By John Bryk, CSO | Jun 27, 2017 11:27 AM PT

Opinions expressed by ICN authors are their own.

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On the morning ofJune 27th, reports began surfacing of widespread attacks against Ukrainian critical infrastructure sectors that included aviation, banking, and electricity. An unknown malware had begun affecting IT systems in these sectors. Business systems were made unavailable and normal processes stopped. Fortunately, no operational technology, the technology that runs the energy grid, was reported to be affected.

Affected systems were widespread. They included Ukrenergo, the countrys electric transmission company, and Kyivenergo, the distribution company serving the Kiev region, While Ukrenergy reported no outages, Kyivenergy was forced to shut down all administratve systems, awaiting permission from the Ukraines Security Service (SBU) before restarting.

Others victims in Ukraine and internationally included:

The attack occurred, probably not by chance, only hours after the car bombing murder of Col. Maxim Shapoval of the Ukraine Chief Directorate of Intelligence and a day before Ukraines Constitution Day.

The offending malware was soon identified at PETYA, PETRYA, or PETwrap, depending upon the source. PETYA reportedly utilized the the NSAs leaked EternalBlue, the same Windows SMBv1 vulnerability as WannaCry, PETYA does not initially encrypt individual files, but replaces the master boot record (MBR), leaving the entire system unusable. Should the MBR not be available, it then goes on to encrypt the individual files.

Perhaps the most valuable lesson we can learn from this attack is that Charles Darwin was right. It's survival of the fittest; right along with that goes the smartest. Unless some completely new vector is discovered in action with this new threat, victims of PETYA have no excuse. The SMB vulnerability in question had been patched by Microsoft prior to WannaCry's May outbreak. During the WannaCry outbreak, Microsoft provided additional patches for legacy operating systems, those no longer supported by normal updates, like Windows XP and Server 2003. Even with these extraordinary measures to provide users with the protection they needed, some failed to update and/or patch.

Those who failed to take action and install patches handed to them on a silver platter are now victims of PETYA, and themselves sources of the new infection to others. Akin to a neighbor with a garage full of dynamite, this is the kind of negligence that endangers the entire cyber neighborhood.

Information Sharing and Analysis Centers (ISACs) in the U.S. were able to get ahead of the infection thanks to early warning and quick action. The Downstream Natural Gas and Electric ISACS combined forces to collect, analyze, and alert their sector members, providing early indicators and even links to algorithms successfully used to earlier decrypt the PETYA ransomware. Having just recently experienced the WannaCry worm, their members were patched and defended. There were no reports of infection in electric or downstream natural gas sectors.

This article is published as part of the IDG Contributor Network. Want to Join?

John Bryk retired from the U.S. Air Force as a colonel after a 30-year career, last serving as a military diplomat in central and western Europe and later as a civilian with the Defense Intelligence Agency. As the intelligence analyst for the DNG-ISAC, he focuses on the protection of our nation's natural gas critical cyber infrastructure.

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PETYA Darwinism applied to cyberspace - CSO Online

A report published today by UK technology association techUK and the Centre for Public Safety explores how police forces can address the challenges and embrace the opportunities associated with the IoT.

The report,Policing and the Internet of Things, provides recommendations on how UK police forces can evolve with the fast-moving world of technology, particularly IoT, to create a digitally skilled police force.

Law enforcement officers in the UK have already begun to embrace emerging technologies, such as drones, for fighting crime. A growing number of officers are also using wearable cameras on the beat these days, while at least one crime scene investigation unit is already working on taking digital forensics from smart devices. However, more work is needed.

According to the report, with fraud and cyber crime now heading the list ofthe UKs top criminal offences, the growth of the IoT and the increasing number of devices connected to the internet means that the way police forces operate needs to change.

Not only have new risks been created, such as the deployment of ransomware onto devices, but more traditional crimes can now be committed online, targeting large numbers of people from almost anywhere in the world, it says.

Currently, online fraud is the most common crime in the country, but a joint report from the National Crime Agency and the National Cyber Security Center suggests that IoT-related crimes may soon become more frequent.

In light of the changing nature of crime, thereport recommends six incremental steps that police forces can take to address both the challenges and the opportunities of IoT.

To address the challenges presented by the IoT, they should:

To maximize the opportunities, meanwhile, they should:

Read more:Dubai rolls out Robocop to fight crime

The report has been endorsed by a number of senior police officers, includingAssistant Chief Constable Richard Berry, chief officer lead on the Digital Investigations and Intelligence Programme for the National Police Chiefs Council. Commenting on the report, he said:

The digital environment presents a number of challenges for public safety and the prevention and detection of crime. Police forces across the country have already adapted locally and there are many pockets of good practice. However, digital challenges can be different to those previously familiar to many in policing.

Working in new partnerships will help the Police Service discover and respond to threats and opportunities better and, in particular, closer working with industry will be critical. In order to fight crime in the digital age, it is vital that police have a good understanding of market capabilities. It will be important to ensure a regular exchange of ideas is facilitated, for police and industry to work collaboratively in responding to new crime and security issues.

This report sets out six incremental steps, which will help police forces meet the challenges presented and harness the opportunities available. Beyond this, I hope this report sparks discussion and debate for how we, as the Police Service can rise to the challenges of Digital Darwinism.

Read more:Ransomware disables connected hotel door system in Austria

See the rest here:

UK police to embrace IoT in age of 'Digital Darwinism' - The Internet of Business (blog)

The crisis of evolutionary biology is spoken of openly here and by scientists who are professed advocates of intelligent design. It is acknowledged in much more circumspect terms by other scientists who know they would be hounded and punished by colleagues for doing so in the public arena. You have to look carefully at what they admit in professional journals, when they think laypeople arent listening.

However, a forthcoming book by biologist J. Scott Turner, Purpose & Desire: What Makes Something Alive and Why Modern Darwinism Has Failed to Explain It, is a real shot across the bow. Dr. Turners last book, from Harvard University Press, was The Tinkerers Accomplice: How Design Emerges from Life Itself. The new book, from HarperOne, is aimed not at an academic audience but straight at the broadest thoughtful reading public.

Turner is a delightful, clear, and highly engaging writer, and he sets out his argument against smug Darwinism forthrightly. As he shows, biology itself is in crisis, having failed to grapple with the enigma of what life really is.

From the Preface:

[T]here sits at the heart of modern Darwinism an unresolved tautology that undermines its validity. We scientists might not be troubled by this, but we should be, not least because the failure to recognize it closes off modern evolutionism from many big problems it should be capable of answering: the origin of life, the origin of the gene, biological design, and the origins of cognition and consciousness, to name a few. Intentionality and purposefulness are important to all these unresolved big questions, and yet we are very quick to fence these off behind a wall of denial. Instead of a frank acknowledgment of purposefulness, intentionality, intelligence, and design, we refer to apparent design, apparent intentionality, apparent intelligence.

The latest biologist to come out swinging at Darwinism, Turner is not an ID proponent. He teaches at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry.

And this is not a review you will be hearing more about Purpose & Desire, here and elsewhere, in weeks to come and more so when the book is published on September 12. Instead I want to invite you to take advantage of a great pre-order deal. See here for details. All you have to do is pre-order from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or other selected venders, and you get two free e-books, Fire-Maker: How Humans Were Designed to Harness Fire and Transform Our Planet, by Michael Denton, and Metamorphosis, which I edited as a companion to the Illustra Media documentary of the same name.

Its as simple as this: order, and then click on the button at the bottom to let us know your order number. The two free e-books are then yours. Needless to say, this deal is of limited duration, so dont dawdle about it!

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Scott Turner's Purpose and Desire An Important New Voice in the Evolution Debate - Discovery Institute

Photo: Facebook

Last week, Donald Trump appeared before a rally in Iowa, where he regaled a crowd of supporters with stories of the great wealth of his inner circle of advisers. When you get the president this is the president of Goldman Sachs smart! having him represent us, he went from massive paydays to peanuts! he boasted. The crowd applauded, as people passionate enough about a politician to attend a rally are wont to do.

But the thing about Trumps core supporters is that Trump doesnt have enough of them. To win the election, he had to pry away some former Obama voters in the Midwest, and he did it by positioning himself to his opponents left on economics. Hillary will never reform Wall Street. She is owned by Wall Street! he warned. Im not going to let Wall Street get away with murder, he promised. His closing ad quoted Trump insisting, The Establishment has trillions of dollars at stake in this election, while images of a stock ticker and the street sign for Wall Street appeared onscreen.

Trump lies and reverses himself about all kinds of things, but usually this behavior is a flailing attempt at self-preservation. The curious thing about these particular reversals is that this hypocrisy comes at large cost to himself. Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg recently interviewed white working-class Obama voters whod turned to Trump and found that news of the presidents Wall Street advisers was the fact most likely to shake their faith in his administration. Trumps approval ratings have sunk to 40 percent or lower. Why is he making so little effort to conceal his bait-and-switch? Why forfeit his most precious political asset? The best explanation for this grand act of self-sabotage (beyond his simply not understanding the policies he endorses) is that Trump, like much of the Republican Party, is an instinctive social Darwinist.

Social Darwinism is a philosophy that treats the market as a perfectly efficient and moral mechanism for allocating wealth. Just as natural selection favors those species best adapted for survival, the theory goes, capitalism rewards the smartest and most deserving among us. It is the intellectual scaffolding, constructed by writers like Ayn Rand and various Austrian economists, behind the vision of conservatives like Paul Ryan and David Koch. Trump may not have read up on the theory, but he understands it viscerally. His father, Fred, inculcated his son with the unshakable belief that his own greatness would lead to enormous wealth.

