Tuesday, June 30, 2020

A comment I wrote at the Washington Post. It's about Mississippi. They still live in the Dark Ages.

In the bill, lawmakers laid out two requirements for the flag’s eventual replacement: It cannot include the Confederate symbol and it must incorporate the phrase “In God We Trust.”

That's ridiculous. The god thing is not real.

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What someone else wrote:

Removing the hateful traitor emblem from their flag is a necessary and welcome step forward. But of course, this being Mississippi, they had to take that next step backward with the God stuff, didn't they?

Some more Richard Feynman Quotes

“I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned.”

“Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt.”

“I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of uncertainty about different things, but I am not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here. I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which is the way it really is as far as I can tell.”

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.”

“I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.”

“Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn't matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough. Work as hard and as much as you want to on the things you like to do the best. Don't think about what you want to be, but what you want to do. Keep up some kind of a minimum with other things so that society doesn't stop you from doing anything at all.”

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts."

“I have a friend who's an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don't agree with very well. He'll hold up a flower and say "look how beautiful it is," and I'll agree. Then he says "I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing," and I think that he's kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe. Although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is ... I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it's not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there's also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts.”

“We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on.”

I would not want to live in a universe that had a magic god fairy. I prefer reality. Fortunately that's the way it is. God fairies and Easter Bunnies are not real.

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Scientists

"Many people, including many important and well-respected scientists, just don’t want there to be anything beyond nature. They don’t want a supernatural being to affect nature."

This quote is from an asshole Christian. A professional moron who looks for hiding places for his god fairy. The stupid, it burns.

The asshole's name is Michael Behe. He sells books about sticking magic into science. I never met a Christian who wasn't a stupid fucking asshole.

If you're a Christian and you're reading this, you need to understand why scientists don't buy your god fairy bullshit. We have something called "reality". Don't be afraid. Reality is a good thing.

Richard Feynman quotes

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman

We scientists are clever — too clever — are you not satisfied? Is four square miles in one bomb not enough? Men are still thinking. Just tell us how big you want it!

It doesn't seem to me that this fantastically marvelous universe, this tremendous range of time and space and different kinds of animals, and all the different planets, and all these atoms with all their motions, and so on, all this complicated thing can merely be a stage so that God can watch human beings struggle for good and evil — which is the view that religion has. The stage is too big for the drama.

The Magic Man did it.

Mississippi, which has the most obese people in the world, changed their state flag because the old flag was not politically correct. The new flag is still being designed but we know they are going to stick the Magic Man into it, the "In God We Trust" bullshit.

Obese people can't exist without their magic god fairy. The stupid, it burns.

Wikipedia - Flag of Mississippi

On June 28, 2020, the Mississippi State Legislature passed a bill to repeal the sections of the Mississippi State Code which made provisions for a state flag, mandate the removal of the former flag from public buildings within 15 days of the bill's effective date, and establish a commission to design a replacement that would exclude the Confederate battle flag and include the motto "In God We Trust". Governor Tate Reeves had said he would sign the bill into law if it were passed. After the Mississippi State Legislature passed the bill, Reeves signed it into law on the evening of June 30, 2020.

The best way to advertise a book is get someone to try to block it. It worked for me. I ordered it from Amazon.

Amazon - Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man Hardcover – July 28, 2020 by Mary L. Trump Ph.D. (Author)

The Washington Post

Publication of explosive tell-all book by Trump’s niece temporarily blocked by New York state judge

By Michael Kranish

June 30, 2020

A New York judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked the publication of Mary L. Trump’s scathing book about her uncle, President Trump, which describes him as the “world’s most dangerous man,” saying no copies can be distributed until he hears arguments in the case.

The order leaves it uncertain whether the book will be published as scheduled on July 28.

Judge Hal B. Greenwald ordered a hearing next month on a request for an injunction by Trump’s brother Robert, who has argued that Mary Trump is not allowed to publish anything about her family as part of a settlement in an inheritance case.

His attorney, Charles J. Harder, said in a statement Tuesday that he would seek the “maximum remedies available” for the “truly reprehensible” actions of Mary Trump and her publisher, which he said have caused “enormous damages” to his client.

“Short of corrective action to immediately cease their egregious conduct, we will pursue this case to the very end,” Harder said.

