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Latest Challenges to the Teaching of Evolution

 
 
spendius
 
  1  
Reply Thu 23 Jun, 2011 03:30 pm
@cicerone imposter,
You're just in denial ci. It's all about sex.

Have you seen the plants. They are sex mad. They have every combination of male and female: monogamy, polygamy, polyandry, group sex, orgies and a few, I believe, see to themselves. Life comes from a common ancestor. Plants can be soothed by certain sounds and colours.

Luther and his henchmen had the hots for the nuns. They had Pantagreul's problem with the ladies of the toffs and the ladies of the peasants and the artisans, who were peasants with nifty fingers, were beneath them as members of the estate in between. (Except in emergencies I mean but even then it must have left them with a profound sense of self-disgust. All that learning come to this.) Media is now a sort of estate in between.

Springing the nuns was a raging imperitive. Luther married one as soon as he was confident that his Prince would protect him if he took on the might of Rome. All the stuff about the Holy Ghost and the Papacy being a secular invention and Jesus being present in the Eucharist were just sophistical wranglings. Like whether there was a Flood or not. Getting Sister Simperteena spreadeagled or up on her hands and knees I suppose, missionaries not having been invented then, was the objective whilst not being ostracised or worse. Maintaining one's status as the man of God all the while.

The objective here is to make it respectable to shag anybody or anything or be shagged by anybody or anything. I don't say "fucked" because that word has a specific meaning. In theology at least.

And I'm not arguing against that. It might well be the best way forward. I'm arguing against pulling the wool over everybody's eyes so that they will choose that without really knowing and without therefore considering the implications. The "controversial issues" wande reported on from Texas. The things one doesn't talk about in public places.

Was that logical enough?

cicerone imposter
 
  1  
Reply Thu 23 Jun, 2011 05:16 pm
@spendius,
Sex doesn't occupy my life 100% of the time; that would be a waste of time and energy on one aspect of being an animal with some brains.
spendius
 
  1  
Reply Thu 23 Jun, 2011 05:22 pm
@cicerone imposter,
What a silly reply. Nobody ever said sex occupies 100% of anybody's time. In the thirty seconds after one drops a brick on one's toe sex is the last thing anybody would be occupied with. So that's chipping away at the 100%.

Already.
cicerone imposter
 
  1  
Reply Thu 23 Jun, 2011 05:40 pm
@spendius,
According to you, your mind is on sex more than what may be considered "normal."
0 Replies
 
Ionus
 
  0  
Reply Fri 24 Jun, 2011 02:19 am
@cicerone imposter,
So what does occupy your time ? Give us a breakdown of everything and how it is totally unrelated to sex .
0 Replies
 
wandeljw
 
  1  
Reply Sat 25 Jun, 2011 10:42 am
Quote:
Online notes offer insight into evolution of Darwin’s big idea
(Yorkshire Post, June 23, 2011)

Notes and comments scribbled by Charles Darwin on the pages and in the margins of his own personal library have been made available online for the first time.

Darwin’s library amounted to 1,480 books, of which 730 contain a wealth of scrawled notes, providing an insight into his thought processes and struggles as he wrote On The Origin Of Species.

For example, his friend Charles Lyell wrote in his famous Principles Of Geology that there were definite limits to the variation of species. Darwin wrote alongside this: “If this were true adios theory.”

The majority of the collection in Cambridge University library and has now been digitised in an effort involving Cambridge, the Darwin Manuscripts Project at the American Museum of Natural History, the Natural History Museum and the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

University librarian Anne Jarvis said: “While there has been much focus on his manuscripts and correspondence, his library hasn’t always received the attention it deserves – for it is as he engaged with the ideas and theories of others that his own thinking evolved.”

Because Darwin’s evolutionary theory covered so many aspects of nature, reading served him as a primary source of evidence and ideas.
spendius
 
  1  
Reply Sun 26 Jun, 2011 02:10 pm
Suppose one of those nerdy brainboxes is pottering about on the internet in the general field of animal biology and comes across this--

Quote:
The vervet monkey has a vivid blue scrotum which pales when the animal falls in social rank. Histology and electron microscopy showed dopa-positive melanocytes in the dermis each packed with fully melanised melanosomes. By transmitted light the scrotal skin was brown on a red background: by reflected light the colour was blue. Thus the blue colour is due to Tyndall scattering over a layer of melanin. Variation of scrotal colour was not due to changes in melanocyte number or dispersion of melanosomes. Pallor was induced by injecting fluid, and blueness could be restored by removing fluid. It is concluded that the blue-to-white colour variation is modulated by the degree of dermal hydration.


