AAH argument.

Just a letter transcript. To Kuliukas...

>>I was surprised that YouTube allows someone to delete someone else's comment, aren't you?

Nah, creationists delete my comments all the time.

>>It took over 30 years for enough people to begin to doubt the authority of those who'd just given a knee-jerk thumbs up to it when it was discovered.

They were very much expecting to find a fossil just like Piltdown man. There was a fairly good movement against it as soon as we found more fossils, they just didn't seem to mesh. And finally the scientific field rejected it. With AAH we don't have any evidence, just a rather silly claim. It's a lot like claiming to be Galileo. For every real Galileo oppressed by the powers that be, there are a thousand crackpots with really silly ideas. Rather than making claims like "Oh they use to think Tectonic Plates was hogwash too..." -- It's better to have actual evidence (the guy who proved tectonic plates did and Galileo).


>>You're completely wrong if you think recent evidence is increasingly making it look more odd than it used to.

Human evolution is looking more and more par for the course. Larger brain benefits outstrip the costs of running this monster brain. In fact, after humans were bipedal for a million years or so, we still weren't that different than chimps. Lucy would look like a chimp, hairy, small, biped chimp... pretty much no real major advantage.


>>Quite the contrary. Before 1997 there were no observed instances of ape bipedalism in water. Today it's accepted that apes are at their most bipedal in water.

I suggest you watch Monkey Life. You could get a copy off some torrent sites. It's about an ape rescue center. Most of the chimps run around on two legs for pretty much any reason at all. There's nothing about water that makes full time bipedalism worthwhile. And bipedalism takes no time to evolve, apes are already partially bipedal. Shallow water would be one reason among hundreds why apes walk on two feet. It wouldn't evolve them onto two legs, just give them yet another reason to use their bipedalism.


>>Before 1974 the prevailing view was that early hominids had evolved in open habitats. Increasingly we now know that they were wooded and very wet if not swampy.

More trees, yeah... the previous idea was that they evolved bipedalism slowly rather than just started to use it full time. Though, since 1974 we've learned a lot about human evolution.


>>In 1960 Hardy was the only AAH proponent and his view was very much that the idea might fill a gap in the fossil record between 10 and 4 million years ago.

So why aren't chimps hairless and running around on two legs? They split off after that time period. Hell, Gorillas split off about 8 million years back. Ideas aren't evidence.


>>Since then several bits of evidence have shown this to be unlikey but other proponents have published similar ideas suggesting that coastal phases happenned much more recently.

Yes, AAH folks love switching the time periods involved. It's one of the reasons it ain't science.


>>I, for example, think we were at our most aquatic (and even then not much) at around the time of the Homo sapiens speciation event.

There's no such thing. It's all just a progression. Draw a line anywhere you want. We draw the line at 20k or 100k or whatever else we'd like. We're the same species as our parents as far as we go back.


>>Before the 1990s little was known about the biochemical basis of brain nutrition but recently it has become increasingly clear that the marine food chain supplies most of the key nutrients needed for encephalisation.

People get along fine without seafood. And people hunt seafood just fine without going into the water. Is the theory getting more wishy-washy again... now it's down to "we eat fish." Soon it will be that "we like water" then "humans evolved head hair for babies to grab on".


>>Who has not heard of the importance of omega-3 fatty acids in the diet and their abundance in oily fish? I could list more examples showing that the AAH is stronger today than it has ever been.

By eating antelope and other animals, we'd have plenty of omega-3. If they feed on grass, they end up with omega-3. We tend to eat animals fed large amounts of grain (not grass) and thusly lacking in omega-3. Taking our diet today and suggesting that it needs more Omega-3 and "hey fish have omega-3" is silly. You might as well argue that since humans like salt and kissing is said to be a way to remove salt from other people's lips that kissing is evidence for an aquatic origin.

>>I'm pinning my hopes to evidence-based reasoning and rationality eventually overriding peer pressure and cow towing to authority.

Kowtowing! Cow towing? Tow that cow! "Hey Jimmy, I've been towing this damned cow to the administrator." - "Stop Cow Towing to authority!" Lol.

