Reflectorites
Here are excerpts from web articles for the period 23 August - 1
September 2000, with my comments in square brackets.
But first, here is an article in yesterday morning's newspaper, which I have
been unable to find on the web this morning:
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30 THE WEST AUSTRALIAN SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 2 2000
[...]
Neanderthal find hailed
DUESSELDORF
GERMAN scientists say they have found 50 new bone fragments and many
stone tools at an excavation in the Neander Valley in Mettmann. near
Duesseldorf, where an early form of homo sapiens was found in 1856. Ralf
Schmitz and Juergen Thissen, who led a team of archaeologists, said an
important new find was a fragment of facial skull that fitted like a puzzle
piece with the incomplete skeleton that gave its name to the Neanderthal
Man. The find confirmed the Neanderthal was not a direct predecessor of
modern man.
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Has anyone seen a web article on this? I have found something
about Schmitz and Thissen's work as follows:
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http://www.neanderthal.de/e_thal/pg_40.htm
[...]
New from the world of research
New Finds in Neanderthal
During the summer of 1997 the archaeologists Dr. Ralf W. Schmitz and
Dr. J?rgen Thissen were contracted by the Rheinisches Amt f?r
Bodendenkmalpflege to do several sondes on the banks of the D?ssel, with
the goal of localizing portions of the former cave floor of the Feldhofer
Cave. Supported by old maps and the results of earlier sondes that were
carried out by the University of Cologne under Prof. Dr. Gerhard Bosinski
in 1984, they were able to achieve a phenomenal piece of detective work.
About 50 meters from the old sondes, they were able to locate the remains
of a clayish cave filling with traces of occupation from ice age humans.
This material had been shoveled out of the cave prior to blasting of the
limestone during quarry work in 1856, and had bee heaped on the banks of
the D?ssel. Debris from blasting had covered the heap, which then
protected it from further destruction.
Two heaps could be discerned, which partially overlapped each other in
certain areas. One of these belonged to the Feldhofer Cave, the other
probably to the adjacent "Feldhofer Kirche". According to historical
reports the Feldhofer Cave was very small, the Feldhofer Kirche on the
other hand was quite large. In addition, seven other caves are mentioned in
historical reports.
Stone tools and animal remains were found in both heaps. In addition to
the animal remains, 20 fragments of human skeletal material of 10cm
maximum length could be identified.
What can be said with certainty at this point?
The cave material from the Feldhofer Cave was localized. A small bone
fragment from this matrix fits exactly on the left thigh bone from the
Neanderthal of 1856. Bone fragments from an additional individual to the
known Neanderthal from 1856 have been identified. Several of these bones
are from portions of the skeleton which are totally intact in the old
neanderthal. One of these "double" bones was dated with C-14 analysis at
the ETH Zurich at about 40,000 B.P.. Stone tools were found in the
remains from both caves which typologically belong in the middle
paleolithic, and belong to the time of the neanderthals. In addition, more
recent stone tools - from the upper paleolithic - were also found. It appears
that these finds came originally from destroyed occupation layers in the
Feldhofer Kirche.
[...]
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but it doesn't say anything about finding a matching facial fragment which
confirmed that Neanderthals were not a direct predecessor of modern man.
