Watching the Pandemic - UK

22 Nov 2021

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Omicron variant first detected
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C

Compulsory self-isolation if test positive no longer enforced.
24 Feb 2022

Compulsory self-isolation if test positive no longer enforced.
25 Feb 2022

Compulsory self-isolation if test positive no longer enforced.
From week-beginning 21 Feb 2022, no updates at the weekends.
28 Feb 2022

Compulsory self-isolation if test positive no longer enforced.
From week-beginning 21 Feb 2022, no updates at the weekends.
01 Mar 2022

Compulsory self-isolation if test positive no longer enforced.
From week-beginning 21 Feb 2022, no updates at the weekends.
02 Mar 2022

Compulsory self-isolation if test positive no longer enforced.
From week-beginning 21 Feb 2022, no updates at the weekends.
03 Mar 2022

Compulsory self-isolation if test positive no longer enforced.
From week-beginning 21 Feb 2022, no updates at the weekends.
04 Mar 2022

Compulsory self-isolation if test positive no longer enforced.
From week-beginning 21 Feb 2022, no updates at the weekends.
07 Mar 2022

From week-beginning 21 Feb 2022, no updates at the weekends.
08 Mar 2022

From week-beginning 21 Feb 2022, no updates at the weekends.
09 Mar 2022

From week-beginning 21 Feb 2022, no updates at the weekends.
10 Mar 2022

From week-beginning 21 Feb 2022, no updates at the weekends.
11 Mar 2022

From week-beginning 21 Feb 2022, no updates at the weekends.
14 Mar 2022

From week-beginning 21 Feb 2022, no updates at the weekends.
15 Mar 2022

From week-beginning 21 Feb 2022, no updates at the weekends.
16 Mar 2022

From week-beginning 21 Feb 2022, no updates at the weekends.
17 Mar 2022

All Anti-COVID measures now abolished!
From week-beginning 21 Feb 2022, no updates at the weekends.
18 Mar 2022

All Anti-COVID measures now abolished!
From week-beginning 21 Feb 2022, no updates at the weekends.
21 Mar 2022

All Anti-COVID measures now abolished!
From week-beginning 21 Feb 2022, no updates at the weekends.
22 Mar 2022

All Anti-COVID measures now abolished!
From week-beginning 21 Feb 2022, no updates at the weekends.
23 Mar 2022

All Anti-COVID measures now abolished!
From week-beginning 21 Feb 2022, no updates at the weekends.
24 Mar 2022

All Anti-COVID measures now abolished!
From week-beginning 21 Feb 2022, no updates at the weekends.
25 Mar 2022

All Anti-COVID measures now abolished!
From week-beginning 21 Feb 2022, no updates at the weekends.
28 Mar 2022

All Anti-COVID measures now abolished!
From week-beginning 21 Feb 2022, no updates at the weekends.
29 Mar 2022

All Anti-COVID measures now abolished!
From week-beginning 21 Feb 2022, no updates at the weekends.
30 Mar 2022

All Anti-COVID measures now abolished!
From week-beginning 21 Feb 2022, no updates at the weekends.
31 Mar 2022

All Anti-COVID measures now abolished!
From week-beginning 21 Feb 2022, no updates at the weekends.
01 Apr 2022

Free Testing Abolished! No updates at the weekends.
04 Apr 2022

All Anti-COVID measures now abolished!
From week-beginning 21 Feb 2022, no updates at the weekends.
05 Apr 2022

All Anti-COVID measures now abolished!
From week-beginning 21 Feb 2022, no updates at the weekends.
06 Apr 2022

All Anti-COVID measures now abolished!
From week-beginning 21 Feb 2022, no updates at the weekends.
07 Apr 2022

Free Testing Abolished! No updates at the weekends.
08 Apr 2022

All Anti-COVID measures now abolished!
From week-beginning 21 Feb 2022, no updates at the weekends.
11 Apr 2022

All Anti-COVID measures now abolished!
From week-beginning 21 Feb 2022, no updates at the weekends.
12 Apr 2022

Free Testing Abolished! No updates at the weekends.
13 Apr 2022

All Anti-COVID measures now abolished!
From week-beginning 21 Feb 2022, no updates at the weekends.
14 Apr 2022

All Anti-COVID measures now abolished!
From week-beginning 21 Feb 2022, no updates at the weekends.
19 Apr 2022