Mary Trump’s attorney, Theodore Boutrous Jr., said in a statement that while the judge’s order is temporary, “it still is a prior restraint on core political speech that flatly violates the First Amendment. We will immediately appeal. This book, which addresses matters of great public concern and importance about a sitting president in an election year, should not be suppressed even for one day.”

Simon & Schuster said it also plans to appeal.

“We are disappointed that the Court has granted this Temporary Restraining Order,” the publishing house said in a statement. “We plan to immediately appeal this decision to the Appellate Division, and look forward to prevailing in this case based on well-established precedents regarding prior restraint.”

The book, titled “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man,” has already ascended to the top of bestseller lists based on presales, underscoring the intense interest in a rare insider account by a Trump family member.

In promotional material for the book, the publisher said Mary Trump “shines a bright light on the dark history of their family in order to explain how her uncle became the man who now threatens the world’s health, economic security, and social fabric.”

Mary Trump spent years pursuing an education that led her to become a clinical psychologist, as The Post recently reported.

Mary Trump once stood up to her uncle Donald. Now her book describes a ‘nightmare’ of family dysfunction.

Using that background, she explores the “nightmare of traumas” within the Trump family, according to the publisher.

“She explains how specific events and general family patterns created the damaged man who currently occupies the Oval Office, including the strange and harmful relationship between Fred Trump and his two oldest sons, Fred Jr. and Donald,” according to the book’s description.

Mary Trump’s father, Fred Jr. — the older brother of President Trump — died of an alcohol-related disease when she was 16 years old in 1981, an event that had a deep impact on the family.

President Trump said in an interview with The Post last year that he made mistakes in dealing with his brother and regretted pushing him to join the family business.

Mary Trump was involved in a bitter dispute in the family over an expected inheritance when her grandfather Fred Sr. died in 1999. She and her brother, Fred III, said in court papers that someone in or connected to the Trump family got Fred Sr. to change his will and give them less than they expected.

After all sides exchanged a bitter round of accusations in court papers and the newspapers, a settlement was struck, and Mary Trump signed a nondisclosure agreement. Robert Trump, in asking the court to block Mary Trump’s book, said its publication would violate the nondisclosure deal.

In his ruling, Greenwald did not discuss the specifics of the arguments of either side. Instead, he said that the merits of Robert Trump’s petition deserved to be heard in court before the book can be published.

He ordered that the parties present their arguments on July 10 or as soon as possible thereafter. He said that it will be up to Mary Trump and the publisher to show why an order to block the book should not be made.

Robert Trump had originally filed his petition in Queens County Surrogate’s Court, but a judge rejected the request on grounds that the court did not have jurisdiction. Robert Trump then filed his petition with the state Supreme Court.

This afternoon I went outside to take out the garbage and visit my plants. I saw a huge bee, a species I have never seen before, and a butterfly doing their thing with my beautiful plants.

Wikipedia - Pollination

Pollination is the transfer of pollen from a male part of a plant to a female part of a plant, later enabling fertilization and the production of seeds, most often by an animal or by wind. Pollinating agents are animals such as insects, birds, and bats; water; wind; and even plants themselves, when self-pollination occurs within a closed flower. Pollination often occurs within a species. When pollination occurs between species it can produce hybrid offspring in nature and in plant breeding work.

Don't forget your mask.

This is not my problem. I have been obeying the rules. But it looks like too many people are fucking everything up. Of course it's Trump's fault. Everything is Trump's fault. We got to get rid of Trump so let's choose another moron for the job, Joe Fucktard Biden.

The Washington Post

Fauci says U.S. may reach 100,000 coronavirus cases per day ‘if this does not turn around’.

Anthony S. Fauci issued a dire warning at a Senate hearing Tuesday about the rate of the coronavirus pandemic’s spread amid a spike in new cases, noting that new cases may reach 100,000 per day if the United States continues on its current trajectory.

The nation’s top infectious-disease expert gave the warning in response to questioning from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on what the overall U.S. death toll is likely to be.

“I can't make an accurate prediction, but it is going to be very disturbing,” Fauci replied. “I will guarantee you that, because when you have an outbreak in one part of the country, even though in other parts of the country they're doing well, they are vulnerable.”