Trumps boast in Iowa about the great, brilliant business minds in his administration communicates a great deal about his innermost beliefs. I love all people, rich or poor, he explained, but, in those particular positions, I just dont want a poor person, does that make sense? The richest people in the country are, by definition, the most brilliant and well qualified. Trump rejects the notion that circumstance, luck, or social advantage might play a role. In a 1990 interview, a more candid time, Trump expressed his belief that being born into poverty would not have arrested his rise. The coal miner gets black-lung disease, his son gets it, then his son, he told an interviewer. If I had been the son of a coal miner, I would have left the damn mines. But most people dont have the imagination or whatever to leave their mine. They dont have it Youre either born with it or youre not.

Conservative intellectuals make a sharp distinction, at least in theory, between good wealth amassed through pure capitalism and bad wealth obtained by government favoritism. Trump has never observed any boundary between the two. (On the contrary: During the campaign, he presented his experience buying government influence as a qualification for office.) And in practice, few Republicans bother themselves too much over how a person got rich, either. The Bush administration was a boom time for grifters Jack Abramoff, Tom DeLay, Bob Ney, and Duke Cunningham were among the party eminences who used Republican control of government to fatten their wallets.

After the Bush presidency collapsed, conservatives made a show of remorse and vowed not to succumb again to the temptations of corruption. Abramoff, the crooked conservative activist and lobbyist, refashioned himself after returning from prison as a chastened reformer. In 2012, he appeared at a Public Citizen event, denouncing the evils of the system.

But now the lessons have been discarded, and the stench of self-dealing is everywhere. The only low-income-housing program spared by Trumps budget is one his business profits from, and he picked a comically underqualified family loyalist, an event planner by trade, to oversee federal housing in New York, where his business has its largest interest. Trump has handed control of every major regulatory agency to the industries they oversee a Wall Street lawyer runs the Securities and Exchange Commission, fossil-fuel surrogates run the Environmental Protection Agency, the CEO of a for-profit lender will oversee the student-loan system, and on and on. Lobbyists are already shuffling between the White House and K Street. Even Abramoff has been lured out of retirementregistering as a foreign lobbyist, in which capacity he prevailed upon one member of Congress to write a letter requesting a presidential meeting with a client of Abramoffs, a foreign dictator.

Congress has indulged Trumps flagrant profiteering in part because he is letting them dip their beaks too. That Trump is holding his inaugural reelection fund-raiser in the Trump International Hotel, where party elites will join in an event that lines the presidents pockets, is one of the perfectly symbolic moments of the young administration. Any theoretical distinction between the Trumpian ethos of self-entitlement and the conservative doctrine of rewarding job creators has long since washed away.

Social Darwinism is the tissue connecting this shady conduct with the Republican Partys highest policy priorities. Conservatives believe programs that tax the rich and benefit the poor illegitimately meddle with the natural and correct distribution of wealth produced by the marketplace. The Republican health-care bill both what passed in the House and what Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has brought to the Senate confers a nearly trillion-dollar tax cut that overwhelmingly benefits the wealthy. That appears to be its sponsors primary consideration. Secondarily, it strips away an equal amount in Medicaid and middle-class insurance tax credits.

Conservatives have little difficulty applying the logic of social Darwinism to justify punishing the sick. Vice-President Mike Pence explains that the administrations health-care plan supports the promotion of personal responsibility. Kellyanne Conway implies that only an unwillingness to work would cause an able-bodied adult to have trouble affording health care: If they are able-bodied and they want to work, then theyll have employer-sponsored benefits like you and I do. The Republican plan, explained Alabama congressman Mo Brooks, will reduce the cost to those people who lead good lives. Theyre healthy, theyve done the things to keep their bodies healthy. Mick Mulvaney, Trumps budget director, allowed that while people who get cancer should have a safety net, that doesnt mean we should take care of the person who sits at home, eats poorly, and gets diabetes.

After passing a health-care bill built around a regressive tax cut, Republicans plan to proceed quickly to a second tax cut, which is expected to also benefit the rich disproportionately. The two bills, which are the entire focus of the partys current legislative ambitions, would constitute the most sweeping upward redistribution of resources in American history. Washington in the summer of Trumps first year is an atmosphere of organized looting. The precariousness of Trumps position, given his anemic polling, a riled-up opposition, and Robert Mueller lurking in the background, has only heightened the urgency to get while the getting is good.

*A version of this article appears in the June 26, 2017, issue ofNew YorkMagazine.

Meanwhile, coal production is on the rise.

On one hand: 22 million people losing coverage. On the other: extra deficit savings to fund sweeteners.

He was called a snake and an evil man when jury selection began for his securities-fraud trial on Monday.

The Supreme Court did reinstate a narrower version of the order. But the White House could easily lose in the end.

It is hard to overestimate the impact of this much-rumored event, had it occurred.

In the meantime, the Court will allow the ban, in much narrower form, to go into effect.

The Senate still needs a replacement for Obamacares individual mandate. Their idea could amount to a death sentence for uninsured cancer patients.

Obama is Americas vacation-dad-in-chief.

It is bizarre to watch a party carry out a major welfare-state rollback while fervently insisting the welfare state will not be rolled back.

Republicans are laying out their demands, and its hard to see how both moderates and conservatives can be appeased.

Nobody knows, but everyones guessing.

Just wait. Watergate didnt become Watergate overnight, either.

Sixty British high-rises have already failed fire-safety tests following the devastating Grenfell Tower inferno. Hundreds more may still be at risk.

Soon there will be one less person Trump administration officials have to avoid taking selfies with.

A shooting down of an Assad-regime jet raises some questions, such as, are we about to go to war with Russia? How about Iran?

Hes complaining that Obama stole the term from him.

The Trump administration doesnt seem to be taking the threat of future Russian election interference very seriously.

Were about to find out what Mattiss Pentagon will do with mostly unchecked authority to conduct a war.

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Social Darwinism Is What Truly Guides Trump - New York Magazine

Hooker (1849-51). The Rhododendrons of Sikkim-Himalaya. London; Reeve, Benham and Reeve.

Specimens featured in Joseph Hooker's The Rhododendrons of Sikkim-Himalaya, illustrated by Walter Hood Fitch.

Joseph Dalton Hooker, born 200 years ago this month, made extraordinary contributions to science over a life (18171911) that spanned the Victorian era and beyond. Royal Society president and director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, he was knighted in 1877 for scientific services to the British Empire.

Hooker presided over his own empire, too a global network of botanic gardens, from Sydney to Calcutta and Trinidad, which were used to investigate economically vital plants such as rubber and to arrange where they could be cultivated profitably. Hooker's numerous expeditions took him to remote regions, and he wrote foundational works on plant classification, such as The Botany of the Antarctic Voyage of H.M. Discovery Ships Erebus and Terror in 18391843 (184460); Handbook of the New Zealand Flora (1864); and The Flora of British India (187297). Even in the weeks before his death in December 1911, the 94-year-old Hooker was still hard at work on a comprehensive reclassification of the genus Impatiens (the Himalayan balsams; see page 474). And, as Charles Darwin's closest friend, Hooker was part of a collective effort that, in the decade after the 1859 publication of On The Origin of Species, shifted opinion radically towards acceptance of the idea of evolution by natural selection.

Hooker was one of the first to pursue a paid (and successful) scientific life and make doing so respectable, which paved the way for the careers of modern scientists. In fact, he sounded all too much like a modern scientist in 1868, in an address to the delegates and guests of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS), of which he was president. He complained that he would have liked to sketch the rise and progress of Scientific Botany, but was stymied by the pressures of official duties. As the administrator of a large public department he had to drag a lengthening chain of correspondence and could not spend his brief holidays on research.

Hooker's first love was plants. Aged just seven, he began attending the Glasgow University botany lectures of his father, William Jackson Hooker, and joined the students on field trips. As soon as Joseph had obtained his medical degree from Glasgow, he boarded HMS Erebus as official botanist on a four-year expedition to the southern oceans. Over the course of his life, he travelled from Antarctica to the Himalayas, and from Africa's Atlas Mountains to the North American Rockies, in search of plants.

Among the legacies of Hooker's Indian travels was the profusely illustrated The Rhododendrons of Sikkim-Himalaya (1849), whose stunning hand-coloured plates helped to ignite a rhododendron craze in Britain. However, his most lasting legacy was probably the Genera Plantarum (186283), which he co-wrote with George Bentham and which laid the foundations for much of modern plant classification.

Historians have tended to lump Hooker in with Darwin's other young supporters. The biologist Thomas Henry Huxley and physicist John Tyndall, for instance, took every opportunity to attack what they saw as the corrupt Anglican hierarchy that held back the progress of British science. Huxley, Tyndall and Hooker were all members of the slightly shadowy X Club, working behind the scenes to support Darwin and reform science. Yet a closer look at Hooker's life suggests that he was the odd one out.

In the early 1870s, for instance, Hooker became embroiled in a public spat with Acton Smee Ayrton, the government minister responsible for Kew. Hooker railed that Ayrton (who was famously rude) had interfered in the running of the gardens and had lied to the prime minister about it. The press in general rallied to Hooker's defence. The Globe newspaper described Ayrton as someone whom the thick breath of a turbulent suburban democracy has blown for a moment into patronage and power, threatening a public servant whose loss to the interests of universal science would be absolutely irreparable. In calmer terms, The Times reported that a politician had told Parliament to treat naturalists as gentlemen, with consideration, delicacy, refinement, and courtesy.

The truth about this disagreement was more complex. Hooker objected to Ayrton's demand that applicants for clerical positions at Kew take the civil-service examinations rather than be appointed on Hooker's whim. Ayrton had also insisted that all building work at Kew be put out to tender; Hooker used the same firm he and his father had always used. If anyone was trying to put science on a more professional basis, it was Ayrton.

