Reflectorites
Below are web article summaries with links for the period 20-31 December
1999, in descending date order, with my comments in square brackets.
Steve
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http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/1999/millennium/ [episode 10] CNN ...
The 20th century produced more creativity, more effort, more technical
resourcefulness, more planning, more freedom, more power for good than
ever before in human history. It was also the century of the most
destructive wars, the most inhuman massacres, the most barbarous
tyrannies, the worst extremes of wealth and poverty, the foulest
environmental degradation, the most trash, the cruelest disillusionment. It
promised so much and betrayed so many. The big mystery of the 20th
century is: Why did progress fail? ... First, people say, progress failed
because men forgot God. The century's wickedest excesses were
perpetrated by godless movements, fascist or communist.. It's no
coincidence ... the most secular century has been the most iniquitous.
Without God to fear, human beings cannot be relied on to observe
morality. ... (121/1262) [Predictably the article goes on to dismiss this out
of hand on fallacious grounds, proving once again what it actually says at
the end: "There are `few lessons of history,' and in any
case people never seem to learn from them"! BTW it's not the 21st century
yet.]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/19991230/sc/safrica_apeman_1.html
Yahoo! ... December 30 ... S.Africa Apeman Is Guide to Human Origins ...
[A]... researcher ... uncovered the apeman's fossilized left arm and hand
embedded in rock more than 20 meters ... below the surface. "... Dr Ron
Clarke told Reuters. ...The hand and arm belong to the same creature
whose foot, lower leg and lower thigh bones and skull that were discovered
earlier this decade at the same site ... the dislodging of rocks had separated
the bones ... He is confident of finding the rest of the specimen deeper in
the cave, including the backbone and the pelvis. ... (92/949) [There are
fragments found in various places throughout this cave and yet Clark
assumes they all must come from the same individual! Clark in the article
wonders why there are no ape ancestors, only human ones. Maybe that's
because paleoanthropologists always assume that every hominoid fossil
they find was a human, not an ape, ancestor?]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_570000/570429.stm BBC
... 30 December, 1999 ... Scientists ... will send bacteria into space and
back inside manmade 'meteorites' attached to the heat shield of a Russian
space probe .... [They] included ... a manmade piece simulating a
sedimentary rock from the Martian surface. ... Preliminary results suggest
clear differences between the exposed side ... and the side protected by the
heat shield. ... "The next experiment will use samples loaded with bacteria
... (62/625) [No doubt if some of the bacteria survive we will hear all about
on the front page of the newspapers, e.g. "Scientific Experiment Proves we
Came from Mars!" What is interesting in the shift of the focus of origins-
of-life research to space, as science quietly gives up on chemical evolution
on Earth, perhaps without ever admitting to the public they were wrong
these last 40+ years!]
http://www.washtimes.com/culture/culture-19991229.htm December 29,
1999. Contesting science's anti-religious bias ... The Washington Times.
Scholars from the Seattle-based Discovery Institute promote 'intelligent
design' ... called "the wedge" - as in the steel spike for splitting hardwood.
... now has expanded to 45 fellows ... "intelligent design," a term coined ...
to say aspects of nature show design, and thus a purpose. ... is a valid
scientific inquiry, even if it suggests a designer, such as God. ... Phillip
Johnson, the Berkeley law professor ... got the debate going with his 1991
book, "Darwin on Trial," ... The design idea ... suggests a cosmic order
that defines what a human is ... Discovery founder Mr. Chapman ... said the
opposition to "the wedge" is expected. "We're able to disagree with the
majority culture without being disagreeable," ... (130/1301)
[A fair article in The Washington Times explaining what the ID movement
and "The Wedge" is. Those on the Calvin Reflector who have hinted darkly
that the Discovery Institute has a lot of money may be disappointed to read
that in 1999 its operating budget was only $2 million and the ID movement
share of that was only $750,000!]
