Ardi Shook Science To Its Roots
by Bill Allin, author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for teachers and parents who want to understand all the ways children develop, not just intellectually. People have problems when they don't know.
"From studying Ardipithecus ramidus, or Ardi, we learn that we cannot understand or model human evolution from chimps and gorillas."
- Owen Lovejoy, a lead author of one of the 11 studies of Ardi that appeared in the journal Science.
Science labelled the discovery of Ardi (more accurately, the revelations of study results of Ardi) the biggest scientific breakthrough of 2009.
At this stage, the study of Ardi and the ramifications of the changes of thinking that will come from it are just beginning. This article will add a few important observations to what we in the general public should learn from the whole exercise. Different information to ponder.
First and foremost is that the lead author of a respected scientific study admitted that the theory (that human evolutionary models could be devised from ape models) that was cherished so long it became thought of as fact, was wrong.
As much as we look somewhat like apes, especially so in the case of young chimpanzees, we differ significantly. The theory claimed that our prehistoric and prehuman ancestors lived in trees and only emerged from the African jungle to walk upright, learn to run and hunt on the savannah.
Cats and birds, for examples, live in trees (at least cats are as comfortable in trees as they are on the ground). Cats and birds can hang upside down from a tree branch and their brains will adjust to the orientation so that they can understand the scene as well as if they were standing upright.
Humans cannot. Stand up now, spread your legs and bend your head down so you look between your legs at the scene behind you. It simply doesn't make as much sense as it would if you were standing upright even though you know the components of the scene you are trying to look at. Your brain cannot adapt to what it understands as a scene that is non-conventional, that is not oriented to the way it wants to understand a floor or ground level scene.
Can you not bend that far? Interesting. Cats and birds can do that for their whole lives. Most can also keep their bodies steady and turn their heads almost completely around to face behind them (some can even do it more than 180 degrees). That would be useful for animals that spend a great deal of time in trees.
If you have observed a pet cat--perhaps one climbing on you--then you have likely seen it hang upside down (at least its head would be upside down according to common orientation) and yet have no trouble understanding everything in the scene. Birds can do the same. To a cat or a bird, there is no upside down, only different orientations of the head, to which their brains easily adapt and adjust immediately.
Monkeys and their kin can do the same. You may have seen one in a zoo, on television or in a movie hanging upside by a foot, or even by its tail. They understand the scenes around them no matter what orientation their heads have to view the scene.
We humans can't. No matter how practiced we become, viewing a scene from a non-conventional perspective is always "not right" to us.
Why? If we did indeed once live in trees, we had no reason to lose what was once a critically important ability. We may lose body parts because we have no use for them (prehensile tail of the human fetus that disappears after the fifth month, wisdom teeth that will soon not appear in future generations, useless organs we can have removed and easily live without), but there is no example of humans or other animals losing inherent skills or abilities they once had.
We may no longer be able to do things we once did because our bodies have changed shape or configuration slightly, but we don't lose the skill within our brain should we ever need it. The potential is still there. Yet we still can't understand a scene that is "upside down" to our brain.
Even the reason science gives for humans losing their body hair is lame. The claim is that humans lost their body hair because it would have been too hot to run around the plains hunting in a fur coat. So we lost our fur coats so we could expose our bare skin to ultraviolet radiation from the sun (more direct, thus damaging, in Africa than in temperate zones) so we could contract skin cancer more easily?
That doesn't make sense. Evolution has never been shown to work to create more health risk in any animal. That would be counter to natural selection. Besides, do monkeys not get hot from swinging around in the trees? I would, if I had that ability and strength, hairy or naked. But I don't now and I didn't as a child, though I climbed awkwardly (by ape standards) in some trees.
The claim that hair in the crotch and armpits helps to dispel sweat, which is why we still grow it in those places, would apply as well to hair anywhere else on the body. Sweat would evaporate more quickly from crotch and armpits without hair to slow down the movement of air across them. If not, then women who shave those places today would be sweatier than women who let their hair grow. I'm not an expert, but I have never heard of that being a problem of women who shave.
