Challenge to Muslims

Regular readers will no doubt remember the hilarity, and no little hysteria, which ensued when I challenged Manuel de Dios Agosto, who posts on twitter using a variety of usernames (some of which are listed here) including @Sacerdotus, to debate a very simple proposition. He had been boasting that he had irrefutable scientific evidence for the Christian god so I challenged him to justify his claim. The result, and his subsequent meltdown can be seen here (it is not for the faint-hearted!)

It's just occurred to me after a debate on Twitter with a Muslim whose entire 'scientific' argument for his god was based on profound ignorance and personal incredulity, reinforced in places by some half-baked notions of what science does or doesn't claim about evolution, cosmology, biology, etc., that I had been a little unfair to Muslims and should have given them the same opportunity to prove to the world that their god's existence is a scientific fact too.

So, with this in mind, I have opened the challenge to any Muslim who holds this same belief - that there is irrefutable scientific evidence for only the god of Islam as described in the Qur'an. Can you do better that Manuel did for his god? It would be hard to do worse. He took one look at the proposition, saw what a scientific definition actually was, started screaming and shouting abuse and hasn't got his composure back yet. Don't try it if you're also of an unstable disposition!

The (non-negotiable) proposition is:

There is verifiable, scientific evidence for only the Muslim God for which no possible natural explanation can exist.

This is non-negotiable because anything less would not validate the belief.

Also non-negotiable:

The proposer (that is the person accepting this challenge) will supply an agreed scientific definition of the God of Islam against which the proposition can be tested, precise details of the evidence and how it can be verified, how the hypothesis that it proves only the Muslim god is real could be falsified, and how it establishes the truth of the proposition beyond reasonable doubt. Failure to do so will be regarded as conceding the debate.

Quotes from a book, appeals to authority, statements of 'faith', personal opinion and sincerely held beliefs will not be accepted as evidence unless accompanied by scientifically verifiable evidence.

The forum is to be mutually agreed. All contribution will be echoed to this blog and either party may publish the entire debate in any medium. The forum will not be a blog over which either participant has full control.

The negotiable terms and conditions are:

A neutral referee will be agreed. The rulings of this referee will be final and binding on both parties to the debate. The referee will rule on:

1. Whether an assertion of fact has been validated with verified evidence.
2. Whether questions have been answered fully, honestly and without prevarication.
3. The meaning of words, when these are in dispute.
4. Whether an argument was ad hominem or not.
5. Any other disputes when requested by either of the parties to the debate.
6. Whether a referral to the referee was mendacious or an attempt to prevaricate, divert or otherwise obstruct the normal flow of debate.
7. The referee may intervene at any time to declare the debate won, lost or drawn.

Should either party fail to provide evidence for which a claim of its existence has been made, the debate will be considered lost.

Making any claim which is shown to be untrue or unsupported by evidence will result in forfeiture of the debate.

Ad hominem arguments will result in forfeiture as will threats, veiled or otherwise.

Failure to respond to a reasonable point, answer a reasonable question or to supply the evidence requested within three days (subject to notified periods of absence, or illness or injury or at the discretion of the referee) will result in forfeiture.

You might want to familiarise yourself with these common fallacies listed here before you start.

So, who's up for it? Can you justify your beliefs in open debate?

If not, you might like to ask yourself why you hold them.

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Why Cooperation Works

Cooperative Yeast Break Free

One thing that seems to baffle religious people no end is why non-religious people behave decently when they aren't expecting a reward or fearing punishment. What they can't seem to grasp is why people bother to cooperate and aren't simply selfish. Strangely though, they take umbrage at the suggestion that, if this applies to them, they are admitting to being a sociopath with no feelings for their fellow man nor any ability to empathise with others.

If you're religious you're probably thinking that's not fair. You do right because it's the right thing to do. It's just that you can't trust all the others, so you want them to be motivated by reward and punishment because that makes them more reliable; more controlled and predictable. You don't need that, obviously, because you can be trusted to do the right thing! In fact, what you believe in is belief itself. For more on this see Believing in Belief.

A study, published in Current Biology and reported on by Guy Riddihough in Science shows that cooperative behaviour probably evolved because it leads to greater long-term success, especially in an expanding population which, for most of its recent history was what Homo sapiens was and which many populations continued to be until very recently.

The team genetically engineered yeast to form two populations to act as cooperators and defectors respectively. Both populations were unable to absorb the disaccharide sugar sucrose from their growth medium but both could absorb the simpler monosaccharide sugars (glucose and fructose) into which sucrose can be broken down with the enzyme invertase.

The cooperators could produce and excrete invertase making glucose and fructose available for all populations but the defectors had been mutated to prevent invertase production. Since there was a cost to the cooperators in producing invertase but not to the free-riding defectors, defectors would be expected to be the main beneficiaries of this system.

This system is analogous to the Game Theory Prisoner's Dilemma:

Two members of a criminal gang are arrested and imprisoned. Each prisoner is in solitary confinement with no means of speaking to or exchanging messages with the other. The police admit they don't have enough evidence to convict the pair on the principal charge. They plan to sentence both to a year in prison on a lesser charge. Simultaneously, the police offer each prisoner a Faustian bargain. If he testifies against his partner, he will go free while the partner will get three years in prison on the main charge. Oh, yes, there is a catch ... If both prisoners testify against each other, both will be sentenced to two years in jail.

In this classic version of the game, collaboration is dominated by betrayal; if the other prisoner chooses to stay silent, then betraying them gives a better reward (no sentence instead of one year), and if the other prisoner chooses to betray then betraying them also gives a better reward (two years instead of three). Because betrayal always rewards more than cooperation, all purely rational self-interested prisoners would betray the other, and so the only possible outcome for two purely rational prisoners is for them both to betray each other. The interesting part of this result is that pursuing individual reward logically leads the prisoners to both betray, but they would get a better reward if they both cooperated. In reality, humans display a systematic bias towards cooperative behavior in this and similar games, much more so than predicted by simple models of "rational" self-interested action.

Source: Wikipedia - Prisoner's dilemma

What the researchers found was:

...as the colonies grow, the cooperator populations expand at the expense of the defectors. The cooperators form genetically demixed sectors, analogous to "genetic surfing" seen in frontier populations. Simulations support the idea that an expanding colony frontier favors (cooperative) genotypes that maximize group productivity and that this could apply to range expansions seen in many species, including humans.

