Ardi and Ida

 
"Ardi" is the nickname of Ardipithecus ramidus, the recently described hominid fossil. "Ida" is the nickname of Darwinius masillae, an early primate fossil that made a big splash last year.

The "Darwinius" affair has become notorious as a bad example of scientists getting into bed with book publishers, movie producers, and PR professionals [see The dangerous link between science and hype].

The "Ardi" publicity campaign seemed to be different. Sure, there's the 11 papers published simultaneously in Science—this clearly involves a coordinated attempt to maximize the impact of this fossil—but this seems like only a minor trangression. Coordinating publication happens lots of times.

But now there's the Discovery Channel documentary that's going to air next weekend.

A DISCOVERY CHANNEL EXCLUSIVE, WORLD PREMIERE SPECIAL BRINGS YOU THE STORY OF THE LATEST NEWS ABOUT HUMAN EVOLUTION

DISCOVERING ARDI airs Sunday, October 11 at 9 PM (ET/PT)

Following publication in the journal Science on the discovery and study of a 4.4 million-year-old female partial skeleton nicknamed "Ardi," Discovery Channel will present a world premiere special, DISCOVERING ARDI, Sunday October 11 at 9 PM (ET/PT) documenting the sustained, intensive investigation leading up to this landmark publication of the Ardipithecus ramidus fossils.

UNDERSTANDING ARDI, a one-hour special produced in collaboration with CBS News will air at 11 PM (ET/PT) immediately following DISCOVERING ARDI. The special is moderated by former CBS and CNN anchor Paula Zahn and includes research team members Dr. Tim White, Dr. Yohannes Haile-Selassie, Dr. Giday WoldeGabriel, Dr. Owen Lovejoy, and science journalist Ann Gibbons

The scientific investigation began in the Ethiopian desert 17 years ago, and now opens a new chapter on human evolution, revealing the first evolutionary steps our ancestors took after we diverged from a common ancestor we once shared with living chimpanzees. "Ardi's" centerpiece skeleton, the other hominids she lived with, and the rocks, soils, plants and animals that made up her world were analyzed in laboratories around the world, and the scientists have now published their findings in the prestigious journal Science.

"Ardi" is now the oldest skeleton from our (hominid) branch of the primate family tree. These Ethiopian discoveries reveal an early grade of human evolution in Africa that predated the famous Australopithecus nicknamed "Lucy." Ardipithecus was a woodland creature with a small brain, long arms, and short legs. The pelvis and feet show a primitive form of two-legged walking on the ground, but Ardipithecus was also a capable tree climber, with long fingers and big toes that allowed their feet to grasp like an ape's. The discoveries answer old questions about how hominids became bipedal.

The international research team weighed in on the scope of the project and its findings:

"These are the results of a scientific mission to our deep African past," said project co-director and geologist, Dr. Giday WoldeGabriel of the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

"The novel anatomy that we describe in these papers fundamentally alters our understanding of human origins and early evolution," said project anatomist and evolutionary biologist, Professor C. Owen Lovejoy, Kent State University.

Project co-director and paleontologist Professor Tim White of the Human Evolution Research Center at the University of California Berkeley adds, "Ardipithecus is not a chimp. It's not a human. It's what we used to be."

DISCOVERING ARDI begins its story with the 1974 discovery of Australopithecus afarensis in Hadar, northeastern Ethiopia. Nicknamed "Lucy," this 3.2 million year old skeleton was, at the time, the oldest hominid skeleton ever found. As the Discovery Channel special documents, Lucy's title would be overtaken twenty years later by the 1994 discovery of "Ardi" in Ethiopia's Afar region in the Middle Awash study area. It would take an elite international team of experts the next fifteen years to delicately, meticulously and methodically piece together "Ardi" and her lost world in order to reveal her significance.

We all know that this documentary took a long time to make. That means the authors of the scientific papers were cooperating with Discovery Channel (and CBS News?) long before the papers were published. Perhaps even before the papers were accepted.

