Covidiot News - SCOTUS Does Its Bit to Keep the Covidiot Trumpanzee Cull Going

Donald Trump, Republicans Rejoice as Supreme Court Knocks Down Biden Vaccine Mandate

Donald Trump's efforts to turn SCOTUS into a partisan, Repugnican tool, paid of yesterday as his appointed majority voted as a block to overturn President Biden's rule requiring employers with more than 100 employees to mandate their employees to either be vaccinated against COVID-19 or submit a weekly negative test before being allowed to enter the workplace. As expected, SCOTUS voted along partisan lines with Trump's appointees doing their master's bidding and voting to thwart efforts to control the spread of the virus. The mandate for workers at federally-funded healthcare facilities will be allowed to continue.

Trumpanzee Insurrection - How Close They Came to a Full Coup D'etat on 6th Jan 2021.

Elmer Stewart Rhodes III,
Founder of the American neo-Nazi 'Oath Keepers' domestic terrorist group
Charged with sedition

“Seditious Conspiracy” Charges Against Oath Keepers Mark a Major Advance in January 6 Investigation – Mother Jones

According to this report and the US Department of Justice, FBI agents have arrested the founder and leader of the neo-Nazi terrorist group, the Oath Keepers, Stewart Rhodes, 56, of Granbury, Texas, on a charge of sedition in connection with the failed coup d’état at the Capitol on Jan 6th, 2021. FBI agents also arrested Oath Keepers member, Edward Vallejo, 63, of Phoenix, Arizona, on the same charges.

According to the Department of Justice:

New Spheres of Knowledge on the Origin of Life - University of Tsukuba

Researchers from the University of Tsukuba, Japan, in collaboration with East China Normal University, show that Escherichia coli cells become spherical when grown in conditions mimicking a primordial environment.

Image by Maximillian cabinet/Shutterstock

New Spheres of Knowledge on the Origin of Life - University of Tsukuba.

The point of this piece of research is not only what it tells us about the probable morphology of the earliest cells but what happened next.

It has long been assumed that the earliest cells would have been the simplest structures for maximal exchange of nutrients and waste with their environment and this would have been small spheres, since these give the maximal surface area to volume ratio. However, that remained an assumption until this experiment showed how a primordial environment would have favoured it.

The really interesting thing, however, is how the resultant organisms continued to diversify into, in this case, six distinct lines, with different sets of mutations all being selected to give the same advantages in that environment. This is perhaps best explained by the Tsukuba University press release:

Talibangelical News - A Fundamentalist Christian Theocracy is a Little Closer in South Dakota

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem delivering the State of the State address on Jan. 11, 2022.

Photo: Erin Woodiel/The Argus Leader via AP

Noem to push abortion ban after 6 weeks, conservative vision

The dream of every American evangelical Christian is to have control of the entire United States, at least in the short-term with world-domination to follow, backed up by a nuclear arsenal capable of destroying the world several times over.

This much was obvious from a the PRRI 2021 American Values Survey in which 57% of white evangelical Protestants stated a preference that Christianity should be the predominant religion in the USA. Only 13% had a preference for religious diversity.

Homophobic Archbishop Demoted as Vatican Civil War Hots Up

Archbishop Giacomo Morandi,
former Secretary for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Source: Catholic Herald

Pope demotes Vatican official who championed statement against blessings of same-sex couples - Catholic Herald.

In a move which has focussed attention on the struggle within the Catholic Church as it tries desperately to modernise and come more into line with recent developments in cultural morality, the Pope has demoted the former Secretary for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), Archbishop Giacomo Morandi, an old-school homophobe, widely believed to be the author of a document instructing Catholic churches not to bless same sex marriages on the grounds that "God cannot bless sin", despite Pope Francis' attempt to liberalise the Church and welcome same sex couples into it, if not to specifically conduct same sex marriages, to try to give the traditionally homophobic church a more LGBTQ-friendly face.

The Church's intolerant homophobia is often cited as a reason for leaving the church as the Catholic Church, in common with other Christian churches, continues to haemorrhage members throughout the developed world. The call to allow the blessing of same-sex marriages had come from several German bishops in response to their declining congregations.

In the document, Morandi had claimed the Pope had been informed of its contents and had given his consent to it, yet Francis was reportedly taken by surprise by it. Francis is either finding it difficult to keep up or trying to ride two horses, or Morandi was lying. Morandi is also believed to have opposed another reform initiated by Pope Francis, intended to restrict further the celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass.

Archbishop Morandi has been appointed bishop of a small Italian diocese of Reggio Emilia-Guastalla, although he will be allowed to retain his Archbishop title "ad personam", so not so much a punishment as a reduction in his work-load.

