Malevolent Designer News - How Creationism's Favourite Pestilential Malevolence Might Soon Try for Another Pademic

Laboratory staff wearing full PPE.

AAP Image/Joel Carrett

5 virus families that could cause the next pandemic, according to the experts

Creationism’s pestilential designer never tires of designing new ways to make us sick and die, or modifying old ways by improving their ability to harm us. It normally uses one of five different families of virus, its favourite until recently has been the Orthomyxoviridae family that includes the influenza virus, but it made good use of the Coronaviridae family recently with SARS and MERS as practice runs, and eventually SARS-CoV-2 that caused the on-going COVID-19 pandemic.

But it also has several other families in stock, so to speak, and can modify any of them to cause the next pandemic.

That's if you believe the Creationist claims that all life is designed by a magic designer and any change in its genome can only occur with divine intervention to make it happen. For incomprehensible reasons, they would rather we thought of their putative designer god as a pestilential malevolence than accept the scientific Theory of Evolution.

The following article from The Conversation by four Australian experts, outlines five different virus families from which the cause of the next pandemic could come. It was written by Professor Allen Cheng, Professor in Infectious Diseases Epidemiology, Monash University, Victoria, Australia, Dr. Andrew van den Hurk, Medical Entomologist, The University of Queensland, Australia Associate Professor Cameron Webb, Clinical Associate Professor and Principal Hospital Scientist, University of Sydney, NSW, Australia, and Professor Damian Purcell, Professor of virology and theme leader for viral infectious diseases, The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

It is reprinted here under a Creative Commons licence, reformatted for stylistic consistency. The original article can be read here.

AAP Image/Joel Carrett

5 virus families that could cause the next pandemic, according to the experts

Allen Cheng, Monash University; Andrew van den Hurk, The University of Queensland; Cameron Webb, University of Sydney, and Damian Purcell, The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity The CSIRO has delivered a comprehensive report on how we should prepare for future pandemics.

The report identifies six key science and technology areas such as faster development of vaccines and onshore vaccine manufacturing to ensure supply, new antivirals and ways of using the medicines we already have, better ways of diagnosing cases early, genome analysis, and data sharing.

It also recommends we learn more about viruses and their hosts across the five most concerning virus families. These causes of disease could fuel the next pandemic.

We asked leading experts about the diseases they can cause and why authorities should prepare well:

1. Coronaviridae

COVID-19, Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), severe acquired respiratory syndrome (SARS)

The first human Coronaviruses (229E and OC43) were found in 1965 and 1967 respectively. They were low-grade pathogens causing only mild cold-like symptoms and gastroenteritis. Initial understanding of this family came from study of related strains that commonly infect livestock or laboratory mice that also caused non-fatal disease. The HKU-1 strain in 1995 again did not demonstrate an ability to generate high levels of disease. As such, coronaviridae were not considered a major concern until severe acquired respiratory syndrome (SARS-1) first appeared in 2002 in China.

Coronaviridae have a very long RNA genome, coding up to 30 viral proteins. Only four or five genes make infectious virus particles, but many others support diseases from this family by modifying immune responses. The viruses in this family mutate at a steady low rate, selecting changes in the outer spike to allow virus entry into new host cells.

Coronaviridae viruses are widespread in many ecological niches and common in bat species that make up 20% of all mammals. Mutations spread in their roosts can spillover into other mammals, such as the civet cat, then into humans.

Coronaviridae genome surveillance shows an array of previously unknown virus strains circulating in different ecological niches. Climate change threatens intersections of these viral transmission networks. Furthermore, pandemic human spread of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID) has now seeded new transmissions back into other species, such as mink, cats, dogs and white-tailed deer.

Ongoing viral evolution in new animal hosts and also in immune-compromised HIV patients in under-resourced settings, presents an ongoing source of new variants of concern.

– Damian Purcell

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Read more:
Long COVID: How researchers are zeroing in on the self-targeted immune attacks that may lurk behind it

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2. Flaviviridae

Dengue fever, Japanese encephalitis, Zika, West Nile fever

The flaviviridae family causes several diseases, including dengue, Japanese encephalitis, Zika, West Nile disease and others. These diseases are often not life-threatening, causing fever, sometimes with rash or painful joints. A small proportion of those infected get severe or complicated infection. Japanese encephalitis can cause inflammation of the brain, and Zika virus can cause birth defects.

While all these viruses may be spread by mosquito bites, when it comes to each individual virus, not all mosquitoes bring equal risk. There are key mosquito species involved in transmission cycles of dengue and Zika virus, such as Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus, that may be found in close to where people live. These mosquitoes are found in water-holding containers (such as potted plant saucers, rainwater tanks), water-filled plants, and tree holes. They also like to bite people.

The mosquitoes that spread these viruses are not currently widespread in Australia; they’re generally limited to central and far north Queensland. They are routinely detected through biosecurity surveillance at Australia’s major airports and seaports. With a rapid return to international travel, movement of people and their belongings may become an ever-increasing pathway of introduction of the diseases and mosquitoes back into Australia.

A Sri Lankan health worker sprays insecticide to curb mosquito breeding earlier this year.

EPA/Chamila Karunarathne

Different mosquitoes are involved in the transmission of West Nile virus and Japanese encephalitis. These mosquitoes are more likely to be found in wetlands and bushland areas than backyards. They bite people but they also like to bite the animals most likely to be carrying these viruses.

The emergence of Japanese encephalitis, a virus spread by mosquitoes between waterbirds, pigs, and people, is a perfect example. Extensive rains and flooding that provide idea conditions for mosquitoes and these animals create a “perfect storm” for disease emergence.

– Cameron Webb & Andrew van den Hurk

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Read more:
Japanese encephalitis virus has been detected in Australian pigs. Can mozzies now spread it to humans?

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3. Orthomyxoviridae

Influenza

Before COVID-19, influenza was the infection most well-known for causing pandemics.

Influenza virus is subdivided into types (A, B, and rarely C and D). Influenza A is further classified into subtypes based on haemagglutinin (H) and neuraminidase (N) protein variants on the surface of the virus. Currently, the most common influenza strains in humans are A/H1N1 and A/H3N2.

Zoonotic infection occurs when influenza strains that primarily affect animals “spill over” to humans.

Major changes in the influenza virus usually result from new combinations of influenza viruses that affect birds, pigs and humans. New strains have the potential to cause pandemics as there is little pre-existing immunity.

An Israeli worker disposes of chicken eggs to contain the spread of bird flu.

EPA/Atef Safadi

Since the beginning of the 20th century, there have been four influenza pandemics, in 1918, 1957, 1968, and 2009. In between pandemics, seasonal influenza circulates throughout the world.

Although influenza is not as infectious as many other respiratory infections, the very short incubation period of around 1.4 days means outbreaks can spread quickly.

Vaccines are available to prevent influenza, but are only partially protective. Antiviral treatments are available, including oseltamivir, zanamivir, peramivir and baloxavir. Oseltamivir decreases the duration of illness by around 24 hours if started early, but whether it reduces the risk of severe influenza and its complications is controversial.

– Allen Cheng

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Read more:
My year as Victoria's deputy chief health officer: on the pandemic, press conferences and our COVID future

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4. Paramyxoviridae

Nipah virus, Hendra virus

Paramyxoviridae are a large group of viruses that affect humans and animals. The most well known are measles and mumps, as well as parainfluenza virus (a common cause of croup in children).