Something isn't right about all of this. John Hawks senses it too ["Discovering Ardi"].

Oh, my. Well it stands to reason that something this coordinated wasn't just science. I wonder whether anyone will ask the questions about the timing of Science's publication and the documentary release only a week later.

I have to tell you, I've been wondering about all the bogus-looking Darwin paraphrases these guys have been throwing out -- you know, the ones about how Darwin taught us about how chimpanzees changed from their common ancestors, and how fossil humans would tell us about the apes. I can't find anything like that in any of Darwin's publications -- please e-mail if it's there and I'm missing it.

But now I see where they're coming from. It's the tagline from the Discovery show!

I smell a rat.

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Do Graduate Students Understand Evolution?

 
The other day I was discussing how to teach evolution with one of my colleagues and the discussion turned to the presumed distinction between students who were really interested in science and everyone else. My colleague claimed that students who were science oriented probably managed to acquire a good understanding of evolution in spite of the fact that some undergraduate courses weren't doing a very good job of teaching the subject.

I pointed out that my impression was different. I suggested that most Professors in our department don't have a firm grasp of one of the most fundamental concepts in biology (evolution), and neither do our graduate students. I reminded my colleague of the times when we cringe at graduate student presentations when the topic of evolution comes up.

Ryan Gregory must have felt the same way since he was prompted to do a survey of graduate students in science departments at Guelph University. The result is published in BioScience. You can read about it on Ryan's blog: How well do grad students grasp evolution?.
Here's the press release...

Science Students Could Brush Up On Darwin, U of G Study Finds

October 01, 2009 - News Release

Even students pursuing advanced degrees in science could brush up on their knowledge of evolution, according to a new study by University of Guelph researchers.

The finding reveals that there is room for improvement in how evolution is taught from elementary school up, said Ryan Gregory, a professor in Guelph’s Department of Integrative Biology, who conducted the research with former student Cameron Ellis.

The study was published today in BioScience. It’s particularly timely, given that this year is the bicentennial of Charles Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of publication of On the Origin of Species, which underpins understanding of the diversity of Earth’s organisms and their interrelations.

“Misconceptions about natural selection may still exist, even at the most advanced level,” Gregory said.

“We’re looking at a subset of people who have spent at least four years, sometimes even six or seven years, in science and still don’t necessarily have a full working understanding of basic evolutionary principles or scientific terms like ‘theories.’”

Many previous studies have assessed how evolution is understood and accepted by elementary, high school and undergraduate students, as well as by teachers and the general public, Gregory said. But this was the first to focus solely on students seeking graduate science degrees.

The study involved nearly 200 graduate students at a mid-sized Canadian university who were studying biological, physical, agricultural or animal sciences. About half of the students had never taken an evolutionary biology course, which is often not a prerequisite.

The researchers found that the vast majority of the students recognized the importance of evolution as a central part of biology. Overall, they also had a better understanding of evolutionary concepts than most people.

“That was encouraging, especially because it was across several colleges — it wasn’t just the biology students,” Gregory said.

But when the students were asked to apply basic evolutionary principles, only 20 to 30 per cent could do so correctly, and many didn’t even try to answer such questions. Of particular interest to Gregory is the finding that many students seem less than clear about the nature of scientific theories.

“This is telling us that traditional instruction methods, while leading to some basic understanding of evolution, are not producing a strong working knowledge that can be easily applied to real biological phenomena.”

Gregory has studied evolution-related topics for years and recently co-organized a workshop designed to improve how the subject is taught in public schools. He is also associate editor of Evolution: Education and Outreach, a journal written for science teachers, students and scientists. He recently created Evolver Zone, a free online resource for anyone interested in evolutionary biology.
He is also helping bring an evolution-inspired art exhibit to U of G this month. “This View of Life: Evolutionary Art in the Year of Darwin, 2009” highlights diverse artists’ views of Darwin’s ideas and evolution in general. It runs Oct. 9 to 30 in the science complex atrium.

