Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 110

February 6, 2022

Washington, DC Mayor’s Office: Let Darwinism take care of the unvaccinated

Darwinism? Just when we thought we were veering off-topic, our issues all collide:

Elliot Tommingo, director of the Washington, DC Mayor’s Office of Veterans Affairs, said it is a “necessary evil” to allow ‘Darwinism to kill off” unvaccinated Americans, blaming them for the city’s coercive mandates, deeming them “foolish,” and accusing them of eating horse dewormer and “their own piss.”

Breitbart News on Thursday obtained screenshots from one of Tommingo’s conversations on a Facebook post… Further, last week, [Mayor Muriel Bowser decided to extend the city’s mask mandate — which applies to vaccinated individuals as well — another month.

Hannah Bleau, “Official in D.C. Mayor’s Office: It’s a ‘Necessary Evil’ to Allow ‘Darwinism to Kill off’ the ‘Foolish’ Unvaccinated” at Breitbart News (February 4, 2022)

Freedom Convoy to Washington, DC: Come in, Washington: You need truckers. The people will follow the trucks. Just watch. Stay calm, stay peaceful and polite, but honk, honk, honk. Today’s progressive politicians do not appear to understand anything else. And stock up on flags.

You may also wish to read: Let us listen to Dr. Robert Malone, dissenting expert, on the COVID-19 crisis

and, for what’s happening in suddenly famous Canada:

What I saw at the Freedom Convoy in downtown Victoria It was all friendly; people were having a good time. There was no violence; I heard no racial epithets and saw no racial insignia. So if media tell you that it is really about white nationalism, etc., remember that the legacy Canadian media are in fact supported to stay in business by the federal government. Because few depend on them for news any more.

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Published on February 06, 2022 07:35

February 5, 2022

Let us listen to Dr Robert Malone, dissenting expert, on the COVID-19 crisis

HT LCD, here is a sobering, 3-hour video on the Covid-10 crisis, by a dissenting expert:

Food for thought. END

PS, I am sufficiently concerned to cross post here.

PPS: The Senator Johnson panel is here, discussion begins at approximately 40 minutes: refuses to embed. Here are excerpts at YouTube:

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Published on February 05, 2022 23:06

What I saw at the Freedom Convoy in downtown Victoria – various updates

Yesterday, I (O’Leary for News) wrote about the way, when elites go progressive, anarchy starts to come from the top more than the bottom.

True, rioters are not usually elite unless they are college students or teachers. But it takes an elite to tell the police to just stand down. The elite can much more easily protect themselves from the risks of violence than the middle class or working class can. So Wokism is good strategy for arbitrary rule. So are useless anti-COVID measures that break down the society that is forced to obey them.

Such elites view with horror what has suddenly started happening across Canada: Thousands of peaceful working class people (mostly not truckers, actually), waving flags and honking their horns (or just standing on the sidewalk waving flags), are demanding an end to the crackpot science and authoritarianism behind the COVID mandates and lockdowns. It is abundantly evident to everyone that they do nothing but rip the fabric of society. Elites, of course, often ignore the restrictions themselves while inflicting them on those below. Or else they make a nauseating religion out of visibly following them…

Either way, they are advertising their uselessness to the world and, specifically, to Canada.

The almost entirely violence-free protest continues in Ottawa and it has spread to a number of major cities like Toronto and Vancouver.

And to smaller centres like the Okanagan Valley (south central B.C.):

Counterprotests are comparatively few. Elon Musk pointed out, tellingly, that if the government’s policies were popular, there would be large counterprotests. There aren’t. Most are small, mean, and spiteful by comparison, as is the FluTruckstan Twitter thread, accusing the truckers of racism, etc.

Now about Victoria this afternoon. Victoria is the capital city of the Canadian province of British Columbia. It is much smaller than Vancouver and situated on Vancouver Island, off the west coast of North America.

On a hunch I decided to go downtown to the Legislature to see if there was any action there.

Well, I never got anywhere near the Legislature.

As soon as I got off the bus about a kilometre away from the legislature, I heard the honking. Hundred and hundreds of cars and trucks, draped in Canadian flags and sometimes the British Columbia flag, were rolling down Douglas Street. There were signs in plenty, demanding an end to the mandates and lockdowns.