Cooperative Yeast Break Free; Guy Riddihough;
Science 7 June 2013: Vol. 340 no. 6137 p. 1143 DOI: 10.1126/science.340.6137.1143-b

So we see that an expanding population is likely to be more successful and so continue to expand if its members cooperate. Cooperation is thus a consequence of expansion and genes for cooperation benefit from the situation in which they find themselves. As always with evolution, it's not just the genetic change which matters but the context of the environment in which that change occurs which facilitates evolution.

Human evolution is a little more complex than yeast evolution, not because the basic principles are different but because we have an additional set of replicators - our memes. Memes are units of cultural inheritance and are no less inherited replicators than our genes. This is where our morality resides. Morality is simply the set of inherited rules by which we ensure cooperation by regulating our interpersonal interactions. What our genes allow us to do is to empathise with other people - to put ourselves in their place and see things through their eyes. This way we know what they would have us do unto them. We don't always do it that well and some are better at it than others, but all humans have the innate ability to cooperate and the learned ability to select the right rules for task.

And of course, the rules vary from place to place and from people to people because they evolved in different frontier populations at different times and in different situations. This difference is how we know they evolved and weren't handed down to us by some divine authority thought up by Bronze-Age goat-herders who knew no better.

References:

Cooperative Yeast Break Free; Guy Riddihough; Science 7 June 2013: Vol. 340 no. 6137 p. 1143; DOI:10.1126/science.340.6137.1143-b

Van Dyken et al. Curr. Biol. 23, 919 (2013)

Religion: An Abdication of Moral Responsibility.

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Martian Water Suitable For Life

Nasa's Opportunity rover finds Martian water appropriate for the origin of life | Science | guardian.co.uk

Solander Point, Mars.
Photograph: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Univ./Arizona State Univ.

This article in today's Observer Across The Universe blog, by author Stuart Clark, caught my eye, especially in view of my recent blog about water on Mars, and what this means for the absurd 'Goldilocks Zone' argument used by Creationists.

NASA's now ancient Mars Exploration Rover, Opportunity, has recently found evidence that not only was there water on Mars but that that water was neutral. What this means for the uninitiated is that the water had an acidity the same as drinking water and very close to the acidity of most of the water in which life is now found on Earth.

Ignore the next three paragraphs if you know what pH is and why it is important to biochemical systems.

pH of some familiar substances

Very briefly, scientists measure acidity on a pH scale (probably from the German, potenz Hydrogen or power of hydrogen). The acidity of a solution is the amount of 'free' hydrogen ions (H⁺) it contains measured on a logarithmic scale based on the reciprocal of the amount of (H⁺), which means that for every decrease of 1 on the pH scale the amount of H⁺ it contains increases ten fold. The scale ranges from 1 to 14 with the lower the number the more acid is the solution. On this scale, a pH of 7 is neutral. Above 7, a mixture becomes increasingly alkaline as the amount of free negative ions such as OH^- increase relative to the amount of H⁺.

This is important to life because H⁺ is so reactive. Being H⁺ means that, in theory, it is simply a free proton, in other words a hydrogen atom (one positively charged proton and one negatively charged electron) which has lost its electron. Generally speaking, the smaller an ion is, and the more charge it carries relative to its size, the more reactive it is. Compared to other ions, H⁺ is incredibly small so is highly reactive. In practice it doesn't exist as such as it attached electrostatically to anything even hinting as a negative charge. Even in water, H⁺ attaches itself to H₂O molecules to form H₃O⁺ ions which then join together as long chains... but that's another story.

All biochemical processes need a fairly tight range of pH (usually slightly above 7) in order to work effectively and cells contain 'buffer' substances that mop up free H⁺ when they increase and release them again when the concentration falls, so keeping the cell's chemistry within the required range. Protein enzymes need a very precise shape to work and this shape is maintained by a dynamic interaction between the small variations in electrostatic charge over their surface, itself caused by interactions between negatively charged electrons and the positively charged atomic nuclei. H⁺, by attaching to them in its eagerness to find anything remotely electrically negative, can change this shape. In very high concentrations of H⁺, proteins and other biochemicals can be destroyed completely - which is why you don't stick your fingers in sulphuric acid.

What Opportunity has found are clay particles called montmorillonite which are formed under the influence of neutral water. This is believed to date from a time early in Mars's life when the climate was much more like that of earth and it rained frequently. Later on, as desertification progressed on Mars, the minerals dissolved in the water would have become more concentrated and the pH would have become more like sulphuric acid. For a time at least Mars had an environment in which self-replicating molecules could have arisen, so initiating the process that scientists believe led eventually to life on Earth.

So much for the Creationist notion that God an 'Intelligent Designer' created a special planet and put it carefully in a 'Goldilocks Zone' around the Sun so that it could create just the right 'fine-tuned' conditions for humans to live in and worship it by giving evangelical fundamentalist Christian pastors money and unaccountable political power. If there was ever a Goldilocks Zone its finely tuned narrow distance from the Sun must have included Mars as well.

One wonders also why an omnipotent designer would need a fine-tuned environment in the first place unless it isn't omnipotent and is as constrained by the laws of physics (and chemistry) as we are, in which case, ID advocates have a great deal of work to do to explain how this designer got designed and why it is subject to these higher laws.

I expect the Discovery Institute has professional liars swivel-eyed loons people working on that right now...

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How Birds Lost Their Penises

How did the cockerel lose its penis?

BBC News - Study reveals how birds lost their penises.

One of the great mysteries in bird evolution is why the males in all but about three percent of species have lost their penises during their evolution, even though fertilisation takes place internally. What makes this a little more of a puzzle is why a few species, such as ducks, geese, ostriches and rhea have retained one - and we now know that it has been retained rather than having evolved independently.

In the majority of bird species sperm is transferred to the female during a 'cloacal kiss' when the single openings for the digestive, urinary and genital tract, the cloaca, of the mating pair are pressed together. Mating for most birds lasts just a second or two and is often performed frequently during the breeding season.

One theory, which requires a lot more work to

Human and Chimpanzee Infants Share Gestures

Gestures of Human and Ape Infants Are More Similar Than You Might Expect | Surprising Science.