He added: “We are now having 40-plus thousand new cases a day. I would not be surprised if we go up to 100,000 a day if this does not turn around. And so I am very concerned.”

Pressed by Warren on the likely total death toll, Fauci again declined to say.

“I would really be hesitant to give a number that will come back and either be contradicted and overblown or underblown,” Fauci said. “But I think it’s important to tell you and the American public that I’m very concerned because it could get very bad.”

"The bloc will allow visitors from 15 countries, but the United States, Brazil and Russia were among the notable absences from the safe list."

New York Times

E.U. Formalizes Reopening, Barring Travelers From U.S.

The bloc will allow visitors from 15 countries, but the United States, Brazil and Russia were among the notable absences from the safe list.

By Matina Stevis-Gridneff

June 30, 2020

BRUSSELS — The European Union will open its borders to visitors from 15 countries as of Wednesday, but not to travelers from the United States, Brazil or Russia, putting into effect a complex policy that has sought to balance health concerns with politics, diplomacy and the desperate need for tourism revenue.

The list of nations that European Union countries have approved includes Australia, Canada and New Zealand, while travelers from China will be permitted if China reciprocates.

The plan was drawn up based on health criteria, and European Union officials went to great lengths to appear apolitical in their choices, but the decision to leave the United States off the list — lumping travelers from there in with those from Brazil and Russia — was a high-profile rebuke of the Trump administration’s handling of the coronavirus crisis.

Travelers’ country of residence, not their nationality, will be the determining factor for their ability to travel to countries in the European Union, officials said, and while the policy will not be legally binding, all 27 member nations will be under pressure to comply. If not, they risk having their European peers close borders within the bloc, which would set back efforts to restart the free travel-and-trade zone that is fundamental to the club’s economic survival.

Still, some European countries, especially those in the south that see millions of visitors from all over the world throng to beaches and cultural sites during the summer, have been eager to permit more travelers in a bid to salvage their ravaged, and vital, tourism industries.

The United States was the first country to bar visitors from the European Union in March as the pandemic devastated Italy and other European nations.

The bloc implemented its own travel ban in mid-March and has been gradually extending it as the pandemic spreads to other parts of the world. It had set July 1 as the date to begin allowing non-European Union travelers to return, even as Portugal and Sweden, both members, and Britain, which is treated as a member until the end of the year, still grapple with serious outbreaks. Others, such as Germany, are seeing new localized outbreaks drive up their national caseloads.

Britain was exempt from consideration for the list because of its current E.U. status, and countries like Spain and France are considering allowing direct flights from Britain to bring in crucial tourism revenue.

The list of safe countries will be reviewed every two weeks to reflect the changing realities of the coronavirus outbreaks in individual nations, officials said, and countries could be added or removed from the list. Experts say the approach is a sensible way navigate the continent’s reopening as the spread of the virus shifts and ebbs. But it is also bound to create logistical problems for airlines trying to plan routes, and could reap uncertainty for would-be travelers.

The full list of the first 15 countries that the European Union will open up to includes Algeria, Australia, Canada, Georgia, Japan, Montenegro, Morocco, New Zealand, Rwanda, Serbia, South Korea, Thailand, Tunisia, Uruguay and China, provided that China also opens up to travelers from the bloc. It also includes four European microstates, Andorra, Monaco, San Marino and the Vatican.

Exceptions are also being made for travelers from countries outside the safe list, including health care workers, diplomats, humanitarian workers, transit passengers, asylum seekers and students, as well as “passengers traveling for imperative family reasons” and foreign workers whose employment in Europe is deemed essential.

Although travel between the United States and Europe has been severely limited by the earlier lockdown restrictions, exceptions have been made. A regular flight between Newark and Amsterdam, for example, has shuttled essential travelers such as diplomats and health care professionals and repatriated Europeans from the United States.

The prolonged severance of travel ties between the bloc and the United States has disrupted a critical economic, cultural and diplomatic relationship. Business travelers on both sides of the Atlantic are desperate to resume their visits, couples and families have been split up for months, and the differences between the European and American approaches to combating the pandemic have brought to the fore divergent views on science and policy.

While most European nations went into strict lockdowns early in their outbreaks and have promoting the wearing of masks and other measures to try and control the resurgence of the illness, the United States has seen a patchwork response and the number of new cases has continued to balloon.

