Baby Beetles Evolve in 13 Generations

Sexton beetles, Nicrophorus vespilloides and larva

Credit: tomhouslay.com

Neglected baby beetles evolve greater self-reliance | Cambridge University Research News

How do you make your offspring grow big and strong?

If you are a sexton beetle, you feed them on dead mice, neglect them and let them fend for themselves. Well, not exactly their immediate offspring but the offspring of your 11 time great grandchildren who will evolve to be better at fending for themselves than those who are cared for, as this observed example of evolution in a laboratory shows.

Sexton beetles, Nicrophorus vespilloides, provide a useful service in the British countryside by burying the dead bodies of mice and other small vertebrates to create food for their offspring. They represent an intermediate level of parental care, between providing for all their needs and providing no care at all. Normally, the females remove the hair from the corpse and make cuts into the skin so their larvae can get into the body more easily. They will also bite off pieces of flesh and feed it to their larvae.

Fruitloops For Jesus

Pastor Paul Begley.
"They're out there you know! Coming to get us! Only Brett Kavanagh can save us!"

Paul Begley: Kavanaugh Allegations Represent 'The Darkest Hour in the Last 150 Years' | Right Wing Watch

A measure of their values and of their desperation to take over the American judiciary can be got from the hysterical response of fruitloop American Christians to the revelations about the character of their nominee for the vacant SCOTUS seat, the religious fundamentalist and right-wing political extremist, Brett Kavanaugh.

For example, here is fellow fruitloop, Pastor Paul Begley's hysterical outburst. Bear in mind that this is an adult speaking:

Catholic Abuse News - Why Francis and Benedict are Staying Silent

Why Francis and Benedict won't answer the accusations dividing their church - CNN

An intriguing insight into the Byzantine machinations in the highest echelons of the Catholic Church is beginning to emerge as the fall-out from the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report into Catholic clerical child abuse continues.

And it's becoming apparent why Pope Francis is under a self-imposed code of omerta concerning the allegations made by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò that both Pope Francis and his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, knew of the sexual abuses by disgraced Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick but allowed him to continue in his role as the senior American Catholic Cardinal.

Catholic Abuse News - The Vigilance of Bishop Timlin

Bishop James C. Timlin, Suffer little children.

Some Pa. Catholic priests impregnated the girls they abused,

Buried deep in the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report into Catholic child abuse in the state are some horrific stories that are only just coming to light.

One of them is the account of how a priest in Scranton diocese, Father Thomas D. Skotek, sexually abused a girl over a period of five years while serving as pastor of St. Casimir in Freeland, got her pregnant and arranged an abortion for her.

You might think those facts alone would be

Christians Tax-Free Lying for Jesus, Trump and the GOP

Pastor Terri Copeland Pearsons

Atheist Group Tells IRS to Investigate Church That Told Members to Vote for GOP | Hemant Mehta.

Eagle Mountain International Church's Terri Copeland Pearsons may have cost her father's money-making enterprise a hefty tax bill, if the Freedom From Religion Foundation's complaint to the IRS is upheld.

After turning the church into a political mouthpiece for Donald Trump and the GOP, in violation of the Johnson Amendment which removes the tax exempt, charitable status from churches that are openly partisan in their politics, Terri and her co-preacher Paula White, a 'spiritual advisor' to Donald Trump, boasted that since Trump became president they didn't need to bother about that because the Johnson Amendment has been abolished.

The only problem is, the Johnson Amendment has not been abolished and is still the law of the land. Trump promised to abolish it so the conservative Christian churches could have their greatest wish fulfilled so they could have the political power denied them by the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. They would, of course, without exception, support extreme right GOP candidates who would naturally be in hock to them and effectively in the pockets of church leaders like Kenneth Copeland and his daughter Terri. To date, however, Trump has failed to keep that promise.

This Week's Accidental Evidence for Evolution

Octopus bimaculoides

Credit: Tom Kleindinst/Marine Biological Laboratory

Octopuses Given Mood Drug ‘Ecstasy’ Reveal Genetic Link to Evolution of Social Behaviors in Humans.

