Latest Challenges to the Teaching of Evolution

@Ionus,

Just like your brain. That's a joke.

@Ionus,

Don't have to be on stage to belittle little people like you.

Can you all tell that we have not evolved very much? Now keep in mind that when I say we I must be included in there some where!

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@spendius,

Quote:

I didn't see it either Io. Perhaps he's just asserting again.

Or drunk. He drinks rather heavily, to the point where he cant even type or spell correctly, goes to bed and tells us all the next day about how great he is whilst cleverly fitting in references to **** and arseholes. A very disturbed mind for a "scientist".

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@cicerone imposter,

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Just like your brain. That's a joke.

Are you pre-teens ??

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@cicerone imposter,

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Don't have to be on stage to belittle little people like you.

Your opinion exaggerates your success.

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@Ionus,

No, I'm in my 2d childhood. However, my maturity far exceeds yours not only by age, but by everything else on these blogs.

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@cicerone imposter,

Quote:

my maturity far exceeds yours not only by age, but by everything else on these blogs.

Have you sort a second opinion ??

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@Ionus,

Who needs a second opinion when your opinions are challenged more often than mine?

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@cicerone imposter,

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Who needs a second opinion when your opinions are challenged more often than mine?

You do. You are not a God. You are not even a person of note. Becoming bitter in your old age is not a criteria most would accept as suitable for giving advice. As for challenged opinions, of course you dont know enough about any subject to do more than just run with the crowd. It is expected you will be like that. You dont have the mental prowess for anything else.

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@Ionus,

Ionus wrote:

Quote:
Once something happens, its probability hits 100% and stays there forever.
Which begs the question, was the probablility of other events zero ?

Of necessity. Probabilities only ever total 100%. Ex post. Ex ante: can, even now, anyone calculate that whales 40 million years ago would change their minds about moving to dry land and decide to move back to the wild blue yonder? The fact is, they did, losing their briefly-acquired legs in the process:

http://www.ask-aladdin.com/images/whalepics3.gif

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There we found an expedition from University of Michigan that was digging and had discovered a large walking whale.

The university of Michigan had done some earlier digging there in 1983, 1985, 1987, 1989, 1991, and 1993, during which time some 400 archaeocete and sirenian skeletons were found and mapped.

This time they came back with professor PHILIP D. GINGERICH Professor of Paleontology, Professor of Geological Sciences, Professor of Biology, Professor of Anthropology, Director, Museum of Paleontology — The University of Michigan of a very experienced geologist. had the pleasure of meeting him on site, and he was so kind to let me know what is the new discovery about, i was told that the new whale is around 44 million years old!!

This whale once had feet and used to walk on the shore before getting into the water, The oldest and most primitive walking whale had been uncovered in Pakistan; Pakicetus lived 50 million years ago. but in the valley of whales, this is the first time we find this walking whale in any part of Africa and this time it was found in this remote barren site of Wadi El-hitan.

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@High Seas,

The point I have been trying to make with these self confessed "great scientists" here is that if you cant make accurate predictions for results how is it science ? If you cant evolve a species of mammal in the laboratory how are you ever going to say the process is accurate ?

Incidently, I have always been impressed with the beauty of maths, and all the family have a solid basis in maths...none of us ever chose it as a career path though I always wanted to learn more of it.

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@Ionus,

I'm not a god? ROFL

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@Ionus,

Ionus wrote:

The point I have been trying to make with these self confessed "great scientists" here is that if you cant make accurate predictions for results how is it science ? If you cant evolve a species of mammal in the laboratory how are you ever going to say the process is accurate ?

Incidently, I have always been impressed with the beauty of maths, and all the family have a solid basis in maths...none of us ever chose it as a career path though I always wanted to learn more of it.

We can "evolve" computer simulations of viruses - they seem to replicate actual cycles (of cicadas, say, which all happen on year multiples that are prime numbers) fairly accurately. There's always chance - you're familiar with the masterpiece "Chance and Necessity" - perhaps chance is the only necessity.

Computer models fed realistic parameters have, after billions of simulation runs, come up with plagues; they were only theoretical plagues, but you never know, so labs working with real life forms are duly cautious. That is the miracle, and the wonder, and the magic, of our universe, this perpetual doubt and uncertainty. A clockwork world would be intolerable - is that what you support? Incidentally, Australian universities are at the forefront of this research.

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@Ionus,

Quote:

Or drunk. He drinks rather heavily, to the point where he cant even type or spell correctly, goes to bed and tells us all the next day about how great he is whilst cleverly fitting in references to **** and arseholes. A very disturbed mind for a "scientist".

Course you realize what a shitfaced liar and fraud you are. I dont drink and I know you are just stating that under some feeling that perhaps you will get under my skin. Ive swept stink bugs off my field vest that are more intelligent than you so Im really not too concerned about whether youve failed to "see "anything in response to your question re: experiments supporting evolution. You purposely ignore inputs if they dont agree with your worldview. You tend to try to twist posts around after a page or two so that the correspondent can appear like an idiot. IF that doesnt work you just flat out lie.I really think that most people here have got your number and are aware that you try to pull these little self aggrandizing stunts.
I still maintain that you flunked out of college and have been a clot ever since.

You are a laugh in a bucket when you try to speak like you even know of what you speak.