Free Testing Abolished! No updates at the weekends/B.Hols.
20 Apr 2022

Free Testing Abolished! No updates at the weekends/B.Hols.
21 Apr 2022

Free Testing Abolished! No updates at the weekends/B.Hols.
20 Apr 2022

Free Testing Abolished! No updates at the weekends/B.Hols.
25 Apr 2022

Free Testing Abolished! No updates at the weekends/B.Hols.
26 Apr 2022

Free Testing Abolished! No updates at the weekends/B.Hols.
27 Apr 2022

Free Testing Abolished! No updates at the weekends/B.Hols.
28 Apr 2022

Free Testing Abolished! No updates at the weekends/B.Hols.
29 Apr 2022

Free Testing Abolished! No updates at the weekends/B.Hols.
03 May 2022

Free Testing Abolished! No updates at the weekends/B.Hols.
04 May 2022

Free Testing Abolished! No updates at the weekends/B.Hols.
05 May 2022

Free Testing Abolished! No updates at the weekends/B.Hols.
06 May 2022

Free Testing Abolished! No updates at the weekends/B.Hols.
09 May 2022

Free Testing Abolished! No updates at the weekends/B.Hols.
10 May 2022

Free Testing Abolished! No updates at the weekends/B.Hols.
11 May 2022

Free Testing Abolished! No updates at the weekends/B.Hols.
12 May 2022

Free Testing Abolished! No updates at the weekends/B.Hols.
13 May 2022

Free Testing Abolished! No updates at the weekends/B.Hols.
16 May 2022

Free Testing Abolished! No updates at the weekends/B.Hols.
17 May 2022

Free Testing Abolished! No updates at the weekends/B.Hols.
18 May 2022

Free Testing Abolished! No updates at the weekends/B.Hols.
19 May 2022

Free Testing Abolished! No updates at the weekends/B.Hols.
20 May 2022

Free Testing Abolished! No updates at the weekends/B.Hols.
23 May 2022

Free Testing Abolished! No updates at the weekends/B.Hols.
24 May 2022

Free Testing Abolished! No updates at the weekends/B.Hols.
25 May 2022

Free Testing Abolished! No updates at the weekends/B.Hols.
26 May 2022

Free Testing Abolished! No updates at the weekends/B.Hols.
27 May 2022

Free Testing Abolished! No updates at the weekends/B.Hols.
30 May 2022

Free Testing Abolished! No updates at the weekends/B.Hols.
31 May 2022

Free Testing Abolished! No updates at the weekends/B.Hols.
01 June 2022

Free Testing Abolished! No updates at the weekends/B.Hols.
06 June 2022

Free Testing Abolished! No updates at the weekends/B.Hols.
07 June 2022

Free Testing Abolished! No updates at the weekends/B.Hols.
08 June 2022

Free Testing Abolished! No updates at the weekends/B.Hols.
09 June 2022

Free Testing Abolished! No updates at the weekends/B.Hols.
10 June 2022

Free Testing Abolished! No updates at the weekends/B.Hols.
13 June 2022

Free Testing Abolished! No updates at the weekends/B.Hols.
15 June 2022

Free Testing Abolished! No updates at the weekends/B.Hols.
16 June 2022

Free Testing Abolished! No updates at the weekends/B.Hols.
17 June 2022

Free Testing Abolished! No updates at the weekends/B.Hols.
20 June 2022

Free Testing Abolished! No updates at the weekends/B.Hols.
21 June 2022

Free Testing Abolished! No updates at the weekends/B.Hols.
23 June 2022

Previous 7 Days total cases per 100,000 population

The number of covid-19 cases in the UK is rising again, due to the δ variant. It had been falling steadily until about mid-May but is already some 5,000 cases higher that at the peak of the first wave in April, 2020.

The main reason why hospitalisations and deaths are not rising nearly so sharply as they did then, is due to the vaccination campaign in which just over 80% of adults have had at least one dose and close to 60% have had both.

[update 28 Nov 2021] We now have a new varianr, (ο - omicron) to watch. The question is whether the vaccines will be as effective against it as they have been against α and δ and whther it will be more or less transmissible. The early indication is that it quickly replaced δ in southern Africa so is significantly more transmisible, with 50 mutations, 30 of which are in the gene for the spike protein.

[update 15 Dec 2021] Ο is proving to be far more transmissable that δ with an r number of 2-3 or higher. Cases in UK are now at record levels but serious cases seem to be remaining low (early days yet as there is about 1-2 week lag in being diagnosed and needing hospitalisations, with deaths about a week behind.)

This slideshow uses maps of cases published daily on the UK government Coronavirus UK Summary website. It starts about early April 2021, when I started saving them. An area shown in outline only has missing data.

Slideshows are something which I have been experimenting with for a few weeks and hopefully, I'll be adding some controls to this one in the near future. At the moment is simply recycles back to the first slide when it comes to the end of the list.

I'll be updating it with a new slide each day. A red background indicates the last 7 days.

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Evolution News - Another Creationist Dogma Refuted - Evolution by LOSS of Information!

Pseudoblepharisma tenue with endosymbionts - green algae and purple bacteria

© Sebastian Hess

An unusual symbiosis of a ciliate, green alga, and purple bacterium

One of the problems with Creationism is that, because it is not evidence-based and relies on religious dogma and disinformation, it is constantly having to ignore evidence which refutes those dogmas. Then, as Francis Collins pointed out, if Creationists ever grow up and discover scieence, they feel they have to abandon religion because it has been proved wrong. They also discover they've been lied to from the pulpit and by self-serving liars they were fooled into thinking were honest and giving them good information.

To remain members of the Creationist cult, therefore, Creationists must continue to ignore evidence such as this, or face that awful prospect of having to consider being wrong about everything fundamental to their lives and admit being the victims of unscrupulous frauds.

Nevertheless, the facts are what they are, and the fact in this case is that, contrary to Creationist dogma, evolution can, and does, occur through a loss of information. In fact, this is commonplace in parasitology - which is one reason why Creationists will rarely discuss parasitology.

In a paper recently published open access, in the journal Science Advances, a team of biologists led by Dr. Sebastian Hess from the Institute of Zoology at the University of Cologne, Germany, has discovered an unusual single-celled flagellate organism, Pseudoblepharisma tenue, which has in its body two endosymbiotic organisms, an algae and a previously unknown purple bacterium belonging to the family of so-called ‘purple sulfur bacteria’ (family Chromatiaceae). It was discovered living in the hypoxic sediment in ponds in Simmelried, a moorland near the German city of Konstanz am Bodensee.

Anti-Covid Vaccines Working!

Perhaps better than anything, this graphic from the UK Government Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows the effects of the anti-coronavirus vaccination program.

Starting just before Christmas 2020, the NHS has had a massive drive to get the adult population vaccinated, starting with the most vulnerable then working down through the younger age groups. The most recent age group to be invited to get a vaccine is the 25 year-olds and over.

The UK is currently experiencing a surge in case numbers due to the greater infectivity of the Δ-variant but the number of hospitalisations and deaths remain at substantially lower levels than during the earlier waves. The reason for this is almost certainly the protection against being made seriously ill being given by the vaccines.

The following graphic shows the percentage vaccinated with the first and second dose, together with with the probable anti-body levels over time of different aga groups:

Christian Covidiot News - How Dangerous Covidiots Manipulate With Fear and Superstition

Dr Sherri Tenpenny. Anti-vaxxer and purveyor of Covid-19 disinformation

Ohio Doctor Testifies God Will Disapprove of Christian Lawmakers Who Support Required Vaccinations

According to Newsweek, Dr Sherri Tenpenny is one of 12 people who between them are responsible for 65% of all vaccine disinformation on social media. Nevertheless she was invited to testify before the Ohio House Health Committee.

