Nasty Nuns

As you may know, people who believe in God are generally terrorists, rapists, witch burners, child molesters, or otherwise nasty and imbalanced weirdoes.  They are called "theists," and the most zealous ones are called fundamentalists. 

 

A fundamentalist, clearly committing child abuse

On the other hand, there are some people who believe that God is synonymous with pink unicorns or the Spaghetti Monster.  Obviously, such people are far more reasonable, better balanced, totally conscientious, and wouldn't hurt a mosquito.  Well, at least not an endangered mosquito.  They are called atheists, and many of them are called "humanists," which means that they love humanity but not human beings.  Or something like that.

 

Humanist Atheist Pekka-Eric Auvinen
(Yeah, this is for real.  Look him up.) 

Meanwhile, what makes fundamentalists so evil?  For one thing, they actually believe in God all the time, not just on the weekends.  "Non-fundamentalists" are the more rational theists, because they only believe in God when it's convenient. 

 

A non-fundamentalist Protestant

But the main problem with fundamentalists is that they're always fighting over disagreements.  Atheists simply don't do that, because they're rational.  



Trotsky with a headache

 

Yes sir, fundamentalists are a bunch of hopelessly militaristic die-hards.  You see, believing in heaven makes you want to go there, so you take the logical route and commit an act of otherwise totally pointless aggression and kill yourself.  Well... at least if you're a Muslim, in which case you get a bonus of fifty virgins besides.  But Christian fundamentalists can't be all that different from Muslims, now can they? 

 

Virgins in paradise eagerly await Muslims

Fundamentalists cause problems wherever they are.  For example, Rev. Fr. Gerald Fitzgerald was an old Catholic fundamentalist who called pedophiles "rattlesnakes" and "vipers," and thought them generally incurable.  Wasn't that mean of him?  They should not be priests, he said; or if they were, they should be secluded on a desert island where they wouldn't do any harm.  Fortunately, the progressive, rational, cool non-fundamentalists in the Church knew better, and dismissed him for his outdated views on psychology and sex and stuff.  If you're interested, you can read his 1950's letters here:

http://documents.nytimes.com/father-gerald-fitzgerald-correspondence-priest-sex-abuse

 

Not particularly fundamentalist

Of course, many fundamentalists are always trying to say that they're not the problem.  Christians, for example, say that they're the most persecuted religion on the planet, and that atheists are the real problem.  Not just atheists, but anybody else who isn't Christian!  This is quite clearly arrogant, intolerant, and hateful B.S., the result of religious dogmatism.  The real problem is everybody who isn't atheist. 

Atheism is the only solution!

Yes, the poor, defenseless atheists have to put up with a lot of hatred and irrationality from their fundamentalist peers.  Not to mention cigarette smoke.

Problem?

Well, that's all for tonight.  Let's welcome Sister Barracuda here to say a cheery goodbye to all you nice non-fundamentalists and atheists out there--

Good joke... No?

Have you ever wondered if humans are descended from a pig-chimp hybrid? 
 

You people get the weirdest ideas.

For those who are unaware, the satirical netrag Rational Wiki has this to say about Poe's Law:

"Without a clear indication of the author's intent, it is difficult or impossible to tell the difference between an expression of sincere extremism and a parody of extremism." 

Now Rational Wiki  is generally a fine and hilarious example of this truth; though there are similar, but often better quality, humor outlets available for those who just want a laugh.  These include The Progressive, The New Republic, Utine Reader, Harper's Magazine, World Policy Journal, Washington Monthly, Rolling Stone, etc. 



Another satirical magazine

But of course, at the top of any humor list is... [insert drum roll]...  The one and only, To Kill a Polar Bear!  
 

Al Gore proudly endorses this blog

But let's get back on topic.  I've personally been aware for a good while that we human beings are a bit like pigs.  Seriously, there are some interesting similarities.  Yet I never imagined that any evolutionary geneticist would actually take the hint. 

 

Some (females?) find the connection obvious. 

 

Now it's right about here that Poe's Law comes into effect, because the actual claims really start to be indistinguishable from satire.  Buckle up for the ride... and try not to think too hard, or you might damage your mind. 

 

According to a July, 2013 article in Phys.org, http://phys.org/news/2013-07-chimp-pig-hybrid-humans.html, geneticist Eugene McCarthy describes a hereditary connection between humans and pigs.  He's gotten the idea peer-reviewed and everything!  After studying anatomical similarities between species, he decided that a pig-chimp hybrid could "explain" a lot of things.  For example, why are we comparatively hairless, and apes are not?  In fact, why is our skin structurally more similar to a pig's than an ape's? 

