Vexen Crabtree's Blurty
 
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Vexen Crabtree's Blurty:

    [ << Previous 20 ]
    Wednesday, July 28th, 2010
    9:24 pm
    God Cannot Change: Physics Versus Traditional Religion
    I've added a little bit to "The Four Dimensions and the Immutability of God: 3.2. Traditional Religious Beliefs" by Vexen Crabtree (2007):

    Traditionally the Creator of Judaism, Christianity and Islam and many other religions, is a creator that is emotional, creative, moral, judgemental and personable. Nearly all monotheistic religoius books contains descriptions of God portraying emotions that require the creator to be subject to time, not outside of it. For example in Genesis, God is found 'looking' for Adam and Eve; on other occasions, a Human being changes God's mind through the use of a rational argument in one instance, and through the use of a blood ritual in another occasion. The creator of time cannot change its mind - nor can a perfect being. To change is to be subject to time, and to change implies that what comes after was better than before, which would contradict God's perfection.

    God, in all religious literature up until recently, resembled a being with human emotions and thoughts. Whoever wrote religious books tended not to understand the complexities of multi-dimensional abstract mathematics nor the physics of the space-time continuum.
    Book“By employing mathematics as a language, science can describe situations which are completely beyond the power of human beings to imagine. Indeed, most of modern physics falls into this category. [...] It may be logically impossible for anyone to be able to correctly visualize certain physical systems, such as atoms, because they contain features that simply do not exist in the world of our experience. [...] Failure of the human imagination to grasp certain crucial features of reality is a warning that we cannot expect to base great religious truths (such as the nature of the creation) on simple-minded ideas of space, time and matter.” -- "God And The New Physics" by Paul Davies (1984)


    Current Mood: happy
    Current Music: "Supersonic Snakebite" by Project Pitchfork
    Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010
    8:18 pm
    The Short History of Romantic Marriage in the West
    I've added some details to "Marriage: Its Diversity and Character: 3.2. The Short History of Romantic Marriage in the West" by Vexen Crabtree (2004)

    Modern marriage, "for love", is a relatively rare and new institution. Not only is monogamous marriage common in only 20% of present-day societies, but romantic marriage itself has only been common in the West for a few hundred years. According to the sociologists Anthony Giddens, Lawrence Stone and John Boswell, even as late as the 1500s modern ideas of romantic marriage had not found common acceptance. Religious authorities regarded marriage as a necessary, pragmatic solution to unhealthy sexual emotions, and not something to be done for pleasure, romance or affection.

    Book“[In the 1500s] Individual freedom of choice in marriage and other aspects of family life was subordinated to the interests of parents, other kin or the community. Outside aristocratic circles, where it was sometimes actively encouraged, erotic or romantic love was regarded by moralists and theologians as a sickness.” -- "Sociology" by Anthony Giddens (1997)

    “In premodern Europe marriage usually began as a property arrangement, was in its middle mostly about raising children, and ended about love. Few couples in fact married 'for love', but many grew to love each other in time as they jointly managed their household, reared their offspring, and shared life's experiences. Nearly all surviving epitaphs to spouses evince profound affection. By contrast, in most of the modern West, marriage begins about love, in its middle is still mostly about raising children (if there are children), and ends - often - about property, by which point love is absent or a distant memory.” -- John Boswell

