development?

Uh, no... a casino. By the noble, suffering, downtrodden sovereign nation that calls itself the "Jamul Indian Village."

That's right. In their eyes, it's the impoverished citizens of a desperately needy nation against the wealthy NIMBY white menace. They see the casino as their only possible salvation, and the tribal leaders have stated that they will do whatever it takes to get their casino.

Whatever it takes... which was, in this case, disenrolling several tribal members who opposed the casino, and bulldozing the homes of Walter Rosales and Karen Toggery, lifelong native American residents who opposed the casino as a desecration of sacred land where their ancestors are buried.

And, on that fateful morning in March, it was not other native Americans who stood side by side with Walter and Karen, as hired thugs sprayed them with pepper spray and struck them with batons. It was the residents of Jamul.

Choices, choices

2007-06-01T11:06:00.000-07:00

If all goes well, and the housing market in San Diego doesn't crash, and our land values aren't blighted by a casino, and all the planets align and we appease the proper gods, then in about three years we will be building our own home on our land in La Center, WA.

Building a home is a monumental undertaking, and even with several years to prepare, making choices is difficult.

We know where we want our home to go, and that's about it. The rest is still up in the air- lots of ideas but many decisions yet to make. Many of those decisions involve how green we want our home to be. Others revolve around what our home will look like.

I'll skip the tedious recitations of square footage and bathroom components to look at the ecological implications.

Unfortunately (and unfairly, it seems) green building is not cheap. Even is an area like the Northwest, where green products are widely available through business such as the Environmental Home Center in Seattle and Environmental Building Supplies in Portland, building a truly green home is still considered a luxury for the upper class.

There are, of course, views to the contrary, and a lot depends on what your idea of "going green" is. Some practices- such as careful siting of the house and placement of windows to maximize passive solar capabilities- cost nothing extra. And some things- such as stone veneers rather than real stone- cost less.

But going the whole nine yards and being as green as you can- that'll cost ya. Recycled timbers? Much more than newly-harvested ones. Wood only from forests certified to use sustainable harvesting methods? Harder to find and more expensive. Plywood without harmful volatile compounds like formaldehyde? Yikes. Geothermal energy systems? Thousands of dollars more than conventional.

It shouldn't be that way- at least in my mind. Building green should be rewarded and be cheaper. In some ways there are rewards- such as tax breaks for using energy-efficient materials and technologies- but there aren't enough rewards yet for most people to consider all the available technologies to reduce our footprint on the planet.

Luckily, in many areas, interest in green building is growing. Hopefully, in a few years, the demand will lead to a drop in prices and an increase in available options...hopefully in time for building our house!

From the archives- La Center update

2007-05-31T17:17:00.000-07:00

I originally had a blog on FunTrivia, where I am an editor and site administrator. FunTrivia will soon be discontinuing its blogs, and these are some that I wanted to keep for posterity.

La Center update- originally published Mar. 9, 2006

If you read my entry below, you know that I spent some time in January planting trees at our property in La Center, WA. Over the President's Day weekend, I got to visit my trees and see how they were doing.

I am glad to report that all had survived, although the Western hemlocks that didn't fit into the tree shelters had been pruned rather closely by the deer, and some of the trees had some frost damage (February had the coldest weather that the region had experienced in something like 70 years.)

You may have noted in the last entry on La Center that I stated "And nine trees were displaced when our new next-door neighbors decided that those trees might block their miniscule Portland view (view? All we see are clouds…)" Well, the weather was lovely this trip...hardly a cloud in sight. So here, for your edification and enjoyment, is an enlarged photo of that vaunted Portland view...

Ummm... that's it, between the trees. And remember, it's enlarged!

On the other hand, here is our view to the southeast:

Nicer, eh?
But back to the trees- here is some salal, an evergreen shrub related to wintergreen:

And a bigleaf maple:

And not far from our house, the Cedar Creek Grist Mill, still grindng grain the old-fashioned way...

