Bowing for Best - the Beavers at Their Best

OSU OSU OSU OSU OSU

If you saw the November 7, 2009, football game between the Oregon State Beavers and the California Golden Bears, you likely saw the spectacular spill by Cal star running back Jahvid Best. Or maybe you saw it on highlight clips later. Or maybe you were on a different planet.

You can find still photos at:
http://blog.oregonlive.com/behindbeaversbeat/2009/11/looks_like_cals_jahvid_best_wh.html

I was watching the game - rooting for my "lunchbucket" Beavers. They had a great performance, downing a good Cal team 31-14.


But for my money, Oregon State's best performance came when the Beavers' defensive team took the knee in the end zone, praying as Best lay still following his spectacular crash.

Photo: AP, Oregonian, Paul Buker

I am thankful for the OSU athletes who had the sensitivity - and boldness to pray.

'Nuff said.


With gratitude and appreciation to the OSU men who put a great face of compassion on a very violent game,

D.U.

Genome Fractal Globules Globs Globulets - Jagnormously Cool ! And Merry Christmas with the Mother of All Christmas Strands.

Special greetings ( ! ! ) today to all you storage-challenged souls out there wandering in search of another closet or a better closet system. To the rest of you, a politely restrained "hello there".

Yes, I also am storage-challenged. Too much stuff, stored in linear vertical structures (stacks) with a storage retrieval system (my memory) in need of an upgrade.

So when I read the other day in Science News about the discovery that DNA appears to be stored in a fractal structure, I thought that was really really cool. But a shadow was cast over my topological joy as functional access to a linear structure within volumetric storage nudged my thoughts to the impending annual challenge- get the Christmas lights untangled.

(I) First the fractals:



See the article in Science News, Nov. 7, 2009, "New view reveals how DNA fits into cell; Map of 3-D structure of the entire human genome shows fractal folding is key," By Laura Sanders.


http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/48166/title/New_view_reveals_how_DNA_fits_into_cell



The work reported appears to be a very clever way to understand how linear DNA is packed ("folded") into the volume of a cell's nucleus. This is very important in order to understand the wonderful efficiencies of the transcription, replication, repair (and more) processes busily ongoing in each nucleus.



Laura Sanders' article reports:


"Cells are tidy packers, cramming DNA into nuclei to create a tangle-free, dense ball with pieces that are still accessible, researchers report October 9 in Science. The findings, based on a new three-dimensional view of the whole human genome, solve a long-standing biological mystery and may lead to a deeper understanding of how genes operate. ... a human cell’s two meters of DNA is jammed into an area about a hundredth of a millimeter wide. But researchers had been puzzled by how cells could pack the DNA, which is organized into 23 pairs of chromosomes inside the nucleus, so tightly without hopelessly tangling it and making it impossible to use." ...



"In the new study, Erez Lieberman-Aiden of Harvard University and MIT, Nynke L. van Berkum of University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester and colleagues developed a trick to lock pieces of neighboring DNA to each other while they were still in the nucleus. After removing the pieces and sequencing them, the researchers could calculate how close each and every piece of DNA had been to the other pieces and could reconstruct the 3-D shape of the genome."



What did they find? It appears that DNA is stored in a "fractal" structure. What does that mean? "A fractal is a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be subdivided in parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole. Fractals are generally self-similar and independent of scale."
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/fractal-faq/section-2.html



Sanders reports that the researchers found the human genome "has a highly organized structure. Small pieces of DNA fold into globs, and those globs fold into larger globs and so on. The researchers report that this “globule of globules of globules” is fractal, meaning it is organized in such a way that it has the same pattern no matter how far you zoom in. This fractal shape is “super-dense, but has no knots.”



Here is the image produced by Leonid A. Mirny, Maxim Imakaev, and reproduced in the Science News article:

This reminds me a great deal of the vast improvement in computer programming languages (e.g., introduced in the "C" programming language) that came when "go-to-less" systems (code nested inside a nest of code nested inside a nest of code nested inside ... a nest of code) - with loads of recursive functions - replaced the "spaghetti code" in the FORTRAN II that I cut my teeth on . Sometimes topology really matters.

The "knot" in the fractal would correspond to my dinosaur "GO TO" that would jump from here to there without restraint from sound organizing boundaries. The image above looks considerably more organized than some code I wrote in the stone ages. Like, debug that and have a nice day!




(II) And now the Christmas lights:


I usually try to untangle three strands, each about 25 feet long with lights about every 0.2 m (approximately 8 inches), carefully placed in a box the prior season. If I take them down, each strand is unplugged from the next so each strand is individually wound up. If my son or son-in-law takes them down, maybe the whole plugged string is tossed in the box - quickly. But it seems no matter how much care in packing the lights last year, the unpacking becomes an ugly wrestling match more often lost than won.


So how about an analogy of the DNA storage with Christmas lights? Consider a strand with four colors of lights: Amber (A=>adenine), Turquoise (T=>thymine), Coral Red (C=> cytosine), and Green (G=>guanine). But this is a special strand since it is really two "uni-strands" twisted together to form one strand so that every Amber bulb on one "unistrand" corresponds to a Turquoise bulb on the other "unistrand", while every Coral bulb on one "unistrand" corresponds to a Green bulb on the other "unistrand." The two unistrands are twisted and twisted and twisted until we get lots of twists end-to-end (call this a "helix") to correspond to the wound up structure of DNA.

It seems like this is going to be the Mother Of All Christmas Strands (MOACS), with 3 billion lights in each unistrand (corresponding to the 3 billion base-pairs in the human genome). A little math determines the coverage we can get with this strand (ignoring practical matters of blown fuses and the like). The circumference of the earth is approximately 40,000 km, that is 40,000,000 m. With a bulb-pair every 0.2 m (about 8 inches), we can get 200,000,000 bulb pairs in each circumference of the earth. Hey, this little strand of lights can circle the globe 15 times ! ! !

How about the box this thing came out of ? We have to stuff MOACS back into the box after the Christmas ham is gone. Following the globule ... glob ... globlet fractal idea and ignoring the question of linear connectivity, consider a first small cubic box 0.2m x 0.2m x0.2m (about 8 inches on a side), and assume we can store 27 bulb-pairs (27=3 cubed) in the box. Call that B1. Then form B2 as a box composed of 27 B1 boxes in a cubic 3x3x3 configuration, B3 is composed of 27 B2 boxes recursively in the same fashion, and so on. If I get the math right, the box B7 should be able to contain 10.5 billion bulb-pairs, triple the space required. B6 of course can only store 1/27 of that, or 0.39 billion bulb-pairs (only about 13% of the volume needed to hold our MOACS).

So let's take B7 as our design box. This will leave some extra space for the hounds to get in and fetch copies of strand segments when needed. The length of one side of B1 is 0.2 m, one side of B2 is 0.2m x 3, one side of B7 is 0.2m x 3**(7-1) = 146 m, or about 160 yards. To envision that, consider a cubic box with one dimension equal to the full end-to-end field length of the Los Angeles Coliseum. Here is a photo (thanks to Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Memorial_Coliseum ) from the 2008 USC vs. Ohio State football game to help your imagination:

Now go that wide and that high (far above the nosebleed seats) and you have the B7 box that holds our MOACS.