Some of us know what the problem is. What are we going to do about it? How are we going to convince professors that evolution education has to change when most of them don't even recognize there's a problem because their own views of evolution are flawed?

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Denyse O'Leary Making Sense

 
Like they say, even a stopped clock is right twice a day. I'm happy to report that this is one of those days when Denyse O'Leary says something intelligent [Fun with Mark Steyn: But when isn’t Mark Steyn fun?].

Darwinists are forever nagging the keepers of the public purse to generously fund their efforts to sell their story to a disbelieving public, but the money is wasted by definition. The reason people don’t believe a lot of this stuff is that it isn’t believable. More public relations will actually make more people aware of scandals like “Ida” or the fact that there is little or no response to the ridiculous claims of “evolutionary psychology” – which make the science press sound like the National Enquirer.

It's a sad day, actually, when an Intelligent Design Creationist points out something that many scientists are ignoring.

Scientists are very good at self-promotion but that's not compatible with good science. We need more good science journalists.¹ That's the group that has to face up to to their failures in the past and start to clean up their acts.

They will soon be extinct if they don't.

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1. I do not mean to imply that Denyse O'Leary is an example of a good science journalist.

Map That Campus Returns

 
After a lengthy hiatus, the ever-popular feature on Alex Pallazzo's blog has returned. See Map That Campus XLVII. (Extra bonus points if you can translate XLVII into a real number!)

There's actually three campuses this week. You need to get all three before you can pat yourself on the back. No looking at the comments before giving your answer!

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Is Richard Dawkins an Accomodationist?

 
Richard Dawkins was recently interviewed by Newsweek: Darwin’s Rottweiler. Here's an excerpt.

Are those incompatible positions: to believe in God and to believe in evolution?
No, I don't think they're incompatible if only because there are many intelligent evolutionary scientists who also believe in God—to name only Francis Collins [the geneticist and Christian believer recently chosen to head the National Institutes of Health] as an outstanding example. So it clearly is possible to be both. This book more or less begins by accepting that there is that compatibility. The God Delusion did make a case against that compatibility in my own mind.

I interpret this to mean that in Dawkins' own mind the two are incompatible as he explained in The God Delusion, but that there are many scientists, like Francis Collins, who think that science and religion are compatible.

But on reading this, the real accommodationists had a conniption. Josh Rosenau thinks that Dawkins may have converted to his side and the side promoted by NCSE (who back Collins over Dawkins) [Richard Dawkins, accommodationist?].

This, for what it's worth, looks like the position NCSE has taken, and is, to the best of my knowledge, the sort of rhetoric Matt Nisbet and Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum have been calling for from folks like Dawkins. It matches my own views, too, though I've been less vocal in these debates than many others.

It will be interesting to see whether the usual suspects go after Dawkins with quite the same vehemence that has met others advancing similar lines of argument.

Matt Nisbet is delighted because he's been saying all along that Dawkins needs to re-frame his argument to conform to the Nisbet rules for talking about evolution [Is Dawkins Re-Framing His Position on Science & Religion?]. Chris Mooney—who hasn't completely abandoned the bizarre views of his former colleague (Nisbet)—is also jumping on the bandwagon [Richard Dawkins, Accommodationist].

Sheesh! Come on guys, get a life.

Dawkins wasn't very careful about what he said in that interview but to assume that he's all-of-a-sudden become an accommodationist is really stupid of you.

Now we have the makings of a really Alice-in-Wonderland (or Woody Allen) scenario. Jerry Coyne is currently in Los Angeles at a meeting with Richard Dawkins. He (Coyne) showed the Josh, Matt, and Chris postings to Richard and here's what Coyne wrote on his blog [Richard Dawkins is not an accommodationist].

