Monday, November 06, 2006

Are Humans the Weirdoes?

Evolutionary theory is still evolving.  There is still much which is not understood, or, is possibly misunderstood, about human evolution.  I mention this because I just completed reading an interview with Erik Trinkaus, published in Archaeology, titled Bending the Branches, wherein the lead in to the interview begins thusly.

Most people think of humans as the top, the apex of the family tree. But new research suggests this quintessentially human infatuation with ourselves may have impaired our judgment. Erik Trinkaus, a paleontologist and Neandertal expert at Washington University in St. Louis, believes that modern human features are unusual enough, compared with ancestral members of the genus Homo, to make us a side branch of the family tree. Neanderthals have generally been seen as evolutionary outcasts, but through comparisons and analyses of unique and shared traits, published in the August issue of Current Anthropology, Trinkaus concludes that modern humans are morphologically more divergent from ancestral humans than Neanderthals. This leads to the question, then: Why are modern humans so different? ARCHAEOLOGY spoke with Trinkaus about his research and its implications concerning the ongoing story of human evolution.

The interview, unfortunately, does not provide us with much of the substantive evidence for Trinkaus’ postulation, though Current Anthropology does, if you subscribe.  I do not subscribe to the publication, so I cannot provide a link to a more robust review of Trinkaus’ work.

None-the-less, the interview is interesting.

Via Fred Lapides.

Posted by John Venlet on 11/06 at 01:31 PM
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The Power of One

There are alot of theories of how the pyramids were constructed, how Stonehenge was constructed, and how the Easter Island statues were raised.  Many of the theories postulate that the number of individuals required to construct these edifices was quite large.  This might not be so.

In a post titled Building Stonehenge By Yourself, Dean, over at Dean’s World, has a video linked about an individual by the name of Wally Wallington who moves blocks of stone, one weighing over 19,000 pounds, all by himself.

Wallington, who resides in Michigan, also has his own website called The Forgotten Technology.

Check out the video via Dean’s site, it’s pretty amazing, and the technology is simple.  No block and pulley action at all.

Posted by John Venlet on 11/06 at 09:10 AM
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Can Secession be Made "Sexy"

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that the First North American Secessionist Convention was held in Vermont over the weekend.

The First North American Secessionist Convention, billed as the first national gathering of secessionists since the Civil War, included an eclectic mix of conservatives, liberals, libertarians, left-wing Green Party zealots, and right-wing Christian activists.

Interesting.

Per the Inquirer’s article, the disparate group of participants were in the main “congenial,” though nothing definitive was actually accomplished, except for the adoption of the group’s “Burlington Declaration."

...At the end of the day Saturday, the group adopted a Burlington Declaration, borrowing liberally from the Declaration of Independence and asserting that “any political entity has the right to separate itself from a larger body… and peaceably to establish its independence."

I could find no link or posting of the Burlington Declaration on the web, so far, but if I do find it posted, I will update this post and provide a link.

The Inquirer’s article on this is titled Coming together to ponder pulling apart.

Via USA Today.

The secessionist group also has a blog, appropriately named The American Secessionist Blog.

Posted by John Venlet on 11/06 at 08:20 AM
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Propaganda Posters

Here in the U.S. of A., we have our fair share of propaganda posters warning of this danger, or that danger.  The schools here in the U.S. also seem to produce propaganda swallowing individuals.  Start them young, you know.  Britain seems to also suffer from this.

Anyway, take a look at this poster, designed by a British schoolboy.  The poster proclaims Knives Take Lives, and was spotted in the London Underground.  Additionally, the poster informs you that “Knife Surrender Bins are now in place across Kensington and Chelsea.”

A schoolboy designed this poster.  A schoolboy who has swallowed, whole, the tripe rolling out of the mouths of the state’s pedagogues.

Via Virginia Postrel.

Posted by John Venlet on 11/06 at 06:06 AM
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"Times Echoes"

I’ve criticized The New York Times on a number of occasions here.  The lean of the Times is so far to the left that I am somewhat surprised the Times hasn’t simply tipped completely over and openly advocated a new and softer version of socialism, with the Times editorial board acting as the Politboro.

The American Thinker has a piece up titled Times Echoes, which casts an eye on the zealous readers of the NYT, and their tendency to parrot the NYT in all matters.  From the piece.

A distinct subculture, a belief system if not a religion, exists in the United States. Its members draw their instruction on what to believe and how to live from the New York Times. I call them the Times Echoes. They exist in urban social ecosystems all across American.