The different policy approaches and their subsequent results became obvious to officials tasked with drafting the safe list. The benchmark scientific metric used was new cases over the past two weeks per 100,000 people. The average among the 27 European Union countries was 16 in mid-June; in the United States, it was 107.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last week said that the United States and the European Union were working together to reopen travel between the two areas.

“We’re working with our European counterparts to get that right,” he told a German Marshall Fund conference last week. “There’s enormous destruction of wealth.”

Matina Stevis-Gridneff is the Brussels correspondent for The New York Times, covering the European Union. She joined The Times after covering East Africa for The Wall Street Journal for five years. @MatinaStevis

There are real atheists and there are wimpy atheists. The wimps are just plain fucking stupid.

Atheism is an acceptance of reality.

A real atheist is 100% certain magic god fairies and Easter Bunnies are not real because they are impossible.

One more thing: Only a wimp would write this moronic bullshit: "absence of belief".

Would this moron say he has an absence of belief in Easter Bunnies?

These wimpy atheists have my contempt.

Normal countries. Idiot America is not on the list.

BREAKING NEWS

Balancing health concerns and politics, the European Union will open its borders to visitors from 15 countries. The U.S. is not on the list.

Tuesday, June 30, 2020

Travelers from Russia and Brazil will also be barred from the European Union, as the bloc puts into effect a complex policy.

The list of approved nations includes Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

What I wrote for the liberal fucktards at the Washington Post.

Biden has a senile problem but he can read a speech. He should try to avoid being in a debate because he might forget what country he lives in.

Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin - I'm reading it the 2nd time. The science deniers (Christian fucktards and Muslim terrorists) should read this book but thinking makes them cry.

Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body Paperback – January 6, 2009

by Neil Shubin (Author)

Benjamin Franklin - “It is ill-manners to silence a fool and cruelty to let him go on.”

Benjamin Franklin Quotes - chess

ON THE MORALS OF CHESS(1779) Benjamin Franklin: "The game of Chess is not merely an idle amusement. Several very valuable qualities of the mind, useful in the course of human life, are to be acquired or strengthened by it, so as to become habits, ready on all occasions."

Chess is so interesting in itself, as not to need the view of gain to induce engaging in it; and thence it is never played for money.

By playing at Chess then, we may learn: First: Foresight... Second: Circumspection... Third: Caution...And lastly, we learn by Chess the habit of not being discouraged by present bad appearances in the state of our affairs, the habit of hoping for a favorable chance, and that of persevering in the secrets of resources.

You must not, when you have gained a victory, use any triumphing or insulting expressions, nor show too much of the pleasure you feel; but endeavour to console your adversary, and make him less dissatisfied with himself by every kind and civil expression that may be used with truth; such as, you understand the game better than I, but you are a little inattentive, or, you play too fast; or, you had the best of the game, but something happened to divert your thoughts, and that turned it in my favour.

The game of Chess is not merely an idle amusement; several very valuable qualities of the mind are to be acquired and strengthened by it, so as to become habits ready on all occasions, for life is a kind of chess.

2020

Monday, June 29, 2020

Faith is an excuse for cowardly morons to believe in any childish nonsense that makes them feel good.

Wikipedia - Faith - Criticism

Criticism

Bertrand Russell wrote:

Christians hold that their faith does good, but other faiths do harm. At any rate, they hold this about the communist faith. What I wish to maintain is that all faiths do harm. We may define “faith” as a firm belief in something for which there is no evidence. Where there is evidence, no one speaks of “faith.” We do not speak of faith that two and two are four or that the earth is round. We only speak of faith when we wish to substitute emotion for evidence. The substitution of emotion for evidence is apt to lead to strife, since different groups substitute different emotions. Christians have faith in the Resurrection; communists have faith in Marx’s Theory of Value. Neither faith can be defended rationally, and each therefore is defended by propaganda and, if necessary, by war.
— Will Religious Faith Cure Our Troubles?

Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins criticizes all faith by generalizing from specific faith in propositions that conflict directly with scientific evidence. He describes faith as belief without evidence; a process of active non-thinking. He states that it is a practice that only degrades our understanding of the natural world by allowing anyone to make a claim about nature that is based solely on their personal thoughts, and possibly distorted perceptions, that does not require testing against nature, has no ability to make reliable and consistent predictions, and is not subject to peer review.

