Arete

Wat? Abbott - agree with him or not has always been one of the more vocal and controversial figures in contemporary Australian politics. E.g. TONY Abbott's plan to send back all asylum-seeker boats has drawn fire from Indonesia's police as well as the UN High Commissioner for Refugees as dangerous and in breach of international law. http://www.theage.co...l#ixzz1yuIbmwCW Asked to clarify his views on homosexuality he said: "There is no doubt that challenges, if you like, orthodox notions of the right order of things," he said last night. He was expanding on comments he made on 60 Minutes on Sunday night, in which he said: "I probably feel a bit threatened (by homosexuality), as so many people do." http://www.news.com....0#ixzz1yuIlXQ6j "Why isn't the fact that 100,000 women choose to end their pregnancies regarded as a national tragedy approaching the scale, say, of Aboriginal life expectancy being 20 years less than that of the general community?" - From an address to the Adelaide University Democratic Club, 17 March 2004. "I think there does need to be give and take on both sides, and this idea that sex is kind of a woman's right to absolutely withhold, just as the idea that sex is a man's right to demand I think they are both they both need to be moderated, so to speak" http://www.abc.net.a...xt/s2514401.htm etc. As far as improving the quality of our politicians goes, I think we need restrictions which prevent us ending up with career politicians, who can shuffle portfolios amongst themselves (i.e. shift from education minister to environment minister to sports and recreation minister to...) and the inevitable popularist, short term policies aimed at simply winning the next election. As most people in democratic nations would know, there's two sides to almost every policy decision, and if you try to make everyone happy all the time, very little effectual change actually happens. If we had an actual economist with the economic portfolio, an actual environmental scientist with the enviroment portfolio, an actual trained teacher with the education portfolio, etc. and gave these people limited terms so that they needed a career other than simply being politicians, they might be a) better equipped and b) more willing to make hard decisions which would actually progress the state of our countries.

Yeah they do: One print is a chimp, one is a koala and one is human. http://www.odec.ca/projects/2004/fren4j0/public_html/animal_fingerprints.htm

Except your link and excerpt specifically state the study does not show any evidence linking the MMR vaccine to autism. It shows a correlation between autism and gastrointestinal abnormalities, and that treating a painful gastrointestinal disorder can solve a behavioral problem in an autism sufferer.

Yesterday was a sad day for science, as Lonesome George, the last known member of Chelonoidis nigra abingdoni - The Pinta Island giant tortoise dies, marking the extinction of the species. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-18574279

No it isn't speculation. You made the general remark that it was "highly improbable" that a gene would be shared between African and European populations. I countered that assertion with peer reviewed literature showing that the likelihood of a gene selected at random being fixed across humans and chimps is 7.2% and long term gene flow between Europe and Africa considerably increases that probability between African and European populations, which further peer reviewed literature I cited shows are indistinctly differentiated in the first place. Given you're the party making the positive assertion that such a gene a) exists, b) is fixedly different between these two populations c) significantly contributes to the phenotype of intelligence d) this phenotype is significantly different between these populations, I'd say the burden of proof lies squarely on your shoulders - my point was merely that even if it does exist, it's not "highly improbable" to be shared in human populations with long standing geneflow between them - the data shows allele sharing is highly likely and claims of fixed differences between two such populations require substantiation beyond yet another arm waving generalization. You've ignored repeated requests to evidence any of these speculative assertions, and whenever anyone tries to counter any of the blatantly false statements you're making, you counter with a comment such as the one quoted above which simply restates these unproven assumptions, which attempts to shift the burden of proof onto others to prove your assertions false. It's becoming circular and obfuscating. I think you need to read your own link on ad hominem attacks - I did not attack you at all. I brought into question the appropriateness of your post (not you) because it was a private communication sent to you which you aired publicly, a point which was validated when the moderators decided to moderate your post. If I had of said "Your post is inappropriate because you are a narrow minded bigot so everything you say is inappropriate" that would have constituted an ad hominem fallacy - see the difference? I further question the appropriateness of "wall of texting" us with copypasta of what appears to be your undergraduate essay in a discussion forum. If you were having a verbal discussion, you wouldn't stand up and give a half hour monologue, so why do the virtual equivalent? It seems to me that such behavior falls under the definition of "soapboxing". Culture and ideas are not heritable - there's no genetic basis for their inheritance and the argument is fundamentally and completely flawed. To preempt - it is not up to me to demonstrate that they aren't as you are making the positive assertion that they are - if you use words like "will always" and "correlated", you need to provide data. Yet again, you're making unsupported assertions and treating your own opinion as fact. Did you miss post #3 of this thread: "The models suggest that in impoverished families, 60% of the variance in IQ is accounted for by the shared environment, and the contribution of genes is close to zero" http://pss.sagepub.c.../14/6/623.short "IQ, is perhaps 48%; narrow-sense heritability, the relevant quantity for evolutionary arguments because it measures the additive effects of genes, is about 34%." http://www.nature.co...l/388468a0.html "large environmentally induced IQ gains between generations suggest an important role for environment in shaping IQ" http://psycnet.apa.o.../rev/108/2/346/ The above peer reviewed scientific publications provide a basis for the assumption that observed variance in intelligence is more attributable to environmental factors than genetic - which you are yet to counter. Where is your evidence that they are distinct? The null hypothesis of any test for genetic differentiation (e.g. AMOVA, Bayesian clustering, Mantel test) assumes no difference between populations. The burden of proof is on you.