Steve
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_903000/903686.stm BBC
... 1 September, 2000 ... Clicking for consciousness Is the sky blue - yes or
no? ... Web users are being invited to help create the first model of human
thought. By collecting "atoms of information" a Canadian scientist hopes to
be able to teach a computer what it means to be human. Once created, the
body of knowledge will be made available to other artificial intelligence
researchers trying to make machines smarter or easier to interact with. The
project is expected to run for ten years or however long it takes to collect
one billion nuggets of knowledge. Collecting common sense The Generic
Artificial Consciousness project is the brainchild of researcher Chris
McKinstry who wants to make computers think about the world like
people do so that they become more useful. ... the inspiration for Gac
(pronounced Jack) came from work he was doing on a computer that could
pass the Turing test. ... In 1990 the Turing Test stopped being theoretical
with the creation of the Loebner Prize in which computer programs
compete to see which one is most human-like. ... the Turing Test is more
an examination of human experience than it is a test of reasoning. But ... a
computer that sees the world like we do and shares our knowledge of it is
likely to be more useful than one that can think. With Gac he is attempting
to create the computer that knows everything that people know about the
world and can use it to reason. McKinstry knows he cannot codify
common-sense consensus knowledge all by himself, there is just too much
of it. So he is turning to the internet for help and asking anyone who is
interested to contribute atoms of knowledge - or "mindpixels" as he calls
them - to start building Gac's database. Each Mindpixel takes the form of a
statement that can be answered yes or no. The answer must not change
from person to person, location or time. ... He estimates that around one
billion Mindpixels will be needed to capture this consensus information. He
says Gac could take 10 years to complete because three times as many
mindpixels will have to be gathered and winnowed down to the subset that
everyone agrees on. Once complete, the database will be used to train a
neural network. "We will reward and punish the design dependent on how
it performs against this image of humanness," he said. ... [Leaving aside the
problem of obtaining enough valid information, the fallacy here is equating
storing and reguritating of information with *knowing* what it is. This is
IMHO the central delusion of AI, which in turn is based on materialist
philosophy that the mind is ultimately just "a computer made of meat".]
http://www.cnn.com/2000/US/09/02/football.prayer/index.html CNN ...
Texas turnout falls short in protest of Supreme Court school-prayer ban A
sign outside a Santa Fe, Texas, church on Friday September 2, 2000 ...
SANTA FE, Texas -- At the high school football stadium where the issue
of school prayer touched off a constitutional debate, a protest planned
Friday to defy the U.S. Supreme Court fell flat. ... Pro-prayer groups failed
to muster significant protests against the U.S. Supreme Court's recent ban
on school-sanctioned pregame prayers. ... In its 6-3 decision, the court
ruled against the defendant, Santa Fe Independent School District, saying
its approval of student-led prayers over the loudspeakers was
unconstitutional. The prayers violated the separation of church and state,
ruled the court. ... That decision, however, angered a group from Temple,
Texas, called No Pray No Play. In defiance of the court's decision, the
group tried to rally Texas Christians on Friday to pray as soon as national
anthems ended at football games across the state. Members boldly
predicted that 10,000 protesting Christians would converge at Santa Fe
High School's home opener. But when the national anthem ended, only
about 200 in the crowd of 4,500 recited "The Lord's Prayer." ... "I have a
right to stand and pray and ask for God's blessings," said No Pray No Play
spokesman the Rev. David Newsome ... But Dena Marks of the Anti-
Defamation League ... told CNN the public prayers by No Pray No Pay
members and other were insensitive. The Supreme Court's decision, she
explained, was "designed to protect students of minority faiths "from being
put into a coercive situation -- where they are listening to a prayer they
don't want to listen to." ... Friday's recitations paled in comparison with
other pre-game expressions of faith at football games around the country
since the high court's ruling. High school football began last week in some
states, and some prayer demonstrations already have occurred, most
notably in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, when 4,500 fans stood to pray before a
game. In Asheville, North Carolina, 25,000 people gathered at a football
stadium for a rally sponsored by a group urging the recitation of "The
Lord's Prayer" at football games. In Skiatook, Oklahoma, about 50 people
bowed their heads in a pre-game invocation organized by a group of adults
Friday. "We have a 50-year tradition here that will be done away with so
easily because a few people don't think it's constitutional for children to
pray at school," said Kevin Jordan, one of the organizers. "We just want to