As I've pointed out many times, biologists these days don't set out to find evidence for evolution any more so than physicists set out to find evidence for the Laws of Thermodynamics nor do chemists set out to prove the Atomic Theory. It just happens, because the theories are true, that whatever they do confirms the underlying theories.

This week for example we have a couple of papers that yet again casually confirm that the TOE is true and the only way to make sense of what can be seen.

Catholic Abuse News - Campaign to Blame the Gays

Bishop Robert Morlino of Madison, Wisconsin. "It was the gays!"

Credit: CNS/Jason Studnicka

U.S. Bishops Blame The Gays For Priests Raping Children, Cite ‘Homosexual Subculture’ | Michael Stone

The current frantic campaign by Catholics to try to combine their need to dissociate themselves from the crimes of paedophile and sexually predatory Catholic clergy with their desire to victimise and demonise homosexuals, did not start with Bill Donohue of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights; he was merely following the party line it seems.

It was the line also taken by Bishop Robert Morlino, Bishop of Madison, Wisconsin, last August when the Pennsylvania report detailing the abuse of over 1000 children by 300 Catholic priest in Pennsylvania was released. In a letter to his diocese Morlino said:

It is time to admit that there is a homosexual subculture within the hierarchy of the Catholic Church that is wreaking great devastation in the vineyard of the Lord...

New Book: A History of Ireland: How Religion Poisoned Everything

My new book, A History of Ireland: How Religion Poisoned Everything, is a bit of a departure for me, delving into other areas of interest - history and Ireland - and combining them into a coherent critique of religion and the harm it does.

Originally conceived many years ago as an objective background to the then prevalent 'troubles' in Northern Ireland, it quickly became inescapable that the underlying cause of them was religion. There are few if any other factors involved. There is no significant racial, linguistic or ethnic difference between what amounted to warring and mutually detesting communities.

The Catholics spoke English as did the Protestants, the 'Old English' had long been assimilated into the Catholic Irish community and the Protestants were mostly Scots whose divergence from the Celts of Ulster had been within the last 1500 years. Both communities now spoke predominantly English which had largely replaced a Goidelic Celtic language so similar and with such recent common origins that they amount to dialects of one another and are mutually intelligible.

The one major difference was religious, and yet the differences ran so deep that the two communities maintained a virtual apartheid; one faction seeing the other as a lesser people destined to be for ever ruled over by the other and that faction seeing the other as usurpers, occupying their ancestral homelands. A hatred that ran so deep that it became more important to avenge some half-legendary wrong done to grandparents than to ensure a peaceful future for grandchildren. A hatred that cost 3000 lives and gained not an inch of territory and not a single significant political concession.

Texas Mormons For Child Abuse

Sam Young - Excommunicated for defending children.

The Mormon Church Just Excommunicated a Man Who Was Trying to Protect Children | Hemant Mehta.

Like so many other Christian churches, the Mormons also have a problem with child abuse and, like other church authorities where the cat is out of the bag and the abuses they thought they were hiding from public view are now common knowledge, the Mormons are acting swiftly. They have taken decisive steps to ensure it carries on by excommunicating a member, Sam Young, who has been campaigning to stop it.

Phoenix Pastor Abusing Girls For Years

Jose Vicente Morales. Pastor of the Iglesia Cristiana Impacto de Fe, Poenix, Arizona

Phoenix pastor sentenced to prison for molesting underage girls.

I'm not sure if this will give Catholics any comfort, but it seems their priests are not the only ones who use the trusted access their position gives them to abuse minors and vulnerable adults.

51 year-old Jose Vicente Morales, pastor of the Iglesia Cristiana Impacto de Fe, a small, primarily Spanish-speaking church in Phoenix, Arizona, USA, was doing exactly that throughout the 1990 and again between 2007 and 2011.

He was sentenced to 12 year in prison followed by a life-time on probation by Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Warren Granville, last Monday, having been arrested in 2016. His offences came to light when one of his victims, then aged 17, began self-harming and told her mother that Morales had been sexually abusing her since the age of 12. Another victim gave evidence that he sexually abused her regularly when she was between the ages of 7 and 12. Her mother was also sexually abused Morales when she was a child.