    The idea of romantic marriage, steeped in personal choice, coincidence and love, had begun to flourish in cities and urban centres. Until the 1800s, marriage was still a deal sought for practical advantage - a peasant could not maintain his holding on his own, without a committed and hardworking wife. When bereaved, a peasant married almost at once, often to whoever was simply most willing to work hardest. It wasn't until the 1800s that ideas of romantic marriage began to emerge from the cities.
    “The traditional conception of marriage as essentially a business contract, an arrangement based on mutual practical advantage in terms of property-ownership or the labour-power needed to work a peasant holding, the conception which had been taken for granted in pre-industrial peasant Europe, was now rapidly decaying. The idea of it as the result of free individual choice based on individual tastes and preferences was now seeping from the large city into the countryside and the smaller urban centres. In one small French town, for example, during the two decades after Waterloo, the average age of women at marriage was relatively high (about twenty-five) and about a third of brides were older than their husbands. Quite rapidly, however, the average age of marriage fell to twenty-one; and from about 1865 onwards only one woman in ten was older than the man she married. A basic aspect of human nature, the fact that, given a free choice, men prefer to marry women who are younger than themselves and who are physically attractive, was now increasingly able to assert itself.” -- "The Ascendancy of Europe 1815-1914" by M S Anderson (1985)
    Although romantic marriage was destined to dominate the ideas of what marriage should be in the West, it actually has a rather short history of less than 200 years of general acceptance.

    Current Mood: happy
    Current Music: "The Tongue of Fire" by Emperor
    Saturday, March 27th, 2010
    9:38 pm
    Perception of Crime Rates in the UK
    I've added this section to "Modern Mass Media: 1.3. Perception of Crime Rates in the UK" by Vexen Crabtree:

    "Crime stories have long been a staple of news reporting, but crime news doesn't reflect the real world" says Professor Justin Lewis, head of the School of Journalism at Cardiff University. He continues: "Crime is usually reported because it is dramatic or alarming, not because it is typical or likely to have an impact on our lives. So while increases in the crime figures are seen as dramatic, decreases are seen as dull. The first will be headlined, the second glossed over. [...] Many people have assumed in recent years that crime levels are going up when they have actually been going down". For example in the 1990s the annual total crime rate was over 15 millions crimes per year on average in the UK. This was according to the large-scale British Crime Survey which quizzes people about crime, rather than rely on police or government statistics. In the 2000s the average was closer to 10 million crimes per year. This significant drop has occurred despite an increasing population in the UK. "Despite these changes, 65 per cent of the population believe that crime levels are increasing in the country as a whole". Aside from this independent source, the UK government's Home Office has itself complained of the mistaken opinions of the masses, noting that in particular, readers of poor quality newspapers are the most likely to have skewed perceptions of crime:
    “The Home Office says that [...] Crime in England and Wales actually peaked in 1995 and has now fallen by 44% in the last 10 years. 'Despite the number of crimes estimated by the British Crime Survey falling in recent years, comparatively high proportions of people still believe the crime rate to have risen. This is not true.' said Jon Simmons, head of Home Office research and statistics who put part of the problem down to media reporting. 'Readers of national tabloids were around twice as likely [39%] as those who read national broadsheets [19%] to think that the national crime rate has increase 'a lot' in the previous year', he said.”
    Populist news outlets prefer to headline what sells rather than practice good journalism. And aside from crime rates, populist papers tend to report the negative side of pretty much everything.

    The next section on that page is about "Modern Mass Media: 1.4. The Pessimism Syndrome"
    Monday, March 15th, 2010
    10:47 pm
    The 'Experience of Evil' Theodicy
    I have revamped http://www.vexen.co.uk/religion/theodicy_experience.html , the bulk of it now reads:

    Some people say that God created suffering, pain and evil because we need to experience these things. But there is no 'greater purpose' that can justify the existence of the amount of suffering and superfluous evil that exists for humankind or in the natural world. There are a few major arguments against the experience theodicy.

    1. Infanticide and Heaven: If the unborn go to heaven when they die prematurely, as is assumed by many, then it means that these babies have not yet experience the suffering of life. If they can enter heaven without experiencing suffering and evil, then, it cannot be true that God created suffering because it is good for us, and God should put everyone in heaven immediately.

    2. Real suffering is not necessary: God could simply give us an innate knowledge of what evil is like, without us having to experience it. We have a lot of instinctive emotional reactions to pain and suffering, these are not learned. They are proof that innate understanding is valid, and God can easily endow us with as much innate understanding about evil as required. We would then know about it, and not need to experience it. We could all happily appreciate its absence.

