A design with us in mind?

 Is There Enough Phosphorus for Us? 

David Coppedge. 

Not long ago I considered the element phosphorus as a test case for Michael Denton’s hypothesis of prior fitness of the environment for complex beings of our size. Phosphorus is a vital element on which life’s genetic and metabolic processes depend every picosecond. And yet P is not as easily cycled through the environment as are other elements like nitrogen and carbon. Phosphorus, therefore, can be considered a limiting factor for a productive biosphere. We left the issue as a work in progress, although ample circumstantial evidence exists that P bioavailability has not been a problem throughout Earth’s history (consider trilobites in an ancient ocean, sauropods in a tropical rain forest, or tropical fish in a lagoon consuming phosphorus with impunity in different eras).

Phosphorus has been in the news since that article. A paper in Nature admits that “the extent to which phosphorus availability limits tropical forest productivity is highly uncertain” because of intertwined effects with other limiting factors such as nitrogen. The authors experimented with adding phosphorus to a small patch of old growth rainforest in Amazonia, where soils are depleted in phosphorus. After two years, they saw increases in primary productivity, but not in stem growth. Disentangling the effects of phosphorus from other factors still seems uncertain. 

At Charles University in the Czech Republic, two paleontologists investigated the phosphorus cycle over geological time by investigating the abundance of phosphatic marine shells in the fossil record as a proxy. In news from the Faculty of Science, they ascribe a transfer of phosphorus from shelly creatures to vertebrates in the Devonian: 

M. Mergl laconically remarked that “phosphorus was stolen by vertebrates“. This remark actually became the “starting shot”. The question of the radical loss of phosphorus in the environment proved so exciting that both authors set about studying in detail the various corners of the cycle of this element. [Emphasis added.] 

The Phosphorus Theory

Their tale begins with abundant phosphorus supporting the Ediacaran fauna. Then they attribute the Cambrian Explosion in part to still-plentiful phosphorus. 

The Early Paleozoic was a critical era of phosphorus cycle due to the intense involvement of biota in its dynamics. At the beginning, phosphorus was easily available in great amount and therefore many groups had the opportunity to build external phosphatic shells. This very likely contributed to the story of the Cambrian explosion, a period when representatives of almost all animal phyla appeared in the fossil record within a relatively short period of time. The Cambrian was thus a “golden age” for organisms with external phosphatic shells. 

Like the oxygen theory, this explanation transfers the explanation for the origin of genetic information to the abundances of blind elements in the periodic table — hardly a logical idea. That would be like attributing the origin of books to the availability of movable type in a print shop with no Gutenberg. 

In Act Two of their biological opera, phosphorus divorced the shelly creatures and married the vertebrates. Marine shells declined in size because large phosphatic shells became a luxury. “This process has been accelerated by the emergence and evolutionary diversification of vertebrates, which, although they need a lot of phosphorus, are better at managing it,” the paleontologists surmise. But the plot thickens when anomalies emerge:  

The subsequent era from the end of the Paleozoic to the present is characterized by limited but also selective availability of phosphorus in the seas and oceans. Geological processes such as the Variscan (400-300 Ma) and the Alpine orogenies (80 Ma to the present) have greatly aided the supply of phosphorus to the oceans.However, the ability of phosphorus to reach the oceans from its main source in the rocks of the denuded continents was hampered by the spreading of vegetation on land and other influences such as climate during this times [sic].  

A Skeleton Key? 

Climate change should not be used as a skeleton key for incomplete answers. In combination with “other influences,” storytellers can make any plot work. Kraft and Mergl published their ideas in an Opinion article, “Struggle for phosphorus and the Devonian overturn,” last month in Trends in Ecology & Evolution.

Most instructive is their proposal that “geological processes… have aided the supply of phosphorus” to the oceans and land. The role of volcanoes and orogenic processes in keeping phosphorus plentiful throughout Earth’s history deserves elaboration by design theorists. Consider what happened on January 14, when one of the most powerful volcanic eruptions ever recorded, the Hunga-Tonga volcano, surprised scientists with a massive plume visible from space (see the photo above). A new paper in Geophysical Research Letters reports a “massive phytoplankton bloom” that was visible from space as well following the eruption.  

Two independent bio-optical approaches confirmed that the phytoplankton bloom was a robust observation and not an optical artifact due to volcanogenic material. Furthermore, the timing, size, and position of the phytoplankton bloom suggest that plankton growth was primarily stimulated by nutrients released from volcanic ash rather than by nutrients upwelled through submarine volcanic activity. The appearance of a large region with high chlorophyll a concentrations less than 48 hours after the largest eruptive phase indicates a fast ecosystem response to nutrient fertilization. However, net phytoplankton growth probably initiated before the main eruption, when weaker volcanism had already fertilized the ocean. 

Although chlorophyll itself does not contain phosphorus, the availability of phosphorus in the ash may have stimulated rapid proliferation of the plankton. 

Phosphorus Ecology

Does phosphorus availability impact predator-prey relationships? In a research article in PNAS, Guilloneau et al.investigated “Trade-offs of lipid remodeling in a marine predator–prey interaction in response to phosphorus limitation.”  

Microbial growth is often limited by key nutrients like phosphorus (P) across the global ocean. A major response to P limitation is the replacement of membrane phospholipids with non-P lipids to reduce their cellular P quota. However, the biological “costs” of lipid remodeling are largely unknown. Here, we uncover a predator–prey interaction trade-off whereby a lipid-remodeled bacterial prey cell becomes more susceptible to digestion by a protozoan predator facilitating its rapid growth. Thus, we highlight a complex interplay between adaptation to the abiotic environment and consequences for biotic interactions (grazing), which may have important implications for the stability and structuring of microbial communities and the performance of the marine food web. 

The magical thinking in this story becomes evident when the authors opine that “marine microbes have evolved sophisticated strategies to adapt to P limitation” such as replacing phospholipids with non-P lipids. One must imagine microbes holding committee meetings, thinking out “strategies” as if they were business managers worried about maintaining their products under duress from shortages in the supply chain. “But if we do that,” one manager worries, “we become susceptible to organized crime.”  

The low availability of key nutrients like P in marine surface waters represents a grand challenge for microbes, particularly those inhabiting oligotrophic gyres. Although lipid remodeling enables these microbes to survive better in these potentially P-limited environments, as well as facilitating greater avoidance of ingestion by ciliate grazers, once ingested, these lipid-remodeled cells are unable to survive phagolysosomal digestion (Fig. 6). Therefore, these microbes face an unsolvable dilemma.  

The managers panic; what to do? Each option is potentially disastrous. “Thus, it is clear that adaptation to a specific niche can come with consequences to an organism’s viability,” the storytellers continue. Stay tuned for the next exciting episode! “…it remains to be seen what other trade-offs in predator–prey interactions exist following adaptation of cosmopolitan marine microbes to P limitation.”  

Not Particularly Helpful  

Speculation like this is not particularly helpful in science, especially when the story is so evidence-starved as to depend on one single example of a microbe and its predator. “Global change is expected to exacerbate P limitation in the surface ocean due to water-column stratification accelerated by global warming,” they say at one point. Maybe that was the motivation to ensure their story got funded and published. But what do they know from their observations? And how can they extrapolate one predator-prey interaction to the whole globe? 

Moreover, given that the effects of remodeling on predator–prey interactions we report here are ultimately controlled by in situ P concentrations (which controls lipid remodeling), then such interaction effects are also likely to be dynamic in their nature, given the often-seasonal nature of P limitation — e.g., in the Mediterranean Sea, PlcP-mediated lipid remodeling occurs across an annual cycle, whereby P limitation intensifies during spring and summer, but starts to become alleviated from September. Nonetheless, this work clearly highlights the complex interplay between the abiotic nutrient environment, microbes, and their grazers and how predator–prey dynamics are governed by abiotic control of prey physiology, which has important implications for how we model trophic interactions in marine ecosystem models, particularly in a future scenario where nutrient-deplete gyre regions are set to expand. 

Readers should note that both predator and prey have not gone extinct, which would make a stronger case for P limitation in their limited ecological case. 

Habitability Requires a Phosphorus Supply Chain 

While agriculturalists worry about phosphorus for commercial fertilizers, none of these papers above suggest that the natural biosphere has ever suffered from a deficiency of phosphorus. The plankton bloom after the Tonga eruption shows how volcanoes can fortify marine environments with inorganic nutrients. Another paper in Nature Scientific Reports suggests that terrestrial environments, too, can take advantage of volcanic phosphorus. Pioneering plants can absorb phosphorus from volcanic ash and supply it to secondary growth through their leaf litter. This is interesting because many terrestrial soils contain volcanic ash containing insoluble inorganic phosphorus that was thought unavailable to plants. Volcanic islands like Japan and Hawaii, however, seem to have thriving ecosystems. 