Just to add some links for mississippichem: http://www.bmj.com/c...2/7284/460.full "the data provide evidence that no correlation exists between the prevalence of MMR vaccination and the rapid increase in the risk of autism over time" http://jama.jamanetw...rticleid=193604 "Essentially no correlation was observed between the secular trend of early childhood MMR immunization rates in California and the secular trend in numbers of children with autism enrolled in California's regional service center system" http://www.nejm.org/...56/NEJMoa021134 "There was no association between the age at the time of vaccination, the time since vaccination, or the date of vaccination and the development of autistic disorder." http://www.sciencedi...140673699012398 "Our analyses do not support a causal association between MMR vaccine and autism. If such an association occurs, it is so rare that it could not be identified in this large regional sample." http://www.bmj.com/c...4/7334/393.full "These findings provide no support for an MMR associated "new variant" form of autism" http://jama.jamanetw...rticleid=197365 "The results do not support a causal relationship between childhood vaccination with thimerosal-containing vaccines and development of autistic-spectrum disorders."

Aside from the wild inappropriateness of sharing personal emails on a web forum: of 11,000 coding regions analyzed in this study, 797 were found to be fixed (i.e. identical) between not only all the human samples analyzed, but between humans and chimpanzees. This indicates that there is in fact a 7.2% likelihood that a randomly chosen gene is conserved between all humans and chimps. It is therefore considerably plausible - given some actual data rather than arm waving generalization, that two humans, from different populations could share identical alleles at one of the many genes which contribute to intelligence. Even more damning for your generalization is the level of migration between human populations. This study shows that "genome-wide polymorphism data from about 40 West Eurasian groups to show that almost all Southern Europeans have inherited 1%–3% African ancestry" and This study shows that bidirectional gene flow has been occurring between European and African human populations since their seperation. This means that if an allele which conferred an intellectual advantage arose in Europe, it is entirely possible that it was transferred to African human populations, or vice versa. For the nth time if you're going to claim there is significant difference between two things, you need to demonstrate that there is a significant difference. If you're going to attribute a correlation between two things, you need to demonstrate a significant correlation.