    3. We don't need an experience of suffering. Forgetting the fact that unborn babies don't seem to need it and that God could give us knowledge of it without us having to actually experience it, it seems that there is no particular reason why we need either knowledge or experience of suffering and pain. Any advantage that is gained from experiencing these things could simply be granted to us directly by God, therefore bypassing the need.

    4. Angels and God: If angels, and if god, exist in heaven then it shows that it is possible for beings to be in heaven without first going through an experience of suffering in life. If it possible, then if God is good, it would immediately place everyone in heaven. However, god is not good, so it continues to let us suffer.

    It is inadequate to say merely that knowledge or experience of suffering is requirement for us to enter heaven as a justification of why suffering exists. God can give us innate knowledge of evil, rather than let us experience it directly, and if babies or the unborn go to heaven then is clear that experience of the suffering of life is not actually required, after all. If angels or god exist in heaven then it shows that it is possible for beings to be in heaven without first experiencing suffering. The experience theodicy does not work.

    “To the present day, all theodicies have failed to explain why a good god would create evil, meaning that the existence of evil is simply incompatible with the existence of a good god. After thousands of years of life-consuming passion, weary theologians have not formulated a new answer to the problem of evil for a long time. The violence of the natural world, disease, the major catastrophes and chaotic destruction seen across the universe and the unsuitability of the vastness of reality for life all indicate that god is not concerned with life, and might actually even be evil. Failure to answer the problem of evil sheds continual doubt on the very foundations of theistic religions.”

    "The Problem of Evil: Why Would a Good God Create Suffering?"
    Vexen Crabtree     (2002)

    Wednesday, February 10th, 2010
    6:36 pm
    "Thought processes are accompanied by localized physical activity in the brain"
    I've added text to "Emotions Without Souls: How Biochemistry and Neurology Account for Feelings" by Vexen Crabtree (1999):

    Neurology and science has enabled us to understand the brain to such an extent that such an ethereal concept is no longer needed to explain anything. Modern brain scanning methods include a wide range of technologies, including fMRI, PET, SPECT and EEG. Using these, neuroscientists have made many exciting discoveries, including the physical basis of important thought processes. In all cases, the firing of neurones in these parts of the brains come before awareness and conscious choices are made.

    “All these techniques confirm that thought processes are accompanied by localized physical activity in the brain. Let us look at just a few of the examples relevant to our discussion. Using fMRI, scientists in the United States and Brazil have discovered that the region of the brain activated when moral judgments are being made is different from the region activated for social judgments that are equally emotionally charged. [... It] is not just that physical processes in the brain take part in thinking; they seem to be responsible for the deepest thoughts that are supposed to be the province of spirit rather than matter. [...]”
    Prof. Victor J. Stenger (2007)

    Some people reject this type of thinking. The science is new (even if the idea of a physical basis of consciousness comes from antiquity) and it often takes a while for new discoveries to find their way into popular thinking - neophobia may play its part too.. Prof. Stenger warns that "the implication that "we" are bodies and brains made of atoms and nothing more is perhaps simply too new, too disturbing, too incompatible with common preconceptions to be soon accepted into common knowledge", so, we, as scientists and enlightened readers, should always strife to spread the great depth of our scientific understanding of neurology and consciousness.

    The rest of the page linked contains several discussions and examples from various fields of medical science which are all only possible because emotions are physical, not spiritual, in nature.

