Darwin in South Africa
Today is the 150th anniversary of the publishing of Charles Darwin’s seminal On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. (This mouthful was changed for the sixth edition of 1872 to the familiar The Origin of Species.) So this anniversary marks one of the most important events in human history: the day faith in the supernatural was no longer required to explain human origins.
Darwin visited South Africa in 1836. The HMS Beagle was on its homeward journey and although the crew were keen to get home, Captain Fitzroy needed to exercise one of his interests and visit the newly opened South African Observatory. Darwin went ashore to “geologise”. The geology of the region interested him greatly. But ever the naturalist, he discovered a bug in the Cape, and it is named after him – Kaapiad darwini.
In all he spent 18 days in the Cape. By all accounts he was sick and miserable, the cold and rainy Cape winter not helping matters. He recorded in his diary that it was a rather desolate country. (In a later book describing his travels, he stated that “there was no country like South Africa” with regard to the large animals that could be found in the interior.)
The world renowned British astronomer Jon Herschel was living at the Cape at this time, studying the Southern sky. Herschel was fascinated by the Cape’s unusual indigenous flora and started speculating on how species evolved. Darwin and Captain Fitzroy were invited by Herschel to dinner and although the details of the conversation are unknown, the 26 year-old Darwin was said to be very impressed by Herschel’s ideas.
The city of Cape Town have erected a series of commemorative plaques to mark the route Darwin took during his stay. Here are images of one of the plaques, taken in Sea Point, Cape Town.
Click to view larger image.
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The great climate change conspiracy revealed
George Monbiot, climate change activist and author of the best selling book, Heat, has revealed an alarming and damning email which lays bare the great conspiracy behind the global warming scam:
From: ernst.kattweizel@redcar.ac.uk
Sent: 29th October 2009
To: The Knights Carbonic
Gentlemen, the culmination of our great plan approaches fast. What the Master called “the ordering of men’s affairs by a transcendent world state, ordained by God and answerable to no man”, which we now know as Communist World Government, advances towards its climax at Copenhagen. For 185 years since the Master, known to the laity as Joseph Fourier, launched his scheme for world domination, the entire physical science community has been working towards this moment.
The early phases of the plan worked magnificently. First the Master’s initial thesis – that the release of infrared radiation is delayed by the atmosphere – had to be accepted by the scientific establishment. I will not bother you with details of the gold paid, the threats made and the blood spilt to achieve this end. But the result was the elimination of the naysayers and the disgrace or incarceration of the Master’s rivals. Within 35 years the 3rd Warden of the Grand Temple of the Knights Carbonic (our revered prophet John Tyndall) was able to “demonstrate” the Master’s thesis. Our control of physical science was by then so tight that no major objections were sustained.
More resistence was encountered (and swiftly despatched) when we sought to install the 6th Warden (Svante Arrhenius) first as professor of physics at Stockholm University, then as rector. From this position he was able to project the Master’s second grand law – that the infrared radiation trapped in a planet’s atmosphere increases in line with the quantity of carbon dioxide the atmosphere contains. He and his followers (led by the Junior Warden Max Planck) were then able to adapt the entire canon of physical and chemical science to sustain the second law.
Then began the most hazardous task of all: our attempt to control the instrumental record. Securing the consent of the scientific establishment was a simple matter. But thermometers had by then become widely available, and amateur meteorologists were making their own readings. We needed to show a steady rise as industrialisation proceeded, but some of these unfortunates had other ideas. The global co-option of police and coroners required unprecedented resources, but so far we have been able to cover our tracks.
The over-enthusiasm of certain of the Knights Carbonic in 1998 was most regrettable. The high reading in that year has proved impossibly costly to sustain. Those of our enemies who have yet to be silenced maintain that the lower temperatures after that date provide evidence of global cooling, even though we have ensured that eight of the ten warmest years since 1850 have occurred since 2001(10). From now on we will engineer a smoother progression.