More evidence was reported today, this time by the world-renowned Smithsonian Institute's blog, Surprising Science, that humans and chimpanzees share a common ancestor. Marina Koren was reporting on a paper published today in the on-line journal Frontiers in Comparative Psychology.

In 1879 Charles Darwin had said, in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals that humans all have the same gestures in common, regardless of culture. Closer examination has shown that this was not strictly true but never-the-less we do have very many gestures in common.

Now this study has shown that not only do humans have many gestures in common, but we also share many gestures in common with our closest relatives, the chimpanzee and the bonobo. This is especially true of the basic gestures which precede language in infants such as pointing and holding up arms to ask to be picked up.

To pick up on these behaviors, the team studied three babies of differing species through videos taken over a number of months. The child stars of these videos included a chimpanzee named Panpanzee, a bonobo called Panbanisha and a human girl, identified as GN. The apes were raised together at the Georgia State University Language Research Center in Atlanta, where researchers study language and cognitive processes in chimps, monkeys and humans. There, Panpanzee and Panbanisha were taught to communicate with their human caregivers using gestures, noises and lexigrams, abstract symbols that represent words. The human child grew up in her family’s home, where her parents facilitated her learning.

Researchers filmed the child’s development for seven months, starting when she was 11 months old, while the apes were taped from 12 months of age to 26 months. In the early stages of the study, the observed gestures were of a communicative nature: all three infants engaged in the behavior with the intention of conveying how their emotions and needs. They made eye contact with their caregivers, added non-verbal vocalizations to their movements or exerted physical effort to elicit a response...

The researchers speculate that the matching behaviors can be traced to the last shared ancestor of humans, chimps and bonobos, who lived between four and seven million years ago. That ancestor probably exhibited the same early gestures, which all three species then inherited. When the species diverged, humans managed to build on this communicative capacity by eventually graduating to speech. Read more...

One wonders how creationists loons will explain this in terms of spontaneous creation in a single day with humans being created separate from and apart from the other animals. It's strange that humans share so much with the other apes such as (especially) the two chimpanzees and the gorilla, which are not shared by other species when you would expect exactly the opposite to be the case if humans are a distinct form of life. You would expect all the other animals to maybe share things in common but why would human and chimpanzee infants be so similar, at least until human children learn to speak and tend to replace gestures with words.

References:

Gestures of Human and Ape Infants Are More Similar Than You Might Expect; Marina Koren 7 June 2013.

A cross-species study of gesture and its role in symbolic development: Implications for the gestural theory of language evolution; Gillespie-Lynch, Kristen, et al; Front. Psychol., 06 June 2013 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00160

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Now The Earliest Primate!

Archicebus achilles fossil

Xijun Ni / Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology,
Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing

Archicebus achilles. Tarsier or Monkey?

Mat Severson / Northern Illinois University

Crucial Link in Primate Evolution - ScienceNOW

It's difficult to keep up with all this. Yet another 'transitional' fossil from the remote human evolution story has been found, this time in China, from 55 million years ago. Only last week I reported on a veritable deluge of reports and scientific papers reporting 'transitional' fossils such as early newts and turtles, and the finding that about eight percent of modern people have feet with characteristics found in an early hominin from South Africa, Australopithicus sediba, which itself had a skeleton which could only be regarded as transitional between fully bipedal hominins and the chimpanzees, from the period when our ancestors were evolving from a tree-dwelling to a ground-dwelling ape.

This little creature, which has been given the scientific name Archicebus achilles, has been extensively examined for the past ten years by a team of researchers who have concluded that it is the earliest primate so far discovered. Primates are the order of mammals which includes humans and the other apes as well as the monkeys, tarsiers, lorises, tree-shrews and lemurs. It was found in central China in the remains of an ancient lake bed and has been dated to 55 million years old.

Challenge to Christians (Reissued)

Regular readers will no doubt remember the hilarity, and no little hysteria, which ensued when I challenged Manuel de Dios Agosto, the expelled seminarian who post on twitter using a variety of usernames (some of which are listed here) including @Sacerdotus, to debate a very simple proposition. He had been boasting that he had irrefutable scientific evidence for the Christian god so I challenged him to justify his claim. The result, and his subsequent meltdown can be seen here (it is not for the fainthearted!)

So, with the above in mind, I have opened the challenge to anyone else who holds this same belief - that there is irrefutable scientific evidence for only the Christian god. Can you do better that Manuel? It would be hard to do worse. He took one look at the proposition, saw what a scientific definition actually was, started screaming and shouting abuse and hasn't got his composure back yet. Don't try it if you're also of an unstable disposition!

The (non-negotiable) proposition is:

There is verifiable, scientific evidence for only the Christian God for which no possible natural explanation can exist.

This is non-negotiable because anything less would not validate the belief.

Also non-negotiable:

The proposer (that is the person accepting this challenge) will supply an agreed scientific definition of the Christian God against which the proposition can be tested, precise details of the evidence and how it can be verified, how the hypothesis that it proves only the Christian god is real it could be falsified, and how it establishes the truth of the proposition beyond reasonable doubt. Failure to do so will be regarded as conceding the debate.

Quotes from a book, appeals to authority, statements of 'faith', personal opinion and beliefs, no matter how sincerely held, will not be accepted as evidence unless accompanied by scientifically verifiable evidence.

The forum is to be mutually agreed. All contribution will be echoed to this blog and either party may publish the entire debate in any medium. The forum will not be a blog over which either participant has full control.

The negotiable terms and conditions are:

A neutral referee will be agreed. The rulings of this referee will be final and binding on both parties to the debate. The referee will rule on:

1. Whether an assertion of fact has been validated with verified evidence.
2. Whether questions have been answered fully, honestly and without prevarication.
3. The meaning of words, when these are in dispute.
4. Whether an argument was ad hominem or not.
5. Any other disputes when requested by either of the parties to the debate.
6. Whether a referral to the referee was mendacious or an attempt to prevaricate, divert or otherwise obstruct the normal flow of debate.
7. The referee may intervene at any time to declare the debate won, lost or drawn.

Should either party fail to provide evidence for which a claim of its existence has been made, the debate will be considered lost.

Making any claim which is shown to be untrue or unsupported by evidence will result in forfeiture of the debate.

