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Listen: Scale-to-Feather Evolution Doesn't Fly - Discovery Institute

From Julius Randles 35-point outburst to Evan Fourniers red-hot shooting in overtime, Kemba Walkers Knicks debut to the collapse in regulation, Obi Toppins explosions in transition to Mitchell Robinsons monster night in the paint, there was so much to break down from Wednesday nights regular season-opening double-overtime win over Boston.

RJ Barretts performance was somewhat lost in the shuffle to most observers. But not to Tom Thibodeau, the Knicks defense-first coach.

RJ in the second half was a monster, Thibodeau said.

After a quiet first half, Barrett was one of the best players on the floor. He scored all 19 of his points in the second half and the two overtimes. He didnt commit a turnover, blocked two shots and hit three 3-pointers.

But what really stood out wont appear on a stat sheet. It was his defense against Celtics All-Star wing Jayson Tatum, limiting the rising superstar to a nightmarish 7-for-30 shooting performance. While Tatum did miss some shots he normally makes, Barrett limited his ability to get to the basket and forced him onto the perimeter. In the final seconds of the first overtime, the Celtics isolated Tatum against Barrett, who smothered him and forced the 6-foot-8 forward into a tough baseline turnaround jumper that he missed badly.

I put on a couple of pounds, Barrett said recently. Just trying to be a little heavier, especially since I will be guarding a key guy most every night. So its just to have that strength, hold my weight there, hold myself down against the other competition.

I feel like Im trying. Im trying to do something out there, trying to just be better, trying to be that guy for our team.

It is part of his evolution as a player. Last season, Barretts improvements on the offensive end he shot 40.1 percent from deep and averaged 17.6 points per game helped the Knicks reach the postseason after an eight-year hiatus. Early on Wednesday, his offense wasnt there. He attempted just three shots in the first half, missing all of them. He wasnt really involved offensively, somewhat lost surrounded by more offensive-minded guards in Walker and Fournier.

But in the third quarter, as the ball began moving more, Barrett got hot. He scored 14 points in the stanza, keying a 25-8 Knicks run that turned a seven-point deficit into a 10-point lead early in the fourth quarter.

The thing I liked the most was that he kept his composure, he wasnt rattled, and he kept playing until the game got going his way and that was good to see, Thibodeau said.

One of the big questions for the Knicks this season is at the defensive end, where they were so strong a year ago. Thibodeau and Julius Randle spent most of the preseason stressing the importance of defending, now that the Knicks might be better offensively with the additions of Fournier and Walker.

Their go-to wing defender last season was Reggie Bullock, who they let walk in free agency to upgrade at the other end of the floor. That left a hole defensively, though. The league is loaded with elite offensive wings, players who will test Barretts defense. There, however, arent many as talented as Tatum.

On opening night, Barrett showed he is ready to take on this new role.

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RJ Barretts defensive development next phase in evolution with Knicks - New York Post

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A mutational hotspot that determines highly repeatable evolution can be built and broken by silent genetic changes - Nature.com

The invention of bit and bridle eventually led to the evolution of armed mounted warriors like the one depicted in an Assyrian relief from 8th century BCE. Credit: Ealdgyth

New research conducted through the Complexity Science Hub Vienna and applied to a rich historical dataset shed light on the evolution of weapons, armor, and fortifications in human history.

Peter Turchin from the Complexity Science Hub Vienna (CSH) and an interdisciplinary team of colleagues set out to test competing theories about what drove the evolution of war machines throughout world history. Their study, published today (October 20, 2021) in the journal PLOS ONE,sees the strongest influence on the evolution of military technology coming from world population size, the connectivity between geographical areas, and advances in critical technologies such as iron metallurgy or horse riding. Conversely, and somewhat surprisingly, state-level factors such as the size of the population, the territory, or the complexity of governance seem not to have played a major role.

We had two goals for this study, principal investigator Peter Turchin points out. First, we wanted to draw a clear picture of where and when military technologies appeared in pre-industrial societies. Second, we intended to find out why important technologies were developed or adopted in certain places.

For their analyses, the researchers used Seshat: Global History Databank, a large and constantly growing collection of historical and archaeological data from across the globe. To date, Seshat has assembled around 200,000 entries from more than 500 societies, spanning 10,000 years of human history.

