Questions re the monkeys-to-humans "evolution objection"

A. Had your flu shot this year?

The flu virus evolves to survive onslaughts against its survival. And since flu poses a danger to our well being, we engineer new vaccines annually to attack the "mutations." If we can do this--annually--what can nature alone accomplish using its counter-/adaptive-techniques?

B. Got a dog? What kind is it?

Dogs are the products of breeding. So, purebreds are not really purebred. Bring two together and the offspring look/act like a combination of the parents. Why not thee, er thou, you, whatever?

C. Do you take after your mom or dad? Well, then are you "just like" him or her in each and every way?

Thought so. If you count the generations even from the biblists six or ten thousand years, you should get pretty significant variations from the original pair of humans, not apes (separate evolutionary history).

D. Segue. Eve was created from Adam's rib?

Quite a leap from the original specimen, comparable to monkeys-to-humans. Why it's same-sex procreation! Or maybe self-sex. Unbelievable.

. . . And these without going into any of the concrete sciences of physical and biological constants and changes in us and other living things.

PS This published yesterday and an interesting extension to part of this discussion. Scientists Move Closer to a Lasting Flu Vaccine By Carl Zimmer.

Vaccines work by enhancing the protection the immune system already provides. In the battle against the flu, two sets of immune cells do most of the work.

One set, called B cells, makes antibodies that can latch onto free-floating viruses. Burdened by these antibodies, the viruses cannot enter cells.

Once flu viruses get into cells, the body resorts to a second line of defense. Infected cells gather some of the virus proteins and stick them on their surface. Immune cells known as T cells crawl past, and if their receptors latch onto the virus proteins, they recognize that the cell is infected; the T cells then release molecules that rip open the cells and kill them.

This defense mechanism works fairly well, allowing many people to fight off the virus without ever feeling sick. But it also has a built-in flaw: The immune system has to encounter a particular kind of flu virus to develop an effective response against it.

It takes time for B cells to develop tightfitting antibodies. T cells also need time to adjust their biochemistry to make receptors that can lock quickly onto a particular flu protein. While the immune system educates itself, an unfamiliar flu virus can explode into full-blown disease.

Today’s flu vaccines protect people from the virus by letting them make antibodies in advance. The vaccine contains fragments from the tip of a protein on the surface of the virus, called hemagglutinin. B cells that encounter the vaccine fragments learn how to make antibodies against them. When vaccinated people become infected, the B cells can quickly unleash their antibodies against the viruses.

Unfortunately, a traditional flu vaccine can protect against only flu viruses with a matching hemagglutinin protein. If a virus evolves a different shape, the antibodies cannot latch on, and it escapes destruction.

Influenza’s relentless evolution forces scientists to reconfigure the vaccine every year. A few months before flu season, they have to guess which strains will be dominant. Vaccine producers then combine protein fragments from those strains to create a new vaccine.

Scientists have long wondered whether they could escape this evolutionary cycle with a vaccine that could work against any type of influenza. This so-called universal flu vaccine would have to attack a part of the virus that changes little from year to year.

Ready to move beyond mere science

A friend wrote, "appearing and being are not exactly the same thing."

I say yes they are. What appears to you is what is. There is nothing outside of you which tells you, or me, that IT, what ever "it" is, IS.

The only way I can know is through me and my senses. My stream of experiences are mine, no one else's. These experiences do not prove the existence of the exterior world or anything in it. I construct that sense-world by attributing my sensations to an unknown universe. The world then is my projected picture of it, symbolic and approximate. We justify, on the whole, the external world by accepting our private evidence that something exists beyond ourselves.

So, I contend, we go about our business thinking that I see, feel, hear--sense--what you think you see, etc., or can. Thus the bases for science and other things. _I_ becomes _we_. And we proceed beyond me and under the illusion that my concrete reality is the same as yours, a "consensual realty." We carry on our oh-so-practical lives on what are defenseless and uncertain foundations.

Thus all is _interpretation_, the business of naming, describing the workings, and understanding. Scientists interpret. Sociologists and others do also. We do. The reality that is, or is claimed, shimmers.

But a rock you say? I should go outside. Find a rock, pretty good size. Take off my shoe and kick it. There, doesn't shimmer so much as hurts a damn lot. There is my reality, you say.

Yes, but that is but one experience, one description, of a rock. Solid so much that it can hurt you if you kick or stumble upon it. But I propose there are different descriptions, and levels of. Solid rocks become vast empty spaces, more empty space than particles that make up the solid of the solid rock in the quantum physicist's view(?). If he be correct and I am correct, we are not talking about the same thing. Different things. Different descriptions. Add to this the idea of a rock, and we have three quite separate descriptions for what we consensually agree is, a rock.

Hard science is but one of at least four ways of knowing. I can examine a rock as a physical thing (hard science). I can examine it in my unforgettable experience of it (phenomenology). My toes still smart. I can look at rocks as cultures have understood them, what they mean to peoples (anthropology and related disciplines). And I can consider rocks as parts of systems that use them physically or metaphorically. That these may make an integrated map of the thing is here left for another time, but I suspect integration is only partial. After all, differences are differences.