The Committee was taking evidence concerning Bill 248 which would make it unlawful for an employer to require an employee to have an anti-Covid vaccination and would allow individuals to decline a vaccine on the grounds of medical conditions, reasons of conscience such as religion and natural immunity.

How the Raving Right Panders to American Paranoias

Pastor Rick Wiles, anti-Semitic, Talibangelical conspiracy theorist.
"The Chinese are out to get me!"

Anti-Vaxxer Rick Wiles Blames Chinese Agents for His COVID-19 Infection | Right Wing Watch

Probably for historical reasons and a long history of politicians creating and then playing on American xenophobic paranoia, America is more prone than almost any other nation to conspiracy theories based on the notion that 'abroad' is a dangerous place full of evil people plotting to 'come and take our freedoms away'.

Now the right-wing Talibangelical extremist, virulent anti-Semite and conspiracist, Pastor Rick Wiles, has taken this tactic one step further, partly to explain away making such a fool of himself over Covid-19 and the vaccines.

He spent the first part of last year telling his followers that the coronavirus pandemic was God's plague as a prelude to the End Times. When this idiotic position became untenable because so many pious, God-fearing Christian were dying of the virus, he then did a volte face, declaring that the SARS-CoV-19 virus was the result of collusion between Dr Anthony Fauci, the leading epidemiologist who had been advocating the mitigation measures to reduce the spread of the virus and the severity of the pandemic, and the Chinese government.

At one point he demanded that Dr Fauci be arrested and tortured to make him confess his 'crime'. Wiles also campaigned vigorously against the vaccines, urging people not to have them.

To make matters worse, he spent last month in hospital with Covid-19 himself! So, now it's not an End-times plague, but a Chinese Communist Party plot to kill Americans and come and take their land away.

He now claims he was infected by a special Chinese hit squad as a reprisal for exposing the collusion between Fauci and the Chinese Communist Party. Looking ill and sounding hoarse, he told listeners to his paranoia pulpit, 'RealNews' [sic]:

There is a medical mafia in this country. I’m suggesting the CCP agents in America struck at me because I am calling for Fauci to be arrested and interrogated.

I mean this with all my heart. If the China Communist Party is not stopped, most Americans may be dead in the next five years. Think about what I just said: a systematic, genocidal plan to exterminate the American population over the next five years through a variety of biological weapons and vaccines, to the point that there’s hardly anybody remaining alive in the country. China is deliberately exterminating the American population for the purpose of migrating hundreds of millions of Chinese settlers to North America.

The most effective way to substantially depopulate America would be to take Rick Wile's advice and not get a vaccine and not take the very sensible anti-Covid-19 measures advocated by leading scientists such as Dr Anthony Fauci. As figure from the UK now show with very little room for doubt, the vaccine is not only extremely safe, but has been instrumental in reducing the severity of infections in those unfortunate enough to be infected.

The UK is now at wat looks like the beginning of another wave of infections, due in part to the Δ-variant and possibly in part to a relaxation of the lockdown. Cases yesterday went over 8,000 (more than double what they were just a few days ago and 2,000 above the peak of the first wave in April 2020, when the HNS was teetering on the brink of collapse due to the number of hospital cases and the demand for ITU beds and ventillators) yet the number of deaths remains low, as do the new hospitalisations and the number of people in hospital. As I showed 2 days ago, the mass vaccination campaign by the NHS has broken the link between infection rates and death/hospitalisation rates. Figures yesterday confirm that:

Comparison of UK first wave and current coronavirus wave

Date	New Cases	New Admissions	Hospital Patients	Deaths	Deaths per New Case	New Admissions per New Case
April 5, 2020	6199	2917	18855	599	0.966	0.47
June 11, 2021	8125	173	1058	17	0.002	0.02
Source: Coronavirus (Covid-19) in the UK

The rate of serious infections requiring hospitalisation was some 23 times higher in April 2020 compared to today!

The only logical explanation for this is that 76.6% of the adult population (41.1 million people) have now had at least one dose of the vaccine and 54% (29.2 million) have had both doses.

So, if the Chinese Communist Party really was aiming to exterminate Americans, they could do worse than urge people to listen to loony Rick Wiles and heed his dangerously misleading advice. As an evangelical Christian, though, Pastor Rick Wiles believes his own self-aggrandisement and political power and influence has a higher priority than worrying about the welfare and well-being of his compatriots and co-religionists and ensuring the truthfulness of the stuff he manipulates them with.

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How Science Works - Falsifying a Theory and Running Rings Around Creationism

Drone image of the fairy circles and a lonesome tree in the Giribes Plains. Hundreds of thousands of fairy circles occur in the Giribes without any Euphorbia damarana in the vicinity. These typical fairy circles of the Giribes have a regular pattern, mostly with an extraordinary degree of spatial ordering. By contrast, euphorbias in the isolated location where Theron marked the shrubs had an opposite clustered pattern, which cannot explain the origin of the regularly distributed fairy circles.

Photo credit: S Getzin, University of Göttingen

Origin of fairy circles: Euphorbia hypothesis disproved - Georg-August-Universität Göttingen

The great thing about science, and what gives it its power as the tool for discovering the truth, is that it has self-correction built in, and every properly-constructed theory is falsifiable. In this example, we see a theory proposed back in 1979 to explain the phenomenon of the 'fairy rings' of Namibia being systematically falsified by observations which could not be true if the theory is correct.

The 'fairy rings' of Namibia is a vast area on the edge of the Namib dessert in which there is a pattern of regularly-spaced circles of barren soil occurring in an essentially mono-specific grassland.

