tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post5849368919077844777..comments2024-03-27T14:50:47.345-04:00Comments on <center>Sandwalk</center>: Answering Barry Arrington's challenge: DarwinismLarry Moranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05756598746605455848noreply@blogger.comBlogger24125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-38862886683278384742015-11-11T18:39:00.466-05:002015-11-11T18:39:00.466-05:00If a million Robert Byers did them some "keyb...If a million Robert Byers did them some "keyboard typing" for a million years, would even one post that wasn't total, incomprehensible wanking result ? steve oberskihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14067724166134333068noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-41001645925887287992015-11-10T23:17:23.779-05:002015-11-10T23:17:23.779-05:00Yeah I always wondered where "Futuyma" c...Yeah I always wondered where "Futuyma" came from, after initially assuming "Futuyama" back in my early days...NickMhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04765417807335152285noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-61689687788235503292015-11-10T20:21:25.277-05:002015-11-10T20:21:25.277-05:00I agree, I really enjoy Piotr"s etymology and... I agree, I really enjoy Piotr"s etymology and history posts. Fascinating stuff.Chris Bhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04778164246719803780noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-34589733787315721252015-11-10T09:04:17.649-05:002015-11-10T09:04:17.649-05:00I don't think Arrington understands what the E...I don't think Arrington understands what the English verb "to predict" means. He uses it as though the definition were "to hold the opinion". <br /><br />A genuine prediction has to be temporally prior to the outcome, and it is not simply a matter of placing a bet on the winning horse, but having a legitimate and clearly stated reason for doing so. The argument from Ohno in 1971 was theoretical and it occurred long before genomics or even DNA sequencing. When asked to name the ID proponents who "predicted" that junk DNA would turn out to be functional, he points to 2011 book by Jonathan Wells. How can that be a prediction? Evolutionary biologists like Tom Cavalier-Smith were arguing against junk DNA from the 1970s. Arlinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03243864308260498878noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-20760798087985044842015-11-10T05:18:32.589-05:002015-11-10T05:18:32.589-05:00Damn, just as it was getting interesting. I learn ...Damn, just as it was getting interesting. I learn so many things on this blog :PMikkel Rumraket Rasmussenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07670550711237457368noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-31007668473146963782015-11-10T05:10:29.630-05:002015-11-10T05:10:29.630-05:00Joe,
Thanks for the above. I'll contact Profe...Joe,<br /><br />Thanks for the above. I'll contact Professor Futuyma with pleasure. I believe I have found the correct etymology at last. It seems my provisional hypothesis has to be abandoned. The real story is pretty complicated, goes back to the 14th century and (somewhat unexpectedly) involves a third language in addition to Polish and Ukrainian, but since it's off topic here, I'll just share it with the owner of the name.Piotr Gąsiorowskihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06339278493073512102noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-85960116523689927272015-11-09T19:59:18.442-05:002015-11-09T19:59:18.442-05:00It is all two easy to mispoll a word, as evidenced...It is all two easy to mispoll a word, as evidenced by the disqussion about Futuyma. I think what Barry Arrington has are 'psychophants'.grasshopperhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16697495539384219936noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-80711403714574934832015-11-09T13:04:36.702-05:002015-11-09T13:04:36.702-05:00@Ken Phelps
Excellent! Thanks. How much do I owe ...@Ken Phelps<br /><br />Excellent! Thanks. How much do I owe you?<br /><br />@Petrushka<br /><br />Does that mean I can't have sycophants? Boo!Larry Moranhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05756598746605455848noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-23752315414889523582015-11-09T12:36:22.980-05:002015-11-09T12:36:22.980-05:00So I emailed Doug Futuyma and pointed out this dis...So I emailed Doug Futuyma and pointed out this discussion of his name. Here is his reply (I had described this jokingly as "The latest crisis", hence his reference):<br /><br />"Fantastic, and fascinating. Thanks so much for sending this to me -- and for sparking the discussion and Gasiorowski's investigation.<br /><br />Here is some information that you are free to send to Gasiorowski (or to post on the site, but they are surely tired of this crisis). I had told you long ago that the name came from Poland, because that was what I thought, based on growing up with my Polish paternal grandmother, on having an oldest aunt who identified completely with the Polish-American community, and on knowing nothing about my paternal grandfather. In recent years, I learned (from a friend who looks into such things) that grandfather's immigration entry at Ellis Island is indeed under the name "Futuyma," but I suspect Gasiorowski is absolutely right about the likelihood that this was changed from "Futujma," because I dimly recall, as a child, seeing "aerograms" addressed to "Futujma" in Poland.