To quote an earlier self of mine, credits to others available if asked:

What-is-the-experience-of becomes first person knowing (e.g., phenomenology and related interior sciences). What do we understand, believe, value, etc., becomes first person plural (e.g., interpretive studies such as history, cultural anthropology). Examining it and explaining what and how becomes singular thing research, the object(s) of inquiry for harder (more exterior) science (e.g., biology, physics, etc.). Not least (because all four perspectives are contributors to knowing and understanding) is things plural and how they relate (e.g., systems sciences, political science, etc.).

You don't like the word truth. I don't much like the word science in the way you have limited it. What are we left with? I guess it is an IT. Whatever IT is, and I don't mean information technology, IT is what IT is, based on perspective. And different perspectives, I sincerely assume, are useful. And legitimate. If you like, science (the hard stuff) is done more or less well. And the other fields of inquiry are done more or less well as you have aptly pointed out. We need not throw out any of it though, unless patently worthless or fraudulent.

All for what? Explanation seems to relate specifically to things, whats. Rocks, cells, chemicals, etc. And their interactions. An explanation is a how. How does a cell work?

After one answers that, the question is so what? And this takes one off into another territory, another perspective. That is meaning. And meaning is all about understanding.

Hard science itself is limited. It doesn't give us meaning, arguably the important part. Yes, it is nice to know what a cell is and how it functions. And if you don't have a healthy one, it can do this bit of damage or that. But that is nothing about why, or what to do with the new info/knowledge you have discovered. And _why_ is what the universe is about and wants to know--not that it is, or shimmers, and it works rather mechanically this way or that. Wonderful stuff and it can amaze and enlighten, but in the human end, insufficient.

So I will draw a distinction between _explanation_, which is all fine and good, and _understanding_, which gives me reasons for being. Neither by the way, need remain static. They shouldn't if there is more to learn about all the ITs.

Now to end the rant for the day. I feel as if I have plowed this field before but do the seeds desperately need re-cultivating to grow? New topics surely await. I feel I need to leapfrog forward from these "knowns" into a known I can discover. It lies herein, or without. I am ready to move on.

This to an opera singer/pundit

This to an opera singer/pundit

One perennial--We seek truth, beauty, and goodness.

You have dealt with truth. Although I am not so quick to dismiss this as a useful term, we can proceed with "infinite study [inquiry]" as sufficient surrogate.

You have dealt with goodness, stupidity being the synonym for evil, therefore intelligence as the proper measure of ethical behavior.

Now we come to beauty. You have made a life of making noise of the operatic kind. I wonder. Is this (pre)occupation something we can associate with your search for beauty? Or are we left with watching girls, eye-candy as all we can hope for in this earthy life?

Your comments welcome.

Italian scientists guilty of manslaughter in not predicting as scientists doing hard, physical science must, and politics USA . . . these and other mundane matters have become ho-hum to those house-bound in rain-soaked Umbria.

Proposed petition

I have attempted to get a petition going. It is to Obama and the administration to:

provide foreign state officials in undeclared war zones real time
locations of enemy combatants and warfare preparations.

My abbreviated rationale.

Drone technology will persist. Use it to build foreign relations and support responsible others.

The policy recommendation is to stop USA unilateral interventions on or above others' sovereign soil.

In a constitutionally declared war, the US can use its battery of weapons. In adjacent countries or "interested hotspots," the US, if warranted, might assist technically. US advisers on the ground with no combat authorization advise and inform. From the air, same approach.

Given real time information of US enemy locations and threats, foreign states can act in their own best interests and those of innocents and trusted partner states.

Personal injury, death and property damage in targeting few terrorizes and alienates whole populations. Would the US tolerate foreign drones over US air?

Recommendation.

Go to http://wh.gov/KTUn to view and support the petition proposal.

Scalea, IT

Vincenzo Cauterucci--if this is the "gentleman" who has the VW dealership and service garage, BEWARE. If not, BEWARE the VW service garage in Scalea. Touring Italy to find a place to buy and settle down in 2010, my wife and I decided for an oil change for our Ferrari-red Skoda. My Skoda is no Ferrari but an older model, and if new worth about 6000 euros. My bill included the most expensive oil I could imagine, 20 euros per liter. My bill? Over 80 euros. I checked around locally. I should have paid at most 40 euros. I complained to no avail. I decided not to settle in Scalea.

Inspiring no longer

There was a time I followed bicycle racing. It was an exciting sport to watch in person, if only from a turn or two. Comes along a Texan with superhuman powers. Lance. We groupies all loved him. I read his book--inspirational about beating cancer.

But now this:

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/general/others/cycling-usada-claim-conclusive-and-undeniable-proof-in-doping-allegations-involving-lance-armstrong-8205794.html

Heroes (or models), sports and otherwise, are flawed, some more so. I take back my admiration, my interest, my pride in anything anybody represented for me or "my country" on a bike. And I take it back from Lance, who now seems more sinister than ever because of his silence. His consistent denials and protests were what Shakespeare claimed more cleverly--Guilty. Until the next go round.

However, there doesn't seem to be another in the offing--unless it is a bestseller confessional which would be typically opportunistic, typically--pathologically--over-competitive. Thoroughly dastardly.

New sayings to comfort us in our disillusion.

• Americans who beat thy chests, get over thyselves.
• One testicle doth not diminish a man's testosterone, or audacity.

You are right, Dave. History when fully revealed colors things, so it is best to not get too excited. Once I called this pessimism. Now it is just better judgment, or getting older . . .