Reflectorites
Here are excerpts from Yahoo! and CNN for the period 23 - 5 July
2000, with my comments in square brackets.
Steve
===================================================
http://www.cnn.com/2000/NATURE/07/05/better.engines.enn/index.html
CNN ... Modern Darwinism: better engines through natural selection.
Caterpillar Inc., the world's largest manufacturer of ... diesel and natural
gas engines, and industrial gas turbines, has funded a computer model to
create more efficient engines July 5, 2000 ... A century and a half after
Charles Darwin's bombshell, could his rules of evolution help engineers
design high-performance engines of the future? Computer models are doing
just that, by using genetic algorithms to simultaneously increase fuel
efficiency and reduce pollution. Peter Senecal ... created the computer
models to help sort through literally billions of combinations of factors that
determine engine performance. ... Senecal says the most important advance
is in improving pollution emissions without sacrificing fuel efficiency, and
vice versa. ... Senecal created a diesel engine design that reduces nitric
oxide emissions by three-fold and soot emissions by 50 percent over the
best available technology. At the same time, the model reduced fuel
consumption by 15 percent. ... The "optimum" point represents the best
possible combination of factors that will achieve reduced emissions of both
soot and nitric oxide. ... The "baseline" represents the best existing
technology. Six engine performance measures were studied, including fuel
injection timing, injection pressure, and amount of exhaust recirculation.
The simulation was then reproduced experimentally in a real diesel engine.
... genetic algorithms have been developed in recent years for other
engineering challenges, such as designing bridges and airplane wings. ...
Senecal's computer model is extremely versatile and could be used for all
types of engines. ... [Without any details one cannot tell of this is really
Darwinian, with truly random mutation. Also, if the `phenotype' is able to
feedback directly to the `genotype' then this would be Lamarckian, not
Darwinian. Unlike nature, such a GA's cannot fail to work because they
have been *designed* to infallibly achieve a goal of finding an optimal
solution. If the claim is that an intelligently designed algorithm which
works within defined limits to infallibly achieve a desired goal, is an
analogue of a `blind watchmaker' system which denies all those things, then
this would be another example of `Berra's Blunder'. As Kelly pointed out
(see tagline), all such simulations are just microevolution, i.e. fine-tuning an
existing design, and no radically new designs have ever emerged. Now if
this GA spontaneously `evolved' a jet engine out of a diesel engine, then
that *would* be interesting! :-)]
http://www.cnn.com/2000/LAW/06/28/scotus.helms/index.html CNN ...
Supreme Court says tax money can go to religious schools The Supreme
Court reviewed the issue of whether aid to religious schools for computers
and other technology violate separation of church and state June 28, 2000
... WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that
taxpayer money may be used to buy computers and other materials for
religious and other private schools. The 6-3 ruling should speed federal
efforts to connect every American classroom to the Internet. The decision
also is sure to be cited as a big victory for proponents of using public
money for tuition aid to families who send their children to religious
schools. .... The central issue in Mitchell v. Helms and school vouchers is
whether taxpayer money can be used by private or religious school
students. ... Helms argued that the act violates the Establishment Clause of
the First Amendment, which says Congress "shall make no law respecting
an establishment of religion." ... Interestingly, traditional foes of public
funding for private schools -- the American Civil Liberties Union and the
National Education Association -- were quiet when the law was passed.
Now, both groups argue that the law as it is applied raises fundamental
constitutional question because it is impossible to truly determine if the
material is being used to advance a particular religious cause. ... A federal
judge ruled in favor of Helms, siding with the argument that the act runs
counter to the First Amendment. But when the defendants -- Guy Mitchell
and other parents ... asked for a review of the case, a new judge ruled that
Chapter 2 of the act is indeed constitutional. Prior U.S. Supreme Court
decisions had distinguished between textbooks and other materials. ... The
case remained in lower federal courts for 13 years before it reached the 5th
Circuit Court of Appeals. After the defendants appealed, the Supreme
Court accepted the case in June 1999 and heard oral arguments in April. ...
