Malevolent Designer News - A Brilliant Way to Kill Plants!

Phytoplasma symptoms in vegetable crops.

(A) Little leaf in brinjal; (B) close up view of brinjal flower showing phyllody; (C) big bud in tomato; (D) witches broom’ in Cucurbita pepo; (E) flat stem in lettuce; (F) witches’ broom in chili; (G) witches’ broom in potato; (H) witches’ broom in cabbage; and (I) flat stem in cowpea.

Source

Phytoplasma effector proteins devastate host plants through molecular mimicry (APS) - Leibniz-Institut für Alternsforschung (FLI)

Here we have yet another example of the malevolence of any creative intelligence that can come up with so much of nature. In this case we have a type of obligate, endoparasitic bacterium that lives in plant cells and prevents the plant from reproducing while the plant supports bacterial reproduction, in what has been termed 'zombification' - where a parasite converts the host to work for it, often against its own interests.

This pathogen is currently imposing a major economic burden on those least able to bear it - third-world farmers.

Two teams of researchers have worked to explain exactly how this bacterium works. The Lipmann Insitute press release explains:

Phytoplasma are a type of bacteria that live within the cells and cause devastating diseases with damaging effects. For example, in many cases plants infected with phytoplasma are no longer able to develop flowers. These plants have actually been described as "zombies," since they allow the reproduction of phytoplasma but are unable to reproduce themselves anymore. A group of biologists based at Friedrich Schiller University and the Fritz Lipmann Institute in Germany are working to help better understand exactly how phytoplasma cells bring about the so-called zombification of plants.

Trump's Disastrous Year Explained - It Was Them Witches What Did It!

America leads the world again in new coronavirus cases as a third, even bigger wave threatens to spin out of control.

Source: Johns Hopkins University

Thousands of Witches Plot a 'Binding Spell' Tonight Against President Trump | CBN News

Why has Donald Trump had such a disastrous year - getting impeached and making such a hash of the coronavirus pandemic? It's all the fault of witches, apparently and not because of the spells they cast on him a year ago, but because they signally failed to work!

According to the conservative Christian website, Christian Network Broadcasting (CBN) News a year ago today, thousands of witches were planning to join forces and cast a 'binding spell' on Donald Trump. Being Wiccans, these witches are forbidden from doing harm, so the binding was simply to prevent Trump doing any more harm to America and Americans than he had done already, short of harming him.

Covid-19 - Neanderthal's Revenge?

The ancient Neanderthal hand in severe COVID-19 | Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University OIST

Who would have thought that some of the Neanderthal DNA we inherited from those of our ancestors who interbred with them, could be causing some of us to suffer much more with Covid-19 than those of us who don't have those particular bits of Neanderthal DNA?

Yet that's the conclusion of a two researches, Hugo Zeberg of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany and the Department of Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden and Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, and the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, Onna, Japan.

Their findings were published in Nature on September 30, 2020.

Still Lying to Win. How Desperate Donny is STILL Trying to Fool Americans

Belief in the truth-value of narratives by candidate preference.

QAnon story gains credence with up to 44% of Americans: News: The Media School

The latest report from Indian University's Observatory on Social Media shows a continuing campaign of lies and disinformation emanating from QAnon, designed to win support for Donald Trump by fooling Americans.

It shows how this tactic is having its greatest success amongst republican voters, who appear to be the most gullible and susceptible to conspiracy theories and unlikely narratives. This bears out the recent article in Psychology Today which explained the psychology behind the making of a Trump voter.

Evolution News - Another Way in Which Humans Are Just Like Chimpanzees

Three males groom together in a chain — Likizo (a younger male) grooms Big Brown (an older male), who grooms Lanjo (another younger male).

Photo: John Lower
Source: Havard Gazette

Aging chimps show social selectivity – Harvard Gazette

Despite the denial of Creationists, humans are very like their closest relatives, the chimpanzees in so many way, and not just physical, physiological and genetic. Our psychology is similar too, as this latest finding shows.

A team of psychologists and primatologists from the Harvard Department of Human Evolutionary Biology has shown that chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes, like humans, tend to be increasing selective in their friendships as they age. Their findings are published today in Science.

It had been thought that this tendency was unique to humans and stemmed from our sense of our own mortality (itself believed to be a uniquely human trait). However, detailed observation has shown that aging chimpanzees also show the same selectivity in their friendship, tending to favour those they know and trust and with whom there has been little history of animosity.

Malevolent Designer News - Covid-19 Design Even MORE Devious!