Well, I know Richard Dawkins. I am at a meeting with Richard Dawkins. I just discussed these accusations of accommodationism with Richard Dawkins. And I can tell you, Chris, Sheril, and Josh, that Richard is not one of you.

Right now I feel like Woody Allen in Annie Hall. If you’ve seen the movie, you’ll remember that in one scene Allen is in a movie line with Diane Keaton, and becomes annoyed by some pompous guy trying to impress his date by nattering on about the work of Marshall McLuhan. Allen goes behind a movie sign and pulls out McLuhan himself, taking him over to confront Mr. Pomposity. McLuhan coldly eyes him and says, “Excuse me, but I am Marshall McLuhan, and I couldn’t help overhearing what you said. I have to tell you that you know nothing of my work!” Allen turns to the camera and comments, “Don’t you wish life could be like this?”

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Jonathan Wells Is a Winner!

 
This week's Egregiously stupid remark of the week by an IDiot goes to Jonathan Wells for his comment about HOX genes.

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A Julia Child Recipe

 
Posting a video of Julia Child preparing a delicious dish is something you're more likely to find on other blogs. But this is a recipe for "Primordial Soup" so it's appropriate to let Sandwalk readers know about it.

You should definitely try this at home in your own kitchen. But don't eat it.

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[Hat Tip: Martin Brazeau on The Lancelet]

Good Science? Bad Science Journalism?

It was inevitable that science writers all over the world would screw up the story of Ardipithicus ramidus as reported in a series of papers published in Science [see the special Science webpage: Ardipithicus ramidus].

Everyone will have their favorite example. Mine comes from today's issue of The Toronto Star in an article by Joseph Hall titled Did apes descend from us?

Man didn't descend from apes.

What is closer to the truth is that our knuckle-dragging cousins descended from us.

That's one of the shocking new theories being drawn from a series of anthropology papers published Friday in a special edition of the journal Science.

Scientists say a 4.4-million-year-old fossil called Ardi – short for ardipithecus ramidus – is descended from the "missing link," or the last common ancestor between humans and apes.

The 4-foot, 110-pound female's skeleton and physiological characteristics bear a closer resemblance to modern-day humans than to contemporary apes, meaning they evolved from humanlike creatures – not the other way around.

We did not descend from apes—humans are apes. Modern humans and other modern apes share a common ancestor. It's silly to say that humans descend from monkeys, or apes, and it's just as silly to say that chimpanzees descend from humans.

The second part of the quotation is pretty accurate but it's overshadowed by the unnecessary hype in the first few sentences. There are no "shocking new theories" being promoted.

C. Owen Lovejoy is one of the authors on several of the papers just published (e.g. White et al. 2009; Suwa et al. 2009). He is quoted in the Star article, presumably from a 'phone interview by the author.

"It's transformative. This is a lot closer to anything that you'd call the missing link than anything that's ever been found," says Lovejoy, a biological anthropologist at Ohio's Kent State University.

Among other things, research on Ardi suggests humans are far more primitive in an evolutionary sense than today's great apes – like chimps and gorillas – which have continued to evolve from the missing link.

"In a way we're saying that the old idea that we evolved from a chimpanzee is totally incorrect," he says. "It's more proper to say that chimpanzees evolved from us."

Can you blame the reporter when this is what one of the authors says? Yes you can, because, as Carl Zimmer points out, it's up to science reporters to do a bit of digging to find out the real story behind the scientific papers and the press releases.

But we also need to blame scientists for the sorry state of scientific literacy. That was a remarkably stupid thing for C. Owen Lovejoy to have said to a science journalist. As a scientist he should have known that the "old idea" (we evolved from a chimpanzee) is wrong and the "new idea" (chimpanzees evolved from us) is also wrong for the same reasons.

Maybe Lovejoy was misquoted? After all, he's a member of the National Academy of Sciences so he must know what he's talking about. Let's look at the Kent State University press release [Kent State University Professor C. Owen Lovejoy helps unveil oldest hominid skeleton].