[Maybe the Supreme Court's interpretative pendulum regarding "no law
respecting an establishment of religion" is swinging back to what the
Founding Fathers intended? If so, this may enhance ID's prospects of
surviving a future Supreme Court challenge (see next article).]
http://www.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/06/28/campaign.wrap/in
dex.html CNN ... Presidential candidates comment on Supreme Court
rulings on abortion Gore draws distinctions with his rival; Bush condemns
ruling June 28, 2000 ... COLUMBUS, Ohio (CNN) -- On campaign stops
in Ohio on Wednesday, both Vice President Al Gore and Texas Gov.
George W. Bush weighed in on two abortion- related Supreme Court
rulings -offering praise and condemnation respectively. ... As both
candidates stumped in the key Midwestern state, Gore praised the court's
rulings and seized on the opportunity to draw a distinction with his GOP
rival, cautioning that Bush, if he becomes president, could appoint justices
who might seek to bring an end to abortion-on-demand as guaranteed by
the court's 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision. ... "The next president will
nominate at least three and probably four -perhaps four -- justices to the
Supreme Court. One extra vote on the wrong side of those two issues
would change the outcome and a woman's right to choose would be taken
away," said Gore, the presumptive Democratic nominee. .... Gore singled
out Bush's previous statements in which the Texas governor declared he
considered Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas as
role models for high court appointments ... [It will be interesting if Bush
wins and appoints conservative Justices like Scalia and Thomas, who have
in the past have supported the right of secular criticism of evolution in
schools. Scalia in particular may even favour the presentation of alternative
models, including ID? When Phil Johnson retires from Berkeley, I think he
would make a very wise Supreme Court Justice! :-)]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000705/sc/health_ghosts_dc_1.html
Yahoo! ... July 5 ... Brain Damage Can Explain Ghosts - Swiss Scientist
LONDON (Reuters) - Ghosts have nothing to do with supernatural
experiences, but are simply the result of brain damage ... Apparitions are
like "phantom limbs" -- the sense that an amputated limb is still present -but
"spread to the whole body," according to neuroscientist Peter Brugger ...
"Ghosts are probably nothing more, but also nothing less than phantoms of
the body," ... this could be the result of damage to visual areas of the brain
that affect the way we sense our body .... Out-of-body experiences, where
people "see" their body from the outside, may be caused by temporary over
activity of certain brain regions ... Brugger said these experiences are
generated when the parietal lobes, the regions responsible for the
distinction between the body and surrounding space, are damaged. ... [This
sounds like materialistic philosophy masquerading as an empirical finding
of science. The implication is that *all* "supernatural experiences" are the
result of "brain damage" or "phantoms of the body". Some, even most, may
well be, but how can he possibly know that *all* are? *All* experiences,
true and false, come through the same brain. Indeed, according to
materialism, *all* thinking is just a "phantom of the body"!]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000704/sc/aids_safrica_dc_1.html
Yahoo! ... July 4 ... South Africa AIDS Panel to Validate HIV Tests ... A
meeting of international experts convened by South African President
Thabo Mbeki ... agreed to carry out further stringent studies on the
reliability of the globally-used ELISA HIV test. .... Mbeki has also courted
controversy by including researchers like ... Peter Duesberg -- who
contends that AIDS is not caused by HIV -- on the 44-member presidential
panel advising him on the pandemic. ... Mokhele, president of the South
African National Research Council fuelled the controversy when he said
the team of three scientists had been tasked with carrying out studies and
experiments to test the widely-established belief that HIV causes AIDS.
The claim was hotly disputed by Makgoba, Gayle and Bialy although Bialy
said the ELISA tests could "in the far future" lead to tests on the link
between HIV and AIDS. [Sounds ominous for the `HIV causes AIDS'
orthodoxy? If the HIV testing methods cannot be validated, then all of the
statistics upon which conclusions are based (see below) may be invalid?]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000701/sc/aids_hiv_dc_1.html Yahoo!
... July 1 ... Evidence Overwhelming HIV Causes AIDS - Doctors ...
LONDON (Reuters) - Overwhelming evidence shows that the HIV virus is
the cause of AIDS, more than 5,000 leading scientists, doctors and medical
experts said .... In a document published in ... Nature, Nobel prize winners,
renowned AIDS experts and researchers signed the so-called Durban
Declaration. The move was an effort to stem controversy in South Africa
over whether the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is the cause of the
disease that has infected 33 million people worldwide. ... "The evidence
that AIDS is caused by HIV-1 or HIV-2 is clear-cut, exhaustive and
unambiguous, meeting the highest standards of science," ...The document,
released just a week before the start of the 13th International AIDS
conference in Durban, South Africa, was designed to resolve controversy
over the source of the disease ... The 5,000 scientists supported their
position by saying that most people with the HIV virus, if not treated, show
signs of AIDS within five to 10 years. ... To tackle the AIDS pandemic,
which the scientists say shows no sign of ending, everyone must first
recognize and accept that HIV is the enemy. "It is unfortunate that a few
vocal people continue to deny the evidence. This position will cost
countless lives," the scientists said. Some scientists have threatened to
boycott the six-day conference in Durban that begins on July 9 because of
South Africa's controversial view on the cause of AIDS. ... [There are
going to be 5,000 red faces if it turns out the main test to validate AIDS is
flawed! The contradictions in the above are glaring: "most people with the
HIV virus, if not treated, show signs of AIDS..." (i.e. there are some who
are HIV+ but don't get AIDS); "the AIDS pandemic, which ... shows no
sign of ending" (indicating current treatments aren't working, as Duesberg
predicted); and "This position will cost countless lives" (how, since
everyone with AIDS AFAIK dies of it anyway under the current drug
cocktail regime?)]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000628/sc/cloning_transplants_dc_1.html
Yahoo! ... June 28 ... UK Firm Uses Gene Targeting to Create Cloned
Lambs ... LONDON (Reuters) - The company that helped create Dolly the
sheep said ... it had cloned two lambs from genetically modified cells in a
technique that could prove a major step in animal to human organ
transplants. PPL Therapeutics ... inserted new DNA in a specific place in
sheep cells, fused the modified cells with sheep eggs from which the
nucleus had been removed and produced two lambs, Cupid and Diana, with
the genetic change. ... The success of the technique in sheep opens up new
possibilities to produce specific genetic changes in mammals. ... "This is the
first time in any species apart from mice where the transgene has been
introduced at a pre-selected site in the animal's genome," ... The
achievement is important because it will allow scientists to knock out, or
switch off, unwanted genes in animals or to introduce modifications which
could have important therapeutic and nutritional applications. So scientists
could potentially knock out a protein in cows' milk to which 10 percent of
infants are allergic, or the prion protein that causes scrapie and mad cow
disease, or other genes that cause animal diseases ...The achievement is
also a major boost for PPL's efforts to produce pigs for human organs
transplants, or xenotransplantation, because it will allow them to knock out
the gene in pigs or other animal cells which causes rejection in humans by
telling the body it is a foreign organ. ...The technique for precise genetic
modification could potentially also be used in gene therapy in humans in
which cells are taken from a patient, genes are inserted and then the cells
are put back into the patient ... "We are clearly at the dawn of a new era in
mammalian genetic technology," ... [This might be of more practical
importance than sequencing the human genome. Cloned mammals can now
become identical protein and spare parts factories. The ethical and animal
welfare issues could be very serious.]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000626/sc/genome_ethics_dc_1.html
Yahoo! ... June 26 ... Skeptics Fear 'Book of Life' Could Spell Death ...
LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists heralded a brave new world ... but
skeptics said a genetic breakthrough could usher in a sinister era of perfect
people and death to the disabled. "The further science goes, the further the
worst case scenario goes," Steve Jenkins, a spokesman for the Church of
England ... "I'm not anti-science but there is no way that God is now out of
a job." He spoke after an international team of researchers said they had
mapped 97 percent of the human genome -- the genetic makeup of the
human body -- in a scientific accomplishment on a par with the discovery of
penicillin or the lunar landing. "This is the outstanding achievement not
only of our lifetime but in terms of human history," said Dr Michael Dexter
... the researchers have effectively whittled down the human body to a
complex string of letters that should revolutionize the way doctors see the
body and treat its shortfalls. ... The potential benefits are huge: drugs
tailor-made for individuals, predictive testing, improved understanding of
disease along with gene therapy to put in-built wrongs to right. Others fear
the possible misuse of science in man's drive to create a perfect world and
say few will benefit. "It's the difference between using genetics to correct
something that has gone wrong and using them to create something
considered perfect," said Jenkins, who trained in science. "The idea of
designing humans from scratch along with the prospect of an enormous
increase in abortion is not the world we want." While the scientists
emphasized their so-called "book of life" was just the beginning of a long
road ahead, doubters said it would benefit few and could turn out to be a
giant step back to the sort of eugenics practiced in Nazi Germany. ...
