Troll at work!
Posted on 08/10/2004 3:57:16 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
A 5-5 deadlock on the State Board of Education has been broken with the election of two conservatives Tuesday who do not have opposition in the November election.
The board previously was controlled by conservative members who decided that creationism should be taught with evolution in the science classes of the state's schools. That was reversed when moderates were elected. The board member from Kansas City, Kan., was not up for re-election this year. One conservative who was elected Tuesday to the board was an incumbent.
A new conservative board member from Clay Center, Kan., has been quoted by newspapers as saying she supports creationism being taught in science classes, along with the theory of evolution. The state board sets the science standards for schools, setting out what should be taught at different levels.
The past debates focused on whether religious ideas should be included in science classes, or should be reserved for religion or social science classes.
While we can't predict the future, we can say, from past experience, that the evolution controversy will intensify on the state board after the new members are sworn in. Kansas, by teaching religion in public school science classes, will almost certainly receive negative international attention again.
For mixing religion, politics and education, the State Board of Education is now on the endangered list, and it will probably go the way of the dinosaur. Very likely, some in the Kansas Legislature will not deem it fit for survival.
Large-scale genome-wide reorganizations occur rapidly (potentially within a single generation) following activation of natural genetic engineering systems in response to a major evolutionary challenge. The cellular regulation of natural genetic engineering automatically imposes a punctuated tempo on the process of evolutionary change.
Most of the species on earth are currently undergoing major evolutionary challenge. Virtually every habitat has been altered significantly, and many utterly. Below where I sit, 100 years ago, there was prairie; now there's concrete. Around this place for 100 miles there is monoculture agriculture (actually, di-culture: corn and soybeans, two year rotation). Some have met the challenge and prospered - barn swallows learned to use human structures, bluebirds nesting boxes. Some have failed - the passenger pigeon, the Carolina parakeet, and (if humans hadn't intervened) the whooping crane and California condor. But I know of no single instance of the activation of the putative genetic engineering systems about which this link speculates.
Moreover, this hasn't just started happening. Humans have been drastically altering habitats for thousands of years. Yet the proposed genetic engineering systems have never clicked on.
Why not?
You're way too flattering. That was what I was trying to say, yes.
Look at post 315.
Still, it's an interesting paper.
I've just read her novels. I worry about ab initio philosophies, since they tend to lead to conclusions that just don't work in real social systems. But boy has she been influential - American conservatism would not have its strong libertarian streak without her.
Massive was not required. Only the activation of something present was required to meet the threat.
And the bacteria were genetically homogenous.
Before, after and during. So where was the genetic engineering?
Prior to the insult. It shows that RMNS was not necessary for survival. Natural selection selected nothing.
Prior to the insult.
You're moving the goalposts. The original thesis was activation of natural genetic engineering systems in response to a major evolutionary challenge. If it happened priot to the challenge, then it sure didn't happen in response to the challenge.
Okay if you don't like that one. Try this.
Plant Response to Stress: Genome Reorganization in Flax
The plant genome is in a dynamic state, and a range of environmental pressures can stimulate particular alterations. Flax, a bifunctional crop that can be grown for fiber (flax) or oil (linseed), is particularly susceptible to such alterations. Some varieties undergo heritable genomic and phenotypic alterations during a single generation's growth in certain particular destabilizing environments. These genomic changes have been shown to occur in all types of sequences, including highly repetitive tandem arrays, intermediately repetitive dispersed regions, and low-copy number sequences. The genomic changes have been shown to occur during the vegetative growth, resulting in chimeric plants. However, in all the cases that have been characterized to date, the genomic alterations have become homozygous in the plant prior to the reproductive structures being differentiated. Therefore, because flax is essentially a self-fertilizing plant, all the progeny for a particular plant are identical, but could be different from the parent plant. More important, all the progeny from a series of plants grown under the same environment are identical, illustrating that there is reproducibility in response to such environmental pressures. Some of the genomic alterations appear to be adaptive to the conditions under which they are induced, but in every case these possible adaptive changes are part of a large number of genomic regions that are disrupted under any given growth conditions.
And the alteration in the plant is not simply an increase in mutation frequency?
Well, he's making a valid point; but I believe flax is unusual in the respect he's referring to.
Trying to move goalposts?
Mutation and alteration are synonymous.
You don't think he will bring up the previous "example" in the next thread?
Sure. And we have a case where the organism induces an increase in its own mutation rate in response to stress (at certain labile DNA sequences.) A quick scan of the literature suggests they don't really have a handle on how it happens yet, but it sure looks like that awful randiom mutation followed by natural selection to me.
The main point is that flax does this, but other organisms apparently don't. It's interesting, but it's not a general mechanism, particularly since it seems to be a one-off deal; once flax has done this, the daughters seem to lose the ability. Another little oddity in the vast panorama of genetic diversity isn't going to get Charles Darwin turning in his grave.
About 30 years ago, the Biology Dept. in Trinity College held a debate between two profs on Lamarckian vs. Darwinian evolution. The prof. who took the Lamarckian position was a terrific debater (which is why he offered to take the 'losing' side), and in fact it was very enjoyable, if you're a biology nerd. Anyway, at the end I asked why, since the ability to inherit acquired characteristics would be such an advantage, didn't the ability to evolve in a Lamarckian manner in itself evolve? No one could answer, but I guess we now know that in some circumstances it did.
Doesn't the bat need a different system based upon it's needs? Since it's only after bugs, it's system may not need to be as robust as say, an eagle, but it definitely still needs to be effective enough to allow it to hunt effectively (which it does quite nicely). It's respiratory requirements are quite different than birds as well (therefore requiring a different design), in that it uses respiratory muscles to power the production of biosonar vocalisations.
You believe it evolved from a shrew, right?
Ahhh the insult-bot has returned! It seems like.....well, a day since you were last here adding nothing to the discussion.
And that is not random. It is a response.
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