<br /><br />More significantly, 15 or 20 years ago I talked with my father's oldest brother, who was born in Europe, about the family's origins. He told me that my grandfather was from Ukraine and was Russian Orthodox, and that the understanding when he married my Roman Catholic Polish grandmother was that sons would be raised as Orthodox and daughters as Catholic. That didn't happen: the family was fully Roman Catholic in every respect (and you might recall that I attended Catholic grammar and high schools). According to my uncle, the family's home was in Buchach, now in Ukraine near the Polish border (a border that I believe wandered or was nonexistent at times). I once looked up Buchach and found that it had had a majority Jewish population, and is today a destination for some Jewish tour groups. <br /><br />I'm grateful to Dr. Gasiorowski for looking into my name and its variants. I doubt I could add any more information, but if he should want to contact me, I would be be pleased.<br /><br />My siblings and their progeny will be most interested?"<br /><br /><br />(I think he didn't intend the "?" -- JF)<br />Joe Felsensteinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06359126552631140000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-89403123267586491542015-11-09T10:15:00.289-05:002015-11-09T10:15:00.289-05:00Sites where all the people nominally on the same s...Sites where all the people nominally on the same side are all in perfect agreement on everything are tedious.Petrushkahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02343702725399620404noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-36383929655177138872015-11-09T10:03:53.665-05:002015-11-09T10:03:53.665-05:00Maybe Barry is an expert in real estate law.Maybe Barry is an expert in real estate law.Joe Felsensteinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06359126552631140000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-76361842678652227112015-11-09T09:55:24.833-05:002015-11-09T09:55:24.833-05:00Larry, you are so great, your words are so wise, a...Larry, you are so great, your words are so wise, and your 'stache is so luxuriant, that you have no need of sycophants.<br /><br />That work?Capt Stormfieldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06406739898230505330noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-79784823194353404352015-11-09T08:47:42.534-05:002015-11-09T08:47:42.534-05:00We had a wonderful time last night at dinner with ...We had a wonderful time last night at dinner with our nephew. My day of optimism is over. <br /><br />I've read Barry Arrington's latest at: <a href="http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/larry-moran-is-a-desperate-man/" rel="nofollow">Larry Moran is a Desperate Man</a>. I despair at ever being able to teach him anything and that goes for all his sycophants on <i>Uncommon Descent</i>. They are, in fact, IDiots.<br /><br />BTW, how does one get sycophants? I'd like to have some to keep my spirits up from time to time. Can you buy them on eBay?Larry Moranhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05756598746605455848noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-73130796964129200832015-11-09T07:29:37.178-05:002015-11-09T07:29:37.178-05:00Barry has spent so much time studying Darwinism th...Barry has spent so much time studying Darwinism that his general literacy must have suffered.Piotr Gąsiorowskihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06339278493073512102noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-7859775054109235892015-11-09T07:18:31.033-05:002015-11-09T07:18:31.033-05:00the basic tenants of which are described in the Ne...<i>the basic tenants of which are described in the New World Encyclopedia</i><br /><br />So there are people renting space in some apartment called "Darwinism," who, though they are rather basic people, still merit an encyclopedia entry.<br /><br />Interesting.judmarchttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03111006189037693272noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-79386507964071744952015-11-09T06:22:50.384-05:002015-11-09T06:22:50.384-05:00Maybe not yet there, but getting closer. There is ...Maybe not yet there, but getting closer. There is a village called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futoma" rel="nofollow">Futoma</a> in SE Poland. Its name was first documented in 1436 (as <i>Futhomyna</i>) and 1439 (<i>Futhuma</i>). The longer variant can be reconstructed as <i>Futomina</i>, which is a possessive type of name: (village) belonging to someone called <i>Futoma</i>. It demonstrates that Futoma existed as a given personal name (or nickname) already in the 15th century, and probably earlier (hereditary surnames were not yet regularly used at the time). The consonant /f/ was unknown to Proto-Slavic and does not normally occur in