I hope I can get back in the spring, when the deciduous trees have leafed out and I can really se the results of my labor!

From the archives- January in La Center

2007-05-31T17:15:00.000-07:00

I originally had a blog on FunTrivia, where I am an editor and site administrator. FunTrivia will soon be discontinuing its blogs, and these are some that I wanted to keep for posterity.

January in La Center- originally published Feb. 16, 2006

Let's try this out here...this isn't about Jamul, a dusty little burg in the suburbs of southern CA, but about our property we recently purchased in La Center, WA . I wrote it awhile ago for some friends. Here's a picture of the property in October:

So there I was, face-down in the mud in the midst of pouring rain in 45 degree weather, soaking wet after neglecting to put my rain pants back on over my jeans (though I did have my REI rainjacket!)... and I was happy to be there!

The day before, we'd spent an hour or two in Vancouver in the title company office, finally signing the escrow papers we thought would have been behind us months ago. As we scribbled our signatures on document after document, Mike kept a tally on a scrap piece of paper of just how many times he had to write his name. It came out to 29 signatures and nine initials. We walked out of the office with a sheaf of papers, into a wind from the Gorge so strong it blew umbrellas inside-out.

Along the property line

So back to my sojourn in the mud...I have behind me 33 years of experience with the flora and fauna of southern California; though my heart is in the Northwest, my database is still stuck in the chaparral :>) I can tell a lemonade berry from a laurel sumac with my eyes closed, but differentiating between bigleaf maple and wild cherry in the winter? I have a lot to learn...

Some lessons have been easy.

Lesson #1. Himalayan blackberry is the enemy.

Even my previous trips to the Northwest had not taught me this lesson. I have now properly learned to curse the person who first had the idea of bringing this noxious weed to our shore, and all of his descendants unto eternity. Not only is blackberry thorny and aggressively invasive, it sends up tendrils to trip you, and it's impossible to kill. Blackberry faces flamethrowers, herbicides, and ravenous goats with a laugh, and comes back for more. sprouting from its vast underground network of rhizomes. We have a big job ahead of us with the blackberries...

Lesson #2. English holly and English ivy are the enemy too.

Forget the Christmas carol.

The holly and the ivy

When they are both full grown

Of all the trees that are in the wood

The holly bears the crown

Maybe in Jolly Olde England. Maybe they want to claim their expatriates?

The carol should be something like:

The holly and the ivy

We see them and we groan

The ivy kills trees in the wood

The holly- cut it down!

So much for lessons.

For months before the trip, I obsessed. I am good at that. I spent hours with my field guides and with websites. I can tell you more about our new property than I can about our place in Jamul. I know the soil type and what it grows, how deep the well is, what USDA climate zone it’s in and what likes that climate, what should grow there and what shouldn’t. I began to plan the reclamation of the place; creating a bit of wildlife heaven in the woods. I researched nurseries and ordered plants, and pondered the merits of various types of tree shelters and mulch mats.

Ferns in the forest in October

Once I touched down in Portland, it was off to Home Depot for a hoe and a shovel, planting stakes and gardening gloves.

“Clearing webs from a hovel,

Blistered hands on the handle of a shovel…”

The Indigo Girls, "Hammer and a Nail"

Well, our hovel was a one-room apartment inside the shop, and I didn’t have to clear any webs. The gloves kept the blisters away, but it certainly was true that I needed to tend the earth if I wanted a rose…or a Western red cedar. So, for the first two days before I drove to the airport to pick up Mike, I scouted the property, cursed mightily at the blackberries, and flagged spots for my new acquisitions.