KENT, Ohio -- Oct. 1, 2009 -- Throw out all those posters and books that depict an ape evolving into a human being, says Kent State University Professor of Anthropology Dr. C. Owen Lovejoy. An internationally recognized biological anthropologist who specializes in the study of human origins, Lovejoy is one of the primary authors who revealed their research findings today on Ardipithecus ramidus, a hominid species that lived 4.4 million years ago in what is now Ethiopia.

"People often think we evolved from apes, but no, apes in many ways evolved from us," Lovejoy said. "It has been a popular idea to think humans are modified chimpanzees. From studying Ardipithecus ramidus, or 'Ardi,' we learn that we cannot understand or model human evolution from chimps and gorillas."

Not much better, although Loverjoy does emphasize the fact that "people often think we evolved from apes." However, he doesn't do much to dispel this way of thinking when he says, "apes in many ways evolved from us."

I don't think we can blame our reporter for this one.

What about the scientific papers? What do they say? Remarkably, the papers actually address the idea that humans might have evolved from chimpanzees as though this was a real scientific belief held by real scientists. Here's the conclusion of the White et al. (2009) paper.

Conclusions. Besides hominids, the only apes to escape post-Miocene extinction persist today as relict species, their modern distributions centered in forested refugia. The markedly primitive Ar. ramidus indicates that no modern ape is a realistic proxy for characterizing early hominid evolution—whether social or locomotor—as appreciated by Huxley. Rather, Ar. ramidus reveals that the last common ancestor that we share with chimpanzees (CLCA) was probably a palmigrade quadrupedal arboreal climber/clamberer that lacked specializations for suspension, vertical climbing, or knuckle-walking (24–27). It probably retained a generalized incisal/postcanine dentition associated with an omnivorous/frugivorous diet less specialized than that of extant great apes (22, 23). The CLCA probably also combined moderate canine dimorphism with minimal skull and body size dimorphism (22, 23), most likely associated with relatively weak male-male agonism in a male philopatric social system (22, 23, 31).

Ardipithecus reveals the first hominid adaptive plateau after the CLCA. It combined facultative terrestrial bipedality (25, 26) in a woodland habitat (28–30) with retained arboreal capabilities inherited from the CLCA (24–27). This knowledge of Ar. ramidus provides us, for the first time, with the paleobiological substrate for the emergence of the subsequent Australopithecus and Homo adaptive phases of human evolution. Perhaps the most critical single implication of Ar. ramidus is its reaffirmation of Darwin’s appreciation: Humans did not evolve from chimpanzees but rather through a series of progenitors starting from a distant common ancestor that once occupied the ancient forests of the African Miocene.

Hmmm ... I'm not that familiar with the scientific beliefs of anthropologists. Maybe they really did think that humans evolved from chimpanzees! That's pretty scary.

Owen Lovejoy has a single author paper where he makes the case for just such a mistaken view of human evolution (Lovejoy 2009). It's a good read. He might be right that his colleagues tended toward a ladder-like view of evolution.

Not all of the reporting is bad. Yesterday I linked to the article by Carl Zimmer [Ardipithecus: We Meet At Last] and today we get to see the reports in Science. One of these reports, A New Kind of Ancestor: Ardipithecus Unveiled by Ann Gibbons, is particularly good. It contains important bits of information like this ...

But not everyone agrees with the team’s interpretations about how Ar. ramidus walked upright and what it reveals about our ancestors. “The authors … are framing the debate that will inevitably follow,” because the description and interpretation of the finds are entwined, says Pilbeam. “My first reaction is to be skeptical about some of the conclusions,” including that human ancestors never went through a chimpanzee-like phase. Other researchers are focusing intently on the lower skeleton, where some of the anatomy is so primitive that they are beginning to argue over just what it means to be “bipedal.” The pelvis, for example, offers only “circumstantial” evidence for upright walking, says Walker. But however the debate about Ardi’s locomotion and identity evolves, she provides the first hard evidence that will inform and constrain future ideas about the ancient hominin bauplan.