inherited words in Polish or Ukrainian (except as a rare development of *<i>ch</i> /x/ (the final sound of <i>loch</i> as pronounced in Scotland), so the name is either foreign or continues earlier *<i>Chutoma</i>. The latter possibility is more likely, since <i>-oma</i> quite often occurs in hypocoristic variants of compound names (like Old Polish Witomir --> Witoma). My best guess at the moment is that there was a Slavic name like that, Polish *<i>Chętomir</i>, regularly corresponding to Ukrainian *<i>Chutomyr</i>, which could be abbreviated to <i>Chutoma</i> (the related and similar names <i>Chotimir</i> and <i>Chotomir</i> are attested in several Slavic languages). In Ukrainian dialects old *<i>ch</i> may be confused with and replaced by /f/ before the vowel /u/, hence the by-form <i>Futoma</i>, used already in the Middle Ages in the bilingual borderland between Poland and Ukraine.<br /><br />The existence of the full version <i>Chutomir</i> is supported by the fact that there is a village name derived from it near Lyubeshiv, Ukraine (not far from the modern Polish border):<br /><br /><a href="https://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A5%D1%83%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%B8%D1%80" rel="nofollow">Chutomyr</a><br /><br />Whether I am on the right track or not, Douglas Futuyma has a most interesting name.Piotr Gąsiorowskihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06339278493073512102noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-8515071680154488142015-11-09T03:55:36.655-05:002015-11-09T03:55:36.655-05:00I doesn't sound Ukrainian either. But I found ...I doesn't <i>sound</i> Ukrainian either. But I found a full database of Polish surnames (based on official census data from the early 1990s) and searched it for names resembling Futuyma. They do exist, though they are rare. The number of Polish citizens who carry a given name is shown in brackets:<br /><br />Futyma (832)<br />Futoma (279)<br />Futymski (27)<br />Futyna (13)<br /><b>Futujma</b> (5) [Heureka!]<br />Futymowski (4)<br /><br />For comparison, there are 220217 people called Nowak, 131240 people called Kowalski (the two most common surnames in the country), and 8391 people called Gąsiorowski.<br /><br />To sum up the findings so far: Futyma, Futoma and Futujma (and probably Futyna) seem to be variants of the same family name (from which the other names listed above are also derived). The most frequent allele is <i>Futyma</i>, but Douglas Futuyma's ancestors were in all likelihood carriers of the variant <i>Futujma</i>. The Futymas and Futomas are concentrated in SE Poland (in the Rzeszów and Lublin voivodships), close to the Ukrainian border, but there is a secondary hotspot in an around Wrocław (German Breslau) -- the city in which thousands of Poles expelled by the Soviets from what is now Western Ukraine (especially the Lviv/Lwów area) settled in the aftermath of WW2. All the 5 people called Futujma live (or used to live) in Wrocław, and so do all the Futynas.<br /><br />http://nazwiska-polskie.pl/Futyma<br />http://nazwiska-polskie.pl/Futyma<br />http://nazwiska-polskie.pl/Futujma<br /><br />I have no idea yet what the etymology of the name could be. I'll report back if get to the bottom of the Futuyma mystery.<br /><br /><br /><br />Piotr Gąsiorowskihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06339278493073512102noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-89872008731761087972015-11-09T01:30:53.335-05:002015-11-09T01:30:53.335-05:00I'm confident that all tribes of creationists ...I'm confident that all tribes of creationists only mean to attack evolutionism and not redefine it. Darwinism is just another word for it. There probably is incompetence in keeping up with new developments vut its still just the one target. Those saying fish became fishermen with an inner fish(there was a nOVA series called the Inner fish etc)<br />The names don't work well.<br />YEC means biblical creationists or Genesis believers yet there are tEC who believe in genesis with no death here till the fall and Adam/eve but accept before the sixth day it could of been millions of years. just so long as nothing in biology or geology etc evolved.<br />YET YEC works best. i have people complain to me for using the word evolutionist or evolutionism. We need tags for quick profiling and keyboard typing.<br /> Robert Byershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05631863870635096770noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-77118561299217015282015-11-09T00:35:15.253-05:002015-11-09T00:35:15.253-05:00@Piotr, I just went to a site that, based on 93 p...