I think you should pin your hopes on a brutal dictatorship and being installed by force as science like Lysenko, because frankly you don't have any evidence. One bit of evidence is worth a million half-baked arguments. The evidence isn't there. Human ancestors may have fished and may have grabbed some food here and there. However, the litany of things attributed to AAH is just absurd. We're opportunists, give me a fish and I'll eat it.

However, from there you're not going to get bipedalism and nakedness... this or that or the other. There's no more aquatic influence in human evolution in the past than today.


>>It's people who do the opposite who are being religious.

As an atheist, I love that "religious" has become an insult. However, those who oppose AAH aren't pinning their hopes on evidenced-based reasonings. They are pinning their beliefs on the evidence itself. If AAH were where the evidence leads us... sure, but it's not, nowhere close.


>>The essential difference between science and religion is that we are allowed to - no, that's wrong - we are *expected to* criticise orthodoxy. It's odd that you don't seem to like this.

I think you misunderstand science. Science isn't about criticizing orthodoxy, it's about disproving incorrect theories and proposing theories to get shot down. The idea that early hominids were killer apes with tools and meat, hunting and being all around awesome, is certainly a theory one could draw from the evidence. It isn't orthodoxy, it's just a theory. Then it gets crushed by the evidence. Well done on both parts. Theory proposed, theory demolished... that's science.

The teeth marks show that it was the prey, the animal that killed the little guy was tracked down, the evidence was against the "killer ape" theory, and so the theory was disregarded. Nobody in the science thinks that the proposal of the theory was wrong, just the theory was wrong. Science is about subjecting ideas to repeated scrutiny. Putting up a definite idea of exactly how and why something is the way it is, then subjecting it to the full brunt of scientific attack. If it survives... fantastic.

However, this is why AAH isn't a theory and isn't even science. There's no definite claim. Nobody says 5 million years ago, bipedalism was evolved in a freshwater aquatic environment in NE Africa. Rather we get a bunch of traits, a bunch of different times, different water sources, different everything and nothing is on the line. When one problem is proposed the theory switches. If you point out that humans can't drink seawater, then they evolved in freshwater. If you note that sweating is worthless in the water they switch and say that sweating was to get rid of the extra salt from the sea.

Science is fantastic, but it isn't criticizing orthodoxy. If you can show that the evidence suggests that some long standing idea is actually wrong... that's huge points in the scientific community. Just saying that you have this theory that vaguely includes humans and water in some mixture and it's hetrodox and thus real good science is the absurd to the highest power.

>>Whenever I read people like yourself, spouting the usual ignorant dogma against this theory, it reminds me more of religious fundamentalists than anything else.

I argue with religious fundamentalists all the time. They say a lot of stuff, one thing they don't tend to say is you have no evidence and in fact, X, Y, and Z studies are pretty sound refutations of your entire position. I hear this same sort of dogma argument spouted by creationists that evolution is just like a religion. Really, without strong evidence I'm not going to your side of an argument, and such things... the strong arguments are with mainstream science.

>>If you need some kind of academic assurance before you are likely to be persuaded (although you shouldn't) I'm doing a PhD on this subject at UWA, Perth, Australia and I passed my masters on the same topic with a distinction from UCL, London.

Good for you. It doesn't make it science. It's a silly idea without any evidence to back it up. And beyond that mainstream anthropology's cup runneth over with evidence, fossils, credible ideas and scientific theories.

WMD found! Suddenly it's all worth it.

Finally after a number of years we've discovered their stockpile. The deaths finally add up. The administration is vindicated! Democrats disgraced!

Well, at least it's a vial of something.

*sigh*

I don't think they actually do it...

Quite often when I share my views that rats and rabbits are members of the same order or that abortion rates have been shown to statistically be reduced by use of contraception, I get people who say that they will be praying for me. I don't think they actually do it. I think it's a cheap stunt and they just claim to be praying for me and really don't bother. I can never shake the feeling that their words, in this respect, are hollow.