Despite volcanic ash soil covering about 20% of the land in Japan,and phosphorus deficiency being a serious problem in Japanese agriculture, net primary production in Japanese forests is primarily is not low compared to other temperate zones of the world. This suggests that natural vegetation on the infertile volcanic ash soil obtain sufficient nutrition including phosphorus. 

Geology, therefore, appears to offer a supply chain for elemental nutrients built into our planet by means of plate tectonics coupled with thermodynamics — the availability of heat near the surface. Since a planet’s internal heat decreases over time, there may be temporal constraints on this supply chain. If so, one implication is that cold, dead worlds might not have a functioning biosphere even if they orbit in the habitable zone. Is Earth operating in a Goldilocks time as well as a Goldilocks location? These are good questions for design theorists to investigate. Meanwhile, Earth’s biosphere seems to be functioning tolerably with its natural phosphorus supply. 

And still yet even more primeval tech v. Darwin.

 The Electric Cell: More Synergy with Physics Found in Cellular Coding 

David Coppedge 

New imaging techniques down to the picometer scale are permitting the detection of previously unknown alliances of cellular software with electrostatics and mechanics. Such knowledge was unattainable until biophysicists gained the ability to measure phenomena at the atomic level. What they are finding multiplies the information content embedded in the molecules of life.

Early depictions of molecules in the nucleus showed them drifting around aimlessly. How could molecules do otherwise without membranes to hold them together? Organelles are defined by their lipid membranes. The simplified picture of molecules in lipid cages, like animals in a zoo, raised questions about how enzymes locate their substrates in regions that, at their scale, would be distant. Last December, we reported findings at Caltech that revealed smaller levels of organization at play: nuclear speckles, transcriptional condensates and other “membraneless organelles” coordinated by non-coding RNAs. These erstwhile “junk” parts of the genome turned out to play key roles in architecting the “office layout” of the cellular factory. Some ncRNAs actually recruit the partners needing to associate like managers calling a meeting. 

The Electric Cell 

New findings reported in PNAS by Toyama et al. are uncovering a role for electrostatics in enzymatic activity. Simultaneously, the discovery may offer insight into the function of so-called “disordered proteins” that never fold into stable structures, and other proteins containing disordered regions that would seem to flail about like loose cables. But there is order in the disorder! How big is this discovery? 

Electrostatic interactions play important roles in regulating a plethora of different biochemical processes and in providing stability to biomolecules and their complexes 

6What the team from the University of Toronto found, discussed below, was only made possible by “solution NMR spectroscopy.” This technique allows them, for the first time, to measure the near-surface electrostatic potentials of individual atoms in proteins and follow changes in those potentials during an enzyme’s action. 

Our results collectively show that a subtle balance between electrostatic repulsion and interchain attractive interactions regulates CAPRIN1 phase separation and provides insight into how nucleotides, such as ATP, can induce formation of and subsequently dissolve protein condensates. [Emphasis added.] 

CAPRIN1 (cell cycle associated protein 1) is an RNA-binding protein “localized to membraneless organelles playing an important role in messenger RNA (mRNA) storage and translation.” It may act as a negative regulator of translation, confining mRNAs in condensates at times to prevent overproduction of proteins. “CAPRIN1 is found in membraneless organelles, such as stress granules, P bodies, and messenger RNA (mRNA) transport granules, where, in concert with a variety of other RNA-binding proteins, it plays an important role in regulating RNA processing,” the paper explains. In humans, this enzyme appears associated with long-term memory through the regulation of dendritic spine density. If so, our memories are not just dependent on chemistry, but on electrostatics, too.

CAPRIN1 contains IDP tails at both ends which, it turns out, are the key to condensate formation. The Toronto team found, importantly, that ATP plays a dynamic role in the electrostatic changes of CAPRIN1, especially in its IDP regions. In brief, here is what happens (see Figure 5 in the paper). Specific amino acid residues in the IDP regions confer on them a net positive charge. This makes the tails repel each other, resisting condensate formation (and preventing self-association of the tails). When ATP attaches to the IDP regions, however, the net charge is reduced, permitting intermolecular interactions. As more ATP is added, the collection becomes neutral, and a condensate forms. Additional ATP inverts the electrical potential, making it negative. Electrostatic repulsion ensues again, causing breakup of the condensate, separating the contents and freeing them up for the next round.  

This implies that condensate formation has an electrical aspect to it. Since it relies on the sequence and position of specific amino acid residues, one might even call it an electric code. 

Our interest in these experiments lies in applications to intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) and to intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs) of proteins, collectively referred to as IDPs in what follows. It is estimated that ∼30% of residues within human proteins encode regions of disorder, comprising at least 30 amino acids, with many of these proteins playing critical roles in cellular function, including modulating the formation of membraneless biomolecular condensates that organize proteins and/or nucleic acids, along with a variety of small molecules to regulate biochemical processes in the cell. At least 75% of IDPs contain both positively and negatively charged residues, with charge–charge interactions important in defining their physical and chemical properties and, in some cases, their propensities to phase separate. 

The information in the sequence of amino acids, and of the codons in the genes that encode them, appears to play critical roles in condensate formation and, simultaneously, in enzymatic behavior. Some amino acids they dub “stickers” promote phase separation. The specific electrostatic attractions and repulsions that give rise to the enzyme’s function during condensate formation and dissolution is dependent on the positions of these stickers.

This remarkable revelation begins to give insight into the participation of cell coding with electrophysics. Get a charge out of that! 

CAPRIN1 coexists with negatively charged RNA molecules in cells and, along with FMRP and other proteins, is implicated in the regulation of RNA processing and translational activity. Thus, electrostatics play a central role in modulating the biological functions of this protein, and measurement of electrostatic potentials at each site along its backbone, as reported here, provides an opportunity to understand in more detail the important role of charge in this system. 

The paper only investigated one enzyme, so caution is advised before generalizing. The authors feel, though, that this electrical code model will help explain many other processes that require molecules to come together, perform their work, and then separate. It’s the new Electric Cell. 

Future applications of these methods will pave the way for mapping the role of electrostatics in phase separation in a more general sense, including the effects of sequence, charge patterning, posttranslational modifications, and the presence of nucleic acids. 

Coded Mechanics, Too 

Another case of physics in cellular processing was uncovered by a team from the University of Washington who also published their work in PNAS. And once again, it was new creative imaging at the atomic scale that made the discovery possible.

This team worked on a helicase enzyme named PcrA, which unwinds DNA for transcription. This enzyme works so fast (1000 bases per second!) it’s been like trying to describe the blur of a racecar speeding down a track. Using a new technique called “single-molecule picometer-resolution nanopore tweezers” (SPRNT), they were able to slow down the action and watch the racecar move with its “inchworm mechanism” one base at a time. This blends chemistry with another branch of physics, mechanics: “mechanochemistry." 

We recorded more than two million enzyme steps under various assisting and opposing forces in diverse adenosine tri- and diphosphate conditions to comprehensively explore the mechanochemistry of PcrA motion.…Our data reveal that the underlying DNA sequence passing through the helicase strongly influences the kinetics during translocation and unwinding. Surprisingly, unwinding kinetics are not solely dominated by the base pairs being unwound. Instead, the sequence of the single-stranded DNA on which the PcrA walks determines much of the kinetics of unwinding. 

The authors are not clear why this is. What is evolution up to? They figure that there must be a reason. 

Unlike protein filaments (e.g., actin), DNA is not a homogeneous track; sequence-dependent behavior may be the norm rather than the exception. Strong sequence-dependent enzyme kinetics such as those observed in our data likely affect PcrA’s role in vivo and could thereby exert selective pressure on both DNA and protein evolution. Therefore, sequence-dependent behavior should be carefully considered in future studies of any enzyme that walks along DNA or RNA, since the sequence-dependent kinetics may reveal essential features of an enzyme’s function. Such effects are almost certainly used by life to achieve various ends, and SPRNT is well suited to discovering how and why such sequence dependence occurs and opens the possibility of uncovering enzyme functions that were hereto unknown. 

Why are they giving the credit to blind evolution? If life uses “sequence-dependent kinetics…to achieve various ends,” that sounds like intelligent design, not evolution. Design advocates are accustomed to forgiving logical malapropisms like this. They look past the magical thinking and see the operation of a designing mind with foresight and purpose, intimately familiar with the laws of physics, able to write code to utilize those laws in precision operations. Now, it becomes clear that the precision goes deeper than previously known. 

The Navajo nation: a brief history.

 Navajo Nation 

The Navajo Nation (Navajo: Naabeehó Bináhásdzo), also known as Navajoland,[3] is a Native American reservation in the United States. It occupies portions of northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, and southeastern Utah; at roughly 17,544,500 acres (71,000 km2; 27,413 sq mi), the Navajo Nation is the largest land area held by a Native American tribe in the U.S., exceeding ten U.S. states. In 2010, the reservation was home to 173,667 out of 332,129 Navajo tribal members; the remaining 158,462 tribal members lived outside the reservation, in urban areas (26 percent), border towns (10 percent), and elsewhere in the U.S. (17 percent).[4][5] The seat of government is located in Window Rock, Arizona. The United States gained ownership of this territory in 1848 after acquiring it in the Mexican-American War. The reservation was within New Mexico Territory and straddled what became the Arizona-New Mexico border in 1912, when the states were admitted to the union. Unlike many reservations, it has expanded several times since its establishment in 1868 to include most of northeastern Arizona, a sizable portion of northwestern New Mexico, and most of the area south of the San Juan River in southeastern Utah. It is one of a few Indigenous nations whose reservation lands overlap its traditional homelands. 