@Piotr, I just went to a site that, based on 93 people named Futuyma, showed me in which countries the name was most prevalent. The highest number are in Ukraina. So maybe Doug's families were interlopers in Poland. This also speaks against the theory that the name changed.Joe Felsensteinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06359126552631140000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-37354900352195000782015-11-08T20:51:14.773-05:002015-11-08T20:51:14.773-05:00By the way, Barry's Glossary does not mention ...By the way, Barry's Glossary does not mention random drift or neutral evolution, but it includes "technical terms" like the one below:<br /><br /><i>Darwinist Derangement Syndrome (“DDS”) is akin to Tourette’s syndrome, a neuropsychiatric disorder characterized by physical and verbal tics in which the patient involuntarily vocalizes grunts and/or nonsense words. Similarly, those who suffer from DDS seem compelled to spout blithering idiotic nonsense in order to avoid a design inference. For example, famous evolutionist Nick Matzke makes a DDS utterance in the following exchange:<br /><br />Barry Arrington: “If you came across a table on which was set 500 coins (no tossing involved) and all 500 coins displayed the ‘heads’ side of the coin, would you reject ‘chance’ as a hypothesis to explain this particular configuration of coins on a table?”<br /><br />Mark Frank: “. . . they might have slid out of a packet of coins without a chance to turn over.”<br /><br />Sal Cordova: “Which still means chance is not the mechanism of the configuration.”<br /><br />Matzke: “Not really.”<br /><br />That an internationally prominent Darwinist would make such a patently ridiculous utterance is beyond rational explanation and can be explained only by DDS. DDS is a sad and pathetic condition that the editors of UD hope one day to have included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders published by the American Psychiatric Association.</i><br /><br />Of course Nick's "reply" is a mined quote. Whoever did it (in a supposedly "technical" glossary) is a liar and a jerk, or, to use a technical description, a nasty little turd. Here's the <a href="http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/a-statistics-question-for-nick-matzke/" rel="nofollow">original exchange</a>.<br /><br />Piotr Gąsiorowskihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06339278493073512102noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-88904642404745451192015-11-08T20:27:44.398-05:002015-11-08T20:27:44.398-05:00It must have been horrendously mangled in the proc...It must have been horrendously mangled in the process of Americanisation, so that it doesn't really look Polish any longer, but I'm sure its owner knows better. When I saw it for the first time, years ago, I assumed it was Japanese and had a letter missing. I was quite surprised to find out that the spelling was correct. I suppose many other people's reactions have been similar. But if someone <i>still</i> thinks the name is "Futuyama", it means they aren't really familiar with what he's written. If you see the author's name many times, you are likely to remember how to spell it.Piotr Gąsiorowskihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06339278493073512102noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-2035238846781627472015-11-08T20:11:54.312-05:002015-11-08T20:11:54.312-05:00Doug Futuyma told me his name is Polish. (Or the o...Doug Futuyma told me his name is Polish. (Or the original version is). No wonder you know how to spell it correctly.Joe Felsensteinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06359126552631140000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-39664015773754206572015-11-08T17:18:31.720-05:002015-11-08T17:18:31.720-05:00They can't even spell "Futuyma". The...They can't even spell "Futuyma". The NWE article refers to "Futuyama [sic] 1986" (presumably the second edition of <i>Evolutionary Biology</i>) but has no such publication in the list of references. Arrington just copied and pasted it all with no attention to such detail. I doubt if he's ever so much as opened Douglas Fytuyma's book.Piotr Gąsiorowskihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06339278493073512102noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-43779246185559118742015-11-08T15:45:31.607-05:002015-11-08T15:45:31.607-05:00On Barry's thread, a member named Seqener quot...On Barry's thread, a member named Seqener quoted from Sandwalk:<br /><br /><i>In one of the comments over at Sandwalk, Jeffrey Shallit has an interesting suggestion:<br /><br />“Nearly every university has a course in evolutionary biology. Have Barry take a final exam in that course under equivalent conditions. If he passes, I’d believe him.”</i><br /><br />Barry replied:<br /><br /><i>Seqenenre, Shallit is wrong (shocker, I know). Moran made the claim that I do not understand Darwinism. As the one advancing a claim he has the burden of supporting it. He could do that by, for example, pointing to a statement I have made that contains a basic error about Darwinism. If he is unable to support his claim it means he made a claim he cannot back up.</i><br /><br />Apart from Barry's claim that Jeffrey was wrong (About what? Does every university <i>not</i> have a course in evolution? If Barry passed the exam, should Jeffrey not believe this indicates Barry understands evolution?), Barry sounds quite confident that you cannot find any quotes that indicate he does not understand Darwinism. I hope you know what you're doing Larry. It's not like Barry Arrington to shoot his mouth off over something about which he is mistaken. No, not at all.Faizal Alihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00937075798809265805noreply@blogger.com