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jerwin wrote:

Light Speed wrote:

There are a few scientists saying that this group are homosapiens but dwarfs rather than a new species.

BBC wrote:

The researchers say they are now more convinced than ever that Homo floresiensis represents a distinct species and not some diseased individual of modern human (Homo sapiens)as some sceptics have suggested.

"The finds further demonstrate that LB1 is not just an aberrant or pathological individual but is representative of a long-term population," they write in Nature.

A critical line in their argument is the length of time which the new collection of remains represents - possibly 80,000 years - making a disease explanation for the cause of the little people's stature and shape an unlikely one.

I personally don't doubt that this could be a new species. It is the perfect scenario for that to occur. I was just throwing caution to the wind to say that some scientists are waiting for more info before hopping on the wagon.

it's just a nickname. don't blow it out of proportion

Are you saying fundamentalists believe otherwise? Or do you just not like being associated with the term? Isn't that the definition of fundamentalism?

P.S. The Pharisees were/are one of the sects of the Jewish religion. In the Christian context, it refers to a self-righteous hypocrite. Why its in my profile? Meh, you had to be there. 'suppose I'll change it soon.

Here is a link to that article about the dinosaur in Nature:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v4 … 03996.html

If you are among the cognesceti (as am I) you may acess the full article.

On another note, and in the same issue of Nature, it turns out that that "little person" fossil of Indonesia was not alone.  More have been found, meaning that two species of humans (us and the little people) co-existed in recent times:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v4 … 13-08.html

Duke Stratosphere wrote:

Hank Rearden wrote:

Here is a link to that article about the dinosaur in Nature:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v4 … 03996.html

If you are among the cognesceti (as am I) you may acess the full article.

On another note, and in the same issue of Nature, it turns out that that "little person" fossil of Indonesia was not alone.  More have been found, meaning that two species of humans (us and the little people) co-existed in recent times:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v4 … 13-08.html

Aren't we the ones who killed off the Neanderthals? Meaning, I guess, that we must have co-existed with them long enough to kill them? Wonder what enlightened species killed off the "Hobbits?"

SANTA killed off the Hobbits because they did not kneel down and praise him.

Santa is the allmighty. He sees all!!!

Hank Rearden wrote:

Duke Stratosphere wrote:

Aren't we the ones who killed off the Neanderthals? Meaning, I guess, that we must have co-existed with them long enough to kill them? Wonder what enlightened species killed off the "Hobbits?"

"We" (if by saying "we", you indicated that the public-schooled collectivist-educated mind is inclusive of neolithic ancestors...because I'm assuming that you had no individual role in their demise, and I know that I didn't)

Jeez, ya gotta be so technical? Of course I meant our Cro-Magnon ancestors.

Hank Rearden wrote:

may or may not have "killed off" the Neaderthals.

Wouldn't their realistically be more than one culprit in their extinction? Sure, we probably clubbed several over the head a little too hard to get their deer from them, but I'd imagine that to really wipe them out took a pandemic of some sort. Maybe their resistance to smallpox was just much worse than ours.

Hank Rearden wrote:

The Neaderthals may or may not have been a separate species.  You may or may not carry some Neanderthal genes.

If I don't have any I definitely know people who do.

Hank Rearden wrote:

All of that is up in the air.

As for the "hobbits", no one knows what killed them off.  It could be "us", it could just be due to the hazards of being a small, isolated population.  Who knows.  Likely, we (really "we" this time) will never really know, though I bet there'll be some strong hints one way or the other.

I seriously wonder how isolated they really were. Just because their remains have not been found anywhere else doesn't mean much to me. Look how long it took to find these. If anything, this find only reassures me that we have barely begun to scratch the surface of archaeology.

http://arstechnica.com/journals/science … 10/15/1532

Ars has a post today noting that the connection between dinos and birds still isn't too strong. It seems there is only one major group pushing this, but they are a fairly respectable group.