However, the Vatican has moved to deny that the effective demotion has anything to do with the reactionary document, so trying to minimise the impression of an internal civil war in the Vatican between the old guard and the reformers led by Pope Francis, by portraying it as nothing more significant than a simple reorganization. According to this report in the Catholic Herald:

Some of this was fuelled by a meeting between Archbishop Morandi and Pope Francis on December 18, the day when further restrictions against the Latin Mass were announced in a highly-controversial responsa to a dubia about Traditionis custodes, the Holy Father’s motu proprio limiting the Extraordinary Form of the Mass.

But Vatican sources told The Pillar website that his departure is not directly connected to the responsa, which introduced further restrictions – prompting questions about its legality – and that such speculation was “nonsensical”.

They say his move is most likely simply the first steps of a reshuffle which will allow the Pope to ultimately appoint Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta to the CDF and prepare him to take over as head of the dicastery when Jesuit Cardinal Luis Ladaria, the prefect who turns 78 in April, steps down from office.

One source said Morandi’s appointment was a way of “making room” at the CDF for the promotion of Archbishop Scicluna, an experienced canon lawyer and ally of the Pope, who at present serves as adjunct-secretary of the department.

It is generally agreed however that Archbishop Morandi was instrumental in the publication of the responsum ad dubium to a question about the legitimacy of liturgical blessings for same-sex couples.

However, although allowed to retain his title, being appointed to head up a minor diocese in southern Italy from his position as a senior member of the Curia and someone who would normally be expected to be appointed as a cardinal and promoted to head of the CDF, can't honestly be presented as anything other than a ritual humiliation and a warning to other die-hards not to oppose Pope Francis.

Covidiot News - Another Cleric Catches Covid After Attending a Super-Spreader Event

Patriarch Porfirije, Head of the Serbian Orthodox Church

AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic

Head of Serbian Orthodox Church tests positive for virus

The Head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, 60-year-old Patriarch Porfirije, has tested positive for COVID-19 after attending a super-spreader event last Sunday in Republika Srpska, the Serb-run part of neighbouring Bosnia, established as an autonomous republic at the end of the war following the collapse of Yugoslavia, in which Serbian Orthodox Christian forces, with the support and encouragement of the Orthodox Church, indulged in ethnic cleansing and genocide against Bosniak Moslems. Last Sunday (January 7) was the Serbian Orthodox Christmas.

Patriarch Porfirije's immediate predecessor, Patriarch Irinej, died of COVID-19 but the Serbian Orthodox Church has continued to hold masses in which few participants wear masks, despite the rapidly-spreading omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2.

Weekly Covid-19 cases (top) and deaths (bottom), Serbia

Source: Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center

Last week there were 47,749 new cases and 152 deaths in a population of 7 million. Since the pandemic started, there have been 1.3 million cases in Serbia, of which nearly 13,000 have died.

According to Reuters, a number of Serbian Orthodox clergy have contracted the coronavirus since early 2020, including Irinej and Metropolitan Amfilohije, the church’s patriarch in neighbouring Montenegro who died from the respiratory disease last October. Despite the pandemic, the Orthodox Church - with some 12 million faithful mainly in Serbia, Bosnia and Montenegro, has continued religious services and most of its clerics including Porfirije have appeared in public without face masks.

In common with other Christian churches and other religions, the Orthodox Church has been a major factor in spreading the coronavirus by continuing to hold mass gatherings in which social distancing and wearing face masks is generally ignored or even discouraged. Consequently, despite early pronouncements that the pandemic was a punishment from God, selectively directed at unbelievers, Clerics of all religions, and worshippers at their services have been some of the people most at risk from dying of the virus, yet they have continued to demand special exemptions from any measures to mitigate the pandemic, believers apparently believing their piety gives them special protection.

The reality is that the most pious are also the least likely to be vaccinated, the most likely to catch the virus, the most likely to spread the virus to others and the most likely to die from COVID-19.

Unintelligent Design News - Hawkmoths Use Beetles to Protect Themselves From Parasitic Wasps.

Egg-laying Manduca sexta female. The moth is bending its abdomen to the underside of the leaf to lay an egg. On the leaf at the top of the image, a deposited egg can already be seen on the left edge.

Danny Kessler, Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology

Unexpected benefits from food competitors | Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology

Imagine you're a Creationist fraud, trying to convince your dupes that biological diversity only happens because an intelligent, supernatural designer designs it that way and you're presented with the following example. The question is, how on earth can you present it as the work of an omniscient, omnipotent intelligence which is in full conformity with the Bible's account of a supposedly omni-benevolent designer God, as required by the Creationist oath and to ensure you get paid?