Oh, we have some critical chores to accomplish with our MOACS:
First chore, we need to send in - sometimes waaaaay in - our copyists with a bag of wire and a bag of bulbs to copy good-sized chunks of the MOACS and drag the copied strand back out. These daughter-of-MOACS (DOMOACS) ministrands correspond to RNA segments copied from DNA. One problem is that the copy wire must be attached to the MOACS while the DOMOACS is being constructed. And everything gets all tangled up unless the copy hounds take in a pair of pliers to occasionally cut the MOACS while going round-and-round. Also needed is a splicing tool to put the MOACS back together again with integrity. Here is a DNA-for-dummies description of the corresponding process in transcribing RNA from DNA:
"Transcription causes a problem: the movement of the polymerase through the interwound helical DNA causes the DNA ahead of the polymerase to become tightly overwound. This would cause transcription to slow down or halt completely except that another protein, called topoisomerase, untangles the DNA. It does this by a complicated maneuver - cutting one strand of the tangled DNA, passing the uncut DNA strand through the cut strand, and then resealing the cut." (Behe, M.J., Darwin's Black Box, The Free Press, New York. 1996, p 271.) Cool, huh?

Second chore, we need to make more copies of the coliseum-sized MOACS. In the DNA world, this chore is called replication. This calls for a bag of at least 6,000,000,000 bulbs (because when the strand is separated into unistrands, another unistrand is constructed attached to each of the original-but-now-separated unistrands. I will give you dear readers just the first bit of the biochemical process analagous to our MOACS duplication job:
"DNA replication begins at a certain DNA sequence, known appropriately as an "origin of replication" and proceeds in both directions at once along the parent DNA. The first task to be tackled during replication, as for transcription, is the separation of the two parent DNA strands. This is the job of the DnaA protein. After the strands are separated, ...."
If you are anxious to read the rest of this elegant replication story, see:
Behe, M.J., Darwin's Black Box, The Free Press, New York. 1996. p. 275.

(III) AND FOR MR. DARWIN ...

Pack, replicate, unpack, pack. Do you suppose Charles Darwin, if transported to the modern time along with his buddy dog pack:
Thomas Huxley ("Darwin's bulldog" - http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/philosophy/huxley_darwins_bulldog.html ),
Richard Dawkins ("Darwins Rottweiler" - http://discovermagazine.com/2005/sep/darwins-rottweiler ), and
Eugenie Scott ("Darwin's Golden Retriever" - http://www.arn.org/blogs/index.php/literature/2009/06/05/darwin_s_golden_retriever_portrays_id_as )

would be able to make a duplicate copy of the MOACS described above? Well, maybe. But then let's see if they could pack all 15 earth-circumferences of it back in the coliseum-sized box. And then let's really see the smug faces fade as they try to get it back out next Christmas and untangle it. Maybe there is a corner of hell with that kind of task assigned - pack, replicate, unpack, pack, replicate, unpack .... ad infinitum. If so, I wonder who might be there.

It would be interesting to ask: "If Darwin's dog pack can pack MOACS packs. how many packs can the dog pack pack?"


(IV) FINALLY:

"Cells are tidy packers," Ms. Sanders says.

But let's get more real and say "The Creator God is a tidy packer of cells."

There. That's better.

What can I say to any man or woman who might smugly continue to contend that accidental natural processes have formed all living things?

What can I say to one who dogmatically insists that purposeless particles, through purposeless processes, produce purposeful people?

What can I say? Nothing. Just sigh, shrug, and move on. There are others who are willing to listen. By God's mercy may they be found.

We have Christmas coming up soon - an opportunity to celebrate the incarnation (via virgin birth) of the one about whom scripture says:

"13. For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son,
14. in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
15. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.
16. For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities-- all things have been created through Him and for Him.
17. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.
18. He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything.
19. For it was the Father's good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him,
20. and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross; through Him, I say, whether things on earth or things in heaven.
21. And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds,
22. yet He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach--
23. if indeed you continue in the faith firmly established and steadfast, and not moved away from the hope of the gospel that you have heard, which was proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, was made a minister."
Colossians 1:13-23 (NASB)

If you read verse 13 carefully, you will see that Jesus himself is not only Savior, but also Creator. Ooooohhhhhh! So He is the one who did the pack-replicate-unpack! But He also figured out how to do it in the first place. If you are wont to use the name of Jesus in a casual or disrespectful way, bite your tongue. You have to be really careful who you diss.

May you "continue in the faith, firmly established and steadfast, and not moved away from the hope of the gospel that you have heard."

Have a blessed Christmas 2009.

Because of Jesus the Savior,

Respectfully submitted,

D.U.

Self-authorizing moralizers - enough already!

Following is a letter which was submitted to the Oregonian newspaper's Opinion Editor a couple of weeks ago. Provided herein with permission of the writer for the Undertaker's readers without further comment:

[[
Ocober 20, 2009
To : Editor, The Oregonian
Subject: Self-authorizing moralizers

Recently, once I'm past the Sports section of the Oregonian, every week has brought a new example of self-authorized moralizers trying to tell me how I should think and what people of faith should or should not speak in the public square. Now the epidemic has even invaded your sports section. The problem is that these self-appointed self-anointeds have no basis in true moral authority, which is vested only in God Himself.

Example 1:
An essay by New York Times writer David Broder appeared in the Oregonian Sep. 30, 2009, p. B-5, with the caption, "ERODING ECONOMIC VALUES: The moral revival our country needs." Broder decried the recent erosion in the country's financial values while opining: "This erosion happened at a time when the country's cultural monitors were busy with other things. They were off fighting a culture war about prayer in schools and the theory of evolution. They were arguing about sex and the separation of church and state, oblivious to the large erosion of economic values happening under their feet." Wrong, Mr. Broder. Not at all oblivious. And in fact I have observed that individuals with a commitment to the broad issues of moral integrity have been those with the most outspoken concern for economic integrity as well. And, yes, economic integrity is a moral issue. But when the immortal God of Heaven gives mortal man a moral compass, I have not noticed Him (Him with a capital "H") granting us the authority to cherry-pick our pet issues, but rather mandating responsibility for all. Unless Mr. Broder has demonstrated his own personal authority by creating a functioning universe somewhere recently, he should best humble himself before the Creator (Creator with a capital "C") of this one.

Example 2:
Charles Darwin's reigning high priest of chance, Richard Dawkins, recently rolled his snake-oil wagon into Portland for the Wordstock Book Fair October 10-11 and snagged an interview with Oregonian writer Joe Rojas-Burke (published Oregonian October 10). According to the article, "In his best-seller 'The God Delusion,' evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins attacked religious belief, arguing that faith in God is irrational and harmful." Leading the unsuspecting with a Pied-Piper-like deception, Dawkins glibly proclaims, "For me, the story of how we got here, how the trees got here, how the birds got here, how iguanas and dinosaurs and turtles got here, it is just so beautiful, and elegant, and thrilling, and enthralling. How could you resist trying to pass that on to anybody who will listen? If they don't want to listen that's fine, they can just shove off."

Hmmm. So he wants me to "shove off," does he? So I suppose I would not be welcome to hang around and mention the inconvenient truth that his cute search algorithm to reproduce the little Shakespeare phrase, "Methinks it is like a weasel" in his book The Blind Watchmaker uses intelligent selection toward a foreknown objective to "prove" the feasibility of evolution. The problem is that Dawkins is breaststroking in an intellectual cesspool as he uses both "intelligent" and "foreknown" features of his algorithm to support his argument that life arose by chance using neither intelligent selection nor foreknown objectives. And he even limited his algorithm to only consider letter sequences of the exact length required. Am I joking? Google it yourself. How absurd. How doubly absurd. How does this guy even rate an interview?