Seshat is a goldmine for the study of cultural evolution, says Turchin, who initiated and further developed the database together with a team of anthropologists, historians, archaeologists, mathematicians, computer scientists, and evolutionary scientists. To explore this data, the authors applied innovative quantitative methods of mathematical modeling and statistical analysis.

Some military inventions had cascading effects on cultural and social evolution, explains Turchin, who conducted the data analyses in this study. The invention of bit and bridle, for instance, made it easier to control horses, which led to advances in weapons or the appearance of mounted archers and knights, which again made it necessary to build better fortifications. According to our study, this bundle of military technologies was one of the most important factors leading to the rise of mega-empires and of world religions like Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam during the first millennium BCE.

Turchin and colleagues define a mega-empire as a society supporting tens of millions of inhabitants and covering millions of square kilometers of territory, which they say began to appear in different parts of Europe and Asia as part of a process of growing social complexity driven by the connection and competition between states with increasingly advanced and dangerous technology.

The scientists also found strong signs of the importance of agricultural productivity. A certain level of food production may have been necessary for the subsequent development of new war technologies, says co-author Dan Hoyer, who leads and organizes Seshat data collection. To explore the role of agriculture for the evolution of military technology in more detail would be an interesting next research step.

Seshat was developed to distinguish cause and effect in theories of social evolution.

Good data and methods like the ones we developed here offer a fresh perspective on a multitude of open questions, theories, and controversies in various fields, ranging from archaeology, to history, to the social sciences, emphasizes Turchin. Furthermore, studies like this can contribute to a general understanding of what makes a society thrive or how to recognize early signs of deterioration and societal collapse.

A fundamental understanding of social dynamics is not only of academic interest, says Turchin who works with a team at CSH onSocial Complexity and Collapse. To understand what leads to social transformation, and being able to identify the tipping points that lead to either resilience or catastrophe, is crucial for all of us, especially today, he concludes.

Reference: Rise of the War Machines: Charting the Evolution of Military Technologies from the Neolithic to the Industrial Revolution by Peter Turchin, Daniel Hoyer, Andrey Korotayev, Nikolay Kradin, Sergey Nefedov, Gary Feinman, Jill Levine, Jenny Reddish, Enrico Cioni, Chelsea Thorpe, James S. Bennett, Pieter Francois and Harvey Whitehouse, 20 October 2021, PLOS ONE.DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0258161

Originally posted here:

Evolution of Weapons, Armor, and Fortifications: What Drove the Invention of Military Technologies? - SciTechDaily

Image by czu_czu_PL

The rise of horse riding and metals-related technology were key drivers in military technological evolution, according to the authors of a just-published study.

Effective horse-riding had far-reaching consequences for the evolution of military technologies, and specifically armor, projectiles such as crossbows, and fortifications, Peter Turchin and his fellow researchers reported.

The study team, writing in the open-access journal PLOS ONE, charted the evolution of military technologies from the Neolithic period to the Industrial Revolution.

Their investigation covered almost 10,000 years of history.

The researchers explored world population size, connectivity between geographical areas of innovation and adoption, and critical enabling of technological advances, such as iron metallurgy and horse riding.

They found that all of those factors were strong predictors of change in military technology, whereas state-level factors such as identifiable political populations, territorial size, or governance sophistication played no major role.

The international team of researchers found that, once a military technology had proven advantageous in inter-state competition, increased pressure arose on nearby societies to adopt that technology as well so as not to be left behind.

This was seen with key technologies such as horse-mounted warfare that spread initially among nomadic confederations and nearby agrarian societies located along the central Eurasian Steppe.

Indeed, the domestication of the horse and its use in the civil and military sphere including both the material components of horse-mounted archery as well as the tactical and organizational means to wield these weapons appear to be of particular importance in the evolution of technologies and social complexity during the pre-industrial era, they said.

The use of the horse improved transportation, agriculture, and military capacities alike.

Further, the creation of new and more lethal weapons in one society could force people in their strike zone to invent more sophisticated defenses while also often adopting the offensive technology themselves, prompting further technological advances.