Why do we retain head hair? To protect us from the sun? That argument should give more reason why we should retain all-body hair, not lose it. We can wash hair and skin (cooling off in the water at the same time), but we can't slough off melanoma.
Why do we like water so much? Never mind that most of our bodies consist of water as that applies to all animals and plants. Archaeologists looking for ancient human habitation almost always look near water. Or they look near where water once was in the prehistoric past.
Why? We can get enough water into our bodies the way monkeys and other animals do.
We also swim differently from most land animals that spend part of their lives in water. A dog swims using the dog paddle (elephants, excellent swimmers, swim the same way). A dog swims this way so easily because its face and nose are, compared to the locations of our own, on top of their heads. A dog doesn't have to lift its head to swim because its nose is already above water as it floats.
That convenient location of the nose and eyes for dogs did not cause them to lose their fur because they hunt and basically live on land. Elephants, on the other hand, are naked, can find food in the water, and they have webbing between their toes like a duck.
It seems highly likely that our prehuman ancestors--in the Pliocene period--spent a good deal of time in the water. There we lost our body hair, retained it in crotch and armpits for warmth and on the head so our babies could hold onto it. Ever held out your finger to a young baby and had it grasp the finger naturally? For more on this see Elaine Morgan's The Descent of Woman.
If the experts that study the history of our own species are so careless, so inexact, so arrogant about teaching theory that doesn't even meet the criterion of common sense examination, as if it were established fact, how much confidence can we place in any scientific claims made with the certainty of experts?
Theory is not fact, by its very definition, though theory is often taught as if it were fact. Even the laws of physics bear questioning. Remember reading about when light was believed to travel in straight lines, when time and space were linear, when the earth was the centre of the universe and when an object was in one place it couldn't be anywhere else? Not anymore. Evidence proves that these "facts" of science were wrong.
We may be wrong to adopt fantastic stories masquerading as religion (my story is always better and truer than yours), but we would be equally as mistaken to accept all statements by science as fact, no matter how confidently and passionately the statements are made.
We humans do not really know as much as we claim we do. We just act as if we know more, as if we are always right. It's called hubris. We teach it to our kids.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for teachers and parents who want to understand all the ways children develop, not just intellectually. People have problems when they don't know.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/
Showing posts with label Africa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Africa. Show all posts
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Sharing Prejudices Or Love
If you think well of others, you will also speak well of others and to others. If your heart is full of love, you will speak of love.
- Mother Teresa
The world is not made up of you, the people you know and people like you, people with your biases and prejudices, your tastes and preferences, your standards of ethics and morals.
It's made up of nearly seven billion people you have never met, whose lives you know nothing about, whose cultures you know little about, whose backgrounds, fears, family values and daily struggles you can't comprehend based on your experience.
Do not assume that because you and your friends believe something or that because you can justify to yourselves some line of thinking or point of view that you can speak for them. They don't want you to speak on their behalf any more than you would want them to act for you.
Men and women around the world have many characteristics in common. However, what most of us think life is like for us relates to our culture, not to those common characteristics.
We all want to experience happiness. It would be a shameful experience to calculate how little time and effort we devote to those who lack more experience with happiness because they're too busy finding food for themselves and their families, some way to earn money so they can buy something with which to shelter themselves or simply a way to avoid being killed in the night.
We all experience fear. Many fears. Everyone has them, though we try to cover them up and pretend otherwise. What do we do to help relieve the causes of fear and risk in countries where it dominates the lives of most citizens? In some cases, we engage in war to "liberate" them. So, how do you think that has worked out?
We all need love, as Mother Teresa suggested. How can we offer love to people we have never met? People whose lives we know nothing about?
Love has two basic components. One is security. Think about the people you love. Don't you want to protect them when you can? Think about those who love you. Surely they try, in their own ways, to provide some security and dependability for your life.
Touch is the other component of love. We don't think of love that way usually. We think of love as something mysterious that either happens or it doesn't. That's not because love doesn't have common characteristics, but because we aren't familiar with the physical characteristics of love. Other than the physical component of sex, which is but one small part of the totality of love.