The example you'd need to explain is that of the gravid tobacco hawkmoths, Manduca sexta, that is dependent on the presence of a competitor for food resources, the three-lined potato beetle, Lema daturaphila, on the plants on which it chooses to lay its eggs, because the presence of these beetles makes the plant less easily detectable for the endo-parasitic wasp, Cotesia congregata. The wasps prefer plants not infested with the beetle, preferring instead those infested only by the hawkmoth - a difference they detect by scent receptors. The plants emit different odours depending on which insect is eating their leaves. In the case of infestation by Lema daturaphila, the plants emit α-copaene, one of about 70 odours, for which the moths have receptors.

This was discovered by scientists working at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, Jena, Germany, led by Dr. Markus Knaden. Here is how the Max Planck Institute press release explains it:

A research team at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology has found that gravid tobacco hawkmoths (Manduca sexta) show an unusual preference for Datura plants that are already infested with leaf beetles when laying their eggs. The beetles and their larvae actually compete with tobacco hornworms, the larvae of Manduca, for food. Plants infested by beetles change their odor profile and increase the production of the substance alpha-copaene, making them, however, more attractive to tobacco hawkmoths. Despite food competition, tobacco hornworms seem to benefit from their mothers’ choice of such host plants because in the presence of beetles and their larvae they are better protected from parasitic wasps that avoid beetle-infested plants. The researchers were also able to identify the tobacco hawkmoths' olfactory receptor that controls this behavior (Current Biology, doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2021.12.021)

By choosing the best possible oviposition site, many insects set the course for the best possible development of their offspring: There should be enough food available and the larvae that hatch from the eggs should be as safe as possible from pathogens and predators. In an earlier study, the research team led by Markus Knaden and Bill Hansson from the Department of Evolutionary Neuroethology had already been able to demonstrate that tobacco hawkmoths avoid laying their eggs on plants where they smell the feces of their conspecifics. "This is apparently their way of avoiding food competition. Therefore, we wondered whether the moths also avoid plants infested by other herbivorous insects," first author Jin Zhang summarizes the question of the current study.

To be honest, we were a little frustrated at first because we had expected the experiments to confirm our initial hypothesis, namely that egg-laying tobacco hawkmoths avoid food competitors. In our case, however, the unexpected observation suddenly made sense when we realized that beetle-infested plants smell quite differently and that parasitoid wasps, which often use plant odors to find their host insects, are less efficient at detecting tobacco hornworms on beetle-infested plants.

Dr. Markus Knaden, Co-senior author. Project leader
Department of Evolutionary Neuroethology
Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, Jena, Germany

However, behavioral experiments with sacred datura (Datura wrightii), which were infested by the three-lined potato beetle Lema daturaphila, resulted in an unexpected surprise: Quite obviously, female tobacco hawkmoths even preferentially laid their eggs on these Datura plants, compared to plants that were not infested by the beetles.

In nature, it is not always possible to avoid all dangers and at the same time select a place with abundant food. For example, studies suggest that up to 90% of Manduca sexta caterpillars are parasitized by the wasp Cotesia congregata. This parasitoid wasp lays its eggs in the caterpillars and transmits pathogens. Parasitized tobacco hornworms usually die, when the wasps’ offspring hatches.

The researchers used this knowledge to study the seemingly strange behavior of the tobacco hawkmoths in more detail. They analyzed the odor Datura plants emit when they are infested by three-lined potato beetles and compared it with control plants without infestation. And, finally, they noticed an unusual increase of the substance alpha-copaene in the plants' odor bouquet.

How the moths detect and process this odor was the next question the team answered. Since tobacco hawkmoths have about 70 odorant receptors that would be potential candidates for detecting alpha-copaene, it would have been very time-consuming to test them all individually. Instead, a combination of complex molecular methods allowed the scientists to reduce the number of candidates from about 70 to 6, and finally identify Or35 as the odorant receptor activated by alpha-copaene and probably involved in oviposition.

Our results show that in nature, simple explanations are often not sufficient. Tobacco hawkmoths do not only have to take into account, whether a plant is a good food substrate for their offspring, but also whether potential competitors are already present, and whether the presence of these competitors could even help to hide from predators.

Bill Hansson, Co-senior author.
Department of Evolutionary Neuroethology
Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, Jena, Germany.

The researchers also examined the odor-guided behavior of the parasitoid wasps. Choice experiments in which the wasps could choose between two odors revealed, on the one hand, that Cotesia congregata wasps preferred the odor of plants on which tobacco hawkworms were feeding to control plants. On the other hand, these behavioral assays also demonstrated that the wasps avoided the odor of plants that were infested by Lema daturaphila beetles. These results were confirmed by assays in an experimental tent containing Datura plants infested only by tobacco hawkmoths or by tobacco hawkmoths and beetles. Wasps also avoided plants with beetles in this setting.

Although the development of tobacco hornworms on plants that are additionally infested by beetles is impaired in comparison to the development of caterpillars on non-infested plants, the mother moths accept this disadvantage when laying their eggs. The advantage of protecting their offspring from parasitic wasps must therefore outweigh the disadvantage of food competition. Such cost-benefit trade-offs play a significant role in many ecological interactions.