I walked a long way, surveying the seemingly endless parade of vehicles and realized that I was already seeing what I came for. Yes, the protest had indeed hit Victoria.

There was very little counter protest.

It was all friendly; people were having a good time. There was no violence; I heard no racial epithets and saw no racial insignia.

So if media tell you that it is really about white nationalism, etc., remember that the legacy Canadian media are in fact supported to stay in business by the federal government. Because few depend on them for news any more.

You will get from them the story governments want to hear. Governments are frightened and want to hear about violence and racism to justify suppression of the popular “quiet revolution.”

Independent media are essential for getting a handle on this story. Able commenter Fasteddious put it rather well here:

Watching this unfold, I have been aghast at the mainstream media twisted coverage of this convoy. They misrepresent reality, blow up minor events, ignore the truckers themselves, and parrot each others’ talking points, totally missing the larger story about widespread discontent across the nation. Their hypocrisy is so obvious when comparing their handling of this convoy, to their responses to BLM, Antifa, or Native blockades, protests and mobs, that I have to wonder how they can look at themselves in the mirror without shame.

The Prime Minister’s responses have been even worse: repeating media lies, insulting a broad swath of citizens (not the first time), ignoring evidence of the changing COVID situation, refusing even to talk with anyone from the convoy, and spouting his over-worn arrogance and ignorance. He needs a good dose of humility and repentance! I know people who voted for him and his party; they have drunk the Kool-Aid of the progressive woke narrative, and are quite happy in their own insulated silos.

Fasteddious, these people are so insulated from reality and common sense that even the fact that Mr. Max Vaxxed himself, PM Justin Trudeau, is currently battling COVID-19 does not prompt any questions from them. If the vaccines are that hit and miss, a policy demanding that everyone get them is untenable, especially as severe side-effects are not as rare as some would have us believe.

But many lesser mortals seem to be reassessing their loyalties:

There was a touching moment when two older women, waving a support sign on the sidewalk, saw the little Canadian flag tucked into my jacket clasp and asked, “Are you afraid of hugs?” I said no. So we hugged and I said “It’s over. It is really just so over. Only the government does not seem to realize that.”

The lies are not working. At least four provinces are announcing that they are going to start lifting the more useless restrictions.

By the way, San Francisco-based GoFundMe, which seized $10 million raised for the support of the Convoys on a flimsy pretext, is not going to be allowed to give it to charities it approves of, as it was going to do:

The GoFundMe fundraising platform said Feb. 5 it will automatically refund donations made to a trucker convoy in Canada protesting COVID-19 vaccine mandates after backlash.

GoFundMe said Friday it was preventing the funds from going to organizers of the Freedom Convoy and would instead send the money to “established charities verified by GoFundMe.”

The justification for the unusual move? “We now have evidence from law enforcement that the previously peaceful demonstration has become an occupation, with police reports of violence and other unlawful activity,” GoFundMe said.

The website didn’t provide any evidence of the alleged violence or unlawful activity.

Jon Carpay, president of Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedom, a legal group representing the convoy organizers, told The Epoch Times that the fundraising company “has no credibility” without making the evidence public.

Zachary Stieber, “GoFundMe Says All Donations to Trucker Convoy Will Be Automatically Refunded; Florida to Investigate” at Epoch Times (February 5, 2022)

The Convoy is now raising funds at GiveSendGo. So far, the truckers have raised $2.5 million there in only a couple days, much faster than at GoFundMe (probably because many people were dismayed by GoFundMe’s actions).

Update: The GoFundMe attempted cash grab has only strengthened the truckers: They didn’t need that much money in one place and some government or private litigant was bound to try to grab it. Now that it must properly be returned to the donors, they are sending it to safer distribution methods. In any event, as Cory Morgan writes,

People are dedicated to supporting the convoy and for each fundraising initiative that gets shut down, more will surface. Authorities will be wasting their time playing whack-a-mole chasing down the new fundraising sources. People will bring cash directly to the protests if they have to.

Convoy protests are happening across the country. Many people getting refunds from GoFundMe will be dedicating that to local actions now. The central protests never really needed such a massive fund in the first place. Spreading support across the country will actually make them more effective, and much more difficult to block. Epoch Times

Canada to Government: Come in, Government. You work for us, not the other way around.

