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Contents contributed and discussions participated by Daryl Bambic

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Hominid Skull Spurs Radical Rewrite of Human Evolution - D-brief | DiscoverMagazine.com - 0 views

blogs.discovermagazine.com/...cal-rewrite-of-human-evolution skull fossil species anthro controversy
shared by Daryl Bambic on 20 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Daryl Bambic on 20 Oct 13
     
    Once again, another discovery challenges the existing scientific theory about the evolution of homo sapiens.
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A Viking Mystery | History & Archaeology | Smithsonian Magazine - 0 views

www.smithsonianmag.com/...A-Viking-Mystery.html viking civilization archaeology
shared by Daryl Bambic on 09 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Oxford
  • anuary 2008
  • 4,000-year-old religious complex—an earthwork enclosure, or henge, built by late Neolithic tribesmen, probably for a sun-worshiping cult.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • 400 feet in diameter
  • Britain’s prehistoric henges
  • garbage dump
  • uman bones
  • but now a mass grave as well.”
  • all of them victims of violence
  • 960 to 1020—the period in which the Anglo-Saxon monarchy peaked in power
  • riginally from Germany, Anglo-Saxons had invaded England almost six centuries earlier, after the Roman Empire had fallen into disarray.
  • “execution cemeteries”
  • n average, more fish and shellfish than did Anglo-Saxons.
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anthropologyatwic / The Nacirema - 0 views

anthropologyatwic.pbworks.com/...The%20Nacirema
shared by Daryl Bambic on 02 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Horace Miner
  • magical beliefs and practices of the Nacirema present such unusual aspects that it seems desirable to describe them as an example of the extremes to which human behavior can go
  • North American group living in the territory between the Canadian Cree, the Yaqui and Tarahumare of Mexico, and the Carib and Arawak of the Antille
  • ...38 more annotations...
  • highly developed market economy
  • devoted to economic pursuits
  • activity is the human body
  • human body is ugly and that its natural tendency is to debility and disease
  • one or more shrines devoted to this purpose
  • more powerful individuals in the society have several shrines in their houses and, in fact, the opulence of a house is often referred to in terms of the number of such ritual centers it possesses
  • ituals
  • re private
  • box or chest which is built into the wall
  • harms and magical potions without which no native believes he could live
  • ecured from a variety of specialized practitioners
  • medicine men
  • ubstantial gifts
  • write them down in an ancient and secret language
  • charm-box
  • mall fon
  • bows his head before the charm-box, mingles different sorts of holy water in the font, and proceeds with a brief rite of ablutio
  • holy-mouth-men.
  • pathological horror of and fascination with the mout
  • supernatural influence on all social relationships
  • oral and moral
  • For example, there is a ritual ablution of the mouth for children which is supposed to improve their moral fiber.
  • mouth-rite
  • small bundle of hog hairs into the mouth, along with certain magical powders, and then moving the bundle in a highly formalized series of gestures.[7]
  • holy-mouth-man once or twice a year
  • f sadism is involved
  • This part of the rite includes scraping and lacerating the surface of the face with a sharp instrument.
  • As part of this ceremony, women bake their heads in small ovens for about an hour
  • latipso
  • "that is where you go to die
  • Psychological shock results from the fact that body secrecy is suddenly lost upon entry into the latipso
  • aversion to the natural body and its functions.
  • fat people thin
  • thin people fat.
  • used to make women's breasts larger
  • inhuman hypermammary development are so idolized that they make a handsome living by simply going from village to village and permitting the natives to stare at them for a fee
  • Natural reproductive functions are similarly distorted. Intercourse is taboo as a topic and scheduled as an act. Efforts are made to avoid pregnancy by the use of magical materials or by limiting intercourse to certain phases of the moon.
  • magic-ridden people
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Intelligent design - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

en.wikipedia.org/...Intelligent_design intelligent_design
shared by Daryl Bambic on 26 Sep 13 - Cached
  • "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.
  • version of the theological argument from design for the existence of God
  • leading proponents
  • ...21 more annotations...
  • The leading proponents of this version of the argument are all associated with the Discovery Institute, a politically conservative think tank based in the United States, and believe the designer to be the Christian deity.
  • irreducible complexity
  • The scientific community therefore considers intelligent design a pseudoscience
  • ID proponents have sought to overturn the methodological naturalism inherent in modern science, proposing that it be replaced by "theistic realism" or "theistic science" in which ID presents a broadly theistic understanding of nature.[12]
  • a single system which is composed of several well-matched interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning".[40]
  • mousetrap
  • Removal of any one piece destroys the function of the mousetrap
  • natural selection could not create irreducibly complex systems, because the selectable function is present only when all parts are assembled
  • bacterial flagellum of E. coli,
  • Coyne responds that in light of the evidence, "either life resulted not from intelligent design, but from evolution; or the intelligent designer is a cosmic prankster who designed everything to make it look as though it had evolved"
  • problem of poor design in nature
  • "What designed the designer?"
  • Invoking an unexplained being to explain the origin of other beings (ourselves) is little more than question-begging.
  • For a theory to qualify as scientific,[n 21][106][n 22] it is expected to be:
  • Consistent
  • Useful
  • Empirically testable
  • Based on multiple observations (often in the form of controlled, repeated experiments)
  • Typical objections to defining intelligent design as science are that it lacks consistency,[107] violates the principle of parsimony,[n 23] is not scientifically useful,[n 24] is not falsifiable,[n 25] is not empirically testable,[n 26] and is not correctable, dynamic, provisional or progressive.[n 27][n 28][n 29]
  • Intelligent design proponents argue that naturalistic explanations fail to explain certain phenomena and that supernatural explanations provide a very simple and intuitive explanation for the origins of life and the universe
  • There is a gap in scientific knowledge. The gap is filled with acts of God (or intelligent designer) and therefore proves the existence of God (or intelligent designer).[124]
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Mike Morwood: Archaeologist whose 'hobbit' discovery sparked fresh debate on human evol... - 0 views