Why Datura plants emit different odor depending on the insects that feed on them will be addressed in further studies. Both Manduca sexta caterpillars and the larvae of the three-lined potato beetle Lema daturaphila are chewing insects and cause similar damage to plant tissue. Presumably, microorganisms in the oral secretions of the animals play a role. Interdisciplinary approaches that also focus, for example, on the role of microorganisms in these complex interactions may help to uncover further exciting aspects of the multifaceted interactions between living organisms.

. Sadly, the team's paper published in Current Biology, is behind an expensive paywall, however, their abstract and the paper's highlights are available here and a PDF format version of the entire paper can be downloaded from here.

There is obviously a lot here to unpack for any would-be Creationist fraud to try to explain to a potential dupe:

1. Why would an intelligent designer, even a malevolent one, go to the trouble of creating the Cotesia congregata wasp to predate on the hawkmoth, then give the hawkmoth a way to defend itself against predation by the wasp?
2. Why is the best way for the moth to defend itself, to actively seek out a plant on which a competitor for food for the growing offspring is already feeding, instead of making the wasp find the odour given off by the plants infested by the moth distasteful and therefore repellent? In other words, why involve the beetles at all?
3. Why would an intelligent designer create a parasitic wasp then give its preferred prey species a preference for plants being consumed by a competitor species so making the prey larvae less fit due to the competition, and harder for the parasite to detect?
4. Why does the supposedly intelligent designer appear to be having an evolutionary arms race with itself?
5. If the team are right in their suspicion that it is microorganisms carried by the different insects that cause the plant to produce these odours, so explaining the differences, then why go to such needless complexity to achieve a result that could be achieved without the microorganisms, and so with far less complexity?
6. Why is this apparently malevolent stupidity and poor design a better explanation than that implied by the research team, namely, the dynamic result of competing evolutionary pressures where there is a trade-off for the moth between choosing competition for food and less predation on the one hand, and more food but a high risk of predation on the other; and for the parasitic wasp in choosing moth larvae which are less likely to thrive due to competition for food, because these plants are easier for it to detect than plants were the moth larvae have no such competition?

To evolutionary biologists, and to anyone with a desire to understand how the world works, these results of competing evolutionary forces are endlessly fascinating and drive a desire to understand more and more. To a Creationist, the best they can offer is a self-deceiving strategy for coping with the resulting cognitive dissonance that I wrote about recently in order to maintain their counter-factual delusion. The probability is that, as one of their coping strategies, they will try to explain it all as the result of some mythical 'sin' by humans, who are totally unafected by this complex of relationships and for which they can offer no rational, testable mechanism, so blowing the gaff on the sharade that Creationism is an alternative science and not fundamentalist religious superstition in disguise.

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Covidiocy, Conspiracism and Creationist Self-Deception Explained

Why people deceive themselves - Newsportal - Ruhr-Universität Bochum

Hard though it can be to understand, the reason people such as antivaxx covidiots, conspiracy theorists and Creationists, hold onto patently idiotic and counter-factual opinions has been explained as a process of self-deception by two researchers from Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB), Germany and the University of Antwerp, Belgium.

In a paper published on 6 January, 2022, in the journal Philosophical Psychology, Dr. Francesco Marchi and Professor Albert Newen describe four strategies used to stabilise and shield the positive self-image. According to their theory, self-deception helps people to stay motivated in difficult situations. Of course, self-deception is common to all people and not confined to those who hold wackadoodle opinions, but the way they hold doggedly to those patently wrong beliefs is understandable as a strategy for coping with cognitive dissonance.

Evolution News - Science Does it Again! Creationism Refuted by Australian Fossil Discoveries

Fossils from McGraths Flat
Left: a spider. Right: a feather.

Life in the ‘dead’ heart of Australia - The Australian Museum

Two of the major problems Creationism, especially the Young Earth variety, has never been able to overcome are:

1. The lack of evidence for their assertions.
2. The abundant evidence that the childish notion is wrong.

But, since Creationist are well versed in avoiding these problems, the discovery of even more evidence for 2 is unlikely to have much influence on them. Besides, the true test of a dedicated Creationist, of any variety, is that nothing can make them change their mind, because to them, 'faith' trumps even glaringly obvious evidence. In fact, many of them spend vast amounts of time online trying to prove that to themselves and others because the thought that they could be wrong is an existential threat that must be resisted at all costs.

So, here is that evidence for 2, from Australia, as described in an Australian Museum news release:

Malevolent Designer News - How Creationism's Beloved Sadist Created Another Pandemic

Vibrio cholerae

Tracking down the origin of cholera pandemics | Max-Planck-Gesellschaft

Creationist mode:

The Coronavirus pandemic is not the only one the world is currently experiencing. It is not generally known in the developed world where clean drinking water has made it a rare disease, but we have been in the midst of a cholera pandemic since 1961 - the seventh in a series of cholera pandemics known to science.