Take the feathers off of a hawk or even a chicken and what have you got?

What does it look like? Look at the head. Look at the feet. Look at the body shape.

Aside from that look at the skeletal structure. What does it resemble?

And now, for something completely different, a biplane dinosaur:

http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051017/ … 017-1.html

Early in this topic, Resedit brought up the issue of how can it be that mutations can improve a species if every mutation destroys information?  If I understand correctly, the ID argument relies on research done by Shannon in information theory.
The article by Mark Perakh does a good job of rebutting the notion of conservation of information.  There is nothing stopping destruction of information nor its creation out of thin air.

However, the article is somewhat heavy on the math, so I will try to show how mutations can increase information, but using a less formal, more intuitive approach.

Assume a submarine on patrol sends the following message:

UNCLEAR BLAST IN THE PACIFIC

(The phrase come from a Scientific American article 20 - 25 years ago.  I forget what the rest of the article was about, but remember the phrase.)

This phrase has certain semantic content: The submarine detected a blast while on patrol in the Pacific Ocean, but was unable to learn what kind of blast it was.  (Actually, we don't know the submarine was in the Pacific, only that its detection gear localized the blast as occurring in the Pacific.)

What kinds of corruption (mutations) can occur to this text without losing its meaning?

If we convert to lowercase (unclear blast in the pacific), the message is okay.

If we drop every other letter (UCERBATI H AII), the message is lost.

If we drop certain letters, the meaning can survive (UNCLEAR BLAST IN PACIFIC) (UNCLEAR BLAST IN THE PACIFC).

If we duplicate certain words (UNCLEAR BLAST IN THE THE PACIFIC, UNCLEAR BLAST IN THE PACIFIC PACIFIC), the meaning is still derivable, but our estimation that we received the message correctly might drop.

If we receive "HAPYRNE OYNFG VA GUR CNPVSVP," that looks like gibberish, unless we realize that it is really just the rot-13 cipher of the original text.

This brings up an important point.  The information content depends on the sender and the receiver.  It is not an inherent property of the message.  For an extreme example of this, take the case of Paul Revere and the lanterns in the bell tower.  The "message" has only three possible values: no lanterns, one lantern, or two lanterns.  It fits in 1.5 bits.  However, the information content of the message is much larger: no lanterns -> "The British army are still in quarters;" one lantern -> "The British army have left quarters and are traveling by land;" two lanterns -> "The British army have left quarters and are traveling by sea."

Similarly, the information content of a string of DNA is not inherent in the DNA.  It takes a great deal of other machinery in the cell to convert the DNA message into correctly folded proteins, etc.  Which is how small changes to the message can get magnified into significant changes in the phenotype.

Returning to our message, we can swap some letters without serious harm to the message (UNCLEAR BLAST IN TEH PACIFIC).

Now, we pull a rabbit out of a hat.  Suppose we swap the first two letters:

NUCLEAR BLAST IN THE PACIFIC

We have created information!  We are no longer uncertain about the type of blast--we learn it was a nuclear blast.  This message has more information than the original message.

It is true that this message is a corruption of the original message and is probably in error.  However, it is a perfectly valid message.  The humans reading it can interpret and act upon it.  They will produce different actions than if they received the original message, but so be it.

In a similar fashion, mutations to DNA can produce new messages that are corruptions of the original DNA message.  Nonetheless, the new messages sometimes produce new, functional proteins, or changes to promoters, or other non-lethal modifications.  Sometimes, these modifications are improvements on the original message.  Our lizard no longer has scales--its skin is covered with feathers.  (This is an exaggeration.  There are undoubtedly many mutations necessary to swap between scales and feathers.)

As Hank Reardon pointed out, it helps if the gene that mutates has already suffered a duplication mutation (a common occurrence).  That way, one copy of the gene can continue its original functions, while the other copies wander off on their own paths.