In 1979 a South African botanist, G.K. Theron, published a theory that the circles were caused by toxins in the decaying leaves of the plant Euphorbia damarana. This theory has now been falsified by researchers led by scientists from Göttingen University, as the Göttingen University news release explains:

Talibangelical False Prophet News - Loopy Jeff Jansen Still Can't Accept Reality

Jeff Jensen, former Co-Senior leader, Global Fire Ministries International, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, USA

'Prophet' Jeff Jansen Declares, 'It's Revolution Time,' Says Trump Will Be Back in Office in June | Right Wing Watch

Even his fellow Talibangelical Christians at Global Fire Ministries International in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, USA, are embarrassed by false prophet and fanatical Trumpanzee, Jeff Jansen, it seems. Not surprisingly, either, given Jansen's increasingly bizarre behaviour as he tries to justify his false prophesies throughout 2020 that Donald Trump would win in November, although, it's probably not his unswerving devotion to the worship of Donald Trump and his blatant false prophesies that seem to concern them most.

Jansen's first attempt to make his false prophesies look like true ones was to simply declare that Trump did win really, then he announced that God had told him he would restore Trump to the White House by March 2021, apparently having been powerless to stop the 'Satanic padophile cnnibals' stealing the election. When March 2021 came and went, he decided that God had meant May, but in May he announced it would now be June.

Covidiot Evangelical News - The Fool Returneth to His Folly

Tony Spell, pastor of the Life Tabernacle Church of Central City, La., waits outside the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, Monday, June 7, 2021. Spell, who flouted coronavirus restrictions last year, prepared Monday to ask the court to revive his lawsuit challenging the restrictions.

Credit: AP Photo/Gerald Herbert

Pastor seeks revival of suit challenging virus restrictions

The notorious Covidiot Christian evangelical preacher of greed and selfishness, Pastor Tony Spell of the Life Tabernacle Church of Central City, Louisiana, USA, is back in the news again. He has still not given up his lucrative campaign for self-martyrdom by being 'persecuted' for encouraging his idiot followers to put themselves and others at risk by attending non-Covid-safe services in his church, despite the ban on such gatherings.

He first came to prominence when he saw a get-rich-quick opportunity in the $1,200 stimulus checks the Trump administration handed out to try to kick-start the economy after the first coronavirus wave and lockdown in spring 2020. He demanded his congregation hand their checks over to him!

Covidiot News - New Study Shows Face Masks Work!

Face Masks Block Expired Particles, Despite Leakage | UC Davis

More evidence, if any were needed, of the efficacy of face masks in reducing the transmission of the coronavirus.

A research team from University of Califronia, Davis and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, have shown that a face mask is effective at reducing the production of aerosols from talking or coughing, despite leakage around the sides.

The point that often seems to be lost on the selfish evangelical Christians who refuse to wear a face mask having been fooled into thinking they're some sort of anti-Trump political statement with which, as loyal Trumpanzee cultists, they are obliged to disagree, is that masks protect other people from you. But protecting your friends and family and the wider community is not something that seems to trouble evangelicals overmuch, as other surveys have shown.

The point is not lost however, on those socially responsible individuals who recognise that, in a pandemic such as the current one, we all have a moral obligation to help protect others as well as ourselves, to reduce the number of deaths and serious illnesses and to conserve health-care resources for those who really need them. It is reassuring to those people that they have been doing the right thing all along.

As the UC, Davis news release explains:

Look What Science's Anti-Covid Vaccines Have Achieved

At the moment, the UK is experiencing something of a surge in SARS-CoV-2 cases, yesterday reaching over 6000 confirmed new cases – double what it was just a week ago - almost certainly due to the 'Indian' or Δ-variant currently responsible for a surge in the Bolton/Greater Manchester area and elsewhere in the UK.

This variant is calculated to be some 40% more infectious than the ‘Kent’ variant. Admittedly on a higher level of routine testing, this is approaching the levels that prompted the first major lockdown in April 2020, as this chart shows:

Malevolent Designer News - More Evidence of Sheer Nastiness with SARS-CoV-2

New findings show that a Covid-19 infections can provoke an auto-immune response to give long-term health problems.

Many patients with COVID-19 produce immune responses against their body's own tissues or organs, finds study

The more we find out about the effects of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, currently responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic, the more it looks like Creationism's intelligent [sic] designer went to great lengths of sheer nastiness when it designed this virus - If you believe that tosh, that is!

In an open access paper published a few days ago in the journal Clinical & Experimental Immunology, a group of researchers led by Professor Alex Richter, of the University of Birmingham, show that some patients infected with the virus go on to produce antibodies against their own body tissues and so develop systemic symptoms not directly related to the virus itself:

Trumpanzee News - Why So Many Repuglicans Believe the QAnon lies

The Trumpanzee cult rally on Jan 6, 2021, prior to their failed coup d’état.

QAnon's Repeated Mythology: Consequences to Brain Function | Psychology Today

In an article in Psychology Today, Dr. Gary L. Wenk, a Professor of Psychology & Neuroscience & Molecular Virology, Immunology and Medical Genetics at the Ohio State University and Medical Center, explains why so many Repuglicans believe the blatant QAnon lies.

His key points are:

• QAnon is a recent example of leaders controlling followers by offering a comfortable myth that comforts and confirms fears.
• Frontal lobes in the brain are apt to accept lies told to ourselves and each other.
• Humans have been accepting myths as truths for millennia, for some they reduce the feeling that the world is dangerous and frightening.

Controlling followers with comforting myths is a well-established political technique, so it is not surprising that Trump, in alliance with the shadowy group behind QAnon, should be using it to try to set up and control the Trumpanzee cult. The same technique has also been successfully used by religions for several thousand years of course, so it is not surprising either that Trump's technique has resulted in a virtual new religion to replace the failing Evangelical Christianity. For God so loved America that he sent his misbegotten son, Donald, to save her from Satan, Black people, liberals, homosexuals, Jews, Chinese and all those other evil foreigners that God hates too. God bless America!