The organism that causes it is a nasty little bacterium known as Vibrio cholerae. It kills around 95,000 people a year and makes another 2.3 million people sick.

Now scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön, Germany, and the Institute for Experimental Medicine, Christian-Albrecht University, Kiel, Germany, in collaboration with colleagues from the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, City College New York, USA and the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, Texas, USA, have shown how small tweaks to the bacterial genome may have played a role in the emergence of the seventh pandemic.

The strain causing the current pandemic, known as the El Tor biotype, has a molecular mechanism to help them kill rival bacteria known as the "Type VI secretion system" (T6SS) with which it can inject toxins into rival cells. This was lacking in earlier versions of V. cholerae, so the newer type was able to predominate in the competition for resources.

As any Creationists will tell you, molecular systems such as the T6SS must be designed by an intelligent [sic] designer, so none of that would have happened had not their beloved pestilential, genocidal god not intended it to. This is the same designer who designed the flagellum which enables V. cholerae to be more effective at killing us.

Creationist mode:

However, because they understand the science, the scientists attribute these changes to a mindless natural process called evolution. In the Max Planck Gesellschaft news article explains:

With these findings, we support the theory that microbial competition between bacteria is very important for understanding pathogens and bacterial pandemics. Our research on the cholera bacterium was made possible by an S2 laboratory newly established at the institute. Here, we can conduct experiments with bacterial pathogens under the necessary safety precautions. The study contains some of the first data from the new laboratory.

Daniel Unterweger, co-author
Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, Plön, Germany
And the Institute for Experimental Medicine, Christian-Albrecht University, Kiel, Germany

In their natural environment, bacteria are subject to competition with other bacteria for space and nutrients. In this process, molecular mechanisms help them to hold their own. One such mechanism is the so-called "type 6 secretion system" (T6SS), with which a bacterium transports toxic proteins into a neighboring bacterium and thereby kills it. Thus, cholera bacteria of the seventh pandemic use their T6SS to keep other bacteria in check and presumably more easily cause infection.

Researchers now had the special opportunity to study the T6SS of cholera bacteria from previous pandemics. For this purpose, among other things, the T6SS genome sequence of cholera bacteria from the 2nd pandemic was reconstructed from a museum specimen from the 19th century in a complex procedure and recreated in the laboratory.

In the process, the scientists were able to show that 2nd and 6th pandemic cholera bacteria lack a functional T6SS. As a result, the bacteria of earlier pandemics not only lack the ability to attack other bacteria, they are themselves killed by bacterial strains of the seventh pandemic. This may have been one of the reasons that older cholera strains were displaced by modified cholera strains of the seventh pandemic and are now hard to find.

A Maximum likelihood tree based on core-genome SNP sites of indicated V. cholerae strains. Insertions, deletions and nucleotide substitutions are noted. Classical strains with the same mutations in the large cluster of the T6SS and TsiV1 are highlighted in the same colour. The horizontal bars indicate the mean. B Schematic representation of the sequential acquisition of T6SS mutations among representative classical V. cholerae strains. Arrows highlight the specific changes to the T6SS gene cluster.

Kostiuk, Benjamin; Santoriello, Francis J.; Diaz-Satizabal, Laura; et al (2022)

The team's findings are published, open access, in Nature Communications:

Abstract

The gram-negative bacterium Vibrio cholerae is the causative agent of the diarrhoeal disease cholera and is responsible for seven recorded pandemics. Several factors are postulated to have led to the decline of 6th pandemic classical strains and the rise of El Tor biotype V. cholerae, establishing the current 7th pandemic. We investigated the ability of classical V. cholerae of the 2nd and 6th pandemics to engage their type six secretion system (T6SS) in microbial competition against non-pandemic and 7th pandemic strains. We report that classical V. cholerae underwent sequential mutations in T6SS genetic determinants that initially exposed 2nd pandemic strains to microbial attack by non-pandemic strains and subsequently caused 6th pandemic strains to become vulnerable to El Tor biotype V. cholerae intraspecific competition. The chronology of these T6SS-debilitating mutations agrees with the decline of 6th pandemic classical strains and the emergence of 7th pandemic El Tor V. cholerae.