If he asked his professor, Ms Barbara Forrest say, the well known critic of intelligent design, in a philosophy class, how did that manifestation evolve in view of the fact that it relates a mental state to a physiological effect and does this remarkable colour change of the scrotum take place in humans seeing as how much DNA we have in common with monkeys?

How does the team think she would respond?
reasoning logic
 
  0  
Reply Sun 26 Jun, 2011 02:23 pm
@spendius,
What do you think about this reply?
Now, what have we learned? Three things. First, coherent light reflection can be accomplished by biological structures in a direction-independent way.

Second, monkey scrotum researchers really defend their turf! Or at least, skin pigmentation researchers and last but not least Spendius has monkey penises on his mind!
0 Replies
 
farmerman
 
  1  
Reply Sun 26 Jun, 2011 02:32 pm
@wandeljw,
Darwin had penned in several places that very thing that plagued him most during his post"Origin..." time . He was afraid of the "if/then theorem" ie "if... (somethings were true),... then (my theory is blown out of the water). Even though Desmond and Moore post this travail as a supposed shortcoming, it actually was a demo of Poppers theorem of falsifiability. Darwin was always one "step ahead but he never realized it.

He feared this potential eventuality as much as death or public speaking.
spendius
 
  1  
Reply Sun 26 Jun, 2011 03:07 pm
@farmerman,
Quote:
Darwin was always one "step ahead but he never realized it.


"always" is a bit far-fetched. "Usually" might be better or "often". Yes--"often" is the word. It conveys the same impression without committing the writer to much.
0 Replies
 
High Seas
 
  1  
Reply Tue 28 Jun, 2011 01:50 pm
@farmerman,
Darwin had no computers - read this, done on basic computer, think how much faster calculations would go if supercomputers were being used >

Quote:
The whole assembly is about a metre and a half across, and controlled by an ordinary computer.

Say hello to the evolution machine. It can achieve in days what takes genetic engineers years. So far it is just a prototype, but if its proponents are to be believed, future versions could revolutionise biology, allowing us to evolve new organisms or rewrite whole genomes with ease. It might even transform humanity itself.

These days everything from your food and clothes to the medicines you take may well come from genetically modified plants or bacteria. The first generation of engineered organisms has been a huge hit with farmers and manufacturers - if not consumers. And this is just the start. So far organisms have only been changed in relatively crude and simple ways, often involving just one or two genes. To achieve their grander ambitions, such as creating algae capable of churning out fuel for cars, genetic engineers are now trying to make far more sweeping changes.


http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21028181.700-evolution-machine-genetic-engineering-on-fast-forward.html?DCMP=NLC-nletter&nsref=mg21028181.700
spendius
 
  1  
Reply Tue 28 Jun, 2011 05:08 pm
@High Seas,
Quote:
It might even transform humanity itself.


Can it make women easier to understand?
farmerman
 
  1  
Reply Tue 28 Jun, 2011 07:34 pm
@High Seas,
Its still a hit or missd proposition> The thing they can do is "recall" the steps. Id like to see, rather than a bunch of repeatede steps for lycopine (eg), a genome that is adaptive to a real world environmental change.
I can see how algae can be jiggered with to increase fatty acid plasmids, but I am usually more concerned about unknown changes in genomes that can "Swap" deleterious segments with microorganisms in , say, drinking water, producing a super strain of E coli.


It would make an interesting short story when all the guys at HArvard med start coming down with incurable nasofungus infections that drill through therhinal septum and burrow into their brains.


Naaaah, never happen.
farmerman
 
  1  
Reply Thu 30 Jun, 2011 08:13 pm
@farmerman,
Bound to Happen. Baba Brinkman, earlier had recievede accolades for his "Canterbury TAles Rap" has come up with a new one
Baba Brinkmans Rap Guide to Evolution"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VDc1HkFtjo&feature=related
spendius
 
  1  
Reply Wed 6 Jul, 2011 03:28 am
@farmerman,
Quote:
Education
Atlanta schools latest in string of test cheating scandals across nation

Published August 17, 2010

| Associated Press

ATLANTA – A cheating scandal is roiling Atlanta Public Schools, casting into doubt the work of hundreds of students in at least 12 of the mostly poor, mostly minority district's elementary and middle schools.

At one elementary school, a student said his teacher whispered in his ear the correct answers for a standardized test.