In English, the official name for the area was "Navajo Indian Reservation", as outlined in Article II of the 1868 Treaty of Bosque Redondo. On April 15, 1969, the tribe changed its official name to the "Navajo Nation", which is displayed on its seal.[6] In 1994, the Tribal Council rejected a proposal to change the official designation from "Navajo" to "Diné", a traditional name for the people. Some people said that Diné represented the people in their time of suffering before the Long Walk, and that Navajo is the appropriate designation for the future.[7] In the Navajo language, Diné means "the People", a term many Indigenous nations identify with in their respective languages. Among the Navajo populace, both terms are employed. In 2017, the Navajo Nation Council again rejected legislation to change the name to "Diné Nation," citing potential "confusion and frustration among Navajo citizens and non-Navajos."[8][9]

In Navajo, the geographic entity with its legally defined borders is known as "Naabeehó Bináhásdzo". This contrasts with "Diné Bikéyah" and "Naabeehó Bikéyah" for the general idea of "Navajoland".[10] Neither of these terms should be confused with "Dinétah," the term used for the traditional homeland of the Navajo. This is located in the area among the four sacred Navajo mountains of Dookʼoʼoosłííd (San Francisco Peaks), Dibé Ntsaa (Hesperus Mountain), Sisnaajiní (Blanca Peak), and Tsoodził (Mount Taylor). 

The Navajo people's tradition of governance is rooted in their clans and oral history.[11] The clan system of the Diné is integral to their society. The system has rules of behavior that extend to the manner of refined culture that the Navajo people call "walking in beauty".[12] The philosophy and clan system were established long before the Spanish colonial occupation of Dinétah, through to July 25, 1868, when Congress ratified the Navajo Treaty with President Andrew Johnson, signed by Barboncito, Armijo, and other chiefs and headmen present at Bosque Redondo, New Mexico.

The Navajo people have continued to transform their conceptual understandings of government since signing the Treaty of 1868. Social, cultural, and political academics continue to debate the nature of modern Navajo governance and how it has evolved to include the systems and economies of the "western world".[13] 

Reservation and expansion 

In the mid-19th century, primarily in the 1860s, most of the Navajo were forced to abandon their homes due to a series of military campaigns by the U.S. Army conducted with a scorched-earth policy and sanctioned by the U.S. government. The Army burned their homes and agricultural fields, and stole or killed livestock, to weaken and starve the Navajo into submission. In 1864, the main body of Navajo, numbering 8,000 adults and children, were marched 300 miles on the Long Walk to imprisonment in Bosque Redondo.[14] The Treaty of 1868 established the "Navajo Indian Reservation" and the Navajo people left Bosque Redondo for this territory.

The borders were defined as the 37th parallel in the north; the southern border as a line running through Fort Defiance; the eastern border as a line running through Fort Lyon; and in the west as longitude 109°30′.[15]: 68 

As drafted in 1868, the boundaries were defined as:

the following district of country, to wit: bounded on the north by the 37th degree of north latitude, south by an east and west line passing through the site of old Fort Defiance, in Canon Bonito, east by the parallel of longitude which, if prolonged south, would pass through old Fort Lyon, or the Ojo-de-oso, Bear Spring, and west by a parallel of longitude about 109º 30' west of Greenwich, provided it embraces the outlet of the Canon-de-Chilly [Canyon de Chelly], which canyon is to be all included in this reservation, shall be, and the same hereby, set apart for the use and occupation ofthe Navajo tribe of Indians, and for such other friendly tribes or individual Indians as from time to time they may be willing, with the consent of the United States, to admit among them; and the United States agrees that no persons except those herein so authorized to do, and except such officers, soldiers agents, and employees of the Government, or of the Indians, as may be authorized to enter upon Indian reservations in discharge of duties imposed by law, or the orders of the President, shall ever be permitted to pass over, settle upon, or reside in, the territory described in this article.[16]

Though the treaty had provided for one hundred miles by one hundred miles in the New Mexico Territory, the size of the territory was 3,328,302 acres (13,470 km2; 5,200 sq mi)[15]—slightly more than half. This initial piece of land is represented in the design of the Navajo Nation's flag by a dark-brown rectangle.[17]

As no physical boundaries or signposts were set in place, many Navajo ignored these formal boundaries and returned to where they had been living prior to US occupation.[15] A significant number of Navajo had never lived in the Hwéeldi (near Fort Sumner). They remained or moved near the Little Colorado and Colorado rivers, on Naatsisʼáán (Navajo Mountain), and some lived with Apache bands.[14]

The first expansion of the territory occurred on October 28, 1878, when President Rutherford Hayes signed an executive order pushing the reservation boundary 20 miles to the west.[15] Further additions followed throughout the late 19th and early 20th century (see map). Most of these additions were achieved through executive orders, some of which were confirmed by acts of Congress. For example, President Theodore Roosevelt's executive order to add the region around Aneth, Utah in 1905 was confirmed by Congress in 1933.[18]

The eastern border was shaped primarily as a result of allotments of land to individual Navajo households under the Dawes Act of 1887. This experiment was designed to assimilate Native Americans to mainstream American culture. The federal government proposed to divide communal lands into plots assignable to heads of household – tribal members – for their subsistence farming, in the pattern of small family farms common among Americans. This was intended to extinguish tribal land claims for such territory. The land allocated to these Navajo heads of household was initially not considered part of the reservation. Further, the federal government determined that land "left over" after all members had received allotments was to be considered "surplus" and available for sale to non-Native Americans. The allotment program continued until 1934. Today, this patchwork of reservation and non-reservation land is called the "checkerboard area". It resulted in the loss of much Navajo land.[19] 

In the southeastern area of the reservation, the Navajo Nation has purchased some ranches, which it refers to as its Nahata Dził, or New Lands. These lands are leased to Navajo individuals, livestock companies, and grazing associations.

In 1996, Elouise Cobell (Blackfeet) filed a class action lawsuit against the federal government on behalf of an estimated 250,000–500,000 plaintiffs, Native Americans whose trust accounts did not reflect an accurate accounting of money owed them under leases or fees on trust lands. The settlement of Cobell v. Salazar in 2009 included a provision for a nearly $2 billion fund for the government to buy fractionated interests and restore land to tribal reservations. Individuals could sell their fractionated land interests on a voluntary basis, at market rates, through this program if their tribe participated.

Through March 2017, under the Tribal Nations Buy-Back Program, individual Navajo members received $104 million for purchase of their interests in land; 155,503 acres were returned to the Navajo Nation for its territory by the Department of Interior under this program.[20] The program is intended to help tribes restore the land bases of their reservations. Almost 11,000 Navajo citizens were paid for their interests under this program.[citation needed] The tribe intends to use the consolidated lands to "streamline infrastructure projects," such as running power lines. 

Clan governance 

In the traditional Navajo culture, local leadership was organized around clans, which are matrilineal kinship groups. Children are considered born into the mother's family and gain their social status from her and her clan. Her eldest brother traditionally has a strong influence on rearing the children.

The clan leadership have served as a de facto government on the local level of the Navajo Nation.

Rejection of Indian Reorganization Act

Edit

In 1933, during the Great Depression, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) attempted to mitigate environmental damage due to over-grazing on reservations. Significant pushback was given by the Navajo, who did not feel that they had been sufficiently consulted before the measures were implemented. BIA Superintendent John Collier's attempt to reduce livestock herd size affected responses to his other efforts to improve conditions for Native Americans. The herds had been central to Navajo culture, and were a source of prestige.[21]

Also during this period, under the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) of 1934, the federal government was encouraging tribes to revive their governments according to constitutional models shaped after that of the United States. Because of the outrage and discontent about the herd issues, the Navajo voters did not trust the language of the proposed initial constitution outlined in the legislation. This contributed to their rejection of the first version of a proposed tribal constitution.

In the various attempts since, members found the process to be too cumbersome and a potential threat to tribal self-determination. The constitution was supposed to be reviewed and approved by BIA. The earliest efforts were rejected primarily because segments of the tribe did not find enough freedom in the proposed forms of government. In 1935 they feared that the proposed government would hinder development and recovery of their livestock industries; in 1953 they worried about restrictions on development of mineral resources.

They continued a government based on traditional models, with headmen chosen by clan groups. 

Navajo Nation and federal government jurisdictions 

The United States asserts plenary power and thus requires the territory of the Navajo Nation to submit all proposed laws to the United States Secretary of the Interior for Secretarial Review, through the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA).