Our co-option of the physical world has been just as successful. The thinning of the Arctic ice cap was a masterstroke. The ring of secret nuclear power stations around the Arctic Circle, attached to giant immersion heaters, remains undetected, as do the space-based lasers dissolving the world’s glaciers.
Altering the migratory and reproductive patterns of the world’s wildlife has proved more challenging. Though we have now asserted control over the world’s biologists, there is no accounting for the unauthorised observations of farmers, gardeners, bird-watchers and other troublemakers. We have therefore been forced to drive migrating birds, fish and insects into higher latitudes, and to release several million tonnes of plant pheromones every year to accelerate flowering and fruiting. None of this is cheap, and ever more public money, secretly diverted from national accounts by compliant governments, is required to sustain it.
The co-operation of these governments requires unflagging effort. The capture of George W. Bush, a late convert to the cause of Communist World Government, was made possible only by the threatened release of footage filmed by a knight at Yale, showing the future president engaged in coitus with a Ford Mustang. Most ostensibly-capitalist governments remain apprised of where their real interests lie, though I note with disappointment that we have so far failed to eliminate Vaclav Klaus. Through the offices of compliant states, the Master’s third grand law has been accepted: world government will be established under the guise of controlling manmade emissions of greenhouse gases.
Keeping the scientific community in line remains a challenge. The national academies are becoming ever more querulous and greedy, and require higher pay-offs each year. The inexplicable events of the past month, in which the windows of all the leading scientific institutions were broken and a horse’s head turned up in James Hansen’s bed, appear to have staved off the immediate crisis, but for how much longer can we maintain the consensus?
Knights Carbonic, now that the hour of our triumph is at hand, I urge you all to redouble your efforts. In the name of the Master, go forth and terrify.
Professor Ernst Kattweizel, University of Redcar. 21st Grand Warden of the Temple of the Knights Carbonic.
He-he.
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Aardonyx celestae pictures
Shirona Patel of the Bernard Price Institute has kindly sent me some pictures of Aardonyx celestae to share with you.
The specimen, one of three found on the site, is impressively large at seven metres long, the length of a African elephant bull. Click though for the full-size images.
Aardonyx skeleton
Aardonyx skull
Aardonyx premaxilla
Aardonyx claw
Aardonyx celestae: new South African fossil treasure
South Africa is awash in palaeontological riches, with fossils of the earliest vertebrates to early and late hominids. It was announced today that a new species of dinosaur is the latest addition to this treasure.
Dr Adam Yates announces Aardonyx celestae
The new species, a vegetarian dinosaur named Aardonyx celestae, from the early Jurassic period (approximately 195 million years old and seven metres long), was described by Dr Adam Yates, the primary investigator and a palaeontologist from the Bernard Price Institute for Paleontological Research, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. The genus name (Aardonyx) means “Earth Claw”, (Aard – Afrikaans for Earth) and (Onyx – Greek for claw) an appropriate name, given that the large, earth-encrusted foot claws were some of the first bones to be discovered in the town of Senekal, near Bethlehem in the Northern Free State, in South Africa. The species name (celestae) is given to acknowledge the work of Celeste Yates who prepared much of the fossil.
“This species is important as the Aardonyx was an animal close to the common ancestor of the gigantic sauropod dinosaurs,” explains Yates. “Sauropods, known popularly as “brontosaurs”, were the largest backboned animals to walk on land with their long necks, tree-trunk legs and whip-like tails. Some were even longer and exceeded 100 feet (about 30 metres) in length. Aardonyx gives us a glimpse into what the first steps towards becoming a sauropod involved.”
The discovery was made by a Wits postgraduate palaeontology student, Mr Marc Blackbeard, who began excavating two sites in the Northern Free State, five years ago, under the leadership of Yates. “We knew that there was likely to be some fossils in these ‘bone beds’ discovered by James Kitching about 20 years ago, but we did not expect to find anything of this magnitude,” says Yates.
