Apes Are In The News Once More

Live Science is going ape these days with stories about apes and monkeys.

Putty-nosed monkeys, who dwell in African rainforests, give out warning "hacks" when predators are around. I love the description of the goals of the monkeys by the Live Science writer: "Their three main goals in life are to reproduce, eat, and not get eaten." Aint that what evolution is all about? More here.

Now it looks like humans and chimp ancestors may have interbred. " The initial split occurred around 6.3 million years ago. Sometime after, the descendents of the earliest known human ancestor—the 6.5 to 7.5-million-year-old "Toumai," a biped that probably didn't look much different than chimpanzee ancestors—mated with ancestral chimps and created a hybrid species.

Scientists can't say how long the hybridization carried on, but the final speciation occurred around 5.3 million years ago, possibly because the two species' genetic coded were too different to mix or the animals were simply physically unappealing to each other." More here

Unappealing to each other? I don't think they are talking about married couples who have been together too long.

And now for the best story, at least to me. Apes plan ahead.
"To determine if apes can also perform this type of "mental time travel," Nicholas Mulcahy and Josep Call, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, enlisted five bonobo chimpanzees and five orangutans for an experiment.

The researchers first led the animals into a room and taught them how to use a tool to get a food reward. Then the apes were directed to a "tool shed" containing tools for reaching grapes and juice bottles. Two of the tools were well suited for the task, while six were not.

After an ape made its selection, it was not allowed access to the goodie dispenser for an hour, so the animal hauled the tool back to a waiting room for storage.

When the researchers allowed the animals to have a go at the dispenser, the apes returned with a suitable tool and retrieved their treat in less than 5 minutes about 30 percent of the time.

One orangutan, a female named Dokana, was particularly adept at planning ahead. She returned to the feeding area with the correct tool for the task nearly every time. Even when she brought back the wrong tool, she figured out how to alter it to make it work anyway.

In a second test, the researchers extended the wait time to 14 hours and ran the test with Dokana and a male bonobo named Kuno. Dokana took tools with her in all 11 trials, and returned with the proper tool seven times. Kuno did even better, returning with the right tool eight times.

Reading an ape's mind

The authors suggest that selecting a tool, which has no value in itself, is evidence that the apes are actually planning ahead, since the animal knows that the tool will come in handy later on."

OK, now I would have guessed that Great Apes could think ahead. But this leads me to ponder why can't Palestinians think ahead. Maybe some of the Palestinian leaders need brain transplants. Give the Palestinian leaders bonobos brains and maybe, just maybe, there will be peace in the middle east.

Here is an example of how Palestinians think ahead:

Palestinians have yet to show any ability to think even one move ahead. They seem to be stuck on the past. Voting for Hamas was a perfect example of this. I have a feeling that when a Palestinian gets ready for a game of chess, he just imagines suicide belts on all the pawns.

The Da Vinci Code is baloney: Why the commotion?

I know why many Christians are so upset over the movie, The Da Vinci Code. It isn't that people are going to die over this, like Jews died in the past when The Passion plays were performed, or like the people who died at cartoon protests recently. No, the Christians aren't worried about people dying because of this movie. They are worried their already flimsy belief system will be further questioned, potentially losing even more of their flock.
Science is hard enough to argue against, but now a fake but plausible story about their mythological saviour....this is too much. How dare someone add to the phoney story they already live and die by? It is like telling a Fundy to add evolution and an ancient earth to their belief system. Many Christians don't like add ons. Too much thinking is required, too many new lies must be invented to keep people believing the old lies.
It is obvious that distorting the mythological Jesus by allowing for a wife and possible kids is totally taboo, causing such an uproar. Yet the release of the movie, The God Who Wasn't There, hardly made news. Maybe Brian Flemming should have got Tom Hanks to appear in a couple of scenes:)

I know as far as my belief in the historical Jesus goes, I never questioned his existence until around the time that Mel Gibson started with his movie, The Passion.

All of a sudden, I was turned on to lots of information about the FACT that Jesus most likely didn't even exist. And everything I've read since, even from Christian Apologists, has only reinforced the non existence of Jesus Christ. It is kind of like the opposite of evolution, where everything I read reinforces evolution as fact. Us Atheists, we are such a cynical bunch, always demanding proof. How dare us!

Here are a couple of clips from The God Who Wasn't There. Definitely worth watching.
The first one runs around 6 minutes and the second one is less than 2 minutes long.

This is the movie that should upset Christians much more than The Da Vinci Code. At least the Code assumes Jesus was a living breathing person.



Yes, there was a 40 year gap from when Jesus supposedly lived, and the first words were written about the greatest myth of all times (OK, he is tied with God).



Oh, and before I get nasty comments by Christians here, please look at some of these sites and try refuting them. You can't.

http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/

http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/m_m_mangasarian/truth_about_jesus.html

http://www.luigicascioli.it/home_eng.php

http://www.i4m.com/think/bible/historical_jesus.htm

http://www.nobeliefs.com/exist.htm

http://www.bidstrup.com/bible.htm


Was Jesus mostly based on Caesar?