Malevolent Designer News - The Malevolent Designer Hasn't Given Up on Zika Virus

Map of Uganda, with trap sites indicated by black circles and positive sites indicated by red stars (Python Cave, Maramagambo Forest: Egyptian rousette bat, 2009 (n = 1); Kawuku: Ethiopian epauletted fruit bat, 2013 (n = 1); Bugonga: African straw-colored fruit bat, 2011 (n = 2)).

Map was created using QGIS 3.4.2 (www.qgis.org).

CSU researchers make first-ever discovery of Zika virus RNA in free-ranging African bats

Creationist mode:

Spurred on by the success of its coronavirus in killing millions of humans and leaving many times more with long-term health problems and disabilities, Creationism's Intelligent [sic] Designer may have improved on its Zika virus (ZIKV) design to make it more capable of causing microencephaly and permanent disability in new-born children.

According to a discovery by Colorado State University (CSU) scientists, ZIKAV can be carried and may be widely dispersed by bats, in an eerie use of the same order of mammals in which Creationism's putative designer of all living things, developed the coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, currently responsible for its best attempt at a global genocide of humans for a century, with Covid-19.

Unintelligent Designer News - Does God Favour Spiders?

Photographs of worker ants of Myrmica rubra (a), Lasius niger (b) and Camponotus modoc (c) that were used to prepare test stimuli, and of subadult female spiders of Steatoda grossa (d), Latrodectus hesperus (e), Eratigena agrestis (f) and Araneus diadematus (g) that were tested in laboratory experiments. Bar length, 1 mm.

Spiders can sniff out and avoid killer ants, SFU study finds - University Communications - Simon Fraser University

Findings like his throw up all sorts of questions for Creationists - who normally avoid them like the plague, being fully aware of how toxic facts are to their cult.

It is the discovery by a team of researchers based at Simon Fraser University, British Columbia, Canada, that spiders avoid building their nests in the vicinity of European fire ants, their natural predators.

Foraging ants leave a scent trail when foraging, to act as a marker for other ants and so they can find their way back to the nest. The researchers collected samples of this scent by exposing filter papers to several species of ant then placing the impregnated filter papers in a chamber of a multi-chambered habitat occupied by four species of spider. They found that the spiders preferred to stay and build their webs in the chambers without the ant scent-contaminated filter-papers.

The strongest deterrent effect was found for the European fire ant, Myrmica rubra, a recently-introduced species to North America, which the team attribute to evolution under strong selection pressure, however, Creationists are required by dogma to reject that natural explanation so must attributed it to design by their solitary putative designer, of which more later. The teams findings are published open access in the Royal Society Open Science journal:

More of My Books Now in Hard Cover

Following on from the two hard cover versions published a couple of weeks ago, most of the rest of my books are now available in hard cover, including the entire, 5 volume, Light of Reason series of selected articles and essays from this blog:

Trumpanzee Fruitloop News - Lying for Trump

Dr. Laurie Roth, Ph.D.

Are the Military and Trump in control? – News With Views

Dr. Laurie Roth, Ph.D, is a failed singer-song writer who is now a shock-jock radio talk-show host. She is so unswervingly pro-Trump and pro-QAnon conspiracy theories that one might be forgiven for thinking she is actually behind the QAnon hoax. Like Trump, she was a leading light in the 'Birther' movement that tried to prove Barak Obama was born outside the USA, despite his authenticated birth certificate showing otherwise.

She now writes lurid tales to please Trumpanzee cultists of how the military and Donald Trump are covertly running America under the 'Insurrection Act' and planning to arrest those who 'stole the election'. Her Facebook page, which strangely has not been taken down for containing disinformation (presumably they haven't had enough complaints yet!), is full of wackadoodle nonsense lifted straight out of QAnon sources.

Curiously, the date for this 'coming storm' appears to be forever sometime in the future, but real soon, any day now... you'll see!

Only a few days ago she wrote:

Are the Military and Trump in control? I just got off the phone with a high up and trusted, military source I know. He...

Posted by Dr. Laurie Roth on Thursday, 27 May 2021

I just got off the phone with a high up and trusted, military source I know. He comfirmed a few things for me.

Regarding, the speculation/confusion as to whether President Trump signed the Insurrection Act or not, he did. He signed it on Jan 14th, 2021. The act of signing it immediately gave him 2 more months as President according to the very directives of the Act itself. I was then told that the military gave him 2 more months as President. The second extension was over on May 20th and most likely extended again by the military who is now in control per the signed Insurrection Act.

Now, with Manhattan Attorney Cy Vance convening a Grand Jury against President Trump, regarding his taxes and business practices, the Trump which hunt continues. The only problem they may have is that they cannot arrest a sitting President and I am assured that he still is President. Once again, the liberal, legal crazies are desperately trying all they can to stop Trump.

It was confirmed today that many Generals approached Trump to run for office to take out the deep state, criminal cabal. They have been making arrests since the Biden – fake inauguration. The military support is all around Trump and continues under the Insurrection Act.

I was told that the military goes through the FISA court and already did their own investigation, determining that there was international and domestic voter fraud They have long known the real election and voting numbers and have acted accordingly.

Our military is bound by the constitution, their duty and the signed insurrection act to be in control, do what they have to do, make arrests and make things right. They are supporting a new election in August and the return of President Trump . I am told he will be returning very soon...

And more in that vein.

So, Trump signed the 'Insurrection Act' 8 days after leaving office when he had no powers to do so and is now plotting a military takeover and a coup d’état with senior military officials who have taken an oath of allegiance to their commander in chief, President Biden! Isn't that an act of Treason in itself? [correction: he did not formally leave office until 20th Jan on Biden's innauguration. I had confused it with the House confirmation hearing on 6th Jan. However, if as Roth alleges, he is in secret talks with senior military figures and plotting a de facto coup d’état, that would be treason, since Biden is the legal POTUS.]

And all will be revealed 'very soon' when he returns to power. Then there will be a new election in August!

Anyone prepared to lay a small bet that none of this comes to pass, but Dr Laurie Roth, Ph.D. will continue to write about how it's had to be postponed for one reason or another but it's gonna happen any day now... you'll see?