"Mapping the human genome is a great human achievement," Richard
Nicholson ... said. "Like climbing Mount Everest, it will benefit few people,
leaving most untouched. But unlike climbing Mount Everest, it has the
potential to damage large numbers of people." ... Designer babies could be
created, flawed fetuses killed. The stigma of being anything less than
perfect could soar. "Disabled people feel a responsibility to raise the
alarm," said Agnes Fletcher ... "'New hope' for disabled people is
accompanied by the danger of disabled people and others experiencing
increased discrimination in employment, insurance, healthcare provision
and education." ...Yet scientists say they are a long way from making sense
of their new alphabet soup and putting it to practical use. ... man has been
dabbling in eugenics for centuries. Plato's Republic depicts a society
chasing self-improvement through selective breeding while references to
eugenic ideals appear as far back as the Old Testament. English statistician
Francis Galton took it further in 1869 by proposing a system of arranged
marriages between men of distinction and women of wealth to produce a
gifted race. Indeed it was Galton who coined the term "eugenics," and the
American Eugenics Society took up his baton in 1926 by proposing
restrictions on immigrants from "inferior" stock, along with sterilization for
the insane, retarded and epileptic. The German Nazi party of the 1930s
went to the wildest extremes, using eugenics to justify its attempted
extermination of European Jews and other groups of people. ... [Sounds
like they have just opened Pandora's Box! Jenkins point that: "there is no
way that God is now out of a job" highlights the inability of a science based
on naturalism to derive an "ought" from an "is". The claim that there is
"references to eugenic ideals" in the OT is news to me. But what it doesn't
say is that Galton was Darwin's cousin and Nazi eugenics was based on
Darwin's dogma of "favoured races"]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000626/sc/genome_scene_dc_5.html
Yahoo! ... June 26 ... England's Sanger Centre, Where Faith Is Science ...
HINXTON, England (Reuters) - Visitors to the Sanger Centre near
Cambridge, where scientists helped lead a global effort to plot the human
genetic code, could be forgiven for thinking they had arrived at a church. A
large stained-glass window at the entrance depicts humans in a tree of life,
some of them glancing toward the heavens. A parallel image of the
distinctive double-helix structure of DNA winds its way alongside. A pious
silence hangs in the air, broken only by the murmurs of men and women
coming and going with purposeful strides to carry out what some say is a
moral mission. Yet here the people preach about DNA, and if there is
religion, then that religion is science. ... If there is a villain here -someone
who invokes disdain from the faithful -- he is Craig Venter, the head of the
rival private U.S. company Celera which kept its DNA sequence private
and wants to patent information from its database ..."There is a common
philosophy here that holds people together," .... "Most people here feel
quite strongly that this moves science forward, rather than having lots of
individual people trying to do it themselves and not sharing the
information," she adds... [Another example of how the science-religion
dichotomy is superficial. It was Neo-Darwinism's co-founder Julian Huxley
who predicted that a "new religion... will arise to serve the needs of the
coming era"!]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000624/sc/mars_salt_dc_2.html
Yahoo! ... June 24 .... Study Suggests Mars Had Salty Oceans
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Hard on the heels of an announcement that
scientists may have found evidence that water still flows to the surface of
Mars, geologists said ... they had found evidence that, like Earth, Martian
oceans were salty. Astronomers agree that Mars must have been warm and
wet billions of years ago, but its oceans have long ago dried up. A team ...
said they had nonetheless been able to get an idea of what those oceans
were like by looking at chunks of rock that were knocked off Mars and fell
to Earth as meteorites. ...Carleton Moore of ASU and his team said they
had analyzed the inside of the 1.2 billion-year-old Nakhla meteorite, which
fell on Egypt in 1911, and found water-soluble ions that probably would
have been deposited by evaporating brine. ... "We have concluded that we
have extracted salts that were originally present in Martian water," .... "The
salts we found mimic the salts in Earth's ocean fairly closely." The findings
are interesting for a variety of reasons, not least because scientists believe
Mars may have once supported life, perhaps simple life similar to bacteria.