Globally, measles is a dangerous disease for young children, particularly those who are malnourished. Vaccines are highly effective with the measles vaccine alone estimated to have saved 17 million lives between 2000 and 2014.

One group of paramyxoviruses is of particular importance for pandemic planning – henipaviruses. This includes Hendra virus, Nipah virus and the new Langya virus (as well as the fictional MEV-1 in the film Contagion). These are all zoonoses (diseases that spill over from animals to humans)

Hendra virus was first discovered in Queensland in 1994, when it caused the deaths of 14 horses and their horse trainer. Infected flying foxes have since spread the virus to horses in Queensland and northern New South Wales. There have been seven reported human cases of Hendra virus in Australia, including four deaths.

Nipah virus is more significant globally. Infection may be mild, but some people develop encephalitis (inflammation of the brain). Outbreaks frequently occur in Bangladesh, where the first outbreak was reported in 1998. Significantly, Nipah virus appears to be able to be transmitted from person-to-person though close contact.

– Allen Cheng

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Read more:
What is this new Langya virus? Do we need to be worried?

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5. Togaviridae (alphaviruses)

Chikungunya fever, Ross River fever, Eastern equine encephalitis, Western equine encephalitis, Venezuelan equine encephalitis

The most common disease symptoms caused by infection with alphaviruses like chikungunya and Ross River viruses are fever, rash and painful joints.

Like some flaviviruses, chikungunya virus is thought to be only spread by Aedes aegypti mosquitoes in Australia. This limits risks, for now, to central and far north Queensland.

Many different mosquitoes play a role in transmission of alphaviruses, including dozens of mosquito species suspected as playing a role in the spread of Ross River fever. Many of these mosquitoes are commonly found across Australia.

But what role may these local mosquitoes play should diseases such as eastern equine encephalitis or western equine encephalitis make their way to Australia? Given the capacity of our home-grown mosquitoes to spread other alphaviruses, it is reasonable to assume they would be effective at transmitting these as well. That’s why the CSIRO report notes future pandemic preparation should work alongside Australia’s established biosecurity measures.

– Cameron Webb & Andrew van den Hurk

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Read more:
How can the bite of a backyard mozzie in Australia make you sick?

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Allen Cheng, Professor in Infectious Diseases Epidemiology, Monash University; Andrew van den Hurk, Medical Entomologist, The University of Queensland; Cameron Webb, Clinical Associate Professor and Principal Hospital Scientist, University of Sydney, and Damian Purcell, Professor of virology and theme leader for viral infectious diseases, The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity

Published by The Conversation.
Open access. (CC BY 4.0)

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Space News - First Exoplanet Photo. No Life Yet, But It's Only a Matter of Time

NASA/ESA/CSA, A Carter (UCSC), the ERS 1386 team, and A. Pagan (STScI)

The Webb telescope has released its very first exoplanet image – here's what we can learn from it

NASA's James Webb Space telescope, which is performing much better than expectations, has just produced the first image of an exoplanet. The planet, HIP 65426b, is a gas giant rather like Jupiter, orbiting HIP 65426. It's presence had been inferred from data in 2017.

As a gas giant, it is not suitable for living organisms to have evolved but, with so many exoplanets being discovered, with over 5,000 discovered so far, and so many stars with potential planetary systems, it can't now be long before signs of life are detected on one or more of them.

When that happens, of course, it will destroy any remaining arguments from Creationists that the probability of a self-replicating molecule arising by chance is too small to be credible as an explanation for how life got going on Earth. It will show that, if the conditions are right, chemistry and physics alone are quite capable of producing that and the probability of a planet with those conditions being discovered, increases with every new exoplanet discovered.

The chances of finding such a planet are greater the closer the planetary system is to Earth for the simple reason that telescopes such as the James Webb, see distant objects as they were when the light left them, so a planet say, 10 billion lightyears away, will appear as it was 10 billion years ago. We know it took the Universe 10-11 billion years to give rise to Earth before life could get going some 500 million years later, so distant object may not have had time when we are seeing them, to have reached that stage. Closer objects will have had more time.

The image from the James Webb Space Telescope, and its significance is explained in an open access article in The Conversation by Professor Jonti Horner, Professor (Astrophysics), University of Southern Queensland, Australia. The article is reprinted here under a Creative Commons licence, reformatted for stylistic consistency. The original article can be read here.

Covidiot News - Massive Success for the Pro-Trump, Self-Genocide Campaign

Covid-19: U.S. Life Expectancy Continued to Decrease in 2021, Study Finds - USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology

More evidence of the astonishingly stupid, but highly successful pro-Trump antivaxx campaign against the COVID-19 vaccinations was produced today in the form of evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic death rate in the USA produced a significant fall in life-expectancy in 2021, continuing a sharp fall in 2020. It also showed how there were persistent disparities in life expectancy by race and ethnicity.

The antivaxx campaign came about in support of the then president, Donald Trump, who, realising he was out of his depth with the science, but due to his narcissistic personality disorder, was incapable of admitting it, panicked and set about politicizing the pandemic, threatening and vilifying scientists who tried to advise him and pressurizing officials to supress bad news and provide disinformation.

He first declared the pandemic to be a hoax, then to be a mild illness that would be over by April (2020) and which could be prevented with wackadoodle, untested 'preventative' chloramphenicol. This subsequently turned out to not only be ineffective in preventing infection or minimising the symptoms but was positively dangerous.

At one point, in a comical pretence of medical expertise that would have been funny if it hadn’t been so seriously stupid, the fool even suggested drinking surface disinfectants or inserting a UV light source into the body to cure the disease. Soon, wearing face-covering and social distancing became political acts, as did getting vaccinated when the vaccines were produced. Evangelical preachers preached against face-masks and for the right to continue to hold super-spreader events in their churches, and Trump's election rallies in which face-coverings were discouraged, became serious super-spreader events in their own right.

Consequently, when the Omicron wave hit, the death toll became overwhelmingly of unvaccinated people in Republican-leading areas of America, to the extent that some commentators referred to it as a self-inflicted genocide of the most gullible, as the Republicans Party became possibly the first political party in history with policies seemingly designed to kill their own supporters and with supporters who believed that risking the lives of themselves, their families and society at large was the patriotic thing to do.

All to save the orange buffoon’s face.

Human Evolution News - We have More Neanderthal DNA Now Than They Ever Had

Artists impression of a Neanderthal woman.

Artist: Tom Björklund / Moesgård Museum

Neanderthals died out 40,000 years ago, but there has never been more of their DNA on Earth

With almost everyone living north of the Saharah having up to 4% Neanderthal DNA, this means the 8 billion modern humans alive today have between them more DNA that the entire Neanderthal species ever had. So much for the extinction of our close cousins, Homo neanderthalensis.

This is one of the surprising facts about Neanderthals revealed by Peter C. Kjærgaard, Professor of Evolutionary History and Director, Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen, Mark Maslin, Professor of Earth System Science, University College, London, UK and the Natural History Museum of Denmark, and Trine Kellberg Nielsen, Associate Professor, Department of Archeology and Heritage Studies, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark, in an open access article in The Conversation recently.

Neanderthals lived in Eurasia for about 400,000 years, compared to the modern humans 40,000 year occupation. During that time, they evolved to adapt to a changing Northern Eurasian climate as the ice sheets expanded then retreated. By the time moderns arrived on the scene they had already begun to diversify into European and Asia subspecies and the Asian branch had already met, coexisted and interbred with a third species, the Denisovans, who have still to be given a definitive biological name.

