Sandwalk: A New Grandson

Wednesday, November 07, 2012

A New Grandson

Luca Gerard Tarabokia was born early on Sunday morning. He's named after Michael's great grandfather, Luca Tarabokia, who came to America almost one hundred years ago from an island in the Adriatic Sea (now Croatia). Here's a photo of Luca with his mother (my daughter), Jane, and his big sister Zoë.

13 comments :

Matt G said...: How wonderful! Congratulations, Larry!; Wednesday, November 07, 2012 12:55:00 PM
Bilbo said...: Mazel Tov!; Wednesday, November 07, 2012 7:22:00 PM
Eugen said...: Congratulations! Luca will be fast soccer player. Trust me.; Wednesday, November 07, 2012 7:55:00 PM
Anonymous said...: Congratulations, another native Californian,may he be a surfer and soccer player,the best of two worlds.; Thursday, November 08, 2012 9:01:00 PM
Claudiu Bandea said...: Congratulations!

Likely, Luca will be playing soccer and surf. And, I can assure you that he will be an evolutionist. It’s in his name! He has long, long ancestral lineage going back to his great, great, great...famous grandfather: LUCA (as in Last Universal Common Ancestor!); Friday, November 09, 2012 10:44:00 AM
Mikkel Rumraket Rasmussen said...: He looks wonderful. Many congratulations!; Friday, November 09, 2012 10:47:00 AM
The Lorax said...: Congratulations; Friday, November 09, 2012 1:09:00 PM
Piotr Gąsiorowski said...: I agree with Claudiu: being named after the ultimate (great)ⁿ-grandpa is really something! The surname is interesting too: it's one of the oldest family names on the Croatian island of Susak. The island has a population of about 180 today, but practically anyone called Tarabokia, Tarabokija, Tarabochia, Tarabocchia or Taraboća, anywhere in the world, can be safely assumed to have a patrilineal ancestor there.; Friday, November 09, 2012 1:13:00 PM
Claudiu Bandea said...: What about asking Larry to calculate for us the number of generations on the (direct) line of descent between LUCA and Luca? And, of course, we expect some details, including number of genes, genome sizes, evolutionary force, etc., all the good staff that only a loving scientist-grandfather can produce!; Friday, November 09, 2012 2:40:00 PM
John S. Wilkins said...: Great news...; Friday, November 09, 2012 4:27:00 PM
John Pieret said...: As I said before, I was looking forward to the pictures demonstrating your (and Mrs. Sandwalk's) differential reproductive success and they do not disappoint.

Many, many congratulations!; Friday, November 09, 2012 10:14:00 PM
andyboerger said...: All the best. Great picture of Zoe, fascinated by her lil' brother.; Saturday, November 10, 2012 3:51:00 AM
Pedro said...: Congratz!; Saturday, November 10, 2012 5:34:00 AM

Quotations

The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me to be so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows.Charles Darwin (c1880)

Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume, I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view directly opposite to mine. It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such expressions as "plan of creation," "unity of design," etc., and to think that we give an explanation when we only restate a fact. Any one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of a certain number of facts will certainly reject the theory.

Charles Darwin (1859)

Science reveals where religion conceals. Where religion purports to explain, it actually resorts to tautology. To assert that "God did it" is no more than an admission of ignorance dressed deceitfully as an explanation...

Peter Atkins

Quotations

The world is not inhabited exclusively by fools, and when a subject arouses intense interest, as this one has, something other than semantics is usually at stake. Stephen Jay Gould (1982)
I have championed contingency, and will continue to do so, because its large realm and legitimate claims have been so poorly attended by evolutionary scientists who cannot discern the beat of this different drummer while their brains and ears remain tuned to only the sounds of general theory. Stephen Jay Gould (2002) p.1339
The essence of Darwinism lies in its claim that natural selection creates the fit. Variation is ubiquitous and random in direction. It supplies raw material only. Natural selection directs the course of evolutionary change. Stephen Jay Gould (1977)
Rudyard Kipling asked how the leopard got its spots, the rhino its wrinkled skin. He called his answers "just-so stories." When evolutionists try to explain form and behavior, they also tell just-so stories—and the agent is natural selection. Virtuosity in invention replaces testability as the criterion for acceptance. Stephen Jay Gould (1980)
Since 'change of gene frequencies in populations' is the 'official' definition of evolution, randomness has transgressed Darwin's border and asserted itself as an agent of evolutionary change. Stephen Jay Gould (1983) p.335
The first commandment for all versions of NOMA might be summarized by stating: "Thou shalt not mix the magisteria by claiming that God directly ordains important events in the history of nature by special interference knowable only through revelation and not accessible to science." In common parlance, we refer to such special interference as "miracle"—operationally defined as a unique and temporary suspension of natural law to reorder the facts of nature by divine fiat. Stephen Jay Gould (1999) p.84

Quotations

My own view is that conclusions about the evolution of human behavior should be based on research at least as rigorous as that used in studying nonhuman animals. And if you read the animal behavior journals, you'll see that this requirement sets the bar pretty high, so that many assertions about evolutionary psychology sink without a trace.

Jerry Coyne
Why Evolution Is True

I once made the remark that two things disappeared in 1990: one was communism, the other was biochemistry and that only one of them should be allowed to come back.

Sydney Brenner
TIBS Dec. 2000

It is naïve to think that if a species' environment changes the species must adapt or else become extinct.... Just as a changed environment need not set in motion selection for new adaptations, new adaptations may evolve in an unchanging environment if new mutations arise that are superior to any pre-existing variations

Douglas Futuyma

One of the most frightening things in the Western world, and in this country in particular, is the number of people who believe in things that are scientifically false. If someone tells me that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, in my opinion he should see a psychiatrist.

Francis Crick

There will be no difficulty in computers being adapted to biology. There will be luddites. But they will be buried.

Sydney Brenner

An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: 'I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one.' I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist

Richard Dawkins

Another curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understand it. I mean philosophers, social scientists, and so on. While in fact very few people understand it, actually as it stands, even as it stood when Darwin expressed it, and even less as we now may be able to understand it in biology.

Jacques Monod

The false view of evolution as a process of global optimizing has been applied literally by engineers who, taken in by a mistaken metaphor, have attempted to find globally optimal solutions to design problems by writing programs that model evolution by natural selection.

Richard Lewontin

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Wednesday, November 07, 2012

A New Grandson

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