Reflectorites
Here are excerpts from Yahoo! for the period 7 - 22 June
2000, with my comments in square brackets.
Steve
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http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000619/sc/court_evolution_dc_1.html
Yahoo! ... June 19 ... Top Court Rejects Appeal on Evolution Disclaimer
... WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court let stand on
Monday a ruling that struck down a policy that required elementary and
high school teachers to read a disclaimer before teaching evolution to their
students. Over the dissent of three justices, the nine-member high court
rejected an appeal by a Louisiana school board that made public school
teachers tell their students the lesson on the "scientific theory of evolution
... was not intended to influence or dissuade the Biblical version of
creation." A federal judge and then a U.S. appeals court in New Orleans
struck down the 1994 policy by the Tangipahoa Parish Board of Education
for violating the constitutional requirement on the separation of church and
state. ... The appeals court ruled the disclaimer policy endorses religion and
has the impermissible effect of advancing a particular religious viewpoint --
the belief in the Biblical version of creation. The school board appealed to
the Supreme Court, saying the issue was "of exceptional importance" to
students, parents and educators. ... But the court's three most conservative
members, Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia and
Clarence Thomas, dissented. "At the outset, it is worth noting that the
theory of evolution is the only theory actually taught in the Tangipahoa
Parish schools," Scalia said in the dissent. He referred to the famous
"Monkey Trial" in Tennessee in 1925 that involved the prosecution and
conviction of a biology teacher, John Scopes, for teaching evolution.
"Today we permit a court of appeals to push the much beloved secular
legend of the Monkey Trial one step further," Scalia said. "We stand by in
silence while a deeply divided (appeals court) bars a school district from
even suggesting to students that other theories besides evolution --
including, but not limited to, the Biblical theory of creation, are worthy of
their consideration," he said. ... [The scientific materialists might be
winning the battles but they may be slowly losing the war. At least three
Supreme Court Justices now know that all is not well with evolution.
Scalia's "other theories besides evolution -- including, but not limited to,
the Biblical theory of creation" seems to be a veiled reference to ID. It is
going to be interesting to see what happens if and when a school teaching
ID, which says nothing about the Bible, is put on trial.]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000622/sc/birds_dc_1.html Yahoo! ...
June 22 ... Feathery Fossil Shows Birds Aren't Dinosaurs-Report ...
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The ancient fossil of a little tree-climbing
reptile has a frill of feathers that casts doubt on theories that modern-day
birds evolved from dinosaurs, scientists said on Thursday. The 220 million-
year-old fossil is 75 million years older than the oldest known bird,
Archaeopteryx... It has what clearly are feathers that almost certainly were
used to glide, which means dinosaurs are not the direct ancestors of birds,
Alan Feduccia ...said. ... "...The idea that one can study dinosaurs at the
backyard feeder is a delusional fantasy, but a lot of our fantasies are just
that. It's one of those terrible facts of life." ... the fossil, named
Longisquama insignis, is an archosaur, a reptilian genus that gave rise to
dinosaurs, reptiles and birds. But Longisquama lived side-by-side with
dinosaurs in the Triassic period. "We can identify certain structures in these
fossils that you only find in feathers and just don't see anywhere else. We're
quite sure we're looking at the earliest feather" .... "You could easily see
that there was this midline spine, which sort of told us. But more
important, what we saw at the base of the feather was these structures
tapered down to a sort of rounded point," he added. "That tapered,
rounded point tells us that thing grew within a follicle. Hair and feathers
both grow within follicles but scales do not." The skeleton also looks much
like a bird, although the creature probably looked like a lizard, scrambling
about in trees. "The head is birdlike. The neck is birdlike," ... The frill,
made up of 6 to 8 pairs of feathers, acted to help it glide, .... And it has a
wishbone, a shoulder structure seen in birds. "It may have been able to use
its arms as a steering apparatus.... Feduccia compared it to the small flying
"dragons", of the genus Draco, found in parts of Southeast Asia, which can
expand their ribcages to form glider-like wings. "I think this thing must
have been just like one of these little dragons, gliding around, zipping
around from tree to tree," he said. "We imagine it being a pretty adept
glider." The fossil was found more than three decades ago in central Asia
by a Russian paleontologist specializing in insects. "It had been rumored ...