Somebody may have also pointed out to the GoFundMe honchoes that it would be, as commenter Polistra noted, grand larceny.

Let’s say Jane gives John a warm winter coat to give to Aunt Marge but John decides to give it to the Women’s Shelter instead. The fact that John did not benefit directly from his decision does not make it any less wrong. It was not his coat to dispose of. If he feels that the Women’s Shelter should have winter coats, let him buy them with his own money.

On the way back up Douglas Street, I was handed a pamphlet by a group of Communists, advising me that the convoy is “useful for the ruling class.”

Well, if it is, the ruling class doesn’t seem to know that. Trudeau is reportedly freaked out by what is happening, as well he should be. But Lord knows, he and his brought it on themselves.

The worry now is that they will invent some pretext for sending in the troops — and the troops are reportedly not happy about that idea.

While nearing the bus stop on my way home, I encountered two other older ladies, heavily masked out on the street, peeking out at the Convoy as if it had never occurred to them in years that there is a world outside government-ordered lockdowns. Yes there is, old girls. Keep watching this space.

How does all this relate to ID? One thing that is going to take a beating in years to come is “Trust the science.” Science has been misused and abused very badly in handling COVID and trust, once lost, takes time to regain. It will be much less useful a weapon to brandish, as in “I represent science!”

Update: The driver who mowed down demonstrators in a jeep in Winnipeg and fled has been arrested by the Mounties.

Video of the horrific incident has since circulated on social media, showing a group of protesters as several are struck by the Jeep, with many chasing the vehicle as it sped from the scene.

A 42-year-old male from Headingly, Manitoba, faces charges of four counts of assault with weapon, two counts of dangerous operation of a conveyance causing bodily harm, one count of dangerous operation of a conveyance, two counts of failure to stop after accident, and two counts of failure to stop at the scene of an accident. – Daily Mail

The police say that his motive was not pro-lockdown but we’ll let the courts decide that.

Stay tuned. Better yet, go home and do — peacefully — what the Canadians are doing. Most of us are not truckers and large numbers of demonstrators are vaxxed. But we are all sick, as noted earlier, of crackpot authoritarianism parading as science.

And when Canadians start to rebel (politely), you know that the contemptuous elite have sure tripped one big switch.

You may also wish to read: A characteristic of our times: Anarchy from above: Canadian truckers edition

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Published on February 05, 2022 19:33

What I saw at the Freedom Convoy in downtown Victoria

Yesterday, I (O’Leary for News) wrote about the way, when elites go progressive, anarchy starts to come from the top more than the bottom.

Either way, they are advertising their uselessness to the world and, specifically, to Canada.

The almost entirely violence-free protest continues in Ottawa and it has spread to a number of major cities like Toronto and Vancouver.

And to smaller centres like the Okanagan Valley (south central B.C.):

On a hunch I decided to go downtown to the Legislature to see if there was any action there.

Well, I never got anywhere near the Legislature.

I walked a long way, surveying the seemingly endless parade of vehicles and realized that I was already seeing what I came for. Yes, the protest had indeed hit Victoria.

There was very little counter protest.

It was all friendly; people were having a good time. There was no violence; I heard no racial epithets and saw no racial insignia.

You will get from them the story governments want to hear. Governments are frightened and want to hear about violence and racism to justify suppression of the popular “quiet revolution.”

Independent media are essential for getting a handle on this story. Able commenter Fasteddious put it rather well here:

Watching this unfold, I have been aghast at the mainstream media twisted coverage of this convoy. They misrepresent reality, blow up minor events, ignore the truckers themselves, and parrot each others’ talking points, totally missing the larger story about widespread discontent across the nation. Their hypocrisy is so obvious when comparing their handling of this convoy, to their responses to BLM, Antifa, or Native blockades, protests and mobs, that I have to wonder how they can look at themselves in the mirror without shame.

The Prime Minister’s responses have been even worse: repeating media lies, insulting a broad swath of citizens (not the first time), ignoring evidence of the changing COVID situation, refusing even to talk with anyone from the convoy, and spouting his over-worn arrogance and ignorance. He needs a good dose of humility and repentance! I know people who voted for him and his party; they have drunk the Kool-Aid of the progressive woke narrative, and are quite happy in their own insulated silos.