Kostiuk, Benjamin; Santoriello, Francis J.; Diaz-Satizabal, Laura; Bisaro, Fabiana; Lee, Kyung-Jo; Dhody, Anna N.; Provenzano, Daniele; Unterweger, Daniel; Pukatzki, Stefan
Type VI secretion system mutations reduced competitive fitness of classical Vibrio cholerae biotype
Nature Communications 12, 6457 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-26847-y

Copyright: © 2022 The authors. Published by Springer Nature Ltd.
Open access
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

Clearly, devotees of Creationism's putative intelligent [sic] designer have some explaining to do now. Their problem is that systems like the T6SS the El Tor biotype of V. cholerae is equipped with are normally waved around as evidence of irreducible complexity, so they are denied the claim that somehow 'sin' creates these mechanisms, not their magic god, who is powerless to prevent it, apparently. But then, since it was pointed out when Michael J Behe started to claim the bacterial flagellum must have been intelligently designed because it is supposedly irreducibly complex', that it had been known for some time that the flagellum was almost certainly the result of evolutionary exaptation of a redundant (or duplicated) similar secretion system (the Type II Secretion System) in an early bacterium, they tend to steer well clear of discussing these systems.

But, however they want to play it, they have to explain why an entity with the powers and abilities to create and then 'improve' things like V. cholerae, should be regarded as one and thr same as the supposedly all-loving god of the Bible and Qur'an, and why it should not be regarded as an evil god who likes nothing more than watching its creation suffer, if such a malevolence actually existed, that is.

Somehow, I'm beginning to doubt that any Creationist with enough courage and personal integrity, and sufficient understanding of this glaring inconsistency in their cult's dogma, is ever going to come forward to explain the curious paradox of a supposedly omni-benevolent god who wants to minimise suffering in the world being one and the same as the designer of these nasty little organisms and why they prefer us to have that view of their beloved sadist rather than accept that they are wrong about evolution.

Evolution News - How Modern Humans Evolved an Improved Protein by a Simple Mutation

Modern humans developed a more effective protection against oxidative stress | Karolinska Institutet Nyheter

It's the same old story. Just when Michael J Behe and his Deception Institute masters are getting their dupes to believe they are onto something with their unintelligently designed 'devolution' hoax, along comes another scientific paper and refutes the entire half-baked notion.

Here, for example is a paper by a team led by Hugo Zeberg at Karolinska Institutet and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, and Svante Pääbo at the Max Planck Institute. In it they show that humans have a slightly modified gene for an essential protein enzyme, compared to that in other primates and, most relevantly for refuting Creationism's latest hoax, in Neanderthals.

And to make matters worse for Creationism, the mutation involves the simplest substitution in a DNA codon, which results in a substitution of one amino acid in the protein chain for another. This simple substitution does not affect the activity and stability of the enzyme but it is much better than the Neanderthal version in that it doesn't produce nearly so many free oxygen radicals in the cells, so reduces the oxidative stress.

By comparing the large majority of modern humans with the 1-2% of (mostly) south Asian carriers of the Neanderthal version, acquired through interbreeding when moderns and Neanderthals came into contact, the team were able to show that these carriers of this Neanderthal gene were much more susceptible to inflammatory and vascular diseases caused by oxidative stress.

The Karolinska Insitutet news release explains:

Malevolent Designer News - How SARS-CoV-2 Makes You Sick Long-Term Even If You Survive It.

Representative fluorescence micrographs of purified fluorescent (Alexa Fluor™ 88) fibrinogen (note no ThT added) with added thrombin to form extensive fibrin clots

(A) Fluorescent fibrinogen with thrombin; (B) fluorescent fibrinogen with added spike protein (final exposure concentration 1 ng.ml−1) and thrombin.

Could microclots help explain the mystery of long Covid? | Resia Pretorius | The Guardian

As a special New Year gift to worshippers of Creationism's supernatural sadist, the creator of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, I bring them news of its brilliance in creating a virus that, even if you survive the initial attempt to kill you, can ensure you suffer long-term for your effrontery.

As this Guardian article by Professor Resia (Etheresia) Pretorius, of the Department of Physiological Sciences, Faculty of Science, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa showed, COVID-19 has a nasty little sting in its tail with which it hits back if it doesn't kill you. Professor Resia Pretorius is co-lead author of a paper from last August, which highlighted the high incidence of micro blood clots in patients who had survived COVID-19 and were now suffering from 'Long Covid'.
This is a degree of sadistic mendacity in design of which followers of Creationism's malevolent designer should be proud.

In the article, Professor Pretorius points out that there are now around 100 million people worldwide who suffer with Long Covid. These patients:

Evolution News - How Evolution Transformed a Common Ancestor's Genes to Make Snake Venom and Human Saliva

Venoms in snakes and salivary protein in mammals share a common origin | Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University OIST

Here is an interesting paper for at least two reasons:

Firstly, for people who understand evolutionary biology, there is the evidence of common origins in that the genes for producing venom in snakes are also present and produce related proteins in mammals, albeit non-venomous proteins.