    Current Mood: loved
    Current Music: "Feier Dich!" by Unheilig
    Monday, December 28th, 2009
    8:55 pm
    The Struggle for Existence
    I stumbled across a letter from Charles Darwin, where he is despairing at the violence found in nature. I have added it to "The Food Chain: 3. The Design of Earth's Food Chain is Evil" by Vexen Crabtree (2007):

    Many single-cell lifeforms survive off of sunlight, water, and transient chemicals found in the oceans. These simple lifeforms are a Buddhist ideal: They harm no other creatures and feed on nothing living. In a perfect world, all life would have evolved to survive in such a way. With modern technology, we can produce energy to make digestion mostly unnecessary if only we'd have evolved in a way that didn't evolve eating-other-life. All animal life has evolved in a way that makes killing other things necessary. I think that not a single multi-cellular species on Earth survives without directly harming other living life. [...] This desperate, deadly struggle for existence was agonized over by the father of evolutionary theory, Charles Darwin, who wrote:

    “I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly create the Ichneumonidae [wasps] with the express intention of their [larva] feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice.” [Charles Darwin (1860)]

    Current Mood: excited
    Current Music: "Apology (Move!)" by Human Decay
    Friday, November 27th, 2009
    1:22 am
    The Folly of Abstinence-Only Sex Education
    I've added some data to "Birth Control and Contraception: Wisdom Versus Superstition" by Vexen Crabtree (2007):

    In 2009 new data revealed that in the USA at least, abstinence-only education was not only ineffectual, but was actually making things worse. “To the surprise of few outside the rarefied world of the Religious Right, it has emerged that George W Bush's "abstinence only" policies led directly to a rise in teenage pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases. The Centres for Disease Control (CDC) says that after years of falling rates, teen pregnancies and STDs started rising after Bush was re-elected in 2005.

    According to the CDC, birth rates among teenagers aged 15 or older had been in decline since 1991 but rose sharply in more than half of American states after 2005. The number of teenage girls with syphilis had risen by nearly half after a big decrease, while a 20-year fall in the gonorrhea infection rate was being reversed. AIDS cases in adolescent boys had nearly doubled. [...]

    The number of teen pregnancies is double in areas where abstinence is the only method of birth control taught as opposed to areas where there is comprehensive sex education and condoms are handed out. [...] Religious proponents of the "abstinence-only" policies still insist that the reason for the rise is because their policies were not promoted hard enough.”

    The Bible Belt is a swathe of Southern states in the USA famous for their embrace of tough Christianity. It was here, where abstinence-only programmes are popular, that the CDC reported the highest rates of teenage pregnancy and STDs.

    Current Music: "Fear" by Project Pitchfork
    Monday, August 31st, 2009
    7:17 pm
    Self-Isolating Religious Groups, Mass Suicide and Belief in the End of the World!
    I have added large sections to "Religion, Violence, Crime and Mass Suicide" by Vexen Crabtree (2009) on Self-Isolating Religious Groups, Mass Suicide and Belief in the End of the World! Here is some of the new text:

    We saw the Jim Jones' Peoples Temple movement progress gradually from mainstream Christianity, through to a fully-fledged survivalist cult. An emphasis on the end times (when in Christian belief, apocalyptic wars and death scourge most of humanity) emerged slowly. Such ideas are present in most mainstream religions so it is hard to tell believers that it is a dangerous belief. Isolationism, extremism, idealism and an intolerance of people without the same beliefs: these are all commonplace across religious communities. Once you believe in some of those principles, it is hard to draw a firm line and stop a community progressing down a slippery slope to a place where they consider their ideals to be more important than human life. Such a slope met the Peoples Temple in the Jonestown disaster where over 900 of them lost their lives in 1978. Another American group, the Branch Davidians, also took on an increasingly them-and-us attitude. They started out with Biblical ideas about the cataclysms of judgement day, and ended up stockpiling weapons. It culminated with the Waco siege where over 80 of the religionists died during a shoot-out with authorities in 1993.