But many lesser mortals seem to be reassessing their loyalties:

The lies are not working. At least four provinces are announcing that they are going to start lifting the more useless restrictions.

The GoFundMe fundraising platform said Feb. 5 it will automatically refund donations made to a trucker convoy in Canada protesting COVID-19 vaccine mandates after backlash.

GoFundMe said Friday it was preventing the funds from going to organizers of the Freedom Convoy and would instead send the money to “established charities verified by GoFundMe.”

The justification for the unusual move? “We now have evidence from law enforcement that the previously peaceful demonstration has become an occupation, with police reports of violence and other unlawful activity,” GoFundMe said.

The website didn’t provide any evidence of the alleged violence or unlawful activity.

Jon Carpay, president of Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedom, a legal group representing the convoy organizers, told The Epoch Times that the fundraising company “has no credibility” without making the evidence public.

Zachary Stieber, “GoFundMe Says All Donations to Trucker Convoy Will Be Automatically Refunded; Florida to Investigate” at Epoch Times (February 5, 2022)

The Convoy is now raising funds at GiveSendGo.

Somebody may have also pointed out to the GoFundMe honchoes that it would be, as commenter Polistra noted, grand larceny.

On the way back up Douglas Street, I was handed a pamphlet by a group of Communists, advising me that the convoy is “useful for the ruling class.”

Well, if it is, the ruling class doesn’t seem to know that. Trudeau is reportedly freaked out by what is happening, as well he should be. But Lord knows, he and his brought it on themselves.

The worry now is that they will invent some pretext for sending in the troops — and the troops are reportedly not happy about that idea.

Update: The driver who mowed down demonstrators in a jeep in Winnipeg and fled has been arrested by the Mounties. The police say that his motive was not pro-lockdown but we’ll let the courts decide that.

And when Canadians start to rebel (politely), you know that the contemptuous elite have sure tripped one big switch.

You may also wish to read: A characteristic of our times: Anarchy from above: Canadian truckers edition

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Published on February 05, 2022 19:33

February 4, 2022

L&FP, 50: The error(s) of telling ‘truth’ by the clock

The pendulum principle (HT: Wikipedia)

In a given time and culture, characteristic fashionable fallacies too often gain persuasive power by mutual reinforcement, and/or by swinging from one extreme to another; bypassing the point of responsible balance. So, too, we end up in a thorny thicket of errors, a hard-to-escape problematique.

And yes, that often includes the [neo-]marxist version of the Hegelian triad, thesis, antithesis, synthesis, repeat.

Where, too, babylonian captivity to the spirit of the age or the community . . . nowadays, strongly shaped by relativism . . . is of the very essence of ill advised worldly, destructive false “conventional wisdom.”

We must ask, then, what are the crooked yardsticks that we have substituted for what is truly straight, accurate, upright?

(Have we reached the absurdity where we challenge even naturally upright and straight plumb-line, self-evident truths that would expose our need to correct systematically warped thinking? Are we trapped by different, imposed brands of crookedness . . . as, each particular form of crookedness is distinct from others. In turn, that may trap us in polarisation of opposed errors, distracting us from that point of equilibrium and uprightness established by plumb-lines.)

Let’s put a select few candidates on the table:

Chronological snobbery, whereby we trap ourselves in intellectual fads (and ideological agendas) of our times by automatically disregarding lessons of the past as “outdated”Novelty-ism, whereby the ad-man’s “new and improved” or “fashionable trends” trap us in a thirst for the latest intellectual fashionsSome few, of course, may instead so mistrust the new that they are blindly traditionalist (especially, when they lack the prosperity to risk the novel)Imagining that History is bunk or victory propaganda, so disregarding its hard-bought, sound lessons — dooming ourselves to pay in the same coin of blood and tears over and over again Relativism and subjectivism, which so undermine the significance of warrant based on due use of right reason as a corrective to our error-proneness, that we lose sight of the balance and reliability of resulting objective truthRadical empiricism, by which we equate objectivity with materiality, tangibility and concreteness, often seen as “the real world,” thereby swallowing evolutionary materialism and/or its fellow travellers and losing sight of key abstract entities, relationships and states of affairs (including mathematics, morality, mind, truth and more)Blind, [neo-]marxist Progressivism, whereby the socio-cultural version of the Hegelian Dialectic, often in the guise of so-called critical theories [i.e. culture-form marxism], trap us into the dismissal of the past as an oppressive discredited agenda; so that some are forever trapped in thesis, antithesis, synthesis and so the next round of items on an increasingly radical, often anticivilisational agendaScientism, whereby the “progress” of science and agendas of those flying that flag are seen as monopolising or at least utterly dominating knowledge And, far more.