http://216.116.225.186/stories/122799/kan_evolution27.shtml The Capital-
Journal ... 29-Dec-99 ... The Kansas State Board of Education's decision to
de-emphasize evolution ... was the state's top story of the year ... four of
the six board members ... stand for re-election ... [including] Chairwoman
Linda Holloway ... the board adopted ... standards ... subjects not included
for testing ... was "macroevolution," ... But included was "microevolution,"
... The new standards replaced ones that made little reference to evolution
... (61/612) [It will be interesting to see if Holloway and the other Board
members who voted to not accept macroevolution and the Big Bang will be
re-elected. Note the bit about the previous standards "that made little
reference to evolution"! I wonder when some honest leading Darwinist
(assuming that is not a contradiction in terms) is going to have the courage
to point out to publicly to his colleagues that they are misrepresenting what
*really* happened, if they continue claiming that the Board "removed"
evolution from the State's curriculum?]
http://www.kcstar.com/item/pages/opinion.pat,opinion/37741c7d.c28,.html
The Kansas City Star. ... 12/28/99 ... My candidate for Kansas story of the
year is the absolutely grotesque media coverage of the Kansas State Board
of Education's new science standards. ... "the board took evolution out of
the state's mandatory science standards" (they didn't); ... the view of
evolution that the high priests of Darwinism hold is compatible with the
notion of theistic evolution ... (it's not); and ... the struggle is between
science and religion (a convenient fantasy ...). ... (72/730) [One thing that
convinces me that IDers are on the right track in their claim that science
has been taken over by a materialist-naturalist philosophy is the way that
the science establishment and the media continually claim that the Kansas
Board *removed* evolution from that State's science standards when in
fact they *increased* the amount of evolution to be taught compared with
the previous standards!]
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/science/DailyNews/superbug991228.html
ABCNEWS ... Dec. 28 - scientists have ... inserted genes from another
form of bacteria into Deinoccoccus [radiodurans] ... producing a superbug
that transforms ... compounds ... found at nuclear weapons production sites
into less harmful forms. ... It can survive ... gamma radiation ... 3,000 times
the lethal dose for humans ... Even when hundreds of portions of DNA are
damaged by radiation, the microorganism can usually repair itself ... using
redundant genetic codes ... (62/636). Also at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_582000/582755.stm BBC
... 29 December, 1999 Microbe tucks into toxic waste ... The modified
microbe, based on Deinococcus radiodurans ... works in the laboratory but
has yet to be tested in the field ... Scientists believe they may be able to
produce more superbugs, tailor-made to clean up specific waste
products.... (46/537) [This is great for the environment. But how can these
researchers be sure that these new superbugs won't mutate and attack other
things, like human beings for example? Note the `design feature' of
redundant (`junk'?) DNA!]
http://www.latimes.com/news/columns/colone/19991227/t000118425.html
Los Angeles Times ... December 28, 1999. No Limits Hinder UC
Thinker...... Searle .. was setting out on an overarching program of
explaining the relationship of human beings to the universe they occupy.
"The physical world is a perfectly natural place. It consists of particles
organized into systems, some of which have evolved consciousness and
intentionality. "My major project has always been fitting human beings into
that physical world." This involves in large part explaining what human
beings are and how they work: how they think, how they manufacture
meaning out of the nonsense vibration of vocal cords, how they experience
and come to know the world. ... Searle remained substantially unknown
outside the academy until 1972 ... the technology revolution was
underway, and with it people began seeing the computer as a powerful new
way of viewing the human mind. The mind really is just a computer, they
said; it just happens to be located in the brain. If minds are computers, the
thinking went, then computers are minds. We can create machines that
think. This gave rise to a new science called artificial intelligence, a group
of whose practitioners invited Searle to Yale to discuss their work.
Because he knew next to nothing about artificial intelligence, Searle took a
book on the subject along to read en route. He was shocked to learn that
the people he was going to see believed there was virtually no distinction
between a computer and a human thinker. He later devised and published a
famous thought experiment that sought to refute this. It goes like this: A
man who does not speak Chinese is put into a room with a bunch of pieces
of paper on which are Chinese symbols. He is told people outside the room
will pass to him other Chinese symbols and he is given a sheet of
instructions specifying which of his Chinese symbols to pass back in
correspondence with the ones he receives. The man does this so well that it
seems to people outside the room he must understand Chinese. But he is
merely manipulating the symbols according to the instructions he was
given. He understands nothing. The man in the room, Searle said,
corresponds to the computer, which also understands nothing and just
manipulates symbols. To say such manipulation is thinking is silly, he said.