THE SIMPSONS AND FAMILY GUY TAKE ON CREATION/EVOLUTION

I didn't have to wait long before these great clips became available on the web. I always loved these shows, and of course the writers make the show, and the writers are not whacko creationists by the looks of these videos. Watch and laugh.

Edited: Youtube keeps deleting these so if you want to view both Family Guy and The Simpsons short videos mocking creationists go here.

The Simpsons dedicated the whole show to the evolution/creation school debate. They pulled no punches, as they didn't mention it was ID vs. evolution but creation vs. evolution. Here is a clip:


I'm always curious how YECs view things like this. Do they get it (yeah right)? Do they realize how ridiculous their beliefs really are (I think deep down they know it but are in deep denial)? Are they mad at The Simpsons and Family Guy (channel block?)? Do they laugh at themselves (I doubt it)?

It is interesting that both these episodes did a first run on the same day (coincidence, or intelligent design?).
Meanwhile all I can do is laugh.

Incidentally, my favorite TV show tackled evolution/creation earlier this year. Watch this, it is short and to the point:

I wonder if Fundies have discussions like Tony and Chris had after the Fundy left.
NOTE: Youtube removed this clip. To view it go here.

A HUGE KNOCK AGAINST AMERICAN ATHEISTS

As my readers know, I feel American Atheists and their No God Blog has an overwhelming anti-Israel bias there.
Now I have found out that their Atheist of the month for August of 2002 was none other than Holocaust denying white supremacist ass licking piece of shit Larry Darby.
Here is a picture of American Atheist President Ellen Johnson putting her hand affectionately on the piece of crap at an Atheists meeting:


Apparently, Darby was the Alabama state director for the American Atheists.

Larry Darby is now running as the Democratic candidate for Alabama Attorney General. He won't win because he is an Atheist. Other than that, his Jew hating, anti-gay, pro-White views would probably give him a slam dunk victory in inbreed country. According to the article in Newsday, he thinks 140,000 Jews died in Europe tops, and most of them died of Typhus.
He is off to New Jersey to meet with National Vanguard, a racist hate organization who whores with anyone who hates Jews, blacks, etc, even anti-Christians like Darby. The average IQ of National Vanguard's members is probably very close to the 73 average IQ of Qatar.

Here is a quote by the pond scum Darby via Hammer of Truth, "In my investigations of modern mythology, such as the Six Millions Lie, which by the way was first trotted out by Zionists during or immediately after World War One, there is a nasty aspect that is too often ignored - that of Jewish Supremacism. I’ve noticed megalomania or superiority complexes even with so-called secular Jews. Even though so-called secular Jews reject the existence of YHWH (the Jewish God of War, the surviving god of all the gods Jews once worshiped) who made them the Master Race, according to the Tanakh, so-called secular Jews are still Jewish Supremacists."

Screw Darby, and screw American Atheists for not writing a single bad word about their former Atheist of the Month.


Pharygula's main man PZ Meyers, "repudiates" Darby as a Democrat.

Here are a bunch of quotes by this vile piece of human feces. He even complained in February that American Atheists was too suportive of Israel. Meanwhile, like many Jew haters, he has something against bashing Muslims over bashing Jews. People like Darby are the sickest people on this planet. If I saw him tomorrow I would kick him in the balls.

UPDATE: Biblioblography has pointed out to me that American Atheists posted something about Darby in a newsletter dated August 2005: "We wish to confirm and underscore this fact. Darby has not served in that capacity as a Director for over two years. Many of his activities and statements, especially concerning the Holocaust as well as how he conducts himself regarding Atheist, Freethought, Humanist or nonbeliever groups and individuals, do not in any way reflect the official position of American Atheists or its officers."

I'll still add that I did feel that many of the blog commenters were anti-Israel, and a few of them are definitely anti-semites. I wasn't impressed by others support of these posters either.

Maybe Schizophrenics Should Solve the Word's Problems

In a really interesting study reported at world-science.net, it seems that schizophrenics are better at problems to do with logic (on a limited basis) than us norms.
It has to do with the way we take context into account when solving a problem. Context can actually trap us into making logical errors.
The study, done in France, found 58% of norms failing in a particular logic task, compared to only 19% of non-norms failing the same task.
There could be many reasons why the norms fell for the trap, but the bottom line is that they fell for it.
I say that we get a group of schizophrenics, lets say 50-200 and we try to explain problems like Iran's nukes, the Israel-Palestinian conflict, Darfur, Arab terror, global warming, gay marriages, abortion, young earth philosophers, IDers, over-population, the Iraq war, Muslim cartoon violence, and limited oil resources. We then act on their solutions as long as there is an overwhelming (70%+) agreement by the non-norms.
The two biggest problems are, how can these problems be put to schizophrenics in an unbiased way, and how can we get the world to listen to their logical answers.