For example, armor-piercing projectiles from bows and crossbows resulted in the rise of scaled armor and plate armor.

According to the Cavalry Revolution theory, the invention of effective horse-riding in the Pontic-Caspian steppes, combined with powerful recurved bows and iron-tipped arrows, triggered a process of military evolution that spread south.

The threat of nomadic warriors armed with this advanced military technology spurred the development of counter-measures, while also producing an incentive to adopt horse-riding and effective accompanying combat tactics in areas further and further away from the location of their initial invention within the steppe.

The history of the military use of the horse went through several stages: The use of the chariot, the development of riding, the formation of light auxiliary cavalry, the development of nomadic riding, the appearance of the hard saddle, armored cataphracts, stirrups and, finally, heavy cavalry a major branch of troops across Afro-Eurasian societies, they said.

As a result, effective horse-riding had far-reaching consequences for the evolution of military technologies, and specifically armor, projectiles such as crossbows, and fortifications.

They said the combination of iron metallurgy and horse riding had a particularly strong effect on innovation and adoption of military technologies in the periods investigated in their study.

The study team comprised Turchin, Daniel Hoyer, Andrey Korotayev, Nikolay Kradin, Sergey Nefedov, Gary Feinman, Jill Levine, Jenny Reddish, Enrico Cioni, Chelsea Thorpe, James S. Bennett, Pieter Francois and Harvey Whitehouse, from a range of institutions.

Turchin P, Hoyer D, Korotayev A, Kradin N, Nefedov S, Feinman G, et al. (2021) Rise of the war machines: Charting the evolution of military technologies from the Neolithic to the Industrial Revolution. PLoS ONE 16(10): e0258161. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0258161

The study, published under a Creative Commons License, can be read here.

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Horse riding and iron metallurgy drove military evolution - study - Horsetalk

On Wednesday, Republicans once again stood in unity on an issue for which there is fierce agreement across their party: Voting should be hard as hell at least for Americans who live in cities and/or aren't white. Senate Democrats had brought forth a new version of a voting rights bill, watered down byDemocratic Sen. Joe Manchin on the asinine theory that it might attract Republican votes, but no dice. All 50 Republicans in the Senate voted to filibuster the bill, with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., claiming it has a "rotten core."

Republicans oppose voting rights because they know their party isunpopular. Blocking voters especially those who don't live in lily-white suburbs and small towns from the polls is thebest way for the GOP to keep power. But, of course, they can't just come right out and admit that they're theface of the new Jim Crow. Instead, this opposition to voting rights is framed as concern for "election integrity." SoRepublicans pretend to believe there's a threat of widespread voter fraud that can only be addressed by making it incredibly hard for certain Americans to vote at all.

The issue for Republicans right now is that the most popular conspiracy theory about "voter fraud" is the Big Lie being promulgated by embarrassing, insurrection-associated figures likeDonald Trump and his cronies. Certainly, the bug-eyed rantings about stolen ballots and fraudulent voting machines from the Rudy Giuliani/Mike Lindell faction play well with the base. (Currently, two-thirds of Republican voters claim to believe the 2020 election was "rigged" for Joe Biden.) However, theselies are easily debunked by journalists and open up proponents to billion dollar defamation lawsuits. In addition, Republican candidates, like Glenn Youngkin in Virginia, can't win unless they claw back moderate voters who don't appreciate being associated with lunatics andinsurrectionists.

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Clearly, Republicans need a version of the Big Lie that isn't so ridiculous. They need something they can slip past the fact-checkers at the New York Times and CNN. Preferably away to package the same idea that people of color and urban voters are inherently illegitimate without sounding like a maniac like the MyPillow Guy. They need a definition of "rigged" that doesn't sound like theravings of9/11 truthers or QAnon-addled morons.

Enter Trumpist writer Mollie Hemingway.

A frequent voice on Fox News, Hemingwayclearly feels she's found a more sophisticated justification for the baseless accusations that the 2020 election was "rigged." She's got a new definition of "rigged" that sounds less nutty and can be used to browbeat reporters out of calling out the "voter fraud" lie. She's even tied the conspiracy theory to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, cleverly wielding his well-known status as avillain to push this nonsense about a "rigged" election.