A teacher at another school reported seeing school administrators and other educators erasing wrong answers and filling in the right ones after students had turned in tests. One teacher said an administrator told her to "shhhh" when she brought up possible cheating by educators in the school.

The allegations surfaced in recent days as part of a statewide review of every standardized test taken in Georgia elementary and middle schools in spring 2009. The problems have drawn comparisons to scandals elsewhere that experts say reflect the increasing pressure to meet federal No Child Left Behind standards.

The controversey has also placed a black mark on the squeaky clean reputation of Superintendent Beverly Hall, who was named 2009 Superintendent of the Year by the American Association of School Administrators, in large part for her work increasing the district's test scores and graduation rates.

Hall stressed that the independent investigation cleared the majority of the district's 100 schools and that the cheating, if it existed, was not "coordinated or orchestrated."

"In any profession — from religion to journalism — you have a small percentage of people who will be unethical. It doesn't mean you minimize it, but you put it in perspective," Hall said in an interview with The Associated Press.

"People hear everything that could have gone wrong and it continues to reinforce a pervasive belief that an urban system can't function and poor kids can't learn," Hall said.

A number of other urban school districts and individual states have been caught up in cheating scandals in the last several years, including Baltimore and Houston, and Texas, Washington and Florida.

Problems have mounted, some experts say, as teachers and school administrators — particularly those in low-income districts — bow to the pressure of the federal No Child Left Behind requirements and see cheating as the only way they can avoid sanctions. Under the law, failing schools must offer extra tutoring, allow parents to transfer their children to higher performing schools and fire teachers and administrators that don't pass muster.

Studies estimate that between 1 and 5 percent of teachers nationally cheat each year, from giving answers to students to changing answers from wrong to right on answer sheets.

"The pressure to increase achievement is enormous and will likely increase in the next few years," said Ron Dietel with the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing at UCLA. "We are approaching 2013-14, when 100 percent of students are required to be proficient in math and English language arts. Virtually all public schools face sanctions because almost none will reach that goal."

In Atlanta, district officials are trying to determine exactly what happened last year at schools where students' test scores rose dramatically — almost impossibly, in some cases. For example, at Peyton Elementary School — where between 93 and 97 percent of students passed math, reading and English language arts tests — the likelihood that students in one educator's classroom made such a high number of erasure marks to their tests is one in 10 trillion, according to the district's investigative report released earlier this month.

Hall ordered the independent investigation into questions raised by the statewide audit that was released in the spring.

She has also launched a three-month tutoring program for students who were at the 12 schools under suspicion to make sure they aren't behind in mathematics, English and other subjects. The extra studying involves before- and after-school tutoring for the students, along with help during class.

Hall also has reassigned 12 principals to jobs where they aren't in direct contact with students and turned the names of more than 100 educators over to the state for investigation.

That hasn't satisfied some critics, who've asked for Hall's resignation.

"How much does she need to do to be held accountable? Does she need to commit armed robbery?" said state Rep. Ralph Long, D-Atlanta. "The damage has really been done. The trust has been lost."

Atlanta's probe was part of a larger statewide investigation that has so far led to nearly 200 Georgia educators being turned over to the state's teacher licensing commission for possible sanctions. Atlanta by far had the largest number of schools on a list of elementary and middle schools with irregular levels of erasures on student tests.

In Baltimore, the principal at George Washington Elementary School was fired this year and stripped of her teaching license after state officials found thousands of marks changing wrong test answers to correct ones. The 18-month investigation into cheating was a harsh setback for the school, which had been a source of pride for city officials because of its improved test scores.

The principal, Susan Burgess, has denied all wrongdoing.

Texas has been plagued with cheating allegations in recent years.

The Houston school district was investigated in 2005 for widespread cheating on the Texas standardized test at 23 schools. Six teachers were fired and three administrators demoted after cheating was proven at four schools.

The following year, an audit flagged 442 Texas schools for irregularities, forcing the Texas Education Agency to issue tighter regulations on testing materials. More recently, educators at a handful of schools were either fired or reassigned after it was found they helped students cheat on tests.

In May, the principal, assistant principal and three teachers at Normandy Crossing Elementary School in Houston resigned over allegations of test tampering. Investigators said the educators gave students a study guide to the standardized science test after sneaking a look at the questions by "tubing," creating an open tube of the test booklet without breaking the seal.

In 2004, Washington state investigated nearly two dozen reports of improperly administered tests in various school districts. Teachers admitted to telling students questions before the exam, changing answers or telling students to fix answers.