Ad hominem arguments will result in forfeiture.

Failure to respond to a reasonable point, answer a reasonable question or to supply the evidence requested within three days (subject to notified periods of absence) will result in forfeiture.

You might want to familiarise yourself with these common fallacies listed here before you start.

So, who's up for it? Can you justify your beliefs in open debate?

If not, you might like to ask yourself why you hold them.

(It almost goes without saying that Manuel need not apply having failed so abysmally once already).

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Walking Out Of Africa

A. sediba compared to a modern human (L) and a chimp (R)

The devastation for Creationism continues as more and more evidence piles up confirming the universally-held view of serious biologists, anatomists and paleoanthropologists, that Darwinian Evolution is the only theory which accurately explains the observable fact of evolution in general and human evolution in particular. The observable fact is of course the fossil record which shows evidence of gradual change over time, which is becoming more and more complete, and which has never once produced an authenticated specimen which doesn't fit. The pieces of the puzzle are all falling neatly into place.

Last April, BBC News Science and Environment carried an interesting article about the most complete reconstruction yet of a possible human ancestor from South Africa. To the embarrassment of Creationists it showed a remarkable mixture of human and chimpanzee characteristics.

While the upper body and skull more closely resembled that of a chimpanzee, apart from the hands and teeth, which look human; the pelvis and lower limbs look like those of modern humans, until, that is, you look at the feet. They have several chimpanzee-like features. If that doesn't meet Creationist loons' incessant demands for an ape-human transitional fossil, nothing will - and I suspect nothing will, at least for Creation pseudo-scientists, because that would mean abandoning a lucrative source of income.

The reconstruction was done using remains of two individual skeletons of Australopithicus sediba found together in a depression at Malapa, north of Johannesberg. One is of an adult female; the other of an adolescent male. It is thought they could be mother and son who met with a fatal accident together.

As the article said:

An analysis of Au. sediba's lower limb anatomy by Jeremy DeSilva from Boston University and colleagues suggests that the species walked in a unique way.

Its small heel resembles that of a chimpanzee more than it does a human. This suggests it likely walked with an inward rotation of the knee and hip, with its feet slightly twisted.

This primitive way of walking might have been a compromise between upright walking and tree climbing, the researchers suggest, since Au. sediba seems to have had more adaptations for tree-climbing than other australopithecines.

The findings suggest that some species of australopithecine climbed trees, some walked on the ground, and some did both.

Team reconstructs 'human ancestor' - BBC News Science & Environment

The research has implications for how we interpret the fossil record and the evolution of these features.
It's good to understand the normal variation among humans before we go figure out what it means in the fossil record.

Tracy Kivell, Palaeoanthropologist,
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

From this we get a picture of the australopithecines radiating as they moved from an arboreal existence to living on the African plains. This is reinforced by the findings of Joel Irish from Liverpool John Moores University and colleagues who found that Au. sediba's teeth resembled those of Au. africanus, also from southern Africa, suggesting at least two main groups of australopithicines; one in southern Africa and another further north in Ethiopia, including Au. afarensis ("Lucy").

And now today comes more devastating news for Creationists to ignore. BBC News Science & Environment today carries an article by Science Reporter, Melissa Hogenboom (Ape-like feet 'found in study of museum visitors'). Apparently, Au. sediba wasn't the only hominin with those chimpanzee-like foot features. Of 398 modern human visitors to the Boston Museum of Science, MA, USA, one in thirteen had differences in foot-bone structure similar to those of Au. sediba. This finding has been published in Science Journal.

Jeremy DeSilva from Boston University and a colleague asked the museum visitors to walk barefoot and observed how they walked by using a mechanised carpet that was able to analyse several components of the foot.

Floppy foot

Most of us have very rigid feet, helpful for stability, with stiff ligaments holding the bones in the foot together. When primates lift their heels off the ground, however, they have a floppy foot with nothing holding their bones together. This is known as a midtarsal break and is similar to what the Boston team identified in some of their participants. This makes the middle part of the foot bend more easily as the subject pushes off to propel themselves on to their next step.

Dr DeSilva told BBC News how we might be able to observe whether we have this flexibility: "The best way to see this is if you're walking on the beach and leaving footprints, the middle portion of your footprint would have a big ridge that might show your foot is actually folding in that area."

Ape-like feet 'found in study of museum visitors'; Melissa Hogenboom, Science reporter, BBC News

So it looks for all the world as though our feet are still evolving and that many of us carry this fossil record of our anatomical history. Don't be at all embarrassed if you have these feet, like about 8% of people who visit museums in Boston, MA. Wear them like a badge of honor. Those feet have walked a long way from Africa over the last two million years. I don't have those feet but I'm proud to wear a badge of an even longer evolutionary journey. I have primitive ears, and no one can take that away from me.

References:

1. Team reconstructs 'human ancestor' - BBC News Science & Environment
2. Ape-like feet 'found in study of museum visitors'; Melissa Hogenboom, Science reporter, BBC News
3. DeSilva, J. M. and Gill, S. V. (2013), Brief communication: A midtarsal (midfoot) break in the human foot. Am. J. Phys. Anthropol.. doi: 10.1002/ajpa.22287

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Now It's Transitional Turtle Fossils

BBC News - How the turtle got its unique hard shell

What an appalling day for Creationists!

What with pebbles on Mars showing how Mars is very old and the 'Goldilocks zone' is much wider that they like to pretend, transitional fossils showing how cretaceous amphibians evolved, the discovery of rapid recent evolution in Brazilian palm trees and news that scientists at CERN are getting closer to explaining why matter exists, the news of the discovery of a transitional turtle fossil must be devastating.

CERN - Unweaving Reality. No Gods Found.

Scientists find clues to why everything exists - ComputerworldUK.com

Scientists using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN are getting closer to understanding why there is matter in the Universe. So far, they have not detected any gods, nor found any need to include them in any hypotheses.

We have long known that pairs of virtual particles arise spontaneously (that is, unpredictably and without cause) inside a quantum vacuum. These pairs always consist of matter-antimatter pairs which exist for a fraction of a second and then mutually annihilate, releasing energy.

We're reaching into the fabric of the Universe at a level we've never done before. We've kind of completed one particle's story. ... Now we're way out on the edge of a new exploration. This could be the only part of the story that's left, or we could open a whole new realm of discovery.