RELATED:Republicans can't make it any clearer: Trump's Big Lie must be defended at any cost even democracy

Hemingway rolled out her cleaned-up version of Trump's conspiracy theories earlier this month in her new book, "Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections." In it, she cleverly avoids easily debunked claims that the election was stolenthrough rigged voting machines and fraudulent votes. Instead, she rewritesthe Big Lie to focus onmoney that Zuckerberg gave which shederides as "Zuck Bucks" to a couple of voting rights groups, money that was spent on making it easier for marginalized people to vote.

To be clear, however, the two groups Zuckerberg gave money to, the Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTCL) and the Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR), are not "fraud" or in the business of "rigging" elections. They used the donations from Zuckerberg for the non-partisan, completely legal and frankly honorable purpose of making voting easier for people who are disabled, elderly, or whose low income-but-time-intensive job situations make it hard to get to the ballot box. By her own admission, all the group did was reach out to voters to make sure they turned their ballots in on time, assist voters who needed to make sure their ballots were filled out correctly, work to reduce the lines at ballot boxes, and help voters figure out the mail-in ballot system.

The irony here is that Zuckerberg's donations were likely not out of the pure goodness of his heart. He's been under fire for years for allowing Facebook to be a superhighway for fascistic propaganda that is undermining democracy. These donations to pro-democracy organizations have the strong stench of a public relations move to reassure politicians and the public that Zuckerberg has no ill will towards the continued existence of democracy.Now the one good thing the guy ever did is being used as the backbone of this racist conspiracy theory.

And a racist conspiracy theory is exactly what Hemingway is peddling.

Thisbasic pro-democracy work done by these groups is morphed, in Hemingway's telling, into"tech oligarchs' buying the administration of the state's elections" and even the "privatizing" of elections. It's a fancy updateon a very old right-wing talking pointthat paints any activisteffort to assist voters like offering rides to the polls, distributing food or water to voters waiting in line,or organizing "souls to the polls" events through churches as somehow malevolent.

Still, her nonsense is built on atechnically true fact that money is spent on non-partisan groups to assist voters. That helps those who want to push "rigged election" conspiracy theoriesthrough the mainstream media and on, ironically, Facebook. Unlike thelies about "fake" ballots and "rigged" voting machines, Hemingway's conspiracy theory, by relying on this one fact to spin out a wild tale from,can evadebeing flaggedby fact-checkers. And she is not subtle about her intention to use"Zuck bucks"as a cover story that Republican politicians, pundits, and even voters can use to justify screeching about "rigged" elections.

"If you believe things went terribly wrong in the 2020 election, well, you're not crazy, and you're not alone," she writes. "But most of all,you're not wrong."

RELATED: The power of the Big Lie: Why do 30% of Americans cling to Trump's dark fantasy?

It's all quite cunning. Everyone from GOP politicians to dudes ranting on social media needs something that doesn't sound completely nuts to fall back on to justify false claims about a"rigged election."Hemingway's conspiracy theory is misleading, but more through misdirection and bad faith than simply making up false facts.

Unsurprisingly, this new, easier-to-defend version of Trump's Big Lie is starting to take off in right-wing media.

The Federalist, where Hemingway is an editor, has been heavily hyping this new spin on Trump's conspiracy theories with hyperventilating headlines about a "leftist shadow government" and claiming Zuckerberg "took over the 2020 election."The New York Post is also getting involved in the hype. Hemingway's B.S. is evenstarting to show up in Fox News and will likely be making the jump to primetime soon.

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This follows a long-standing pattern in GOP politics, where crazy ideas that start at the fringe are laundered by cynical operators like Hemingway, to make them more palatable for politicians andthe mainstream press. That's how accusations that Barack Obama wasn't born in the U.S. got turned into "questions" about the "long-form" birth certificate. Or how neo-Nazitheories about"white genocide" arebeing cleaned up by Tucker Carlson and other Republicans as a mere question of immigration policy. Or how a bunch of wild-eyed ravings about Hillary Clinton being a murderer somehow morphed into "what about her emails?"Conservatives arevery good atputting a veneer of plausibility on ridiculous conspiracy theoriesthat can help get them into the mainstream media.