that it may have something to do with the origin and evolution of feathers
and maybe even about the origin of birds, but for most part people pooh-
poohed it," ... Martin .. said the Russian paleontologist [Alexei Sharov]
thought the preserved imprints showed long scales, not feathers. But had
that been the case, "the slightest breeze would have toppled the animal
over," ... a lot of people in paleontology thought they had it figured out
where feathers came from and where birds came from so there was no
point in going to look at the thing," he said. "These are some amazing
fossils, and at the very least they prove that feathers did not evolve in
dinosaurs," ... ... "The supposed link between dinosaurs and birds is pretty
entrenched in paleontology, but it's not as solid as the public has been led
to believe." [I had a debate on this on the Reflector some time ago. When I
obtained the scientific journals articles on it, including pictures, I must say
it was unconvincing. The fossil is the only one of its kind and it is badly
crushed. The `feathers' look to me like long scales which come off the
body. Scales are pretty amazing things - in fish and reptiles there are many
types that look like feathers, including some with mid-line spines and rays.
Longisquama's `feathers' look to me like an extreme gliding adaptation of
reptiles' scales. But if they have found definite evidence that these scales
terminated in follicles, then they could be protofeathers. But it doesn't say
they did. Today's reptiles are a limited subset of those which formerly
existed and it is possible that reptiles actually had a wider range of scales
than formerly realised, and both the Chinese dinosaurs' and Longisquama's
`feathers'` are just part of that wide range, without being feathers. If that is
the case, locked into this scale-feather perceptual dichotomy, and where
experimental testing is difficult, each side tends to sees what it thinks
*must* be there.]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000615/sc/cell_password_dc_1.html
Yahoo! ... June 15 ... Password Helps Cells Past Immune Guards - Study
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent WASHINGTON
(Reuters) - Researchers have discovered a kind of password that all cells
in the body use to get past immune system sentries, and hope it will offer
clues to treatments for diseases like juvenile diabetes. The password
comes in the form of a receptor, one of many chemical doorways bristling
on the surface of all cells. This one is called CD47, according to a paper in
Friday's issue of the journal Science. Per-Arne Oldenborg and colleagues
... said red blood cells that lacked the receptor were gobbled up by
immune cells known as macrophages. ... They believe their findings might
help lead to treatments for autoimmune diseases, in which immune cells
mistakenly attack healthy tissue..... "We have shown that macrophages can
actually discriminate between what is 'self' and normal in the body and
what is foreign." The team has worked so far only in mice, but believe
their findings will translate to human beings. ... CD47 is the second
identifier of "self" to be found in the body. The other is major
histocompatibility complex-1 (MHC-1). "It works as an ID badge or a
passport or whatever," .... "Everyone who doesn't show the right passport,
they are taken away. It seems that when the macrophage sees something
that does not express this passport, it gets killed by these macrophages."
...He said he believes the body has many such markers, and CD47 and
MHC-1 are simply the first two to be discovered. ... [ID badges, passport
checking and guards now. Isn't the `blind watchmaker' *wonderful*! :-)]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000622/sc/space_mars_dc_7.html
Yahoo! ... WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Astronomers said ... they had
found convincing evidence that water flows on the surface of Mars, a
finding that makes it much more likely life could exist or has existed on the
planet. Photographs ... show gullies that look like they could have been
formed only by large amounts of water bursting out and causing
landslides... "We see features that look like gullies formed by flowing water
and the deposits of soil and rocks transported by these flows," .... "The
features appear to be so young that they might be forming today. We think
we are seeing evidence of a ground water supply, similar to an aquifer."
Channels carved by flash floods in the U.S. West look very similar to the
Martian gullies, ... "These images are dead ringers for things we see when
we fly over the West," ... Malin and Edgett have been poring over some
65,000 images taken by a camera aboard the Mars Global Surveyor in the
past year. What they saw shocked them. Right where they would least
expect to find water, in the coldest crannies of craters facing away from the
Sun and toward the poles, they found gullies. The most logical explanation
is that they were formed by water. "I was dragged to this conclusion
kicking and screaming," .... The findings are astonishing because scientists
had believed that water on Mars could only exist in frozen form, beneath
the soil or tied up in polar icecaps, and as extremely sparse clouds in the
thin Martian atmosphere. "The presence of liquid water on Mars has
profound implications for the question of life not only in the past, but
perhaps even today," ... "If life ever did develop there, and if it survives to
the present time, then these landforms would be great places to look," .....