Secondly, for Creationist victims of the Intelligent [sic] Design Hoax, there is the complete reliance by the biologists who wrote it on the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection for the explanation, with no hint whatsoever that the imminent collapse of the TOE and its abandonment by science in favour of intelligent [sic] design, or whatever the latest product Creationist frauds are trying to sell their target marks as an alternative to genuine science is, as has been predicted (any day now real soon!) by Creationist frauds, since about 1940. In fact, what would be a historic first where an established scientific theory is replaced by a guess with no supporting evidence, looks about as likely (and as nonsensical) as that of the QAnon 'coming storm' or the return from the grave of John F. Kennedy, Jnr. to overthrow the Biden presidency and reinstall Trump in the Oval Office.

Evolution News - Human Head Lice are Making Nits of Creationists

Mummified man of the Ansilta culture found in the Andes of San Juan, Argentina, dating back approximately 2,000 years

Nits on ancient mummies shed light on South American ancestry

The story of the co-evolution of head lice and humans just got a little more interesting, unless you're a Creationist, in which case it just got a lot more difficult to ignore.

Briefly, the human head louse Pediculus humanus capitis diverged from human body louse, Pediculus humanus humanus, at about the same time that humans started wearing clothes. Pediculus humanus (the common ancestor of the two subspecies) was a close relative of the louse found on Chimpanzees, Pediculus schaeffi. In fact the evolution of these louse species and subspecies maps exactly onto our own evolution, both biologically as we diverged from the common ancestor we share with chimpanzees, and as we lost body hair and invented clothes (cultural, rather than biological evolution).

Headlice have accompanied humans throughout their entire existence, so this new method could open the door to a goldmine of information about our ancestors

Dr Alejandra Perotti
Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Section
School of Biological Sciences
University of Reading, Reading, United Kingdom

What is even more interesting is the finding of an international team that the cement head lice use to stick their eggs (or nits) to hair, preserves the DNA in the hair cells. This means we can extract far more DNA from the hair of ancient people who also had head lice, than we can from the fossilised or semi-fossilised teeth and bones that were used until now.

So, using the DNA extracted from the lousy hair of human remains in South America, the Reading team, in association with scientists from Argentina, Wales, Oxford, UK and Denmark, were able to discover:

The Covidiot Cull is Forging Ahead in the USA

Covidiot Trumpanzee, antivaxx podcaster and QAnon dupe, Doug Kuzma, has COVID-19 and is unconscious on a ventilator.

Anti-Vaxx Podcaster Reportedly on Ventilator After Attending QAnon-Friendly Event in Texas | Newsweek

The prominent, right-wing, MAGA-hat wearing Trumpanzee and anti-vaxx campaigner, Doug Kuzma, is reportedly seriously ill, sedated and on a ventilator, in a Virginia hospital, with COVID-19, after attending a QAnon rally in Texas. Several other attendees at the rally also became unwell but have claimed they were suffering from 'anthrax poisoning'. Anthrax is a bacterial infection, unlike COVID-19 which is viral, so is easily distinguished from it.

Kuzma is in many ways an example of what happens when you, consciously or unconsciously, buy into a cult and adopt cult-think in place of rational thought. He has a long history of recruiting into the Trumpanzee cult by uncritically repeating any QAnon-originating conspiracy theories and campaigning to persuade the gullible dupes who listen to his raving right Frog News spots, not to get vaccinated. As a right-wing evangelical Christian he has no hesitation in risking the health and welfare of others to serve his ego-tripping self-promotion.

More Evidence of Declining Religiosity in USA

The Bellefonte First Presbyterian Church in Bellefonte, Pa., USA. Founded in 1800 by the same group who founded the borough of Bellefonte in Pennsylvania, held its last service on 21^th December 2021.

'Go in peace': Pennsylvania church founded in 1800 holds last service.

As though to reinforce the recent findings of the Pew Research survey which shows an accelerating decline in affiliation to mainstream churches in the USA, one of the oldest fundamentalist Christian churches in Pennsylvania, The First Presbyterian Church of Bellefonte, has closed its doors for the last time, attendance having fallen by 87% from about 200 in the 1970s to about 40 before the pandemic and just 25 now.

When it was founded in 1800, the First Presbyterian Church of Bellefonte was very much a part of the local political establishment, even holding meetings in the courthouse before the church was built and providing two Pennsylvania governors from amongst its members. The church provided the local civil leadership for the borough and the state at large, which was, for all practical purposes, a local theocracy with no attempt to separate church and state, the local Christian leadership believing it was entitled to rule.

Malevolent Designer News - How Brilliant was Creationism's Favourite Serial Killer?

Viruses enter cells to make copies of themselves and cause infection. One secret to SARS-CoV-2’s success is hiding from the immune system by spreading between cells. This transmission electron micrograph shows COVID-causing virus particles that were isolated from a patient.