"And then the rains came. They came down from the hills and up from the Sound. And it rained a sickness. And it rained a fear. And it rained an odor. And it rained a murder. And it rained dangers and pale eggs of the beast. Rain fell on the towns and the fields. It fell on the tractor sheds and the labyrinth of sloughs. Rain fell on toadstools and ferns and bridges… Rain poured for days, unceasing. Flooding occurred. The wells filled with reptiles. The basements filled with fossils. Mossy-haired lunatics roamed the dripping peninsulas. Moisture gleamed on the beak of the Raven. Ancient shamans, rained from their homes in dead tree trunks, clacked their clamshell teeth in the drowned doorways of forests. Rain hissed on the Freeway. It hissed at the prows of fishing boats. It ate the old warpaths, spilled on the huckleberries, ran in the ditches. Soaking. Spreading. Penetrating. And it rained an omen. And it rained a poison. And it rained a pigment. And it rained a seizure."

Tom Robbins, Another Roadside Attraction

I appreciate rain and cold. The first morning of my trip, it was a balmy 43 degrees or so, and the rain had let up for a bit. Perfect t-shirt weather…:>) I turned the soil in the upper pasture, digging planting holes for Western red cedar. In every spadeful, worms wriggled. The richness was astounding- back in Jamul, I would not even be able to dig such a shovel of soft dirt held together with a net of grass roots- you need a mattock to turn the soil, that or high explosives…No worm would have a chance. As I dug, I watched a hawk dive-bombing songbirds in the neighbor’s shrubbery, emerging with empty talons.

Rainy day and old plow

Monday was the day I picked up the trees. Burnt Ridge Nursery was 60 miles north, on the other side of Mt. St. Helens. The entire drive was a reminder of water. Rain fell, gently and constantly, almost the whole time. Small waterfalls coursed over the rock walls abutting the highway. I passed over one steel bridge after another- the Lewis River, the Cowlitz, the Toutle, the Coweeman- as they descended to join the Columbia River to the west.

The East Fork of the Lewis River at Lucia Falls

Burnt Ridge was run by an office full of longhair hippie-types and one very wet, wriggly Labrador. After picking up my carefully-packed and labeled, organic, healthy trees and shrubs, I drove back, and the planting began. Out came the seedlings I’d dreamed about for months- Western red cedar, Western hemlock, bigleaf maple, and, I must admit, a few non-natives- beech trees (the squirrels will not complain) and Japanese maples (with which I’ve had a love affair since I first met them in Portland many years ago.)

It seems so simple- just poke a hole in the ground, stick a tree in it, and let it grow. After all, anything should grow here…you’re surrounded by luxurious, verdant greenery. But it isn’t so simple.

Mama Tree can afford to produce millions of seedy offspring every year- they are of very low energetic cost to the tree. It doesn’t matter that the vast majority go down the gullets of squirrels and birds, or otherwise meet sad fates- over a tree’s lifespan of centuries, only one needs to grow and prosper for a replacement, and two survivors will mean a population boom!

I, on the other hand, have a much greater investment in having that one lonely seedling survive, and I need to hedge my bets. Just a bit. Let’s see here. We start by choosing the site carefully, then clearing it of all vegetation in a 2’ radius, down to the bare ground, so no grass roots compete with my seedling for nutrients. Then, when the seedling is in the ground, we place a 4’ x 4’ mulch mat over the seedling, to further block competing vegetation. Then, for our trees in the meadow, that stand like a beacon advertising “Fresh Eats” to the deer, a plastic tube called a “tree protector” goes over the seedling, both to keep away browsers and act as a miniature greenhouse.

Trees growing the old-fashoned way, on the property in October

Not all the trees got the premium protection plan. The hemlocks were too big for the shelters; we just had to hope the deer didn’t find them to be on the menu this year. And nine trees were displaced when our new next-door neighbors decided that those trees might block their miniscule Portland view (view? All we see are clouds…) and moved into the low-rent district near the shop building, where their hurried accommodations before we left for the airport consisted of holes in the ground, hope for their survival, and little more.