Neanderthals probably evolved from an archaic hominin, H. heidelbergensis, itself a descendant of H. erectus which migrated out of Africa at an earlier date, although there has been an attempt to simplify the hominin evolutionary tree recently with a newly-named species, H. bodoensis, replacing several archaic species by regarding them as regional and temporal variants of H. bodoensis. Other authorities are continuing with the earlier nomenclature.

Why they became extinct is still something of a mystery with various contributory causes suggested, from inbreeding due to small population size and even smaller, isolated family groups, an inability to adapt to the changing climate at the end of the ice age, the fact that modern humans had domesticated dogs giving them an advantage when hunting, displacement and extermination by expanding modern humans, to simply being subsumed into the large and increasing modern population and subsequent elimination of all but the advantageous genes we inherited from them. In other words, they never did go extinct and live on in us.

Here is how the three authors in The Conversation see Neanderthals as fitting into the Hominin tree, and the contribution they made to the non-African part of modern humanity. Their article is reprinted here under a Creative Commons license, reformatted for stylistic consistency. The original article can be read here:

God the Great Abortionist

Most human embryos naturally die after conception – restrictive abortion laws fail to take this embryo loss into account

Religious fundamentalists in the USA recently scored what might turn out to be a Pyrrhic victory in the struggle over a woman's right to choose whether to allow her body to be used to grow a new person or not. In a historic ruling, the right-leaning Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS), recently stuffed with Republican placemen and women ruled that since there was no traditional right to an abortion, the states were free to regulate and restrict abortions.

This has led to about a third of American women losing the right to have an unwanted pregnancy terminated, in some states regardless of how the pregnancy occurred or the effects continuing with it might have on the health of the woman. So, in these states, for example an underage girl who was raped or the victim of incest will be obliged to carry the baby to term, and some states are even attempting to make it illegal to get help in another state where abortion is still decriminalised.

But what is this objection to abortion and the right of women to control their own bodies based on?

As we might expect with beliefs that lead to limitations on human rights, it is based on Christian fundamentalism and two things in particular:

Evolution News - How Australia and New Guinea Got Their Diverse Populations of Rodents

A hopping mouse of the Notomys genus. Hopping mice have evolved highly efficient kidneys to deal with the low water environments of Australia’s deserts.

Credit: David Paul/Museums Victoria

'Impressive rafting skills': the 8-million-year old origin story of how rodents colonised Australia

I've remarked before about how well the Theory of Evolution as an explanation for the biodiversity in animals, plants and fungi we see all around us, consistently meshes with other strands of science. For example, plate tectonic and the timing of the splits and collisions of land masses that have occurred exactly coincides with the deduced evolutionary divergence in major branches of the tree of life, so explaining the relationships between species on unconnected land masses such as Africa and South America or Europe and North America.

Here we have an account of the colonisation of Australia and New Guinea and neighbouring islands by rodents, and their evolutionary diversification, that exactly meshes with the rise and fall of sea level during cycles of glaciation and glacial regression, and with known periods of mountain building in New Guinea that transformed it from a group of small islands into a single large mountainous island.

The study, led by Dr. Emily Roycroft, a postdoctoral research fellow with the Australian National University's Division of Ecology and Evolution, Research School of Biology, Acton, ACT, Australia, and Pierre-Henri Fabre, of the Institut des Sciences de l’Evolution, Université de Montpellier, Montpellier, France, with colleagues from the Australian National University, and the Science Department, Museums Victoria, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, is published in the journal,Current Biology. Sadly, the main body of the paper is behind a paywall, despite the journals claimed support for open access publishing. However the abstract is available here.

Lead author, Dr Emily Roycroft has also written about their research in the open access online magazine The Conversation which, if you want factual, objective analysis of news, is well worth reading. Her article is reproduced here under a Creative Commons license, reformatted for stylistic consistence. The original article can be read here.

Stunning Images from NASA Courtesy of the James Webb Space Telescope

A close up of the JO418 Einstein ring.

Image credit: Spaceguy44

Stunningly perfect 'Einstein ring' captured by James Webb Space Telescope | Live Science

In a departure for this blog, this has little or nothing to do with religion, Creationism or even politics, save only that the reality of the Universe, as shown in this stunning image compiled from data supplied by NASA's James Webb space telescope, bears no relationship to anything described or even hinted at in the Bible.

It is, in fact, an image which confirms Einstein's General Theory of Relativity in that it is produced by gravitational lensing, just as Einstein predicted, back in 1912 when he first announced his discovery. This is the way light can be bent by the gravity of a massive object such as a black hole, a neutron star or, in this case an entire galaxy (SPT-S J041839-4751.8).

Unintelligent Design - Seahorses Show How Creationism's Amnesiac Designer Creates Different Solutions for the Same Problem

Credit: Charlotte Bleijenberg / Shutterstock

Seahorse fathers give birth in a unique way, new research shows

Like an amnesic, Creationism's putative intelligent [sic] designer often forgets what it designed earlier and starts again. It did it with all the different forms of wing for flying organisms, for example, and with the seahorse and pipefish family, which it bizarrely designed so the male would be the pregnant one of the sexes, it designed a different mechanism for giving birth, even though it had designed a perfectly good mechanism for other viviparous fish and the one it would design later for mammals.

The male seahorse has a pouch at the front base of its tail which acts as a uterus, which, like in mammals, even contains a placenta to nourish the growing babies, so we would expect the same designer who designed both this and the mammalian uterus to use the same method for expelling the baby when it was time for birth, but not a bit of it!

Instead of smooth muscle contacting under the influence of oxytocin without conscious effort, as with the mammalian uterus, the male seahorse uses his skeletal tail muscles under conscious control, even though a 1970 study had shown that the fish equivalent of oxytocin, isotocin, induces labour-like behaviour in male seahorses. Apparently, the designer hadn't realised he could have made the pouch out of smooth muscle and achieved the same result. The designer only seems to have realised that millions of years later when designing mammals - something any omniscient designer would know he was going to do, and according to creationists, did on the same day!

How Evolution Works - Variation Matters in Predator-Prey and Parasite-Host Interactions

Melissa blue butterfly, Lycaeides melissa
Recently colonized alfalfa as a food plant for its caterpillars

Variation Matters: Genetic Effects in Interacting Species Jointly Determine Ecological Outcomes

The greatest diversity of life is not counted in the number of species, but in the diversity of interactions among them, according to the finding of a research group led by evolutionary geneticist, Professor Zachariah Gompert, of the Department of Biology, Utah State University, Logan, UT, USA, a 2019 NSF CAREER Award recipient.

The question the research group sought to answer was to what extent is the interaction between, for example, a microbe and a host is the same for all members of the microbe and host species, or does it vary according to the genetic make-up of the two species?

Not surprisingly, the outcome was that genetic variations in both species affect the interaction. This is, in fact, what so-called Darwinian evolution depends on, as small variations give more or less advantage to both species in an interaction, i.e. as the environment 'selects' for greater or lesser fitness.

Bigotry News - Religions Fighting For the Right to Discriminate and Victimise

Magaly Valentin (left), and Rosalba Gomez (right) Arlington Food Services prepare fresh salads and vegetable cups for the National School Lunch Program in the kitchen at Washington-Lee High School in Arlington, Virginia, Wednesday, October 19, 2011.

USDA Photo by Bob Nichols.