Further, would Dawkins stand quietly while I repeat back to him his seen-by-millions statement in the movie Expelled that living things on the Earth could be actually (and not just apparently) designed and that the design might be detectable? But Dawkins insists that the designer(s) must have been highly evolved space aliens. I guess he really wishes to say that our origins are from somewhere - anywhere - except from God with a capital "G." And this is science? This man has abused his position by intellectual deceit. So why should I bother for one second with his suggestion that I "shove off" from the public square of origins discourse? And why should not the Oregonian be more aggressive in exposing the nonsense? Maybe Dr. Dawkins would threaten to sue the Oregonian - as he later threatened to sue interviewer Ben Stein - for repeating to too many people what he actually said.

Example 3: Sunday, October 16, local writer/speaker Tom Krattenmaker invaded my Oregonian Sports page (p. B-2, "Athletes proclaim: God is my QB."). Mr. Krattenmaker oozes his distaste for the public witness of Arizona Cardinals quarterback Kurt Warner as Warner gives God credit for his ability, opportunities, and accomplishments. Excuse me, but I am just kind of thinking that Miss Manners would suggest that spoken gratitude in all situations - whether some hearers want to hear it or not - is the greatest validation of a thank-you. Oh, and does Mr. Krattenmaker give God thanks for the air he breathes and the sunrises he sees? I did not see a hint in his Oregonian piece that he bows the knee to any but his own ego and book publishing royalties. If he does not choose to honor the God of creation, maybe his real issue is that he is misplaced - living in God's universe instead of his own.

I'm curious to see who or what comes down the pike next week.
]]

Respectfully copied,
D.U.

CFCs, HFCs, and ME and U: Man's Flailings Bring God's Glorious Creation Into Sharper Focus

"Sometimes you just can't win for losing" goes the old adage.

The adage is validated yet again in the recent revelation that hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) used to replace the ozone-layer-reducing chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) as refrigerants are themselves not a freebie. It seems the HFCs are hundreds to thousands of times more effective than CO2 carbon dioxide in trapping heat in the earth's atmosphere.

Got it? Yep, the ozone layer saviors are greenhouse gas monsters.

You can find it in the recent David A. Fahrenthold Washington Post article:
"Chemicals That Eased One Woe Worsen Another"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/19/AR2009071901817.html

Also published in The Oregonian, July 24, 2009, p. E6. "Chemicals that fixed ozone hole worsen Earth's warming"


So where does your faithful blogger go today with this technical tidbit? Simply this: the delicate balance of all aspects of the physical universe and the earth's life systems is so incredibly complex as to defy the God-hating scientism mystics who yet continue to proclaim - beyond all rationality - that all is a great cosmic coincidence.

Man's flailing and frustrations to fix stuff that seems broken only bring into sharper focus the great wonder of the original creation (now itself decaying and failing after the "fall of man" recorded in the Bible, Genesis chapter 3).

Bottom line: only a beyond-our-imagination great Creator God could bring into existence all the wonderful stuff we find as we look deeper in and look farther out to understand and discover the wonders of our world and of our cosmos. May all glory be to God the Creator and Father of all.

A few verses from Isaiah chapter 45 (spoken by God through Isaiah around 700 BC - note LORD is translated from the Hebrew tetragrammaton YHWH, spoken as Jehovah in English):

18. For thus says the LORD, who created the heavens (He is the God who formed the earth and made it, He established it and did not create it a waste place, but formed it to be inhabited), "I am the LORD, and there is none else."
Isaiah 45:18 (NASB)

and
20. Gather yourselves and come; Draw near together, you fugitives of the nations; They have no knowledge, who carry about their wooden idol and pray to a god who cannot save.
21. Declare and set forth your case; indeed, let them consult together. Who has announced this from of old? Who has long since declared it? Is it not I, the LORD? And there is no other God besides Me, a righteous God and a Savior; there is none except Me.
22. Turn to Me and be saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no other.
23. I have sworn by Myself, the word has gone forth from My mouth in righteousness and will not turn back, that to Me every knee will bow, every tongue will swear allegiance.
24. They will say of Me, 'Only in the LORD are righteousness and strength.' Men will come to Him, and all who were angry at Him will be put to shame.
25. In the LORD all the offspring of Israel will be justified and will glory."
Isaiah 45:20-25 (NASB)

By the way, did you notice in Isaiah 45:18 above that God says the earth was not created to be a waste place, but rather was formed to be inhabited? In the context of this post, let me just recall Professor Guillermo Gonzalez, co-author of The Privileged Planet. Gonzalez was a highly-published hero to the space-science-type humanists as he described the wonder of our "habitable galactic zone" - until he dared come out to say he believed the cosmos was (GASP !) designed! That was when the God-haters at Iowa State University emerged to drive Gonzalez out of academia by engineering his tenure denial. See my post:

http://darwin-is-dead.blogspot.com/2007/05/maybe-i-should-have-waited-until-after.html
later migrated to:
http://darwin-is-dead.blogspot.com/2007_05_01_archive.html

Indeed, heed God as He speaks:

"Turn to Me and be saved,
all the ends of the earth;
For I am God,
and there is no other."

Indeed, for he also speaks of your future day:

" ... to Me every knee will bow,
every tongue will swear allegiance.
They will say of Me,
'Only in the LORD are
righteousness and strength.'
Men will come to Him,
and all who were angry at Him
will be put to shame."

Amen.

Respectfully submitted,

D.U.

What a week! May I sleep in until all this mess is over?

Greetings all:

I'm kind of numb right now. The last week ... the last 24 hours ... it all just gets weirder and weirder. It is kind of tough to freak out seasoned Portlanders with weirdness - but here I am numbly clicking away. The weirdness seems to track more and more familiarly back to President Obama's desk and the Democratic tangle of doom surrounding him.

Again a bit tangential to the usual Darwin-hating rant, but a few consequences of the old boy's illogical logic have maybe intruded into our current politics and economy.

In my last post I mentioned we are looking at a U.S. federal debt in 10 years of $200,000 per household (double the current debt) - if our kids are lucky. A June 10, 2009, Bloomberg article says,
"For the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30, the CBO forecasts the deficit to reach a record $1.845 trillion, almost four times the previous fiscal year’s $454.8 billion shortfall. "
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aqoRjq0HIaME

So I thought I just might run the numbers as a quick intro to what I really want to get to today. Again using the 2007 number of 111.2 million households, that means that each American household was blessed with a one-year increase of a RECORD $4100 in the 2007-2008 Federal budget (ending September 30, 2008). That is about what my two old used cars are worth combined. But, hey, you ain't seen nuthin' yet. The projected 2008-2009 one-year Federal deficit pencils out to $16,600 per household. And you were worried about paying off that washer and dryer on your credit card? That is just dust on the scales compared to the Fed deficit numbers. It's like you just bought a new car and your kids signed the promissory note. Oh - and another new car next year, and the next, and ...

Now on to ...

THE WEEK THAT WAS ...

(1)The "Cap and Trade" bill (known to realists as the "Cap and Tax") squeaked by in the U.S. House of Representatives and now moves on to the U.S. Senate. This ecofreak darling is designed to rescue us from the imminent peril of global warming, at the cost of ... hmmm, how much? Let's see....