    Irrationality and susceptibility to believe some unlikely things about the universe can lead to ideals and sectarianism that separate 'others' from their humanity, and allow despicable acts to be undertaken. Aum Shinrikyo was the religious movement responsible for the 1995 sarin gas attack on Tokyo's subway that killed a dozen people and injured thousands. The movement had also already murdered others in order to protect itself. The leader believed in karma, and preached that murder was justified because it stopped people accumulating bad karma. He had picked up Christian ideas, and preached that such actions were an act of mercy, and started preaching about Armageddon. "Political failure and a feeling of national rejection led to increasing millenarianism"; again, the idea of a cataclysmic end of the world fuels seemingly insane bloodshed. The victims are not only the suggestible adherents of the movement, but the relatives, friends and communities that are affected by the religion's otherworldly aims.

    The rest is on www.humanreligions.info.
    Sunday, June 7th, 2009
    12:45 am
    Deceiving the American Public: How the Oil Lobby Manipulates the Press
    From my page "The USA Versus the Environment: Oil, Pollution and Kyoto" by Vexen Crabtree (2002).

    Many of the large oil companies are related, and together they have conspired (in history) to avoid legal pronouncements of their practices. Since oil and petrol industries have become under fire from environmentalists, moralists and activists the world over, they have fought back with well-funded public relations campaigns. These go as far as to supply their own scientists to argue against scientific truths and who appear on radio and news reports.

    “Within months of the UN producing its first report endorsing the idea of man-made climate change, in 1989, Exxon and other big corporations started setting up pseudo-groups. The first and biggest was the Global Climate Coalition which was soon lobbying in the corridors of power [...]. As a single example of its activities, the coalition made a classic appeal to the subconscious feelings of its American audience before the Kyoto conference in December 1997, when it spent $13 million on TV advertising, aimed at reining in the Clinton administration. It pitched the whole issue as a matter of freedom and patriotism. 'America has signed many treaties... but never a treaty of surrender,' was the key line in one advertisement, over a photograph of the Japanese surrender at the end of the Second World War.

    When Kyoto nevertheless produced an agreement to cut emissions, Exxon, in early 1998, helped to set up a new front group, the Global Climate Science Team. [...] Between 1998 and 2005, ExxonMobil alone spent $15.8 million on forty-three different front groups, according to research published in January 2007 by the Union of Concerned Scientists, who described this as 'the most sophisticated and successful disinformation campaign since Big Tobacco misled the public.

    [...]

    A columnist at the Daily Mail [...] Melanie Phillips [wrote] a series of outspoken columns denouncing the whole concept of man-made climate change. 'Global warming is a scam,' she wrote in February 2002. 'The latest evidence is provided in a report published today by the European Science and Environment Forum, in which a group of the most eminent scientists from Britain and America shred the theory.' However, the forum whose work she was quoting was, in truth, yet another pseudo-group, created with the help of two PR agencies (APCO Worldwide and Burson-Marsteller) with the specific intent of campaigning against restrictions on corporate activity; and the report to which Phillips referred in such glowing terms was recycled work which had been funded by Exxon.”

    "Flat Earth News" by Nick Davies (2008)

    My page which criticizes the mass media explains why such lobby groups find it so easy to insert content into the news:

    “Modern journalists work at breakneck speed to process stories as fast as possible. Therefore most news services rely heavily on public relations (PR) material in order to rapidly produce the stream of news. Much of this news comes from trusted wire agencies, but these also rely on PR input. Because of these pressures, public relations firms and commercial companies are having a heyday and find it easy to insert material into news media. In general, over half of all news stories are mostly PR or contain substantial PR-sourced material. Journalists themselves do not check the facts or figures of such inputs, nor admit in the articles themselves that PR material is the true source of the information, so the news often appears unbiased. Powerful commercial lobbies use this weakness to pervert public opinion.