The US Supreme Court in United States v. Kagama (1889) affirmed that Congress has plenary power over all Indian tribes within United States borders, saying that "The power of the general government over these remnants of a race once powerful ... is necessary to their protection as well as to the safety of those among whom they dwell".[22] It noted that the tribes did not owe allegiance to the states within which their reservations were located; they are considered wards of the federal government.[23]

Most conflicts and controversies between the federal government of the United States and the Nation are settled by negotiations outlined in political agreements. The Navajo Nation Code comprises the rules and laws of the Navajo Nation as codified in the latest edition.

Lands within the exterior boundaries of the Navajo Nation are composed of Public, Tribal Trust, Tribal Fee, Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Private, State, and BIA Indian Allotment Lands. On the Arizona and Utah portions of the Navajo Nation, there are a few private and BIA Indian Allotments in comparison to New Mexico's portion, which consists of a checkerboard pattern of all the aforementioned lands. The Eastern Agency, as it is referred to, consists of primarily Tribal Fee, BIA Indian Allotments, and BLM Lands. Although there are more Tribal Fee Lands in New Mexico, the Navajo Nation government intends to convert most or all Tribal Fee Lands to Tribal Trust. 

Economy 

The Navajo economy and culture has long been based on the raising of sheep and goats. Navajo families process the wool and sell it for cash, or spin it into yarn and weave blankets and rugs for sale. The Navajo are also noted for their skill in creating turquoise and silver jewelry. Navajo artists have other traditional arts, such as sand painting, sculpture, and pottery. 

The Navajo Nation has created a mixture of industry and business that has provided the Navajo with alternative opportunities to traditional occupations. The Nation's median cash household income is around $20,000 per year. However, using federal standards, unemployment levels fluctuates between 40 and 45%. About 40% of families live below the federal poverty rate.[100]

Economic development within the Navajo Nation has fluctuated over its history but has largely remained limited. One obstacle to investment has been the incompatibility of its two land management systems. Tribal lands are held in common and leased to individuals for specific purposes, such as home construction or for livestock grazing. Financial institutions outside of tribal lands require assets, including land, to be used as collateral when potential borrowers seek capital. Since individuals do not own the land outright, financial institutions have little recourse if borrowers default on their loans. Additionally, the wide-ranging bureaucracy involving elements of the U.S. Department of Interior,the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the tribal government has created a complex network that is cumbersome and time-consuming for investors and businesses to navigate.

Self-employed Navajo workers and Navajo entrepreneurs are often involved in the grey economy. For instance, artisans staff roadside shops and cater to American and international tourists, travelers passing through Navajo Nation, and to the Navajo people themselves. Other Navajo workers find employment in the nearby cities and towns of Page, Arizona; Flagstaff, Arizona; Farmington, New Mexico; Gallup, New Mexico; Cortez, Colorado; and other towns along the I-40 corridor. Commute times vary for these workers. Because of the remoteness of some Navajo communities, they can last up to several hours. Economic push-pull factors have led a sizeable portion of the workforce to temporarily or permanently relocate to these border towns or to large metropolitan areas further away, such as Phoenix, Arizona; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Los Angeles, California; Chicago, Illinois; Denver, Colorado; and Salt Lake City, Utah. With nearly half of all Navajo tribal members living off the reservation, it is more difficult for the tribe to build social capital there and to draw from those people's talents. 

Navajo college students and graduates studying at universities in cities and towns outside the reservation may elect to stay there rather than relocate to the Navajo Nation because of the relative abundance of employment opportunities, connections with other classmates, and higher quality of life. This phenomenon contributes to human capital flight or "the brain drain", where highly skilled or highly educated individuals are attracted or pushed to a location with different or more economic opportunities. They are not incorporated into the community and local economy of origin.

The tribe has grown peaches (Prunus persica) since the 1700s.[101] Wytsalucy 2019 genotypes some of the trees here and distinguishes them from those grown elsewhere.[101] This analysis illuminates the different course that Navajo breeding of peach has taken from peach breeding elsewhere.[101]

Natural resources

Edit

Mining – especially of coal and uranium – provided significant income to both the Navajo Nation and individual Navajos in the second half of the 20th century.[102] Many of these mines have closed. But in the early 21st century, mining still provides significant revenues to the tribe in terms of leases (51% of all tribal income in 2003).[103] Navajos are among the 1,000 people employed in mining.[104]

Coal

Edit

The volume of coal mined on the Navajo Nation land has declined in the early 21st century.

Peabody Energy's Black Mesa coal mine, a controversial strip mine, was shut down in December 2005 because of its adverse environmental impacts. It lost an appeal in January 2010 to reopen.[105]

The Black Mesa mine fed the 1.5 GW Mohave Power Station at Laughlin, Nevada, via a slurry pipeline that used water from the Black Mesa aquifer. The nearby Kayenta Mine used the Black Mesa & Lake Powell Railroad to move coal to the former Navajo Generating Station (2.2 GW) at Page, Arizona. The Kayenta mine provided the majority of leased revenues for the tribe. The Kayenta mine also provided wages to those Navajo who were among its 400 employees.[106]

The Chevron Corporation's P&M McKinley Mine was the first large-scale, surface coal mine in New Mexico when it opened in 1961. It closed in January 2010.[107]

The Navajo Mine opened in 1963 near Fruitland, New Mexico, and employs about 350 people. It supplies sub-bituminous coal to the 2 GW Four Corners Power Plant via the isolated 13-mile Navajo Mine Railroad.[108] Parts of the Navajo Nation, through the Navajo Transitional Energy Company, acquired the mine and three mines in Montana and Wyoming.[109][110]

Uranium

Edit

The uranium market, which was active during and after the Second World War, slowed near the end of that period. The Navajo Nation has suffered considerable environmental contamination and health effects as a result of poor regulation of uranium mining in that period. As of 2005, the Navajo Nation has prohibited uranium mining altogether within its borders.

Oil and natural gas

Edit

There are developed and potential oil and gas fields on the Navajo Nation. The oldest and largest group of fields is in the Paradox Basin in the Four Corners area. Most of these fields are located in the Aneth Extension in Utah, but there are a few wells in Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona. The first well was drilled in the Aneth Extension in 1956. In 2006 the Paradox Basin fields were injected with water and carbon dioxide to increase declining production.[111] There are also wells in the Checkerboard area in New Mexico that are on leased land owned by individual Navajo.

The selling of leases and oil royalties have changed over the years. The Aneth Extension was created from Public Domain lands as part of a 1933 exchange with the federal government for lands flooded by Lake Powell. Congress appointed Utah as trustee on behalf of Navajos living in San Juan County, Utah for any potential revenues that came from natural resources in the area. Utah initially created a 3-person committee to make leases, receive royalties and improve the living conditions for Utah Navajo. As the revenues and resulting expenditures increased, Utah created the 12-member Navajo Commission to do the operational work. The Navajo Nation and Bureau of Indian Affairs are also involved.[112Several Navajo organizations deal with oil and gas. The Utah Diné Corporation is a nonprofit organization established to take over from the Navajo Commission. The Navajo Nation Oil and Gas Company owns and operates oil and natural gas interests, primarily in New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah.[113] Federally incorporated, it is wholly owned by the Navajo Nation.[114]

Renewables

Edit

In early 2008, the Navajo Nation and Houston-based International Piping Products entered into an agreement to monitor wind resources, with the potential to build a 500-megawatt wind farm some 50 miles (80 km) north of Flagstaff, Arizona. Known as the Navajo Wind Project, it is proposed as the second commercial wind farm in Arizona after Iberdrola's Dry Lake Wind Power Project between Holbrook and Overgaard-Heber. The project is to be built on Aubrey Cliffs in Coconino County, Arizona.[115]

In December 2010, the President and Navajo Council approved a proposal by the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority (NTUA), an enterprise of the Navajo Nation, and Edison Mission Energy to develop an 85-megawatt wind project at Big Boquillas Ranch, which is owned by the Navajo Nation and is located 80 miles west of Flagstaff. The NTUA plans to develop this into a 200-megawatt capacity at peak. This has been planned as the first majority-owned native project; NTUS was to own 51%. An estimated 300–350 people will construct the facility; it will have 10 permanent jobs.[115] In August 2011, the Salt River Project, an Arizona utility, was announced as the first utility customer. Permitting and negotiations involve tribal, federal, state and local stakeholders.[116] The project is intended not only as a shift to renewable energy but to increase access for tribal members; an estimated 16,000 homes are without access to electricity.[117]

The wind project has foundered because of a "long feud between Cameron [Chapter] and Window Rock [central government] over which company to back".[118] Both companies pulled out. Negotiations with Clipper Windpower looked promising, but that company was put up for sale after the recession.[118]

Parks and attractions

Tourism is important to the Navajo Nation. Parks and attractions within traditional Navajo lands include:

Shiprock Pinnacle (large volcanic remnants, elevation 7,178 ft, located in New Mexico near Shiprock)

Navajo Mountain (mountain along Utah and Arizona border, elevation 10,318 ft)

Chaco Canyon

Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness

Canyon De Chelly National Monument

Navajo National Monument

Window Rock Tribal Park

Navajo Nation Museum

Navajo Nation Zoological and Botanical Park

Navajo Bridge

Kinlichee Ruins

Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site

Grand Falls

Narbona Pass

Navajo Tribal Parks

Edit

The Navajo Nation has four Tribal Parks, which bring tourists and revenue to the Tribe.[119]

Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park (on the Utah and Arizona border, near the town of Kayenta, Arizona)

Little Colorado River Gorge Navajo Tribal Park

Lake Powell Navajo Tribal Park – includes Antelope Canyon and hiking trail to Rainbow Bridge National Monument

Four Corners Monument Navajo Tribal Park

Navajo Nation Parks & Recreation also operates Tseyi Heritage Cottonwood Campground at Canyon de Chelly, Camp Asaayi at Bowl Canyon, and the Navajo Veterans Memorial Park.