Philosophy professor Peter Boghossian argues that reason and evidence are the only way to determine which "claims about the world are likely true". Different religious traditions make different religious claims, and Boghossian asserts that faith alone cannot resolve conflicts between these without evidence. He gives as an example of the belief held by that Muslims that Muhammad (who died in the year 632) was the last prophet, and the contradictory belief held by Mormons that Joseph Smith (born in 1805) was a prophet. Boghossian asserts that faith has no "built-in corrective mechanism". For factual claims, he gives the example of the belief that the Earth is 4,000 years old. With only faith and no reason or evidence, he argues, there is no way to correct this claim if it is inaccurate. Boghossian advocates thinking of faith either as "belief without evidence" or "pretending to know things you don't know".

Typical Muslim assholes. This BBC News article is from 5 years ago.

Islamic State 'beheads women for sorcery' in Syria

A member of Islamic State's vice police force, known as al-Hisba, patrols a market in Raqqa, Syria (17 April 2015) — Image captionIslamic State has imposed an extreme interpretation of Islamic law in the areas in it controls

Islamic State (IS) has beheaded two women in eastern Syria, the first time the jihadist group has decapitated female civilians, activists say.

The women were killed along with their husbands in the city of Deir al-Zour and the town of al-Mayadeen, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.

All four were accused of sorcery.

IS has previously decapitated the bodies of Kurdish female fighters killed in battle. The group has also beheaded men for witchcraft in Iraq.

The group's extreme interpretation of Islamic law has also seen gay men thrown off buildings and women stoned for adultery.

Last week, IS militants in Syria hanged two youths from a beam by their wrists after accusing them of not fasting during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

The killing of people for sorcery is not unique to IS. The authorities in Saudi Arabia have also beheaded both men and women on similar charges.

Sunday, June 28, 2020

The United States is a fucked up country.

4 more years of Trump would be a disaster.

4 years of Biden would be a disaster.

This is Idiot America. We have 2 candidates for President of the United States and both of them are fucking morons.

'Biden's cognitive issues can no longer be ignored'

Sky News Australia

Sky News host Rita Panahi says “no matter how hard the Democrats and their allies in the media try, Biden’s cognitive issues can no longer be ignored”.

“We’ve seen Biden appear confused about key facts, policies, dates, and names, even forgetting Barack Obama’s name,” Ms. Panahi said.

“There is simply too much footage of his muddled rants, inexplicably bizarre outbursts and Charlie Sheen levels of confusion to try and gaslight the American public.”

The Democrats voted for Joe Biden instead of Mike Bloomberg. It was a terrible mistake.

A comment someone wrote:

"I just saw a video where Joe Biden said he’s going to beat Joe Biden."

"Joe Biden - 17 Minutes Of Joe's Melting Brain." I watched part of it. It was too disgusting to watch the whole thing. The Democrats fucked up and they know it.

3 reasons why Joe Biden was a terrible mistake.

dementia

a chronic or persistent disorder of the mental processes caused by brain disease or injury and marked by memory disorders, personality changes, and impaired reasoning.

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Alzheimer's disease

the progressive mental deterioration that can occur in middle or old age, due to generalized degeneration of the brain. It is the most common cause of premature senility.

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senile

a person having or showing the weaknesses or diseases of old age, especially a loss of mental faculties.

The Magic Jeebus Man is dead. Nobody cares.

An easy way to find this blog: Google "Magic Jeebus Man".

This blog has 620 posts about the Magic Jeebus Man at Magic Jeebus Man.

The Magic Jeebus Man did not magically become a zombie because that's fucking impossible.

Most Americans are Christians. This means most Americans think zombies are real, especially the Jeebus zombie. They know Jeebus was a zombie because it's in the fucking Bible.

The stupid, it burns.

My favorite quote in the movie NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD

Are they slow moving chief?

Yeah, they're dead, they're all messed up.

I like Russians. I play chess with them every day. But this is not very nice:

New York Times

"Russian plot to pay bounties to the Taliban to kill American troops in Afghanistan."