A mutation will only become prevalent and eventually fixed if it confers a selective advantage on its bearer - i.e. the mutation allows you to have more progeny than your cogeners. This means that for a particular niche, there are likely to be optimal phenotypes. Crossing the saddle between two optima might involve too much negative selection for it to be possible, hence stabilizing /purifying selection will retain the predominate, successful phenotype. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stabilizing_selection or in simpler terms, the current grass phenotype is better than any of the random phenoptyic deviations from it that evolution has afforded the grasses. That said we've got phenotypes ranging from 30m tall bamboo, to obligate aquatic forms, to lawns - adaptations like blades, spears aerial roots giant flowerheads, c3 and c4 pathways, so there is a pretty substantial diversity of successful phenotypes in the grasses. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poaceae

Check citation 1 in post 3 in this thread. http://pss.sagepub.c.../14/6/623.short It describes a twin study in which one twin was raised in a low socioeconomic environment and the other was raised in an elevated socioeconomic environment - which resulted in significant variation in the plastic response and heritable components of intellect - "The models suggest that in impoverished families, 60% of the variance in IQ is accounted for by the shared environment, and the contribution of genes is close to zero; in affluent families, the result is almost exactly the reverse." How about diet - http://www.nature.co.../pr197611a.html and climate- http://www.amsciepub...0.107.4.251-254 I'm not sure you're understanding. Phenotypic plasticity is a phenomenon in which the same genotype, exposed to differential environments (and sometimes identical environments) can produce a range of different phenotypes. As shown above with socioeconomic status, climate childhood diet, and a quick literature search will show, exposure to radiation, peer associations, exposure to lead, etc, etc, all result in environmentally induced plasticity in IQ in humans. So, even in the case you were able to provide a study which showed statistically validated differentiation in intelligence between human populations (which you haven't) defined by race (which is a poor categorization of genetic variation in humans as gene flow between races is historically high http://mbe.oxfordjou.../26/8/1823.full and differentiation between races is clinal http://mbe.oxfordjou.../26/8/1823.full) there exists substantial potential and evidence that hypothetical differences in intellect between human populations could be driven by environmental factors rather than genetic - which means that to prove any heritability of the differential conditions you need to control for environment. Here is a study which proves there is no genetic basis in significant phenotypic differences between allopatric snail populations. http://www.ncbi.nlm....pubmed/18840773 Cross sectional field studies show significant differences in body size between populations - common garden experiments show no significant difference in size between offspring from these differentiated populations when raised in a homogenous environment. It is the type of study you would need to produce to validate your speculations.

Including phenotypic plasticity. Look, this is not about political correctness. This is about science. Stop arm waving and provide a statistically validated correlation between an intelligence metric and race instead of evasion, arm waving and logical fallacies. It is what everyone else in evolutionary biology is required to do in order to establish a phenotypic difference between two populations, regardless of species. If you then wish to establish a genetic basis for the difference between these two statistically differentiated phenotypic clusters, establish common inheritance in a controlled environment. If you cannot do this you cannot establish a genetic basis for trait difference between populations.

Please start taking you own advice and cite some actual evidence to prove any of your assertions and stop arm waving. This is an appeal to authority. Please show us the data which proves that race significantly explains an observed difference in intelligence. a) you and I have different definitions of "recent" b) please learn how to properly cite an article if you wish you use it as evidence c) Youtube is not peer reviewed scientific evidence. No, you claim that it does. Please provide evidence. Always? again, evidence needed. Please provide the observations that show this. Again, just because you say so? Sorry, but no. Evolutionary biology is a physical science. Hypotheses are justified using observations and statistical analysis - experiments which do this were cited to you and ignored in my previous post. Conjecture is not a scientific approach to hypothesis testing.

First off, You haven't demonstrated that there is an observable difference between the two categories, which iNow points out have little biological meaning. So you're starting from a false premise. Even if there were, sympatry certainly does not imply identical environment. Different phenotypic responses in genetically homogeneous populations is a well studied phenomenon. http://en.wikipedia....ypic_plasticity http://www.sciencema...4/5541/321.full As such, the observation of two distinct phenotypes can, in no way lead to a conclusion that genetic differences are responsible. For a third time, to even hypothesize about the heritability of trait you need to control the environment - a common garden experiment, like this: http://www.plosone.o...al.pone.0010229 and even when you do conduct a common garden experiment, it's not definitive, as the same genome can produce different phenotypes even in the same environment: http://www.pitt.edu/...ept/pdf/700.pdf As such, you need to conduct a functional study to identify the actual genetic component responsible for the observed phenotype differences, like a knock out experiment http://www.iscid.org...-out_Experiment, like this one: http://www.pnas.org/...3/27/10352.full