Art and crafts 

An important small business group on the Navajo Nation is handmade arts and crafts industry, which markets both high- and medium-end quality goods made by Navajo artisans, jewelers and silversmiths. A 2004 study by the Navajo Division of Economic Development found that at least 60% of all families have at least one family member producing arts and crafts for the market.[citation needed]. A survey conducted by the Arizona Hospitality Research & Resource Center reported that the Navajo nation made $20,428,039 from the art and crafts trade in 2011.[120] 

Diné Development Corp. 

The Diné Development Corporation was formed in 2004 to promote Navajo business and seek viable business development to make use of casino revenues.[121]

The kuleshov effect: a brief history.

 Kuleshov effect 

The Kuleshov effect is a film editing (montage) effect demonstrated by Russian film-maker Lev Kuleshov in the 1910s and 1920s. It is a mental phenomenon by which viewers derive more meaning from the interaction of two sequential shots than from a single shot in isolation. 

Kuleshov edited a short film in which a shot of the expressionless face of Tsarist matinee idol Ivan Mosjoukine was alternated with various other shots (a bowl of soup, a girl in a coffin, a woman on a divan). The film was shown to an audience who believed that the expression on Mosjoukine's face was different each time he appeared, depending on whether he was "looking at" the bowl of soup, the girl in the coffin, or the woman on the divan, showing an expression of hunger, grief, or desire, respectively. The footage of Mosjoukine was actually the same shot each time. Vsevolod Pudovkin (who later claimed to have been the co-creator of the experiment) described in 1929 how the audience "raved about the acting... the heavy pensiveness of his mood over the forgotten soup, were touched and moved by the deep sorrow with which he looked on the dead child, and noted the lust with which he observed the woman. But we knew that in all three cases the face was exactly the same."[1]

Kuleshov used the experiment to indicate the usefulness and effectiveness of film editing. The implication is that viewers brought their own emotional reactions to this sequence of images, and then moreover attributed those reactions to the actor, investing his impassive face with their own feelings. Kuleshov believed this, along with montage, had to be the basis of cinema as an independent art form.[2][incomplete short citation]

The effect has also been studied by psychologists and is well-known among modern film-makers. Alfred Hitchcock refers to the effect in his conversations with François Truffaut, using actor James Stewart as the example.[3][4]

In the famous "Definition of Happiness" interview which was part of the CBC Telescope program, Hitchcock also explained in detail many types of editing to Fletcher Markle.[5] The final form, which he calls "pure editing", is explained visually using the Kuleshov effect. In the first version of the example, Hitchcock is squinting, and the audience sees footage of a woman with a baby. The screen then returns to Hitchcock's face, now smiling. In effect, he is a kind old man. In the second example, the woman and baby are replaced with a woman in a bikini, Hitchcock explains: "What is he now? He's a dirty old man."

The experiment itself was created by assembling fragments of pre-existing film from the Tsarist film industry, with no new material. Mosjoukine had been the leading romantic "star" of Tsarist cinema, and familiar to the audience.

Kuleshov demonstrated the necessity of considering montage as the basic tool of cinema. In Kuleshov's view, the cinema consists of fragments and the assembly of those fragments, the assembly of elements which in reality are distinct. It is therefore not the content of the images in a film which is important, but their combination. The raw materials of such an art work need not be original, but are prefabricated elements which can be disassembled and reassembled by the artist into new juxtapositions.

The montage experiments carried out by Kuleshov in the late 1910s and early 1920s formed the theoretical basis of Soviet montage cinema, culminating in the famous films of the late 1920s by directors such as Sergei Eisenstein, Vsevolod Pudovkin and Dziga Vertov, among others. These films included The Battleship Potemkin, October, Mother, The End of St. Petersburg, and The Man with a Movie Camera.

Qin Shi Huang: a brief history.

 Qin Shi Huang 

emperor of Qin dynasty 

By Claudius Cornelius Müller • Edit History. 

Born: c.259 BCE China

Died: 210 BCE China

Title / Office: king (246BC-221BC), Qin emperor (221BC-210BC), China

House / Dynasty: Qin dynasty

Qin Shi Huang, also called Shihuangdi, Wade-Giles romanization Shih-huang-ti, personal name (xingming) Zhao Zheng or Ying Zheng, (born c. 259 BCE, Qin state, northwestern China—died 210 BCE, Hebei), emperor (reigned 221–210 BCE) of the Qin dynasty (221–207 BCE) and creator of the first unified Chinese empire (which collapsed, however, less than four years after his death). 

Early years 

in Shi Huang

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Qin Shi Huang

emperor of Qin dynasty

Alternate titles: Shih-huang-ti, Shihuangdi, Ying Zheng, Zhao Zheng

By Claudius Cornelius Müller • Edit History

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Qin Shi Huang, also called Shihuangdi, Wade-Giles romanization Shih-huang-ti, personal name (xingming) Zhao Zheng or Ying Zheng, (born c. 259 BCE, Qin state, northwestern China—died 210 BCE, Hebei), emperor (reigned 221–210 BCE) of the Qin dynasty (221–207 BCE) and creator of the first unified Chinese empire (which collapsed, however, less than four years after his death).

Qin Shi Huang (Shihuangdi)

Qin Shi Huang (Shihuangdi)

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Born: c.259 BCE China

Died: 210 BCE China

Title / Office: king (246BC-221BC), Qin emperor (221BC-210BC), China

House / Dynasty: Qin dynasty

Early years

Zhao Zheng was born the son of Zhuangxiang (who later became king of the state of Qin in northwestern China) while his father was held hostage in the state of Zhao. His mother was a former concubine of a rich merchant, Lü Buwei, who, guided by financial interests, managed to install Zhuangxiang on the throne, even though he had not originally been designated as successor. The tradition, once widely accepted, that Zheng was actually Lü Buwei’s natural son is probably a slanderous invention. 

When Zheng, at age 13, formally ascended the throne in 246 BCE, Qin already was the most powerful state and was likely to unite the rest of China under its rule. The central states had considered Qin to be a barbarous country, but by that time its strong position on the mountainous western periphery (with its centre in the modern province of Shaanxi) enabled Qin to develop a strong bureaucratic government and military organization as the basis of the totalitarian state philosophy known as legalism.

Until Zheng was officially declared of age in 238, his government was headed by Lü Buwei. Zheng’s first act as king was to execute his mother’s lover, who had joined the opposition, and to exile Lü, who had been involved in the affair. A decree ordering the expulsion of all aliens, which would have deprived the king of his most competent advisers, was annulled at the urging of Li Si, later grand councillor. By 221, with the help of espionage, extensive bribery, and the ruthlessly effective leadership of gifted generals, Zheng had eliminated one by one the remaining six rival states that constituted China at that time, and the annexation of the last enemy state, Qi, in 221 marked his final triumph: for the first time China was united, under the supreme rule of the Qin. 

Emperor of China 

To herald his achievement, Zheng assumed the sacred titles of legendary rulers and proclaimed himself Qin Shi Huang (“First Sovereign Emperor”). With unbounded confidence, he claimed that his dynasty would last “10,000 generations.” 

reforms aimed at establishing a fully centralized administration, thus avoiding the rise of independent satrapies. Following the example of Qin and at the suggestion of Li Si, he abolished territorial feudal power in the empire, forced the wealthy aristocratic families to live in the capital, Xianyang, and divided the country into 36 military districts, each with its own military and civil administrator. He also issued orders for almost universal standardization—from weights, measures, and the axle lengths of carts to the written language and the laws. Construction of a network of roads and canals was begun, and fortresses erected for defense against barbarian invasions from the north were linked to form the Great Wall. 

In 220 Qin Shi Huang undertook the first of a series of imperial inspection tours that marked the remaining 10 years of his reign. While supervising the consolidation and organization of the empire, he did not neglect to perform sacrifices in various sacred places, announcing to the gods that he had finally united the empire, and he erected stone tablets with ritual inscriptions to extol his achievements. 