Pando - Something for Creationists to Ponder

Pando, the Word’s Heaviest Organism, is an Ever-Growing Witness of an Ancient Earth – Naturalis Historia

What is the world's oldest living and almost certainly the heaviest organism?

No it's not the blue whale, a mere minnow by comparison, or 'Methuselah', the 4850 year-old bristlecone pine tree from California and nor is it General Sherman, the giant sequoia or redwood tree.

It is in fact, Pando, a clone of trembling aspen, Populus tremuloides, around Fish Lake in Central Utah, USA. It gets its name from the Spanish for 'I spread' because of the extensive spread of what has been shown to be a clone of all males trees (so they can only reproduce vegetatively, by root suckers). The total weight of this organism is estimated to be 13 million pounds (5900 metric tonnes).

Pope's Popularity Takes a Tumble

Pope Francis Favorability Down Sharply in U.S. | Gallop.

Although Pope Francis still maintains a positive approval rating amongst Americans, the 53% approval recorded by Gallop between 4-12 September this year masks what amounts to a major shift in perception of his 'approvability' by non-Catholic Americans.

Amongst this group his approval has fallen 18 percentage points in the month since the publication of the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report, from 63% (and from a high of 72% recorded in February 2014), to the present low of 45%.

174 Million Year-Old Dinosaur Fossil Adds New Information

Artist's impression of dinosaur Lingwulong shenqi

Credit: Zhang Zongda

A new Middle Jurassic diplodocoid suggests an earlier dispersal and diversification of sauropod dinosaurs | Nature Communications

From this week's research papers we have a very nice example of how science is an ever developing picture of reality and a very nice example of a new species of dinosaur.

Despite the sensational headlines, this one doesn't really mean we have to forget everything we ever thought we knew; nor does it mean all the textbooks are going to need to be re-written. It means that what we thought we knew turns out to be not quite right and maybe a paragraph or two will need to be added or altered in the next edition of a book on the evolution of the sauropod dinosaurs.

Catholic Abuse News - Another Bishop Resigns

Bishop Michael J. Bransfield, under investigation

Pope accepts resignation of US bishop accused of sexual harassment | CatholicHerald.co.uk

Only hours after announcing an investigation into 'financial irregularities' (i.e fraud, embezzlement and money-laundering) in the running of the Sistine Chapel Choir, Pope Francis had to accept the resignation of yet another bishop involved in a sexual abuse scandal.

This time, as the self-inflicted implosion in the American Catholic Church gathers pace, the bishop to offer his resignation is Bishop Michael Bransfield of Wheeling-Charleston, West Virginia. In a slightly unusual and somewhat refreshing variation on the usual sexual abuse and coverup scandal, Bishop Bransfield's victims were adults whom he allegedly sexually harassed.

Discord in the Vatican as Sistine Choir is Investigated

Don Perosi with his scuola di canto (singschool) c. 1905.

Source: Wikipedia

Sistine Chapel Choir under investigation for money laundering | World news | The Guardian

"When sorrows come they come not single spies but in battalions." (Hamlet Act IV, Scene V)

"To be or not to be? That is the question. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take up arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing, end them." (Hamlet Act III, Scene I)

"Get thee to a nunnery; why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?" (Hamlet Act III, Scene I)

As poor Pope Francis contemplates the advancing battalions of sorrows and tries to work out whether and how to take up arms against then or suffer yet more slings and arrows, taking himself off to a nunnery must seem like a tempting option.

This time, it's not yet another few hundred of his priests, bishops and cardinals exposed for routine abuse of another thousand or two children and concealing crimes from the law enforcement and child protection authorities; it's something much closer to home involving choir boys - in the Sistine Chapel Choir.

New Jersey Catholic Abuse Hotline Swamped

New Jersey Atorney General, Gurbir S. Grewal
"We're not going to protect those individuals who perpetrated these crimes any more."