And these “Times Echoes” do exist all across America, even right here in Western Michigan, unfortunately.

And this.

To Times Echoes, the Times isn’t merely an information source.  It isn’t even just the newspaper of record.  It is an oracle, an inerrant purveyor of wisdom, compared to which the Bible pales.  But the Times Echo is most certainly human.  Although, if Christian theology is correct that it’s intellect and free will that separate man from the animal kingdom, perhaps just barely so.

Via Dissecting Leftism.

Posted by John Venlet on 11/06 at 05:26 AM
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Milton Friedman Interview

MercuryNews.com has a Q&A with Milton Friedman available.

I especically enjoyed this insight of Friedman’s regarding health insurance.

It’s a misnomer really. It isn’t insurance at all. Insurance makes sense when you have a small probability for a large cost and you want to share that probability with others. But it doesn’t make sense for ordinary day-to-day care. What we call medical insurance is not really insurance at all. It’s pre-paid medical care.

Via PrestoPundit.

Posted by John Venlet on 11/06 at 05:01 AM
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Sunday, November 05, 2006

Good Riddance

Saddam Hussein To Hang

Posted by John Venlet on 11/05 at 05:54 AM
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Saturday, November 04, 2006

Libertarian Roadways

Coming from a Dutch ancestry, as I do, I am sometimes chagrined by the goings on in the Netherlands, and other times I am quite pleased by the Hollanders’ forward thinking.

Residents of the northern Dutch town of Drachten have already been used as guinea-pigs in an experiment which has seen nearly all the traffic lights stripped from their streets.

Only three of the 15 sets in the town of 50,000 remain and they will be gone within a couple of years.

The project is the brainchild of Mr Monderman, and the town has seen some remarkable results. There used to be a road death every three years but there have been none since the traffic light removal started seven years ago.

There have been a few small collisions, but these are almost to be encouraged, Mr Monderman explained. “We want small accidents, in order to prevent serious ones in which people get hurt,” he said yesterday.

It works well because it is dangerous, which is exactly what we want. But it shifts the emphasis away from the Government taking the risk, to the driver being responsible for his or her own risk. (bold added for emphasis - ed.)

From an article in the Telegraph titled Is this the end of the road for traffic lights?

The Telegraph also has another interesting article posted on this subject titled Rip them out.

Via Samizdata.

Posted by John Venlet on 11/04 at 11:58 AM
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"Mimicas"

Interesting Saturday morning read, from The New York Times Magazine, regarding the development of what researchers are calling a new language.

Following the 1979 Sandinista revolution, the newly installed Nicaraguan Government inaugurated the country’s first large-scale effort to educate deaf children. Hundreds of students were enrolled in two Managua schools. Not being privy to the more than 200 existing sign languages used by hearing-impaired people around the world, Managua’s deaf children started from ground zero. They had no grammar or syntax — only crude gestural signs developed within their own families. These pantomimes, which deaf kids use to communicate basic needs like “eat,” “drink” and “ice cream,” are called mimicas in Spanish.

Most of the children arrived in Managua with only a limited repertory of mimicas. But once the students were placed together, they began to build on one another’s signs. One child’s gesture solidified into the community’s word. The children’s inexperienced teachers — who were having paltry success communicating with their profoundly deaf students — watched in awe as the kids began signing among themselves. A new language had begun to bloom.

The article is titled A Linguistic Big Bang

Its interesting to note that the children who developed this new language, though brought together by the state, rejected the state’s attempt to indoctrinate them in an accepted language, and then developed their own.

Posted by John Venlet on 11/04 at 07:46 AM
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Friday, November 03, 2006

"Global Salvationism"

It is, I suspect, no accident that it is in Europe that climate change absolutism has found the most fertile soil. For it is Europe that has become the most secular society in the world, where the traditional religions have the weakest popular hold. Yet people still feel the need for the comfort and higher values that religion can provide; and it is the quasi-religion of Green alarmism and what has been termed global salvationism - of which the climate change issue is the most striking example, but by no means the only one - which has filled the vacuum, with reasoned questioning of its mantras regarded as a form of blasphemy.

Posted as the Samizdata Quote of the Day.

Posted by John Venlet on 11/03 at 11:22 AM
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American Ingenuity in Foreign Lands

The title to this series of photographs is Lords of the Logistic, but the title could easily have been “Ingenuity in Action.”

Take a look, the photos are amazing.