I'll be praying for you. I honestly wonder how many of them actually do it. Also, it isn't I'll pray for you today or pray for you tomorrow. It's "be praying" like it will be a continuing thing. How long will this activity continue?

It just seems that since prayer has no effect at all, I can't verify this claim. And they always make it seem like their prayers will involve that one guy on that one forum that one time who cited a peer-reviewed study to backup a claim forever!

Mormonism is awesome...

At the end when they mention how it sounds really odd and a lot like Battlestar Galactica they aren't whistling dixie... BSG is actually written after Mormonism. To Kolob and godhood within the celestial kingdom... at least you'll be God of the planet rather than intergalactic overlord like fracking Xenu.

Wow, I thought I was kind of joking.

It turns out that there actually is a secret gay tap signal for lewd sex acts. When I first posted my little rant about there being secret codes, I never fully expected it to be real. Sure a general foot tap is one thing but it is actually a secret code.

Science isn't naturalistic...

Science isn't naturalistic by its nature. To the contrary, if for some reason everybody born on a certain day were very similar in very definite ways, science would figure this out. If you could with a few words whether a spell, prayer, or incantation cause a very real consistent and repeatable effect on the natural world, even if these effects were, as far as we could tell causeless, we would still measure and study it. We could quite literally get prayers down to a science.

For example, quantum phenomenon are often uncaused. In reality there is no reason it should do what it does, but we can measure them very exactly. If supernatural things had such an effect on the real world, they would look identical to quantum effects.

Now, why then do we never find such supernatural causes for things? Why don't we prove astrology, religion, prayer, magic?

In science, we test our ideas about reality against the natural world and figure out what sticks. It isn't science that has a vendetta against your favorite pet fantasies, reality doesn't back them up because they are false. Sorry, but science just seems naturalistic because only naturalistic explanations exist as a part of reality.

Repubican Senator caught soliciting gay sex... but what's this I hear.

At first when I heard the Craig was convicted of soliciting an undercover officer for lewd acts in a public bathroom I thought par for the course.

The odd part of the story is this:

“At 1216 hours, Craig tapped his right foot. I recognized this as a signal used by persons wishing to engage in lewd conduct..."

Does the gay community actually have lewd act bathroom stall tapping signals? Is there some secret gay code or something? It's not fascinating as some kind of social observations, I just love secret codes and I'm pissed that I don't know what they are.

Fine, keep your secret tap codes and your ability to put on matching clothing. I'll go learn the Mason's secret handshakes (which coincidentally were exactly borrowed by the Mormons at the Temple until a few years back when they got rid of them for exactly that reason).

Aquatic Ape Hypothesis...

AAH is a nifty bit of non-science. Mostly dead and gone and was never very good. Though, as more and more information came around it just got worse and worse.P.Z. Myers bothered to note the theory. So I might as well steal some thunder.

I did some editing of the Wikipedia page though there is an odd sort of following. Hairlessness in humans has more to do with fire than water. We regulate our heat far better than hair ever could, fire and shelter is more than enough to remove the hair requirement. When it's gone less pests and problems, and we cope quite well, moreso with clothing.

The basic idea is that humans heavily evolved in water, as such explains bipedalism, and sweating, hairlessness and other such little bits of what not. Though, rather than getting better the theory has just gotten more and more vague.

Ben Stein is apparently making a movie about ID.

Expelled. Wow, what rebels these Christians are, undermining science is so fighting against the man. I oddly first heard about this on Pharyngula though without a link to the movie. He had a clip.

I have another great story he should cover. I was teaching English and rather than teach I started yelling and flinging feces at them. But, those vile administrators said "No" and was pretty well driven away. Why? Why do they hate the truth?

Chimp-Gorillia split conflated to be something amazing.

So, there I am surfing my forums and such and I see that human-chimp split is pushed back to 10 million years as a thread title. Now this just doesn't work. First, humans aren't that different from chimps. I mean very little evolution and 10 million years is just too big. So I check out the article which actually says ape-human split, based on some 10 million year old fossil find of teeth that look vaguely gorilla.