have the freedom to pray as we want, without imposing our beliefs on
others." ... [I agree with this last point. But Jesus' emphasis was on private
prayer and He criticised those who made public prayers for a show to
others (Mt 6:5-6). Maybe the best solution is to allow a minute's silence so
those who want to pray silently can do so?]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000830/sc/computers_robots_dc_1.ht
ml Yahoo! ... August 30 ... Robotic System Can Design, Make Other
Robots-Study LONDON (Reuters) - Cheaply-produced robots that can
perform mundane chores may be a step closer thanks to American scientists
who have made a robotic system that can for the first time design and
construct other robots. The system operates with almost no human
intervention. "The robotic system is creating little toy robots completely
automatically. All the humans are doing is snapping in the motors,"
explained Jordan Pollack .... The tiny plastic prototype robots look like
toys but they could represent the future of affordable robotics. "This is, I
think, a harbinger of a new industry where dumb robots for specific tasks
like vacuuming or clean-up or assembly can be automatically designed and
manufactured without human engineers and high-cost machining," Pollack
said .... "So the robots are cheap enough to be useful and practical. "The
robotic system spits out 8X8X12 inch maximum pieces of plastic that look
like toys but are fully functional robots that move around," ... The research
... works on both the body and the brain of the robot. It takes computer
software, the brains, and incorporates it into the hardware, or body, of the
robot. Hod Lipson ... described it as "nearly a self-replicating artificial life
system." It follows an earlier Brandeis project in which a computer used
evolutionary steps to design a bridge made of children's LEGO blocks. ....
However, automatically-produced robots would still be designed for
specific tasks and would not be the all-purpose humanoids of science
fiction. In a separate report... Laurent Keller ... described how they taught
robots community spirit by programming them to behave like ants in
foraging for food. They found that "group dynamics of swarms of robots
may follow similar rules to those governing social insects." ... [Personally I
expect that humans may eventually be able to design and build robots that
can design and build other robots, and maybe even event eventually design
robots that can *improve* the design of the "offspring" robots. But the
design would have originally been latent in the original design at the
beginning: they would have to be designed to do the designing of improved
design! Still it would be interesting to see how far such improvements
could get without the infusion of new information. My guess there is a limit
on how much information one could program into such a computer at the
beginning and that to have any major new innovations would require the
external infusion of new information. Of course this is still a model for
Design, not Naturalistic Evolution, which claims that this all designing
started with *no* design at all!]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000829/sc/pope_cloning_dc_1.html
Yahoo! ... August 29 ... Pope Tells Scientists Cloning Morally
Unacceptable .... ROME (Reuters) - Pope John Paul Tuesday praised
science for its dedication to preserving human life but described as "morally
unacceptable" any form of human embryo cloning or commercialization of
organ transplants. Addressing an international conference on transplant
techniques, the Pope said respect for human life should be the guiding
principle in determining the boundary of scientific experimentation. "Every
medical procedure performed on the human person is subject to limits: not
just the limits of what is technically possible, but also limits determined by
respect for human nature itself," the 80-year-old Pontiff said in a rare
public address. "What is technically possible is not for that reason alone
morally admissible," he said. ... "Transplants are a great step forward in
science's service of man, and not a few people today owe their lives to an
organ transplant," ... "(But) any procedure which tends to commercialize
human organs or to consider them as items of exchange or trade must be
considered morally unacceptable," he said, adding that any transplant
should be non- discriminatory and non-utilitarian, that is, based solely on
immunological and clinical factors. ... "Methods that fail to respect the
dignity and value of the person must always be avoided. I am thinking in
particular of attempts at human cloning with a view to obtaining organs for
transplants. "These techniques, insofar as they involve the manipulation and
destruction of human embryos, are not morally acceptable, even when their
proposed goal is good in itself," he said. Yet, while drawing a strict line on
embryo stem cells, the Pope said it was morally permissible to conduct
research on adult stem cells, an already active field. ... the Catholic Church
opposes any tampering with embryos, teaching that life begins at the
moment of conception. ... [This is IMHO the right balance. Stem cell
research is OK on adult cells but not on human embryos which are (or even
were) potential human beings.]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000825/sc/space_jupiter_dc_2.html ...