The new conclusions will have to be confirmed. The paper does not say
that water itself has been detected -- only structures that, if found on Earth,
would have been formed by water seeping up from underground, then
building up under pressure and bursting out in an explosion of mud. "I bet
when this data gets out in the science community, there will be all sorts of
proposals about how you could do this without water," .... The findings are
a huge boost to NASA, which lost two Mars missions in a row late last
year. The space agency is planning missions to Mars in 2003 and 2005
which will include the use of a robot to sample the planet's surface. "It is
very pleasing to be up on the dais talking about something positive for a
change," Weiler said. .... "If water is available in substantial volumes in
areas other than the poles, it would make it easier for human crews to
access and use it -- for drinking, to create breathable air, and to extract
oxygen and hydrogen for rocket fuel or to be stored for use in portable
energy sources." ... [This is old news and sounds like another NASA beat-
up saved up for release just before budget approval time? The TV news
report I saw said that this actually was evidence of life on Mars!]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000621/sc/health_prayer_dc_1.html
Yahoo! ... ... June 21 ... Doctors Say Prescriptive Prayer May Be
Unwarranted ... BOSTON (Reuters) - Medical schools are offering courses
in spirituality, religion and health after studies saying prayer can help
people feel better and live longer. But prescribing prayer is probably
premature, researchers say. "We are troubled by the uncritical embrace of
this trend by the general public, individual physicians, and American
medical schools," said the group of nine researchers and chaplains...in New
York. The trend, they said in an article ... is based on "limited, narrowly
focused, and methodologically flawed studies of the place of religion in
medical practice." ... Sloan's team said the idea that religious activities
make people healthier comes from studies that have not been well
designed, produce vague conclusions, and generate sometimes conflicting
results. For example, some researchers use church attendance as a measure
of religiousness, making no distinction between Quaker meetings and
Roman Catholic masses. "Do advocates of the connection between religion
and health propose that such differences are unimportant?" they asked. Nor
do such studies account for the stresses people feel when they change their
denomination, sometimes over their family's objections, said Sloan and his
colleagues. "Religious practices can be disruptive as well as healing." The
nine also said that because there is no evidence of "a solid link between
religious activity and health," doctors have no business prescribing religion.
Studies have consistently shown that married people live longer, "but
physicians do not dispense advice regarding marriage," they said. "There is
evidence that early rather than late childbearing may reduce the risk of
various cancers, but we would recoil at a physician's recommendation that
a young woman, either married or single, have a child to reduce her risk of
cancer." The Sloan group said people should recognize that studies
attempting to link religious experience to health are sometimes an attempt
to validate religion. But, they said, "Religion does not need science to
justify its existence or appeal." ... [The argument seems disingenuous,
oscillating between paying lip service to the "distinctions" between different
religious groups like "Quaker" and "Roman Catholic" and then lumping
them all together again as "religion" when it suits. The former atheist
Patrick Glynn in "God, The Evidence" (1997), produces *overwhelming*
evidence of a strong and positive correlation between religious belief and
good health. Whether this is due to God answering prayer or
psychosomatic factors is another question. The fact is that the popular
materialist stereotype that religious belief is unhealthy is 180 degrees flat
*wrong*!]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000614/sc/cockroach_dc_1.html
Yahoo! ... June 14 ... Scientists Discover Cockroaches' Escape Ploy ...
LONDON (Reuters) - Ask any city dweller or someone who lives in a hot
climate and they will testify to the near indestructibility of cockroaches.
Whether it's an imminent attack from a toad or wasp or a hammering with
an old shoe, the cunning creatures are as renowned for their ability to sense
danger and escape as they are for their ability to multiply. But scientists ...
think they have discovered how they do it. ... the wily insects can sense
danger by changes in air movements around them. Tiny hairs on their back
appendages act as sensors to tell them when to run. "When a predator
comes in for an attack they sense the wind that the predator makes and
they calculate the direction it is coming from and then run away in the
opposite direction.... "Our work addresses how it tells the difference
between normal wind in everyday life and when it is being attacked," ...