Another motive for Qin Shi Huang’s travels was his interest in magic and alchemy and his search for masters in these arts who could provide him with the elixir of immortality. After the failure of such an expedition to the islands in the Eastern Sea—possibly Japan—in 219, the emperor repeatedly summoned magicians to his court. Confucian scholars strongly condemned the step as charlatanry, and it is said that 460 of them were executed for their opposition. The continuous controversy between the emperor and Confucian scholars who advocated a return to the old feudal order culminated in the famous burning of the books of 213, when, at Li Si’s suggestion, all books not dealing with agriculture, medicine, or prognostication were burned, except historical records of Qin and books in the imperial library. 

The last years of Qin Shi Huang’s life were dominated by an ever-growing distrust of his entourage—at least three assassination attempts nearly succeeded—and his increasing isolation from the common people. Almost inaccessible in his huge palaces, the emperor led the life of a semidivine being. In 210 Qin Shi Huang died during an inspection tour. He was buried in a gigantic funerary compound hewn out of a mountain and shaped in conformity with the symbolic patterns of the cosmos. (Excavation of this enormous complex of some 20 square miles [50 square km]—now known as the Qin tomb—began in 1974, and the complex was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1987. Among the findings at the site were some 8,000 life-sized terra-cotta soldier and horse figures forming an “army” for the dead king.) The disappearance of Qin Shi Huang’s forceful personality immediately led to the outbreak of fighting among supporters of the old feudal factions that ended in the collapse of the Qin dynasty and the extermination of the entire imperial clan by 206. 

Most of the information about Qin Shi Huang’s life derives from the successor Han dynasty, which prized Confucian scholarship and thus had an interest in disparaging the Qin period. The report that Qin Shi Huang was an illegitimate son of Lü Buwei is possibly an invention of that epoch. Further, stories describing his excessive cruelty and the general defamation of his character must be viewed in the light of the distaste felt by the ultimately victorious Confucians for legalist philosophy in general.

Qin Shi Huang certainly had an imposing personality and showed an unbending will in pursuing his aim of uniting and strengthening the empire. His despotic rule and the draconian punishments he meted out were dictated largely by his belief in legalist ideas. With few exceptions, the traditional historiography of imperial China has regarded him as the villain par excellence, inhuman, uncultivated, and superstitious. Modern historians, however, generally stress the endurance of the bureaucratic and administrative structure institutionalized by Qin Shi Huang, which, despite its official denial, remained the basis of all subsequent dynasties in China.

Claudius Cornelius Müller

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

The antiDarwin?

 For Labor Day: Alfred Russel Wallace, Scientist and Working Man 

Evolution News @DiscoveryCSC 

We hope you are enjoying your Labor Day weekend. While you are carefully putting away all your white clothing until next summer, take a moment to consider the impact of labor on the development of evolutionary theory.

That’s right, the two founders of evolutionary theory, Wallace and Darwin, came from very different backgrounds. Alfred Russel Wallace, whose thought receives an accessible treatment in the new book Intelligent Evolution: How Wallace’s World of Life Challenged Darwinism, would later become a premature proponent of what we now call intelligent design. Unlike Darwin, Wallace grew up among the middle class and had to work for a living. This dictated the contours of his life and research. Charles Darwin came from family money. 

Watch the video below for a brief take on the impact of this difference from our friend and colleague, the historian Michael Flannery. Wallace did his collecting, leading to his own formulation of evolutionary thinking, because his livelihood urgently depended on it. Darwin felt no such pressure. So what? As we’ve explained before: 

Darwin’s voyage on The Beagle was paid for by his father (around 600 pounds worth). By custom the ship’s senior surgeon, Robert McCormick, should have been the expedition’s naturalist. Darwin’s official duty was not as the ship’s naturalist. From the beginning of the voyage, the notion that Darwin was the Beagle’s naturalist existed only in his own mind. Disagreements between McCormick and Darwin would ultimately have the surgeon leave the expedition in a huff.

FitzRoy, after McCormick’s departure, basically allowed the official collection he had ordered to take second place to Darwin’s. “Darwin,” FitzRoy rumbled darkly in post-Beagle days, “should not forget the generosity extended to him by captain and crew alike. It seems only too evident, however, that he did” (Janet Browne, Voyaging, p. 227). Does this sound anything like an Indiana Jones?

In contrast, Wallace, by and large, paid his own way with the specimens he collected and sent off to his agent Samuel Stevens back in England. For Darwin, collecting was a fascination underwritten by his father, Dr. Robert Darwin. For Wallace collecting was a passion and a livelihood fueled by his own hard work.How many specimens did Wallace bring home? In the East alone, 310 species of mammals, 100 reptiles, 8,050 birds, 7,500 shells, 13,100 Lepidoptera (butterflies), 83,200 Lepidoptera (beetles), 13,400 “other insects.” Total: 125,660. This excludes species collected in South America, many of which were lost in a shipwreck.

Darwin amassed nothing approaching this. Wallace’s massive collecting reflects a man in need of an income — no specimens meant no sales. Darwin’s comparatively smaller scale collecting reflect the interests of hobbyist with the leisure of an independent income. Which do you think represents the more independent adventurous spirit? 

Disney, you may recall, once promised that a Darwin biopic was in the works absurdly casting young Charles in an Indiana Jones model of swashbuckling adventurer. That role, as well as that of sympathetic working man, really belongs to Alfred Wallace. For the true adventure story of his life, see also Professor Flannery’s Alfred Russel Wallace: A Rediscovered Life. 

Survivalism: a brief history.

 Survivalism 

Survivalism is a social movement of individuals or groups (called survivalists or preppers[1][2]) who proactively prepare for emergencies, such as natural disasters, as well as other disasters causing disruption to social order (that is, civil disorder) caused by political or economic crises. Preparations may anticipate short-term scenarios or long-term, on scales ranging from personal adversity, to local disruption of services, to international or global catastrophe. There is no bright line dividing general emergency preparedness from prepping in the form of survivalism (these concepts are a spectrum), but a qualitative distinction is often recognized whereby preppers/survivalists prepare especially extensively because they have higher estimations of the risk (odds) of catastrophes happening. Nonetheless, prepping can be as limited as preparing for a personal emergency (such as a job loss, storm damage to one's home, or getting lost in wooded terrain), or it can be as extensive as a personal identity or collective identity with a devoted lifestyle. Survivalism's emphases are on self-reliance, stockpiling supplies, and gaining survival knowledge and skills. The stockpiling of supplies is itself a wide spectrum, from survival kits (ready bags, bug-out bags) that anyone should have, to entire bunkers in extreme cases.

Survivalists often acquire first aid and emergency medical/paramedic training, self-defense training (martial arts, firearm safety), and self-sufficiency training, and they often build structures such as survival retreats or underground shelters that may help them survive a catastrophic failure of society.

Use of the term survivalist dates from the early 1980s.[3] 

The origins of the modern survivalist movement in the United Kingdom and the United States include government policies, threats of nuclear warfare, religious beliefs, and writers who warned of social or economic collapse in both non-fiction and apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction.[citation needed]

The Cold War era civil defense programs promoted public atomic bomb shelters, personal fallout shelters, and training for children, such as the Duck and Cover films. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) has long directed its members to store a year's worth of food for themselves and their families in preparation for such possibilities,[4] and the current teaching advises beginning with at least a three-month supply.[4]

The Great Depression that followed the Wall Street Crash of 1929 is cited by survivalists as an example of the need to be prepared.[5][6] 

The increased inflation rate in the 1960s, the US monetary devaluation, the continued concern over a possible nuclear exchange between the US and the Soviet Union, and perceived increasing vulnerability of urban centers to supply shortages and other systems failures caused a number of primarily conservative and libertarian thinkers to promote individual preparations. Harry Browne began offering seminars on how to survive a monetary collapse in 1967, with Don Stephens (an architect) providing input on how to build and equip a remote survival retreat. He gave a copy of his original Retreater's Bibliography to each seminar participant.[citation needed]

Articles on the subject appeared in small-distribution libertarian publications such as The Innovator and Atlantis Quarterly. It was during this period that Robert D. Kephart began publishing Inflation Survival Letter[7] (later renamed Personal Finance). For several years the newsletter included a continuing section on personal preparedness written by Stephens. It promoted expensive seminars around the US on similar cautionary topics. Stephens participated, along with James McKeever and other defensive investing, "hard money" advocates.

The battle of Antioch: a brief history.

 Battle of Antioch (1098) 

The Battle of Antioch (1098) was a military engagement fought between the Frankish forces of the First Crusade and a Muslim coalition led by Kerbogha, atabeg of Mosul. Kerbogha's goal was to reclaim Antioch from the Crusaders and affirm his position as a regional power. 