    For example in the 1950s the smoking lobby created a waft of innocent-sounding and scientific-sounding groups in order to discredit government information about the dangers of smoking. Oil and petrol lobbies have spent fortunes on the same PR tricks, as have food industry lobbies. They produce scientific reports engineered by their own scientists, which serve to boost their own industries by deceiving the public. In short, don't trust the news media directly even when they are reporting on scientific-sounding research groups. Always check facts with long-standing scientific bodies such as the Royal Society. Rich and activist commercialist lobby groups have a set of well-practised and efficient methods for manipulating the news and public opinion. The scientists and welfare groups who wish to get real scientific worries about certain industries out into the open are not funded or equipped to run public relations campaigns. Only multinational information campaigns, legal agreements and inter-national political bodies such as the EU have the oomph to be able to fight back against such powerful industries.”

    "The Modern Mass Media: The Bane of Human Cultural Evolution" by Vexen Crabtree (2008)

    This situation of large-scale misinformation can only be rectified by a strong government that is willing to stand up to the commercial-media free for all, but, during the period covered by this article the USA has had its politics dictated by commerce rather than by long-term good sense.

    Current Mood: thoughtful

    Friday, April 24th, 2009
    11:46 pm
    Thursday, March 12th, 2009
    7:40 pm
    Institutionalized Religions Have Their Numbers Inflated by National Polls

    I've completely rewritten this page! The contents of "Institutionalized Religions Have Their Numbers Inflated by National Polls" by Vexen Crabtree (2009) is now:

    1. Established Religions Become Default Religions
    2. People Say They Attend Services Twice As Much as They Actually Do
    3. Popular Religions Diversify and Encompass Many Beliefs
      1. World Religions as Umbrella Terms
      2. Laypeople's Limited Theological Vocabulary Hides Diversity and Artificially Boosts an Established Religion's Numbers
    4. Cultural Ties Distort the Statistics of Religion
    5. Vague Beliefs Get Classified as Concurring With the Dominant Religion
      1. Hidden Secularisation
      2. It is Popular to Mistake Theism in General for the Dominant Religion
    6. Minority Religions Become Under-Represented in Polls
    7. Conclusion


    Current Mood: busy
    Friday, January 16th, 2009
    11:10 pm
    Christian bus driver Ron Heather refuses to drive bus with atheist advert on it
    Christian bus driver Ron Heather in Southampton, who drives for First Bus, has refused to drive buses with the atheist "There is probably no God" advert campaign. Ridiculously, the company have been bending to his wishes and avoiding making him drive those buses, although both parties agree that if there is no other bus, he will have to drive one of them.

    This is ridiculous; imagine if vegetarians could demand not to work in places advertising meat-based food; if atheists refused to work in (for example council town halls) that display religious propaganda such as leaflets (i.e., opening times) from a local church.

    His personal pride and arrogance may seem fine to him, but he certainly hasn't given this much thought. If religious beliefs trump practicalities, then society falls apart amidst sectarian intolerance for almost anything.

    The daft Ron Heather forces society down one of two roads:

    (a) All beliefs are permitted to enforce their dogmas on others, leading to anarchy and chaos, and almost essentially, to the complete segregation of people into clusters, by beliefs, so that they don't have to see each other's religious symbols or adverts.

    (b) Hard secularism, where all religious statements are barred from the public sphere.

    Tell us, Ron Heather and First Bus (who are encouraging those like him), which route you want to take us down!
    Monday, December 8th, 2008
    9:30 pm
    Not enough time!
    There isn't enough time to write everything that should be written, or to quality-check everything that I've written so far! I need an editor, a helper, a spellchecker! Despite being academic, I like real life too much to be the recluse that I could be - meaning, I like communicating with people personally, in depth, and there is too much to take in, in life, to avoid going out into the world and losing yourself in it.

    Although you can get lost in life and enjoy it... the greater and harder path is the more solitary study and writing, the accuracy-checking and statistics-crunching, and it seems that it is this path that is worth something, whereas the former path is merely nice. It is so nice, it would be selfish (and unproductive for everyone) to pursue it too much.