Touch is a critical component of love for those closest to us. The more two people who love each other share their love with touch, the more secure they feel. That applies to parents and children as well as to lovers. We even tend to measure the love that another has for us by the amount and the kind of touch they offer to us. Yes, touch is a "love meter."
When children grow up and separate from parents, often by long distances in this modern world of international economy, what the distant kin remember--what holds them together as "loved ones"--is their memory of how they used to show their love for each other through touch. They may not consciously think of it as touching each other, but touch will be a component of almost every good memory they have of sharing love.
A smile is the closest we can come to showing love for someone without actually touching them. A smile is sort of "love by proxy." That's why everyone appreciates having a smile from others they know and even from strangers. We show our love for other members of our species--even to our pets--with smiles. Somehow our pets understand that kind of love, though they, like us, would prefer to receive it through touch.
Most of us find it hard to ease the fears of people we never see and to better their lives with loving touch and smiles. But it can be done.
Next time you watch one of those television commercials that asks you to donate a dollar a day to help orphaned children in Africa or people in some war-torn, poverty-stricken part of the world, note how often those making the appeal touch those needing your help. They do for strangers what you can't do. These organizations usually have lots of people who would like to work in such situations, but they can't afford to send more than they can support with food, shelter and defence.
Do you travel to other countries on vacation? If you look, you will find treasures as valuable in poor countries as in wealthier ones that can afford to advertise to attract your tourist money. You can actually see more, meet more people and learn about them, travel cheaper and give the cash you saved to those who need it in poorer countries. With your smiles and your casual touch you can share your love with them.
You will find yourself thinking that if you lived in similar circumstances you would likely do the same sorts of things they do to survive. That empathy will demonstrate to you how much of the truly important parts of life we all have in common.
To accomplish these suggestions, you will have to defy the advertising that those with money throw your way to get you to spend lavishly in their countries.
Then your choice will be whether money or love is more important to you.
Mother Teresa had millions of people who loved her. She had no money to spend on them. What she had to share was a smile, a touch. They loved her back for the love she gave to them. Her cost: nothing. Her rewards: priceless.
Bill Allin
Turning it Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents, grandparents and teachers who want to grow socially and emotionally healthy children, not just intellectually and physically healthy ones.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Mother Teresa
The world is not made up of you, the people you know and people like you, people with your biases and prejudices, your tastes and preferences, your standards of ethics and morals.
It's made up of nearly seven billion people you have never met, whose lives you know nothing about, whose cultures you know little about, whose backgrounds, fears, family values and daily struggles you can't comprehend based on your experience.
Do not assume that because you and your friends believe something or that because you can justify to yourselves some line of thinking or point of view that you can speak for them. They don't want you to speak on their behalf any more than you would want them to act for you.
Men and women around the world have many characteristics in common. However, what most of us think life is like for us relates to our culture, not to those common characteristics.
We all want to experience happiness. It would be a shameful experience to calculate how little time and effort we devote to those who lack more experience with happiness because they're too busy finding food for themselves and their families, some way to earn money so they can buy something with which to shelter themselves or simply a way to avoid being killed in the night.
We all experience fear. Many fears. Everyone has them, though we try to cover them up and pretend otherwise. What do we do to help relieve the causes of fear and risk in countries where it dominates the lives of most citizens? In some cases, we engage in war to "liberate" them. So, how do you think that has worked out?
We all need love, as Mother Teresa suggested. How can we offer love to people we have never met? People whose lives we know nothing about?
Love has two basic components. One is security. Think about the people you love. Don't you want to protect them when you can? Think about those who love you. Surely they try, in their own ways, to provide some security and dependability for your life.
Touch is the other component of love. We don't think of love that way usually. We think of love as something mysterious that either happens or it doesn't. That's not because love doesn't have common characteristics, but because we aren't familiar with the physical characteristics of love. Other than the physical component of sex, which is but one small part of the totality of love.
Touch is a critical component of love for those closest to us. The more two people who love each other share their love with touch, the more secure they feel. That applies to parents and children as well as to lovers. We even tend to measure the love that another has for us by the amount and the kind of touch they offer to us. Yes, touch is a "love meter."
