Reflectorites
Here are some excerpts from the Electronic Telegraph from 13-27 April 2000,
with my comments in square brackets.
Steve
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=000113078204876&rtmo=fqrDfrMs&atmo=FFFFFFFX&pg=/et/00/4/13/ecfdar13.html
Electronic Telegraph 13.04.00 ... Alfred Russel Wallace page - Western Kentucky
University http://www.wku.edu/%7Esmithch/index1.htm ... Did a forgotten
naturalist beat Darwin to natural selection? Alfred Wallace was one of the great
Victorians - and world famous in his day. ... It is the culmination of a year's work,
raising funds and then renovating Wallace's long-neglected grave. But it also marks
something of a renaissance in appreciation of this extraordinary Victorian ...
Wallace developed the theory of evolution by natural selection ... The theory,
however, bears the name of a certain Charles Robert Darwin, who had the same
idea and who, by contrast, now lies in all the splendour of Westminster Abbey.
And although ... Wallace's name was eclipsed by that of Darwin, he was far from
unknown in his time. ... despite a disadvantaged start, he turned himself into a
professional collector, working first in the Amazon, then Indonesia - where the
Wallace Line separates the flora and fauna of Asia and Australasia. With numerous
scientific papers and many books to his name, he became, by the 1890s, one of the
world's best known scientists ... "Wallace...had this extraordinary strength of
character," .... "When he was on his way back to England in 1852 after four years
of work collecting in the Amazon, there was a fire on the ship and he lost
everything. ... he just turned around and said, 'Right, I think I'll go to the Malay
Archipelago for eight years.'" It was there, in 1858, while recovering from a bout
of malaria, that Wallace hit on the idea of evolution by natural selection to explain
the origins of new species. Excited by his insight, he penned an essay on the
subject to Darwin, with whom he'd struck up a correspondence several years
earlier. On reading it, Darwin confessed to fearing that his life's work was about to
be "smashed" into pieces - a relative unknown producing, in a succinct 40 pages,
what appeared very much like an elegant abstract of Darwin's own unfinished and
unpublished work. The events that followed are still being debated today. Dr
George Beccaloni, an entomologist, also at the Natural History Museum, who
spearheaded the effort to renovate Wallace's grave, believes something "very fishy"
went on. Darwin sent Wallace's paper to a friend, the eminent geologist Sir Charles
Lyell, a pillar of the scientific establishment. He in turn arranged for the paper and
various private letters from Darwin on evolution (pre-dating Wallace's work) to be
read out together to a meeting of the Linnean Society in July that year, establishing
Darwin's priority on the theory. Darwin then rushed his own book, On the Origin
of Species, into print a year later and its great success ensured that before long, his
name alone was linked with the theory of evolution by natural selection. Some
believe this was less than honourable on Darwin's part. Dr Beccaloni goes further,
supporting a theory that Darwin received the Wallace paper earlier than he claims
he did, and may have used some of his contemporary's ideas. The documentary
evidence has been pored over for some time, but ... most serious scholars of the
history of evolutionary theory remain unconvinced that Darwin is guilty of the
theft of Wallace's intellectual property. With at least six major biographies of
Wallace currently either in progress or awaiting publication, there may yet be more
surprises in store. ... [IMHO Darwin did act less than honourably in not
immediately forwarding Wallace's MS to Lyell for publication as requested, but
instead prevailed on his friends Lyell and Hooker to have his abstract read jointly
with Wallace's paper. However, the claim that Darwin plagiarised Wallace seems
unsustainable, since the abstract of Darwin's theory is attached to a letter he wrote
to Asa Gray in September 1857. But what is *really* interesting IMHO is the
rehabilitation of Wallace, which implies a `demythologising' of Darwin.]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=000113078204876&rtmo=ln7Hwlnt&atmo=llllll1x&pg=/et/00/4/27/ecfbrai27.html
Electronic Telegraph. 27.04.00 ... Seeing is believing - any moment now... The
human brain lags behind the present, says new research. ... Our brains seem to
work in a similar way to the slightly delayed broadcast of live TV shows to provide
an opportunity for fast editing changes. ... Human perception of the outside world
seems to be delayed by a minimum of 80 thousandths of a second. ... human brains
seem to develop conscious awareness in an "after-the-fact fashion", analysing
information from both before and after an event before committing to a decision
about what happened. ... Dr Eagleman describes these results as "quite surprising".
"It means that your brain collects information into the future of an event before it
commits to what it thinks it saw at the time of the event," he says. ... "More
surprises may be in store as we look for explanations in the biology of the brain
itself." .... [More evidence of a `ghost in the machine'?]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=000113078204876&rtmo=ln7Hwlnt&atmo=llllll1x&pg=/et/00/4/27/ecfchik27.html
Electronic Telegraph. 27.04.00 ... She's a lot smarter than you think Although
chickens don't top the list of clever animals, their particular abilities are surprisingly
impressive ... although chickens might not top the list of clever animals, their
particular abilities are important - and sometimes surprisingly impressive. ...