The scientists measured the response of the American cockroach's wind-
sensing system to controlled wind. Their research ... showed the insects
gather information from the wind's properties that warn them about
approaching predators. ... The hairs on the cockroach are connected to
neurons that converge on a bundle of nerves. Interneurons, message
carriers in the insect, send information about the wind telling the insect
what to do. Davidowitz and Rinberg attached electrodes to the cockroach
nerves to measure the response of the neurones to controlled and repeated
stimuli, or wind. "We built two miniature wind tunnels that were computer
controlled and the cockroaches were in the middle. At the same time we
measured the wind (in real time) with a fiber optic wind detector," ... By
measuring the strength of the wind they were assured that they could
repeat it exactly for the experiments. Although it all seems very
sophisticated for the lowly cockroach, the scientists were not surprised by
their findings. "They have been evolving for more than 300 million years.
So they have got it right. They have been around a lot longer than we
have" ... [This a good example of what Colin Patterson meant when he
called evolution "an anti-theory, a void that had the function of knowledge
but ... conveyed none." What does the fact that cockroaches have been
around 300 myrs got to do with it, unless they have evidence that the
cockroach was gradually improving its `early warning system' throughout
that time? But it followed the usual fossil record pattern, this feature would
have appeared suddenly and fully formed, and then spent the rest of their
tenure on Earth in stasis. But such is the delusionary effect that
evolutionary ways of thinking have on otherwise good scientists, that they
apparently do not realise that their explanation: "They have been around a
lot longer than we have" actually counts *against* against their continuous
improvement mythical view of evolution. After all, we have been around
only 100 kyrs (or less), but we have `flown' to the moon!]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000611/sc/egypt_tomb_dc_1.html ...
June 11 ... Tomb of Pharaoh Ramses II's Chief of Staff Found ... CAIRO
(Reuters) - French archaeologists have found the tomb of the pharaoh
Ramses II's chief of staff dating from the 13th Century BC, Egypt's head
of antiquities said ... "Necharomes was the chief of staff of Ramses II and
his envoy," ... "He could have been a member of a delegation sent by
Ramses II to the Hittites to conclude a peace treaty." The tomb, which
includes a likeness of Necharomes carved into the rock, was found in
Sakkara southwest of Cairo. Ramses, whose rule began in 1304 BC, won a
great victory over the Hittites at the Battle of Kadesh. The New Kingdom
ruler later concluded a peace treaty with the Hittites and married one of
the Hittite princesses. ... Necharomes was also an administrative
supervisor of the area of Memphis and of the Treasury. Sakkara is the site
of several tombs discovered by the French team. ... [This may be of
interest to some because Ramses II is thought to be the Pharoah of the
Exodus.]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000608/sc/salt_dc_2.html Yahoo! ...
June 8 ...Salt Crystals Point to Wet Start of Solar System ...
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Ancient salt taken from a meteorite shows
that planets started forming in the solar system much sooner than anyone
thought, and that it was often a warm and wet place, ... They said the salt
crystals in the Zag meteorite, found in Morocco in 1998, might be the
oldest materials ever found. The crystals date back to within two million
years of the solar system's birth from swirling dust 4.6 billion years ago ...
The key to dating the ancient bit of rock, which probably chipped off an
asteroid, was tiny traces left by evaporating gases. ... "The salt is most
likely an evaporite, which means water passed through the rock and it was
salt water," ... "That tells us there was water flooding on the asteroid it
came from in the first few million years the solar system existed." This
suggests that the conditions considered hospitable for life existed, at least
in some places in the solar system, soon after it started to condense into
the Sun, planets and asteroids 4.57 billion years ago. "The temperature at
which life can exist is essentially the temperature at which water can be
liquid. The halite (salt) shows that the water was a liquid," ... But he said
that did not mean that life was likely to have existed. "There is a long gap
between the conditions hospitable for life and life actually arising," ... But
the meteorite, one of only two meteorites to have been found that
contained salt, yielded some interesting secrets ... Scientists had to look
deep inside ... They analyzed xenon, iodine, and argon isotopes ... They
found a surprisingly large amount of xenon-129, which forms when
iodine-129 decays. Iodine-129 existed in the early solar system but is not
found on present-day Earth. ... "It lives a half-life of 15 million years," ...