USDA exempts religious schools from nondiscrimination rules to keep kids fed

Religions in the USA are continuing their campaign to be allowed to continue to victimise and bully minorities and women, using religion as their excuse.

The latest move is to persuade the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to drop its insistence that to participate in the free school lunch program, schools must not discriminate on the basis of sexuality or gender identity.

The National Schools Lunch Program is a federal initiative that provides meals for tens of millions of children in public and non-profit private schools. Schools had complained that participation in the program would oblige them to comply with the non-discrimination provisions of "Title IX" - a 1972 measure aimed at ensuring equal opportunities at educational establishment across the USA.

Last July, Grant Park Christian Academy of Tampa Florida, launched a lawsuit, supported by the unashamedly Christian nationalist hate group, Alliance Defending Freedom, claiming exemption from the non-discrimination provisions of Title IX on the grounds that the school taught a “biblical worldview about marriage, sexuality, and the human person.” In other words, it intended to discriminate against the LGBTQ community and teach the students to do the same, based on ancient texts written in the Bronze Age.

And recently, the Catholic Archdiocese of St. Louis, Missouri, withdrew from the lunch program, claiming that:

Accepting any federal subsidy would subject archdiocesan schools to federal mandates that could impede a school’s ability to faithfully carry out the teachings of the Catholic Church

In other words, the catholic schools would no longer be allowed to discriminate against the LGBTQ community, continue to condemn same-sex marriages and victimise and demonise homosexuals, and teach their students to do likewise. Obviously the Catholic Church would rather have children go hungry than to grant everyone full human rights.

Unintelligent Design - Giant Viruses Designed Only to Kill Another Of the Designer's Creation?

(A) General location and local geography of the Milne Fiord epishelf lake in 2015 (adapted from reference 7). Gray areas of map indicate lake ice detected by RADARSAT-2 imagery. (B) Cartoon showing accumulation of freshwater behind Milne Ice Shelf and the bottom topography of Neige Bay.

Giant Viruses in Climate-Endangered Arctic Epishelf Lake | ASM.org

Readers may recall how I wrote very recently about a 'giant virus' that is designed to infect and kill an amoeba, but whatever designed it, also designed a bacterium to defend the amoeba from it, in a seemingly pointless excercise in design for no apparent reason. That's if you see everything in terms of the childish intelligent [sic] design hoax.

Now scientists have discovered another 'giant' virus' that lives in a remote arctic lake and does nothing other than kill the cyanobacteria that also live there, which, presumably, Creationists believe were designed by the same designer who designed the 'giant virus'.

If you can't see the flaw in the reasoning that this must have been designed by a intelligent designer, then it's highly likely that you have fallen for the intelligent [sic] design hoax yourself, or your definition of 'intelligent' is at odds with the way the rest of the English-speaking world uses it.

Just a quick reminder about these "giant viruses": These are a goup of very large viruses that are several times larger than normal visues such as the COVI-19-causing SARS-CoV-2. They have a relatively complex genome which includes genes normally only found in cellular animals, plants and fungi. They are harmlees to humans since they only infect single-celled organisms such as amoebae and, in this case, cyanobacteria. They are relatively common in a marine environment and can have an impact at the lowest level of the food chain by killing the organisms that recycle nutrients from dead organisms from higher up the food chain. How and why they got their complex genomes is the current subject of study, but may be the result of horizontal gene transfer during evolutionary arms races between them and their hosts.

The discovery was made by microbiologists from Université Laval, Québec, Québec, Canada. Their findings are published, open access in the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) journal, Applied and Environmental Microbiology. How the discovery was made and its significance in terms of climate change are explained in the ASM news release:

How Science Works - Changing Our Minds When the Evidence Changes

Jujube, Ziziphus jujuba.

Source: Alex___photo/Shutterstock

A new discovery shows major flowering plants are 150 million years older than previously thought

Although Creationists seem to be baffled by the concept of uncertainty and the idea that knowledge can only ever be provisional, in fact, this is what gives science it's great power. By contrast, religions, which depend on certainty in the face of a lack of evidence and where a 'crisis of faith', i.e., doubt due to an unwelcome intrusion of reality, is considered a bad thing, are still mired in the Bronze Age when the basic ideas were first codified by people who knew little but sought certainty in a confusing and frightening, seemingly magical world, so made some best guesses with what little knowledge they had.

So, it's never surprising and always reassuring when another science paper is published showing that the scientific consensus was wrong about something. Unlike with black and white Creationists thinking, right and wrong are not absolute terms in science. Scientific ideas can be mostly right but not absolutely right since there are no absolutes where there is uncertainty and without uncertainty there is no scientific progress. Rather, science is a self-correcting, ever improving search for the truth as revealed by evidence.

As we say, science is reasonable uncertainty, whereas religion is unreasonable certainty.

Unintelligent Design - One Hand Doesn't Know What The Other Is Doing

The FISH image - FISH stands for a visualisation method called fluorescence in situ hybridisation - shows amoebae infected simultaneously with the Viennavirus (for the first time isolated in this study and therefore named by the research team) and the bacterial symbiont. In the image, the amoebae are shown in magenta, their symbionts in cyan and DNA in yellow. The larger yellow structures are the virus factories, which are still in the initial phase here and cannot produce infectious viruses.

Credit: Patrick Arthofer

Bacteria provide immunity against giant viruses

Here we have a very nice example of the reality of biology that devotees of the childish intelligent [sic] design notion, must either ignore or explain away as an unexplained mystery if they are to retain their childish superstition.

Similar example abound in nature, when one looks beneath the superficial of course, as I showed in my popular book, The Unintelligent Designer: Refuting The Intelligent Design Hoax, but this is an especially nice one.

It involved an amoeba, a bacterium - chlamydia - 'designed' to infect the amoeba, and a giant virus, also designed to infect the amoeba. The problem is, when the amoeba is infected with chlamydia, it gains protection against the giant virus. This was discovered by scientists from the University of Vienna, Austria, and the Université de Poitiers in France, led by microbiologist Matthias Horn from the Centre for Microbiology and Environmental Systems Science at the University of Vienna.

Giant viruses are unique in that they are several times larger than normal viruses and contain genes normally only found in cellular organisms such as bacteria, animals, plants and fungi. Fortunately, they are harmless to all but Protista such as amoebae which they infect then takeover to turn them into virus factories. Their only purpose seems to be to kill amoebae and produce more giant viruses. Biologists believe the reason for such a large, relatively complex virus is due to an evolutionary arms race between the virus and chlamydia, each vying for control of the host amoeba. The exact evolutionary pathway remains to be worked out, but it looks like another example of horizontal gene transfer.

Chlamydia are infectious bacteria which infect many species, including humans where they are a serious, sexually transmitted pathogen. The species that infects amoebae is closely related to the human pathogen and normally takes up residence in the amoeba where is slows down growth. In that respect it behaves like a parasite, but it also behaves like a symbiont when it protects the amoeba against infection by the giant virus.

So, let's just summarise what intelligent [sic] design advocates have to believe. This is based on the assumption that a designer such as the one believed in by Creationists, i.e. an omniscience, omnipotent creator god, would have known exactly what its creations would do, so designed them for that very purpose and no other:

Evolution News - How the Evolution of Land Plants Changed Earth's Environment.

Ferns were some of the first land plants to colonise the continents.