"There was apparently a uniformity between the planets," Moore said. "The
inference that the early Martian ocean was very similar to our current
ocean also implies that the early Earth's ocean may have been very similar
to what it is today. This is a clue to what it might have been." ... See also:
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000623/sc/space_mars_dc_8.html
Yahoo! ... June 23 ... Scientists Find Evidence of Water on Mars ... [I
presume they made sure these "water soluble ions" did not seep into the
meteorite after it landed on Earth? The fundamental premise of why life
arose spontaneously on the early Earth but doesn't arise spontaneously
today was that things were different then. But if the Earth's ocean was the
same 4.6 bya this would be another problem for naturalistic OoL oceanic
`soup' theories.]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000623/sc/health_genome_dc_3.html
Yahoo! ... June 23 ... Groups to Announce Genome Map in Washington
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent WASHINGTON
(Reuters) - Celera Genomics Inc. and the publicly funded Human Genome
Project said on Friday they had finished making arrangements for a joint
announcement on mapping the human genome. The two groups, which
have sped to make a rough draft of the human DNA map, said they would
make a joint announcement on Monday in Washington. ... Although all
scientists involved stress that the map is only a very initial first step -- they
still do not know where the genes are and what they all do -- they also
point out that mapping out the "sequences" that make up DNA is a huge
landmark. At first most genetics experts cast doubt on Venter's "whole
shotgun" sequencing method, which involved busting up the human
genome into small bits, sequencing each piece, and then fitting it all back
together somewhat like a jigsaw puzzle. But when it started to work, the
skeptics were quick to confess admiration and speeded up their own, more
painstaking, mapping methods. The result is that they have both raced to
the first step in the genome mapping effort -- finding the order in which the
four "bases" that make up human DNA, known by their initials A,C, T and
G, are laid out on the human chromosomes. The next step, which will take
years, will be sorting out which bits in this code constitute the genes and
which parts are so-called "junk" DNA. ... [That Venter's `jigsaw' method
worked is testimony to the book-like specified complexity of the genome.
My ID prediction is that they will find that they need to take into account
the so-called "junk" DNA in fully understanding how the genome functions
within its cellular context. IOW the adjective "junk" will be seen to be a
misnomer, and in future will be looked back as another example of how
adopting an anti-ID philosophy hindered scientific understanding of the
natural world.]
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"Synthetically reproduced protolife and artificial evolution in computers
have already unearthed a growing body of nontrivial surprises. Yet artificial
life suffers from the same malaise that afflicts its cousin, artificial
intelligence. No artificial intelligence that I am aware of-be it autonomous
robot, learning machine, or massive cognition program-has run more than
24 hours in succession. After a day, artificial intelligence stalls. Likewise,
artificial life. Most runs of computational life fizzle out of novelty quickly.
While the programs sometimes keep running, churning out minor variation,
they ascend to no new levels of complexity or surprise after the first spurt
(and that includes Tom Ray's world of Tierra). Perhaps given more time to
run, they would. Yet, for whatever reason, computational life based on
unadorned natural selection has not seen the miracle of open-ended
evolution that its creators, and I, would love to see. As the French
evolutionist Pierre Grasse said, "Variation is one thing, evolution quite
another; this cannot be emphasized strongly enough... Mutations provide
change, but not progress." So while natural selection may be responsible
for microchange-a trend in variations-no one can say indisputably that it is
responsible for macrochange-the open-ended creation of an unexpected
novel form and progress toward increasing complexity." (Kelly K., "Out of
Control: The New Biology of Machines", [1994], Fourth Estate: London,
1995, reprint, p.476)
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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