Yates elaborates on the anatomy of Aardonyx celestae: “The dinosaur had a wide-gaping mouth, bracing joints in the back vertebrae that made the backbone rigid enough to support great weight and a forearm and hand capable of grasping and supporting weight. Growth rings in the rib and shoulder blade sections show that Aardonyx was not full grown – it was probably less than 10 years old when it died near a river or stream.”
He adds: “Aardonyx probably walked on its hind legs but could drop onto all fours as well. It had flattened feet with large claws that supported body weight on the inside of the foot and a robust thigh bone (femur) for supporting weight.”
Dr Chinsamy-Turan a Wits graduate and a Vertebrate Paleohistologist at UCT concurs: “My analysis of the bone microstructure in the ribs and shoulder blades of Aardonyx suggests that while it had experienced at least seven spurts or cycles of growth, it was not a fully grown animal.”
Dr Adam Yates lies down next to newly exposed dino-femur
According to Dr Matthew Bonnan, a Vertebrate Paleobiologist, Department of Biological Sciences and an author of the paper, they already knew that the earliest sauropods and near-sauropods would be bipeds. “What Aardonyx shows us, however, is that walking quadrupedally and bearing weight on the inside of the foot is a trend that started very early in these dinosaurs, much earlier than previously hypothesised. The bones of the forearm are shaped like those of sauropods – this means that the forearm and hand could bear weight and that Aardonyx could drop onto all-fours as well as walk bipedally.”
Tuesday’s Tune: The Morning I Get To Hell
The Duke & The King is a new band featuring Simone Felice and Robert “Chicken” Burke. Felice, a former New York subway busker, has wowed English critics and fans alike on their first ever tour. Neil McCormack of the London Telegraph called Felice “the greatest singer-songwriter you’ve never heard,” and
“I went to a gig last week as good as any I have ever seen, by a relatively unknown singer & songwriter (and performer) working at the very highest level of his art…It’s a kind of cracked country soul thing, with a dash of psychedelia, and at the heart of it are Simone’s songs which are, honestly, the best I have heard in a while, touching the hem of Dylan by way of Gordon Lightfoot…There is a boldness to Simone’s writing, the fierceness and fearlessness of complete honesty that pushes them into places that simply take the breath away…When he tells stories from his own life he goes to places few artists ever touch…These songs are good enough to be sung by the whole world, if only people got to hear them.”
All I can say is that Felice’s song writing is extraordinary and the début album, Nothing Gold Can Stay competes with anything released this year.
(Thanks Bruce)
A climate-denying lie in the making
This is the original of the letter I wrote to Business Day today.
Sir
Robert Gentle, that busy little cog in the Climate Change Denial machinery, has repeated a downright lie, fabricated within the last months (Beware global cooling, Letters, November 9). He has resorted to quote-mining a talk by Prof Mojib Latif, warning of the very distortions Gentle is now peddling.
In his talk in September 2009, Prof Latif warns that natural variations in the long term warming might be misinterpreted by the media out of ignorance – or malice. What Latif actually said was: “..we all believe this long-term warming trend is anthropogenic in nature, is man made. … [I]t may well happen that you enter a decade, or maybe even two, when the temperature cools, relative to the present”. He then goes on to warn about this natural variation being misinterpreted by the climate-change sceptics. To emphasise his position he says, “I am definitely not one of the sceptics. And if my name was not Mojib Latif, my name would be Global Warming”.
No sooner were his words cold than one Lorne Gunter, a US columnist, did exactly that and completely misrepresented Latif’s message, saying that instead of global warming Latif was predicting global cooling. Within minutes this was picked up by Fox News and the lie was spread to the rest of the climate-deniers including, it would seem, Robert Gentle. The interesting thing is that the creation of this lie is well documented by environmentalist, Peter Sinclair. Have a look at his short video Birth of a Climate Crock (Google it). It lays bare the dishonesty of the climate deniers.
Sinclair has this to say: “It is a truism of human nature that honesty, integrity and openness are seen by evil and greedy men as weakness, something to be exploited and used. The only remedy is to keep shining the light and keep telling the truth.”