When children grow up and separate from parents, often by long distances in this modern world of international economy, what the distant kin remember--what holds them together as "loved ones"--is their memory of how they used to show their love for each other through touch. They may not consciously think of it as touching each other, but touch will be a component of almost every good memory they have of sharing love.
A smile is the closest we can come to showing love for someone without actually touching them. A smile is sort of "love by proxy." That's why everyone appreciates having a smile from others they know and even from strangers. We show our love for other members of our species--even to our pets--with smiles. Somehow our pets understand that kind of love, though they, like us, would prefer to receive it through touch.
Most of us find it hard to ease the fears of people we never see and to better their lives with loving touch and smiles. But it can be done.
Next time you watch one of those television commercials that asks you to donate a dollar a day to help orphaned children in Africa or people in some war-torn, poverty-stricken part of the world, note how often those making the appeal touch those needing your help. They do for strangers what you can't do. These organizations usually have lots of people who would like to work in such situations, but they can't afford to send more than they can support with food, shelter and defence.
Do you travel to other countries on vacation? If you look, you will find treasures as valuable in poor countries as in wealthier ones that can afford to advertise to attract your tourist money. You can actually see more, meet more people and learn about them, travel cheaper and give the cash you saved to those who need it in poorer countries. With your smiles and your casual touch you can share your love with them.
You will find yourself thinking that if you lived in similar circumstances you would likely do the same sorts of things they do to survive. That empathy will demonstrate to you how much of the truly important parts of life we all have in common.
To accomplish these suggestions, you will have to defy the advertising that those with money throw your way to get you to spend lavishly in their countries.
Then your choice will be whether money or love is more important to you.
Mother Teresa had millions of people who loved her. She had no money to spend on them. What she had to share was a smile, a touch. They loved her back for the love she gave to them. Her cost: nothing. Her rewards: priceless.
Bill Allin
Turning it Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents, grandparents and teachers who want to grow socially and emotionally healthy children, not just intellectually and physically healthy ones.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Thursday, February 14, 2008
AIDS: More Than You Could Imagine
The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side.
- Hunter S. Thompson, American journalist and author (1937-2005)
While not about the music industry, instead about the AIDS juggernaut, this article shows the seedy side of a frightening pandemic that is far worse than the music industry. Seedy and frightening? Check out the information below before discounting the possibility.
Many histories and medical articles have focused on parts of the AIDS phenomenon (the topic is too massive to be covered in a single read). Everyone agrees that the disease transformed from an immune disease that has likely been around for a very long time among the monkeys and apes of Africa.
But what of that transformation? Did nature manage that with genetic mutations alone?
People of North America may recall a couple of decades ago when Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (now known commonly as simply AIDS) was considered by many to be a disease of drug users, homosexuals and the promiscuous. It was, according to some, God's revenge on those who violated His laws.
But that was only one of the conspiracy theories, most of which have bypassed us while today we learn about the devastation of the disease in Africa, Asia and to a lesser extent every other country on the planet.
The home region of AIDS, subsaharan Africa, still retains the title of most HIV-infected and AIDS-destroyed part of the world. Some villages have been virtually wiped out, with a few having almost no adults left, only dozens of children scrambling around trying to eke out an existence with no tools or skills at their disposal.
In that same part of the world, a conspiracy theory foments about the origins of AIDS. According to this theory, white skinned people (and near-whites) dominate every other continent on earth, except Antarctica (where no one lives permanently) and Africa. With the demise of the slave trade, successors of the slavers both developed AIDS from its precursor disease and encouraged the many tribes to adopt promiscuous habits and rape of unguarded women to spread the disease around.
The ultimate objective of this movement, according to the theory, is to eventually wipe every person with black skin off the continent of Africa so that the whites can have free reign over the continent they once dominated as imperial powers. In other words, it's a land grab by whites on a continental scale.