Hooker had to find a way to make a living from botany without compromising his gentlemanly status.

Unlike Darwin, whose father's wealth spared him the need to earn his own money, Hooker had to find a way to make a living from botany without compromising his gentlemanly status. The world of science was changing rapidly. When William Hooker was appointed to the chair at Glasgow in 1820, he had never heard much less delivered a university lecture. He owed the position to the support of his aristocratic patron Joseph Banks, de facto director of Kew under King George III. Half a century later, the Darwinian young guard were supposedly committed to eradicating such practices, yet Joseph Hooker privately referred to Kew's herbarium collections (which his father had created) as future estates comparable to inherited land. The government's reluctance to lose these valuable collections was crucial in ensuring that when William died in 1865, Joseph stepped into the post.

Private Collection/Prismatic Pictures/Bridgeman Images

Joseph Hooker, photographed in his youth.

Hooker became the first scientist to publicly embrace Darwinism, in 1859. In his 1868 BAAS speech, he reflected on the fate of Darwin's theory: although criticisms continued, he asserted that by this time, less than a decade after its first publication, almost every philosophical naturalist accepted natural selection. Even The Guardian (a conservative Anglican newspaper, not its current liberal namesake) acknowledged Darwinism's triumphant and almost unopposed reign. Such was the debt of Darwinism to Hooker; but what did Darwinism do for him?

During his first voyage to Antarctica, Joseph had written to his father, if I cannot be a naturalist with a fortune, I must not be too vain to take honourable compensation for my trouble. One of the many problems Hooker faced as he worked for that compensation was that botany had little status at the time; it was seen as too heavily focused on collection and description. Darwinism offered the prospect of real, applicable scientific laws. In Origin, Darwin argued, for example, that community of descent is the hidden bond which naturalists have been unconsciously seeking. That provided a sound scientific basis for what had previously been largely a matter of individual, often idiosyncratic, expertise. For Hooker, using evolution to put plants in their proper place within the system of classification was also a way of putting botany into a better place within science.

Yet being a naturalist with a fortune would have been his first choice, as the argument with Ayrton shows. Hooker's career bridged the old world of patronage and the new one of government-funded science. The latter opened careers to the relatively poor, but at the cost of bureaucratic interference and that lengthening chain of correspondence. In Hooker's youth, there were no clear scientific paths, so careers had to be improvised against a background of rapidly changing expectations. The men (for it was almost all men) of Hooker's generation struggled to earn a living, persuading others that they were still gentlemen receiving an honorarium rather than a salary. Hooker's aristocratic values may seem slightly absurd today, but some of science's core ideals such as suspicion of profit-driven secrecy instead of the free exchange of knowledge are a legacy of his need to act like a gentleman.

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Botany: He made plants a profession - Nature.com

Evolution will no longer be taught in Turkishsecondary schools after being described as a controversial subject by the government.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has personally approved the change, which will be part of a new national curriculum being published later this month.

The head of the education ministrys curriculum board, Alpaslan Durmu, said a section on Darwinism would be cut from biology classes from 2019.

We have excluded controversial subjects for students at an age unable yet to understand the issues scientific background, he told a seminar in Ankara, according to Hurriyet Daily News.

As the students at ninth grade are not endowed with antecedents to discuss the Origin of Life and Evolution section in biology classes, this section will be delayed until undergraduate study.

Mr Durmu said pupils at elementary schools would still be given an evolutionary point of view and learn evolutionary biology from year five.

Claiming the curriculum was being simplified, he said the government was attempting to educate children in line with local and national values.

Erdogan to Turkish referendum critics: Talk to the hand

Academics from Turkeys most prestigious universities have reportedly criticised the proposals, pointing out the only other country to exclude evolutionary theory from schools was Saudi Arabia.

The omission was first noticed in January, when the Turkish government first announced its new primary and secondary school curricula.

The education ministry said a draft would be discussed and criticism taken into account before the publication of the final version, including a possible replacement chapter entitled Living Beings and the Environment, with all references to Darwinian theory removed.

Other changes included a decrease in the amount of homework and allowing more time for children to play, and the life of Turkeys secularist founder Mustafa Kemal Atatrk being given less focus.

Mustafa Akyol, a senior fellow at the Freedom Project at Wellesley College, said the change appeared to arise from advice given by Egitim Bir-Sen, a conservative education union.

Writing in a column for Al Monitor, he said debates about the theory of evolution date back to the late Ottoman Empire and have repeatedly surfaced under the rule of Mr Erdogans Justice and Development Party (AKP).

Since the early 2000s, religious conservatives have had the upper hand in Turkey, and their distaste for the theory of evolution is well established, Mr Akyol wrote.

Many of them see the theory as corrosive to religious faith and want to protect young generations from such harmful ideas.

The latest move is part of a wider struggle between secularists and right-wing religious groups in Turkey, which is undergoing constitutional reforms to grant the President dramatically increased powers following a referendum held in April.

The vote, which European monitors found did not meet international standards, resulted in the parliamentary system of government being replaced with an executive presidency that has long been the ambition of Mr Erdogan.

He has been accused of undermining Turkeys democratic and secular foundations with in increasingly autocratic and religious agenda, imposing restrictions on alcohol, building new mosques and reintroducing state religious education.

More than 50,000 people have been arrested since a failed coup against Mr Erdogan in July last year, with many more dismissed or detained.

Journalists, prosecutors, soldiers, civil servants and academics are among those targeted in the ongoing purge, which has seen almost 33,000 teachers sacked.

The government has accused suspects of supporting the Gulenist movement blamed for the attempted coup, but critics say baseless accusations are being used for a wider crackdown on dissent.

Fethullah Gulen, a US-bsed cleric,has denied involvement and foreign governments including the UK have found no evidence to support Ankaras allegations or its designation of his Hizmet movement as a terror organisation.

Link:

Turkey to stop teaching evolution in secondary schools as part of new national curriculum - The Independent

Darwinism extends far beyond Earths atmosphere, something Darwin himself could probably never even imagine. Cosmological natural selection (CNS) is based on its biological doppelganger, but evolutionist Michael Price has taken it where no theory has gone before.

Theoretical physicist Lee Smolin had previously suggested that black holes are adaptations of CNS, just as claws or night vision are adaptations born of biological natural selection. He theorized that life emerges from the selection of black holes because universes supposedly self-replicate through them, so those with more gravitationally superpowered star corpses have the advantage. Price has turned Smolins theory inside out to propose that it is actually intelligent life that is more likely to be an adaptation of CNS that results in universes replicating themselvesaka CNS with intelligence.

"Living organisms are the least entropic, that is, the most complexly ordered and improbable entities known to exist," Price insists in defense of his reverse theory that sees life as an adaptation rather than a by-product of universe replication.

The same biological natural selection that generates complex order and decelerating entropy is believed to have a mirror image in the cosmos. Cosmological natural selection depends on the existence of intelligent life because it is much less likely to spawn at random than a black hole, not to mention the most complex thing we know of and the one entity in the cosmos least prone to decay and degeneration.

Even before natural selection shot off into space, Darwin was onto something. Bio-natural selection is entropys worst enemy because it creates organisms rather than destroying them. Everything crawling, flying or swimming around Earth today is here because they run on genes with the most potential for survival. Not having an immune system resistant enough to killer microbes or teeth deadly enough to demolish prey meant your bloodline would perish, while having these survival traits meant your DNA would also survive. Universes with intelligent life (as compared to those without that cosmological boost) are assumed to level up the same way.

This doesnt necessarily send Smolins theory into the chasm of a black hole. While intelligent life may be the ultimate CNS adaptation, black holes could still be the reason universes beget other universes.

CNS may be the ultimate primary cause of cosmological order, just as BNS is the ultimate primary cause of biological order, said Price. In other words, BNS and CNS may together be ultimately responsible for much of the order that we observe in the universe.

(via Phys.org)

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Are aliens more likely by design than black holes? - SYFY WIRE (blog)

It was sort of like waiting for the other shoe to drop. You knew it was going to happen, you just didn't know when. Trumpcare! Now it's here and a joyful noise can be heard throughout the land. Well, perhaps not if you're poor and on Medicaid. But I'm sure tax accountants and tax attorneys have broken out the cases of Dom Perignon they put into storage at the beginning of the Obama Administration. As I wrote the other day, Trumpcare will hurt. We just didn't appreciate how much.

I suppose I could steep myself in the minutiae of the new American Health Care Act in order to truly appreciate the extent of the suffering it will impose. But it seems to me in this particular instance that the WHAT is not nearly as important as the WHY. While it wasn't altogether successful, the intent of the Affordable Care Act was to extend the benefits of the American health care system to as many Americans as possible. The intent of the American Health Care Act, on the other hand, is to limit access to quality, affordable health care to the privileged few. It's as simple as that.

Lurking beneath the surface, however, is the question that should be gnawing away at America's soul. Why would anyone want to limit sick people's access to health care? Doesn't that seem unreasonably cruel? Well, I've said it before and I'll say it again, the Republican Party believes, as a matter of principle, that if you cannot afford medical care, you don't deserve it. Simple. Straight forward. To the point. Health care is a privilege for those willing and able to pay. The indigent and the financially struggling are simply on their own. One way to express it is Social Darwinism.

At its core, this is the opening shot in the Republican version of class warfare. In times past, Republicans would pull out that old chestnut in order to oppose any type of legislation they deemed contrary to the best interests of the wealthy. Genuine tax reform and the elimination of arcane tax loopholes, a rise in the income tax rate on the very rich, means testing for Social Security. All these proposals were equated with the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution.