Readers may be impressed by the chicken that learnt to peck a key to obtain access
to a perch suspended over a tank of water. It then crossed the perch, pulled a
string three times to unlock a door, turned right at a T-junction, and jumped across
water to reach a nestbox. ... In fact, most animals can be trained to perform
seemingly complex tasks with the promise of a food reward. The "clever" chicken
may not even have envisaged the final nestbox when it performed the first keypeck
of the sequence. Dr Christine Nicol, ... has been impressed most by how they can
teach, which has otherwise only been studied extensively in primates. ... [As more
animals are trained to perform impressive feats, the achievements of chimps may
not seem so special? The article also discusses suffering and emotions in animals.]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=000113078204876&rtmo=ln7Hwlnt&atmo=llllll1x&pg=/et/00/4/27/ecnbab27.html
Electronic Telegraph 27.04.00 ... Babbling, the birth of language ... THE babbling
of babies may be the same as the first words spoken by our ancestors more than a
million years ago. Scientists have found that four basic sounds are common to
babies around the world and are the basis of adult speech. This backs theories that
there was one mother tongue that evolved into all other languages. ... [Support for
the Biblical statement that all mankind once spoke the same language: "Now the
whole world had one language and a common speech..." (Gn 11:1)? And more
evidence against the multi-regional hypothesis.]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=000113078204876&rtmo=ln7Hwlvt&atmo=99999999&pg=/et/00/4/20/ecntic20.html
Electronic Telegraph 20.04.00 ... Chaos theory may prevent heart attacks ...
EVIDENCE of "chaos" has been found in the heartbeats of cardiac patients,
paving the way to developing new ways to prevent an attack by "nudging" an
ailing heart with tiny electric shocks. ... it may be possible to refine these devices
so that tiny currents can be used well in advance of a possible attack to keep
heartbeat on track, said Prof Robert Harrison ... [An example of how an intelligent
designer can bring order out of chaos? It is my preferred model of the Intelligent
Designer's intervention/guidance at strategic points in natural history that they
were well in advance where small, well-placed changes would have foreseen
maximum effects.]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=000113078204876&rtmo=ln7Hwlvt&atmo=99999999&pg=/et/00/4/20/ecfeas20.html
Electronic Telegraph. 20.04.00 ... How the date for Easter was set many moons
ago A ruling 1,700 years ago made Holy Week late this year - but kept science
alive during its darkest hour .... Thanks to a Church ruling 1,700 years ago, the
date of its most important festival is determined by an unlikely combination of the
lunar cycle, the solar year and our tradition of dividing the year into 365 days. ...
The efforts to predict the festival stimulated science during the Dark Ages and
paved the way for modern astronomy. ... [Leaving aside the misnomer "Dark
Ages", this is another example of the crucial role that Christianity played in the
development of modern science.]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=000113078204876&rtmo=ln7Hwlzt&atmo=99999999&pg=/et/00/4/13/ecnmar13.html
Electronic Telegraph. 13.04.00 ... This little meme went to market... A MARKET
research website with a difference has been set up by a Sussex University
researcher. The online research tool uses "memetic" theory to process responses to
questions posed on the site. ... When it is interpreted, the information will be sold
to companies to increase the potential of their advertising and marketing
campaigns ... The word "meme" was coined in the Seventies by the evolutionary
biologist Richard Dawkins, in his book The Selfish Gene, as a cultural analogue to
a gene - in other words, any idea or fragment of an idea that can be shared..."What
business would like to have is the technology to engineer a memetic idea or
product that could sweep through a population. They want an idea or product that
behaves like a mind virus - that goes non-linear and sweeps through populations
like a measles epidemic...." ... [It seems fitting that Darwinist, that "mind virus" par
excellence, having been appropriated by Marxism, Freudianism, Nazism, and
`robber baron' Capitalism, has now been appropriated by "advertising and
marketing"!]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=000113078204876&rtmo=ln7Hwlzt&atmo=99999999&pg=/et/00/4/13/ecnsci13.html
Electronic Telegraph. 13.04.00 ... Why science may bring curse of immortality ...
BETTER treatment of disease could lead to "generational cleansing" as people live
longer, an ethical expert warned last week. The elderly could be condemned to
death by suicide or euthanasia after an allotted lifespan as medical advances raise
the maximum age beyond 120, according to Dr John Harris ... a side-effect of
research to treat the diseases of old age, such as dementia, cancer and arthritis,
could be to extend the maximum age to immortality. ... Society would have to
make compromises, for instance by deciding that when individuals have had "a fair
innings" they must die, either by suicide, euthanasia or even by reactivating the
ageing process. ... "How could a society resolve deliberately to curtail healthy life
while maintaining a commitment to sanctity of life? The contemplation of making
sure that people who wish to go on living cannot do so is terrible indeed." ... [An
insight into why living forever in a fallen world might be a curse and death actually
a mercy (cf. Gn 3:22)?]
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"Setting aside the problem of the origin of ribose, the synthesis of
nucleosides (base and sugar linked together as in present-day nucleotides)
also poses problems. Purines react with ribose to yield the corresponding
nucleosides in small amounts. The analogous reaction with pyrimidines
seems hopeless. The phosphorylation of nucleosides to nucleotides can be
done in dry-phase with relatively good yield, but all sorts of isomers with
varying degrees of phosphorylation emerge. This lack of purity is important
because accurate replication of a polymer depends on chemical purity."
(Maynard Smith J. & Szathmary E., "The Major Transitions in Evolution,"
W.H. Freeman: Oxford UK, 1995, pp.31-32).
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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