New Jersey Priest Abuse Hotline Gets So Many Calls That People Can’t Get Through | David G. McAfee.

In a measure of the scale of the problem, the hotline established in New Jersey for reporting cases of Catholic priests abusing children and vulnerable adults was so overwhelmed with calls in the first few hours that people found it difficult to get through. Extra staff were brought in to cope.

According to this report, calls to the toll-free hotline number (855) 363-6548, are now being answered promptly.

The hotline was established by the office of Attorney General, Gurbir S. Grewal, who has set up a taskforce to investigate allegations of sexual abuse by Catholic priests in the state of New Jersey, following the shocking Pennsylvania Grand Jury report, which revealed abuse by predatory paedophile priests and routine cover-up on a massive scale in every diocese in the state.

Spokesperson for the New Jersey Criminal Justice Department, Peter Aseltine, acknowledged the problem and explained that some calls were reporting multiple instances of abuse.

I Learned Something New Today

Leo Behe

I learned something new today; something I should have known but which had obviously passed me by unnoticed.

It's not something I'm proud of; I should have known and I'm ashamed I didn't! I have learned my lesson, reflected on my failure and will try harder in future.

I learned that Michael J. Behe's son is an Atheist.

Michael J. Behe is of course the famous inventor of the notion of intelligent design for the Discovery Institute and notoriously pedals the idea relentlessly, pushing ideas that have been refuted and frequently making unsupported claims about science papers that the authors themselves refute. He is also notorious for what PZ Myers describes as the fireship for the creation industry, launched into the wind and causing court cases in which he is brought in as an expert witness for creationism to crash and burn.

Now it seems his son Leo doesn't believe a word of his claims either.

You can read his very thoughtful account of his journey from home-schooled indoctrinate Catholicism and Behe Snr's brand of creationism here. Below are just a few quotes to whet your appetites.

Catholic Abuse News - Now It's The Dutch

Dutch Catholic church accused of widespread sexual abuse cover-up | World news | The Guardian.

The standard techniques of cover-up and concealment of clerical abuse of children was used extensively in the Netherlands, so a report in today's, Guardian claims.

Quoting a report in National Catholic Reporter, the report says that:

Over the course of 65 years, 20 of 39 Dutch cardinals, bishops and their auxiliaries “covered up sexual abuse, allowing the perpetrators to cause many more victims. Four [of them] abused children and 16 others allowed the transfer of paedophile priests who could have caused new victims in other parishes".

Catholic Abuse News - Germans Do it Too

Cardinal Reinhard Marx
Working with PR advisers on best way to present the report.

Catholic Church in Germany: Study Counts 3677 Abuse Victims - SPIEGEL ONLINE

It might be some consolation to Catholics in the USA, Australia, Ireland, Chile, Mexico, etc, to know that their children are not the only ones at risk from predatory Catholic priests. According to a report in Spiegel Online (which suffers slightly from Google Translate), German children also are, and have been since at least 1946.

According to a confidential report leaked to Der Spiegel, between 1946 and 2014, 3677 mostly male children were molested by 1670 Catholic priests and the figure could be double that. More than half of the victims were aged 13 or less; one in six were raped and three quarters of them were in a church or pastoral relationship with their abuser.

Evolution of Social Insects

Ooceraea biroi clonal raider ants with larvae.

Photo: Romain Libbrecht

A study of ants provides information on the evolution of social insects.

Far from the forlorn claims of creationist that the Theory of Evolution is a theory in crisis, as this recent paper shows, other than citing magic (which by making anything possible, makes any claim meaningless and useless), evolution is the only way to make sense of the natural world.

This example comes from the insect world and in particular the world of eusocial species of the insect sub-order, hymenoptera. It explains how some species of the bees, wasps and ants for colonies in which one female, or sometimes a small number of females, are the reproducing members of the colony while the vast bulk of the colony are sterile worker females.

Why this system arose is easy to explain in evolutionary terms - it gives more descendants. What has been harder to explain is just how this system arose. As the press release from Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany explained: