Below are web article summaries with links for the period 21-26
December 1999, in descending date order.
My comments are in square brackets.
Wishing you all a happy New `Millennium'!
Steve
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http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/19991226/sc/people_einstein_2.html
Yahoo! ... December 26 ... Time Names Einstein 'Person of the Century'...
(Reuters) ... In his "special theory of relativity", Einstein described how the
only constant in the universe is the speed of light. Everything else -mass,
weight, space, even time itself -- is compressed as it approaches the speed
of light...The idea ...had a profound and startling influence on society and
culture. "Indirectly, relativity paved the way for a new relativism in
morality, arts and politics..."There was less faith in absolutes, not only of
time and space but also of truth and morality."... (92/926) [This seems a bit
far-fetched. I know that a Breakpoint article mentioned this was claimed by
historian Paul Johnson, but I would have thought that ethical relativism
was a consequence of the decline in religious belief and any claimed
support from Einstein's Theory of Relativity would have just been a
rationalisation after the fact. The same article showed that ironically
"Einstein himself...preferred to call it `invariance theory,' because it shows
that physical laws do not vary across reference frames"!]
http://www.cnn.com/1999/NATURE/12/24/monkeygenes.ap/ CNN ...
Jellyfish DNA transferred to monkey embryo December 24, 1999 ... (AP) -
- Moving medicine a big step closer to the day when healthier humans can
be engineered in the laboratory, scientists have successfully transferred
glowing green jellyfish DNA to monkey embryos. ... and produced a
healthy, normal-looking monkey. ... the experiment represents a big step
toward the day when genes can be inserted into human embryos to correct
or prevent diseases. ... the experiment has raised ethical concerns. ... There
is absolutely no regulation governing this field whatsoever," said Alix Fano
... "We're really playing with fire in this whole field of genetic
manipulation," ... (99/1017) [For better or for worse, this gene
manipulation may now be out of control. According to the dominant
materialistic philosophy of science, we are just machines cobbled together
by a `blind watchmaker' from interchangeable parts. So why not
interchange those parts which are not working properly with others from
another machine that are? And there definitely are benefits in curing genetic
diseases. But once gene *repairs* are accepted, who is going to argue
against gene *improvements*? Hitler's dream of a master-race would not
be far away. Gould's NOMA would pretend to give `religion' a say in
ethical concerns, since God is not real, it will turn out to be just a token
gesture. And there are plenty of tame theistic naturalistic theologians to
give their blessing. So who is going to represent the point of view that we
were created by God and that maybe He does not approve of us being
radically changed?]
http://www.cnn.com/1999/NATURE/12/23/color.perception.ap/index.html
CNN ... December 23, 1999 ... (AP) -- A new study suggests the human
brain knows a lot more about science and the properties of light than you
might believe. When you see holiday lights reflected on a wall, the colors
you perceive may not be what's really there. The study published today in
the journal Science shows that the brain automatically compensates for
what direction the lights are coming from ... "Our brains know more about
physics and light reflection than we consciously realize," said Dan Kersten
... (83/883) [Isn't the `blind watchmaker' wonderful? Being able to know
the laws of physics and make brains which know the laws of physics too? :-
)]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/19991223/sc/science_reproduction_1.html
Yahoo! ... December 23 ... Kids Make You Tired? There's a Good
Reason... (Reuters) - People who complain that their children are driving
them to an early grave may be closer to the truth than they thought,
researchers said ... they had found definitive evidence ... that reproducing
takes a deadly toll on the body. ... (50/520) [This fruit-fly study claims that
a fruit-fly that had no offspring would be personally fitter than one that did.
But of course it is only the fruit-flies who do reproduce which have any
evolutionary significance. While extrapolating from fruit-flies to humans
may be a bit dubious, this highlights the fact that "survival of the fittest" in
Neo-Darwinism these days is all about *reproduction*, and not about
attributes we normally associate with fitness, like strength or speed. The
couch potato who has ten kids is "fitter" in Darwinian terms than the
Olympic athlete who has two!]