Similar problems have popped up in Norfolk, Va., where a state investigation found that a principal pressured teachers to use an overhead projector to show special education students answers on a reading test. In Massachusetts, the state shut down the Robert M. Hughes Academy Charter School in Springfield after the school produced dramatic and unlikely test scores for students.

"It definitely undermines the reputation of the district, and it can have undeserved negative effects for teachers who are not involved and did a good job," said Bob Linn, a testing expert who is retired from the University of Colorado at Boulder. "Everybody then becomes suspect."


So now we have an explanation at last. A scientific one too. There had to be an explanation of why barely literate posters on here display a hauteur and an insolence sufficiently inflated as to cause them to feel qualified to pontificate on a nation's educational arrangements.

High Seas
 
  1  
Reply Wed 6 Jul, 2011 10:10 am
@spendius,
spendius wrote:

Quote:
It might even transform humanity itself.


Can it make women easier to understand?

I don't know the answer to that question, but it would certainly make the relatively tepid response to your posts here easier to understand - here, I found a mathematical model from network theory that purports to show that.....
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/26967/?ref=rss
Quote:
.....negative actions seem to be more infectious than positive ones. However, players with a high fraction of negative actions tend to have shorter lives. ....So the bottom line is that the society tends towards positive behaviour.

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/files/65915/Good%20and%20evil.png
High Seas
 
  1  
Reply Wed 6 Jul, 2011 10:15 am
@spendius,
spendius wrote:
......So now we have an explanation at last. A scientific one too. There had to be an explanation of why barely literate posters on here display a hauteur and an insolence sufficiently inflated as to cause them to feel qualified to pontificate on a nation's educational arrangements.

A positive cooperation mindset is shown in the above and similar models to promote social evolution for all living creatures, incl. humans - and may be critical to our faster evolution. And most of us "barely literate posters" would have added "n" to your indefinite article preceding the French word "hauteur" Smile
0 Replies
 
spendius
 
  1  
Reply Wed 6 Jul, 2011 12:21 pm
@High Seas,
Then it must be positive actions which have dropped us all in the ****.

Quote:
And most of us "barely literate posters" would have added "n" to your indefinite article preceding the French word "hauteur"


Which proves my point. It is an English word. Adding a "n", or adding an "enn", is a bit snobby I would have thought.

The item I quoted, and the CBS feechewer last night on the matter which inspired me to find it, are just grist to the mill for my theory that the educational system is not run for the kids at all. They would be better off without it and given instead a week to study the salary scales, working conditions and general life-style of every occupation a respectable young American might aspire too. "Teacher" having been deleted of course. People should teach for the love of it. For the satisfaction of seeing the little monsters blossom forth as sane, well adjusted adults.

The money saved, a not inconsiderable amount, could be used to provide learning facilities, supervised by ex-Marines and ex Ward Sisters who have had enough of the **** and the goo and the gore to say nothing of the whinging and whining and the general mutterings of malcontent. When the likes of Ms Hall can be declared Superintendent of the Year by the American Association of School Administrators it is time some radical thinking is given a chance.
spendius
 
  1  
Reply Wed 6 Jul, 2011 12:59 pm
@spendius,
Maybe I should add that the procedure of helping students to pass their exams by means other than them having learned anything began its life when the in-bred sons of heriditary kings were presented to tutors of the establishments of the Higher Learning and high treason was an aspect of the king's rage.

Ms Hall has not discovered it or anything.

In a republic, where everyone is equal, from Cyrus Vance Jnr. to Henry Kissinger and from the black lady in Renaldo and Clara, who interrupts a philosophical discussion in the street to expound her own wisdom, to Madelaine Albright, one might expect the principle to be applied to everyone.

Perhaps Ms Hall arranged the exposure herself in order to draw attention to what goes on in better areas such as those where farmerman and his cronies were "educated". In which case she fully deserves the honour bestowed on her by the AASA. (A not for profit outfit no doubt).

Why should her poor students be denied the privileges of those in higher social circles. When I was captain of the school cricket eleven the priests made allowances for my net practice, which interfered with my studies a great deal for the honour of the school, and provided me with a crammer the night before the exam which was always amazingly congruent with the questions on the paper. Or 5 of them. 5 from 12 was usual so there are 7 important matters in every subject which I know nothing about other than what I have picked up on my weary journey through this world of woe.
izzythepush
 
  1  
Reply Wed 6 Jul, 2011 01:10 pm
@spendius,
spendius wrote:

I know nothing about other than what I have picked up on my weary journey through this world of woe.


Is that like world of woecraft?
 

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