Date 28 June 1098

Location 

Antioch (present-day Antakya, Turkey)

Result Crusader Victory

 

Belligerents

Crusaders

Seljuk Empire

Emirate of Mosul

Emirate of Damascus

Emirate of Homs

Various other Muslim Emirates[1]

Commanders and leaders

Bohemond of Taranto

Raymond IV of Toulouse

Adhemar of Le Puy

Godfrey of Bouillon

Robert II of Normandy

Robert II of Flanders

Hugh of Vermandois

Eustace III of Boulogne

Baldwin II of Hainaut

Tancred of Hauteville

Rainald III of Toul

Gaston IV of Béarn

Anselm of Ribemont

Kerbogha

Duqaq

Toghtekin

Janah ad-Dawla

Arslan-Tasch of Sindjar

Qaradja of Harran

Watthab ibn-Mahmud

Balduk of Samosata

Soqman ibn Ortoq

Ahmad ibn-Marwan Surrendered

Strength

~20,000

~35,000-40,000[2][3]

Casualties and losses

unknown

Heavy 

The conflict begins 

As the starving and outnumbered Crusaders emerged from the gates of the city and divided into six regiments, Kerbogha's commander, Watthab ibn Mahmud, urged him to immediately strike their advancing line.[4] However, Kerbogha was concerned a preemptive strike might only destroy the Crusader's front line and may also significantly weaken his own forces disproportionately. However, as the Franks continued to advance against the Turks, Kerbogha began to grasp the severity of the situation (he previously underestimated the size of the Crusading army), and attempted to establish an embassy between him and the Crusaders in order to broker a truce.[5] However, it was too late for him, and the leaders of the Crusade ignored his emissary 

Battle manoeuvres 

Kerbogha, now backed against a corner by the advancing Franks, opted to adopt a more traditional Turkish battle tactic. He would attempt to back his army up slightly in order to drag the Franks into unsteady land, while continuously pelting the line with horse archers, meanwhile making attempts to outflank the Franks. However, Bohemond of Taranto was ready for this, and he created a seventh division of Crusaders led by Rainald III of Toul to hold off the attack. Soon, many Emirs began to desert Kerbogha. Many of the Crusaders were also encouraged by the presumed visions of St. George, St. Mercurius, and Saint Demetrius among their ranks.[5] Finally, Duqaq, ruler of Damascus, deserted, spreading panic among the ranks of the Turks. Sökmen and the emir of Homs, Janah ad-Dawla, were the last loyal to Kerbogha, but they too soon deserted after realizing the battle was lost. The whole Turkish army was now in complete disarray, all fleeing in different directions; the Crusaders chased them as far as the Iron Bridge, slaying many of them. Kerbogha would go on to return to Mosul, defeated and stripped of his prestige  

References 

 France 1996, p. 261

 Asbridge 2004, p. 204

 Rubenstein 2011, p. 206

 Jonathan Simon Christopher Riley-Smith; Jonathan Riley-Smith (1 April 2003). The First Crusade and Idea of Crusading. Continuum. p. 59. ISBN 978-0-8264-6726-3.

 Runciman, Steven (1951–52). A History of the Crusades I: The First Crusade. Penguin Classics. pp. 204–205. ISBN 978-0-141-98550-3. 

Bibliography

Asbridge, Thomas (2004). The First Crusade: A New History. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195189056.

France, John (1996). Victory in the East: A Military History of the First Crusade. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521589871.

Runciman, Steven (1951). A History of the Crusades, Volume I: The First Crusade and the Foundation of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Cambridge: Penguin Classics. ISBN 978-0-141-98550-3.

Riley-Smith, Jonathan (1986). The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading. University of Pennsylvania. ISBN 9780485112917.

Rubenstein, Jay (2011). Armies of Heaven: The First Crusade and the Quest for Apocalypse. New York: Basic Books.

Paleo darwinism v. Neo Darwinism?

 If Darwin Came Back Today... 

Evolution News @DiscoveryCSC 

A classic ID the Future episode presents the beginning of a novella simultaneously fantastical and cheeky, I, Charles Darwin. What would happen if Darwin were to come back today? What would the gentleman of Down House think about the science of the 21st century, and how might it confirm or change his views on evolution? In today’s introductory episode of a multi-part series, Darwin finds himself returned from the grave and begins to explore modern London, followed by a return trip to the Galápagos Islands, where he is surprised by what he learns. Download the podcast or listen to it here. To learn more and to purchase the book, visit www.icharlesdarwin.com. 

David Berlinski on being an intellectually fulfilled Darwin sceptic:the conclusion.

 Darwin Without Darwinism 

BIOLOGISTS OFTEN affirm that as members of the scientific community they positively welcome criticism. Nonsense. Like everyone else, biologists loathe criticism and arrange their lives so as to avoid it. Criticism has nonetheless seeped into their souls, the process of doubt a curiously Darwinian one in which individual biologists entertain minor reservations about their theory without ever recognizing the degree to which these doubts mount up to a substantial deficit. Creationism, so often the target of their indignation, is the least of their worries.

For many years, biologists have succeeded in keeping skepticism on the circumference of evolutionary thought, where paleontologists, taxonomists, and philosophers linger. But the burning fringe of criticism is now contracting, coming ever closer to the heart of Darwin’s doctrine. In a paper of historic importance, Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin expressed their dissatisfaction with what they termed “just-so” stories in biology.(8) 

It is by means of a just-so story, for example, that the pop biologist Elaine Morgan explains the presence in human beings of an aquatic diving reflex. An obscure primate ancestral to man, Morgan argues, was actually aquatic, having returned to the sea like the dolphin. Some time later, that primate, having tired of the water, clambered back to land, his aquatic adaptations intact. Just so.

If stories of this sort are intellectually inadequate–preposterous, in fact–some biologists are prepared to argue that they are unnecessary as well, another matter entirely. “How seriously,” H. Allen Orr asked in a superb if savage review of Dennett’s Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, should we take these endless adaptive explanations of features whose alleged Design may be illusory? Isn’t there a difference between those cases where we recognize Design before we understand its precise significance and those cases where we try to make Design manifest concocting a story? And isn’t it especially worrisome that we can make up arbitrary traits faster than adaptive stories, and adaptive stories faster than experimental tests?

The camel’s lowly hump and the elephant’s nose–these, Orr suggests, may well be adaptive and so designed by natural selection. But beyond the old familiar cases, life may not be designed at all, the weight of evolution borne by neutral mutations, with genes undergoing a slow but pointless drifting in time’s soft currents. 

Like Orr, many biologists see an acknowledgment of their doubts as a cagey, a calculated, concession; but cagey or not, it is a concession devastating to the larger project of Darwinian biology. Unable to say what evolution has accomplished, biologists now find themselves unable to say whether evolution has accomplished it. This leaves evolutionary theory in the doubly damned position of having compromised the concepts needed to make sense of life–complexity, adaptation, design – while simultaneously conceding that the theory does little to explain them.

NO DOUBT, the theory of evolution will continue to play the singular role in the life of our secular culture that it has always played. The theory is unique among scientific instruments in being cherished not for what it contains, but for what it lacks. There are in Darwin’s scheme no biotic laws, no Bauplan as in German natural philosophy, no special creation, no elan vital, no divine guidance or transcendental forces. The theory functions simply as a description of matter in one of its modes, and living creatures are said to be something that the gods of law indifferently sanction and allow. 

“Darwin,” Richard Dawkins has remarked with evident gratitude, “made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.” This is an exaggeration, of course, but one containing a portion of the truth. That Darwin’s theory of evolution and biblical accounts of creation play similar roles in the human economy of belief is an irony appreciated by altogether too few biologists. 

Notes 

A.S. Romer’s Vertebrate Paleontology (University of Chicago Press, third edition, 1966) may be consulted with profit.

The details have been reported in the New York Times and in Science: evidence that at least some entomologists have a good deal of time on their hands.

Schutzenberger’s comments were made at a symposium held in 1966. The proceedings were edited by Paul S. Moorhead and Martin Kaplan and published as Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution (Wistar Institute Press,1967). Schutzenberger’s remarks, together with those of the physicist Murray Eden at the same symposium, constituted the first significant criticism of evolutionary doctrine in recent decades.

Murray Eden is, as usual, perceptive: “It is as if,” he writes “some pre-Newtonian cosmologist had proposed a theory of planetary motion which supposed that a natural force of unknown origin held the planets in their courses. The supposition is right enough and the idea of a force between two celestial bodies is a very useful one, but it is hardly a theory.”

Black Mischief: Language, Life, Logic & Luck (1986).

The same pattern of intellectual displacement is especially vivid in Daniel Dennett’s description of natural selection as a force subordinate to what he calls “the principle of the accumulation of design.” Sifting through the debris of chance, natural selection, he writes, occupies itself by “thriftily conserving the design work . . . accomplished at each stage.” But there is no such principle. Dennett has simply assumed that a sequence of conserved advantages will converge to an improvement in design; the assumption expresses a non sequitur. 

It is absurdly easy to set up a sentence-searching algorithm obeying purely Darwinian constraints. The result, however, is always the same–gibberish.