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Washington Post

Russian bounties offered to Taliban-linked militants to kill coalition forces in Afghanistan are believed to have resulted in the deaths of several U.S. service members, according to intelligence gleaned from U.S. military interrogations of captured militants in recent months.

Natural Selection

Summary of Darwin's Theory of Evolution

A species is a population of organisms that interbreeds and has fertile offspring.

Living organisms have descended with modifications from species that lived before them.

Natural selection explains how this evolution has happened:

More organisms are produced than can survive because of limited resources

Organisms struggle for the necessities of life; there is competition for resources.

Individuals within a population vary in their traits; some of these traits are heritable -- passed on to offspring.

Some variants are better adapted to survive and reproduce under local conditions than others.

Better-adapted individuals (the "fit enough") are more likely to survive and reproduce, thereby passing on copies of their genes to the next generation.

Species whose individuals are best adapted survive; others become extinct

One of my favorite quotes about why science works and why religion is bullshit.

"Faith may be a gift in religion, but in science it's poison, for faith is no way to find the truth."

Amazon - "Faith versus Fact, Why Science and Religion Are Incompatible" by Jerry Coyne

"Evolution by natural selection is one of the best substantiated theories in the history of science, supported by evidence from a wide variety of scientific disciplines, including paleontology, geology, genetics and developmental biology."

What is Darwin's Theory of Evolution?

By Ker Than

February 27, 2018

The theory of evolution by natural selection, first formulated in Darwin's book "On the Origin of Species" in 1859, is the process by which organisms change over time as a result of changes in heritable physical or behavioral traits. Changes that allow an organism to better adapt to its environment will help it survive and have more offspring.

Evolution by natural selection is one of the best substantiated theories in the history of science, supported by evidence from a wide variety of scientific disciplines, including paleontology, geology, genetics and developmental biology.

The theory has two main points, said Brian Richmond, curator of human origins at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. "All life on Earth is connected and related to each other," and this diversity of life is a product of "modifications of populations by natural selection, where some traits were favored in and environment over others," he said.

More simply put, the theory can be described as "descent with modification," said Briana Pobiner, an anthropologist and educator at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., who specializes in the study of human origins.

The theory is sometimes described as "survival of the fittest," but that can be misleading, Pobiner said. Here, "fitness" refers not to an organism's strength or athletic ability, but rather the ability to survive and reproduce.

For example, a study on human evolution on 1,900 students, published online in the journal Personality and Individual Differences in October 2017, found that many people may have trouble finding a mate because of rapidly changing social technological advances that are evolving faster than humans. "Nearly 1 in 2 individuals faces considerable difficulties in the domain of mating," said lead study author Menelaos Apostolou, an associate professor of social sciences at the University of Nicosia in Cyprus. "In most cases, these difficulties are not due to something wrong or broken, but due to people living in an environment which is very different from the environment they evolved to function in." [If You Suck at Dating, It's Not You — It's Evolution]

Origin of whales

In the first edition of "On the Origin of Species" in 1859, Charles Darwin speculated about how natural selection could cause a land mammal to turn into a whale. As a hypothetical example, Darwin used North American black bears, which were known to catch insects by swimming in the water with their mouths open:

"I can see no difficulty in a race of bears being rendered, by natural selection, more aquatic in their structure and habits, with larger and larger mouths, till a creature was produced as monstrous as a whale," he speculated.

The idea didn't go over very well with the public. Darwin was so embarrassed by the ridicule he received that the swimming-bear passage was removed from later editions of the book.

Scientists now know that Darwin had the right idea but the wrong animal. Instead of looking at bears, he should have instead been looking at cows and hippopotamuses.

The story of the origin of whales is one of evolution's most fascinating tales and one of the best examples scientists have of natural selection. The last shore-dwelling ancestor of modern whales was Sinonyx, top left, a hyena-like animal. Over 60 million years, several transitional forms evolved: from top to bottom, Indohyus, Ambulocetus, Rodhocetus, Basilosaurus, Dorudon, and finally, the modern humpback whale.

Natural selection

To understand the origin of whales, it's necessary to have a basic understanding of how natural selection works. Natural selection can change a species in small ways, causing a population to change color or size over the course of several generations. This is called "microevolution."