Credit: Dr Tom Gernon

Land plants changed Earth’s composition, say scientists | University of Southampton

Another piece of the story of how Earth came to be the way is today has been revealed by an international team of scientists led by led by Dr Christopher Spencer of Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, and including researchers at the University of Southampton, Hampshire, UK, the University of Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, UK and the University of Geosciences, Wuhan, China.

They have shown how the evolution of land plants changed Earth's environment, paving the way for the eventual evolution of dinosaurs, 200 million years later, followed by birds and mammals and the diversity of vertebrates we see today.

And of course, it is entirely at odds with the account in the Bible which Creationists have been fooled into thinking is the way it happened. Obviously, magic was not involved anywhere in the process

Donald Trump's Narcisistic Personality Disorder Should Disqualify Him from Public Office

Is narcissism a mental health problem? And can you really diagnose it online?

There are very real fears in the civilised world that Donald Trump could stand and even win again in 2024. The fear is that his behaviour is dangerously unpredictable because he is given to bouts of paranoid anger and a desire for revenge for imagined wrongs, or even for failure to acknowledge his expertise on everything.

He is psychologically incapable of accepting that he isn't the best at everything and that there really are people who know more than he does and understand things better than he does, and whose advise he should be listening to.

This manifested early on in his presidency when he obsessively undid everything his predecessor, Barak Obama, had achieved, including the measures to combat climate change, the 'nuclear' deal with Iran, the Affordable Care Act, the disastrous dismantling of the provisions for a possible pandemic, and later, in his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. He not only rejected the advice of the scientists but launched a campaign of abuse and vilification of those who tried to give him advice on the handling of it because it wasn’t the advice he wanted. Instead, he encourages the view that the virus was a hoax and not very serious, as he advocated untried and dangerous quack medicine he had heard about from far-right fruitloop sources, and even suggested drinking bleach to kill the virus.
But is that a symptom of an all-controlling narcissistic personality disorder?

According to the symptoms of narcissism described in this article by Paula Ross, a psychology lecturer at the Australian Catholic University and Nicole Lee, a professor at the National Drug Research Institute (Melbourne), Curtin University, Australia, he might well have. The article is reproduced here under a Creative Commons license and has been reformatted for stylistic consistency. The original can be read here.

Is narcissism a mental health problem? And can you really diagnose it online?

Source: Unsplash/Laurenz Kleinheider, CC BY

Paula Ross, Australian Catholic University and Nicole Lee, Curtin University

It’s not uncommon these days to hear someone – such as an ex romantic partner or a politician – described as a “narcissist”.

Singer Robbie Williams recently told an interviewer he took an online test to see if he was one. He revealed the test suggested a “mild indication of narcissistic personality disorder”.

But what is narcissism, when is it a problem and can an online test really provide a reliable diagnosis?

A fixation on oneself

According to the Greek myth, a beautiful young man called Narcissus fell in love with his own reflection in a pool of water. He stayed staring at it for the rest of his life. His name gave rise to the term “narcissism”, characterised by a fixation on oneself.

Narcissism is a cluster of traits along a range of severity. At one end of the spectrum, people may be confident, charming and well-adapted.

In the middle of the spectrum, people may be overly focused on seeking out status, success and admiration at work or in their social lives. They can have a need to appear perfect, special or superior to others in order to feel OK about themselves.

At the very extreme end, it may become a disorder in which people can be self-centred, grandiose and destructive.

Narcissus as painted by the Italian Baroque master Caravaggio, circa 1597–1599.

Source: Wikiart

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Read more:
Narcissists: there's more than one type – and our research reveals what makes each tick

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What’s ‘narcissistic personality disorder’?

“Narcissistic personality disorder” is a mental health diagnosis given to people with extremely narcissistic traits. These traits have reached the point where they start to impact on the person’s ability to function at work or socially.

Narcissistic personality disorder is relatively rare. It is estimated around 1% of the population has a diagnosable form of the condition.

Men tend to be more narcissistic than women. There is no evidence that young people are more narcissistic than previous generations at the same age.

Their symptoms are described as “pervasive”, meaning they are obvious across all of a person’s activities, not just in specific situations. So, on the face of it, pop star Robbie William’s insistence his score on the quiz reflected only his narcissistic personality on stage is not quite accurate.

People with narcissistic personality disorder tend to overestimate their abilities and exaggerate their achievements. And they are surprised or angry when others don’t notice their accomplishments.

They need constant confirmation of their value, specialness or importance. They may have fantasies about power, success, having perfect lives or relationships, believing these are not only achievable but deserved.

When narcissists see that good things are happening for you, it triggers their self-hatred and many insecurities. They can’t stand to see targets/victims winning and progressing because they need others to be suffering and failing to feel better about their own mediocrity.

— Narcissist Facts 101 (@narcissistfacts) August 22, 2022

Specialness by association

People with narcissistic personality disorder might talk a lot about how people in their lives are extra special in some way – such as being the very best at something or leaders in a particular field – because it increases their own sense of specialness by association.

When their status or superiority is challenged they can respond with extreme anger, rage or belittling the person and their opinion. They find it difficult to tolerate the thought they may be flawed or vulnerable in some way.

In relationships, they can have exceedingly high expectations of devotion from partners and friends, but may themselves be low in empathy and lack of awareness of others’ needs. They may be envious of and unable to celebrate the success of others, and respond by devaluing them.

They are often unaware of the impact of their behaviours on others.

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Read more:
'Impulsive psychopaths like crypto': research shows how 'dark' personality traits affect Bitcoin enthusiasm

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How is it diagnosed?

Diagnosis should only be made by a mental health professional. Trying to diagnose yourself or someone else with an online quiz may give you results that are misleading and unhelpful.

Narcissistic personality disorder is a cluster of symptoms on a continuum and many diagnoses share similar symptoms. For a proper diagnosis, a clinician needs to assess which cluster of symptoms is present, how far along the continuum they are, and which other diagnoses to exclude.

But a symptom checklist might help you work out whether you should consider seeing a mental health professional for further assessment or support.

People with extreme narcissism can be demanding and destructive.

Credit:Pexels, CC BY

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Read more:
Before you judge personality tests, consider what they don't judge

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How do people get this way?

We don’t know exactly what causes narcissistic personality disorder.

There is probably a genetic component. Traits such as aggression, poor emotional regulation and low tolerance to distress tend to be high in people diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder.

Certain experiences in childhood are also more likely to lead to narcissistic personality disorder. These might be either particularly negative, such as trauma or rejection, or overly positive, such as excessive praise or being constantly told you have extraordinary abilities. Parenting styles that are either very neglectful or overly protective are also associated with the development of narcissism.

People with narcissistic personality disorder often have other mental health conditions, particularly mood disorders. They also have a high rate of suicide. These conditions may have a common cause or they may be a result of the difficulties people with narcissistic personality disorder have with social interactions.

Can it be treated?

Narcissistic personality disorder is a lifelong condition that is considered manageable but not curable. There is no standard medicine or psychological treatment for narcissistic personality disorder.

Psychological treatment aims to reduce the severity of symptoms, improve mood, manage impulses, and build communication and relationship skills. One of the main goals of therapy is to develop more realistic expectations of others.

Medicines that help with other mental health problems like anxiety, depression and bipolar disorder may also help reduce some symptoms.

People are more likely to seek help for another mental health condition, such as depression. Getting treatment for these conditions can also positively impact on personality disorder symptoms.