Via UniquePeek.com.

Posted by John Venlet on 11/03 at 10:05 AM
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Courage and Moral Rectitude Lacking

I popped over and read the comment thread that Billy Beck links to in his post Comment Abroad.

In the thread, which is a discussion of voting Democratic for the purpose of creating political gridlock, with an Objectivist slant, there are a number of references to Rand’s book Atlas Shrugged.

The references to this tome center around what it will take to effect change in the political hell we currently reside.  Will the change be effected by the agonizingly slow creep of Objectivist friendly educators into the education systems, mass civil disobedience, or by the political process?

Though I think that Objectivist friendly educators in the education system would be beneficial, the fruits of this would not be seen for generations to come, and that may very well be too late.

Mass civil disobedience simply will not happen.  Too many individuals desire to reside in the palm of the state.

Participating in the political process is simply robbing Peter to pay Paul and a freedom pipe dream.

At the risk of sounding naïve, I’ll reference Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and state the following.

The main protagonists in this tome are all titans of various industries who make the conscious decision to withhold their sanction from the state.  Some of the protagonists arrive at this decision rather quickly, others need to be beaten down time, and time again, prior to arriving at this decision.  Are there any titans of industry, today, anywhere in the world, who have this type of courage and moral rectitude?  Are there any titans of industry who even contemplate, even vaguely, withdrawing their sanction of the state?  I would say not.

Titans of industry, today, are more apt to ask for additional state interference to protect their markets from competitors, at the expense of the state’s lamprey grip on the fruits of their production, rather than advocating freedom from the state.

Until such time that this world we live in sees men and/or women, leaders, of the character type portrayed by Francisco d’Anconia, Ragnar Danneskjöld, or Elias Wyatt, individuals who destroyed the entities, the businesses, which the state voraciously feeds on, and who assiduously decline to contribute to the coffers of professional jobholders and jobseekers, the decline into socialism will continue.

Posted by John Venlet on 11/03 at 08:10 AM
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John Kerry Apologist

The John Kerry comment, "You know education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”, has been roundly, and justifiably, condemned, and criticized, throughout the media and blogosphere.

I had not seen any defenses of Kerry’s foolish comment, until this morning, when I read Alex Tabarrok’s post, at Marginal Revolution, where Tabarrok had this to say.

The irony is that the joke he intended to make is a lie but what he actually said may be the truth.  The disaster in Iraq was created by a bunch of highly educated intellectuals but the soldiers fighting in Iraq do have less education than the young men and women who have stayed home.  According to historian David Kennedy, quoted in the October issue of the Atlantic, 50 percent of 18-24 year olds in the general population have some college education compared to only 6.5 percent of the same age group in the U.S. military.  (Kennedy’s figures are contested by others.)

Tabarrok then ends his post with this comment.

American political correctness extends to more than women and minorities and as in those areas it prevents discussion of important but uncomfortable truths.

Tabarrok’s post is, at best, a left handed defense of Kerry, and his leaning on the ramparts of political correctness to support his contention that ”...important but uncomfortable truths.”, regarding the educational levels of men and women in the service, prevents this subject from being discusssed is simply specious.

The comments contributed to Tabarrok’s post dissect, fairly well, the fallacy of his assertions so I’ll not add anything further, except to say that relying on a piece of paper with fancy calligraphy inscribed upon it as the measure of individual’s intelligence is about as reliable as a psychic reading.

Posted by John Venlet on 11/03 at 07:03 AM
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Thursday, November 02, 2006

Ping, "False Authority Syndrome"

In a post, by Billy Beck, titled “False Authority Syndrome," we are pointed to this little TSA adventure published at davidgagne.net. You have to read it, to dis-believe it.

I’m wondering, if the TSAers involved in this ridiculous display are the ones who have accepted the $500.00 and $1,000.00 bribes to stay on the job?

Posted by John Venlet on 11/02 at 04:44 PM
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Anniversary of the Flight of Hughes Flying Boat, H-4, HK-1

On this date, in 1947, the largest airplane ever constructed flew for the first, and last, time.

Most individuals know it by the name of the “Spruce Goose," a name Hughes despised by the way, and today it rests at the Evergreen Aviation Museum in Oregon.

The name Hughes despised, Spruce Goose, was a misnomer applied to it by the press, natch, because the majority of the plane was constructed out of birch.

Someday I’ve gotta go see this aviation engineering achievement.

Posted by John Venlet on 11/02 at 02:32 PM
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