After 100 million years, essentially none is left. It was present when the
solar system began to form 4.5 billion years ago. It was gone 100 million
years after." That means the gas was present within the first few million
years of the solar system's formation. In turn, that means the salt water
was there that long back. ... [More evidence that life may have started in
the embryonic solar system and then was transported to Earth by a asteroid
or comet. If that object was itself the origin site but was destroyed on
impact, it would make the fossil evidence for the origin of life
permanently inaccessible to science. I like the warning: "There is a long
gap between the conditions hospitable for life and life actually arising"!]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000607/sc/health_abortion_dc_1.html
Yahoo! ... June 7 ... U.S. Said to Want Restrictions on Abortion Pill ...
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. health officials have proposed rules that
could severely limit access to the French abortion pill RU-486 if it becomes
available in the United States, a group that supports abortion rights said ...
The ... FDA... has proposed that only doctors trained in surgical abortions
be permitted to give the controversial drug ... Also, providers offices'
would have to be located within one hour of an emergency room in case of
complications and doctors would have to be licensed and trained in how to
use the drug, ... FDA officials could not immediately be reached for
comment ... the measures were unnecessary and more stringent than those
for most drugs. "The fear is ... this will severely restrict the use of the
product for non-medical reasons, for antichoice interests," ... Abortion
opponents have fought to keep RU-486 out of the United States. Planned
Parenthood and other supporters say allowing the drug's use would
decrease the number of surgical abortions and give women more privacy. ..
the FDA told the Population Council, the ... group with U.S. rights to RU-
486, that the agency would approve the drug if some unidentified issues
could be resolved ... "The agency's initial approach is more restrictive than
we had envisioned for a drug that has been used very safely by so many
women around the world," ... Abortion opponents argue that the drug
combination, in addition to causing abortions, is dangerous to a woman's
health. "If the FDA is going to approve it, the very least they can do is
place these significant restrictions on it," said Laura Echevarria, a
spokeswoman for the National Right-to-Life Committee. "But we think it's
unsafe overall and should not be introduced." ... [An interesting example of
how, if God is excluded, all the ensuing debate takes place within the rules
set by scientific materialism's ethical relativism. Pro-life groups may have
Christian objections to taking human life based ultimately on divine
revelation, but they have to find reasons for their objections within a value
system which denies such revelation, a priori. So, although pro-lifers win
some battles and delay the process, and maybe curb its worst features, in
the end it is a long losing fight. I support their fight nonetheless!]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000621/sc/aids_integrase_dc_2.html
Yahoo! ... June 20 ... Scientists Hope New Compound Is Better AIDS
Drug WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Researchers said ...they may have
created a new compound to fight the virus that causes AIDS. The
compound may survive in cells longer than existing drugs now used in
cocktails to fight HIV, they reported in the Journal of the American
Chemical Society. Vasu Nair of the University of Iowa and colleagues said
they had created the compound using molecular engineering techniques.
They stressed that they have not yet tested it on humans or even animals,
but said it looks very powerful in the test tube. ... [Continuing the tradition
of HIV-AIDS `science by press conference'! Why bother with scientific
journals and peer review when one can have instant fame and maybe a
lucrative grant from a drug company? That this "new compound" might do
better than the existing drug cocktails might not be saying much. If the
drug cocktails were effective why would there be a need for yet
*another*"new compound"?]
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"A natural and fundamental question to ask, on learning of these incredibly
intricately interlocking pieces of software and hardware is: "How did they
ever get started in the first place?" It is truly a baffling thing. One has to
imagine some sort of a bootstrap process occurring, somewhat like that
which is used in the development of new computer languages-but a
bootstrap from simple molecules to entire cells is almost beyond one's
poster to imagine. There are various theories on the origin of life. They all
run aground on this most central of all central questions: "How did the
Genetic Code, along with the mechanisms for its translation (ribosomes and
tRNA molecules), originate?" For the moment, we will have to content
ourselves with a sense of wonder and awe, rather than with an answer."
(Hofstadter, Douglas R., "Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid,"
The Harvester Press: Hassocks, Sussex UK, 1979, p.548)
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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