Professor Joe Incandela, University of California at Santa Barbara

This can be demonstrated with the Casimir Effect where a pair of uncharged metal plated placed a few micrometers apart in a vacuum can exhibit attraction or repulsion depending on their arrangement. This is explained by virtual particles spontaneously forming between the plates.

Incidentally, the spontaneous generation of these particle/antiparticle pairs is an example of an uncaused event, so giving the lie to the Cosmological Argument beloved of religious apologists, that everything that begins to exists must have a cause. This is demonstrably not so with quantum events such as this - and the Big Bang was a quantum event.

But the mystery was why, if there were equal numbers of matter and antimatter particles formed in the initial instant of the Big Bang, why they didn't all annihilate one another almost instantaneously, leaving nothing behind but energy. In other words, why was there an apparent surplus of matter over antimatter when there should have been perfect symmetry.

Now scientists at CERN are beginning to unravel that conundrum. As PC Computerworld US's Sharon Gaudin reports:

CERN reported that when scientists there smashed protons together inside the underground collider, they have been able to create conditions similar to the period soon after the Big Bang. That means they have seen some anti-matter particles.

CERN said they discovered a subatomic particle, dubbed BOs, which decays unevenly into matter and anti-matter. The anti-matter part decays faster than the matter.

It is only the fourth subatomic particle known to exhibit such behavior, scientists noted.

"By studying subtle differences in the behavior of particle and antiparticles, experiments at the [Large Hadron Collider] are seeking to cast light on this dominance of matter over antimatter," CERN reported on Wednesday. "The results are based on the analysis of data collected by the experiment in 2011."

Sharon Gaudin, PC Computerworld UK

This comes close on a report last month that equipment attached to the International Space Station may have detected particles that could be the building blocks of dark matter which is thought to make up about one quarter of the Universe's mass but which is almost undetectable other than by observing the gravity its mass exerts because it is made of of particles which interact only weakly, if at all, with other particles.

Very gradually, methodically, and without fuss, science is unweaving reality and find no trace of gods or supernatural entities. In fact they have found not the slightest trace, either directly or implicitly, of a supernatural realm at all.

But then, no scientific progress was ever made by anyone who gave up looking and declared it must have been the locally popular deity which did it. Science long ago abandoned Bronze-Age guesswork and declaration of truth by fiat. The result is the modern world which can build such machines as the LHC at CERN.

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Creationism Refuted - By Newts!

Tiny but feisty prehistoric wesserpeton amphibian discovered - Nature - Environment - The Independent.

Can it get any worse for Creationists? The last couple of weeks have seen evidence of a transitional species between chimpanzees and humans in the earliest known human ancestor, evidence lining up the fossil record with the molecular evidence of a split between apes and monkeys in Africa about 26-27 million years ago, and evidence that humans were establishes in South American by at least 20,000 BCE. Now comes news that another transitional fossil has been found, this time transitional between two early groups of amphibians.

Rapid Evolution in Brazil

Functional Extinction of Birds Drives Rapid Evolutionary Changes in Seed Size

Yet another example of observed rapid evolution is published in this week's Science. This time it is rapid evolution in Brazilian palm trees due to human activity with no evidence whatsoever of any intelligence being involved in the process, nor of any being required.

Abstract
Local extinctions have cascading effects on ecosystem functions, yet little is known about the potential for the rapid evolutionary change of species in human-modified scenarios. We show that the functional extinction of large-gape seed dispersers in the Brazilian Atlantic forest is associated with the consistent reduction of the seed size of a keystone palm species. Among 22 palm populations, areas deprived of large avian frugivores for several decades present smaller seeds than nondefaunated forests, with negative consequences for palm regeneration. Coalescence and phenotypic selection models indicate that seed size reduction most likely occurred within the past 100 years, associated with human-driven fragmentation. The fast-paced defaunation of large vertebrates is most likely causing unprecedented changes in the evolutionary trajectories and community composition of tropical forests.

Functional Extinction of Birds Drives Rapid Evolutionary Changes in Seed Size; Mauro Galetti, et al.
Science 31 May 2013: 340 (6136), 1086-1090. [DOI:10.1126/science.1233774]

This is a lovely example of how evolutionary change will occur without any new mutation arising simply because the environment has changed. I have shown before how it is not necessarily the information contained in the genome which needs to change but the meaning of that information as determined in the context of the environment in which it finds itself. See Evolution - The Meaning of Information and Rapid Human Evolution.

Over time, these Brazilian palms had evolved to have their seeds dispersed by a range of bird species by being eaten by them and excreted some distance away (neatly giving the seed a little fresh fertiliser to start in on its way in the process). Larger seeds obviously produce larger seedlings and so will have been favoured in areas where 'large-gape' birds were present because these birds could swallow large seeds whole, but, with other bird species present, which could disperse smaller seeds, there would have been little pressure on palms towards producing only large seeds; instead they produce a range of seed sizes.

But, in several areas, under human pressure in the last 100 years or so, many of these large-gape bird species have become locally extinct making it impossible for palms with larger seeds to get dispersed. Not surprisingly, in these areas, as this paper has demonstrated, palms have evolved to produce smaller seeds. With this human-induced environmental change, the relative frequency of alleles of genes favouring smaller seeds in these Brazilian palm trees has shifted - and that is all evolution is.

This reminds me of a similar though more drastic example of how humans can disturb a balanced ecosystem from the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius where several large frugivores (fruit eaters), including the Dodo and a species of giant tortoise have been exterminated by man, resulting in the near-extinction of several plants that depended on them. One such example was the relationship between the tambalacoque (Sideroxylon grandiflorum) or 'Dodo Tree' which was reported in 1973 as being near extinct with only 13 specimens having germinated since the Dodo went extinct 300 years earlier. This was an over-simplification and exaggerated the problem but never-the-less it serves to illustrate the point:

In 1973, the tambalacoque, also known as the "Dodo tree", was thought to be dying out on Mauritus, to which it is endemic. There were supposedly only 13 specimens left, all estimated to be about 300 years old. Stanley Temple hypothesised that it depended on the Dodo for its propagation, and that its seeds would germinate only after passing through the bird's digestive tract. He claimed that the tambalacoque was now nearly coextinct because of the disappearance of the Dodo. Temple overlooked reports from the 1940s that found that tambalacoque seeds germinated, albeit very rarely, without being abraded during digestion. Others have contested his hypothesis and suggested that the decline of the tree was exaggerated, or seeds were also distributed by other extinct animals such as Cylindraspis tortoises, fruit bats or the Broad-billed Parrot. According to Wendy Strahm and Anthony Cheke, two experts in the ecology of the Mascarene Islands, the tree, while rare, has germinated since the demise of the Dodo and numbers several hundred, not 13 as claimed by Temple, hence discrediting Temple's view as to the Dodo and the tree's sole survival relationship.