www.independent.co.uk/...n-human-evolution-8773287.html hobbit evolution
shared by Daryl Bambic on 24 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • far from being the linear narrative of successive waves of colonisation out of Africa, as once thought, the process was, in fact, one with numerous twists and turns involving many different species.
  • among the most outstanding discoveries in paleoanthropology in over half a century.
  • because the cave also unearthed sophisticated stone tools similar to others found around the world in Homo erectus sites
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Flores tools were tiny, the right size for people of only 3ft tall with a brain the size of a chimp or grapefruit
  • Remarkably, the skull was found in a layer of sediments dating back only 18,000 years, long after the Neanderthals had vanished from the face of the Earth, having lost the evolutionary battle to Homo sapiens, the sole human species on Earth by then. This had huge ramifications for the varying theories of human evolution.
  • it could have been a descendant of Homo erectus that arrived early on Flores, perhaps using boats, and which, becoming stranded, evolved its petite size as an adaptation to the limited food supply available.
  • They also proposed the unimaginable, that Homo floresiensis lived contemporaneously on Flores with Homo sapiens.
  • Detractors
  • isease of some sort that produced the specimen’s unusual features.
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Wegener and Continental Drift Theory - 0 views

www.scientus.org/Wegener-Continental-Drift.html Continentaldrift
shared by Daryl Bambic on 23 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • Survival of the fittest" gave an ethical dimension to the no-holds barred capitalism of the late nineteenth century.
  • ppropriated elements of evolution by natural selection to justify the ruthless business practices of his time
  • Darwin, was the ultimate insider
  • ...24 more annotations...
  • Erasmus, was an early student of evolution and his half-cousin, Francis Galton, was a noted statistician who was considered the father of eugenics.
  • o worries about money
  • connections in the scientific world
  • philosopher, Herbert Spencer.
  • famous biologist, Thomas Huxle
  • But fact and reason alone cannot explain the different reactions to new hypotheses and theories we see in the examples above.
  • faith that future scientists will address the shortcomings in the initial theories.
    • Daryl Bambic
      Daryl Bambic on 23 Sep 13
       
      When the facts don't neatly fit the theory, scientists have faith that time, discovery and the hard work of others will eventually prove the theory to be true.  Theories are not always neat equations where all variables are explained, accounted for and even understood. We see this with both Darwin and Wegener.
  • Being German wasn't Wegener's only problem; the arguments he used to support his hypothesis crossed into disciplines that were not his specialty.
  • Darwin's theory quickly came to dominate. Within 5 years, Oxford University was using a biology textbook that discussed biology in the context of evolution by natural selection.
  • At Oxford, evolution by natural selection had gone from hypothesis to a priori
    • Daryl Bambic
      Daryl Bambic on 23 Sep 13
       
      A priori means that something is accepted as true, knowledge that is known without having to investigate it.  We use reason and deduction to know that X is true, so it is a priori.
  • Wegener did not have an explanation for how continental drift could have occurred
  • little challenge until the 1960's.
  • he drew from the fields of geology, geography, biology and paleontolog
  • coal deposits, commonly associated with tropical climates, would be found near the North Pole and why the plains of Africa would show evidence of glaciation.
  • A radical new view on their discipline could be a threat to their own authority.
  • "If we are to believe in Wegener's hypothesis we must forget everything which has been learned in the past 70 years and start all over again."
  • The authorities in the various disciplines attacked him as an interloper that did not fully grasp their own subject.
  • The reactions by the leading authorities in the different disciplines was so strong and so negative that serious discussion of the concept stopped
  • The world had to wait until the 1960's for a wide discussion of the Continental Drift Theory to be restarted.
  • Alfred Wegener is one modern scientist amongst many that demonstrate that new ideas threaten the establishment, regardless of the century.
  • ontinental Drift Theory through the first few decades of the twentieth century.
  • continents had once been joined, and over time had drifted apart.
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Chimps Trade Meat for Sex -- And It Works - 3 views

news.nationalgeographic.com/...090407-chimps-meat-sex.html evolution sex chimps meat anthropology
shared by Daryl Bambic on 02 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • hare meat with females double their chances of having sex with those females
  • More surprising was that males shared meat with females that didn't have sexual swellings, perhaps in hopes of future success, the researchers say.
  • he fact that the chimp males also shared meat with females not in heat could also add new fire to the debate about chimpanzees' cognitive abilities
  • ...1 more annotation...
    • Daryl Bambic
      Daryl Bambic on 03 Sep 13
       
      What do you think the male chimp's behaviour might indicate?
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