But back to me, in the mud. Not all the plants were trees- I had one big, thorny salmonberry that reminded me of a journey long ago to the Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness, where I first tasted its berries. I pruned its prickly canes and found it a place of honor. Then there were small pots of salal, the wintergreen-family evergreen that can produce big crops of sweet berries. While our property had some thickets of Oregon grape, I hadn’t seen any salal, and we needed every recruit we could get in the “fight the blackberries while giving us other berries” campaign!

So there I was, on my stomach as a steady rain fell, just outside the dripline of an old Douglas fir, excavating planting holes with a trowel and carefully settling in my salal, with wishes that it would grow and prosper. Afterwards, it would be time to come in from the cold and wet, to shower, change, and set off to the airport, back to San Diego and sunshine, but dreaming of the next time I’d be able to see my trees, and maybe play in the mud some more.

From the archives- How can anyone not like dogs?

2007-05-31T17:13:00.000-07:00

I originally had a blog on FunTrivia, where I am an editor and site administrator. FunTrivia will soon be discontinuing its blogs, and these are some that I wanted to keep for posterity.

How can anyone not like dogs?-originally published Feb. 23, 2006

Now, of course, there are all of the usual platitudes- dogs are messy, servile, obnoxious…but really, how can you not like dogs?

If it weren’t for dogs, you probably wouldn’t be sitting at this computer, reading this. Are you aware of the recent research on how dogs shaped human evolution? We are the only distance-running primate- we probably evolved that way to keep up with the dogs that helped us hunt. We worked together as teams to find food. Thus, we out-competed the other hominids such as Neanderthals. Dogs helped keep enemies and predators at bay, giving us the ability to relax and develop culture by the fireside and grow the big brains we need. . And, as they evolved, dogs developed the ability to read and interpret human behavior better than any other animal, even the chimpanzee.

And, as we evolved, dogs found our food, retrieved our game, herded our sheep, pulled our sleds, tracked our lost children, defended our soldiers, rid our houses of vermin, rescued our drowning people, guarded our houses, guided our blind and otherwise did everything we asked of them.

Dogs made us what we are, and all they asked was a place at the fireside and a bone to gnaw. And they have stuck beside us, despite what we have done to them- laboratories, dogfighting pits, racetracks, overbreeding, abandonment, and all of the other atrocities we have committed against them.

So how can anyone not like dogs?

From the archives- Goats get a bad rap

2007-05-31T17:10:00.000-07:00

This little charmer is Foxcroft Strawberry Fields

Well, your thoughts probably contain at least a few of the following adjectives- stinky, stubborn, mean, voracious, stupid.

This is "Miss Kitty," our herd queen

I happen to live, right now, with thirteen goats- that number will increase greatly in a few weeks, when the spring kids start arriving! I have eleven Nigerian Dwarf Goats, miniature milkgoats with personality aplenty- and two Angora goats, the woolly critters that most people mistake for sheep. So I know a bit about goats.

They don't stink
(well, at least most of them...)
Female goats and neutered males have no bad odors- far less than a sweaty horse or wet dog. The males- the bucks- are the culprits. During breeding season, they douse themselves with urine and musk... aphrodisiacal to the does, pretty repulsive to us.

They aren't mean
Well-raised and treated goats are gentle and easy to handle. Mean goats are made that way- by mistreatment, or by roughhousing with young kids (never teach a kid a headbutting game- it's cute when they weigh 4 pounds, but not when they weigh 100!)

They don't eat everything
Far from it. They are fussy critters. No barnyard animal is pickier about hay, for example, than a goat. They'll pick the leaves off the alfalfa and discard the stems, refuse hay that's fallen on the ground, and otherwise behave like spoiled kids...well, they are spoiled kids!

Molly, one of my herd's foundation goats

They aren't stubborn or stupid
In fact, goats are smarter than any other livestock, except for pigs. Any thought of stupidity will disappear as soon as you see a goat patiently working at lifting the chain off of the gate latch so she can let everyone out for a party! As for stubborn...if you can convince a goat that what's good for you is what she wants, they are very trainable- goats are often used as packing and carting animals.