    Current Mood: curious
    Sunday, November 30th, 2008
    2:29 am
    Satanism: The Absence of Satanic Proselytizing
    I've added a quote to "Satanism: Conversion, Deconversion and the Absence of Satanic Proselytizing" by Vexen Crabtree (2002). It is from the High Priest of the Church of Satan, Peter Gilmore:

    “We do not intend to turn the vast insensate masses into Satanists. The masses will do as always and follow their inertia.”

    "The Satanic Scriptures" by Peter Gilmore (2007)



    I like the way he states that the masses 'follow' their inertia (something which doesn't move). It implies an active passiveness, something which I think gets to the truth of the matter quite poetically!

    Current Mood: happy

    Monday, September 8th, 2008
    2:39 pm
    Genetically Modified Food and Meat Grown in Vats
    I've added the following sections to "The Food Chain: Modifications and Justifications!" by Vexen Crabtree (2007):
    1. Genetically Modified Food
      1. Synthetic-Natural Meats
      2. Genetically Modified Food
      3. God's Will Versus Genetics
      4. The Fear of New Food: Neophobia Trumps Rationalism


    Current Music: "Solitary (Signals edit)" by VNV Nation (1998)
    Friday, June 20th, 2008
    11:18 am
    Artificial Evolution: Human achievements prove the principals of evolution
    Added to "Evolution and Unintelligent Design" by Vexen Crabtree (2007, edit) (reference removed):

    If for half a dozen generations, no-one in the world had children with a blond mate, before long there would be no blond human beings. This is how strong the forces of sexual selection can be. If everyone in the world thought cats cute and bred the fluffiest, most child-like and domicile ones, Humans could create a whole new species. In fact, that is exactly how the Egyptians created the domesticated cat from the wild one. Nature did not produce our feline friends; we did. It took them hundreds of years to accomplish what nature does over tens and hundreds of thousands of years. How was it was possible for Egyptians to turn wild cats into a new species of domestic cats? Because they commandeered natural selection for their own ends. The result is artificial selection. It is the same process that exists in nature, but with the intelligence and willpower of humankind behind the driving wheel, instead of blind mother nature. Carl Sagan furnishes us with more examples of artificial selection:

    “Ten thousand years ago, there were no dairy cows or ferret hounds or large ears of corn. When we domesticated the ancestors of these plants and animals - sometimes creatures who looked quite different - we controlled their breeding. We made sure that certain varieties, having properties we consider desirable, preferentially reproduced. [...] Our corn, or maize, has been bred for ten thousand generations to be more tasty and nutritious than its scrawny ancestors; indeed, it is so changed that it cannot even reproduce without human intervention. [...]

    In less than ten thousand years, domestication has increased the weight of wood grown by sheep from less than one kilogram of rough hairs to ten or twenty kilograms of uniform, fine down; or the volume of milk given by cattle during a lactation period from a few hundred to a million cubic centimetres. If artificial selection can make such major changes in so short a period of time, what must natural selection, working over billions of years, be capable of? [...] If humans can make new varieties of plants and animals, must not nature do so also? [...] The answer is all the beauty and diversity of the biological world. Evolution is a fact, not a theory.”

    "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan (1995)

    Our growing understanding of genetics results from our understanding of evolution. When we have mapped out genetic trees through history, tracing changes and predicting what fossils we have yet to find, we have frequently found those very intermediary species. Thousands of such missing links have been found, proving our knowledge of nearly every lineage. But all this knowledge is not just a bed-mate for paleontologists; our understanding of rapidly-evolving bacteria and viruses results in the development of new cures. Take SARS in 2002/3, for example. When several hundred people in China developed severe acute respiratory syndrome, genetic tests based on evolutionary theory led researchers in the right direction:

    “The disease soon spread to Vietnam, Hong Kong, and Canada and led to hundreds of deaths. In March 2003, a team of researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, received samples of a virus isolated from the tissues of a SARS patient. Using a new technology known as a DNA microarray, the researchers compared the genetic material of the unknown virus with that of known viruses. Within 24 hours, they assigned the virus to a particular family based on its evolutionary relationship to other viruses -- a result confirmed by other researchers using different techniques. Immediately, work began on a blood test to identify people with the disease (so they could be quarantined), on treatments for the disease, and on vaccines to prevent infection with the virus.”