David Kreutzer, a senior policy analyst in energy, economics, and climate change at the Heritage Foundation, "estimates that House-approved legislation limiting greenhouse gas emissions will hit consumers with a 60-percent spike in gasoline prices and a 90-percent increase in electricity prices, after inflation. ... we find that the impact per household will be, for a family of four, about $3,000 per year for the first 24 years, and that's as far out as we analyzed it."
http://www.onenewsnow.com/Politics/Default.aspx?id=585140

All this at the same time that Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla, has ordered an investigation into the Environmental Protection Agency's alleged suppression of a report that questioned the science behind global warming. "The 98-page report, co-authored by EPA analyst Alan Carlin, pushed back on the prospect of regulating gases like carbon dioxide as a way to reduce global warming. Carlin's report argued that the information the EPA was using was out of date, and that even as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have increased, global temperatures have declined."
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/06/29/gop-senator-calls-inquiry-supressed-climate-change-report/

If your pants pockets are empty now, prepare to lose your pants. And you may need them even more since, recently, we have a cooling spell going on.

Maybe it will be easier just to call your U.S. senator now and fill him/her in.

(2) President Obama sided with Hugo Chavez and others to support a recalcitrant dictator wannabe in Honduras who was legally and constitutionally ousted by his own national congress and supreme court - and replaced by the successor called for by their constitution. I watched with fascination into the early hours of the morning as the Yahoo "Buzz" comments came in on the AP story, "U.N. Backs Ousted Honduran Leader" and a preceding article which it replaced. (http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jAkMGKIUDg_ngUiZboxQbYj5_DPwD99553D00)
There were well over 200 comments, and all but a handful were very supportive of the Honduran government to throw the rascal out. If you watched those comments roll in, you would know there a lot of angry Americans and Hondurans (and American Cubans) out there watching our president. The theme was repeated again and again that the Honduran National Congress and Supreme Court carried out their responsibilities, according to their constitution! And even Hillary almost got it right. And why in the (%&# numerous expletives deleted) would Mr. Obama side with Chavez and other SA socialists to try to reinstate an ousted newbie-socialist who rapidly wore out his welcome with illegal actions in his own nation?

(3) The U.S. Supreme Court reversed a ruling against Connecticut firefighters who, after successfully passing an examination required for promotion, had been unfairly denied promotions because not enough minorities passed the exam. The firefighters sued and finally, at the end, the U.S. Supremes got it right - that discrimination is not lawful, no matter on which side of the ethnic divide you may be. What is really fascinating is that the Supreme Court justices threw out a decision that high court nominee Sonia Sotomayor had endorsed as an appeals court judge.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090630/ap_on_go_su_co/us_supreme_court_firefighters_lawsuit
After Judge Sotmayor's prima facie sexist/racist comments were outed by conservatives following her nomination by President Obama, now our highest court in the land agrees. That was the one sweeeeet spot of the week.

(4) Pesident Obama hosted a dinner and reception for the leading lights of the Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgendered and Gay Pride Month folks last night. His statements reaffirm his outrageous opposition to the clearly stated (by votes) will of the majority of people of the majority of states in the USA. See:
http://www.onenewsnow.com/Culture/Default.aspx?id=585846

"At a White House celebration of Gay Pride Month, Obama said he hopes to persuade all Americans to accept homosexuality. 'There are good and decent people in this country who don't yet fully embrace their gay brothers and sisters -- not yet,' said the president. ... 'There are still fellow citizens, perhaps neighbors or even family members and loved ones, who still hold fast to worn arguments and old attitudes,' he stated. He added that Congress should repeal what Obama referred to as 'the so-called Defense of Marriage Act' "

Yes, I am one of those who hold those "worn arguments and old attitudes." Not because I decide on my own, but simply because the Bible, the Word of God, says so. This is kind of where we can get back to the Bible really quickly. If you think sodomy is so great, just remember what happened to Sodom - and why.

NOW I AM AT THE END OF THE WEEK THAT WAS , AND IT IS ONLY TUESDAY EVENING. SO ....

So what is the origin of marriage? It is the first institution ordained by the Creator God. In the Bible we can read,
"18 Then the LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him."
19 Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name.
20 The man gave names to all the cattle, and to the birds of the sky, and to every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him.
21 So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place.
22 The LORD God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man.
23 The man said, 'This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.'
24 for this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh. " Genesis 2:18-24, The Holy Bible (NASB)

Maybe now you can see why it is so important to keep holding Darwin's feet to the fire, since his poisonous rebellion against the Almighty infects so many - and we are now bearing the consequences corporately as a nation in many seemingly unrelated areas.

I'm tired.

And if you are all reading the same news I am reading, then you also know that either full-scale repentance or full-scale bitterness lies ahead for what used to be a great nation - the United States of America..

Submitted with great respect for the brave who stand:
-- Honduran National Congress and Supreme Court;
-- Connecticut firefighters and five judges in our USA Supreme Court;
-- EPA global warming analyst Alan Carlin;
-- Republicans AND Democrats who voted against the outrageous Cap and Trade bill;
-- preachers in churches who do not compromise and so declare God's word boldly;
-- and more,

D.U.

P.S. Maybe I will get to the carbon-14 content of coal and diamonds one of these days. Got other stuff to do first. Hint - if the earth is even 100,000 years old, the C-14 should not be there in measurable and repeatable amounts. And it is NOT contamination from modern C-14. Oh ... and Accelerator Mass Spectrometry is cool.

Generational looting? Who is gonna pay for all the Dem's plans ???

Well, it is late (3:00 AM), but I just got around to seriously asking ...

A couple of questions:

(1) How much additional debt is planned by the Obama administration over the next ten years? and

(2) How many households in the USA?

And found the results:

(1) Investor's Insight says:

"Using the Obama administration's own projections, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that, including the record 2009 budget deficit of $1.85 trillion, and huge annual deficits over 2009-2019 will result in an additional $11.1 trillion in national debt, on top of the current $11.4 trillion."

and

"During the first 100 days of his presidency, Obama has signed the $787 billion stimulus bill into law, proposed an eye-popping $3.6 trillion federal budget for the 2010 fiscal year, taken over a massive $700 billion Wall Street bailout program (TARP) and created other multi-billion-dollar government programs supposedly to help grease the economic wheels."

http://www.investorsinsight.com/blogs/forecasts_trends/archive/2009/06/16/obama-on-course-to-double-national-debt.aspx


(2) Wikipedia gives a 2007 figure for number of households:

"How many households are in the US? 2007 estimate: 111,162,259"

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_households_are_in_the_US


And then the math ...

So the additional deficit per household may be estimated to be:

$1.11 * 10**13 / 1.11 * 10**8, or $100,000 per household. But since this is on top of the existing debt which is already $11.4 trillion, this comes up to a very un-nice round figure of $200,000 per household.


And now the angst ...

Please tell me it ain't so. Please tell me I can't do math any more.


$200,000 per household federal debt in a mere 10 years from now!


Oh, and Oregon is going in the tank too - just a few steps behind California. Oregon can not even afford to collect water information data needed to meet development application requirements. I look at my children and my grandchildren and ask how can they repay this kind of onerous debt? I agree with those who call this "generational looting"

When will the Democrats and fellow-traveling Republicans end this mindless spend-a-thon? When you hear "shovel ready", just understand the shovels are digging the grave of the America we have known. When will the Obamamedia cease the Obamamania and get real? When will the people of the USA get a grip on these numbers and then get a grip on the collars of the big spenders and toss them out?

But we will not get a grip on the dollar until we get a grip on the Divine.

And the understanding ...

If you really want to understand what is going on, read the Bible, Deuteronomy Chapter 28. You will find that when a nation wears the name of God, that nation best not sully that great and Holy name YHWH - the name of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Because God is not mocked and will not be mocked.