I'll wager a £50 donation to Oxfam that Trump is still President Reject Trump come September 2021, if anyone is prepared to match me.

Covidiot News - Anti-Vaxxer Christians for Jesus - and Covid-19

Biopolymer, mucoadhesive disc being developed to deliver vaccines sublingually. Because it is circular and placed in the mouth, anti-vaxxer Christian fundamentalists claim this is in imitation of the Catholic host, so is a new 'Church of Covid' religion.

Researchers develop vaccine technology in ‘wafer’ form, identical to Catholic host used at Mass | News | LifeSite

In the time-honoured tradition of presenting any ideas they disagree with as some form of faith or alternative religion, the infamous Christian fundamentalist site with a long record of anti-vaxxer propagandizing, LifeSite News, is trying to present the anti-coronavirus measures as 'the Church of Covid' and are casting round for any excuses to do so.

Now they are asserting that a polymer disc impregnated with the components of a vaccine and placed under the tongue, as an alternative to injection, is an imitation of the Catholic host - the wafer used to represent the body of Jesus in the Mass - with the clear implication that having the vaccine is the religious equivalent of a sacrament.

Without a hint of embarrassment at such a ludicrous stretch, the article by Michael Haynes even refutes its own claim by explaining that the 'wafer' is merely a disc of polymers such as alginate (not wafer) and is placed under the tongue, not onto the tongue like the Catholic host. In fact, the resemblance stops at the shape and size of the disc.

Covidiot News - How a Christian Nut-Job Pastor Caused the Death of One of His Congregation

Pastor Greg Locke, Global Vision Bible Church, Tennessee. Coronavirus denier.
Blamed for death from Covid-19 of member of his congregation

Family Speaks Out Against Hate-Preacher Whose COVID Lies Led to Uncle’s Death | Hemant Mehta | Friendly Atheist | Patheos

A stark reminder, if any were needed, of the harm that religious fruitloops with their penchant for conspiracy theories and paranoia can cause when they put their mind to it, was witnessed by viewers of CNN's item about Christian hate preacher, Greg Locke the other day.

Locke, of Global Vison Bible Church in Tennessee, has been downplaying the coronavirus pandemic, and telling his credulous dupes not to get the vaccine and to ignore the anti-covid measure, can claim credit for at least one death amongst his unfortunate congregation.

Biodiversity News - You'll Never Guess What Beetle Poop Contains!

The “bessbug” beetle not only eats its own poop, known as frass, but also uses the material to line the walls of its log-based galleries and to build protective chambers around its young. UC Berkeley scientists have discovered that the frass contains antibiotic and antifungal chemicals produced by actinomycete bacteria, helping to protect the insect from pathogens.

Credit: UC Berkeley photo by Rita de Cassia Pessotti

How antibiotic-filled poop helps ‘bessbug’ beetles stay healthy | Berkeley News

Exactly what potential resources there are in nature can only be guessed at - which is why conservation is so important, not just for the sake of biodiversity on 'spaceship' Earth, but to conserve stuff that could be essential to our long-term survival. Who would have guessed, for example, that the excrement of a beetle would contain potentially powerful antibiotics and fungicides, but that's exactly what a team of researchers from the University of California at Berkeley have discovered.

Malevolent Designer News - How Salmonella Has Been Designed to Make Us Sick

Scanning electron micrograph of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium invading a human epithelial cell.

Credit: NIAID

NIH Scientists Find that Salmonella Use Intestinal Epithelial Cells to Colonize the Gut | NIH: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

The malevolent creativity of Creationism's putative intelligent [sic] designer was revealed in another paper published in the journal Cell Host & Microbe yesterday. Scientist have shown how a mechanism Creationists believe was designed by the same designer to protect us against the intestinal bacteria it designed to live in our gut, has actually been turned against us so that Salmonella can bypass our defences.

Scientists at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in the Rocky Mountain Laboratories, Hamilton, Montana have found that when your body's immune system tries to eliminate Salmonella bacteria from the cells lining your gut, this actually benefits the bacteria and enables them to colonize your gut and increase the faecal shedding of masses of bacteria to infect other people.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates Salmonella bacteria cause about 1.35 million infections, 26,500 hospitalizations and 420 deaths in the United States alone every year. This is small beer compared to this supposed designer's success with the coronavirus of course, but nevertheless, if you believe in this monster, it is something of a success of which its worshipers can be proud.

How it does this is explained in the NIH news release:

Attack on Roe v. Wade Could Backfire on Conservative Repuglicans

The State of Abortion and Contraception Attitudes in All 50 States | PRRI

With a stable majority of Americans supporting a woman's right to abortion in all or most cases, attempts to repeal Roe v. Wade in SCOTUS, exploiting the new Trump-supplied right-wing majority, could backfire badly on the Repuglicans, since conservative evangelicals tend to be the only demographic group with less than 50% support for the continuing legality of abortions, so repealing Roe v. Wade could precipitate a move of moderate and liberal red voters to vote blue in red states. Most of the opposition, by numbers, comes from white evangelical Christians, matched only by a few minority faiths such as Mormons, Jehovah's Winesses and Hispanic Catholics. All the major non-evangelicals are strongly or moderately pro-abortion legality in all or most cases.

What a repeal of Roe v. Wade would produce is a situation where Repuglican politicians in red states would no longer be able to pander to their evangelical base by passing anti-abortion legislation, confident that it will be struck down in the lower courts, so they can pose as champions of conservative 'values', thwarted by a liberal establishment.

They would then be faced with the choice of continuing to pander to their extremist wing by passing increasingly restrictive anti-abortion measures and accepting the consequences of losing large numbers of their less extreme supporters to the Democrts or alientating the fanatics by not using their new-found freedom to restrict a woman's right to choose.

Talibangelical Trumpanzee False Prophets - Now Reduced to Threats

Robin Bullock (left) - God will make you insane
Hank Kunneman (right) - God will give you leprosy.