Art Lindsley, of the C S Lewis Institute, writes — yes, in the context of Lewis’ return to Christian faith (from the atheism of his youth):

Lewis’s question was: How could this an-
cient religion be relevant to my present setting? Lewis
defines this chronological snobbery as “the uncriti-
cal acceptance of the intellectual climate of our own
age and the assumption that whatever has gone out
of date is on that count discredited.” Lewis eventually
came to understand the need to ask further questions
such as: Why did this idea go out of date? Was it ever
refuted? If so, by whom, where, and how conclusively?
In other words, you need to determine if an old idea
is false before you reject it; we would not want to say
that everything believed in an ancient culture was
false. Which things are false—and why—and which
things remain true?
Lewis came to the further conclusion that our own
age was merely a period which, like past periods, has
its own characteristic illusions. We can unthinkingly
take for granted certain cultural assumptions, unless
they are questioned. The classic illustration is the frog
in the kettle. If you put a frog in a kettle of water and
slowly turn up the heat, the frog adjusts to the rising
temperature and therefore does not jump out—until
it is too late. In a similar way, we can be affected by
our cultural environment, yet be unaware of the sig-
nificant impact being made on us.

Nor, is this a modern phenomenon. We find the attitude of Athenians, c 50 AD, described thusly by their fellow Greek, Luke:

All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas. [Ac 17:21, NIV 2011.]

Of course, the trick to that was, they were interested only in the latest ideas that tickled their itching ears and reinforced their preferences and underlying system. Something that was truly, plumb-line, back to core but neglected truths radical, they were on the whole not interested in and would shortly laugh out of court.

But it remains the case that the apostle Paul owned the future by, in his opening words, exposing the fatal foundational crack shown by their maintaining the now famous altar to the unknown god. Yes, they had a monument to their ignorance on the most significant, central question of all, root of reality and source of moral government. (Today, many only pretend to knowledge that there is no such root; such have not really progressed.)

The issue is to restore the plumb-line, correcting crooked yardsticks. Or, changing the metaphor through Jesus of Nazareth’s answer to the dilemmas lurking in Plato’s parable of the cave, in the all-time greatest sermon, given on a Mountainside in Galilee:

Matt 7:22 “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy,[c] your whole body will be full of light. 23 But if your eyes are unhealthy,[d] your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

In plumb-line terms:

Or, in Overton Window, policy and ideological agenda terms:

Of course, today, an obvious case in point is the dangerously lawless mismanagement of the global pandemic, complete with officialdom dressed up in the lab coat of “Science.” Too often, not merely erroneously so called but sometimes there may have been fraud connected to unduly marginalising unfashionable [and less profitable] alternatives. Further, some very disturbing precedents have been set for censorship, surveillance and control of the population. Lawless ideological oligarchy is manifestly on the march.

Pardon a vid as linked HT Jerry:

An example

But, such is only a study on the point, our focal issue is the error of trying to tell truth by the clock. In C S Lewis’ words, one tells time by the clock, not truth. END

PS: Lewis also said, that old books are a corrective to the errors of our time, as we can readily identify such errors as they made in their day, and by their insights, we can often begin to sense where we have become caught up in the spirit of our own age. Thus, we see the need to seek and heed, hard-bought lessons of history. He suggested that were they accessible, books of the future would be equally corrective. He, of course, thought that such were not available. However, there are such things as men who are ahead of their time and if we can find and listen to such, as with Jesus c 30 AD and Paul c 50 AD, that may give a glimpse of those future books. I would argue that Dallas Willard’s closing work on the disappearance/ marginalisation of moral knowledge is also of that character. Let us listen to, rather than stand aside and watch as some set out to kill our prophets.