It has also been suggested that the Broad-billed Parrot may have depended on Dodos and Cylindraspis tortoises to eat palm fruits and excrete their seeds, which became food for the parrots. Anodorhynchus macaws depended on now-extinct South American megafauna in the same way, but now rely on domesticated cattle for this service.

Just another example of evolution in progress, driven as always by the environment selecting for fitness to survive in that environment and environmental change producing a change in allele frequency. If the Brazilian palms in question had not existed in the presence of a range of frugivorous birds but had been forced down an evolutionary path dictated by a single, or small number of, large-gaped species of birds, we would now be looking at impending local extinctions of these trees.

All in all, no evidence there of intelligent design, and all of it easily explained by Darwinian Evolution.

Source: Wikipedia - Dodo, diet

Reference:

Functional Extinction of Birds Drives Rapid Evolutionary Changes in Seed Size
Mauro Galetti, Roger Guevara, Marina C. Côrtes, Rodrigo Fadini, Sandro Von Matter, Abraão B. Leite, Fábio Labecca, Thiago Ribeiro, Carolina S. Carvalho, Rosane G. Collevatti, Mathias M. Pires, Paulo R. Guimarães Jr., Pedro H. Brancalion, Milton C. Ribeiro, and Pedro Jordano
Science 31 May 2013: 340 (6136), 1086-1090. [DOI:10.1126/science.1233774]

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Creationists Hit By Pebbles From Mars

Martian Fluvial Conglomerates at Gale Crater

Fascinating observations from Mars reported in this weeks edition of Science

Abstract
Observations by the Mars Science Laboratory Mast Camera (Mastcam) in Gale crater reveal isolated outcrops of cemented pebbles (2 to 40 millimeters in diameter) and sand grains with textures typical of fluvial sedimentary conglomerates. Rounded pebbles in the conglomerates indicate substantial fluvial abrasion. ChemCam emission spectra at one outcrop show a predominantly feldspathic composition, consistent with minimal aqueous alteration of sediments. Sediment was mobilized in ancient water flows that likely exceeded the threshold conditions (depth 0.03 to 0.9 meter, average velocity 0.20 to 0.75 meter per second) required to transport the pebbles. Climate conditions at the time sediment was transported must have differed substantially from the cold, hyper-arid modern environment to permit aqueous flows across several kilometers.

Martian Fluvial Conglomerates at Gale Crater; R. M. E. Williams, et al.
Science 31 May 2013: 340 (6136), 1068-1072. [DOI:10.1126/science.1237317]

What this means is that at some point in its history, Mars had flowing water with enough power to transport rocks and turn them into pebbles. Pebbles are formed as rocks rolling along in water knock against each other, wearing away any irregularities on their surface to make them smooth and rounded.

The pebbles on Mars have been there long enough to have become incorporated into concretions formed over time from the sand particles they were deposited in.

This has major implications for young-earth creationists who desperately cling to the biblical myth that Earth was created simultaneously with the rest of the Universe between six and ten thousand years ago and everything in the Universe was created exactly as we see it today.

One of their favourite claims is the Earth must have been specially and intelligently designed because it occupies the 'Goldilocks zone' around the Sun where water can exist in each of its three physical states - solid (ice), liquid (water) and gas (water vapour). Creationists claim that the probability of Earth occupying just this 'narrow' band around the Sun is vastly unlikely. This of course ignores the fact that life has evolved on Earth because Earth has the conditions for it to have evolved, and that it fits the conditions on Earth like a hand in a glove because that's what evolution by natural selection causes, as is explained by the Theory of Evolution.

Flowing water on Mars means these conditions existed there at some time too, so widening the 'Goldilocks zone' to include the orbit of Mars and so giving the lie to Creation pseudo-scientist calculations that the 'Goldilocks zone' is very narrow. In fact, the occurance of water in its three physical states on Earth are largely because of Earth's geology and meteorology - mass/gravity, atmosphere, atmospheric pressure, etc - just as when they existed on Mars it was due largely to Mars's geology and meteorology not Mars's distance from the Sun.

The existence of pebbles, which do not form over night, and, more importantly their inclusion in concretions of sand particles, formed with "minimal aqueous alteration" (i.e. after the water had either evaporated due to Mars's low gravity and thin atmosphere, or had become locked up in subterranean permafrost, speaks of a very old Mars, and certainly one more than a few thousand years old. This evidence for liquid water also raises the possibility of the Creationists' nightmare scenario of simple life having evolved on Mars. The search for that continues...

Creationists try to explain away deposits such as these on Earth as due to the Noachin Flood, sent by their god in a fit of temper, to kill all living things because of their 'wickedness'. Do they suppose a similar flood once killed all living things on Mars too, but their god didn't tell a Martian to build an Ark?

Or maybe the Flood reached up higher than the highest mountain on Earth and deluged the inner planets too, but avoiding the Moon which shows no such signs of flowing water.

I dare say one of their 'brilliant scientists' can explain it all...

Don't laugh. It isn't nice.

Reference:

Martian Fluvial Conglomerates at Gale Crater
R. M. E. Williams, J. P. Grotzinger, W. E. Dietrich, S. Gupta, D. Y. Sumner, R. C. Wiens, N. Mangold, M. C. Malin, K. S. Edgett, S. Maurice, O. Forni, O. Gasnault, A. Ollila, H. E. Newsom, G. Dromart, M. C. Palucis, R. A. Yingst, R. B. Anderson, K. E. Herkenhoff, S. Le Mouélic, W. Goetz, M. B. Madsen, A. Koefoed, J. K. Jensen, J. C. Bridges, S. P. Schwenzer, K. W. Lewis, K. M. Stack, D. Rubin, L. C. Kah, J. F. Bell III, J. D. Farmer, R. Sullivan, T. Van Beek, D. L. Blaney, O. Pariser, R. G. Deen, and MSL Science Team
Science 31 May 2013: 340 (6136), 1068-1072. [DOI:10.1126/science.1237317]

Life's a Beach: Rover Finds Mars Pebbles; Ian O'Neill, 31-May-2013.