Yahoo! ... August 25 ... New Evidence Suggests Ocean on Icy Jupiter
Moon ... WASHINGTON (Reuters) - New information provides the
strongest evidence yet that lying beneath the icy surface of one of Jupiter's
moons may be a salty ocean of water, one of the necessary ingredients for
life ... Scientists said data from NASA's Galileo spacecraft suggest the
presence of water in liquid form on Europa, a moon similar in size to the
Earth's. ... Galileo collected data from magnetic fields and scientists found
patterns that indicated the possibility of water ... While they did not rule
out other scenarios, the scientists said water was the most likely
explanation... Even though it is buried beneath a thick layer of ice, life
forms could draw energy from heat sources below, just as deep sea
creatures do in the Earth's oceans .... "Such a process could easily be
occurring on Europa,".... Given the findings, Europa ranks just behind
Mars as bodies in the solar system that merit further exploration for life
forms ... NASA says it hopes to send another spacecraft there, although the
space agency's missions have been hindered by budget constraints. ... See
also: http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/space/08/25/europa.water.02/index.html
& http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_895000/895634.stm
[Hugh Ross discusses this "just add water" assumption in respect of Mars,
in his latest Connections (not yet webbed), where he points out that:
"While no one disputes the necessity of water for life, science has shown
that liquid water is merely one of *many* requirements for life, not the
*only* requirement. Researchers have identified more than a hundred
different requirements, independent of water, for life to exist on any given
planet in any given planetary system.... Even if all the other requirements
were met on a planet, the presence of liquid water is not enough to support
life. Living creatures need an abundance of water in all three states (gas,
liquid, and solid) available for a long time." (Ross H., "Water on Mars:
What Does it Mean?", Connections, Third Quarter 2000, pp.1-2)]
http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/space/08/25/galaxy.test.ap/index.html
CNN ... Galaxy experiment could answer some big questions August 25,
2000 ... EUGENE, Oregon (AP) -- It is a question that's plagued scientists
for centuries, but one that is nagging University of Oregon astronomer
Greg Bothun in particular: What is the universe made of? Bothun is
crunching numbers in an experiment that could narrow the field of possible
answers by later this year. He is trying to determine the exact distance from
Earth to a particular galaxy he has been studying. If that galaxy is where
standard Newtonian physics says it should be, Bothun will publish the
results and go back to looking for missing mass -or "dark matter" -- among
the unseen, burned-out stars. What he may find, however, is the possibility
the measurements will place that galaxy much farther away than current
calculations say it should be. That would mean in deep space, gravity,
which affects an object's speed and distance, starts to fade in a way that
current theory says it shouldn't. The possibility is more than a little
disturbing to astrophysicists, who say it would blow a hole in Einstein's
theory of relativity big enough to drive a spaceship through. "If it turns out
to be at the (farther) distance, that will be a real difficulty for me," Bothun
said. "It would confirm a theory I don't believe." Most other astronomers
are similarly skeptical, and Bothun said a preliminary peek at the data
seems to support Einstein and discount the so-called "funny gravity"
theory. But he and his colleagues won't rest easy until the final data come
together late this fall. ... [This is *real* science: being prepared to propose
a test that could prove a theory that one doesn't believe in. Compare that
with pseudosciences like Darwinism which only looks for confirming evidence
of its theory and personally attacks critics as "ignorant, stupid or insane
... or wicked" (Dawkins, 1989)]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000827/sc/dolphins_dc_3.html ...
Yahoo! ... August 27 ... Dolphin 'Nicknames' Help Them Hook Up in
Murk ... WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Dolphins greet one another by
"name," using signature whistles to keep track of one another in murky
waters and across distances, a researcher says. While he hesitates to say the
dolphins are actually using language, the researcher said the study shows
dolphins have a clear and consistent vocabulary and are able to identify one
another as individuals. "Each dolphin develops a very specific signature
signal," biologist Vincent Janik ... said .... "They always use the same call.