As outrageous and absurd as these theories sound, they must give us pause. Swedish novelist Henning Mankell, who spends a great deal of his free time assisting AIDS charities in Africa (and who is so close to the people that he is director of the Teatro Avenida, in Maputo, Mozambique) wrote about his experiences relating to AIDS in Africa in his novel Kennedy's Brain.
While the novel has almost nothing to do with the apparently absent brain of assassinated former US President John F. Kennedy, it does discuss the enormous size and power of forces on the dark side of AIDS in Africa. He writes in the Epilogue "What is written in this book is exclusively the result of my own choices and decisions, of course. Just as the anger is also mine, the anger that was my driving force."
Earlier in the Epilogue he states clearly that he couldn't write a nonfiction book about what he knows of the AIDS situation in Africa because few would take him seriously. With a fictitious story context, he could incorporate his knowledge and experience in ways that we would and could believe. The theories stated above find prominent places in his story.
What do we know of Africa that could refute the conspiracy theories? We know that the president of South Africa, the subsaharan country that most people hope will take the lead in developing an AIDS vaccine, believes that HIV is not likely the root cause of AIDS in Africa. His argument is not that simple, as he claims that social practices and mores have much more to do with the spread of AIDS than HIV.
We know that Lybia imprisoned, tortured into confession, tried and committed to death by firing squad five Bulgarian nurses, one Palestinian assistant and another Bulgarian doctor who hadn't been anywhere near the Benghazi hospital where about 400 children had supposedly been infect with the HIV virus. In their first trial, proof of their innocence was disallowed by the judge. In the second trial, which also resulted in the sentences to death, further evidence that was beyond doubt proof about their innocence was also ignored, despite the fact that the largest collection of Nobel laureates in history wrote to urge President Qaddafi to release them for lack of evidence.
We know that tribal conflicts in Congo (DRC) and Berundi/Rwanda have resulted in millions of deaths in the past few years. We know that Zimbabwe President Mugabe has urged his tribal supporters to oust whites from their land, killing many in the process. We know about the current problems in Kenya, formerly the most peaceful and perhaps the best organized nation in black Africa.
In Africa, one cannot use the words politician and honesty in the same sentence, unless it's to show contrast.
What are we to make then of Henning Mankell's claim that the big pharmaceutical companies of the world have unacknowledged clinics in subsaharan Africa (certainly including Mozambique) where testing of AIDS medications is done on infected victims without their knowledge or approval? Or that many otherwise healthy Africans have been infected with the HIV virus and held in captivity so that new medication can be tested on those who have recently been infected and "diagnosed?"
This article can't help you to reach any conclusion about AIDS, its origins or its future because the topic is almost beyond human understanding in its scope. It can, however, give you something to think about.
Of one thing we may be certain, where politicians make decisions about AIDS and AIDS victims and where Big Pharma stands to make incredible fortunes from a cure or viable treatment, we shouldn't turn our heads away thinking that someone else is looking after the problem.
Maybe these stories are nothing but conspiracy fantasies. If you think you can dismiss them easily, remember what happened after so many people believed in Weapons of Mass Destruction. The truth lies buried deeper than we would like to believe.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book for adults to learn what they missed in their years of early childhood development and what they need to know to compensate for what they missed now.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Hunter S. Thompson, American journalist and author (1937-2005)
While not about the music industry, instead about the AIDS juggernaut, this article shows the seedy side of a frightening pandemic that is far worse than the music industry. Seedy and frightening? Check out the information below before discounting the possibility.
Many histories and medical articles have focused on parts of the AIDS phenomenon (the topic is too massive to be covered in a single read). Everyone agrees that the disease transformed from an immune disease that has likely been around for a very long time among the monkeys and apes of Africa.
But what of that transformation? Did nature manage that with genetic mutations alone?
People of North America may recall a couple of decades ago when Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (now known commonly as simply AIDS) was considered by many to be a disease of drug users, homosexuals and the promiscuous. It was, according to some, God's revenge on those who violated His laws.
But that was only one of the conspiracy theories, most of which have bypassed us while today we learn about the devastation of the disease in Africa, Asia and to a lesser extent every other country on the planet.