Paula Ross, Sessional psychology lecturer, Australian Catholic University and Nicole Lee, Professor at the National Drug Research Institute (Melbourne), Curtin University

That then is a general description of narcissistic personality disorder. The help judge whether this is what causes Donald Trump's bizarre behaviour in (and out) of office, this is another article from The Conversation, originally published on January 5, 2021, the day before he officially left office, having lost to Joe Biden and updated on January 7, 2021, the day after Trump had incited an attempted coup d’état to reverse the election result. The article is by Steven H. Appelbaum, Professor of Management, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. It is reproduced here under a Creative Commons license. The original article may be read here.

Trump’s dangerous narcissism may have changed leadership forever

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a rally protesting the electoral college certification of Joe as president on Jan. 6, 2021, in which he successfully incited a mob to storm Congress.

Creadit: AP Photo/Evan Vucci

Steven H. Appelbaum, Concordia University

Donald Trump and his narcissistic style of leadership will soon vacate the political stage, despite his recent attempt to cajole elected officials into illegally changing the outcome of November’s presidential election and inciting a mob of supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol.

But what about those who aspire to key leadership positions who have been inspired by Trump? Will they perpetuate this new model of dangerous leadership without understanding that the potential fallout could be viral and spread to their organizations and employees?

American psychologist and author John Gartner, formerly of Johns Hopkins University, sounded the alarm about Trump three years ago, calling on him to be removed from office because he was “psychologically incapable of competently discharging the duties of president.” The petition garnered thousands of signatures.

Narcissism can be described as a grandiose sense of self-importance. A healthy dose of narcissism can be an integral part of a mature adult’s psyche. It can foster positive traits such as confidence, creativity, humour and wisdom.

These are of course important qualities that many of the world’s genius artists, business people and scientists possess.

But there’s a flip side to this coin, since pathological narcissism may leave people extremely isolated, distrustful and lacking in empathy. Perceived threats can easily cause pathological narcissists to fall into fits of rage.

How narcissism affects leadership styles

Their confidence and larger-than-life attitude, after all, have propelled them to the top. Narcissistic leaders often emerge during times of crisis where followers seek the leadership of a charismatic, confident and creative chief.

To the outside world, narcissists appear self-assured, charming and likeable upon first glance. For this reason, they often emerge as leaders. However, important research has shown the thin veneer of these qualities becomes apparent over time, and there’s often a stark contrast between a narcissist’s perceived leadership abilities and their actual abilities. The narcissistic leader’s weaknesses come to the surface.

Trump stands in the Oval Office in December 2020.

Credit: AP Photo/Evan Vucci

While their hunger for power and admiration may yield positive results in the beginning, in the long run, narcissistic leaders are bound to leave damaged systems and relationships in their wake.

Identifiable negative traits of narcissists include sensitivity to criticism, poor listening skills, lack of empathy, intense desire to compete, arrogance, feelings of inferiority, need for recognition and superiority, hypersensitivity, anger, amorality, irrationality, inflexibility and paranoia. Some of these traits seem to fit Trump.

‘Destructive tyrant’

A leader who was perhaps once seen as a visionary slowly but surely transforming into a destructive tyrant can have grave consequences for organizations that are helmed by narcissists. Narcissistic leadership can negatively affect job satisfaction and morale while fuelling chaos of the type we saw at the U.S. Capitol as well as employee turnover.

First lady's chief of staff and former WH press secretary Stephanie Grisham resigns over violent protests https://t.co/eRdMo4tpKN

— Ana Cabrera (@AnaCabrera) January 7, 2021

As time goes on, their insecurities, domineering nature and disregard for the feelings and needs of others lead to employees’ emotional exhaustion, burnout and withdrawal from the organization. In essence, only the leader’s beliefs, experiences and knowledge count. This was evident when Trump publicly stated he knew more than his generals and even in his recently revealed phone call to Georgia officials, when he attempted to browbeat and threaten them to “find” more than 11,000 votes.

Indeed, there is no more relevant or obvious example of the damaging effects of excessive narcissism on leadership ability than Trump. His chaotic leadership style is useful to study since very few of us are trained to deal with this type of behaviour and this type of person.

Before he was elected president, Trump had made a name for himself in the mainstream media and turned his public persona into a lucrative brand. His 1988 book, The Art of the Deal, and later his NBC show, The Apprentice, garnered a large following of admirers, many in leadership positions.

A Trump supporter stands near the president’s vandalized star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in July 2018.

Source: AP Photo/Reed Saxon

Of course, Trump floundered at times, declaring bankruptcy six times, but he always managed to save himself and threaten his naysayers until they disappeared.

We’ve experienced signs of the destructiveness of his behaviour on the world stage. Rather than knowing the “art of a deal,” a president and any other leader should know the art of diplomacy, empathy and service. Unfortunately, these are words that aren’t part of Trump’s vocabulary.

What’s more, his erratic behaviour seems to have had a detrimental effect on his team members, who can never seem to control his outbursts. This should serve as a warning to organizational leaders flirting with this type of leader.

Can the narcissist be managed?

In today’s uncertain market, more and more companies are becoming comfortable with this type of unpredictable and chaotic leadership style, hoping for big gains and magic.

It’s critical to understand that it’s possible for businesses to reap the benefits of a narcissistic leader as long there’s a trusted sidekick or No. 2 who can anchor their grandiose ideas and help control them. This is tricky to do and not common in contemporary organizations as they attempt to eradicate any perceived competition or control.

Any type of controlling influence has been absent in the Trump administration as he operates without guardrails, creating great fallout.

The issue for followers is it never ends well. We have seen this real-time case study play out for the past four years of the Trump presidency.

The challenge is: How will current and future organizational leaders accept or reject the type of narcissistic and damaging leader who is determined to win at any cost? Steven H. Appelbaum, Professor of Management, Concordia University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

There is little doubt in Professor Appelbaum's mind that Trump does have a narcissistic personality disorder, or that this was the cause of the chaos during his presidency as he made policy in response to the fake news in the far right news media, encouraged the wildest conspiracy theories, sacked anyone who dared to disagree with him, or even failed to admire him sufficiently, made an international laughing stock of the USA, attacked and tried to undermine American democracy because it didn't deliver the result he demanded, and in the end came to personify a lying, corrupt, incompetent would be dictator that all reasonable people who hadn't been suckered into his personality cult, were glad to see the back of.

It would probably be the end of American democracy if he is re-elected in 2024. It would certainly be dangerous for the rest of the world. Having one paranoid , psychotic narcissist with nuclear weapons, in the shape of Vladimir Putin of a resurgent Russia, who is almost a clone of Donald Trump, is dangerous enough, without adding another one to the mix.

Religious Bigotry News - After the Methodists, the Anglicans Are Now Splitting Over Whether to Hate Gays or Not.

The Anglican split: why has sexuality become so important to conservative Christians?

I wrote recently about how the American Methodist church is breaking up over the question about whether members of the LGBTQ community are entitled to full human rights or whether they should continue to be figures of hate, condemnation and persecution.

Now the Anglican Church in Australia is falling apart over the self-same issue. The cause, as always, is tension between what modern evolved social ethics is demanding these churches conform to, or whether they should continue to adhere to the outmoded behaviour codes as first laid down by Bronze Age male tribal leaders, some of whom were so insecure in their sexuality that they forbade homosexual sex between men (though not between women), in the belief that these are the objective and unchangeable commands of an invisible sky man on whose whims our social ethics should be based.