It's important to remember that the scientific papers are promoting a particular view of human evolution and the importance of the very fossils that the authors have been working on for many years. They have a big stake in this. There will be biases that creep into the conclusions. It would be wrong to conclude that everything we today hear about Ardipithicus ramidus will stand up to subsequent scrutiny.

If I had to guess, I'd say that the most significant finding is the evidence that Ardipithicus lived in a woodland environment and not on a savanna [see Habitat for Humanity]. This could change the way we think about how humans evolved. If early humans were more likely to lived in wooded areas than in open savanna, then many adaptationist explanations for certain characters will have to be revised. (See the Lovejoy (2009) paper.)

Such a result will make it difficult to explain our supposed instinctual preference for savanna-like terrains, for example [E.O. Wilson in New York]. Why would our ancestral population have fixed alleles making us admire savanna when our ancestors lived in the woods?

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[Image Credit: The map of the Afar Rift is form The View from Afar]

Lovejoy, C. O. (2009) Reexamining Human Origins in Light of Ardipithecus ramidus. Science 326:74e1-74e8. [doi: 10.1126/science.1175834]

Suwa, G., Asfaw, B., Kono, R.T., Kubo, D., Lovejoy, C.O., and White, T.D. (2009) The Ardipithecus ramidus Skull and Its Implications for Hominid Origins. Science 326:68e1-68e7. [doi: 10.1126/science.1175825]

White, T.D., Asfaw, B., Beyene, Y., Haile-Selassie, Y., Lovejoy, C.O., Suwa, G., and WoldeGabriel, G. (2009) Ardipithecus ramidus and the Paleobiology of Early Hominids. Science 326:75-86. [doi: 10.1126/science.1175802]

Creation Astronomy

 
I'm sometimes accused of a bias against creationism and other forms of stupidity. So, in the interests of diversity and political correctness, I present one of the better examples of creationist logic.

This is from The 4th Day Alliance. Don't ever say that I haven't been fair to creationists. This is an accurate, unedited, copy of what's on their website (click on 'Start a Local Chapter"). I'm not making this up. I'm not quote mining.

We are in the midst of a major culture war and we need your help! As you know, one of the foundations upon which great negative change has taken place in our world is the false belief in evolution (naturalism).

While most people are familiar with Charles Darwin’s theory, few realize that an even greater fight is being waged in the area of astronomy. This is because evolution, as it pertains to astronomy, doesn’t just deal with the origin of life, but with the origin of EVERYTHING! If belief in evolution is defeated in the area of cosmology and astronomy, then other forms of evolutionary belief don’t have a leg to stand on. This is why evolutionary astronomers are some of the most dogmatic philosophers in existence today. Their ENTIRE WORLDVIEW rests on the foundation of evolutionary cosmology and astronomy. This is why evolutionists oftentimes feel most threatened by Creation Astronomy and wage the most virulent attacks against Creation Astronomers.

We are requesting your help to combat this problem on a grassroots level. Please consider this opportunity prayerfully.

There are literally hundreds of astronomy clubs around the country, but to our knowledge there is only ONE that is unapologetically Christian and that believes in the absolute truth of the Bible – the 4th Day Alliance. Astronomy clubs are responsible for teaching and introducing the public to astronomy. Unfortunately, 99.99% of the time they are teaching the myth of “billions of years” and false theories like the Big Bang.

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Emma Hale Is My (Distant) Cousin

 
You're probably wondering who the heck is Emma Hale? Up until a few days ago I couldn't have helped you, but now I know a great deal more. She was born in Harmony Township, Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania. This is in the northern part of the state not too far from Binghampton, New York. She died in Nauvoo, Illinois in 1879.

Emma was the wife of Prophet Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon religion (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints). The religion is based on the Book of Mormon, which is a translation of the inscriptions on some gold plates that Joseph discovered. The inscriptions tell of a visit by Jesus to the natives of North America.