 

Simple: long, long ago, we had an odd pig ancestor.  You actually have the porcine line to thank for your pretty, soft skin, ladies.  



I'm beautiful because I'm pig.



Of course!



But it gets better.  Apparently, it was a daddy pig and a mommy chimp.  Our chimp ancestor was literally taken advantage of by a

MALE CHAUVINIST PIG!!!

 

Excuse me for a moment while I laugh like an idiot.

 

Everybody's laughing at me!

 

So apparently a demented pig mated with a chimp, which gave birth to a pim--  wow...  um...  chig.  Let's call it a chig.  After a perfectly healthy and normal childhood (doubtless), the chig probably got together with another chimp.  Though it could have ended up with a pig instead; but it probably wasn't lucky enough to find another chig, since chigs seem to be a rare occurrence in nature.  It's only the most daring pigs and chimps who ever try crossbreeding, apparently. 

 

Don't worry, Baby!  No one will ever know!

 

And that's where the human race comes from. 

 

Time for the button.

 

Of course there are some small discrepancies (such as the fact that chimps and pigs never do that sort of thing, and it wouldn't work anyways).  But who knows?  Maybe pigs and apes were more compatible a million years ago.  Our research will definitely give us further insights, and allow us to appreciate--

 

Now there's no need to be impulsive about it.  After all, it's a theory in progress.



 

All theories have problems.  It's not like any other theory is perfect, you know. 

They can be a lot more perfect than that.

 

But it's peer-reviewed and everything!  You'd be arrogant just to dismiss something out-of-hand when it's been peer-reviewed--



I'm not arrogant, I'm sane.


Look, just give it a chance!  I'm sure there's a way to make it sound more convincing...  We can do all kinds of research about how it could maybe just work...  Heck, if we try long enough, we can probably even conjure up fossils and stuff to support it!  And then you'll have to accept it! 


I value sanity more than that, sorry.

But theories can evolve and change!  Don't take it all so seriously right now!





No one should take it seriously.

Oh come ON!!!  It's JUST a THEORY!!! 

 

...No wait!  What did I say?!?

 

Oh well.  We all know that anything's better than Creationism. 



My finger's getting tired.

Goodnight.  :)
 





FRESH DINO TISSUE

My last (but first) post on this blog was aimed at one particular windbag and his minions, who should look as silly as they are; but I am sincerely sorry if I offended anyone who doesn't deserve it.  Of course, my blog's title will offend environmentalist fundies, and if you believe in the Theory of Evolution, this whole post will probably offend you as well.  You may already be offended that I'm using the word "fundie" in a way other than you'd like.  But don't take any of this personally, because I'm being quite accurate, and if you find any mistake in it I will be both truly surprised and grateful. 

Me with a friend

Kentucky Fried T-Rex, anyone?  

It's not their chicken you should worry about.

With the release of Jurassic World (which has the coolest dinosaur fight scene of all time, by the way), I was reminded of an amazing discovery of actual dinosaur tissue back in 2005.  Since I've been a dinosaur freak from my young childhood, this find and the subsequent tests run on it have kept my interest keen over the last decade.  Not surprisingly, I was able to find a number of articles on the discovery in Science Daily.  But what did surprise me was the following article, from just this year:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/06/150609113703.htm
"Dinosaur fossil investigation unlocks possible soft tissue treasure trove." 

Let me give a little background--well, more than just a little, to be honest.  Back in '05, when Dr. Mary Schweitzer accidentally found soft, fibrous matter in the bone of a T-Rex (yes, the substance was actually soft and "stretchy"), excitement welled up within her, and controversy around her.  Now this was hardly the first time that "fresh" dino bones had been found--fossilized bones, including those of dinosaurs, are seldom fully petrified.  But what made this discovery special was not only the texture of the tissue within the bone, but the fact that it came complete with what appeared to be intact blood vessels, and even blood cells!  A fundamental constituent of the Jurassic Park plot had finally been realized, it seemed.  [1]

Of course, all sorts of questions were raised by experts and non-experts alike.  Was there actually DNA preserved in the find?  If so, could we possibly achieve the awesome, if frightening, dream of the Jurassic Park creators--modern dinosaur clones?  But perhaps most importantly, could this find even be real?  And if so, how? 