If only you were the reviewer on my ecological speciation papers. I could have gotten away with so much absolute bollocks and called it science. To call an observed difference between observed clusters an observed heritable differentiation, science demands considerably more evidence: http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.1086/341015?uid=2&uid=4&sid=56260901913 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1461-0248.2005.00796.x/full http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0000644 http://www.springerlink.com/content/v4l476117611q364/

Oh no! Can't let the data/reality set our agendas and dictate policy decisions instead of our opinions now, can we? Stop the experiments, before they find out we're wrong!

Nature provides us with numerous examples of nominally "homosexual" individuals engaging in the rearing of offspring, both in other species and our own. When we apply evolutionary models of kin selection and inclusive fitness to these scenarios, they fit within the bounds of having positive net effects on evolutionary fitness. http://en.wikipedia....sexual_behavior http://en.wikipedia....clusive_fitness This article discusses a study in Samoa, where homosexuality in males has a long history of acceptance and looks at the care given by heterosexual males, women and homosexual males to children. Homosexual men were shown to provide significantly more care to peripherally related children (nieces, nephews, cousins, etc) than hetero men or women. As these children are carrying a component of the homosexual males genes, and the fact that an additional caregiver - such as a homosexual male - can maximise offspring survival, having/being a homosexual man in such a situation confers a population/familial level of evolutionary success. http://www.news-medi...nt-of-view.aspx When it comes down to it, there's evidence for homosexual individuals positively impacting the success of populations of socially interacting organisms which cooperatively raise young - and when objectively evaluating the broad 'acceptability' of homosexuals raising offspring the evidence is pretty strong that the net evolutionary effect is positive and more than likely has been an element of human societies since their inception - especially given the extremely high prevalence of homosexuality in our nearest relatives. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosex...and_other_apes Can you show any actual evidence of homosexual parenting having a negative effect on the development of offspring?

Which is why in all studies testing differential heritability - regardless of the study species or the trait in question, one needs to conduct a common garden experiment to rule out plastic response of phenotype to environmental heterogeneity. In the absence of such a controlled experiment, all one has is speculation.

You are implying that intelligence is significantly heritable, and any observed differences are due to heritable differences rather than phenotypic plasticity in response to the environment. There's a number of issues: a) You don't demonstrate that there is significant differences in intellect explained when categorizing by race. b) IQ is standardized by the test group - therefore comparisons of IQ from different test groups are invalid. c) Even if you had proof that there were differences in intelligence, in order to prove heritability significantly explains the observed differences above and beyond plastic response to the environment you need a common garden experiment. Arm waving statements about all traits having an element of heritability don't suffice. d) The actual evidence suggests that environment plays a larger role in the development of intellect than heritable components: "The models suggest that in impoverished families, 60% of the variance in IQ is accounted for by the shared environment, and the contribution of genes is close to zero" http://pss.sagepub.c.../14/6/623.short "IQ, is perhaps 48%; narrow-sense heritability, the relevant quantity for evolutionary arguments because it measures the additive effects of genes, is about 34%." http://www.nature.co...l/388468a0.html "large environmentally induced IQ gains between generations suggest an important role for environment in shaping IQ" http://psycnet.apa.o.../rev/108/2/346/ etc.