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Published on February 04, 2022 22:21

At Mind Matters News: Source of most animal intelligence still a mystery

Eric Cassell, author of Animal Algorithms: Evolution and the Mysterious Origin of Ingenious Instincts (2021), takes questions. Questions range from “Do animals have free will?” through “How do migratory animals adapt to magnetic poll reversals” which may come every 1000 years or so?:

Casey Luskin: We have a question from Geoff Simmons, who is a Discovery Institute, fellow. And this is a question that… I’ve wondered about for many years, Eric, because of my interest in paleomagnetism, and the earth’s magnetic field, and also plate tectonics.

And the question is: Magnetic poles can shift. We can suddenly have north become south and south become north. The continents can drift. So can these animal behaviors accommodate changes in earth’s magnetic field or its geography in order to allow animals to continue to migrate?

A geomagnetic reversal, when the earth’s magnetic field flips, is thought to occur potentially in less than 1,000 years. It might even be 500 year or less. We don’t know for sure. But it could be a very short period of time. So can Darwinian evolution keep up with those kinds of shifts, so that you don’t have geese migrating north for the winter instead of south and then freezing to death? Or is it possible that animals are actually pre-programmed to be able to adapt quickly to these magnetic reversals, which have happened many times throughout earth’s history? (07:09)

Eric Cassell: Yeah, that’s one of the things that I’ve thought about a lot, trying to figure out how animals adapt to that. Like you say, these pole reversals happen in a relatively short period of time. Typical Darwinian evolution is too slow to adapt that quickly to something like that, you would think. So maybe there’s some other mechanism that allows an adaption. We really don’t know, but it’s a great question. (08:36)

Note: From a report on a recent study: The team analyzed data from nearly 18,000 reed warblers to investigate whether the birds used the Earth’s magnetic field when finding their breeding site. Reed warblers are tiny songbirds that fly across the Sahara Desert each year to spend the summer in Europe.

They found that, as the magnetic field of Earth moved slightly, the sites to which birds returned moved with it, suggesting that birds homed to a moving magnetic target. Birds appeared to use magnetic information as a ‘stop sign’, with magnetic inclination in particular telling birds that they had arrived at their breeding location

University of Oldenburg, “MAGNETIC NAVIGATION: SONGBIRDS USE THE EARTH’S MAGNETIC FIELD AS A STOP SIGN DURING MIGRATION” AT PHYS.ORG (JANUARY 28, 2022) THE PAPER REQUIRES A SUBSCRIPTION.

Casey Luskin: It is a really great question. I think that Darwinian evolution moves very slowly. And it’s difficult to imagine it being able to keep up because, obviously, if you get the migration wrong, you might not be able to survive. If you’re migrating north for the winter, you’re going to freeze to death. Or if you can’t find that island out in the ocean where you want to go back and, and spawn, and reproduce, you’re not going to be able to leave offspring. So these are, these are pretty important things. (09:27)

News, “Source of most animal intelligence still a mystery” at Mind Matters News (February 4, 2022)

Takehome: If life forms are born or hatched knowing this stuff, it isn’t learned. But if it’s in the genes, where is it?

Here are the earlier portions of the episode, with transcript and notes.

Part I: Neuroscience mystery: How do tiny brains enable complex behavior? Eric Cassell notes that insects with brains of only a million neurons exhibit principles found only in the most advanced manmade navigation systems. How? Cassell argues in his recent book that an algorithm model is best suited to understanding the insect mind — and that of many animals.

Part II: Can animal behavior simply be transferred into the genome? For example, how do Monarch butterflies from Canada get to the same trees in Mexico as their great-grandparents landed in?
Navigator Eric Cassell thinks that the hundreds of thousands of genetic changes that turn solitary insects into social ones cannot be random mutations.

You may also wish to read: A navigator asks animals: How do you find your way? The results are amazing. Many life forms do math they know nothing about. The question Eric Cassell: asks is, how, exactly, is so much information packed into simple brain with so few neurons?

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Published on February 04, 2022 19:56

A characteristic of our times: Anarchy from above: Canadian truckers edition

Barry commented recently that lockdowns had accomplished nothing. Canadian scholar Douglas Farrow offers some thoughts on the way current elite-driven government amounts to anarchy from above, as the COVID-19 situation illustrates. He qutes frm and reflects on the writings of G. K. Chesterton:

Covid has been used, by men of the same sort, in an attempt to euthanize it. Such men are not philanthropists but misanthropes. Among themselves, they “pretend that they despise humanity for its weakness. As a matter of fact, they hate it for its strength” (Heretics XIV).