But ever since January 20, 2017, class warfare has taken on a much more insidious face. The assault on America's economic underclass has become more direct and much more destructive. Today it's health care. Tomorrow it will be an attack on America's system of public education with the rise of non-union charter schools and the spread of school vouchers to further undermine American public education. In time, America's labor unions will come into the cross hairs, limiting the right of American citizens to band together for the purpose of collective bargaining. Next perhaps will see the end of any and all environmental regulations, making asthma and other respiratory diseases much more prevalent, especially in poor, urban areas. Finally will come the piece de resistance, severe voter suppression laws, thus making even the exercise of our voter franchise a privilege rather than a right. In that way it will make getting a redress of grievances that much more difficult, if not altogether impossible.

This isn't about a philosophy of government or a a string of public policy decisions. It's about how some people in the American ruling class view human life. Charles Darwin noted that, in nature, it was called survival of the fittest, and that's pretty much what it boils down to. The "worthy" rise to the top, where they belong. The rest of us are there merely to serve our betters. Period. Oh, they may not express it quite so dramatically, but that's the gist of it just the same.

It's important to understand one thing about this sorry state of affairs. We of America's economic underclass GAVE our wealthy brethren carte blanche. Don't believe it? Well, a self-professed billionaire now sits in the White House, when he isn't traipsing about Mar A Lago playing golf. The minions of America's upper class now control the other two branches of government. Ordinary citizens have been consigned to standing room only on the outside of the seat of power.

That's bad enough. But what we must all come to understand is that America's economic elite didn't stage a coup in order to seize power. We poor folk naively handed that power over to them. So that when the last door is locked and we have all be exiled to a permanent position of subservience in President Trump's even greater America, we ordinary citizens will only have had ourselves to blame.

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From the Recesses of My Mind - ChicagoNow (blog)

They had better do it and decrease the surplus population.

Social Darwinism is a philosophy based on flawed readings of Charles Darwin's biology text On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859). The philosophy came into existence towards the end of the 19th century, though its origins can be traced all the way back to the ideas of Thomas Malthus (1766-1834).

Social Darwinists took the biological ideas of Charles Darwin (and often mixed them with Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Malthus) and attempted to apply them to the social sciences. They were especially interested in applying the idea of "the survival of the fittest" (their words, not Darwin's) in a social context, as this would excuse their existing ideas of racism, colonialism, and unfettered capitalism (for them, at least). It was also used as a tool to argue that governments should not interfere in human competition (as it existed at the time) in any way; and that the government should take no interest in, for example, regulating the economy, reducing poverty or introducing socialized medicine. In other words, have a laissez-faire policy.

The term "Social Darwinism" originated in Great Britain with the works of Herbert Spencer who coined the phrase "survival of the fittest" in the mid-19th century. However his work found more fertile ground in the US where it was taken up by William Graham Sumner who was accused of advocating a "dog-eat-dog" philosophy. This set of ideas was also influenced by the writings of Thomas Malthus, who argued that war was a check on population growth and that welfare promoted population growth among the poor and thus drove down wages. Indeed, what is often called "Social Darwinism" might be more accurately called "Social Malthusianism" since Malthus explicitly promoted policies generally construed as Social Darwinism.[1] The results of Malthus could be seen in the institution of the workhouses; reforming (in actuality virtually eliminating) the Poor Laws; and a general attitude of the upper classes of contempt for the lower classes for their demands of charity. This campaign was aided by the ideas of Jeremy Bentham's utilitarianism, one of the strongest ideologies of the British middle class, which stated that workers chose the poor life and that workhouses would encourage those who wanted to succeed to do so.

At the same time, the "struggle school" of Social Darwinism was being developed. In this view, nations grew and expanded as a result of conflicts with their neighbors. For many, this justified the overseas expansion of powerful nations at the expense of the weak and necessitated the creation of strong military forces.

At more or less the same time, the movement of "Reform Darwinism" was born. This variant emphasized the need for change and adaption in human society to meet new conditions. For example, they argued that the Constitution of the United States should be reinterpreted to meet changing conditions in the US. However some reformers felt that they could use the principles of (Social) Darwinism to justify imperialist, classist, racist, and sexist opinions. And at the extreme of these views was eugenics, originally developed by Darwin's cousin Francis Galton, certain strains of which advocated for state policy such as forced sterilization of the "unfit" (by their standards, of course)[2]

Fortunately, most of Social Darwinisms appeal left it in the early-to-middle part of the 20th century. There were a number of reasons for this including:

Finally an improved understanding of genetics and ideas about the evolutionary basis of philanthropy and compassion removed the basis of this "dog-eat-dog" philosophy.

The term "Social Darwinism" itself has been largely used as an epithet, especially after World War II, and was popularized greatly by the historian Richard Hofstadter, namely by his Social Darwinism in American Thought.[3]Revisionists have argued that Hofstadter's work has caused the term "Social Darwinism" to become wrongly associated with only laissez-faire ideology and wrongly invoked as a synonym for eugenics.[4][5][6] Hofstadter himself delineated two forms of "Social Darwinism" "laissez-faire Darwinism" and "collectivist Darwinism." The former might be represented by the likes of Spencer and Galton while the latter by Nazi biologists influenced by figures such as Ernst Haeckel. However, even this delineation still lumps opposing strains of thought together in some ways. For example, Spencer was also heavily influenced by Lamarckian conceptions of evolution while Galton was staunchly opposed to Lamarck.

The left has also embraced views that may be called forms of "Social Darwinism". Eugenics, for example, found wide support among Progressive Era figures and presidents such as Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Pyotr Kropotkin, a founding thinker of anarcho-communism, was heavily influenced by Darwinian evolution but argued it supported altruism and cooperation rather than competition in his Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution.[7]Peter Singer has argued for what he calls a "Darwinian left."[8]

Indeed, evolutionary ideas have been used to support just about every ideology since (and even before) the publication of Darwin's work.[9][10] However, "Social Darwin-Lamarck-Malthus-Spencer-Galton-Haeckel-Kropotkin-ism" doesn't roll off the tongue as easily as "Social Darwinism."

Social Darwinism rests on two premises: there exists a constant struggle for survival in nature, and nature is a proper guide for the structuring of society. This is not a scientific idea at all, as it is not a statement about what is but rather a statement about what some people think "should" be.

Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection describes the propagation of hereditary traits due to the varying "success" of organisms in reproducing. Basing a moral philosophy on natural selection makes about as much sense as basing morality on the theory of gravitational success: rocks rolling down the furthest are the best rocks.

Social Darwinism is basically a circular argument. A group that gains power can claim to be the "best fit" because it is in power, but then the group claims to be in power because it is the "best fit". Any group in power can use Social Darwinist arguments to justify itself, not just right-wing groups such as fascists. Communists can claim that Communists are the best fit wherever Communists are in power. Ironically, many eugenicists and other racists will insist that DA JEWWS! are secretly in power, yet will never use this logic to insist that Jews are the "best fit".

Given some of the goals of Social Darwinism no universal health care, unfettered capitalism, laissez-faire government policies, strong military forces, and racial separation it is perhaps strange that the Religious Right use the philosophy as a snarl word. It would seem to fit their ideals nicely. Then again, it may be an example of psychological projection, or just because they see the name "Darwin" and get so angry that they ignore the rest. The big irony here is that the Religious Right rejects biological Darwinism while supporting Social Darwinism by another name.

De facto Social Darwinian arguments, such as those made by the authors of The Bell Curve, can also be used as a sort of pseudoscientific socio-economic justification for why rich people are rich ('cause they're, like, smarter) and poor people are poor (too dumb to earn more money). Such notions effectively become a sort of "biological karma" argument in favor of the status quo when used as a hand wave "explanation" for growing economic inequality, typically based on the claim that this rise in inequality reflects dumb poor people outbreeding smart rich people.

Neoreactionaries and "alt-right" types, particularly atheist ones, often openly identify as social Darwinists or as "evolutionary conservatives" (Steve Sailer being one example). These people argue that evolution implies "race realism", since different races evolved under different conditions, and therefore that racial egalitarianism is anti-scientific. On average, they tend to be much younger and more tech-savvy than Religious Right supporters, so it's possible the Republican Party and/or the conservative movement will eventually shift in their direction. These ideas are not new (Thomas Carlyle and Ragnar Redbeard had a lot of the same views), but seem to be undergoing a resurgence.

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Social Darwinism - RationalWiki

["Darwinism" and "Darwinist"] suggest a false narrowness to the field of modern evolutionary biology, as though it was the brainchild of a single person 150 years ago, rather than a vast, complex and evolving subject to which many other great figures have contributed

The word Darwinism is shorthand for evolution by natural selection, named after Charles Darwin, the scientist who first developed, popularised and gathered evidence for the theory. The nuances of its use, however, are dependent on who is using the term. Within biology it is synonymous with natural selection, but within creationism it is more of a snarl word.

To creationists and intelligent design proponents, Darwinism is a derogatory phrase used to describe evolution. By retitling natural selection as "Darwinism", creationists seek to reduce the theory to the level of any other "ism", and thus no more worthy of teaching than creationism. See the evolutionism article for more.

To most biologists, notably Richard Dawkins for example, Darwinism is simply a synonym for evolution by natural selection.[2] This contrasts it against Lamarckism, which is a competing (but completely discredited) mechanism for evolution - and Dawkins often refers to natural selection as "Darwinian". Various other permutations of the term bump around the Internet and blogs. Darwinist is used to describe a vocal proponent of evolution, while neo-Darwinism - to differentiate currently accepted theories about evolution with some of Darwin's original ideas that have turned out to be incorrect. Neo-Darwinism is generally used to refer to the "Modern Evolutionary Synthesis" of Darwinian evolution and Mendelian genetics. Neo-Darwinism is sometimes contrasted with newer schools of thought such as "evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo)," which seeks to incorporate more findings from molecular genetics and developmental biology into the evolutionary paradigm.