In publishing the Chinese Room argument in 1980, he sought to eliminate
artificial intelligence as a serious enterprise. It is, he said, "a major
intellectual disgrace."... (417/4254) [That Searle has to make it his major
project "fitting human beings into that physical world" is evidence that they
are not wholly part of "that physical world"! But of course Searle, brilliant
though he is, is a prisoner to his basic, unquestioned Materialistic
assumption. AI was a corollary of Materialism. If all is matter, what else
*could* the mind be but the brain, which in turn could only be, as Minsky's
put it "a computer made of meat"? AI's demise is really Materialism's
demise, except materialists (including Searle) don't yet realise it!]
http://www.cnn.com/1999/NATURE/12/28/celltransplant.ap/index.html
CNN ... December 28, 1999 ... (AP) -- ... A team of researchers ... was
able to transplant the stem cells from one type of mouse into another. The
cells then developed into sperm cells, carrying the traits of the donor male.
... it could have major implications for some young human cancer victims
... the ability ... raises the possibility of using gene therapy to correct
genetic problems. "Ethical problems with this approach abound," ...
(67/712) [Yet another genetic manipulation technique with great potential
for good but also for evil. It seems a small step from preserving a child's
own immature stem cells so that after cancer treatment they can be
reimplanted to go on to become sperm cells, to the implanting of *someone
else's* stem cells to ensure that only persons with those traits deemed
`suitable' can be born?]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/19991227/sc/health_hiv_1.html Yahoo!
... December 27 ... Study Finds HIV Infection Differs in Men, Women ...
(Reuters) - Women may be infected by the HIV virus in a different way
than men ... suggesting it could be even harder to develop a vaccine that
would work well on women ... most women in the study initially were
infected by multiple variants of the HIV virus while all of the men initially
were infected by a single variant of the HIV virus. ... Once infected by
single or multiple variants of HIV, the virus replicates itself into even more
genetic variants, making it difficult to develop a vaccine. ..... (97/971) [The
claim that HIV solely and directly causes AIDS is looking weaker with
every new ad hoc explanation!]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/19991227/sc/britain_hiv_1.html Yahoo!
... December 27 ... British scientists have developed a blood test which may
transform HIV treatment ... [and] lead to therapies that ... controlled the
virus and ... halted its progression to AIDS. ... "The complex and toxic
medications HIV patients receive ... can ... be monitored more effectively
... "The challenge now lies in understanding the nature of the reservoir in
which the virus continues to grow despite anti-retroviral drugs." ...
(63/639) [Maybe an alternative explanation for science's continuing failure
to discover an effective treatment for AIDS is that: 1) the reason scientists
are not preventing HIV progressing to AIDS is because AIDS is not
caused solely or directly by HIV; and/or 2) many (if not most) deaths in
HIV/AIDS patients are caused, at least in part, from "the complex and
toxic medications HIV patients receive"?]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/19991220/sc/madcow_humans_1.html
Yahoo! ... December 20 ... (Reuters) - Genetically engineered mice have
helped prove that 50 or so people with a rare brain- wasting illness caught
it by eating beef from cattle with mad cow disease ... Michael Scott of the
University of California, San Francisco ... said their experiment provided
very strong evidence that bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE or mad
cow disease) and a new form of its human cousin, Creutzfeldt-Jakob
disease (CJD), are the same. ... (72/721) [CJD was thought to be a result
of HIV and AIDS, but now it appears it can be the result of BSE. So
maybe the original assumption that HIV directly and solely causes AIDS is
also flawed?]
PS: Please forgive the tagline below. I have been sitting on it for months and
since it is the `silly season' it is now or never! :-)
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"In the middle sits the lone figure of Steve Jones, a man so universally
sceptical that unless he had his birth certificate he would doubt his own
existence." (Hurst L., "The darling of the masses", New Scientist, 6 June
1998, p50)
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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