Shatner really has to quit making these Star Trek movies. It's just not credible anymore.
Posted on 01/02/2006 4:14:37 AM PST by PatrickHenry
The mechanisms driving the process of evolution have always been subject to rigorous scientific debate. Growing in intensity and scope, this debate currently spans a broad range of disciplines including archaeology, biochemistry, computer modeling, genetics & development and philosophy.
A recent $2.8 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation to the Cambridge Templeton Consortium [link] is providing the resources for further investigation into this complex and fascinating area. The funds will support 18 new grant awards to scientists, social scientists and philosophers examining how complexity has emerged in biological systems.
Attracting 150 applications, the grant process has generated much interest from a wide range of disciplines. Unique in the interdisciplinary nature of their applicants, the Cambridge Consortium grants will encourage and enable high quality research that approaches the issue from many angles, and will also sponsor collaborative work by people from different academic specialties. All of the work will study how biological systems (molecular, cellular, social etc) become more complex as they evolve.
"This is clearly an emerging area of science, and we are pleased that these grants are specifically aimed at encouraging work that would not easily fall under the parameters of any other grant-awarding body," says Consortium Chairman, Professor Derek Burke.
Questions to be addressed by the projects include:
* Why are biologists so afraid of asking 'why' questions, when physicists do it all the time?Among the institutions receiving grants from the Cambridge Templeton Consortium are Duke University, Harvard University Medical School, University of California, San Francisco, University of Cambridge, UK, and Australian National University.* Can experiments using a digital evolutionary model answer why intelligence evolved, but artificial intelligence has been so hard to build?
* What lessons can rock art and material remains teach us about the development of human self-awareness?
* Can the geometric ordering of specific sheets of cells throw light on the questions currently being raised about design in nature?
* What principles allow individuals to develop social and colonial organizations?
The mission of the John Templeton Foundation is to pursue new insights at the boundary between theology and science through a rigorous, open-minded and empirically focused methodology, drawing together talented representatives from a wide spectrum of fields of expertise. Founded in 1987, the Foundation annually provides more than $60 million in funding on behalf of work in human sciences and character development, science and theology research, as well as free enterprise programs and awards worldwide. For more information about the Templeton Foundation, go to www.templeton.org [link.].
[Omitted some contact info, available at the original article.]
Now there's an eloquent utterance.
You do neither yourself nor your side any credit with such statements.
Your post left me ecstatic.
Bees do this with incredible specificity AND communicate their knowledge with almost no brain at all.
Long distance walking--not to say hunting, but the opportunity was there--predates big brains by at least two million years.
This is a known hunting technique that is still done occasionally, if rarely. It is not unknown among some American Indians.
A human does not have the sprint speed, but they can keep up a cross-country jog for hours without rest if they are in decent shape. Integrated over many hours, a human can sustain a higher average speed than most other land critters. Humans are also smart enough that even though other animals can lose them in a sprint, a human can relocate the animal and continue the chase. A large animal has a hard time losing a dedicated human tracker familiar with the landscape. Humans have both the endurance and brains to pull off this unusual but effective style of hunting. If you think about it, this is a very useful hunting adaptation that takes advantage of evolutionary bias toward predators that can only sprint -- humans have an evolutionary bias that defeats a broad pattern in nature and have the brains to make it work.
While I've never hunted like this myself, I understand that when you catch up with the animal (which usually takes hours), they are so thoroughly exhausted that you can dispatch them with a knife with relatively little risk.
Yeah, but ignoring the bee thing, or the army ant thing (which I think is mostly chemistry), hunting in packs requires social cooperation over a long period of time. It can take a day or two to chase a deer to exhaustion, as its sprints become progressively shorter. This goal-oriented cooperation requires some brain size. We've got it. Wolves (and dogs) have it. It's been said that this is why, of all the beasts in the world, we get along best with dogs.
On the hairlessness issue, I think I agree with you. Evaporation of sweat is important. Dogs pant, we sweat. Bye bye pelt.
Also very important for brain function; the brain would cook itself if it was not for aggressive cooling mechanisms. One of the evolutionary enablers of larger brains in the chain of species that led to homo sapien was progressively improving adaptations for rapid heat transport from the brain area.
This behavior is not that long ago in our past. I'm pretty sure I've read that Julius Caesar could move his legions over 20 miles a day, mostly jogging but with periodic "rest" periods of mere marching -- always with full packs, of course. At the end of a day's march they could fight a battle or build a fort. Then do the same thing the next day ...
His superiors and the union troops he usually whipped were impressed. His footsore soldiers weren't so fond of the whole deal.
Shatner really has to quit making these Star Trek movies. It's just not credible anymore.
Welcome to the Festival of Dover Depressed Dingbats, who have nothing to offer except juvenile bathroom humor in response to the facts brought out at the trial.
Cagey? I clearly stated you guys don't like questioning. Kinda like...
Other researchers have looked within animals' genomes to analyze adaptation at the genetic level. In various places in the Northern Hemisphere, for example, marine stickleback fish were scattered among landlocked lakes as the last Ice Age ended. Today, their descendants have evolved into dozens of different species, but each has independently lost the armor plates needed for protection from marine predators. Researchers expected that the gene responsible would vary from lake to lake. Instead, they found that each group of stranded sticklebacks had lost its armor by the same mechanism: a rare DNA defect affecting a signaling molecule involved in the development of dermal bones and teeth. That single preexisting variant--rare in the open ocean--allowed the fish to adapt rapidly to a new environment.
Separated groups, same mechanism a rare DNA defect.(it isn't rare if they all had it)
Clearly you're mistaking Wilhelmina for her brother.
Did you hear him on late night TV recently? He was asked by the host if the rest of the Star Trek cast had any inkling that George Takai ("Sulu") was a homosexual.
Shatner: "Oh, we all had a pretty good idea..."
Host: "How did you know?"
Shatner: "Well, whenever the rest of us set our phasers on 'STUN,' George would set his to 'FABULOUS'!"
Different words, same sentiment. I mentioned Dr. Shapiro and "Phina" for a reason. One asks questions, the other is part of a fire brigade.
Here anomaly!
There anomaly!
Everywhere a nomaly nomaly!
Ol' witch doctor had a mask!
Oogety-boogety-boo!
Kind of interesting that the Templeton Foundation is funding research into evolution in that haven't evolutionists been claiming that evolution is a fact. if it was a fact, why does it need further research?
Oh, that's right; evolutionists admit that evolution isn't a fact. The $2.8 million will not lead to any evidence proving evolution.
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