Curiously, the diehards these days have little difficulty accepting the triumphs of the progressives in society who in the past have adjusted to changing social attitudes towards slavery, female emancipation, European Christian white supremacism and the colonial imperialism it gave rise to, to disability right, to full adult suffrage, etc, which they now accept as right and proper in a civilised society where once they vigorously opposed them as going against the sacred word of their favourite god.

But they seem to be stuck on the question of equal rights for homosexuals, including the right to marriage, consensual sexual activity and ordination as priests in the church of their choice, though why anyone would want to be a member of, let alone a minister in, any church in which such bigotry was tolerated, and even admired, is quite beyond me.

In the following article, reprinted from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license, reformatted for stylistic consistency, Mark Jennings, Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies, University of Divinity, Australia and an employee of the Anglican diocese of Perth, Australia, analyses this split and the origins of homophobia in the Anglican Church. The original article can be read here.

Malevolent Designer News - How Creationism's Divine Malevolence is Spreading Rat Lung Worms To Humans

Platydemus manokwari, an introduced flatworm present in Hawai‘i, which can act as a paratenic host of the rat lungworm parasite and that has been implicated in causing rat lungworm disease in Okinawa.

Credit: Shinji Sugiura.

Slugs, snails are not alone in causing rat lungworm disease in humans | SOEST

These days, I seem to be constantly reporting on yet another way Creationism's putative intelligent [sic] designer has found to make us sick and generally cause an increase in the suffering in the world - if you believe the Creationist disinformation about biology.

Here we have yet another example.

As though the rat lungworm, Angiostrongylus cantonensis, wasn't nasty enough, especially when it infects humans and destroys the brain, the divine malevolence has been busy finding new ways to make sure humans become infected with this nasty little nematode, as reported by researchers from the Pacific Biosciences Research Center, University of Hawaii at Mānoa, Honolulu, HI, USA and the Royal Veterinary College, London, UK, who combed through nearly 140 scientific studies to show that slugs and snails are far from being the only possible vectors of the disease.

These so-called, paratenic hosts include 32 species of freshwater prawns/shrimp, crayfish, crabs, flatworms, fish, sea snakes, frogs, toads, lizards, centipedes, cattle and pigs. Of these, at least 13 species of prawns/shrimp, crabs, flatworms, fish, frogs, toads, lizards, and centipedes have been associated with causing rat lungworm disease in humans.

Although these paratenic hosts can become infected, the parasites remain in their immature form until eaten by a rodent, when they mature. If one of these paratenic hosts or an intermediate host such as a slug or snail is ingested by a human, the parasite continues to develop but only up to a point. That point is when they are in the person's brain, moving around and feeding on brain cells, then they die. The resulting brain damage and inflammation as the immune systems tries to cope with the dead worms is the cause of the symptoms of rat lung worm disease. Not usually fatal, but the process and debility it causes can be prolonged.

Here is what the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has to say about it:

Creationism In Crisis - More Bad News for Creationists as Scientists Use the TOE to Work Out How Mucus Evolved

The evolution of mucus: How did we get all this slime? - University at Buffalo

Fig. 1. Novel and previously known mucin genes in select mammalian species.
Phylogeny on the left represents the relationship between the species analyzed here [human (hg38), mouse (mm10), cow (bosTau9), and ferret (musFur1)]. Schematic karyotypes show the chromosomes in each species that harbor mucin genes. Mucin gene locations are indicated on each chromosome. Ancestral mucin genes that are orthologous in the four genomes are indicated in blue fonts. Lineage-specific mucins are indicated in green fonts. Mucin genes found within the SCPP gene family, all of which, except for MUC7, are lineage-specific are indicated in pink fonts. Note: Some of the orthologous genes carry different names in different species. For example, rodent Muc3 is orthologous to human MUC17. For those genes, we indicated in parentheses following the official gene annotation the name of the likely human ortholog based on sequence similarity and synteny. In ferrets, the “S” proceeding the putative chromosome number indicates on which Hi-C scaffold the mucin genes were found.

Source: Pajic, Petar; Shen, Shichen; Qu, Jun; May, et. al., 2022

Possibly not the most fascinating of subjects, especially if you're a Creationist fraud trying to convince your dupes that the theory of evolution is a theory in crisis due to not being able to explain stuff like the evolution of proteins, but scientists at the University of Buffalo, New York, USA, have worked out how the various forms of mucus, or slime, evolved.

And guess what! The Theory of Evolution was absolutely essential to understanding the process!

And even worse for creationist frauds who are trying to convince their dupes that the second law of thermodynamics somehow means that no new information can arise without the assistance of a magic creator, is the news that this evolution involved examples of gene doubling where a mistake in replication - a mutation - has provided the process of evolution with genetic 'information' that can be changed without harming the carrier of that mutation. In other words, mutation followed by natural selection has increased the amount of information in the genome by perfectly natural processes, with no need to include magic or a magic creator in the explanation.

The News release by Charlotte Hsu, from the University of Buffalo explains how the scientists made this discovery:

Fewer in U.S. Now See Bible as Literal Word of God

Fewer in U.S. Now See Bible as Literal Word of God | Gallop

Source: Gallop

The decline in fundamentalist religious belief in the USA continues to plummet, according to a Gallop Survey published last July.

This shows the percentage of American adults who believe the Bible is the literal word of God is down to just 20%, half what it was in July 1980. This is still astonishingly high by European standards and means 1 in 5 American Adults believe Adam & Eve, Noah's Ark, and the Tower of Babel were actual, historical events and that the Universe was created by magic in just 7 days, including the dome over earth into which the sun, moon and stars are fixed, and from which stars can shake loose and fall down during earthquakes.

Nevertheless, halving that percentage in 42 years represents something of a triumph for science and common sense.

Even more encouraging news is that the percentage who believe the Bible is just a collection of myths, history and moral precepts written by men has now established a firm lead over the literalists, at 29% (almost triple what it was in 1980).

Science News - How We Know What Happened Millions of Years Ago.

Skull of Afropithecus turkanensis

Ken Ham, along with other Creationists frauds, have managed to convince their child-like followers that asking "Where you there?" of scientists who try to talk about the past, and particularly how the Universe, Earth and life on Earth came to be as they are, is some sort of rational rebuttal of the claim. The idea seems to be that we can only ever know anything happened if we were actually there to see it. If that were true, of course, forensic science would be useless and no criminal could ever be convicted by a jury unless all 12 of them witnessed the crime.

The tactic depends on Creationists not realising that deductive logic and objective analysis of the evidence is a perfectly valid way to determine what happened. Ask a Creationist who is trying out that fallacy, how they can be certain their great grandparents had sex if they weren't there to witness it, and they usually withdraw from the conversation, often hurling abuse and threats as they do so. Of course, theirs, their parents and their grandparents existence are all evidence that their great grandparents got close at least ones.

That was a long-winded introduction to a piece of research published recently in PNAS that reports how an international collaboration of scientists have shown how fossil teeth of pre-human African apes can be analysed to determine the climate changes that may have driven theirs, and eventually our, evolution.
The account of how they did this and its significance is explained in an article in The Conversation by Tanya M. Smith, Professor in the Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution & Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research, Griffith University, Australia, and Daniel Green, a Postdoctoral Research Scientist at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and Climate School, Columbia University, New York.

The article is reproduced here, reformatted for stylistic consistency, under a Creative Commons licence. The original article can be read here:

Christian Hate News - Now The Methodists are Splitting Over How Best to Hate LGBTQ People

Bishop Ken Carter, former president of the UMC's Council of Bishops.

For United Methodists, the center is not holding

A losing or defeated group invariably turns inward and fragments as it looks for scapegoats.

This was never more true than of the American United Methodists, America's second largest Protestant denomination, who, like other Christian denominations, are struggling against falling membership and with trying to keep up with rapidly changing cultural attitudes such as acceptance of LGBTQ people as being as entitled to full human rights as anyone else, including the right to same-sex marriage and/or ordination as pastors in the church of their choice.

It's the same old story of a religion which believes it's morals are handed down from divine authority and codified in a sacred book. These morals eventually become outdated and no longer suitable, as social ethics evolve along with society, to the extent that they come to be regarded as immoral. The mistake is in assuming that morality is fixed and unchangeable and based either on some objective standard or the arbitrary whim of a deity. In reality, of course, they evolve as part of cultural evolution.

Like the Catholic and other Christian Churches, the Methodists are now tearing themselves apart because, to change and accommodate the growing cultural acceptance of LGBTQ rights is to abandon what die-hard conservatives regard as core beliefs. The traditionalists regard the progressives as no longer 'real Methodists' while the progressives regard the conservatives as truculent die-hards, holding the church back and preaching an immoral gospel that gives excuses to would-be bullies and sanctimonious hypocrites, who would deny basic human rights to people of their choosing if allowed to, whilst preaching freedom and the essential equality of Man.

Why Scientific Evidence Doesn't Change a Fundamentalist's or Conspiracist's Mind

Fig. 2. Belief networks and development of interdependence over measurements.
The networks are shown for GM food (A) and childhood vaccines (B) and include moral beliefs (orange nodes) and social beliefs (green nodes). The ties represent the partial correlations between two beliefs controlled for all other beliefs. Blue (red) ties represent positive (negative) correlations, and the widths of the ties correspond to the strength of the correlations. The strength of the ties ranged from 0.02 (between the beliefs “Chi” and “Fam”) to 0.30 (between the beliefs “Med” and “Sci”) for GM food and from 0.02 (between the beliefs “Com” and “Jou”) to 0.28 (between the beliefs “OnE” and “OnC”), N = 979.

Study: new model for predicting belief change | Santa Fe Institute

Two reserchers at the Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA, postdoctoral Fellows Jonas Dalege and Tamara van der Does, have developed a model to predict whether a person is likely to change his/her beliefs when presented with evidence-based information.

Those who have ever tried debating in the social media with Creationists, Antivaxxers, QAnon cultists or people who believe Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election, will be aware that people with these counter-factual beliefs are almost impossible to shift from those positions, no matter how strong the evidence presented to them.

The problem is our old friend, cognitive dissonance. Briefly, cognitive dissonance is the conflict or dissonance that is generated when firmly held belief meets contrary evidence. The result is emotional discomfort, sometimes amounting to a perceived threat, which needs to be resolved one way or another.

Fleecing the Flock - An Evangeilcal Pastor Shouts Abuse at His Followers For Not Buying Him a Luxury Watch

Carlton Funderburke, Senior Pastor and co-founder,
Church of the Well, Kansas City, Missouri, USA

US pastor calls congregation ‘cheap’ for not buying him a luxury watch | Missouri | The Guardian

Self-styled 'prophet', Pastor Carlton Funderburke of the non-denominational Church of the Well in Kansas City, Missouri, thought he had hit upon a new method of extracting wealth from his followers - demand they give him expensive gifts, then shouts abuse at them to try to make them feel guilt and shame for not obeying him.

Having asked his dupes er… congregation, to buy him an expensive Movado watch, he pointed out that the watch he wanted was on sale in the warehouse at 'Sam's Club' and he had told them he wanted one last year, "and here it is, August", and they still haven't bought it for him!

In a jaw-dropping display of hypocrisy, he then shouted at them like a spoiled toddler who didn’t get what he wanted for his birthday, complaining that they think more of their own possessions than they do of him:

Why Religious Fundamentalists Won't Change Their Minds

Everyone, even scientists are prone to trying to cling to cherished beliefs, but this is especially noticeable with people who are wedded to extremist cult beliefs such as Creationism, Fundamentalist religions, and/or wackadoodle conspiracy theories such as the belief that the 2020 US presidential election was 'stollen', COVID-19 is a hoax or that 9/11 was a 'inside job', as anyone who tries to engage these deluded fools in the social media will quickly discover.

Reinforce that natural resistance to change with the paranoid idea that there is a mind-reading, invisible sky man who will punish you with unimaginable horrors for eternity for even thinking of doing so, and you have the explanation for this intellectual cowardice and scientific bankruptcy.

In this article reproduced from The Conversation, reprinted under a Creative Commons license and reformatted for stylistic consistency, Professor Keith M. Bellizzi, Professor of Human Development and Family Sciences, University of Connecticut, USA, explains this basic aspect of human psychology. The original article can be read here.

Malevolent Designer News - A Brief History of The Divine Malevolence's Favourite Pestilence

This is the second in a series looking at the history of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, taken from articles in The Conversation.

In the first of the series, I looked at how the SARS-CoV-1 virus that caused the short-lived SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) epidemic of 2002/2003 looks, from an Intelligent [sic] Design perspective (if you believe that superstitious nonsense), to have been a prototype which Creationism's divine malevolence built on to produce the much more devastating SARS-CoV-2 virus. This virus causes COVID-19 (Corona VIrus Disease 2019) and is still posing a serious threat to life, long-term health, health services and economies world-wide, almost 3 years after it was first detected, at the end of 2019.

SARS-CoV-2 is a member of the coronavirus family, so-called because they have prominent 'spike' proteins on their surface which give the virus particles a crown-like (corona) appearance under sufficient magnification. They are all RNA viruses that have a single strand of RNA as their functional genome. The spike proteins are used by the virus to lock onto the surface of cells, prise them open and inject their RNA into the cell, where it uses the cell's own metabolic processes to make more virus particles and kill the cell.

In this article reprinted from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license, reformatted for stylistic consistency, Lindsay Broadbent, a Research Fellow at the School of Medicine, Dentistry and Biomedical Sciences, Queen's University Belfast, explains the history of coronaviruses. The article is undated but reads as though it was written during the first lockdown in about April or May 2020.

The original article can be read here.

Malevolent Designer News - How SARS Was The Malevolent Designer's Prototype for SARS-CoV-2.

The 'original' SARS (SARS-CoV-1) threat lasted about 6 months and then it was over. So why did this virus apparently go extinct, yet it's close relative, SARS-CoV-2, remains a significant pandemic threat almost three years after it was first identified?

The answer seems to be in the way it is transmitted from one person to another. SARS patients were only infectious when they had symptoms and were relatively ill. This meant that they tended to self-isolate, because they didn't feel well enough to mix socially, and symptom-based measures such as compulsory isolation were effective control measures.

SARS-CoV-2, on the other hand can be asymptomatic for long enough for the victim to have mixed socially before becoming unwell, if at all, and SARS-CoV-2 can be transmitted effectively by asymptomatic carriers.

From a Creationist perspective, the Malevolent Designer was just practicing with its SARS-CoV-1 prototype, and added refinements to its later version to overcome our early measures to contain it, which had worked well against its prototype.

The following article from The Conversation was written in 1920, when the pandemic was in its earlier phase and before the vaccines against it had been produced. It is reproduced here under a Creative Commons license, reformatted for stylistic consistency. The original can be read here.