Links With Your Coffee
- Police worker fired for backing psychic investigations claims religious discrimination
The judge wrote: "I am satisfied that the claimant's beliefs that there is life after death and that the dead can be contacted through mediums are worthy of respect in a democratic society."
- Norwegian, 18, Is Youngest to Be Ranked No. 1 at Chess
The chess world has a new No. 1 player, Magnus Carlsen of Norway, and he is only 18 years old — the youngest player ever to hold the rank.
- The Caveman Fallacy
- Sarah Palin’s book has no index; Maybe because she can’t alphabetize?
- COMPLEXITY EXPLAINED: 9. How Did Complex Molecules Like Proteins and DNA Emerge Spontaneously?
How could the blind forces of Nature create large and highly information-laden molecules like DNA and proteins just by random processes? DNA carries information for the synthesis of proteins, but it requires the prior availability of certain protein molecules for performing its genetic duties. Such proteins help the double-helix DNA molecule to uncoil itself and split into two strands for replication purposes. Therefore, DNA and certain proteins must have emerged independently, by some efficient (and therefore reasonably likely) chemical processes. But how? The answer has to do with the chemical evolution of autocatalytic sets of molecules, which could consume energy-rich molecules and other precursors (’food’) to ‘reproduce’. These molecules were the predecessors of proteins and DNA etc., and thence of life.
Comments
I find the worlds youngest curmudgeon more disagreable than factual.
He seems to fall into the same fallacy as those he is accusing of a caveman fallacy.
Evolution is a continuous process, not a punctuated process. So we might be only partially evolved to eating cooked food and have not developed the skills required to get everything we need from nutritionally depleted foods.
I wouldn't disagree that thinking of caveman culture as our natural state is a fallacy, but so is denyi9ng it. Our current position in our development is the product of millions and of years of evolution. Our "natural state" is indeed not simply the way we lived in a brief period of our evolution but instead the state our form was selected by evolution to survive in. A state that varies from system to system.
Certainly our current back has evolved for standing upright, but much of our torso's structure developed for walking on all fours.
Certainly meat was an important part of our ancestors diet, but it is also psychologically given increased importance because of the difficulty of getting meet for much of our history.
Studying the environments and culture in which we evolved can most definitely give us vital insights into how we think, how we should eat, how we walk, get sick and heal.
I could go on, but I risk becoming a curmudgeon myself.
Martin Eisenstadt is a hoax?
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/arts/television/13hoax.html
A brilliantly funny one for our sad excuse for a media.
Hah! and thanks! I was wondering that when I watched the video! My thoughts were either too good to be true, or truth is stranger than fiction.
All hail the huckster Eisenstadt!
Yes, I can vouch that Martin Eisenstadt is indeed brilliantly funny. His own book just hit stores, and it's gotten great reviews. Buy it tomorrow to show your defiance against Palin: Amazon.com
To be fair, there is a "real" Joe the Plumber, who is far less plausible than Eisenstadt.
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