The following description of Emma Hale's marriage is from the Wikipedia article on Emma Smith.

Emma was born July 10, 1804, in Harmony Township, Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, as the seventh child of Isaac Hale and Elizabeth Lewis Hale. Emma first met her future husband, Joseph Smith, Jr. in 1825. Smith lived near Palmyra, New York, but boarded with the Hales in Harmony while he was employed in a company of men hoping to unearth buried treasure (specifically a silver mine for Josiah Stowell, a farmer whose farm home still stands on the north side of the Susquehanna River on New York State Route 7 in Ninevah, New York, Just West of Afton). Although the company found no treasure, Smith returned to Harmony several times seeking the hand of Emma. Isaac Hale refused to allow the marriage because he considered Smith's occupation disreputable. Finally, on January 17, 1827, Smith and Emma eloped across the state line to South Bainbridge (Afton), New York, where they were married the following day. The site of the marriage is on the site of the present day Afton Fairgrounds located on New York State Route 41 within the Village of Afton, in the Town of Afton. The Afton Fairgrounds is located on the East side of the Susquehanna River and a New York State Historical Marker commemorates the location. The couple moved to the home of Smith's parents on the edge of Manchester Township near Palmyra.

While there, on September 22, 1827, Joseph and Emma took a horse and carriage belonging to Joseph Knight, Sr. and went to a hill now known as the Hill Cumorah where Joseph claimed to receive a set of Golden Plates. This created a great deal of excitement in the area. In December 1827, the couple decided to move to be with Emma's parents' in Harmony where they reconciled to an extent with Isaac and Elizabeth Hale, who helped Emma and Joseph obtain a house and a small farm. While living there, Joseph began work on the Book of Mormon, and for a time, Emma acted as a scribe. She became a physical witness of the plates, reporting that she felt them through a cloth, traced the pages through the cloth with her fingers, heard the metallic sound they made as she moved them, and felt their weight. She later wrote in an interview with her son, Joseph Smith III: "In writing for your father I frequently wrote day after day, often sitting at the table close by him, he sitting with his face buried in his hat, with the stone in it, and dictating hour after hour with nothing between us."[3]

While in Harmony on June 15, 1828, Emma gave birth to her first child—a son named Alvin—who lived only a few hours.

In May 1829, Emma and Joseph left Harmony and went to live with David Whitmer in Fayette, New York. While there, Joseph finished work on the Book of Mormon, which was published by March 1830.

Emma's father was Issac Hale (1763-1839) and his mother (Emma's grandmother) was Diantha Ward (1741-1771). She is the daughter of Arah Ward (1718-1780) and Arah's father is William Ward (1678-1768). William is the son of Andrew Ward Jr. (1645-1691) who is the son of Andrew Ward Sr. (1597-1660) [Ancestors of Joseph Smith and Emma Hale].

Andrew Ward Sr. is Emma Hale's great⁴-grandfather and my great⁹-grandfather. So Emma Hale and I are distant cousins (very distant). The Ward family is from the New Haven area of Connecticut. It was Emma's father, Issac, who first moved to northern Pennsylvania near the New York state border.

Think about it. I am a Mormon in some alternate universe that isn't very different than this one. Only a few minor changes are required.

Contingency is scary.

UPDATE: Turns out I am not related to Andrew Ward so I'm not related to Emma Hale.

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Why People Believe Weird Things

 

WHY PEOPLE BELIEVE WEIRD THINGS

FEATURING DR. MICHAEL SHERMER

Friday, October 2, 7pm
J.J.R. MacLeod Auditorium
Medical Sciences Building
University of Toronto (1 King's College Circle)

Ever wonder why people believe in UFO abductions, mind-reading, reincarnation, urban legends, not to mention "scientific creationism" and the pernicious myth that the Holocaust never happened?