Some people call it a name." But because the dolphins seem to develop
their own signature whistles, Janik said the calls are more like Internet
screen names or handles. Janik studied wild bottlenose dolphins off the
Moray Firth, Scotland's coast. He recorded 1,719 whistles using six
hydrophones and a computerbased method for finding individual dolphins
as they made the calls.... Each dolphin makes its own, distinctive whistle,
Janik found. ... like monkeys and other primates, the dolphins use
distinctive calls when they have found food. .... "It was very clear that this
was a feeding call. If one dolphin found food, they would produce this call.
The others would rush in." So does it qualify as language? "I always try to
avoid the term 'language,"' Janik said. "But it is certainly a complex
communication system." ... See also
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_894000/894944.stm [It is
a refreshing change to find an animal behaviourist *not* claiming that his
subjects are using language!]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000823/sc/intelligence_dc_1.html
Yahoo! ... August 23 ... Animal Behaviorists in Chicago to Share Research
... CHICAGO (Reuters) - Female chimps tend to hold grudges, baboons
generally respect "marriage" bonds within their group, sea lions pick fights
they think they can win, and dolphin life resembles a soap opera. These are
among the findings of animal behaviorists, studying animals from parrots to
whales, who began a four-day conference ... to share insights into how
animals communicate, learn their own "culture" and maintain social order.
"The purpose is to bring together people who work on different animal
species and normally don't talk much together," said conference organizer
Frans de Waal, a psychologist who studies primates ... presentations are
scheduled on whales, dolphins, parrots, elephants, hyenas and all manner of
primates at the conference entitled "Animal Social Complexity and
Intelligence." A scientist who trails sperm whales -- the largest-brained
animal on Earth -- said he had found a female-dominated, egalitarian
society resembling that of the African elephant. .... Decoding dolphins'
complex vocalizations ... may hold clues to their highly changeable social
groupings. Male dolphins will form alliances in pairs and trios to "herd"
females for as long as a month, then form larger groupings to steal females
from other trios. Sexual pairings switch constantly, dolphin homosexuality
is common, and their vocalizations indicate they "bitch at each other a lot,"
said Richard Connor ... . Baboons too have a complex social structure
respectful of "marriage" ... "Females preferred certain males, and other
males knew them and respected the pair bond," Kummer said .... Research
presented on California sea lions in captivity have shown they can reason.
They can work out that "if A equals B, and B equals C, then A equals C,"
said Ronald Schusterman .... In the wild, male sea lions will fight a male
that they have seen beaten by another that they in turn have defeated -- a
similar reasoning process. Or they may fight a male already exhausted by a
just-concluded battle, .... He acknowledged the ongoing controversy
between behaviorists and linguists who argue animals do not possess
language. "One puzzle we have is that even though we humans rely on
imitating sounds for the development of language and music, no other non-
human primate seems to do this," Tyack said. "But we know parrots and
dolphins imitate sounds very well. ... The habits of chimpanzees may even
hold lessons for humans, ... After fighting, female chimps seem to hold
grudges, while males make peace quickly with a variety of postures and
gestures that might form the basis of therapy for young people who are
prone to violence, Long said. ... [I am reminded here of what behavioural
scientists William Fix said: "if anyone is wasting his time, it is those
researchers who believe we are going to learn more about man by watching
chimpanzees than by studying the words of the ancients." (Fix W.R., "The
Bone Peddlers, 1984, p.309)]
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"CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN stands among the giants of Western
thought because he convinced a majority of his peers that all of life shares a
single, if complex, history. He taught us that we can understand life's
history in purely naturalistic terms, without recourse to the supernatural or
divine." (Eldredge N., "Time Frames: The Rethinking of Darwinian
Evolution and the Theory of Punctuated Equilibria," Simon & Schuster:
New York NY, 1985, p.13)
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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