The irony here is that Hemingway, by comingup with a more housetrained version of Trump's Big Lie, also inadvertently exposes the racism at the heart of the "rigged election" claims. Trump'sconspiracy theories were mostly about Democrats somehow inventing votes out of thin air, which he mostly used in order to pressure election officials to actually fabricate votes for him. His racism was never far below the surface,but he managed to avoid coming right and saying that voters of color shouldn't have had the chance to vote.

Hemingway's take on the Big Lie, is less outlandish, but it alsois premised fairly explicitly on the idea that any effort to make voting more accessible is inherently illegitimate. She's not denying that the people who got assistance were real people or even that they had a legal right to vote. Instead, she just takes it as a given that it's dirty pool if someone helps people of color overcome voter suppression tactics tosuccessfully cast their ballots.

But sadly, while Hemingway's definition of "rigged" is even more racist than Trump's, it will likely perform better in the mainstream media, because she is better at dissembling and creating plausible deniabilitythan Trump. Just look toFlorida, whereRepublican Gov. Ron DeSantis is already leaning on the "Zuck bucks" excuse to justify voter suppression.We are likely just beginning to see this racist conspiracy theory spread wildly on the right.

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The evolution of Trump's Big Lie: Republicans retool their conspiracy theory for the mainstream - Salon

There are a couple of things that are always going to be a constant. The sun will rise, and the sun will set. And, bills are always going to be due. Across several industries, we are starting to see a Pay by Text format, in which consumers can access and pay their bill through a text message, rather than paying in person or through the mail. MarketScale Host Justin Honore talked with Larry Talley, Founder & CEO, Everyware, which offers simple billing solutions for organizations in a wide variety of industries. Talley talked about seeing more industries join this movement and which ones are best suited for it.

Pay by text is a great payment method that really works on your own time. Thats the beauty of a text message. Its not like a live chat or a phone call, so it really gives you the flexibility to pay when its convenient for you. Pay by text for industries such as nonprofits where we played a major role in collecting donations, where you just text the word give, and it will ask you, How much? Its a great way to see that playout, especially through COVID when people couldnt congregate or go to church. Its really great to see our platform play such a role in collecting money for those nonprofits.

Every industry is trying to increase patient and customer engagement. I like to call it payment engagement. Healthcare providers can increase patient engagement through text messaging.

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Is Pay by Text the Next Evolution of Ecommerce? - MarketScale

The transition from early hominin to modern human is quite a leap,and some researchers believe that the development of complex cognition and sociality may have been accelerated by external factors. The "stoned ape theory" suggeststhat consumption of magic mushrooms by our ancient ancestors kick-started the expansion of our mental capacities. To date, this highly speculative hypothesis has no hard supporting evidence, yet a new article in the journal Frontiers in Psychology attempts to argue the case for this wild theory.

Penned by independent researcher Jos Manuel Rodrguez Arce and Dr Michael Winkleman from Arizona State University, the paper states that hominin evolution occurred in an ever-changing, and at times quickly changing, environmental landscape and entailed advancement into a socio-cognitive niche. In other words, the challenge of survival created a need for greater intelligence, cooperative communications, and social learning.

According to the authors, these traits are highly dependant upon serotonin,a neurotransmittercreated from the amino acid tryptophan. However, as humans are unable to produce tryptophan, the researchers argue that the only way early hominins could have boosted their serotonin levels was by eating magic mushrooms.

To back this up, they point to recent studies that have hinted at the potential of psychedelics to treat mental health disorders such as depression, primarily by activating serotonin receptors and enhancing neural plasticity. They claim that the ancient consumption of these substances may have allowed for new modes of cognition to emerge while also facilitating the growth of our brains.

Taking things a step further, the authors explain that the ingestion of psychedelic plants may have encouraged social bonding among ancient hominins, generating euphoria and laughter while enhancing the capacity for storytelling and music. This, they say, helped to create certain pro-social tendencies that promoted group cohesion and aided survival.

While all of this may sound plausible, the fact remains that there is no solid evidence proving that early hominins consumed mind-altering substances. Despite this, however, the authors insist that our hominin ancestors inevitably encountered and likely ingested psychedelic mushrooms throughout their evolutionary history. They also point to archaeological evidence suggesting that prehistoric humans ate mushrooms, and claim that various types of fungi featured heavily in the diet of early humans.