Let us show them something of that strength, then, so far as God grants it. Yes, “they have their great campaigns and cosmopolitan systems for the regimentation of millions, and the records of science and progress” (Eugenics 2, VIII). Yes, they behave as if they “had a right to dragoon and enslave fellow citizens as a kind of chemical experiment,” and to do so “in a state of reverent agnosticism” about what may come of it (1, II). But against all that, we have something more than “wild words of despair” to hurl back at them, words snatched away in the cruel, relentless winds of change. We have, as Chesterton points out in his final chapter, the lessons of history, including the example “of all the millions who died to destroy Prussianism” and eventually (though he did not live to see it) Nazism. We have, more fundamentally, knowledge that the cries of the oppressed are etched deep “in the red granite of the wrath of God” and that the pleas of the righteous will not go unheard.

Douglas Farrow, “Anarchy fromAbove, Part II” at Substack

Here’s what resistance to the anarchy means in Canada: The Convoy was peaceful compared to most demos. We just want to COVID Crazy to end. It’s not doing anything but harm. Even Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, max vaxxed, got COVID anyway. Meanwhile, huge social harm follows stuff like kids not in school for years, and so forth. Here’s the Michigan Farmers take:

Here’s the elite response to the Convoy from Canada’s elite progressive government:

Our great freedom-guardian press has sought out every minor incident—and there have been only minor incidents in a protest involving thousands—to brand and colour the whole movement, amplified all criticism, taking to calling the truckers “yahoos,” wildly exaggerating slights or perceived “threats,” and for the most part studiously avoiding giving anything like a reasoned and calm account of the concerns of the citizens who constitute the protest.

PM Trudeau, having removed himself and gone into protection (he caught COVID, after receiving the vaccines and the booster, which might be seen as undercutting the need to mandate them on others), announced in the most febrile terms that they were “misogynists, racists, and science-deniers.” Further, that they are a contemptible “fringe.” On Jan. 31 he was at it again: “We won’t cave to those who engage in vandalism …. There is no place in our country for threats, violence, or hatred.”e1

A great swathe of the press is in tune with the Mr. Trudeau. They exude a superior attitude to those they report on, some are describing the protestors as an “occupying force,” and are most outraged by the “honking.” Dear me. A wave of vandalized and burnt churches last year received far more tepid moralizing.

Rex Murphy, “Media’s Alarmist Reporting of Trucker Protest and Trudeau’s Intolerant Rhetoric Are Shameful” at Epoch Times (February 4, 2022)

In reality, the Canadian Freedom Convoy (end the lockdowns!) was a model of peaceful protest. Meanwhile…

GoFundMe has now seized the $10 million dollars Canadians contributed to the support of those camped in Ottawa aiming to end the destructive lockdowns and will give it to charities instead.

Over the past weeks, the GoFundMe account supporting the Canadian Freedom Convoy has raised over $9 million from small donors. Today, at the request of the Trudeau dictatorship, that account was shut down. To add injury to insult, GoFundMe has decided to repurpose the donations, sending them to a charity that has the approval of that corporation rather than returning them to the donors. You have to submit an “application” to get your money back.

Streiff, “GoFundMe Shuts Down Canadian Freedom Convoy Account and Sends the Money Where It Decides” at RedState (February 4, 2022)

The truckers are allowed to help decide where the money that was raised for them while they wait for answers will go instead.

And if you think elite progressives are not coming for you, rest assured, they are — unless you are one of them.

As if that will stop a free people:

and

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Published on February 04, 2022 19:08

CoVid Spike Protein and Myocarditis Study: The Covid “Vaccine” is a Spike Protein Initiator.

Today at Phys.Org,
this press release and linked paper can be found. Now, listen to this:

A research team led by Bristol’s Professor Paolo Madeddu exposed human heart pericytes, which are cells that wrap small blood vessels in the heart, to SARS-CoV-2 Alpha and Delta variants, along with the original Wuhan virus. Surprisingly, they found the heart pericytes were not infected.