The main problem with this term is that science is about evidence and not personality cults, so naming a branch of science directly after its inventor or discoverer is a dubious practice at best. While great contributors to a field of study are respected, they are not worshipped and revered like gurus.

It is interesting to note how this mentality of describing Darwin as the supposed "worshiped father of evolution" reflects the creationists' need for a worshiped father figure to be the head of everything. It is like calling any one who accepts gravity exists "Newtonists" or those who accept relativity "Einsteinians" or "Galileans" as if the way that the universe works is a world view, passed down and declared from on high. Although Charles Darwin is a seminal figure in the modern theory of evolution, and his contribution is certainly recognized, there have been over 150 years of advancements since his initial publication of The Origin of Species - the study of evolution has expanded well beyond Darwin's original works and the ideas he outlined, namely that evolution can now be described in terms of DNA, something that Darwin was unaware of.

While it is certainly true that the "isms" which are based on people's names (such as Thatcherism, Marxism, and Confucianism) obviously base their thoughts largely or entirely on the writings or thoughts of those individuals, the same cannot be said of "Darwinism". Therefore to think that a modern evolutionary biologist would hang on every word Darwin said as unchangeable gospel is certainly a parody of science that has no basis in reality.

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Darwinism - RationalWiki

ThisOrphan Blackreview contains spoilers.

Now that's what I'm talking about. Clutch of Greed has all the elaborate cloak and dagger techniques, moments of levity, and the final dagger to the heart that we've come to expect and love from Orphan Black. Last week felt like a bit of a slog, but this week we had both the thriller and character-driven moments in perfect sync.

This is a show that originated with a similar vibe as the Bourne movies. Orphan Black's first few seasons always put the audience and the protagonists back on their heels, in a race to resolve questions like what is Sarah Manning, are there more, and who is after them. That makes this episode feel like not only a return to form, but a reunion, going home. Little touches like Clone Phones (5.0, natch) and seeing the alley by Felix's place only adds to that.

Cosima meets PT Westmoreland

Cosima wisely advises her charge not to eat the Soylent Green--er, vitamin seaweed, and gets to meet the mysterious PT Westmoreland, who was apparently friends with Darwin and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I know Darwin himself wasn't into social Darwinism, but is anyone else getting vague eugenics vibes from old PT? I feel like this guy has a century's worth of skeletons in his creepy closet.

I'm glad Cosima isn't taken in, even when he uses her favorite, "I follow the science," line, which is so spot on, perhaps someone fed it to him? Someone should tell this man he's not the first guy to offer Cosima a lab and the chance to study herself, her sisters, and all the coolest genetics in the world.

Helena goes on the lam

Helena and Donnie will always be an excellent pairing, and Donnie doing Helena's voice is an absolute gem. In a bit of foreshadowing, one of Helena's self-healing babies (because of course they are) has a sternum puncture. It's been a while since we've seen Helena's more feral side, especially directed at innocent bystanders. Lately, it has been at known enemies, or her suspicions are later vindicated. Will that doctor turn out to be someone who actually wanted information about (Helena voice) her babies? Or is she just a very unfortunate woman doing her job?

I love any time we get to see the Leda sisters doing actual normal activities that stay normal, so the idea of the word "neonatal" freaking out Helena and Donnie trying to soothe her is a joy. Pregnancy is already fertile ground for discussion of women's bodily autonomy, from the way strangers touch pregnant women and state attempts at control to religious dogma and medical interventions (or lack thereof). I would love to see the show dive into these a bit more, and Helena's fish out of water naivet could be an excellent vehicle for it.

MK makes the ultimate sacrifice and Kira chooses Rachel

Finally, the best part of this episode from both a story and craft perspective. The first act has the audience in the same position as Sarah: not believing what we were seeing, and thinking everyone has gone mad for suddenly trusting the Neos. And yet, the gambit played out for just long enough, and the trade-off (Kira, some element of peace and freedom) is just convincing enough that it had me going for a minute. Could S really agree to this? Of course not. Siobhan has a hit list and PT Westmoreland is on it, but that opening is excellent, and sets up a fantastic, tightly paced episode of everything that makes Orphan Black great.

After so many years, I'm glad someone on this show is finally directly acknowledging that Kira is special, and not just because she colors inside the lines. Watching Kira choose Rachel (which is unfair, but ultimately how Sarah experiences it) is the second-most brutal part of the episode.

MK's death is brutal, like all of Ferdinand's kills, made all the worse by how little we knew her, and how removed she felt from the world after surviving Helsinki and living on the run. It is a little weird how in denial Sarah was, and how easily she accepts that MK would stay behind. She has to know that the swap would end that way. Maybe she just wants to escape with Kira at any price? If that's the case, I hope we see her grapple with that choice.

A big part of the success of this episode is keeping other storylines - like Cosima's, Alison's, and to a lesser extent, Helena's - lean so this episode could play out like a very tightly plotted heist movie, but with Kira as the goods. For next week, we can look forward to a bit more out of the hooks that are dropped in this episode. Ira is headed off to the island in service to Clone Club, to avenge his beloved Susan. Meanwhile, Delphine makes an unexpected (and secret from everyone - including the Leda Sisters) visit to Siobhan. Allison, of course, is still stuck in her craft closet, and Helena is headed to her secret hideaway.

I'm also looking forward to see how long Rachel manages to keep Ferdinand away, since that cockroach will probably outlive and outthink PT Westmoreland at this point. The only thing worse than Ferdinand is a disenfranchised Ferdinand, as we saw this week, so buckle up and hold to your babies, sestras.

Link:

Orphan Black Season 5 Episode 2 Review: Clutch of Greed - Den of Geek US

When Kroger (KR) dropped 18% on Thursday following disappointingfirst quarter results, CEO Rodney McMullen acknowledged straight-on challenges in the industry.

There is a lot of change in the food retail industry, both in terms of the operating environment and the competitive landscape, he said. We know there is a lot of upheaval in the food retail industry.

On Friday, that remark became a historic understatement.

Kroger shares fell another 14% on Friday morning after Amazon (AMZN) announced it would acquireWhole Foods (WFM) for $13.7 billion or $42 per share.

The ramifications for all of retail are seismicnot just retailers that sell grocery, but for everyone, according to Gordon Hasketts Chuck Grom.

The online retail boom has been devastating for brick-and-mortar sellers of electronics, clothes, books, and many other goods where price and convenience are priorities for consumers. While online grocery shopping has been around for a while, it was never considered a major threat to traditional grocers like Kroger and Safeway. That is, until now.

The acquisition says as you look toward the future, you cant just do brick and mortar groceries and you cant just do online groceries, according to Needhams Kerry Rice. A big piece of this is logistics, where the grocery stores havent been able to do wellGetting it to you quickly and building out a network.

Barclays Karen Short called the deal Darwinism at its best.

Whole Foods, which traded as high as $65 a share in October 2013 before falling to under $30 earlier this year, had tried vigorously to push through an online strategy amid declining sales and pressure from activist investor Jana Partners (which revealed in April it had built a 9% stake in the company).

In November 2015, the organic food pioneer outlined a nine-point turnaround plan to combat declining sales, and CEO John Mackey specifically emphasized digital strategies as part of that.

We will invest in digital strategies to convert the strong traffic we generate online into sales, he said during the companys conference call that month. We have integrated Instacart into our app, will soon launch a national sales flyer, and will continue to make upgrades to provide more functionality and streamline our customers digital experience.

Shoppers line up outside a Whole Foods Market in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. (Cydney Scott/Palm Beach Post via AP)

Mackey continued to tout digital initiatives on the companys latest conference call, which included a partnership with Instacart for direct delivery to customers fulfilled out of its stores. The company has also made additional investments in an e-store for catering along with meal delivery with DoorDash.

However, these initiatives have failedto move the needle. In the first quarter of 2017, the grocery chain said comparable store sales fell 2.8%, the seventh straight quarter of declines, just as they rejiggered the board of directors with new retail leadership.

This slow shift to digital sales bytraditional names has been a cloud over the retail industry more broadly, from Macys (M) to Nordstrom (JWN) and beyond. While some brands and industries have been able to dodge this change, todays deal is a sign that no industry is safe from disruption.

The dealis not just about pain for grocery chains. Its also about Amazon gaining a new channel for salesin other categories, according to Morgan Stanleys Brian Nowak.

Grocery is also an important order/traffic velocity driver, given the average US consumer visits the supermarket 1.6 times per week, Nowak said. As such, Amazons ability to capture this traffic flow creates upsell opportunities across its other categories.

Plus, grocery shopping is a significant portion of consumption, accounting for 30% of total US personal spending, according to Morgan Stanley.

Read More

Before today, Amazons entry into the $800 billion grocery business has been focused largely on Amazon Fresh, which it started a decade ago. The deal confirmsthe companys commitment, allowing it to quickly enter the category without upfront build-out costs (Whole Foods has about 460 locations, with the majority in the US).

Injecting Amazons DNA into Whole Foods businesscould create an incredible challenge for the supermarket industry.

We anticipate Amazons ownership is likely to result in lower prices at Whole Foods, forcing other grocery participants to follow, negatively impacting category margins, according to Stifels Mark Astrachan. There is a generally strong correlation between price and comp store sales growth, and we also note Amazon has largely foregone profits in other categories in which it competes, which we believe is likely to happen with Whole Foods/grocery.

In other words, profitability may not be the top priority for Whole Foods, which puts even more pressure on peers to implement what are called price investments in the industry, which is another way of saying lowering prices.