Nonetheless, we have created new information via mutation.

mo' ron wrote:

http://www.framestore-cfc.com/press/05pr/051003noitulove/amv_gune339_050_qt.mov

Beer and evolution.

Hank Rearden wrote:

dtdtdt wrote:

Nonetheless, we have created new information via mutation.

Well said, old chap!

I agree. A beautiful analysis. Good reasons why 'everyone' should be careful to question so called 'historical' information, especially those that 'profess' to be attributed to "God."

In this morning's Corpus Christi Caller Times the following article appeared:

Bishops: Bible truthful, but don't take it literally
by Shelley Emling from the Cox News Service

LONDON: Leaders of the Roman Catholic Church in the United Kingdom have published a teaching document that insists to worshippers that the Bible falls short -- in historical accuracy.

"We should not expect to find in Scripture full scientific accuracy or complete historical precision," the Catholic bishops of England, Wales, and Scotland say in the recently released, "The Gift of Scripture."

For example, the early chapters in the book of Genesis in the Old Testament may contain just "historical traces" designed to teach the world about the goodness of God, the bishops wrote.

In particular, they say that the first 11 chapters of Genesis are similar to traditional material from other cultures, notably from the ancient East, and that they were designed to teach mankind about the devastating effects of human collusion with evil.

The bishops pointed out that in general, biblical material often went through long periods of oral tradition before reaching written form.

Even in Revelation, the final book in the New Testament, the bishops assert that many passages related to the end of the world are symbolic in nature and should not be interpreted literally.

"We should not expect to discover in this book details about the end of the world, about how many will be saved, and about when the end will come." the bishops say.

Despite the questions over historical veracity, the Rev. Adrian Graffy, who worked on the document, said truth does indeed exist on every page of the Bible.

"There are different ways of presenting truth, and not everything should be taken as scientific," he said.

The 60 page "Gift of Scripture" booklet, which was presented to Pope Benedict XVI in Rome last month, was writen to celebrate 40 years of Dei Verbum, the statement about the Bible issued by the Second Vatican Council in 1965.

Many experts say there's a danger "The Gift of Scripture" could be misunderstood and misrepresented.

"The bishops were simply seeking to explain what commentators have recognized for 2,000 years," said Gillian Evans, an expert on religion at Cambridge University.  "The bible is a complex text, a set of books rather than a single book, and it contains lots of different ways of saying things."

While seeking to explain the Bible, "The Gift of Scripture" also lashes out at fundamentalism, saying it brings with it an intransigent intolerance that rules out both listening to other views and the willingness to engage in dialogue.

Please make a note of the last paragraph, res. That's a primary reason for the bad reputation the Fundies are getting. You might pass it along to those you know who are more stiff-necked than you are. Even if they don't agree or accept the bishops' booklet as ' Biblical truth' it does show insight into how to make lemonade out of lemons.

Hank Rearden wrote:

Sassy wrote:

lots of interesting stuff.

The MAIN problem with complete literalism in interpretation of ANY literature is that, if it was not meant by the author to be literal, you are missing the real truth of what was written.

For instance, if I were to take East of Eden (my all time favorite book) as being a literal account of Adam, Kate, Cal, et al., I would be scouring the hills around Salinas to find evidence of ranches, brothels, and the like from the book.  But, Steinbeck had a much deeper reason for writing that story.  And, yes, there are elements of real history in there (some characters are based upon Steinbeck's family).

However, there is a deeper truth about good, evil, and the choices that people make in that book.  The reality (or non-reality) of the main characters is of second importance to that message.

Same deal for substantial portions of the Bible.

I haven't read them all, but everything I have read of Steinbeck's novels is rooted in American history (as he saw it) and the pitfalls within society itself. His observations are as relevant today as they were then. Timeless. A mirror of the American condition. Pity we have learned so little from them. But then, Shakespeare shook his spear at us centuries ago and we laud his observations, but ignore them in our living.