Most of my fieldwork has been in the Australian desert. Long sleeves hands down. a) It's not humid like the Caribbean, so having a light layer of clothing is nowhere near as uncomfortable as it is in a jungle. b) Sunblock can only do so much, especially if you're exposed to the desert sun for extended periods of time, days on end. Sunburn costs water from your system. In addition Australia is under the ozone hole, so the sun burns worse down there than it does in the Northern Hemisphere. c) The desert gets cold at night, like below freezing cold. There is a serious risk of hypothermia at night even in the hottest parts during the day. d) There are big, bitey venomous snakes in the Australian desert, so long pants and boots are essential if you're going to walk anywhere. e) Virtually every plant you encounter will be spiky/thorny and generally unpleasant. You'll get fairly torn up fairly quickly walking through any brush in the Australian desert. Light, breathable long sleeves are vastly preferable to short sleeves for any remote, desert work. As an aside - many Europeans I've met simply don't comprehend the remoteness of the Australian outback until they experience it for themselves, and I've seen some horribly under-equipped people try and tackle it. I've stood with people, with the map out and pointed out that the two towns are 600km apart, the road is unsealed, there is nothing in between and their standard 2wd sedan only has ~450km fuel range - and been completely unable to convince said person that there is literally no people, water supply or place to buy fuel between the two, and watched them drive off. We always take a 4wd vehicle with a winch, a shovel, at least 2 spare tires, 3 separate fuel supplies (tank, reserve tank, jerry can/s) totaling at least 200L, three water supplies with at least 60L and at least two forms of remote communication (sat phone, hf radio) when we go remote in Australia.

Our Staffordshire bull terriers are Huxley and Wallace. More biology names than chemistry, but you get the idea.

How would you feel if a Hindu told you that they would ask Shiva to protect your soul? Or someone told you they'd ask the Flying Spaghetti Monster to forgive you for sinning against Him? How would you react if you were invited to a friend's Islamic wedding and everyone knelt to pray to Allah? Would you kneel too as a sign of respect to your friend's beliefs, or would you remain standing while everyone else knelt? I always thought two of the fundamental tenets of Christian belief were that each person had the ability to form a personal relationship with God and that one should not judge others. Having your "blood boil" at someone's personal choices regarding prayer seems to smack of both assumption regarding another person's supposedly personal relationship with their God and subsequent casting of judgement as to how what you observe relates to what you personally deem appropriate behavior... As for my personal feelings, each person's religion is their own business so I honestly don't care who prays how, to what, or for what at what time at all - however I do get annoyed at the assumption involved when someone tells me they will pray for me. They always seem pretty offended when I respond that I will talk to my dog for them...

Are you stuck with some of these questions? If so what are you having trouble with?

The blue whale is an endortherm: And lives in both warm and cold oceans:

[inert Godwin's law comment here] It seems Hitler at least professed a belief in the Christian God - and one would assume if he was genuine about it he met the New testament entry requirements of having accepted Jesus and asked for forgiveness. "We tolerate no one in our ranks who attacks the ideas of Christianity... in fact our movement is Christian." -Adolf Hitler, in a speech in Passau, 27 October 1928 "My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter." Adolf Hitler, in his speech in Munich on 12 April 1922 "It matters not whether these weapons of ours are humane: if they gain us our freedom, they are justified before our conscience and before our God." -Adolf Hitler, in Munich, 01 Aug. 1923 he certainly didn't seem to like atheists: "We were convinced that the people needs and requires this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out." -Adolf Hitler, in a speech in Berlin on 24 Oct. 1933 edit to add source: http://www.nobeliefs.com/Hitler1.htm

"I'm proud and ashamed every fourth of July" Despite being Australian, I now live in the US and see and feel a lot of parallels between the history, culture and national sentiments of both places and the Descendents sum up the mixture of sentiments surrounding both places quite well in 'Merican.

So an older trip to the Eyre Peninsula for a biodiversity survey. A painted dragon (Ctenophorous pictus) on a sand dune. The males of this species can have either red, blue or orange coloration of their heads - which is used in sexual signalling and territorial displays. Up close shot of a female painted dragon (Ctenophoroous pictus) A Sleepy lizard/Shingleback lizard/Bobtail lizard (Teliqua rugosa). These guys are roughly analogous to land tortoises elsewhere in that they're slow, herbivorous armor plated terrestrial reptiles. They're easy to catch but have a pretty solid bite and will poop on you. Told you all it would fill this thread with lizard photos if no one else added to it