The Evolving Peppered Moth Gains a Furry Counterpart

NY Times ^ | 6-17-03 | CAROL KAESUK YOON

[Aquinasfan]

Other well-studied examples of human-driven adaptive change include... the increase in the numbers of dark-winged forms compared with light-winged forms of the peppered moth in the United States and England after industrialization turned air sooty and polluted.

LOL! Apparently the dope who wrote this article didn't study the peppered moth hoax very well.

Remember those photos of white moths on dark tree trunks that we all saw in school? Those photos were staged. How do we know? For one thing, these moths light on the undersides of leaves, not tree trunks. Also, the photographer admitted that he glued the moths to the tree trunks.

[Aquinasfan]

So, when do we start seeing hunter-orange deer?

Does spray painting a deer with Krylon® count?

[Aquinasfan]

So, why is it that one mouse is dust colored and the other is dark colored? Why is it that one gene has been twisted in order to create this difference, and why is ANOTHER gene turned in another creature to create the same effect.

Why is it that the towels in my hotel room disappear every day, only to mysteriously reappear later? And the hotel TV is bolted to the floor. Is that to prevent it from escaping?

[Aquinasfan]

Recapitulation of lower species in embryology.

You mean Haeckel's embryology? You're kidding, right?

[whattajoke]

This thread has quickly become a classic in the sense that it only took less than 50 posts to go from an interesting study on mice to:

The Paluxy tracks nonsense
The "Peppered moth photos were a hoax!" nonsense
The "micro-evolution is ok, but nothing more" nonsense
The "mutations only lose information" nonsense
The "where's the mice changing into flying fish" nonsense

But the kicker is that it only took 8 posts for some genius to evoke Adolph freaking Hitler in a discussion about a change in genetic information as a response to environmental factors in some mice in the Southwest.

It will never cease to amaze me.

[atlaw]

You're right. Evolution is a hoax. How do I know this? Because I was once an evolutionist, but at one of our midnight meetings in the basement of the Smithsonian, just as I was about to take another blood oath to the secret brotherhood of scientific deception, I had a moral awakening. I looked the evil devil-master S.J. Gould straight in the eye and uttered the forbidden words --"Noah's Ark," I said, and the cabal of satanic evolutionists surrounding me fled like rats. While the conspiracy remains alive and well (the primary and closely guarded secret objective, by the way, is to make to pocket-protectors mandatory), I am now a free man, and it is my goal to expose them whenever and wherever I can. Be warned, and be afraid.

[Kevin Curry]

The pepper moth hypothesis has been proven to rest on fraudulent data, manipulated to support the researcher's Darwinian biases.

The field of Darwinian "proof" is strewn with the bleached bones of deliberate fraud left behind by supposedly objective and dispassionate scientists. Ernst Haeckel's "ontology recapitulates phylogeny" fraud is still being reprinted in scientific texts.

You should be ashamed of your heroes, not in blind awe of them.

[RadioAstronomer]

Well said! LOL!

[Junior]

How does staging a photo make the story a hoax? Did you expect the photographer to stake out a tree and wait for a moth to land on it? Population surveys in industrial areas had shown the dark-colored moth prevalent and in non-industrial areas the light-clored moth was prevalent. Them's the facts. You take the untenable position that a staged photograph that illustrates the study obviates the results of the study. That's like saying the results of crash tests obviate the knowledge of actual crashes.

[Kevin Curry]

George Smoot, the team leader from the Lawrence-Berkeley Laboratory. He said, "It's like looking at God." Obviously, this captured the public's attention.

I imagine your fervid little brain squirmed like a toad in fast-drying mud when fellow scientist George Smoot said "It's like looking at God" when the COBE data was crunched and plotted.

Horror of horrors. Why couldn't the universe just behave, obey narrow-minded Darwinian preconceptions, and be steady-state to allow sufficient endless trillions of eons for Darwinian theory to work its bootstrap "something from nothing" magic?

[aculeus]

Thanks for the ping.

[PatrickHenry]

This thread has quickly become a classic ...

Classic PLACEMARKER

[whattajoke]

Point of clarification: "bootstrap 'something from nothing' magic" is more commonly known as "Genesis, chapters 1-3."

But I'm sure you already know that.

[3Lean]

Since hunter orange is mandated by state laws that would actually be intelligent design, not evolution.

[3Lean]

"But while many dark forms are abundant and can be studied at scientists' leisure, Dr. Majerus said that of the peppered moth was slowly disappearing.

So while there is nearly unanimous praise for the increasingly clean air in industrialized regions of the United States and Britain, there may be, at least for some scientists, a downside. "We've got about 15 or 16 years," Dr. Majerus said, "before those black forms, if they continue to disappear at the current rate, disappear completely."

There you have it - nature is discriminating against animals based upon the color of their skin - when will the NAACP file their lawsuit?

[RadioAstronomer]

Horror of horrors. Why couldn't the universe just behave, obey narrow-minded Darwinian preconceptions, and be steady-state to allow sufficient endless trillions of eons for Darwinian theory to work its bootstrap "something from nothing" magic?

LMAO! Ever hear of the Lyman Alpha Forest or the CMB?

[RadioAstronomer]

For anyone interested:

http://aether.lbl.gov/

[whattajoke]

If you care, I checked out the Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea a few weeks ago. I guess its like Mecca to people such as yourself... to me, it was definitely pretty cool.

[Mamzelle]

Single-cells. Anything bigger?

[RadioAstronomer]

If you care, I checked out the Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea a few weeks ago. I guess its like Mecca to people such as yourself... to me, it was definitely pretty cool.

Whoohooo! I would love to go there :-)