This comes at a time of increasing competition over price, which Kroger noted on their conference call Thursday. And beyond online, the brick-and-mortar landscape has already been increasingly challenging and competitive.

Whole Foods leadership in the naturalfood category paved the way for others to expand in the category. Big-box retailers like Costco (COST), Target (TGT) and Walmart (WMT); traditional grocers like Kroger and privately-held Wegmans; and convenience stores like Walgreens (WBA) have all gone organic. Specialty organic rivals have flexed their muscles as well, with names like like Sprouts Farmers Market (SFM) and privately-held Trader Joes growing rapidly.

Amazons announcement didnt come with too many details, keeping with the companys reputation of disclosing minimal information about future plans. So for now, all we can do is speculate. But itll certainly be interesting to see how it all unfolds.

Nicole Sinclair is markets correspondent for Yahoo Finance.

Please also see: Whole Foods co-CEO defends turnaround plan Economist warns: Once again, the Feds credibility is on the line The bar is set low for GEs new CEO Infrastructure stocks arent buying Trumps infrastructure talk Trump is trying to revitalize a dying part of the energy industry

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On Amazon buying Whole Foods: 'The ramifications for all of retail are seismic' - Yahoo Finance

Imagine youre a public high school biology teacher in a state where you are permitted to share objective scientific critiques of evolutionary theory in the classroom the strengths and weaknesses of Darwinism. Where do you turn for a reliable, responsible resource to help you clarify the issues for your students?

Heres a great idea: check out biologist Jonathan Wellss new book, Zombie Science: More Icons of Evolution. Dr. Wells and fellow biologist Ray Bohlin talk about that in a new ID the Future podcast.

Listen to it here now, or download it here.

Dr. Bohlin was closely involved with recent revisions to science standards in Texas, and he describes what happened in his state. So lets say youre a 9th grade biology teacher there. You want to talk with students about the consistent pattern of abrupt appearance of species in the fossil record an observation inconsistent with Darwinian predictions; about the mystery of where biological information in DNA comes from, or the puzzle of whale evolution.

Zombie Science covers all of these subjects. The idea, obviously, isnt to use it as a textbook. Its written (very accessibly) with the thoughtful adult in mind, not for a 9th grader. But teachers will find the book very useful for the background it provides.

Wells and Bohlin do note that in a public high school setting, it would be very ill advised to take the discussion some steps further to the question of design in lifes origins. If Darwinism is hobbled as an explanation for biologys grandeur, however, what then? Dr. Bohlin admits that as a teacher, hes uncomfortable saying I dont know. But this is the wisest response.

For more on evolution instruction and public schools, see our Science Education Policy.

Photo: Jonathan Wells at the national book launch for Zombie Science, by Andrew McDiarmid.

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For the Public School Biology Teacher, Zombie Science Makes an Outstanding Resource - Discovery Institute

Darwinism is the doctrine of survival of the fittest, where only the best and brightest can endure in a dog-eat-dog world where no-one is immune from peril or even death. The Darwin Project uses that infamous theory of evolutionary biology as the basis for its Battle Royale multiplayer deathmatches, where competition is the name of the game.

Developed by Scavengers Studio, The Darwin Project is a multiplayer survival game coming exclusively to Xbox One consoles and Windows PC later this year, and appears to be Xboxs answer to the continued demand for class-based online shooters, as most recently popularized by the likes of Overwatch and others.

Players can adopt the role of several heroes with unique abilities in the arena, but the unique spin on the genre arrives in the form of the Show Director mode as demonstrated by the slightly annoying shoutcaster who showed up in todays trailer at Microsofts E3 press conference.

The Show Director can observe and control the dynamics of the entire playground from a separate viewpoint, and is able to show favour or disapproval to competing players below by messing around with the environment. A neat idea to freshen up an already crowded genre, then, but its unclear how the presence of a God-like onlooker might negatively affect balance in The Darwin Project.

Either way, the lively animations and display of combat depth was enough to engage my curiosity, especially as someone who plays Overwatch on a regular basis. We may have a new Xbox exclusive eSport in the making.

Don't forget to check out our full E3 2017 schedule for all the details as they arrive, and check out our roundup of all the E3 2017 trailers so far.

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The Darwin Project is the Overwatch-Hunger Games crossover you never knew you wanted - GamesRadar

Its shocking. Darwin died 135 years ago, with his home country largely converted to his beliefs. Why dont students embrace the teachings of their national hero? England has largelyabandoned its religiousheritage, so thats not it. Everybody knows about Darwin. Evolution should be an easy sell in the classroom.Whats the problem?

Evolution is one of the trickiest subjects to teach and not just because some people find it controversial. The ideas are subtle and the language and concepts can be confusing; how many of us have thought that survival of the fittest was an encouragement to go to the gym. Many studies have sought to discover the reasons why evolution is so difficult for students to understand and accept, but few have attempted to find ways to improve the understanding of evolution in the classroom. [Emphasis added.]

So writes Lawrence Hurst in The Conversation, along with an associate professor and an educator. At the University of Bath, a mere 100 miles from Down House, they conducted experiments on how to get children to understand evolution, using secondary school students as their lab rats.

They published their results in PLOS Biologyunder the title, Teaching genetics prior to teaching evolution improves evolution understanding but not acceptance. Sarah Chaffee responded earlier in light of Discovery Institutes education policy.

Notice, as she pointed out, the distinction between understanding and acceptance. They cant even get to the acceptance part! They just want to get students to understand it.

But is evolution so hard to understand? Its simple; people evolved from bacteria ancestors; no source of intelligent designwas involved; everything advances by a blind process of natural selection, not that different from dog breeding. Things change over time. Whats the problem? You can explain it in a few sentences. Finches change. Peppered moths change. Your children will change, even if you dont go to the gym, as long as you leave more offspring than the bodybuilder next door. Simple concepts. There must be an obstacle to understanding. Yes, its those deplorablecreationists again. The paper identifies them:

Students grasp of evolution is often poor and does not always agree with the scientific understanding. Commensurately, numerous studies report low levels of understanding among first year undergraduate students. These factors likely contribute to the poor public understanding of evolution reported by many researchers, including in the UK context. This tempts the question, what are the best methods to teach evolution?

This issue here is currently much debated, particularly at the secondary school level. This is because the theory of evolution can be a controversial issue. Strong opposition is well documented in the United States, but there is increasing concern about the impact that religious movements or strong cultural and social traditions may have on evolution education in other countries, including Northern Ireland, Poland, Turkey, and the UK. There are also concerns that creationism has been taught in UK schools and that religious-motivated groups have attempted to influence science lessons. More generally, numerous studies have focused on impediments to understanding and acceptance of evolution. While religious orientation, prior acceptance/rejection of the theory of evolution, and views of authority figures including teachers and religious leaders are commonly cited reasons, reasoning skills are also considered to be of importance.

And so they sought ways to improve teaching methods, presuming that if students only understood evolution, they would be more likely to accept it. Their hypothesis was to teach genetics as a prerequisite to teaching evolution. Our original idea was what psychologists called priming preloading with some facts to make it easier to take in other information. They continue:

It seemed intuitive to us that a good understanding of genetics should help understanding of evolution: DNA is the heritable material through which variation needed for evolution occurs. If you understand DNA, you can understand what mutations are. And if you understand what mutations are, you can understand that they can change frequency in populations and bingo, evolution can happen. In its simplest, evolution is no more than mutations changing frequency. The differences between species started out as new mutations that went from being rare within one species but then became very common.

Bingo, evolution can happen. The metaphor is very apt. You win at bingo by unguided natural processes. The winner (the fittest) may not be the smartest; just the luckiest. Its not like the chance component of Battleship, where you can infer from past successes where the Destroyer is likely to be. Bingo is a variant of the Lottery: you win by having the luckiest card by pure chance, and each card you get is a new start.

In short, the educators think that by understanding how Bingo works, students will accept the game. Are they missing something?

While this connection might seem self-evident, genetics and evolution are typically taught to 14 to 16-year-old secondary school students as separate topics with few links and in no particular order. Sometimes theres a large time span between the two. Our idea was simple: teach genetics first and look at how that affects the understanding and acceptance of evolution.

Like good lab experimenters, they divided their lab rats into an experimental group and a control group.

Using questionnaires, we conducted a study of almost 2,000 students over three years. Importantly, all that was changed in our study was the order of the teaching material exactly what was to be taught was left to the teachers. This meant our study was a realistic mimic of what would happen should any switch be made. We tested students before and after the two subjects were taught and so could examine the extent to which students improved in their understanding.

The experiment was only partially successful (according to their criteria). Yes, the more students understood microevolution by genetic mutations (the Bingo theory of evolution), the more they understood evolution. We found that students who were taught genetics before evolution performed 7percentbetter on knowledge-based questions about evolution than those who learned about evolution first, they say, proud of this strikingly large effect. But alas, it did not help the students accept evolution very much. Both before and after testing, the students with a better understanding were those with higher levels of acceptance, they said. However, these effects were not strong. So they investigated why students fail to accept evolution.

We also set up a series of focus groups to find out why the understanding and acceptance of evolution are not more strongly coupled. Evidence from these suggests that what is more important for evolution acceptance is not what is taught, but who provides the endorsement. For some students, being told that key authority figures such as parents or teachers approve of scientific evidence for evolution made a big difference to their ability to accept it.

Television documentaries were commonly given as a source of reassurance about evolution, and some students felt that these, and their presenters, were important in helping them accept evolution. Perhaps more predictable, religious leaders, and their views on evolution, were also of key importance. For students from a Catholic background, being told that the Pope approves of evolution was important in helping them to approach evolution as any other science.