Intrigued by this finding, in a second test-tube experiment, the researchers challenged the cardiac pericytes with the spike protein alone, without the virus. The spike protein made pericytes unable to interact with their companion endothelial cells and induced them to secrete inflammatory cytokines, suggesting the spike protein is harmful to human cardiac cells. Interestingly, the team found that antibodies blocking CD147—a receptor for the spike protein—protected heart pericytes from damage.

So, they found that the “spike protein” ALONE is “harmful to human cardiac cells.”

And what does the CoVid vaccine do? It injects mRNA so that cells, in which the mRNA finds itself, will PRODUCE ONLY the “spike protein.” The rest of the virus is not injected. What a study!! And, of course, VAERS data is being sabotaged.

YOU MUST TAKE YOUR VACCINE OR ELSE!! Two days ago there was a story about a healthy 37-year-old who got the injection and suffered a heart attack almost immediately and then died two days later. This has become a crime against humanity.

What a wicked world we live in.

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Published on February 04, 2022 10:40

Fossil bacteria on Mars?: First, what can bacteria survive on Earth?

Some researchers study extreme Earth environments to see what the bacterial tolerance limits really are:

Bacteria have adapted to survive the extreme conditions of a crater lake in the active Poás volcano in Costa Rica, known as Laguna Caliente. These microorganisms provide clues to how potential life may have existed under similar circumstances on Mars.

Situated at 2300 metres above sea level, Laguna Caliente is one of the harshest environments on Earth. It is extremely sulphurous and highly acidic, with pH values ranging between -0.87 and 1.5. The lake is also subject to widely fluctuating temperatures, ranging from 38°C to 90°C.

Laguna Caliente has similar mineral compositions to Gusev crater on Mars, which was explored by NASA’s Spirit rover when it landed there in 2004. This suggests that lakes that may have existed on Mars in the past would also have been acidic and hot, says Justin Wang at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Chen Ly, “Bacteria survive extremes that may have existed in ancient Mars lakes” at New Scientist (January 28, 2022)

Most life forms the researchers found there were bacteria from a genus called, not surprisingly, Acidiphilium.

Apart from having the ability to metabolize energy from sulphur, the bacteria that cling to the fringes of the erupting lake create “bioplastics” to store energy.

A similar project at Poas:

The point of the research is to pinpoint areas on Mars (remains of crater lakes, for example) that might offer samples of fossil bacteria, if they ever existed. If even such spots show no life, we will at least have a means of determining the likely success of further searches.

The paper is open access.

You may also wish to read: Light carbon another faint hope for past life on Mars? At Science: On Earth the signal would be seen as strong evidence for ancient microbial life.

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Published on February 04, 2022 08:27

At Mind Matters News: Can insects be conscious? Let’s look at bees first

Bees can rival mammals in problem-solving intelligence. They can also want things, which gives them a rudimentary form of consciousness:

Honeybee scientist Andrew Barron and philosopher Colin Klein, both then at Macquarie University in Australia, argue that bees have some form of consciousness. Let’s look at what they have to say:

Colin Klein

According to an article in Smithsonian Magazine, Barron broached the question of bee consciousness with Klein, who was highly skeptical at first. But Barron pointed out that at least one key theory holds that

…the core of human consciousness is not our impressive neocortex, but our much more primitive midbrain. This simple structure synthesizes sensory data into a unified, egocentric point of view that lets us navigate our world. Insects, Barron and Klein now argue, have midbrain-like structures, including a “central complex,” that seem to allow bugs to similarly model themselves as they move through space.

ABIGAIL TUCKER, “DO INSECTS HAVE CONSCIOUSNESS?” AT SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE (JULY 2016)

The dialogue resulted in an open-access paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

It is important to qualify what “consciousness” means when we are talking about bees: …

News, “Can insects be conscious? Let’s look at bees first” at Mind Matters News (February 3, 2022)

Takehome: Consciousness does not seem to reside in the neocortex. So complex behavior in bees has raised the question for biologists and philosophers alike.

You may also wish to read: How do insects use their very small brains to think clearly? How do they engage in complex behavior with only 100,000 to a million neurons? Researchers are finding that insects have a number of strategies for making the most of comparatively few neurons to enable complex behavior.

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Published on February 04, 2022 07:53

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