Archive for November, 2006

Dublin, Ireland Street Scene 2006I’m visiting Dublin in the emerald isle for the first time, realizing that this place was under British rule for 700 of the last 750 years. I can’t help but realize that colonial rule doesn’t end well. It isn’t good for the natives, and in the end it causes lots of problems for the colonial power. Northern Ireland is still a terrible sore spot for both countries.
The people of Ireland were poor and starving under British rule. In about sixty years of independance, they have made this a prosperous land. I expect that Ireland will be, over the next sixty years, a better trading partner with England than it ever was as a colony.

Only those few who got rich by the suffering of others made out well in the previous regime – at the cost of their souls.

Jean-Baptiste LamarckJean-Baptiste Lamarck proposed, way back in 1801, that the effect of the environment and an organism’s response to it was the mechanism for change over time and generations. His theory was disputed and derided by Georges Cuvier who could not admit to change in organisms – that they were integrated wholes incapable of change in form or function. Cuvier was a giant of scientific thought and prestigue in many other fields, so his influence was so great that even Lamarck’s patron, Buffton abandoned his support of Lamarck.

Poor Lamarck, who died in poverty and obsurity, is finally being vindicated by a branch of science called epigenetics. It turns out that many mechanisms of gene expression and phenotyping are heritable and reversable after all! These mechanisms operate without necesarily effecting the genome of the organism itself. Many of these mechanisms are related to the effect on the organism by its environment and the stresses it undergoes. (more…)

Recent reports of God’s love for gambling with cosmic rays and free radicals, along with her relentless smiting of inefficiency gives new evidence for evolution. Michael Archangel from the Seraphim Institute reports new research showing the completely random nature of cosmic ray DNA adjustment , and breakage of base pair bonds by free radical interaction. The direct result of these random events is the first driving force of the process called evolution – the random variation of DNA coding.

The second process, natural selection, is driven by God’s policy of smiting inefficiency. The smiting is effected largely through her agents – predators, starvation, parasites, changes in environment and competition. (more…)