In spite of these assertions, its important to note that this contentious theory remains unrefined and hypothetical. Recognizing this, the authors admit that the truth about whether or not early hominins ate magic mushrooms will forever remain uncertain.

Nonetheless, they insist that psychedelics effects in enhancing sociality, imagination, eloquence, and suggestibility may have increased adaptability and fitness [of early hominins].

In particular, the interpersonal and prosocial effects of psilocybin may have mediated the expansion of social bonding mechanisms such as laughter, music, storytelling, and religion, imposing a systematic bias on the selective environment that favored selection for prosociality in our lineage.

If theyre right, then it could mean that we owe our intelligence and social skills to a bunch of tripping primates.

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'Stoned Ape Theory' Suggests Magic Mushrooms Triggered Human Cognitive Evolution - IFLScience

This Saturday, Evolution Fitness & Training is hosting a fundraiser in recognition of Breast Cancer Awareness Month with proceeds going to benefit the Breast and Cervical Cancer Fund of Isabella County.

Owner Tracy Florian says this event is near and dear to her heart because shes known members of her gym who have struggled with breast cancer or had a loved one who struggled. The goal is to raise $100 per rower.

I think we have all in some way, shape, or form been touched by some form of cancer, and I think it's important to think about those that we've lost or that have beat cancer, Florian says.

Eight teams of 10 individuals will be rowing the equivalent of a full marathon a total of over 41,000 meters on the rowing machines housed at Elevation.

The event will be held outdoors in the gyms parking lot, located at 1717 S. Mission St. in Mt. Pleasant, on Saturday, Oct. 23, from 8 a.m. until noon. Spectators are welcomed and encouraged.

There are still spaces left on the rowing teams. Those who are interested in participating should contact Florian at evolutionfitnessmtp@gmail.com. Drop-in donations are welcome.

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Evolution Fitness to host Row for the Cure fundraiser - Concentrate

Dr. Vanilla, a one-man operation based in Fenton, takes the popular flavor to new levels with a line of natural, organic vanilla products.

The company was started in August 2020 by Krishna Bala and makes vanilla products using cool infusion technology. According to Bala, this processing method wastes the least amount of vanilla, retains more flavor compared to other methodsand is more economically sustainable.

Dr. Vanilla currently offers alcohol-free vanilla and natural vanilla extract. A 4-ounce bottle of natural vanilla extract is priced at $12.99 on its website. Vanilla powder, vanilla paste and gourmet vanilla pods will be available in the future, Bala said.

The company sources vanilla bean pods from sustainable farms in Madagascar, Papua New Guinea, India and Indonesia. But Dr. Vanilla wants to go beyond simply outsourcing to teach farmers how to properly grow the best possible vanilla bean, as well as fund educational programs for children in these countries.

Some portion of the revenue, we want to send back to the countries where we are doing business, Bala said. We are not so focused on making money. We want to be business partners.

The process from vanilla bean to final product takes around three months, Bala said. The cool infusion technology extracts flavor from the vanilla pods by using a heat- and friction-free processing method.

According to Bala, this leads to roughly zero product loss, more flavor in the final product and long-term sustainability with fewer vanilla pods used. After the initial extraction process, the vanilla is taken through multiple chemical changes to create the aroma and taste of the final product.

We don't use high temperature, high pressure," Bala said. "It's sustainable because you don't lose any energy. It also captures every flavor molecule in the vanilla bean.

Bala graduated from MU as a food science and nutrition major, focusing on flavor chemistry. After graduating, he became a food chemist, working on a process to create the best possible vanilla.

Traveling the world, he perfected his techniques and founded Dr. Vanilla after he retired last year. Bala began to offer a few products in August on the Amazon online store.

The product just tastes pure, clean and organic," according to a customer review on Amazon.

As Dr. Vanilla continues to grow, Bala wants to expand the product line. He is confident that his plans will be both achievable and profitable.

Ten years from now, we could easily be a $20 million company, he said.

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Dr. Vanilla takes the next step in the evolution of the popular vanilla flavor - Columbia Missourian