Dr. Michael Shermer, the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine, is a genuine ghost-buster, a relentless crusader against superstition and pseudoscience. Based on his bestselling book, Why People Believe Weird Things, Dr Shermer^Òs lecture will debunk junk science, bad science, voodoo science, pathological science, pseudoscience, and plain old nonsense. The event will be filled with humour,insight, and personal anecdotes - a highly entertaining wake-up call that has proved a hit on college campuses.

Dr. Michael Shermer is the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine, the Executive Director of the Skeptics Society, a monthly columnist for Scientific American, the host of the Skeptics Distinguished Science Lecture Series at Caltech, and Adjunct Professor of Economics at Claremont Graduate University.

ADMISSION
$8 regular
$5 students and Centre for Inquiry Members.
This event is FREE to New and Renewing Centre for Inquiry members and one guest.

CONTACT
Visit the event webpage at http://tinyurl.com/ntssw7 or contact
416-971-5676 or jtrottier@centerforinquiry.net

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IDiots, Epigenetics, and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

 
What do IDiots, epigenetics, and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck have in common? Nothing much, actually, but that never stopped the Intelligent Design Creationists before.

For the latest attempt by IDiots to connect epigenetics and Lamarck see: A Bogey Moment with PZ Myers by Cornelius Hunter.

It is interesting to see how evolutionists respond to failures of their theory. For all their talk of following the evidence and adjusting to new data, evolutionists find all kinds of ways to resist learning from their failures. Consider one of the major failures of evolution, its view of the very nature of biological change. Twentieth century evolutionary theory held that biological change is a rather simple process that is blind to the needs of the organism. As Julian Huxley, grandson of Darwin confidant T. H. Huxley, put it, mutations "occur without reference to their possible consequences or biological uses."

Observations have long since been made to the contrary, but evolutionists cast it as the Lamarckian heresy. Researchers knew they should not suggest a correlation between environmental pressure and biological response, as the careers of those who did were ruined.

Now, you might be asking yourself what this has to do with supporting creationism.

Good question. It means you're starting to think critically.

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Nobel Prize Predictions

 
My colleague, Alex Palazzo, has just posted his annual list of potential Nobel Prize winners in the biological sciences [Gaze into the crystal ball - Nobel Prize Predictions].

I'm hoping for Ernest McCulloch and James Till for their discovery of stem cells. My second choice would be Harry Noller and some combination of others for their work on ribosome structure and function.

Post your prediction on Alex's new blog Transcription and Translation.

If you have time, you might want to correct his misguided views about scientific facts [Science - Building Models, Not Facts].

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Questions for Bill Maher and Richard Dawkins

 

Sometime tomorrow Richard Dawkins will be presenting the Richard Dawkins Award to Bill Maher at the Atheist Alliance International convention in Los Angeles.

Why is this a problem? It's a problem because Bill Maher is a kook. He believes in all kinds of strange things about alternative medicine, cancer, and immunizations.

Orac has the documentation at Respectful Insolence: Some "inconvenient questions" for Bill Maher and Richard Dawkins tomorrow. He also has a list of question for Bill Maher and Richard Dawkins.

PZ Myers will be at the convention. His attempt to defend Maher and Dawkins isn't working, in my opinion. Orac takes him on and exposes the hyprocrisy of the whole sorry episode. Maybe there will be fireworks at the convention tomorrow? I sure hope so. Giving the Richard Dawkins Award to Bill Maher is a travesty.

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What's on American Television?

 
One of the things I see on American television is Glenn Beck. PZ Myers says that Glenn Beck is completely insane.

It certainly seems that way to me but one can't help but wonder why he's given a show on a major cable news network. Surely he represents a substantial number of Americans?

Watch the video. Keep in mind that the song "Battle Hymn of the Republic" was originally "Canaan's Happy Shore" then transformed into "John Brown's Body." The significance of the changing lyrics to this memorable tune will become important near the end of the video.

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