The challenge, in their view, becomes one of reducing the impact of authority figures who put obstacles in the way of student acceptance of evolution. Religious leaders are making evolution a scary idea. Avoid the E-word, they say, to soften the blow:

Perhaps helping them understand that mutations can change frequency under the banner of genetics enabled students to learn with less of a clash of ideas? We suggest a simple test: dont teach students material labelled as evolution, teach it as population genetics instead and then tell them after the fact that they have just learned about evolution.

Its a bit like pinching and wiggling the arm before sticking the needle in, for a child afraid of needles. Before the child knows whats going on, the needle is in. When are you going to stick me? Johnny asks. Oh, I already did; now, that didnt hurt a bit, did it? And use less scary words: its not a needle; its a syringe. Its not Darwinism: its population genetics. The indoctrinators conclude:

Whatever the underlying cause, the data suggest a really simple, minimally disruptive and cost-free modification to teaching practice: teach genetics first. This will at least increase evolution understanding, if not acceptance. As with many emotive subjects, it takes more than teaching the facts to shift hearts as well as minds.

Heres a conundrum to end on: these educators, so concerned about student acceptance of evolution, do not accept evolution themselves! Think about it:

The astute reader recognizes that reasoning about evolution is self-refuting (listen to Nancy Pearcey on ID the Future). Lets teach that to the teachers. Bingo! Education happens.

Photo: Bingo cards, by Edwin Torres [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

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Evolution as Bingo: Darwinists Seek Better Ways to Indoctrinate - Discovery Institute

Underlying much of American life and politics is an unshakeable faith in Darwinian evolution. Almost 60 percent of us mistake this theory for fact and, watching Congress, who can doubt that politicians at least are descended from apes? No wonder most Americans regard evolution as the basis of all modern biological science, supported by everything we know about geology, genetics, paleontology, and other fields and extol its importance as a unifying concept in science and its overall explanatory power. Even those who consider themselves Christians like their Bible diluted with Darwin: Half of Americans believe humans evolved, with the majority of these saying God guided the evolutionary process.

The assumption that our ancestor crawled out of primordial sludge pervades everything from health to entertainment. Our taxes pay to indoctrinate students with evolutionary theory while lobbyists insist its the only permissible explanation of our origins. Occasionally, schools also present creationism, but this doesnt necessarily refer to the account in Genesis: Mentioning a deity in any way while discussing mankinds birth apparently turns the topic creationist. No doubt even the most profane teacher avoids taking the Lords name in vain when inculcating Darwinism.

Yet evolution and the Biblical report of Gods creation are actually two sides of the same coin. Both require belief or what we commonly call religious faith since no human eyes saw the advent of man. Just as preachers tell their flocks that God created the heavens and earth, so evolutionists tell theirs that natural processes did. But sheep from neither fold can observe humanitys arrival to confirm the accuracy of these statements.

And observation is essential. The dictionary defines science as a systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation. Ergo, water boiling at 212 degrees Fahrenheit is a scientific fact. We can verify it by observation; we can experiment to see whether it boils at lower temperatures and demonstrate that it does not. But [t]he central ideas of evolution that life has a history it has changed over time and that different species share common ancestors is an opinion. Nor can we verify it because no one has observed millions of years of changes.

That misfortune compels evolutionists to extrapolate backwards from evidence they see in the natural world. But their reckonings could be as false as those of the global-warming nuts (note that the idea of climate change relies on studying current phenomena as well as historical data and yet proponents still argue about whats accurate and true. How much more unobservable events that lie entirely in the past?) Yes, the scientists screaming about rising temperatures had political incentive to do so. But so do evolutionists. They are hardly the disinterested pursuers of Truth that they fancy themselves; like anyone else, they cling to their opinions and prejudices.

And they rabidly defend both especially when Christians find strong proof for direct creation by God in the very data that supposedly upholds Darwins theory. Astoundingly, critics who refuse to acknowledge evolutionists preconceptions dismiss Christian interpretation of evidence because of bias! Such blatant double standards should sicken anyone sincerely interested in the truth.

Evolution, then, is no more than a religion masquerading as science. And since our era worships science, too many folks swallow whatever evolutionists say. They buy the bizarre idea that an infinitely intricate world evolved with no Designer while laughing at the gullible peons who ascribed to Roman Catholic dogma during the Middle Ages. What ironic hypocrisy!

Christianity and Darwinism share another characteristic: They answer mans most fundamental questions. How did the world come to exist, and what is mans place in it? Is there a god? Whats the meaning of life? The two faiths differ only in their answers chillingly so.

If eons of time and fortuitous chance produced the universe and life itself, we need no Creator. And the Book that claims to be His inspired Word is obviously false from its very first words: In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Only fools would believe anything that follows such a whopper. There is no heaven or hell, no final judgment of our sins or salvation from them, no Creator who fashioned man in His image. Life is mere happenstance, not a divine gift that no man may arbitrarily end and when the strong kill those who are weaker or inconvenient, they do so without fear of eternal damnation. Likewise with our liberty: We have no rights, inalienable or otherwise, because no Creator endowed us with them.

Its no accident that historys most brutal regimes have espoused Darwinian evolution. Indeed, communisms authors embraced the philosophy precisely because it rejected God: Marx and Engels accepted evolution almost immediately after Darwin published The Origin of Species. Evolution, of course, was just what the founders of communism needed to explain how mankind could have come into being without the intervention of any supernatural force, and consequently it could be used to bolster the foundations of their materialistic philosophy. Should it surprise anyone, then, that communist governments massacre and torture millions? (Some of that blood lust is due to the nature of the State; non-communist and even Christian governments persecute and murder as well. But arming politicians with communism is like handing a serial killer hundreds of fully loaded machine guns rather than a penknife.)

Hitler and the Nazis endorsed Darwins ideas, too, particularly survival of the fittest and the justice of a superior races dominating inferior ones. Under such reasoning, butchery went from unspeakably heinous to justifiable: The Nazis alleged that their racial hygiene benefited not only Germany but humanity.

As Americans increasingly join the First Church of Darwin, theyre unlikely to resist the evils evolutionary theory brings in its wake. We already murder unwanted babies and the elderly; American governments at all levels destroy rather than protect our rights.

But perhaps evolutionists themselves will save us. After all, they continue insisting that religion has no place in the public square. We simply have to hold them to that creed.

Becky Akers

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The First Church of Darwin - Personal Liberty Digest

At the most basic level, applying AI to certain processes can free up the time of an organisations executives, allowing them to concentrate on higher value tasks. Ultimately, without putting these measures in place, its hard to see much of a future for the professional services industry as the advancing AI revolution continues apace

Darwin may have addressed the natural world, but his insights still offer some valuable lessons in business.

The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and how businesses are adapt to this new technological development provides a great example of Neo-Darwinism at work in todays corporate landscape.

AI is on the march within the next two years, AI services will have cannibalised revenues for a third of market leaders, according to Gartner. For those that trade in consultancy and relationship-building, its easy to dismiss the impact of AI, and easy to assume that headlines such as, Will a robot take my job? are for manual, blue-collar workers to worry about.

However, this is a dangerous point of view to adopt. Simply because the speed at which information is now consumed and synthesised by AI far surpasses any human capacity, and is becoming more sophisticated every week evidenced recently by the AI that defeated six of the best human poker players to win a 230,000 prize.

>See also:The value of artificial intelligence in business

For professional services firms which proudly guard (and sell) their knowledge and accumulated experience, the democratising effects of AI could theoretically undermine their entire business model; empowering the average consumer with quantifiable research and actionable data that far outweigh any advice a professional adviser could provide. This is particularly true on the lower end of the value curve, where robotic process automation (RPA) is already replacing the work that humans once did on certain processes.

The legal sector provides a great example of this, since much of the work performed revolves around sifting through documents, contracts and cases, which are a prime target for automation. Companies like LawGeex, with their ambition to automate the entire legal industry, offer a vision of the future for all professional services.

LawGeex AI-based service allows users to upload a contract and points out any clauses which dont meet common legal standards. The report also automatically details any vital clauses that could be missing, and where existing clauses might require revision.

>See also:5 ways AI will impact the global business market in 2017

These sorts of tools may not be the preferred option for most legal needs at this point its reasonable to assume that customers wouldnt rely on it for expensive contracts yet the technology that underpins it is rapidly maturing. It may not be long until AI can even outperform a human lawyer.

AI has arguably already had its tipping point in the public consciousness, illustrated by our familiarity with having conversations with our phones, computers or in-home assistants like Amazon Alexa.

As examples such as LawGeex demonstrate, AI is silently stealing a march on every industry its exposed to. AI-driven solutions are increasingly commonplace in wealth management, for example, where three of the worlds top five brokerages rely on anAI solution for data analysis. AI is also a natural fit for the data-centric insurance industry, where its capacity for simulation modelling and data analysis from a range of different sources makes it invaluable to underwriters.

Elsewhere, AI can power predictive maintenance and self-monitoring technologies for manufacturers which can save billions. Although real-world examples may still be thin on the ground, the tipping point from theory to practice is fast approaching evidenced by the large investments made by Microsoft, Google, Amazon and IBM, which acquired over 20 AI firms in the last year alone.

>See also:What are the business benefits of artificial intelligence?

Highly empowered and enlightened consumers are more in control of the buying journey than ever before and by 2020, its estimated that customers will manage 85% of their enterprise relationships without interacting with humans.

It might appear at face value that the professional services industry is heading for collapse after all, whats the point of employing humans to do a job that AI can do more accurately, efficiently and quickly? This however, isnt entirely correct, rather were heading towards a point where we as professionals will simply need to become more innovative if were to keep offering value.