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Another Victory For Human Decency

BBC News - Six Bosnian Croat ex-leaders convicted of war crimes

Hard on the heels of a victory for human rights in the European Court yesterday, when it was confirmed that being a Christian does not excuse abusing others and denying them human rights, comes confirmation that war crimes, even when committed in the name of religion, are not to be accepted in civilised societies.

The War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague today handed down sentences of between 10 and 25 years to six Bosnian Croat Orthodox Christians who had been convicted of war crimes against Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) and others in the former Yugoslav republic of Croatia during a series of conflicts following the breakup of Yugoslavia. The plan had been to 'ethnically cleanse' a mini state in Croatia in preparation for its incorporation into a 'Greater Bosnia'.

Those convicted were:

• Jadranko Prlic - leader of the self-proclaimed state of Herceg-Bosna - 25 years in jail.
• Bruno Stojic - former defence minister of the breakaway Herceg-Bosna - 20 years.
• Slobodan Praljak - former militia head - 20 years.
• Milivoj Petkovic - former militia head - 20 years.
• Valentin Coric - former commander of Bosnian Croat military police - 16 years.
• Berislav Pusic - ex-head of prisoner exchanges and detention facilities - 10 years.

As BBC Reporter Anna Holligan reports:

The judges ruled that murders, persecutions, rape and torture of Muslims "were not committed in a random manner by a few undisciplined soldiers" but were part of the plan to remove Muslims from the self-proclaimed Herceg-Bosna state in 1993-94.

They also said it was a religiously-motivated campaign, describing how mosques were blown up and Muslim prisoners were forced to recite Christian prayers.

Referring to the forcible expulsion of the Muslim population from the eastern part of the city of Mostar, the panel said: "Muslims were woken up in the middle of the night, beaten and forced to leave their apartments, often still in their pyjamas. Many women, including a girl of 16, were raped by HVO (Croatian Defence Council) soldiers".

The trial, which began in 2006, is the War Crimes Tribunal's longest running case. It represents yet another example of how religion is quickly losing its privileged position in Europe and abuses in its name will no longer be tolerated. The Humanist position, that all people deserve to be treated with respect and dignity by virtue of the simple fact that they are human beings, is quickly becoming the social norm and accepted as the only basis for a civilised society.

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Christianity Is No Excuse - ECHR

European Court of Human Rights refuses to hear appeals in three ‘Christian persecution’ cases » British Humanist Association:

Congratulations to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on confirming that even Christians can't deny basic human rights to others, at least in signatory countries to the European Human Rights Convention (EHRC). This will no doubt come as a great shock to many of them who still take for granted their former privileged place in Western society and who still assume their 'faith' gives them the right to persecute and oppress those with whom they disagree.

It get really Byzantine, so bear with me:

The (refused) appeal was by three Christians who lost their original case in the ECHR when they claimed it infringed their human rights to deny them the right to deny services to others on the grounds that they are Christians. They have previously claimed for unfair dismissal when they were sacked for refusing to treat people equally in the provision of services, and had lost in the English Courts. Britons have the right to take their case to the ECHR if they feel their human rights, as outlined in the EHRC, have been infringed. The ECHR is the final court of appeal for signatory countries.

Human Gene-Meme Co-Evolution

Culture and genetics intertwined.

Credit: Adapted from a sketch by Josh
(WWW.CARTOONSBYJOSH.COM)

In an article in this week's Science Journal, scientists Simon E. Fisher and Matt Ridley make a case for some aspects of human genetic evolution in the last 200,000 years to be the consequence of cultural evolution rather than, as is generally assumed, cultural evolution to be the consequence of genetic mutation.

Abstract
State-of-the-art DNA sequencing is providing ever more detailed insights into the genomes of humans, extant apes, and even extinct hominins (1–3), offering unprecedented opportunities to uncover the molecular variants that make us human. A common assumption is that the emergence of behaviorally modern humans after 200,000 years ago required—and followed—a specific biological change triggered by one or more genetic mutations. For example, Klein has argued that the dawn of human culture stemmed from a single genetic change that “fostered the uniquely modern ability to adapt to a remarkable range of natural and social circumstance” (4). But are evolutionary changes in our genome a cause or a consequence of cultural innovation.

Culture, Genes, and the Human Revolution; Simon E. Fisher and Matt Ridley

They cite examples such as Richard Wrangham's study showing how the discovery of cooking led to a change in the size of the human gut, the spread of the lactase-persistence gene facilitated by the availability of cattle milk as a consequence of cattle-herding about which I have previously blogged in Lacatose Tolerance and Creation 'Science' and higher alcohol tolerance among Europeans as a result of greater alcohol consumption in Europe, as compared to Asians.

Building Walls

Robert Frost
(March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963

Just been helping a neighbour repair a larch-lap fence between our gardens which the winds a few days ago brought down. It made me think of the poem "Mending Walls" by Robert Frost, about how we build walls between us and how acts of unspeakable brutality such as we saw in Woolwich, London last Wednesday are both caused by those walls and act to reinforce and 'mend' them.

Mending Walls

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

Robert Frost

What we saw in Woolwich was the result of alienation and disengagement; the result of generations of wall-building between the white and black communities in Britain. In the 1960s, disaffected youths found an outlet in gangs of 'Mods' and 'Rockers' or, with some of us, in extremist politics of the various brands of ultra-left 'Marxist' groups like the Stalinists, Leninists, Trotskyites and Maoists. In the 1930 it had been the Communists and the Fascists, in the 1950's the Teddy Boys and the Beatniks.

In Northern Ireland throughout most of the second half of the twentieth century, it had been Nationalism and 'the armed struggle' or Loyalism and Protestant Supremacy. We happily fragmented into Beatles fans, Rolling Stones fans, Bob Dylan fans, Folk, Blues, R&B, Jazz. You name it we could form an exclusive little group around it. Sometimes these were political; sometimes cultural.