Image: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH

SARS-CoV-2 goes ‘underground’ to spread from cell to cell

Creationist mode:

A couple of papers published recently show us just how brilliant and obsessively determined to maximise suffering Creationism's beloved mass murder was when it designed and then subsequently modified the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

The first, by a team from Ohio State University, Ohio, USA, led by virology professor, Shan-Lu Liu of the University's Veterinary Biosciences Department and its Center for Retrovirus Research, explains how the virus is designed to evade your immune system by spreading in your body by cell-to-cell spread rather than by being liberated by infected cells to circulate and infect new host cells.

The problem with the latter method was that it brings the virus into contact with circulating antibodies which remain outside the cell. Spreading from cell to cell is a much more efficient method as it circumvents your immune response so far as the antibody part is concerned. This means a wave of infection can spread across tissues relatively unmolested by your immune system.

Brilliant, eh? It seems the malevolent designer learned a valuable lesson from its failed attempt with the SARS-CoV virus that caused the short-lived 2003 SARS outbreak, which was more lethal but only lasted for 8 months. But it's weird how a supposedly intelligent designer would see the immune system it supposedly also designed to protect us from its viruses, as a problem to be overcome! Creationists, however, see having an arms race with yourself as the act of a supremely intelligent [sic] designer.

Malevolent Designer News - How Creationism's Favourite Mass Murderer Gets a Second Go at Killing You With COVID-19

Immune memory less durable after severe COVID-19, study suggests - UT Health San Antonio

Creationist mode:

This is turning out to be a great day for devotees of Creationism's supernatural sadistic malevolence!

Not only have we learned that its brilliantly redesigned omicron (ο) variant is good at evading the antibodies produced by medical science's vaccines as well as being much more infectious than earlier variants such as δ and α, but we now learn that if it can cause a severe enough case of COVID-19, it will produce a dysfunctional B cell response to the spike proteins, so reducing its victim's ability to fight off future infections. In other words, if it doesn't quite kill you the first time, it makes it more likely to kill you on its second or subsequent try.

Brilliant, eh? Just when you think you've beaten it, it sets you up for a sucker punch.

Creationist mode:

Malevolent Designer News - Update on Omicron - SARS-CoV-2's Brilliant New Design

New Study Adds More Evidence for Omicron Immune Evasion | Columbia University Irving Medical Center

Creationist mode:

A new study by scientists from Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York and The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong, China has provided more evidence of the brilliance of Creationism's putative magic designer in the way it has modified its design of the SARS-CoV-2 virus so it can overcome the efforts of medical science to stop it killing people and making many more sick.

They have shown how the modifications it put in the Omicron (ο) variant help it evade the antibodies produced by the vaccines medical science produced. What the putative intelligent [sic] malevolence spotted was the slight flaw in the vaccines - they are all made by injecting the viral mRNA that produces the virus' spike proteins with which it prizes open a cell to gain entry. This means the antibodies produced in response to the spike proteins that the vaccines produce are specific for the spike proteins on the surface of the virus. This was a quick and easy solution to the immediate crisis caused by the virus but it has meant that the putative malevolence behind the virus only had to think of a way to modify the spike proteins so the antibodies wouldn't attach to them and deactivate them, while retaining their function in prizing open the cell.

It did this with about 30 modifications plus another 20 to other proteins, just to be on the safe-side.

Creationist mode:

At least that is what ID advocates would have to admit to, if they are honest and wish to maintain the childish belief in a magic designer of everything.

Malevolent Designer News - Has Creationists' Favourite Sadist Blundered with Omicron?

Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay measurement of serum dilution titers with a 50% effective concentration (EC₅₀) of SARS-CoV-2 spike RBD-binding antibodies. The dotted lines indicate the assay limits of detection. Two-tailed P values were determined using the Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed rank test with the Holm-Šídák multiple comparison correction. Box plots were generated using the Tukey method. The large box displays the median and IQR. The error bars indicate 1.5 times the IQR or the furthest outlier, whichever is closer to the median. All individual data points are displayed as filled circles.

Source: Bates, T.A., et al 2021

Super immunity may be sparked by getting Covid while double-vaccinated | The Independent

It's early days yet and what studies there have been have been mostly inconclusive and tentative, but it's beginning to look like the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic could be nearing the end as the virus is facing extinction.

If you're a Creationist, you'll have to see this as a blunder by the supernatural malevolence you believe was behind the design and adaptations of the virus. If, on the other hand, you're rational with the thinking abilities of a normal adult, you will see this as the inevitable result of a natural, evolutionary process.

The reason for this slight optimism, and it is slight so far as the data sets are small and may not be representative of the general human population, is a couple of recent studies. The most recent being one from the Oregon Health & Science University which shows that people infected after being vaccinated (the so-called breakthrough infection where the virus manages to overcome the protection given by the antibodies produced as a result of the vaccines) go on the develop a 'super immunity' to the virus with serum antibody levels of up to 1000 times greater than with vaccination alone.