Here is a photo reminding that - like it or not - the USA does wear the name of God - the CREATOR GOD - before the world even on the dollar as we claim "In God We Trust". Credit: Graphic Night Photo






You will find that our financial insanity is a direct result of our spiritual profanity.

It is truly time for personal, corporate (churches as well as governments and businesses) and national repentance. And time is of the essence.


Signing off at 3:49 AM. Going to bed. Hope I can sleep.

D.U.

Storing hydrogen in carbonized chicken feathers to save the planet?

Hey all:

This one is so cool, after I laughed at reading it I just had to pass it on.

It has been long obvious to me and to many (such as a personal friend and former Mechanical Engineering professor at Portland State University) that a hydrogen economy would be a boon to solve the world's concerns about fossil fuels for transportation - if only the storage problem could be solved.

The beauty of hydrogen gas as a fuel is that its combustion product is simply water vapor - preferable even to the carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas) combustion product of natural gas. The problem is that extremely large tanks would be needed to store hydrogen gas even under high pressure. Some folks have succeeded in reducing the storage size significantly by storing hydrogen gas in carbon nanotubes, but the cost of the nanotube tank would be several times the cost of a car with today's nanotechnology.

And now today I saw on page one of the Oregonian that one potential answer may lie in carbonizing the lowly chicken feather:


http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2009/06/feathered_fuel_tank_soaks_up_h.html

The research, done at the University of Delaware, was reported in the university's paper a couple of days ago:


http://www.udel.edu/udaily/2009/jun/feathers062309.html


in which it was reported:


"Chicken feather fibers are mostly composed of keratin, a natural protein that forms strong, hollow tubes. When heated, this protein creates crosslinks, which strengthen its structure, and becomes more porous, increasing its surface area. The net result is carbonized chicken feather fibers, which can absorb as much or perhaps more hydrogen than carbon nanotubes or metal hydrides, two other materials being studied for their hydrogen storage potential, Wool says. Plus, they're cheap. Using carbonized chicken feathers would only add about $200 to the price of a car, according to Wool. By comparison, making a 20-gallon hydrogen fuel tank that uses carbon nanotubes could cost $5.5 million; one that uses metal hydrides could cost up to $30,000, Wool says."

So why would I blog on this today? First - yeah, even creationists are interested in the planet. Duhhhh. Second - the combined strength and light weight of feathers (due in part to the keratin protein and in part to structural design) have long been considered by creationists as a powerful example of design in nature. And not only are feathers a mechanical wonder, they can also be wonders of beauty. Here is my backyard photo of a peacock feather:

So - strength, functionality, and beauty - all are to be found in God's created world because they were created for those purposes. If you don't like that answer, go use your superior intelligence to make a better feather.

Recall again the words of Job 12:7-10 (Holy Bible, NASB):

7. "But now ask the beasts, and let them teach you; And the birds of the heavens, and let them tell you. 8. "Or speak to the earth, and let it teach you; And let the fish of the sea declare to you. 9. "Who among all these does not know that the hand of the LORD has done this, 10. In whose hand is the life of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind?"

Submitted with great pleasure and satisfaction,

D.U.

Speak to the earth and let it teach you ....

Are you wondering about the beginnings of it all? Are you an observer of nature, seeking what may be learned about the nature of life?

I was just reading in the Bible this morning and decided to share these words of wisdom from Job. The Oregon sunset is an added bonus..



Respectfully submitted,

D.U.

Powerful proof that the creation account in Genesis 1:1 - 2:3 is historical narrative, not poetry

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth ..."
Historical narrative? Statistically certain.
Poetry? Statistically indefensible.

Just a followup today to my earlier post:
http://darwin-is-dead.blogspot.com/2009/04/affirmed-theistic-evolution-is-wimpy.html

I pointed out that Professor Karplus' claim that the text of Genesis 1:1 - 2:3 may be taken as poetic rather than as historical narrative was contrary to recent text analysis. The issue seems important enough that I now provide brief detail about that text analysis.

FIRST THE TECHNICAL STUFF:

Among other references, you may find one very thorough text analysis in:

Boyd, Steven. W., "Evidence for an Historical Reading of Genesis 1:1 - 2:3", pp. 631-734 in Vardiman et al, Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth - II, Results of a Young-Earth Creationist Research Initiative. Institute for Creation Research, El Cajon, CA, 2005. 618 pp.

Here is Boyd's Figure 10 (p. 674):

The abscissa value represents the ratio of preterite verbs to total finite verbs in selected Hebrew Bible texts while the ordinate represents the probability of a text being a narrative as opposed to a poetic text. The preterite verb form for the most part is a sequential past tense (Boyd, p. 651). The sample to "calibrate" this classification analysis consisted of fourteen clearly narrative Hebrew Bible texts and fourteen clearly poetic Hebrew Bible texts (Boyd, p. 652). The Genesis 1:1 - 2:3 text had a ratio 0.655 preterite to total finite verbs. The classification analyis gives a probability between 0.999942 and 0.999987 at a 95.5% confidence level that the Genesis 1:1 - 2:3 text is historical narrative. I have highlighted the Genesis 1:1 - 2:3 text on the plot (the blue triangle) by pointing to it with the BIG RED ARROW.

NOW WHAT TO MAKE OF ALL THE TECHNICAL STUFF:

First, why all the numbers stuff? Because too many folks want to read allegorical or symbolic language into the Genesis creation account. They wave their hands and dismiss it as "poetic" despite what what the text on the face of it would convey. So the Boyd analysis is kind of numbers-in-your-face if you really want to insist that an apparently historical narrative is poetic/allegorical.

Now how to understand it. The statistical tools Boyd uses are in the general category of "classification." This is a common application of statistics in science. For example, a hospital diagnosis protocol for a person exhibiting certain symptoms may quantify a suite of symptoms and use a classification analysis (or discriminant analysis) to determine the probability that a person has "disease A" requiring extended hospital isolation and $20,000 for medications, as opposed to "disease B" which would require a few aspirin and a couple of days rest. This would be precisely analogous to the Bible text question.

For the case at hand, we only have to decide between two "classes": historical narrative or poetry. The very small overlap in the samples (almost all of the poetic texts have the preterite/total ratio less than 0.2, while almost all of the historical narratives have a preterite/total ratio greater than o.25) kind of jumps out at you suggesting that the "common sense" reading of the text as historical is backed up by the classification analysis.

Consider an analogy. Suppose at the Beijing Olympics the shoes from the American men's basketball team have been accidentally mixed in with the shoes from the Chinese women's table tennis team, and I have a job simply to look at the shoe size for each pair and toss the shoes into a bin for USA-Men-Basketball or into a bin for PRC-Women-TableTennis. The classification task might be similar to that shown in Boyd's Figure 10 above. There might be a few pair that could conceivably go into either bin and I might make a wrong decision or two. But generally the spread is so great that I am going to get the right answer almost all of the time.

So may I say it? For the folks who wish to insist that the Genesis 1:1 - 2:3 text is poetic, it might not be as bad as tossing Shaqille O'Neil's size 22 shoes in the women's shoe bin, but more like throwing LaBron James' 15.5 shoes to the ladies. Do you seriously want to do that?

BOYD'S CONCLUSION:

"The logistic regression model calculates the probability that a text is narrative. For Genesis 1:1 - 2:3, this probability is between 0.999942 and 0.999987 at a 95.5% confidence level. Thus we conclude with statistical certainty that this text is narrative, not poetry. It is therefore statistically indefensible to argue that this text is poetry."

Respectfully submitted,

D.U.

Trying to send good vibes and think positive thoughts? How about prayer? North Korea captive Laura Ling's friends on the wrong trail

Greetings today from a dreary drippy northwest day when I would prefer to see and smell cut hay drying in sun-kissed fields.

And if you have ever had the opportunity to compare taste-deprived commercially-grown California strawberries (they look great forever it seems - like souped up on botox) with fresh sweet succulent Oregon strawberries, you will understand why I am hoping for a last push of ripening weather before Sunday for our annual post-graduation outing.

For today I comment on the power of man's mind versus the power of God. And in immediate introspection I find that I also am being infected by our Oregon left-coast culture of "me not Thee." Did you notice in the paragraph above I wrote I am "hoping" for ripe berries. I know of no inherent "hoping" power to effect any result except self-inflicted anxiety. Knowing as I do that God is the God of details as well as the God of the largest picture, I should be praying for ripe berries instead of "hoping."

So what sparks today's blurb? I suppose you have heard of the recent spying convictions in North Korea of two American investigative reporters. I just read a few minutes ago in the Silicon Valley MercuryNews.com (http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_12556506?source=most_viewed)
that friends of Laura Ling, one of the convicted journalists, are trying to help the situation in Korea by use of brain-waves from California. Ling's long-time friend Cheryll Marsh "is confident her friend of 20 years is coping with the ordeal. 'She is brave and courageous,' Marsh said. Still, 'having her thousands of miles away is just so heartbreaking. But we're all trying to send good vibes and think positive thoughts.'"

Is there any rational basis to suggest that "trying to send good vibes and think positive thoughts" will be causative in what comes down? I would say no. On the contrary, prayer to the omniscient omnipotent omnipresent and merciful Almighty God of Heaven and earth has been found effectual across centuries, across cultures, and across time zones. And if you, dear reader, are not aware of this reality then you are deprived of enlightenment. Find some good Christian books about real experiences of real people with real needs with real devotion to a very real God, and you will begin to scratch the surface of the great reality of God's willing merciful involvement in the minutiae of our lives if we will but welcome Him.

This is the great reality show that seems underappreciated in America today.

Here is what Jehovah God said to Solomon as he dedicated the temple in Jerusalem around 959 B.C.: "2 Chronicles 7:14 (NASB) "...if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land."

The power we have is not in our minds. Our power is in our free will submission the the will and law of the God who does have the true power.

Respectfully submitted,

D.U.

Should I laugh then cry? Or cry then laugh? Missing link fossil IDA devolves rapidly, Texas Senate follows suit

Today - where to begin? And when will it all end?


Darwin's dutiful defenders continue desperate digging to discover a/the "missing link" - any old link will do. In the meanwhile, the Senate of the grand state of Texas stuffs a guy who seeks inquiry about the sufficiency or insufficiency of evolutionary theory. Methinks there is a weasel in all this stuff.

Article first: IDA the "missing link" - is not.


News sites were humming with the news of a virtually complete fossil from Germany touted as a/the missing link. She even has a name, "IDA."







Here is IDA's mugshot,
courtesy of PLoS One,
Huram et al, via LiveScience









And here is the really fun three-day sequence of news post headlines May 19, 2009, to May 21, 2009.:


(1) LiveScience:
http://www.livescience.com/history/090519-fossil-primate.html
Ancient Human Ancestor 'Ida' Discovered
By LiveScience Staff
posted: 19 May 2009 12:23 pm ET


(2) LiveScience.
http://www.livescience.com/animals/090520-fossil-reactions.html
Amid Media Circus, Scientists Doubt 'Ida' Is Your Ancestor
By Clara Moskowitz
posted: 20 May 2009 02:13 pm ET

(3) FOX News:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,520886,00.html
Scientists: 'Missing Link' Fossil Not Worth Media Hype
Thursday, May 21, 2009 By Clara Moskowitz, LiveScience
You know science has made it big when the Google homepage logo is changed to celebrate a fossil finding and the mayor of New York shows up at a press conference to unveil it.



So how many times have we seen this same scenario. And will it go on interminably? Thanks to Yogi Berra, we can say this seems like "deja vu all over again."



Article second: Texas Senate Democrats disdain asking students to "evaluate the sufficiency or insufficiency of the theory of evolution."


See: http://www.onenewsnow.com/Headlines/Default.aspx?id=546960
Head of state education board denied reappointment for supporting creationism
Associated Press - 5/29/2009 5:30:00 AM
"AUSTIN, TX - Democrats in the Texas Senate have blocked the reappointment of a creationist to head the state board that sets standards and policies for Texas public schools.
The 19-11 vote was one vote shy of the two-thirds approval needed to support Gov. Rick Perry's nomination of Don McLeroy as chairman of the State Board of Education. McLeroy has been chairman of the board since 2007 and will remain a member. He has supported requiring students to "evaluate the sufficiency or insufficiency" of the theory of evolution."
.



And my question:

So dear Darwin-is-Dead readers, some characters are desperately trying to dig up the/a "missing link" to support the molecules-to-man myth. In the meantime, questioning the sufficiency or insufficiency of science to support the myth is a no-no to the Texas Democrats.


Are there no clear-eyed blue-dog Democrats in the Lone Star State? Or have the red-dogs invaded even Longhorn land?



Respectfully submitted,


D.U.

AFFIRMED. THEISTIC EVOLUTION FAILED THE TEST OF SCRUTINY IN CORVALLIS

Hey y'all.

Yup, I'm back.

Probably in part because tax returns are due in a week and a day and I dislike doing taxes even more than I dislike blogging on a rare sunny April day in Oregon.

But I'm really back today because I attended the Oregon State University Socratic Club meeting last night in Corvallis.
http://www.oregonstate.edu/groups/socratic

They had a debate-dialogue kind of thing going on to allow two Christian presenters to give different views of creation. Dr. Andrew Karplus, an OSU professor, came to explain why evolution is compatible with Christian belief. Dr. Kevin Anderson, director of the Van Andel Creation Research Center in Arizona, came to offer his view that evolution corrupts the creation story.

Bottom line:

Going in .... I went to the event pretty well convinced that scientific evidence in no way offers compelling evidence to accept the notion that evolution was "the way God did it". But I was curious to see if anything new might be injected into the debate.

Coming out ... Yes, I'm even more firmly outside the theistic evolutionist camp. The arguments offered for theistic evolution were limp, arbitrary, and poorly supported.

I am going to abbreviate this because there is much to do here on the home front and I should get this thing finished before the boss comes home and pulls the plug on the computer and starts the lawn mower and runs it into my office..

*******
I will touch on only a few of the items presented by Dr. Karplus as he favored theistic evolution:

(1) Dr. Karplus stated that we must not say "God did it - it's a miracle" simply because we don't understand how something works.
. I was insulted, and good honest Christian scientists involved in research should be insulted as well. Why? Because I know very well that Dr. Karplus was attempting to paint non-evolutionary creationists (including me) with a broad brush that says Biblical literalism is a disincentive to good scientific inquiry - that we just throw up our hands and say "God did it. Yessss!" and blissfully walk away from scientific challenges. This is the tragically flawed "God of the gaps" accusation often made against creationists.

But nothing is farther from the truth ! ! ! ! !

A fair reading of the history of science makes it abundantly clear that, to most of the great giants of the scientific revolution, scientific inquiry was a way to honor God by understanding His work - for His glory. And the more difficult the problem and exquisite the discovery, the greater God's glory is understood to be. "Thinking God's thoughts after Him" is the way it was most commonly expressed. If you wish to Google that quote, you will get a semester's worth of reading I'm sure. And go read The Soul of Science by Pearcey and Thaxton. Dr. Karplus should have done so before walking onto the stage.

Take home message from this point: a disingenuous straw man, insulting, inaccurate, and contrary to the history of science.

(2) In identifying four "pillars" of his presentation, Dr. Karplus listed the fourth as "The Bible", which he said "is an inspired and inspiring gift from God, a reliable revelation about spiritual truths."
. If you read this carefully, what Dr. Karplus omits is more critical than what he says. He clearly wishes to imply that the Bible is OK for spiritual truths, but physical truths are not within the scope of holy writ. I approached Dr. Karplus after the event and told him that seemed very arbitrary. Since we would both agree that God is creator/author of the spiritual world which we share, and also creator/author of the physical world in which we live, why would he choose to take scripture as authoritative in one area and not in the other. His answer was basically that he chooses to believe that is the way it is, and mentioned something about poetic language in Genesis chapters 1-3. First, his answer did not give me a reason why he chooses, he just stated that he does choose. His answer also ignored the last figure in Dr. Anderson's presentation, a Biblical text analysis giving powerful evidence that Genesis 1-3 is historical narrative, NOT poetic text.

Take home message from this point: absolutely arbitrary, and his weak reason given is powerfully contradicted by recent text analysis.

(3) After Dr. Anderson gave some figures and recent references on the seriousness of mutational loading and decline in fitness for each generation, Dr. Karplus (surprisingly) said that he would be surprised if the genome is degrading.
. I was disappointed because I came to Corvallis to see if I could hear something new injected into the debate, but this statement by Dr. Karplus clearly showed he is not up-to-date on much of the genetic research of the last decade or more relating to genomic degradation. A good book to read is Genetic Entropy and the Mystery of the Genome by Dr. John Sanford, a Cornell University career plant breeder and geneticist. The book has been out for at least two years and some of the figures and references presented by Dr. Anderson yesterday are also in Sanford's book.

Take home message here: theistic evolutionists would be well advised to read some good creationist literature occasionally. Especially before public debate.

(4) Dr. Karplus failed to make any distinction between operational/empirical science (scientific method with data observable and repeatable, hypotheses falsifiable) versus historical-forensic science which addresses the occurrence of a one-time event.
. Empirical science is primary in operational processes, but is incapable of FULLY evaluating events in which intelligence and purpose and creativity are interjected and superimposed upon structures and functioning in the physical world. The teleology inherent in structures and processes throughout nature can never be subjected to investigation by the (empirical-operational) scientific method. Even after being questioned, Dr. Karplus failed to recognize or to admit the limitations of empirical science looking at one-time historical events.
See:
http://darwin-is-dead.blogspot.com/2005/12/forensic-science-vs-empirical-science or
http://darwin-is-dead.blogspot.com/2005_12_01_archive.html

The take-home message here: If you are going to talk as an authority about science, you'd best be clear precisely which science you mean, and what are the limitations of each.

*******
Now about a few things Dr. Anderson said.

(1) I was surprised and pleased when Dr. Anderson began his questioning session of Dr. Karplus by asking about his view of sin and death.
. The newcomer may greet this question with "Huhhh???? What does that have to do with evolution and creation?"
The answer is - MUCH.
The Biblical literalist would claim (as I do) that as animals and man were created, neither animals nor man were suffering and dying until the fall of man, and only experienced suffering and death AFTER the fall of man. The theistic evolutionary model would have animals experiencing suffering and death for millions of years BEFORE the fall of man arrives in Genesis chapter 3. Biblical literalists expect that the mercy of God, whose care extends also to the animal world, would not ordain, approve, and uncaringly watch over such cruelty and call it "good." Literalists would believe God is author of :

"A good man takes care of his animals, but wicked men are cruel to theirs."
Proverbs 12:10.

It is interesting that atheists and agnostics understand this far better than theistic evolutionists. Recall the complaint raised against God by Alfred Lord Tennyson:
"Man...Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation's final law --
Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shrieked against his creed."

If theistic evolutionists such as Dr. Karplus are correct, then Tennyson's railing against God is accurate. But if there was no death in either man or animals until the fall of man, then "nature red in tooth and claw" has only man's sin to blame.

And for myself, I stood aloof from the theistic vs. literalist debate a few decades ago until one day the light came on and I finally understood this very precise argument. That was the definitive moment in my conviction that theistic evolution is seriously flawed and facilitates faulty but loud accusations against God's merciful nature. I encourage you, don't go there.

See my post:
http://darwin-is-dead.blogspot.com/2007/06/death-and-hope-versus-tennysons-nature
or
httpp://darwin-is-dead.blogspot.com/2007_06_01_archive.html

And Professor Karplus had no satisfactory answer to the question either.

(2) I just have to stop now. You can purchase a video of the event through the OSU Socratic Club (web site given above).


Thanks to the OSU Socratic Club for their effort to host the event.

Respectfully submitted,

D.U.

Dark Matter Revisited - Before It Is Gone Forever With the Pioneer Deceleration

Yo folks.

It is now 1:28 according to the little chronometer displayed at the lower right corner of my monitor screen. Unfortunately, that is 1:28 AM, not PM. So ... as usual, gotta try to make it short. But I am at it this awful hour because the topic seems important to me and a few fellow creationist nerds.

Why? Because some folks at Oxford University are sounding very very creationist-like in their cosmological thinking, publishing via the American Physical Society (but I think maybe failing to credit the creationist who came up with the idea.)

Where to begin? A bit over a year ago I commented on the comments of a newly-arrived physics grad student in NW USA from a country in east Asia:

http://darwin-is-dead.blogspot.com/2007/10/creation-cosmology-god-did-it-is-lookin.html

When I asked her if she was sure dark matter existed, she gave me a rather disdainful look and carefully (speaking slowly I think) explained to me that the existence of dark matter is well known by its gravitational effects. She did not appear to understand that the implications flowed from the "Copernican Principle", the ASSUMPTIONS that (1) we are in no special place in the universe (and in fact no really special places would even exist in the universe), and (2) that the universe is unbounded. These are hypothetical boundary conditions used to solve the General Relativity equations. That in fact means that dark matter inferred by application of those assumed conditions is itself hypothetical rather than demonstrated fact.

BTW, it puzzles me why a hypothesis, or assumption, would ever be called a "principle." Isn't that begging the question a bit?

Well, anyway .....

I mentioned in my October, 2007, post (above) a cosmology suggested by Russ Humphreys in 1994 based on Biblically-based boundary conditions which would give a very different result. What are those boundary conditions? Specifically, drawing from the account in Genesis of the creation in which God separated the waters below the "firmament" from the waters above the "firmament", along with numerous Bible passages that God "stretched out" the heavens, Humphreys inferred that: (1) the earth is approximately at or near the center of the cosmos, and that (2) the universe is bounded, with a "shell" of mass concentrated in the vicinity of the boundary..

There have been others taking a similar tack. For example Dr John Hartnett, a physicist at University of Western Australia, reported, using a space-time-velocity metric of the late Israeli physicist Moshe Carmeli, at the International Conference on Creationism held in Pittsburgh, PA, USA, in August, 2008. With the Carmeli metric, the so-called "dark matter" effects may in fact merely be a property of space-time and not matter at all.

And it turns out that also in October, 2007, at almost exactly the same time the Asian physics grad student and I were having our conversation during our hike in the Cascade mountains, Dr. Russ Humphreys was publishing with a new metric including a gravitational potential term which would draw from the Bible's inference of a large mass "shell" (of water at the time of the stretching in Genesis 1) at the boundary edge of the universe and relatively insignificant mass density inside the "shell." See:

http://www.icr.org/article/3472/ (less technical)

and

Humphreys, D. R. 2007. Creationist cosmologies explain the anomalous acceleration of Pioneer spacecraft. Journal of Creation 21(2):61-70. Can be downloaded as a PDF document from the following page of the Creation Ministries International website: http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/5181/.

The really interesting thing is that the anomalous deceleration of the Pioneer spacecraft (see the article) is explained by the Humphreys cosmology, but not by the big-bang cosmology.

So, now what about that team at Oxford? In September, 2008, an Oxford team published:

Timothy Clifton, Pedro G. Ferreira, and Kate Land. Living in a Void: Testing the Copernican Principle with Distant Supernovae. Phys. Rev. Lett., 101, 131302 (2008) DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.101.131302

I tried to access the link this morning but could not reach it. But you can read the Science Daily summary at:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080926184749.htm

Dark Energy: Is It Merely An Illusion?
ScienceDaily (Sep. 29, 2008) —
"Dark energy is at the heart of one of the greatest mysteries of modern physics, but it may be nothing more than an illusion, according physicists at Oxford University."
... "Although dark energy may seem a bit contrived to some, the Oxford theorists are proposing an even more outrageous alternative. They point out that it's possible that we simply live in a very special place in the universe - specifically, we're in a huge void where the density of matter is particularly low. The suggestion flies in the face of the Copernican Principle, which is one of the most useful and widely held tenets in physics."
... "Dark energy may seem like a stretch, but it's consistent with the venerable Copernican Principle. The proposal that we live in a special place in the universe, on the other hand, is likely to shock many scientists. The maverick physicists at Oxford conclude their paper by pointing out that forthcoming tests of the Copernican principle should help us sort out the mystery in the next few years."

So it seems now that folks at Oxford are willing to point out that it is POSSIBLE that "we simply live in a very special place in the universe." But more than that, they propose a test. According the the original article abstract as published in :

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2008arXiv0807.1443C

"...local redshift dependence of the luminosity distance can be used to test the Copernican principle that we are not in a central or otherwise special region of the Universe. Future surveys of type Ia supernovae that focus on a redshift range of ˜0.1–0.4 will be ideally suited to observationally determine the validity of the Copernican principle on new scales, as well as probing the degree to which dark energy must be considered a necessary ingredient in the Universe."

THIS ONE IS GOING TO BE REALLY INTERESTING TO WATCH!

Respectfully submitted,

D.U.

More neo-Darwinian toxicity to science: "We have in vain spent much time" says Nobel Laureate Werner Abel

Yo all.

Daylight is burning and I'm keyboarding. Ugh.

This is now number 8 in my list of neo-Darwinian toxicities to the advancement of modern science. See my prior post for 1-7.

If you have read much of anything about modern genetics, genetic engineering, genetically modified foods ... or whatever ... you have most likely heard mention of "restriction enzymes." And if you are a professional researcher in the field, you are likely shaking these little guys into your daily lab soup.

Restriction enzymes are to genetics what cut-and-paste software is to word processing. They are the genius little chemical machines that snip and clip and toss and insert segments of DNA to get recombinant sequences. And they were doing that long long before man got involved in biochemical research.

In 1978, microbiologist Werner Arber was co-recipient of a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of restriction enzymes and their application to molecular genetics. Dr. Jerry Bergman in an article entitled:
"Werner Arber: Nobel Laureate, Darwin Skeptic"
http://www.icr.org/article/4095/
provides some keen insight into how a part of Dr. Arber's life was wasted (and considerably unpublished) as he pursued his work from a neo-Darwinian slant:
"Arber conducted extensive scientific research in genetics, evolution, and related areas. In his Nobel Prize autobiography, Arber described his research as long but fruitless attempts to document macroevolution with experimental evidence. For this reason, he wrote that much of his work in this area remains largely unpublished."

Bergman provides the following quotation from Arber:
"One could expect that mutations affecting the part of the enzymes responsible for recognition of the specificity site on the DNA might result in new members of the family, recognizing new specificity sites on DNA. We have in vain spent much time in search for such evolutionary changes both after mutagenization and after recombination between two members of the same family of (bacteria)." Emphasis mine. See:
Arber, W. 1979. Werner Arber: The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1978 Autobiography. In Odelberg, W. (ed.), The Nobel Prizes 1978. Stockholm: Nobel Foundation. Also available online at Nobelprize.org.

And can you believe it? Arber is an advocate of (gasp) intelligent design! Continuing to quote Bergman:
"After a lifetime of research, Arber summarized his main conclusion about intelligent design (ID) in the following words:
Although a biologist, I must confess I do not understand how life came about.... I consider that life only starts at the level of a functional cell. The most primitive cells may require at least several hundred different specific biological macro-molecules. How such already quite complex structures may have come together, remains a mystery to me. The possibility of the existence of a Creator, of God, represents to me a satisfactory solution to this problem.3
He concluded that religion is important to help humans cope not only with the problem of biological origins, but also with the questions that we all encounter in life, noting that some ideologies "may take the place of a religion but science cannot, although some people tend to claim that it does."3 Arber wrote that his belief in God "helped me to master many questions in life; it guides me in critical situations," and his ID conclusions were "confirmed" by his research into the "beauty of the functioning of the living world."3
Bergman's refererence (3) is: Arber, W. 1992. The Existence of a Creator Represents a Satisfactory Solution. In Margenau, H. and R. A. Varghese (eds.), Cosmos, Bios, Theos: Scientists Reflect on Science, God, and the Origins of the Universe, Life, and Homo sapiens. La Salle, IL: Open Court, 141-143.

Read the rest of the Bergman article at the link above. Then laugh or weep, depending on whether you are "one of us" or "one of them."

So, there you go again. If you are a researcher, just toss neo-Darwinism into the tank and get on with real research. Or, if you are a member of a state or local board of education somewhere trying to decide if you will permit the neo-Darwinian hegemony in your schools to inculcate failed and failing ideas into your little children's brains, just remember - neo-Darwinism has a long and consistent track record of hindering and obstructing real science.

Do you suppose that is because neo-Darwinism is simply NOT true science?

Go ahead - think it.

Go ahead - say it.

Go ahead - PROCLAIM IT!


Respectfully submitted,

D.U.


Yo all (take 2, updated October 29, 2008).
I need to add an additional note to the above post. After Dr. Arber wrote in his Nobel autobiography,
"One could expect that mutations affecting the part of the enzymes responsible for recognition of the specificity site on the DNA might result in new members of the family, recognizing new specificity sites on DNA. We have in vain spent much time in search for such evolutionary changes both after mutagenization and after recombination between two members of the same family of the above mentioned systems."
he then wrote
"That the basic idea for this search was good was recently shown by Len Bullas, Charles Colson and Aline van Pel (J. Gen. Microbiol. 95, 166- 172, 1976) who encountered such a new system in their work with Salmonella recombinants."
Well, this last sentence sounds like beginning with a Darwinian idea was not such a failure after all. When I contacted Dr. Jerry Bergman about that, he replied (Dr. J. Bergman, personal communication, October 29, 2008): (the) "authors (Bullas et al) concluded that the change in the restriction enzyme (the topic of the paper) was due to a recombinant event (page 167) and add 'perhaps' a 'mutation can produce a new active site' (page 171). I see nothing in this article that contradicts my paper. If someone finds something, please let me know!"
So number 8 in my list of Darwinian toxicities to modern science stands!