Sometimes they ended up with people being killed because we forgot that, despite whatever group we identify with, the group to which we all belong is the Human group.

Human beings form groups. It's what we do. If we hadn't evolved that basic behaviour on the plains of East Africa a few million years ago, very probably before we were even humans, we wouldn't have survived. As lone individuals we would have been leopard food, scraping a living looking for roots and grubs and scavenging scraps from hyena and lion kills - if we were lucky and the vultures didn't beat us to them.

Circular Reasoning

I'm amazed that anyone needs to explain the logical fallacy of the circular argument but the frequency with which you see it being employed, often in all seriousness by (presumably) otherwise normally functioning adults to defend religion, suggest many people either genuinely don't understand it, or are using in dishonestly, hoping their audience won't understand it.

Circular reasoning (also known as paradoxical thinking or circular logic), is a logical fallacy in which "the reasoner begins with what he or she is trying to end up with". The individual components of a circular argument will sometimes be logically valid because if the premises are true, the conclusion must be true, and will not lack relevance. Circular logic cannot prove a conclusion because, if the conclusion is doubted, the premise which leads to it will also be doubted. Begging the question is a form of circular reasoning.

Two Emails

Compare and contrast there two emails: one from Conservative MP, Nicola Blackwood; the other from Labour MP, Tom Watson.

Nicola Blackwood, MP; Conservative.

The first is from my MP, Nicola Blackwood, Conservative MP for Oxford West West and Abingdon, in reply to an email from me urging her to vote for the third reading of Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill.

Dear ***************,

Thank you for writing to me about the third reading of Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill. In the event, I reluctantly voted against the Bill.

I have taken a great deal of time to engage closely with the detail of this Bill and met with constituents on all sides of the argument, including equal rights campaigners, religious leaders and Ministers to discuss concerns about the Bill's drafting and implications before coming to a conclusion about how to vote.

From the beginning my concerns have not centred on the issues surrounding the definition of marriage. As a strong supporter of civil partnerships and opponent of discrimination in all its forms, I have no principled objection to equal marriage in secular institutions. I abstained from voting in the Second Reading because although I support the principle of the Bill, my concerns about details of the legislation meant I felt I could not vote for it before there was a chance to address these concerns through debate and amendments.

Initially I was disappointed that this Bill did not extend civil partnerships to heterosexual couples and that is why I voted for amendments NC16 and NC16(a) which will provide a prompt review of civil partnerships legislation. I am pleased that this compromise has been reached as it gives hope to many couples who are currently excluded from civil partnerships and unprotected by the legal rights it offers. My only remaining concern on this issue is that the timeframe and scope of this review remain unclear at this point.

Unfortunately, however, my other concerns about the detail of the Bill, and its potential unintended consequences, have remained unresolved.

In particular, although I voted for two amendments that sought to ensure protection of religious freedom, these did not pass and were not accepted by the Government. In the light of this, and given the vastly contradictory legal opinions offered by Aidan O'Neil QC and Karon Monaghan QC of Matrix Chambers, two of the most pre-eminent human rights barristers in this country, about the strength of the protections provided to religious institutions by the Bill, I am not convinced that these protections will work if challenged in the ECtHR, as is very likely. If you would like me to send you a copy of these legal opinions I would be delighted to do so.

I voted against the Bill quite simply because I could not be sure that the measures in the Bill for the protection of religious freedom would work in the way the Government intends and because the amendments designed to strengthen these protections were not accepted.

I felt as though this Bill, through poor drafting and rushed consultation, had become a choice between religious freedom and equality. In the end, as a supporter of both, I could not find a way to support a Bill that did not guarantee the protection of both.
I do hope that this helps to explain my position. Please do get back in touch with me if I can be of further assistance on this or any other topic.

Kindest regards
Nicola

Needless to say, I have expressed my disappointment to Nicola Blackwood.

Tom Watson, MP; Labour.

The second is from Tom Watson, MP, sent to me as a Labour Party member.

***********,

It was wonderful to finally see the gay marriage bill pass through the House of Commons last night. I am delighted that we are so close to having equal marriage in our country, and so very proud of our party.

In the spirit of celebration, I wanted to share with you the story of one couple -- Emma and Hannah -- who are now looking forward to their wedding and to married life together. Their story, in their own words, is below.

Today is absolutely a day to celebrate, but we have a long road ahead of us.

Help us continue our fight for a fair, equal, one nation Britain: make a donation to the Labour Party now.

Thank you for all your support and hard work.

Best wishes,

Tom
@tom_watson

--

**********,
It's been eight years since I met my partner Hannah.

Since then, we've had the joy of watching some of our closest friends and family members get married. The one sadness for us was not knowing when -- or even if -- we would ever be able to make that commitment ourselves.

All we have ever wanted is for our relationship to be seen as equal and today we can see a future where we too will be able to get married.

To see the equal marriage legislation pass through the House of Commons yesterday was a huge moment for us, and we are incredibly grateful to all the politicians who supported it.

We know this moment would never have come without the Labour Party's unwavering support for and leadership on gay equality -- from repealing Section 28 to introducing civil partnerships.

We have never been more proud to be members of this party, and we just wanted to say thank you to everyone who's campaigned for and supported this bill.

With thanks,

Emma Norris and Hannah Stoddart

(Emma on the left in the photo, Hannah on the right)

These emails probably illustrate the fundamental differences between the Conservative and Labour Parties on the issue of Human rights and equality before the law.

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Evolution Of A Plague of Locusts

Magicicada adults and final stage nymphs.

Photo credit: Arthur D. Guilani

If it hasn't happened already, and you live in the Eastern USA, you are in for a rare treat very soon. Rare, that is if you regard once every 17 years as rare, and a treat if you like fair-sized insects that can make a sound approaching the decibel level of a pneumatic drill.

I'm talking about the emergence of the so-called 17-year locust. Actually, it isn't a locust at all, which is a member of the grass-hopper and cricket family, but a cicada, which is closer to the aphids. The first Europeans in America to witness an emergence had heard of biblical plagues of locusts but had no real idea what a locust was, and assumed they were witnessing a similar biblical plague and called the cicadas locusts.