    "Science, Evolution and Creationism"
    National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine (2008)

    Fossil-record predictions and genetic kung-fu are two of the most exciting confirmations of evolutionary theory. Another is the record of what we have achieved so far. Our creation of cats, maize, the green carrot, cattle and sheep, and our deepening understanding of genetics is not to be feared. Nature has shown us how to combine genes to produce children; we have shown nature how much better, more nutritious, and safer, the animal and plant kingdom can be if only it is guided intelligently. Between nature and nurture, we have already created a genetically engineered world. We merely done it so slowly that no particular generation of humans was particularly shocked by the process.

    Now things have changed.

    “From factories and research laboratories to medical clinics, we are entering the era of directed human evolution. [...] For most of our history, we have been the passive subjects of change. In this new era we will take the direction of our evolution into our own hands.”

    "Babies by Design: The Ethics of Genetic Choice" by Ronald M. Green (2007)

    We used our minds to domesticate animals and produce plants with unnatural yields. The method we used was to control the spread of genes in the chosen species, continually improving it. In this millennium, the method is the same but our tools are being updated. Instead of manipulating the spread of genes through sexual selection, we can change them from inception using genetic engineering. We can take genes that produce Vitamin C from one plant and import them into another; we can eliminate hereditary disease through genetic screening. We have made the present, and we will make the future. To say that we shouldn't is to say that we should no longer have cats and dogs, nutritious corn, or wool. None of these things have heralded the end of the world, and neither will the things to come!

    Current Mood: blank
    Friday, November 30th, 2007
    4:18 pm
    Rail transport is good!
    I have added some data from Friends of the Earth's "Fact sheet: Why travelling by rail is better for the environment" (2007) to "Public Transport is Good. The Advantages of Pooled Transport." by Vexen Crabtree (2007). Some factoids that are supported by this document:

    1. Train emissions of CO2 per passenger/Km are, on average, approximately half that of travel by car.

    2. Reduced use of fuel. "In 1999 UK road transport consumed 80 times as much energy as rail, while the distance travelled by road passengers and freight was only 15 times as much."

    3. You are 9 times more likely to die travelling by car than by rail.

    4. Carrying freight by rail results in an 80% cut in CO2 emissions per Kilogram carried compared to road haulage and can replace 50 lorry movements.

    The full page contains a fuller discussion and a more complete review of the advantages of public transport over private cars.
    Monday, September 17th, 2007
    8:02 pm
    EU Economic Power
    I've just added Ref.19 below, to: "The European Union: Democratic Values, The Euro, Crises and Migration" by Vexen Crabtree (2007):

    The European Union is formed from a collection of treaties dating back to the European Economic Community founded in 1957. It has changed from an economic body designed to prevent war, into a wide and varied economic, social and political tool which encompasses nearly 500 million people. "The EU is the world's biggest market, largest exporter, biggest aid donor and largest foreign investor"19.
    Wednesday, August 29th, 2007
    2:06 pm
    Invisible life!
    I've added the following quote to "The Food Chain: Photosynthesis and Trophic Levels" by Vexen Crabtree (2007):
    “A spoonful of good quality soil may contain ten trillion bacteria representing 10 000 thousand different species! In total, the mass of micro-organisms on Earth could be as great as a hundred trillion tonnes - more than all the visible life put together.”
    "The Origin of Life" by Paul Davies, p22



    Current Music: "Say Hello Wave Goodbye" by Soft Cell
    Tuesday, August 7th, 2007
    6:58 pm
    Starbucks
    My favorite starbucks drink this year:

    Hazelnut signature hot chocolate, venti, with cream.
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