Right Wing Bonus Tracks: You Might Get Leprosy | Right Wing Watch

At least two of the Trumpanzee Talibangelical false prophets who prophesied a Trump win in 2020, claiming God told them, are now trying threats to stop people laughing at them and pointing out that either God lied to them or they lied about what God said - or God never said anything and they made the whole pack of lies up to try to ingratiate themselves with Trump-supporting evangelical Christians.

Transitional Evolution News - Ancient Baleen Whales with Teeth!

Aetiocetus weltoni

Ancient Baleen Whales Had a Mouthful | NewsCenter | SDSU|

You can quite understand why Creationists never read scientific papers and have had to devise all sorts of mental exercises for dismissing them out of hand as the work of liars and conspirators out to fool people, when there is a veritable tsunami of papers like this one that refute their dogmas with simple facts.

Here again we have another example of one of those transitions that Creationists need to believe never happened, because some Bronze Age hill farmers didn't know how life came to be the way it was then, and still is today, and guessed it must have all been the result of magic. This time it is evidence of the transition between the toothed whales (the common ancestors of all the whales had teeth) and the baleen whales.

The research also resolves another piece of embarrassment for Creationists - the fact that baleen whales like blue whales, humpback whales and grey whales, all start to develop teeth as embryos, then lose them again before birth. This an atavistic remnant of the fact that they all once had teeth. There is no reason at all for an intelligent designer to give embryo baleen whales teeth, especially since they are never going to need them as adults.

This evidence was discovered by biologist, Eric Ekdale, of San Diego State University and palaeontologist, Thomas Deméré, of the San Diego Natural History Museum, when they examined a 25 million year-old fossil whale skull of Aetiocetus weltoni, an evolutionary “cousin” of today’s baleen whales (Mysticeti), loaned to them by the University of California, Berkeley. They examined the skull using high-resolution computed tomography (CT) and discovered that it had teeth as well as baleen.

Since baleen is composed of keratin, like hair and fingernails, it does not normally preserve long enough to become fossilized, so the team used the CT scans to find evidence of grooves and holes on the roof of the mouth that connect internally to a vascular canal, consistent with the same structures in living baleen whales.

We have found evidence that supports a co-occurrence of teeth and baleen, indicating the tooth-to-baleen transition occurred in a stepwise manner from just teeth, to teeth and baleen, to only baleen.

Our study provides tangible fossil evidence of a major shift in feeding behavior from a raptorial carnivorous feeding mode to a bulk filter-feeding mode for obtaining food, among the largest animals that have ever lived in earth’s oceans. Krill are around 1/600th the size of blue whales. That’s like us humans eating nothing larger than sesame seeds floating in a pool.

Eric G. Ekdale, Lead author.
Department of Biology
San Diego State University,
San Diego, CA, USA

This also showed that the blood vessels that supply the baleen in modern whales is a modification of the blood supply to teeth.

The research was published two days ago in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society of London:

Abstract

Extant baleen whales (Mysticeti) have a deciduous foetal dentition, but are edentulous at birth. Fossils reveal that the earliest mysticetes possessed an adult dentition. Aetiocetids, a diverse clade of Oligocene toothed mysticetes, have a series of small palatal foramina and associated sulci medial to the postcanine dentition. The openings have been homologized with lateral palatal foramina that transmit neurovascular structures to baleen in extant mysticetes, thereby implying a co-occurrence of teeth and baleen in aetiocetids. However, homology of the foramina and sulci have been questioned. Using CT-imaging, we report that the lateral palatal foramina of Aetiocetus weltoni are connected internally to the superior alveolar canal, which transmits neurovascular structures to baleen in extant mysticetes and to teeth in extant odontocetes. Furthermore, the lateral palatal foramina of Aetiocetus are separate from the more medially positioned canals for the greater palatine arterial system. These results provide critical evidence to support the hypothesis that the superior alveolar neurovasculature was co-opted in aetiocetids and later diverging mysticetes to serve a new function associated with baleen. We evaluate competing hypotheses for the transition from teeth to baleen, and explore the transition from raptorial feeding in early mysticetes to filter-feeding in extant species.

Ekdale, Eric G; Deméré, Thomas A
Neurovascular evidence for a co-occurrence of teeth and baleen in an Oligocene mysticete and the transition to filter-feeding in baleen whales
Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2021;, zlab017, doi: 10.1093/zoolinnean/zlab017

Copyright: © 2021 The Linnean Society of London
Open Access
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0)

And so another transitional form is added to Creationism's list of fossils they have to pretend don't exist. It must be so tiresome for Creationists having to remember which fossils to ignore, what scientific evidence should never be looked at and which questions you don't want answers too in case an imaginary magic, mind-reading sky thug notices and adds your name to his list of people to burn alive, but such is the power of parental child abuse and brainwashing.

Unintelligent Designer News - Fixing the Designer's Incompetence

Rubisco in every green cell.
Compensating with quantity for what it lacks in quality

Rubisco proton production can enhance CO2 acquisition | RIPE

Scientists working on the Illinois-based Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency (RIPE) project are trying to improve Earth's food production capability by improving on probably the most abundant protein enzyme on Earth, Rubisco.

The reason you rarely hear an intelligent [sic] design Creationist talking about Rubisco, apart from the fact that few of them know enough biology to know anything about it, is that, for the few who do understand it, it is a major embarrassment.

Quite simply, as an example of sheer incompetence in design, Rubisco, or to give it its full name, ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase, is hard to beat. It is the key enzyme involved in photosynthesis so is at the basis of almost all life on Earth, and is probably the most abundant protein on Earth, being in all the photosynthesising cells of every green plant. And it is probably the least efficient of all enzymes, being only capable of about 4 reactions per second, against the hundreds or thousands of reactions for most enzymes. Indeed, the reason it is so abundant, is probably because it is so inefficient. Green plants need lots of it to compensate with quantity what it lacks in quantity.