So, in the end, no. First off, humans never split from the ape group, that's a lie we tell people because, telling them they are a type of ape kind of pisses them off. The last thing we apes like is having poo tossed at us, so we tend to cut humans out of the entire animal kingdom.

'Apes' is a pretty big category. Because it includes gorillas, chimps and orangutans means it obviously includes humans, if it's not specifically excluding them for no reason at all. This part of the family tree is called chimps (two out of the three have chimp in the name), calling it human-ape is just confusing on both sides. First it's the chimp side and second it's still all within the ape group.


The traditional date is 8 million years for the gorilla-chimp split. This fossil suggests, with extremely weak evidence, that we should say it's 10. These are obvious ape teeth from something that had a gorilla like diet, beyond that who knows.

--Apes----------------------------------------Gorillia
                \
                   ---------------------------Chimps
                            \           \
                              \            -- Bonobos
                               \
                               ---------------Humans

(not to geologic scale, excluding lots of critters)

The Magical Powers of Mermaids...

Certain mythological figures tend to have special magical powers. For example unicorn horns can grant wishes or perhaps gore the crap out of you (as is the case with a few man-made unicorns with horn transplants). Leprechauns have large quantities of gold that somehow we are entitled to steal from them for some reason, when I know a lot of banks with gold that you aren't permitted to steal. It just seems odd as if lack of security entitles one to somebody else's goods. Mermaids have the power to switch between water and land. While on land being indistinguishable from humans. Which raises an interesting evolutionary question, why wouldn't mermaids drive humans extinct if they had the same abilities and then some... it just seems like one hell of a profound advantage. Secondly, they have the magical ability to have their long hair cover their breasts as if by magic (unless something else is covering them). This might actually be an evolutionary reason we aren't all mermaids, specifically that merbabies can't breast feed without getting a mouth full of hair. Just seems like a really odd magical power. For the life of me, I could see no evolutionary advantage for it. If anything it would make breastfeeding harder and negate the roll of breasts as a fertility signal.

Are any mythological figures very evolutionarily sound? Although, the aforementioned real unicorn had a pretty distinct advantage. He quickly realized that with just one big fat horn he could gore the crap out of other animals.

Dislike for congress.

I also think it's classic that many news networks are tossing around the idea that the low opinion of congress somehow vindicates Bush. See, they hate everybody in the government! The truth is they hate Bush because he's the worst president ever and they hate congress because they don't step up, impeach Bush and Cheney, have President Byrd (president pro tempore of the senate, although with the senate that close perhaps Pelosi should do it, though she was the one who wanted impeachment off the table) withdraw the troops, have the senate go nuclear remove the filibuster and ram through a reversal of the last six years perhaps before the next hurricane destroys a city and nobody is around to pick up the pieces.

In short, they hate Bush so much that anybody who isn't fighting with every shred of their being is a traitor.

History views him kindly...

Has anybody considered the irony that historians will have to fight when they write about the worst president in history whose only plea is that perhaps history will view him kindly. That his only Hail Mary is that perhaps historians will be completely stupid and not realize that staying in a worthless intractable war with bizarre delusions about future historians liking him was something noteworthy and respectable?

Secondly, what about the Rapture? Certainly since the crazy nutjob rapture-loving loony Christians are the only ones who are still brainwashed enough to believe Bush (yes I'm talking about Bush 43 if "worst president in history" was clear enough) is anything more than a complete disaster. And if they are yanked into the sky, who will still be around to write a favorable review of Bush in any history book?

Also, it might help if the same powerful lobby that manages to get any evolution tidbit downplayed in text books would also require that history books cater to these delusions.

Ah, news... I hardly knew yea...

I watched a bit of CNN and learned two lessons. Apparently the heat waves in the south, floods in the north and category 5 hurricane hitting Mexico are just day to day things, with no relation to global warming. Though, all of them are pretty obviously from an increase in heat. But, that's just because they were reporting and nowadays if you had to give global warming credit for all the batshit crazy weather we have it would pretty well cut into the weather report time which seems to be more and more.