Neuropilin-1 (NRP1) is a host factor for SARS-CoV-2 infection. The image shows human cells infected with SARS-CoV-2 and expressing viral proteins (shown in green). Removal of NRP1 from cells or treating cells with a drug or an antibody targeting NRP1 reduces SARS-CoV-2 infection

Credit: University of Bristol

October: Neuropilin-1 study | News and features | University of Bristol

Intelligent design creationist fans of the designer whom they believe created the SARS-CoV-2 virus that is currently causing the coronavirus pandemic, killing people by the hundreds of thousands, making millions more sick and wrecking economies as governments attempt to slow its progress and prevent medical services from being overwhelmed, will be thrilled to learn just what a thorough job it did this time, apparently having practiced first with SARS.

The malevolent brilliance of this designer can scarcely be imagined!

One of the puzzling things about SARS-CoV-2 is that it is so much more virulent than the closely related SARS virus and now two independent research teams have discovered why. Both viruses have a 'spike' protein on their outer coat which helps them bind to their victim's cells as a prelude to gaining entry into the cell, where it releases its RNA which converts the cell's reproductive machinery to making new viruses, killing the cell in the process. And yet, SARS-CoV-2 seems to be so much more successful at doing this.

The Bristol University press release explains:

Evolution News - How Ants Evolved by Losing Complexity

Cataglyphis bombycina workers and (larger) queens.

Credit: Philip Hönle

Losing flight had huge benefits for ants, finds new study | Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University OIST

How did ants evolve their famous strength and endurance, which far exceeds even the fittest and strongest mammals in comparison to their size?

The answer to this was provided yesterday by a combined team of researchers from Institut d’Écologie et des Sciences de l’Environnement, Sorbonne Université, Paris, France and the Biodiversity and Biocomplexity Unit, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University, Okinawa, Japan.

And Once again, a science paper refutes another sacred Creationist dogma - that so-called 'macro-evolution' always involves an increase in complexity and is therefore impossible because the new information needed can't arise naturally, so needs a magic man to provide it.

What Makes a Trumpanzee?

5 Psychological Reasons Why the 45th President Remains Popular | Psychology Today

Why would anyone in their right mind even think of voting for Donald Trump again? That question was answered by the psychologist, Vinita Mehta Ph.D., Ed.M., writing in Psychology Today.

There are five things that make a Trumpanzee:

1. Social Dominance Orientation (SDO).

   Readers of my blog-posts may remember we met this term in another Psychology Today article which explained why religious fundamentalists can so easily turn violent and why Creationists feel compelled to over-claim their expertise and insist they know impossible things to be true. Basically, they have a hierarchical view of society and try to elevate themselves up this assumed social hierarchy by pretending to be the superior of educated people, privy to 'secrets' and having a special understanding not available to lesser folk. People who are high in SDO:
   

Malevolent Design News - How Covid-19 was Designed to be Sneaky

SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, appears to have evolved silent changes to its RNA code that gave it a biological edge over previous strains.

Credit: Felipe Esquivel Reed

'Silent' Mutations Gave the Coronavirus an Evolutionary Edge | Duke Today

Sadly, this news came just too late to be included in my new book, The Malevolent Designer: Why Nature’s God is Not Good, because it is a brilliant example of what intelligent [sic] design creationists are obliged to assume was deliberately designed by their putative designer god, and which, if such a god existed, would make it a pestilential, genocidal misanthrope of the highest order.

What researchers at Duke University, Durham, N.C., USA have discovered is the 'silent' mutations that turned a harmless coronavirus, infecting bats and other animals, into a deadly, pandemic virus currently causing mayhem with world economies and deaths in the millions as governments all over the world struggle to contain the virus and avoid local health services being overwhelmed.

New Book - The Malevolent Designer

It hasn't all been boredom and worry during the coronavirus lockdown, when we were confined to our homes for most of the day for several weeks during Spring this year! I spent most of it getting a suntan in my garden and writing a book!

The Malevolent Designer: Why Nature's God is not Good, richly illustrated by my good friend and companion in life, the artist Catherine Hounslow-Webber, is a sequel to my popular book, The Unintelligent Designer: Exposing the Intelligent Design Hoax.

This book, with a close look at the realities of nature, shows why any creative entity who designed much of nature could not honestly be regarded as resembling the notional Abrahamic god, whom we are expected to believe, despite the evidence of its resemblance to an irascible Bronze Age Middle-Eastern tribal warlord in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible, and the fear, amounting to a psychotic phobia, it evokes in the minds of devotees, is nevertheless an all-loving, maximally good god.