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/122199sci-paleo-gould.html
The New York Times. December 21, 1999. ... Stephen Jay Gould ... ... In
his 19 books and in essays ..., Dr. Gould has become perhaps the most
eloquent and best-known proponent of the view that evolution and natural
selection are responsible for the origin and diversity of species. But earlier
this month he came under criticism in The New Yorker, which suggested
that his emphasis on chance in the evolutionary process had unwittingly
aided the cause of creationism. .... Q. What was your reaction, when you
first read that the Kansas Board of Education was going to make the
teaching of evolution optional in biology classes? A. That the citizens of
Kansas would be profoundly embarrassed by the stupidity of the ruling and
that they would vote that school board out of office the next year ... Q.
Your recent book, "Questioning the Millennium," ... Year 2000 issues... A.
... in the year 1000... their fears were grander... that Jesus would come
again ... it's so amusing that in a secular age the main fear that people have
is caused by a technical glitch ... (170/1720) [Gould a *proponent* of
natural selection? One wonders if these journalists ever read what the
people they interview write? It will be interesting to see what does happen
in Kansas when the Board comes up for re-election. Gould's comment
about people's fears being less grand in today's secular age sounds almost
like regret at something lost!]
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/122199sci-archaeo-flowers.html
The New York Times. December 21, 1999. ... Ninety million years ago ... a
flower-filled tropical forest stood in flames, its many blossoms burning and
smoldering away not into ashy oblivion, but into paleontological perpetuity
... the fires ... preserved its blooms as perfect charcoal fossils... more than
200 species of fossil ... including ancient relatives of carnations, cactuses,
teas, azaleas, water lilies, oaks, pitcher plants and magnolias. ... preserved
in breathtaking three-dimensional detail ... the findings are turning botanical
lore on its head, by revealing that the great diversification of flowering
plants ... took place ... some 30 million years earlier than previously
suspected. ... the findings suggest that insects were diversifying right along
with the plants, providing support for the theory that an interaction
between these two groups ... may have driven their mutual and explosive
diversification. ... (130/1317) [This sounds like the `Big Bang' of the
flowering plants! Suddenly all these species of plants appear in the fossil
record 30 million years earlier than thought and thereafter remain much the
same! The discovery of insects with the plants might help solve the earlier
conundrum of why insect mouthparts seemed to have appeared well before
the plants they were adapted to.]
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/122199sci-plant-chromosome.html
The New York Times. December 21, 1999.... Biologists have decoded a
large part of the DNA of a plant [Arabidopsis thaliana], affording the first
glimpse of the genetic programming of the plant world... [A] surprise is
that Arabidopsis ... [has] 25,000 genes, considerably more than the C.
elegans roundworm... large parts of the genome consist of duplications,
with the identical sequence of DNA letters appearing twice over....
(68/681) [An interesting article, well worth reading in full because of its
description of the unexpectedly large, complex and dynamic plant genome.]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/education/newsid_573000/573635.stm
BBC ... 21 December, 1999 ... Scientists have a serious image problem
among the young, claims a survey published by psychologists [at the
University of Bath]... scientists were perceived... as "dangerous cranks"...
[Their] ... work was recognised as improving the quality of life... But there
[were] fears that scientists were "interfering" with nature and creating
weapons of mass destruction. ... (55/551) [If this repeated elsewhere it may
spell big trouble for materialistic-naturalistic science, and opportunity for
ID. Having an ideologue like Dawkins as Oxford's Professor for the Public
Understanding of Science can't help science's image problem in the UK!]
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"Contemporary religious thinkers often approach the Argument from
Design with a grim determination that their churches shall not again be
made to look foolish. Recalling what happened when churchmen opposed
first Galileo and then Darwin, they insist that religion must be based not on
science but on faith. Philosophy, they announce, has demonstrated that
Design Arguments lack all force. I hope to have shown that philosophy has
demonstrated no such thing. Our universe, which these religious thinkers
believe to be created by God, does look, greatly though this may dismay
them, very much as if created by God." (Leslie J., "Universes", [1989],
Routledge: London, 1996, reprint, p22)
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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