A fundamental rethink is required; while were still some way off seeing the real impact of AI, business leaders need to be prepared to implement technology and processes that reengineer the way organisations have traditionally operated. And AI may well unlock new business processes that might not have been available before, inadvertently offering new value to a professional services firm.

>See also:Artificial intelligence: how its transforming financial services today

AI could replace much of the bread-and-butter tasks, providing an opportunity for organisations to offer new services on top of them, such as more informed face-to-face legal counsel.

At the most basic level, applying AI to certain processes can free up the time of an organisations executives, allowing them to concentrate on higher value tasks. Ultimately, without putting these measures in place, its hard to see much of a future for the professional services industry as the advancing AI revolution continues apace.

Sourced byFrank Palermo, global head, Digital Solutions, VirtusaPolaris

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Survival of the fittest: AI perfectly illustrates Darwinism at a business level - Information Age

ALTONA Rep. Paul Tonko (D-Amsterdam) does not think the country is headed in the right direction.

The pullback from the Paris Climate Agreement is "a scar." Income inequality remains an issue. Proposed cutbacks in scientific research have his scientistfriends outraged and pushing him to take action. And the looming rollback of the Affordable Care Act lacks compassion.

Were not going to take this anymore, Tonko said, throwing his arms up in frustration.

The crowd whooped and hollered.

Tonko, speaking Friday night at a labor dinner organized by the Clinton County Democratic Committee, repeatedly assailed Republican policy in Washington, D.C. in a half-hour stemwinder.

Darwinism doesnt quite cut it, Tonko said on White House policies, including the court-entangled travel ban from Muslim-majority counties, efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act and proposed deep budget cuts to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and social programs.

Weve been cutting these agencies since Republicans controlled the House, Tonko said. Were asking unimaginable things with this budget.

On the reduction in funding for scientific research: Its foolish, foolish thinking.

Tonko, who represents the Capital District, serves on the Science, Space and Technology and Emergency and Commerce Committees, as well as the Subcommittee on Research and Technology.

Doing so gives him a firsthand perch to witness what he said are science deniers sitting on top GOP-controlled House committees.

Thats what drove him to author the Scientific Integrity Act, a bill he said would put watchdogs at every federal agency to make sure when the federal government invests in research, federal officials cannot manipulate, misrepresent, mischaracterize, suppress or not share those findings.

Tonko did not mention President Donald Trump by name, nor the lawmaker who represents the 21st Congressional District, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-Willsboro).

The lawmaker took particular relish in eviscerating the American Health Care Act, calling the bill a poison pill."

And on the Paris Agreement: What a scar across the face of America, Tonko said. A deep scar shared with the entire world.

Jobs in the renewable energy sector including the manufacture of turbines and solar panels will instead go elsewhere, he said.

Whos going to produce these jobs now? The nations who are at the table.

The countrys infrastructure is deteriorating to the point where the electric grid is currently unable to import renewables from Canada, Tonko said, citing field visits across the country as part of a congressional task force.

The White House is expected to roll out a $1 billion infrastructure plan this week.

But the plan, said Tonko, needs to be detailed and paired with how it will be paid for not vague commitments or promises of tax relief to contractors.

This is the kind of smart government that America needs and deserves, Tonko said.Were going to Make America Great Again, were going to put you to work do not give us broken promises. Do not tell us you stand for something and then you pull our job opportunities away.

CANDIDATES EMERGE

The speech was red meat to Democrats disaffected with current administration policy including prospective candidates Tonko acknowledged were in the audience, including Patrick Nelson, a Stillwater-based political organizer who has already declared his candidacy to run against Stefanik, and Emily Martz, a Saranac Lake resident who has been involved in community organizing since last falls election.

Im looking at running at the congressional level as well as the local level, Martz told the Sun after the event. Im committed to running for something.

Martz, a registered Democrat, said she appreciated the lack of partisan politics in the area.

That to me is important. The lack of party politics is strong at the local level, and I wish we could get that at the state and local level, Martz said. We need to move beyond that. Its not about party its about the people.

Mike Derrick, who challenged Stefanik last year as a Democrat, also expressed interest in a rematch.

I havent decided yet, said Derrick, who attended the event.

EYE ON 2017

This year is a local election year. On the tailwinds of last November's combative national election, Clinton County Democratic Chairman Sara Rowden said she has seen an uptick in local interest and enthusiasm over the previous local election cycle.

The activity isnt only coming from the left, she said, but also the center, with health care as a driving interest.

Grassroots groups were scant ahead of last years election, she said. But now she estimated there are 40+ independent groups actively involved in the region.

I think we need to take advantage of this momentum and everyone that is there, Rowden said. This is our time.

Clinton County was the only county in the 12-county congressional district that went for former Sec. of State Hillary Clinton, who notched a razor-thin 1 point margin over Trump, besting him by just 265 votes.

Stefanik defeated Derrick by 35 points the highest margin for a Republican in the state.

Rowden said the Democratic Party has become complacent due to recent big-ticket accomplishments, including social justice issues.

The party, she said, must now return to their roots if they want to start winning elections again.

Social justice may have overshadowed our commitment to the working class, Rowden said.

Clinton County Republican Chairman Don McBrayer said he respects true grassroots involvement, but questioned if some of the recent local protests he witnessed in the area could be categorized as locally-organized.

To me, it looked more like protests being organized by state and federal level organizers to promote populist politics, McBrayer told the Sun. It is not something I wish to be a part of.

McBrayer said the GOP prefers to work with people individually, educating them on issues, and finding dedicated candidates willing to put in the sweat-equity required to keep local government efficient, transparent and honest.

McBrayer said local Republicans are excited about the reelection prospects for a number of local and county races, and the committee looked forward to recruiting more candidates this spring and summer.

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'Darwinism doesn't quite cut it,' says Tonko, rallying North Country Democrats - Sun Community News

With our attention to the launch of a new research center on intelligent design, Discovery Institute-Mackenzie, at Brazils Mackenzie Presbyterian University, we dont mean to slight other big countries or important parts of the world where ID is rising in prominence.

Recently I had a conversation with a new Chinese acquaintance, who disclosed a thoughtful interest in questions about biological and cosmic origins. I quoted the remark from Chinese paleontologist Jun-Yuan Chen, In China we can criticize Darwin, but not the government; in America, you can criticize the government, but not Darwin.

I thought this would get a knowing laugh Yes, you silly Americans with your strange reverence for a long-dead Victorian Englishman. Instead, it drew a small and what I took to be acareful, circumspect smile. That surprised me.

I wondered if, for the sake of his comparison between the situation in his country and ours, Dr. Chen indulged in a bit of simplification or exaggeration. Or maybe things have changed since he said that, on a 1999 visit to the University of Washington. Perhaps, like Americans in sensitive career fields, the Chinese now need to think twice about who might be overhearing a frank discussion of evolution.

In any event, I followed up by suggesting a partial list of resources for the Chinese speaker interested in learning more about intelligent design, and the case against the orthodox Darwinism. Assuming that some readers will find it useful themselves or will pass it along, Ill share it here too.

Some major ID books in Chinese translation.

Great video documentaries on intelligent design from our friends at Illustra Media, including:

Jonathan Wells wrote here about his experience at the 1999 Chinese Academy of Sciences conference. He attended at the invitation of Dr. Chen and our Discovery Institute colleague Paul Chien, a biologist at the University of San Francisco.

Of course this is not a complete list, just what I was able to pull together on the fly for my new acquaintance.

And lets not forget about the rest of Asia.

Naturally, many readers in China, Korea, and elsewhere in Asia read or watch our material in English, as, for instance, distinguished South Korean biomimetic scientist Seung-Yop Lee did. Dr. Lee teaches in the Department of Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering at Seouls Sogang University. He offered some wonderful comments in praise ofZombie Science: More Icons of Evolution, the latest from Dr. Wells. Jonathan Witt noted his remarks here.

Photo credit: Silentpilot via Pixabay.

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In China We Can Criticize Darwin, Continued - Discovery Institute

We might as well just give up control over the planet right now. In recently published research, scientists detail a set of experiments in which robots real, physical machines improved themselves through a kind of digital Darwinism. The bots, each drawing from a collective "gene pool," competed with one another over multiple generations, gradually swapping genetic material in a process akin to sexual reproduction. The research articleappearedin the journalFrontiers in Robotics and AI. While this kind ofevolutionary roboticsresearch has been around a while, the new study presents an important step forward in assessing the evolutionary dynamics of physically embodied robots and it suggests that we're mashing the fast-forward button on the impending robotic revolution. Researchers from Vassar College set up an experiment in which 10 small-wheeled robots all of them a model of the Ana BBot, manufactured by Johuco Ltd. were issued the same task: to gather beams of light while avoiding certain obstacles. Each bot was also issued its own set of "genes" a specific pattern of wires connected to pins on a circuit board.

Ana BBot, a mobile robot that is programmable using jumper wires to connect sensors and motors.

RELATED: Stopping Killer Robots at the Source (Code) It turns out that the experiment didn't reveal anything particularly dramatic. The robots didn't evolve better light-capturing or object-avoidance skills. But the experiment did reveal the importance of tracking the developmental factor in evolutionary robotics. "It is important to note that our goal was not to show adaptive evolution per se, but rather to test the hypothesis that epigenetic factors can alter the evolutionary dynamics of a population of physically embodied robots," wrote Brawer and Hill. Notably, all the bots had lost mobility entirely by the end of the experiment, since the mating algorithm allowed low-fitness individuals to remain in the gene pool and reproduce. So maybe there's still hope for us after all.

Originally published on Seeker.

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'Mating' Robots Take a Fast-Forward Leap in Digital Darwinism - Live Science