The book takes the reader through a whole range of parasite-host relationships, from the coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) to parasitic plants, explaining how parasites are often equipped with mechanism to make them more effective at making their hosts sick and finding their way into new victims. The concluding chapter looks at ways in which any such designer has already given some species a much superior system such as the immune system of sharks, the cancer-avoiding system in elephants and the superior eyes and respiratory systems of birds, yet neglected to give other species those same systems, instead handicapping them with inferior 'designs'.

Catholic Corruption News - What a Carry On At The Vatican!

Cecilia Marogna / Cardinal Angelo Becciu

Woman arrested amid Vatican financial scandal claims she worked in ‘parallel diplomacy’ | News | LifeSite

The mystery over the sudden sacking by the Pope of Cardinal Angelo Bacciu, amidst rumours of financial impropriety and misuse of Vatican funds, deepened yesterday with the announcement that a close female associate of his, Cecilia Marogna, 39 had been arrested in Milan and charged with embezzlement.

Until his abrupt sacking, Bacciu had been effectively number two in the Vatican; one of the few members of the Pope's inner cabinet with direct access to him without needing to make an appointment.

Marogana had been employed by Bacciu as a “security advisor”. According to this report in the Catholic-leaning LifeSite:

Christian Loonies for Trump

True to form, Evangelical Christian lunatics are coming out in strength for Donald Trump, that most un-Christian of American presidents.

Here we have a clutch of such fruitloops. The first is one is self-styled "prophetess" Kat Kerr, whom readers of my blog will remember from when she had ordered 100 million angels to guard the GOP National Congress and announced that her personal friend, Jesus, was a Trump supporter.

She has now announced that she can draw God from memory, because she has met him, touched his 'living' hair and has a photographic memory.

Ireland to Reduce Catholic Interference in its Education System

A selection of religious symbols on display at Citywest and Saggart Community National School, an Education and Training Board (ETB) school.

Photograph: Eric Luke

Catholic symbols in State schools to be phased out | Irish Times

The Irish Times is reporting that Catholic influences are to be phased out in State-run schools. This is part of an increasing recent trend towards rejection of religion, especially Catholicism, in Ireland in recent years, and is an important milestone on the road to a fully secular society in the Republic.

Amongst the catholic influences to be removed will be graduation masses, Catholic-only symbols and inspection visits by Catholic diocesan inspectors.

Covidiot News - Wackadoodle Conspiracists

Covidiots protesting against lockdown in Harrisburg, PA, USA

Credit:
Paul Weaver

Popular COVID-19 conspiracies linked to vaccine ‘hesitancy’ | University of Cambridge

Researchers from Cambridge University, UK have analysed data obtained from five different countries and have shown how readily misinformation and fake news about the coronavirus can gain traction. The countries are USA, UK, Mexico, Ireland and Spain.

Using this data, they were able to identify a number of 'key predictors' for susceptibility to fake pandemic news. They also found a clear link between susceptibility to fake news about coronavirus and hesitancy about receiving any future vaccine against it.

Covidiot News - Playing the Persecuted Victims Card

Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn protested new restrictions put in place this week on synagogues, schools, restaurants and nonessential businesses.

Credit: Mark Abramson, The New York Times

Cuomo’s Restrictions on Synagogues in Virus Hot Spots Can Go Forward - The New York Times.

A federal judge in Brooklyn has ruled that Governor Andrew M. Cuomo's restrictions to limit the spread of the corona virus do not violate the right to free exercise of religion for Orthodox Jews.

As though to demonstrate that Evangelical Christian covidiots were not the only religious fundamentalists keen to help spread the coronavirus as widely and quickly as possible, a group of ultra-Orthodox American Jews calling themselves Agudath Israel of America, had sued Gov. Cuomo over his plans to restrict gatherings in areas with high and rising Covid-19 cases. These infection hot-spots include zones with a high Jewish population. The order sets new capacity limits on places of worship, depending on the level of infection in the zone.

Trump's Disastrous Presidency Exposed

Illustration: Señor Salme

How Trump damaged science — and why it could take decades to recover

The science magazine, Nature, which is normally carefully apolitical, has come out firmly against re-election of Donald Trump as POTUS because of the damage he has done and will continue to do to science. This article really should be read by anyone interested in getting the best outcome from the November elections for America, for science and for the world.

Pandering to his scientifically illiterate, evangelical base, Trump has not only shown his ignorance of science but his open hostility to it, epitomised as it is by his attitude towards the measures to contain and control the coronavirus pandemic.