Secondly, Communist China is selling us lead painted toys that we buy from Communist China. It used to be that we were fine importing so many goods from Communist China but now it seems Communist China has fallen out of our good graces. A bit of this lead toys story was simply because groups did the testing of the stuff they imported from Communist China to make sure their Communist China goods were safe... oh and did I note that each and every time CNN talked about Communist China they made damn sure to say "Communist". -- I don't even know what that means!

Redheads going extinct says confused bit of nonsense attributed to scientists...

Apparently gingers will be extinct within 100 years. Why would this fairly moot trait be driven extinct? What is the selection force behind it? What is driving sexy redheads to never breed or die in large numbers...

Global intermingling, which broadens the availability of possible partners, has reduced the chances of redheads meeting and producing little redheads of their own.

It takes only one red-haired parent to produce ginger-headed babies, but two redheads obviously create a much stronger possibility.

Hm? Apparently they don't understand basic genetics. Red hair is primarily caused by one gene, red/not-red where red is recessive. So a parent with rr will have red hair and a parent with Rr or RR will have not-red hair. However, if parents are simply carriers for the gene, Rr and Rr then a solid 1/4th of their children will have red hair. It actually takes zero red-haired parents to produce a red headed child. Secondly, ginger is blond+red whereas auburn is brown+red controlled (pretty much) by the two genes. And blond is recessive. So frankly, if the genes get mixed up into the population then you can still produce a ginger from two dark haired individuals. In fact, have the same number of genes would exist simply mixed up into populations that don't express the genes. It would not make the genes less frequent.

Genes are a pretty simplistic idea of what's actually going on to express those traits, but really... this one fits the model really well. And even then they don't seem to get the model. That or are using "extinct" to mean a decrease in typical phenotype expression.

I was cured by homeopathy...

I was exceedingly thirsty and I drank 2 liters of 100x concentrated snake venom and now I'm cured!

Camels and Eyes' of Needle

There's a fun little note the Biblical note that you should give away all your stuff and spread the word. Stupid advice then, just as stupid now. However there is also another interesting line:

Matthew 19:24 - I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.

Well, as there are many rich people within the religious right, and a good deal of preachers driving fancy cars, so this needs to be defined away. The argument (because it wouldn't be apologetics if there weren't arguments for everything) is that the "eye of a needle" refers to a specific gate in Jerusalem that was just really hard to get one's camels' through. Though not impossible. First, who builds a gate like that? Or narrow pass in the hills, nobody would do that! Also, how do you get around the fact that it's a common place idiom?

They do not show a man a palm tree of gold, nor an elephant going through the eye of a needle. -- Hm?

Why not just redefine the Camel to mean, ant. Camel... that's what they called ants back then. They could do it, it was just pretty rough.

Enemies of Reason, Part 2

Ah, Internet Video.

Followup Church Shooting.

Last week I made a few predictions about a very recent church shooting, upon admittedly no data. How well did I do?

I suspect this fellow was still a theist.

Well, he reportedly shouted "Liars! Liars!" and shot the pastor. Okay, actually he was apparently referring to some secondary altercation that lead to the police investigating him for child molestation of a 14-year old girl. There's nothing to suggest even remotely that he lost his faith.

I would take bets to that effect.

I think I would have won.

Sadly, I'd even go far as assume religion played a roll.

Still no evidence here. Seemed to be a family matter in a small community where he had issues with the family of another church family. That doesn't sound like actual religious cause to me. The Police aren't helping to provide evidence for my speculation.



Also at some point he reported grabbed somebody, asked if anybody else would like to be killed in his stead, and then as nobody stepped forward shot the man. Somehow this seems pretty much an obvious result, perhaps he should have offered a leg shot vs. a headshot or something people could have said 'yes' to.

Jamaica Hit by Hurricane Dean...

Hurricane Dean pummeled Jamaica and I know why.

It's not very widely known, but Jamaica is one of the most homophobic places on Earth, and this Hurricane is wrath for their anti-gay positions!

... you never hear this kind of stuff. I wonder why.