Some in correspondence with Dr. Schweitzer actually proclaimed that it didn't matter how many tests she ran on the find, or how conclusive it seemed--they would never believe it had actual dinosaur DNA.  Indeed, not only is it hardly conceivable that any kind of fresh tissue or proteins could survive millions of years, but the fact is that DNA naturally deteriorates on its own, no matter how good the standard conditions for preservation are, and traditional estimates put its maximum survival time to as low as several thousand years.  If this find were genuine, and especially if it included DNA, scientists around the world would have a serious problem on their hands.  Either DNA could somehow survive far longer than was previously thought, or else that T-Rex was breathing, eating, and stomping around only thousands of years ago. 

To be fair, the possibility of contamination of the specimen was a very real one--a number of similar DNA claims had been made in the past years, only to be debunked as being the products of microbial and/or modern human contamination.  So, a myriad of careful and extensive tests have been run on the 2005 find, some doubtful, but most positive.  One of the most recent was conducted in 2012 by North Carolina State University and the Palo Alto Research Center, which concluded that the protein samples cannot be microbial, do appear fully original, and include DNA!  Of course, the DNA can only be conclusively proven dinosaurian when we have more complete sequencing data; so any of the nay-sayers who still exist may yet see a ray of hope, no matter how dim.  [2]

Meanwhile, a plentitude of both speculation and research has been done as to what possible conditions could extend the survival of DNA to millions of years.  As a consequence, it is now accepted that, under the most ideal conditions, the half-life of DNA is 521 years, much longer than previously thought.  But this still puts the absolute maximum age of genetic material at little more than six-and-a-half million years (and it would cease being readable at only about one-and-a-half million years). In fact, one article from Nature, published just weeks before the release of the 2012 study confirming authentic proteins and apparently DNA, ironically declared that all controversy had been put to bed for good, and that the fossil bone could not possibly contain DNA. Regardless, the 2012 study confirming the proteins’ authenticity stands.  And, also regardless, the T-Rex is still accepted as being 75 million years old.  Science doesn’t care about our models, it would seem. [3]

Considering all this, we can begin to imagine how important a single find of dinosaur tissue can be to science.  But it appears that find is only the beginning! According to the 2015 article in Science Digest, "Dinosaur fossil investigation unlocks possible soft tissue treasure trove," numerous similar finds have since been made; but unlike the case of the T-Rex, these finds have been from fossils that were “poorly preserved” !  The article quotes Dr. Susannah Maidment, Junior Research Fellow from the Department of Earth Science and Engineering at Imperial College London, as saying, "…Although remnants of soft tissues have previously been discovered in rare, exceptionally preserved fossils, what is particularly exciting about our study is that we have discovered structures reminiscent of blood cells and collagen fibres in scrappy, poorly preserved fossils. This suggests that this sort of soft tissue preservation might be widespread in fossils.” [4]

No one had been looking for anything like this before Mary Schweitzer’s accidental discovery in 2005; it was simply considered impossible. Now we know that dinosaur bones everywhere, perhaps even the bones in the New York Museum of Natural History, could basically have fresh marrow in them. Imagine that.


Why did no one tell me?
 

I will continue to keep on top of such findings while I can, and of course I’d like to know if the popular consensus will ever seriously reconsider the ages of those dinosaurs. Of course, the study of dinosaur tissue and DNA could tell us quite a lot about dinosaurs’ biological characteristics and development, which would be highly interesting as well. I’ve personally suspected for a long time that they were vastly different from modern reptiles, and the discovery that they were probably warm blooded and had some hair/feather-like structures is very tantalizing to me. I’ll be completely open here: I personally suspect that the ancient stories of mythological creatures from all over the world have truth in them, and that the creatures they describe are now dead, staring us silently in the face, in our museums of natural history.

This has turned into quite a little essay, but I thought it necessary to give enough background so you can understand why the 2015 Science Daily article excites me the way it does. I also thought I should provide some references besides just that one article, especially for the names, dates, and quotations I’ve given. The citation format is not formal; I just put corresponding numbers after the paragraphs where I gave information found in the following links. The first one has some amazing pictures:

1. http://www.nbcnews.com/id/7285683/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/scientists-recover-t-rex-soft-tissue/#.VeYKfBGFPcs
2. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121023151333.htm
3. http://www.nature.com/news/dna-has-a-521-year-half-life-1.11555
4. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/06/150609113703.htm