For example, on September 13 this year, in Henderson Nevada, in contravention of Nevada state rules for social distancing, Trump held a rally in which thousands of Trumpanzees (fanatical Trump supporters) packed shoulder-to-shoulder, without face-masks, in a warehouse in conditioned that looked designed to maximise the spread of the virus, and late boasted about breaking the rules and getting away with it.

Malevolent Designer News - How Parasitic Plants Got Better At Parasitism

Common Broomrape, Orobanche minor

Illustration: Catherine Hounslow-Webber
From The Malevolent Designer: Why Nature's God is not Good
© Catherine Hounslow-Webber.

Planting Parasites: Unveiling Common Molecular Mechanisms of Parasitism and Grafting | Nagoya University Research Achievements

Good news for intelligent [sic] design advocates!

Researchers at Nagoya University, Japan, have worked out how parasitic plants have been modified to make it easier for them to parasitise other plants. They secrete an enzyme known as β-1,4-glucanase (GH9B3). They showed that the process of attaching the haustorium (the organ through which a parasitic plant extracts water and nutrients from its victim is very similar to the way a graft unites the tissues of the scion and the stock. The press release from Nagoya University explains:

Plant parasitism is a phenomenon by which the parasite plant latches onto and absorbs water and nutrients from a second host plant, with the help of a specialized organ called the "haustorium." Once the haustorium forms, specific enzymes then help in forming a connection between the tissues of the parasite and host plants, known as a "xylem bridge," which facilitates the transport of water and nutrients from the host to the parasite.

Evolution News - Fossils of Oldest Monkey Found

Reconstruction of M. pentelicus from Shuitangba.

Image credit: Mauricio Antón

Oldest monkey fossils outside of Africa found | Penn State University

A combined team of American and Chinese palaeontologists have examines fossils found in a lignite mine in south-eastern Yunan Province, China, and concluded that they are the oldest fossils of monkeys yet found outside Africa. At about 6.4 million years old, they coexisted temporally and geographically with early apes.

The significance of these fossils, appart from being some thousand times older than Creationists believe the Universe to be, is explained by A'ndrea Elyse Messer in a Penn State University news release:

"This is significant because they are some of the very oldest fossils of monkeys outside of Africa," said Nina G. Jablonski, Evan Pugh University Professor of Anthropology, Penn State. "It is close to or actually the ancestor of many of the living monkeys of East Asia. One of the interesting things from the perspective of paleontology is that this monkey occurs at the same place and same time as ancient apes in Asia."

The researchers, who included Jablonski and long-time collaborator Xueping Ji, department of paleoanthropology, Yunnan Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, Kunming, China, studied the fossils unearthed from the Shuitangba lignite mine that has yielded many fossils. They report that "The mandible and proximal femur were found in close proximity and are probably of the same individual," in a recent issue of the Journal of Human Evolution. Also uncovered slightly lower was a left calcaneus — heel bone — reported by Dionisios Youlatos, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, in another paper online in the journal, that belongs to the same species of monkey, Mesopithecus pentelicus.

Continuing Human Evolution

Sketch of median artery vessel which supplies blood to the human forearm and hand.

Credit: Professor Maciej Henneberg

Forearm artery reveals human evolution continues – News

Three scientists from Flinders and Adelaide Universities, Australia, have found evidence of continuing human evolution in the increasing occurrence in adults of an artery known as the median artery, in the forearm. The median artery begins as the main blood supply to the developing forearm but normally atrophies in the embryo when the role is taken over by two other arteries - the radial and ulnar arteries.

Evolution News - More Incidental Rebuttals of Creationism

Blind but ferocious: The Iberian mole (Talpa occidentalis) that is common in Spain and Portugal has a peculiar property – the females develop strong muscles and testicular tissues due to increased levels of male sex hormones

© David Carmona, Departamento de Genética,
Universidad de Granada, Granada, Spain.

The problem with being a Creationist is you are obliged to hold opinions that are continually being refuted by evidence - which probably explains Creationist disdain for evidence and the science that keeps producing it.

Only yesterday, for example, I wrote about two recent pieces of research that, looked at objectively, should tell any Creationist with a modicum of intellectual honesty and personal integrity that there is something wrong with their dogmas. And here, today, are two more papers that utterly refute Creationist claims quite incidentally and with no intention of doing so on the part of the authors.

Science reveals the truth. It's not complicated; if the truth is at variance with your beliefs than your beliefs are wrong and need to be revised. If you subscribe to a 'faith' that prevents you changing your mind when the evidence demands it, then you don't have free will and are a slave to someone else's dogmas.