“The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme,” Proceedings of the Royal Society. Volume B 205 (1979). 

The brain of the talking ape.

 More Ways that Human and Ape Brains Differ. 

Evolution News @DiscoveryCSC 

Yale University researchers have identified more specific ways the human brain differs from the brains of all other primates. Using “hundreds of thousands of cells collected from the dlPFC of adult humans, chimpanzees, macaque, and marmoset monkeys,” they found 

After grouping cells with similar expression profiles they revealed 109 shared primate cell types but also five that were not common to all species. These included a type of microglia, or brain-specific immune cell, that was present only in humans and a second type shared by only humans and chimpanzees.

The human-specific microglia type exists throughout development and adulthood, the researchers found, suggesting the cells play a role in maintenance of the brain upkeep rather than combatting disease… An analysis of gene expression in the microglia revealed another human-specific surprise — the presence of the gene FOXP2. This discovery raised great interest because variants of FOXP2 have been linked to verbal dyspraxia, a condition in which patients have difficulty producing language or speech.

YALE UNIVERSITY, “WHAT MAKES THE HUMAN BRAIN DIFFERENT? STUDY REVEALS CLUES” AT SCIENCEDAILY (AUGUST 25, 2022) THE PAPERREQUIRES A FEE OR SUBSCRIPTION. 

More Differences 

Some other differences between human brains and other primate brains:

➤ Human brains are heavier. “For starters, our brains weigh an average of three pounds, which is enormous for an animal of our body size. By comparison, chimpanzees, our closest living relatives, have brains that are one-third the size of our own, although they are very similar to us in body size. Most of this brain-size difference reflects the evolutionary expansion of the association cortex, a group of regions that supports such sophisticated cognitive functions as language, self-awareness, and problem solving.” — Todd M. Press, BrainFacts (July 23, 2014). However, the relationship between brain size/type and intelligence is not straightforward.

➤ Human brains are especially asymmetric. “Researchers compared geometric differences between brain scans of humans and chimpanzees. They observed structural asymmetries in both human and chimpanzee brains, but human brains were especially asymmetric.” — Tanya Lewis, LiveScience (April 23, 2013). It’s suggested that asymmetry might be related to brain adaptability. 

The human brain allocates more cells to thinking skills. “… a part of the brain called the cerebral cortex – which plays a key role in memory, attention, awareness and thought — contains twice as many cells in humans as the same region in chimpanzees.” — eLife (September 26, 2016).

➤ Our brains have many more language connections. “Especially the fasciculus arcuatus, a bundle of connective nerve fibres important for the processing of language, is connected to many more areas in humans than in macaques, and even in chimpanzees.” — Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour (May 12, 2020). The paper is open access.

➤ There are distinct differences at the molecular and genetic level. “Specifically, the researchers’ results showed that interneurons expressing genes that code for dopamine synthesis are present in humans’ striata but not in non-humans’. This, they say, is part of what makes human brains uniquely human. Neuromodulatory transmitters, in particular dopamine, are involved in distinctly human aspects of cognition and behavior, such as working memory, reasoning, reflective exploratory behavior, and overall intelligence” …” — Peter Hess, Inverse (November 27, 2017)

The design Inference = pareidolia?

 Rosenhouse’s Whoppers: Seeing Patterns in Biology Is Like Seeing Dragons in the Clouds. 

William A. Dembski 

I am responding again to Jason Rosenhouse about his book The Failures of Mathematical Anti-Evolutionism. See my earlier posts here, here, and here.

Having clarified certain points, let’s now turn to Rosenhouse’s whoppers. Whopper number one is this: According to Rosenhouse, to see the bacterial flagellum as a bidirectional motor-driven propeller is to see a pattern that in no essential way differs from seeing clouds shaped like a dragon. I’m not making this up. Thus in his reply he writes: “How can we be confident that in using function as a specification we are not doing the equivalent of looking at a fluffy, cumulus cloud and seeing a dragon?” As if to leave no doubt, he repeats the point: “Saying of a flagellum that it resembles an outboard motor is comparable to saying of a cloud that it resembles a dragon.” Seriously?! 

Not a Metaphor. 

Since the flagellum gets so overused in the debate between ID and Darwinism, let’s change the system. Consider the leaf hopper, Issus coleoptratus (above), which uses toothed mechanical gears to achieve its amazing jumping ability. Here’s a brief video about its gear-based jumping system. Note that these really are mechanical gears. They are not merely like gears. They are not a metaphor for gears. They don’t meekly aspire to be gears. They’re gears. 

Yet, according to Rosenhouse, all such systems, despite exhibiting clear engineering patterns, require no fundamentally different type of explanation from clouds that resemble dragons. Natural selection produces the one, natural weather the other. Click here to see one example of a dragon in the clouds (a fire-breathing dragon, no less). The Internet is filled with such examples.

If you can’t appreciate the difference between these two types of patterns, and if you take seriously that they don’t require completely different orders of explanation, then the real world may not be your home. My notion of specification grapples with the difference. You may not like my formulation of it. Fine. But if you can’t form and take seriously some such distinction, then you inhabit an alternate reality. And even though Darwinian group think, powerful as it is, can keep you imagining that you are in your right mind, you really need to do a sanity check. 

Digression: The Shermer Delusion 

How can some Darwinists, like Rosenhouse, dismiss engineering-like patterns in biological systems as having no more force than seeing human and animal images in clouds? It seems that what’s behind this is the addling effect of evolutionary theorizing on human psychology. As already indicated, I’ve debated professional skeptic Michael Shermer before various college audiences. Shermer dismisses the use of patterns to eliminate chance by appealing to evolution, claiming that evolution has hardwired us to see patterns that convince us of design even when design is in fact absent. In other words, evolution biases us to err on the side of false positives, seeing design in patterns where design is not actually present. Here is how he makes such an argument (in his 2006 book Why Darwin Matters, pp. 38–39) 

Perceiving the world as well designed and thus the product of a designer … may be the product of a brain adapted to finding patterns in nature. We are pattern-seeking as well as pattern-finding animals… Finding patterns in nature may have an evolutionary explanation: There is a survival payoff for finding order instead of chaos in the world, and being able to separate threats (to fight or flee) from comforts (to embrace or eat, among other things), which enabled our ancestors to survive and reproduce. We are the descendants of the most successful pattern-seeking members of our species. In other words, we were designed by evolution to perceive design. 

Shermer is here suggesting that the patterns we find in nature (as opposed to artifacts created by humans or aliens) are simply imposed by us on nature on account of our evolutionary conditioning, and thus signify nothing about any real underlying design of the world. But that can’t be right. Clearly, nature could present us with patterns that reliably point to the activity of an intelligent agent outside of nature. Take, for instance, a pulsating star that acts as an oracle, communicating messages, in English, about matters of great consequence to the inhabitants of the earth. Assume the star is millions of light years away, and yet is communicating in real time, responsive to questions as they are posed by humans on earth. 

No Doubt About It 

Clearly, signals like this coming from outer space would exhibit patterns that leave no doubt about their intelligent origin. But the intelligence in these signals would also be beyond this world, given that physics limits communication by the speed of light, precluding communication taking place, as here, instantaneously. Such signals would provide decisive confirmation of SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. But it would not be an intelligence localized in space and time that’s sending signals with the help of advanced technology. In this example, the intelligence doing the communicating makes itself evident in nature (via a design inference) but operates beyond the constraints of nature.  

In any case, to refuse to attribute patterns to design on the grounds that our brains are hardwired by evolution to overinterpret design merely begs the question. That’s because some patterns are indeed rightly interpreted as signaling design. We all recognize a valid distinction between patterns that convincingly demonstrate design and patterns that result from unreliable psychological factors, such as an overactive imagination: seeing human faces in the clouds, burnt toast, or soap films, examples of the sort that Shermer — and Rosenhouse — use to discredit intelligent design. Shermer’s claim that we are hardwired by evolution to be pattern-seeking, pattern-finding animals does nothing to draw this distinction. 

The edge of Darwinism.

Behe Debates the Limits of Darwinian Evolution. 

Evolution News @DiscoveryCSC 

A new ID the Future episode wraps up a debate over evolution and intelligent design between Lehigh University biologist Michael Behe and Benedictine College theologian Michael Ramage. Both Behe and Ramage are Catholic, and they carry on their conversation in the context of Catholic thinking about nature and creation, in particular the work of Thomas Aquinas and contemporary Thomist philosophers. Ramage seeks to integrate his Thomistic/personalist framework with modern evolutionary theory’s commitment to macroevolution and common descent. Behe doesn’t discount the possibility of common descent but he lays out a case that any evolution beyond the level of genus — for instance, the separate families containing cats and dogs — cannot be achieved through mindless Darwinian mechanisms and, instead, would require the contributions of a designing intelligence. Behe summarizes both the negative evidence against the Darwinian mechanism of change and the positive evidence in nature for intelligent design. This debate was hosted by Pat Flynn on his Philosophy for the People podcast. Download the episode or listen to it here.