Darwin of the gaps logic continues to collapse.

Human Fine Body Hair and the Myth of Junk Body Parts

David Klinghoffer

 you might call Junk Body Parts. This myth points to supposedly useless or defective anatomical features that give evidence of "unintelligent design." An example is the fine hair on our arms and legs. 

Isn't that nothing more than an evolutionary holdover from our apelike ancestors? A list of "God's Greatest Mistakes" that Jerry Coyne likes to promote asks wonderingly, "If our skin is meant to be mostly bare, why do we have the tiny ineffectual hairs (and separate muscles and nerves for them) at all?" Discover Magazine has a similar list of "Useless Body Parts" that observes, "Brows help keep sweat from the eyes, and male facial hair may play a role in sexual selection, but apparently most of the hair left on the human body serves no function."

If you ever entertained the intuition that that can't be right, that we'd be missing something without our arm and leg hair, well it looks like you were...right. Researchers at the University of Sheffield in England explain that it helps fend off unwanted parasites on our body. New Scientisthas the story:

We're often reminded that we're genetically almost identical to apes, so how did we become the baldest primate? Charles Darwin thought sexual selection explained it -- as he put it, women with less hair were more attractive and men became less hairy as a corollary. Alfred Russel Wallace, who didn't like the idea of sexual selection, attributed our naked form to God. In fact, we have the same density of hair follicles as chimps, it's just our hair is much finer.

So the question becomes, why does fine hair persist in humans?

Now Michael Siva-Jothy and Isabelle Dean of the University of Sheffield, UK, have a suggestion: fine hair helps us detect parasites as they crawl over our bodies. It also makes it harder for the bugs to bite.

The results of their experiments -- carried out by putting bedbugs like the one pictured on the arms of student volunteers -- suggest that hair lengthens the insect's search for a feeding site, and increases its chances of detection.

Which makes sense at the intuitive level and is, in any event, more that just a "suggestion." The study, "Human fine body hair enhances ectoparasite detection," is out now in the journal Biology Letters published by the Royal Society.

Why reductionism fails re:abiogenesis.

The Onset of Information on Earth

To a casual reader, the following four paragraphs may seem like a lot to grasp in a single sitting, but it is something that every truly curious person should want to know. Modern biology has revealed a fundamental fact of physical reality: life on earth is the product of information recorded inside the cell.When this information is translated by cellular machinery, it organizes inanimate matter (carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, etc) into all the living things on earth. The mystery of life’s origin is therefore equal to the mystery of information. Where did the information come from that organized the very first living cell on earth? Did this information come together as an incredible chance event in chemical history, or was it the result of a deliberate act of design?

Whichever theory one follows, there is one thing that all people can be certain of. Prior to the organization of the first heterogeneous living cell, unique physical conditions had to arise to make that organization possible. These conditions enable the translation of recorded information into physical effects. They are brought about by the presence of two sets of objects operating in a very special system. To organize the first living cell, one set of objects must encode the information in a series of representations, and the other set of objects mustspecify what is being represented. This is how a "recipe" for the cell can exist in a universe where no object inherently means (represents or specifies) any other object. It requires both a representation and the means to interpret it.

But there is a third requirement. The organization of the system must also preserve the naturaldiscontinuity that exists between the representations and their effects. By doing so, a group of  arbitrary relationships are established that otherwise wouldn't exist. That set of relationships is what we now call The Genetic Code.

The unique physical conditions described here are the universal requirements of translation. Theywere proposed in theory, confirmed by experiment, and are not even controversial. They are also something that the living cell shares with every other instance of translated information ever known to exist. The genetic translation system provides objective physical evidence of the first irreducible organic system on earth, and from it, all other organic systems follow. It is irreducible because without both sets of objects operating in the system, translation cannot occur, and the cell could not be organized. Moreover, this system isnot the product of Darwinian evolution. Instead, it is the source of evolution (i.e. the physical conditions that enable life's capacity to change and adapt over time) and as the first instance ofspecification on earth, it marks the rise of the genome and the starting point of heredity.

And as a final indication of just how profound the appearance of this system was, an almost impossible observation remains – not only must these objects arise from a non-information (inanimate) environment, but the details of their construction must also be simultaneously encoded in the very information that they make possible. Without these things, life on earth would simply not exist.

God's 'folly' defeats man's genius.

Spiders Have Eight (Well-Designed) Eyes
Evolution News & Views 


Have you ever wanted eyes in the back of your head? Spiders have eight eyes, compared to our two. They can boast of better vision than ours on some counts; sharp, color vision that extends into the ultraviolet. Their ample set of peepers allows for division of labor: the main pair in front helps them see detail, while the smaller eyes wrapped around their heads warn them of looming threats. Stephanie Pappas wrote about spider eyes on Live Science recently.
"We see that division of labor within that visual system... That's pretty cool if you think about it, because we only have one pair of eyes."
That was actually a quote from Skye Long, a doctoral student at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, who decided to test and find out what the extra eyes are for. She outfitted an enclosure for her 46 jumping spider subjects and used paint to "blindfold" the principal eyes on a third of them, and the adjacent, smaller eyes (anterior lateral pair) on another third, leaving one third blindfold-free. (Don't worry about the spiders; the paint could be easily removed.)
Then she used an iPod Touch to create images of a black dot growing or shrinking in size. When seeing the "looming threat," the spiders backed up quickly and raised their front legs in defense, as if they felt scared -- even when the principal eyes were covered. This means the anterior lateral pair are crucial for alerting the spider to potential dangers. What are the other four eyes used for? That's what Long wants to find out next.
This would have been a "pretty cool" Halloween animal story, featuring a nice, experimental science project, had not Skye Long wandered off into evolutionary tale-telling:
That means the secondary eyes are crucial for alerting the spider to dangerous motion, Long said. Spider eyes are a "really cool step in evolution," she added; insects have compound eyes with multiple lenses, and some areas of those eyes have certain functions. Spiders, on the other hand, separate out visual functions across their heads.
"This is a different pathway that evolution has taken to allow a very small animal to have a very extensive visual system," Long said.
Right. No matter how cool or well-designed the adaption, just say it evolved. It's a "really cool step in evolution." It's a "different pathway evolution has taken." The blind, aimless, purposeless process of natural selection gave spiders a "very extensive visual system." Turn in your paper and get an A.
Here's a better way. Look what researchers at the Optical Society of Americaare doing with spiders. Incredible as it sounds, they are taking spider silk and using it for fiber optics. Spider silk is already prized as an ideal material: it's strong, flexible, and biodegradable. Now, a team has found it can also transmit and guide light almost as well as glass fibers.
One team is using it as a light guide in photonic chips, while another is trying to imitate the proteins in silk from spiders and silkworms to be able to manufacture it. This second team has already made a silk-based "plastic" that can be used for everything from biodegradable cups to implantable devices that dissolve in the body. Fiorenzo Omenetto presented his work in a superb TED Talk that raised the audience to their feet without him once mentioning evolution. And he is getting grants from the NSF!
Evolution is a straw scarecrow whenever it appears in biological research. The whole story is intelligent design, in the animals and plants studied, in the experiments devised to gain knowledge about them, and in the applications they lead to. Animal tricks become science's treats.