The home region of AIDS, subsaharan Africa, still retains the title of most HIV-infected and AIDS-destroyed part of the world. Some villages have been virtually wiped out, with a few having almost no adults left, only dozens of children scrambling around trying to eke out an existence with no tools or skills at their disposal.
In that same part of the world, a conspiracy theory foments about the origins of AIDS. According to this theory, white skinned people (and near-whites) dominate every other continent on earth, except Antarctica (where no one lives permanently) and Africa. With the demise of the slave trade, successors of the slavers both developed AIDS from its precursor disease and encouraged the many tribes to adopt promiscuous habits and rape of unguarded women to spread the disease around.
The ultimate objective of this movement, according to the theory, is to eventually wipe every person with black skin off the continent of Africa so that the whites can have free reign over the continent they once dominated as imperial powers. In other words, it's a land grab by whites on a continental scale.
As outrageous and absurd as these theories sound, they must give us pause. Swedish novelist Henning Mankell, who spends a great deal of his free time assisting AIDS charities in Africa (and who is so close to the people that he is director of the Teatro Avenida, in Maputo, Mozambique) wrote about his experiences relating to AIDS in Africa in his novel Kennedy's Brain.
While the novel has almost nothing to do with the apparently absent brain of assassinated former US President John F. Kennedy, it does discuss the enormous size and power of forces on the dark side of AIDS in Africa. He writes in the Epilogue "What is written in this book is exclusively the result of my own choices and decisions, of course. Just as the anger is also mine, the anger that was my driving force."
Earlier in the Epilogue he states clearly that he couldn't write a nonfiction book about what he knows of the AIDS situation in Africa because few would take him seriously. With a fictitious story context, he could incorporate his knowledge and experience in ways that we would and could believe. The theories stated above find prominent places in his story.
What do we know of Africa that could refute the conspiracy theories? We know that the president of South Africa, the subsaharan country that most people hope will take the lead in developing an AIDS vaccine, believes that HIV is not likely the root cause of AIDS in Africa. His argument is not that simple, as he claims that social practices and mores have much more to do with the spread of AIDS than HIV.
We know that Lybia imprisoned, tortured into confession, tried and committed to death by firing squad five Bulgarian nurses, one Palestinian assistant and another Bulgarian doctor who hadn't been anywhere near the Benghazi hospital where about 400 children had supposedly been infect with the HIV virus. In their first trial, proof of their innocence was disallowed by the judge. In the second trial, which also resulted in the sentences to death, further evidence that was beyond doubt proof about their innocence was also ignored, despite the fact that the largest collection of Nobel laureates in history wrote to urge President Qaddafi to release them for lack of evidence.
We know that tribal conflicts in Congo (DRC) and Berundi/Rwanda have resulted in millions of deaths in the past few years. We know that Zimbabwe President Mugabe has urged his tribal supporters to oust whites from their land, killing many in the process. We know about the current problems in Kenya, formerly the most peaceful and perhaps the best organized nation in black Africa.
In Africa, one cannot use the words politician and honesty in the same sentence, unless it's to show contrast.
What are we to make then of Henning Mankell's claim that the big pharmaceutical companies of the world have unacknowledged clinics in subsaharan Africa (certainly including Mozambique) where testing of AIDS medications is done on infected victims without their knowledge or approval? Or that many otherwise healthy Africans have been infected with the HIV virus and held in captivity so that new medication can be tested on those who have recently been infected and "diagnosed?"
This article can't help you to reach any conclusion about AIDS, its origins or its future because the topic is almost beyond human understanding in its scope. It can, however, give you something to think about.
Of one thing we may be certain, where politicians make decisions about AIDS and AIDS victims and where Big Pharma stands to make incredible fortunes from a cure or viable treatment, we shouldn't turn our heads away thinking that someone else is looking after the problem.
Maybe these stories are nothing but conspiracy fantasies. If you think you can dismiss them easily, remember what happened after so many people believed in Weapons of Mass Destruction. The truth lies buried deeper than we would like to believe.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book for adults to learn what they missed in their years of early childhood development and what they need to know to compensate for what they missed now.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
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