It is responsible for fixing CO₂ in the initial stages of converting CO₂ and water into glucose. The problem is, it finds it hard to distinguish between CO₂ and O₂, so it wastes about 20% of its time doing something destructive that costs the plant energy that could be used to increase the glucose yield.

In evolutionary terms, this is easily explained because evolution is utilitarian and builds on what is there. Once living organisms evolved a Rubisco, it had an advantage over organisms that couldn't utilise CO₂, so this put all their descendants on an evolutionary path in which they were dependent on an inefficient enzyme but could not scrap the design and start again - something that would have been no problem for an intelligent designer. Also, since photosynthesis is the source of O₂, Rubisco evolved in an environment in which molecular oxygen was a rarity, so its inability to differentiate between CO₂ and O₂ was not the problem it later became. Again, an intelligent designer, who should have foreseen that his design was going to produced lots of O₂, should have foreseen the problem it would become.

Unintelligent Designer News - Correcting Its Blunder with even More Complexity

Superficial Relationship: Enzymes Protect the Skin by Ignoring Microbes and Viruses

As an example of incompetent design, this mechanism, discovered by researchers based at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) Medical School, takes some beating. As an example of what a mindless, utilitarian, natural process would come up with, it is entirely understandable, even predictable.

The mechanism in question is that for protecting us from the harmful organisms Creationism's putative intelligent [sic] designer reputedly designed to make us sick. As though that added and unnecessary level of complexity wasn't bad enough, it has had to be switched off to prevent the skin being constantly inflamed, with yet more complexity.

It might sound like a good idea to have a mechanism for stopping your skin being constantly inflamed, but not when you consider the reason it was necessary in the first place. It is the equivalent of a car maker designing iron cladding on the car's rubber tyres to prevent them being punctured by the tacks and spikes he built into the surface of the roads to puncture the rubber tyres, then inventing another rubber tyre to cover the iron cladding to stop the car shaking to pieces - an act of sheer malevolence for which he had to invent a solution, followed by more malevolence and yet another layer of added complexity to compensate for it!

Evolution News - Great Tits Evolving to Suit City Living

Great tit, Parus major, adapting to city life

Photo: Caroline Isaksson

A stressful life in the city affects birds' genes | Lund University

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given what we know of the way the environment drives evolution, a group of researchers from Lund University, Sweden, have found that the genome of the common European great tit, Parus major, living in European cities is different to those living in the countryside. What was surprising perhaps, was the very clear evidence of this urban selection in a widespread but genetically very similar European population.

This is probably true for all European cities. Whether Milan, Malmö or Madrid the genetic changes were similar, showing a high degree of convergence on the same solutions to the same environmental factors. At least, this was true for the diverse selection of cities on which the team chose to concentrate their efforts.

They found that the changes involved genes that regulate cognition, aggression and circadian rhythms, all of which are important in a high-stress environment like a city with

This indicates that these behaviours, and cognition, are very important in order to live in urban environments with a lot of stress in the form of noise pollution, lights at night, air pollution and constant proximity to people.

We have analysed more than half a million single-nucleotide polymorphisms (snips) spread over the entire genome. There were a handful of genes that had clearly changed in response to the urban environment.

That we see such a clear urban selection across the board, in an otherwise genetically similar European great tit, is surprising.

Caroline Isaksson, Lead author
Senior Lecturer
Department of Biology
Lund University, Lund, Sweden

high levels of pollution, night-time lighting, noise and the proximity to people.

A total of, 192 great tits were examined from populations in Malmö, Gothenburg, Madrid, Munich, Paris, Barcelona, Glasgow, Lisbon and Milan. For each urban population, there was a control group of great tits living on a nearby rural environment. Blood samples have been taken from all of the birds and analysed genetically.

The research is published, open access in the journal, Nature Communications:

Abstract

Urbanisation is increasing worldwide, and there is now ample evidence of phenotypic changes in wild organisms in response to this novel environment. Yet, the genetic changes and genomic architecture underlying these adaptations are poorly understood. Here, we genotype 192 great tits (Parus major) from nine European cities, each paired with an adjacent rural site, to address this major knowledge gap in our understanding of wildlife urban adaptation. We find that a combination of polygenic allele frequency shifts and recurrent selective sweeps are associated with the adaptation of great tits to urban environments. While haplotypes

My Books Now Available in Hard Cover

USA


United Kingdom


Also available in Germany, France, Spain and Italy (so far)

Amazon Kindle Direct are now publishing laminated, hard-cover versions of books, so several of my tiles will soon be available in that format in addition to the paperback and ebook for Kindle formats. The titles so far available are shown in the panel.

This is a new (beta) service from Amazon so there may be a few problems still to be resolved. Although having greater durability than paperback books, hard cover books are more expensive to produce, so this is reflected in the price, nevertheless, in my opinion, they still represent very good value for money.

A history of Ireland: How Religion Poisoned Everything covers the period from the first appearance of humans on the island of Ireland to the present day and shows how religion shaped the culture of the people and eventually divided them into two mutually hostile and at times warring factions, one based in the strongly independent, predominantly Catholic Republic and the other in the staunchly Protestant, 'Loyalist' Ulster, culminating in a period of 'Trouble' in Northern Ireland which cost an estimated 3000 lives, and the subsequent peace deal, the 'Good Friday Agreement'.

What Makes You So Special: From the Big Bang to YOU. How did you come to be here, now? This book takes the reader from the Big Bang to the evolution of modern humans and the history of human cultures, showing that science is an adventure of discovery and a source of limitless wonder, giving us richer and more rewarding appreciation of the phenomenal privilege of merely being alive and able to begin to understand it all. It is written for a lay readership with little formal education in the sciences and is intended as an introduction and a spur to further learning.

Other titles currently in preparation for hard-cover format are:

• Ten Reasons to Lose Faith: And Why You Are Better Off Without It.
• The Unintelligent Designer: Refuting the Intelligent Design Hoax.
• The Malevolent Designer: Why Nature's God is not Good.
• The Light Of Reason: And Other Atheist Writing - The Full Set.

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