Here is the video:
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Mourning a chimpanzee
Can you look at this picture and not get a lump in your throat? You can just feel the grief in the line of chimpanzees sombrely watching the body of their beloved friend being wheeled away.
Dorothy died last year – among her friends after a lifetime of abuse and imprisonment. Her death caused huge sadness among her extended “family”, both human and chimp. Her story makes one wonder what she must have thought of her human cousins; capable of great cruelty yet also of caring and kindness.
Looking at this picture, are those mourning chimps merely objects of amusement? Are they simply handy laboratory animals? Is there really no moral question on killing these creatures other than the destruction of someone’s property?
I think not. I think it’s high time the rest of the world follows Spain’s lead and extend real rights to our closest cousins.
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Einstein: religion is “childish superstition”
Few other historic figures have had their religious beliefs as thoroughly questioned as that of Albert Einstein. I suppose the problem is that he often used the word “God” in his conversations and writings. Of course, atheists would like to claim him as one but he consistently rebuffed this claim since he considered himself an agnostic. He did though reject the notion of a personal, interventionist god. So at most he was a deist agnostic. But even then, he emphatically pronounced that the god he talked of was “Spinoza’s God“, which broadly translates to god = nature.
The religious claims on Einstein is however a curious phenomenon. Why is it that the religious always seems to want the authority of scientists to effectively disprove science? People who believe in an entirely invisible realm without one iota of evidence ever have being produced – a concept in complete antipathy to science – somehow need a scientist to validate their fantasies. And the more famous the scientist, the better. Hence the continuous claims on Einstein as a believer in “god”.
A year before his death in 1955, Albert Einstein wrote a letter to philosopher Erik Gutkind after reading his book, ‘Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt’. If anyone is still undecided whether Einstein believed in a god, I would suggest this passage from the letter will clear up the matter:
The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still purely primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. … For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstition. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong … have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything “chosen” about them.
Until his dying day, Einstein was in awe of nature, the universe. And like all people who know so much about it, he understood how little we know. This was his mystery, his “god”. As Walter Isaacson says in his book Einstein: His Life and Universe,
For some people, miracles serve as evidence of God’s existence. For Einstein it was the absence of miracles that reflected divine providence. The fact that the world was comprehensible, that it followed laws, was worthy of awe.
Homoeopathy explained
Perhaps I was mistaken. Everything I had read and heard of homoeopathy led me to believe it was just a pile of rotten excrement passing itself off as a “science”. I’ve even blogged about it in disparaging tones (here, here, here and here).
But I’ve had the scales pulled from my eyes. The truth of the matter has finally been revealed. Dr Charlene Werner has skillfully pulled all the strands of modern physics together, the bits that us mere mortals cannot hope to fully understand (like General Relativity and String Theory) and shown how this advanced physics underpins the great science of homoeopathy. It’s also fascinating to hear that there’s so little mass in the universe that one can, for all practical homoeopathic purposes, simply ignore the M in E = MC2. One lives and learns.
What’s more, did you know that 70% of how you physically function is through “the vision system”? It must be true. Dr Werner has a whole website dedicated to this.
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Tuesday’s Tune: Berkeley Girl
Paul Simon’s “travelling companion” is no longer nine years old. He’s now 36, and has just released his eponymous début solo album, Harper Simon. And it’s very enjoyable.
Simon – whose mother is Paul’s first wife, Peggy Harper – will of course have to live in the shadow of his musical giant of a father. Yet he seems to have emerged as a talented poetic songsmith in his own right. His songs have an authentic, yet somewhat respectful retro sound. This is due in no small measure to the amazing team (dubbed the “Nashville A Team”) he assembled to record this album in Nashville, Los Angeles and New York. It includes legendary producer Bob Johnston and musicians from every era since the 1950’s. He was also joined by his friend Sean Lennon and of course his Dad.
Some of his songs, such as the exquisite Wishes and Stars, display a style surely learnt at his father’s knee. The song featured here, the romantic Berkeley Girl is far more Dylan than Simon (Paul).
(Thanks Phlatt)
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