BTW, You travel about all the evo threads so the fact that you knew that my answer to RALPHY was on another thread attests to what a great craven liar you are. You posted that you dont have time to "cruise around other threads (where the very answers to this same question you posed, were presented )
OOPS , cant be too careful about what you say can you. I realize that this is of no interest to any others . Im just making a point that youve been consistently a weak arguing, lying, POS who only gets off being a boor when you are in over yer head (as you usually are)

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@farmerman,

Anus fails to recognize that, in a complex theory such as evolution, most predictions and experiments that validate and support it, are in the sciences that support the theory. HE may not understand that archeology doesnt make "predictions " , it makes discoveries. The support sciences like ceramics , stratigraphy, genomics, and chem and shallow geophysics make plaenty of predictions and studies.
I told ANUS several months ago about the experiments revolving around the discovery of key intermediate fosils, the most recent of which Tiktaalik roseae , has been found based on sound predictions made in sciences that include Global Tectonics, stratigraphy, and geochronology. The experiment involved a scientific gamble that included shelling out over 1 million dollars on the understanding that the redbeds of the Mid Devonian of Pa were colocated around the same shallow sea that stretched around to present day Nunavut and East Greenland and just under similar Devonian continental deposits that isotope chemistry had shown was just about 6 million years older than the beds that yielded a Eustenopteron (a more developed amphibian -like fish)

In the applied sciences (including paleo which is in the business of discovery) we lay patron and investor money down with the idea that wed make a discovery worth noting (or developing for profit) What ANUS's simple mind doesnt grasp is that every time I take all the field data from a geological and geophysical "experiment" , I am making aprediction that we will locate something of value. WHile evolutionary science makes discoveries and predictions , it doesnt lose its touch with the main disciplines that provide the basic data (such as stratigraphy again) . PAleo expeditions are a huge batch of interdisciplanary work. This kind of stuff isnt reported on the "Discovery Channel" mainly because the guys with short attention spans (think ANUS and SPENDI)will tune in Jersey SHore or hit the brew pubs (not that theres anything wrong with that)

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@farmerman,

Granted all this, the question "What Comes Next?" looms. I don't know the answer to that except for genetic engineering, as already seen in athletes.

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@High Seas,

The latest finds of the Paleoceatens have been made surrounding the stratigraphy of the opening seas in the Post Cretaceous of the Pan African/Brasiliano orogenic belts. The adaptation of the proto whales are based upon finding the fossils via a very careful analyses of the circum Indian Georaphy. Fossils arent a hit or miss find em and dig em game like they were in the mid 1800's. Global tectonics has provided a veritable road map of what these ancient terranes looked like and so , it became a paeoecological"large scale "experiment" in locating related evolutionary kin by looking for them in geographically and temprally contiguous beds of sediment that held the goods.

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@High Seas,

I dont think that its a too valid question to someone whos doing a synthesis of a bygone world. There are many exobiologists whove made predictions of what life would look like on another planet or on the earth if the O2 levels would again spike as they did in the CArboniferous and the Devonian.
Ive seen "futuristic depictions of lifeforms" that became adapted to a new environment. .
Im still fscinated by the use of the tools that I get from continental drift and paleontology because it helps me in my trade of minerals exploration .
SOmebody;s gotta do it.

Weve recently at the Apple laptop lab, constructed a computerized color chart that , based on Munsell numbers, can help us sort out layer information on specific fossils that are associated with baked deposits of specific clays. These clays attract and concentrate rare earths and minerals like lithium silicates and salts. )

Many of the genetic monstrocities that are the result of genetic engineering and artificial selection(like weird breeds of dogs), will, no doubt, revert to a general species more like a dingo. Hybridization always demands a loss in hybrid vigor. SO , if you wanna model that, you really have to exercise a bit of the HAldane dilemma because of the miniscule numbers of non interbreeding populations of all these hybrids.
The first varietals that go, (as defined by what we see in species extinction) is we lose the extreme end members (still using dogs as an example, wed lose chihuahuas and great danes and Irish Wolf Hounds, probably wed lose the Sharpeis and Tosa Inus and Irish setters. Ultimately , we be left with either , several species of dogs with interbreeding extremities, or else wed have a single species with a "bottleneck" and a high possibility for extinction because it takes a while to confer and rebuild hybrid vigor.
It took humans 70000 years to develop STR (Short repeat tandem alleles) that define hybridization"fingerprints" of the bazillions of local communities. Course thats just my guess. I wish tht reserach geneticist was still on the b oards, hed have a waay more intelligent guess than mine.

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@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

I dont think that its a too valid question to someone whos doing a synthesis of a bygone world. There are many exobiologists whove made predictions of what life would look like on another planet or on the earth if the O2 levels would again spike as they did in the CArboniferous and the Devonian.
Ive seen "futuristic depictions of lifeforms" that became adapted to a new environment. .
............................

Moving from the billion-year scale to the century dimension: all this study of past events should at least enable us to formulate some predictions, however tentative, and however short-term. There's such a thing as exogenous shocks - say a giant solar flare fries our satellites and zaps transformers paralyzing the grid for weeks, and while they can't be predicted their effects can be modeled. There are also - still at the centuries scale - man-made influences, like science and technology, and their effects can be modeled somewhat more easily. An example is this book I'm reading right now:

http://media.us.macmillan.com/jackets/258H/9780374290023.jpg

Those "futuristic life-forms" are so speculative nobody will come up with a probability distribution for them. I haven't followed your past discussions with Ionus, and never looked into any of the related threads, so can't comment on them, but think the question of prediction remains a valid one.

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