So that's the goat lesson for today...hope you learned something!

From the archives- Butting In

2007-05-31T17:06:00.000-07:00

I originally had a blog on FunTrivia, where I am an editor and site administrator. FunTrivia will soon be discontinuing its blogs, and these are some that I wanted to keep for posterity.

Butting In- originally posted Feb. 24, 2006

I will probably never be able to dine in a sushi shop in Japan, or experience the frigid vistas of Iceland. I will probably never be able to experience the faded glory of the Acropolis in Greece, watch wildebeests course over the African plains or taste a fresh baguette in France.

Why?

Not finances or time; both could handle such journeys in my lifetime. Not lack of interest. It’s because all these places have some of the highest rates of smoking in the world.

You see, I’m allergic to smoke. Wait a minute…the smoking apologists claim no one can be allergic to smoke. Fine. Call me sensitive to smoke. Call it whatever you want…the truth is that, with even mild exposure to tobacco fumes, I cannot breathe.

I am lucky to live in California, where smoking is banned in all indoor spaces, and to own land in Washington, which recently passed a voter’s initiative that banned even smoking within 25 feet of a doorway. Even with these restrictions, I must dodge those who think that, for example, it’s perfectly acceptable to puff away in line at the movies, or at the beach.

Visits to places like my mother-in-law’s in Las Vegas are logistical nightmares. Like a general, I must plan every move. Where to eat? (the number of totally non-smoking restaurants in Las Vegas is minuscule) Where to stay (do you have to go through a smoky casino to get to your room?) What to do? (does that mall allow smoking?)

If you smoke in public, stop and consider. There are many like me. Our lives are made miserable by your habit. Does your addiction give you the right to limit my life? Our society does not allow you to douse me with lye or pour arsenic in my food. Why should you have the right to pollute the air I have no choice but to breathe?

The View from Jamul

It's confirmed

The inevitable happens

Requiem for the Phantoms

The brave wolf hunters

Cowering conservatives

Rambling in Idaho- the view from Craigslist

Dire Wolf

Coming Soon!

Marcsana shows his true colors

A sticky situation for Marcsana

More responding to Marcsana on post 1

Responding to Marcsana on post 1

The answers about Answers in Genesis-part 2

Changes and memories

The answers about Answers in Genesis-part 1

The quote mine collapses

No birdbrains here

News Flash! Common Garden Hose Shows The Earth is Really, Really Old!

A creationism vs. evolution discussion, Part 10

A creationism vs. evolution discussion,. Part 9

Information, please- Part 3

Information, please- Part 2

Information, please- Part 1

A creationism vs. evolution discussion,. Part 8 wrap-up

A creationism vs. evolution discussion,. Part 8D

A creationism vs. evolution discussion,. Part 8C

A creationism vs. evolution discussion,. Part 8B

A creationism vs. evolution discussion,. Part 8

A creationism vs. evolution discussion,. Part 7

A small break for a new fact

A creationism vs. evolution discussion,. Part 6

A creationism vs. evolution discussion,. Part 5

A creationism vs. evolution discussion,. Part 4

A creationism vs. evolution discussion,. Part 3

A creationism vs. evolution discussion,. Part 2

A creationism vs. evolution discussion,. Part 1

Nuts, flakes, and crunchy granola

Life and the Indigo Girls

How green was my valley?

Bury my heart at Melody

Choices, choices

From the archives- La Center update

I originally had a blog on FunTrivia, where I am an editor and site administrator. FunTrivia will soon be discontinuing its blogs, and these are some that I wanted to keep for posterity.

La Center update- originally published Mar. 9, 2006

From the archives- January in La Center

January in La Center- originally published Feb. 16, 2006

From the archives- How can anyone not like dogs?

How can anyone not like dogs?-originally published Feb. 23, 2006

From the archives- Goats get a bad rap

From the archives- Butting In