Sunday School

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

Christian nationalism is gaining steam on the right. The Creator of the Universe is about to send GOP candidate Leon Benjamin to Congress.

Texas has banned more books than any other state which may be a precursor to banning the truth.

The story of the praying Bremerton coach keeps getting more surreal.

There has been an 80% increase in the number of Atheists in Northern Ireland in the last ten years.

World of Woo: Ten health and wellness fallacies every skeptic should know.

Environment:  Charging cars at home at night is not the way to go, Stanford study finds.

New archaeology dives into the mysterious demise of the Neanderthals.

Why fighting for the truth is critical and should we believe scientific facts will last forever? Maybe we should just adopt a more Socratic approach to our thinking.

By Jove! tomorrow night Jupiter will be clearly visible in the night sky, its closest approach to us in 59 years.

Long Reads: Four health-conscious cities putting pedestrians first. We need a new philosophy of progress. China in the Age of Surveillance.  The “pig butchering” scam.

Podcast: How the growing nonreligious population will shape future societies.

Sunday Book Club: Caesar’s last breath.

Some photographs taken last week.

While you are waiting for the kettle to boil……

Coffee Break Video:  Should we trust Nature more than ourselves? A conversation on the coming AI upheaval. Tuesday afternoon with Jack. Watch a live feed from NASA’s DART spacecraft on approach to Asteroid Dimorphos.

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

Have a great week everyone!

[Strega]

Thanks, Reg!

[_Robert_]

RE: New archaeology dives into the mysterious demise of the Neanderthals.

One possibility is that a Homo Sapiens born pathogen jumped species and became novel in Neanderthals and wiped them out. After all, many of us have a bit of Neanderthal in the family, so to speak.

[Simon Paynton]

@robert – that’s a very good point.

[jakelafort]

I am taking a firm stance against the pathogen hypothesis.

Same species. So no species jump. Neanderthal fossils have been found in many locations in Europe and Asia. It is hard to imagine the population was sufficient to enable contamination from one group of Neanderthals to the next in a manner that resulted in extinction. There must have been great distances between groups. Perhaps they were nomadic but that is not the same as having extensive trade routes.

Even with deadly pathogens some survive and that creates immunity. Even if a deadly pathogen visited Neanderthal and enclaves were wiped out or so few survivors that the end result was extinction of a group/tribe there just is no way for all of the groups to get the bug or virus.(I would think if it was a virus then we would have evidence of the virus.)

Here is what i think happened. I have no idea!

[Simon Paynton]

jakelafort wrote:

Same species. So no species jump.

That’s a good point as well.  They were sufficiently closely related that they could hybridise.

[_Robert_]

jakelafort wrote:

I am taking a firm stance against the pathogen hypothesis. Same species. So no species jump. Neanderthal fossils have been found in many locations in Europe and Asia. It is hard to imagine the population was sufficient to enable contamination from one group of Neanderthals to the next in a manner that resulted in extinction. There must have been great distances between groups. Perhaps they were nomadic but that is not the same as having extensive trade routes. Even with deadly pathogens some survive and that creates immunity. Even if a deadly pathogen visited Neanderthal and enclaves were wiped out or so few survivors that the end result was extinction of a group/tribe there just is no way for all of the groups to get the bug or virus.(I would think if it was a virus then we would have evidence of the virus.) Here is what i think happened. I have no idea!

Well, science would differ with you on that as there are dozens of zoonoses that have have jumped across species. It’s not like the genetic makeup of bats, rats and people are all that different to something as simple as an RNA virus. We know how deadly new diseases can be. The local “AIS” natives from around here were 100% wiped out by European diseases within a few decades of the arrival of Spainards who were looking for gold and a fountain of youth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoonosis

We should be glad that some dairy workers got cowpox which gave them immunity to smallpox as Dr Edward Jenner noted. Speed things along.

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

We Homo sapiens have between 1% to 3% Neanderthal DNA in our genome. I understand that we got it by interbreeding with Neanderthal. We also have Denisovan DNA, who lived on after Neanderthal became extinct. Both ‘kinds” existed for longer than our species so far has. All three branches of human share some identical genetic information.

But that could be because we all inherited it from a previous ancestor? I mean if we never interbred would we still have that DNA within us. Just an idea that sometimes enters my head. I think I am wrong but will dig a bit deeper out of curiosity. Here is an interesting article on the topic. Now I am off to bandage my knuckles after that long walk.

Some more here.

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

Damn, that was fast….OK, Go ask Alice.

Then go listen to Alice.

[Simon Paynton]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

But that could be because we all inherited it from a previous ancestor?

What I have read is that neanderthals and homo sapiens both evolved from homo heidelbergensis – the neanderthals in Europe, homo sapiens in Africa.

[jakelafort]

Robert i was not questioning the reality of zoonoses. You wrote…One possibility is that a Homo Sapiens born pathogen jumped species and became novel in Neanderthals and wiped them out. I took born to be borne and took issue with the notion that Neanderthal and Homo Sapien are different species. And i agree that a pathogen can make short work of local populations. I suppose it is possible that notwithstanding fossils all over Europe and Asia that the population was down to small numbers and a tribe or two who were in close proximity. Under those circumstances zooknowses with fire hoses put out the life of Neanderthal. And it is quite possible that no single cause is responsible. Climate change, disease, boredom, skirmishes, canabilism…

[TheEncogitationer]

Reg,

Charging cars anywhere at anytime is not the way to go, Stanford study finds.

Fixed That For Them. 😎

• This reply was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by TheEncogitationer. Reason: Wrong tag

[TheEncogitationer]

Fellow Unbelievers,

Several comments on all the great stories in the Sunday School:

First, I wonder if this is where Leon Benjamin got his bony battle bugle?:

Shofar So Good ✡️😁

Home

Re: “The Pig-Butchering Scam”–Absent a contract to the contrary, there is no legal or moral obligation to pick up a phone, reply to a letter, join a social network, or click on a link. Know that and live that, don’t correspond at length with anyone you don’t know, and you won’t be led to the slaughter.

Re:Dimorphos–If a private Free-Market Capitalist space entrepreneur could build an asteroid-smashing device, this could mean leveraging some wonderful windfall for all of us, not to mention useful and precious Metals in the asteroids too:

[Author]

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