But natural selection is also capable of much more. Given enough time and enough accumulated changes, natural selection can create entirely new species, known as "macroevolution." It can turn dinosaurs into birds, amphibious mammals into whales and the ancestors of apes into humans.

Take the example of whales — using evolution as their guide and knowing how natural selection works, biologists knew that the transition of early whales from land to water occurred in a series of predictable steps. The evolution of the blowhole, for example, might have happened in the following way:

Random genetic changes resulted in at least one whale having its nostrils placed farther back on its head. Those animals with this adaptation would have been better suited to a marine lifestyle, since they would not have had to completely surface to breathe. Such animals would have been more successful and had more offspring. In later generations, more genetic changes occurred, moving the nose farther back on the head.

Other body parts of early whales also changed. Front legs became flippers. Back legs disappeared. Their bodies became more streamlined and they developed tail flukes to better propel themselves through water.

Darwin also described a form of natural selection that depends on an organism's success at attracting a mate, a process known as sexual selection. The colorful plumage of peacocks and the antlers of male deer are both examples of traits that evolved under this type of selection.

But Darwin wasn't the first or only scientist to develop a theory of evolution. The French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck came up with the idea that an organism could pass on traits to its offspring, though he was wrong about some of the details. Around the same time as Darwin, British biologist Alfred Russel Wallace independently came up with the theory of evolution by natural selection.

Modern understanding

Darwin didn't know anything about genetics, Pobiner said. "He observed the pattern of evolution, but he didn't really know about the mechanism." That came later, with the discovery of how genes encode different biological or behavioral traits, and how genes are passed down from parents to offspring. The incorporation of genetics and Darwin's theory is known as "modern evolutionary synthesis."

The physical and behavioral changes that make natural selection possible happen at the level of DNA and genes. Such changes are called mutations. "Mutations are basically the raw material on which evolution acts," Pobiner said.

Mutations can be caused by random errors in DNA replication or repair, or by chemical or radiation damage. Most times, mutations are either harmful or neutral, but in rare instances, a mutation might prove beneficial to the organism. If so, it will become more prevalent in the next generation and spread throughout the population.

In this way, natural selection guides the evolutionary process, preserving and adding up the beneficial mutations and rejecting the bad ones. "Mutations are random, but selection for them is not random," Pobiner said.

But natural selection isn't the only mechanism by which organisms evolve, she said. For example, genes can be transferred from one population to another when organisms migrate or immigrate, a process known as gene flow. And the frequency of certain genes can also change at random, which is called genetic drift.

A wealth of evidence

Even though scientists could predict what early whales should look like, they lacked the fossil evidence to back up their claim. Creationists took this absence as proof that evolution didn't occur. They mocked the idea that there could have ever been such a thing as a walking whale. But since the early 1990s, that's exactly what scientists have been finding.

The critical piece of evidence came in 1994, when paleontologists found the fossilized remains of Ambulocetus natans, an animal whose name literally means "swimming-walking whale." Its forelimbs had fingers and small hooves but its hind feet were enormous given its size. It was clearly adapted for swimming, but it was also capable of moving clumsily on land, much like a seal.

When it swam, the ancient creature moved like an otter, pushing back with its hind feet and undulating its spine and tail.

Modern whales propel themselves through the water with powerful beats of their horizontal tail flukes, but Ambulocetus still had a whip-like tail and had to use its legs to provide most of the propulsive force needed to move through water.

In recent years, more and more of these transitional species, or "missing links," have been discovered, lending further support to Darwin's theory, Richmond said.

Fossil "links" have also been found to support human evolution. In early 2018, a fossilized jaw and teeth found that are estimated to be up to 194,000 years old, making them at least 50,000 years older than modern human fossils previously found outside Africa. This finding provides another clue to how humans have evolved.

Controversy

Despite the wealth of evidence from the fossil record, genetics and other fields of science, some people still question its validity. Some politicians and religious leaders denounce the theory of evolution, invoking a higher being as a designer to explain the complex world of living things, especially humans.

School boards debate whether the theory of evolution should be taught alongside other ideas, such as intelligent design or creationism.

Mainstream scientists see no controversy. "A lot of people have deep religious beliefs and also accept evolution," Pobiner said, adding, "there can be real reconciliation."

Evolution is well supported by many examples of changes in various species leading to the diversity of life seen today. "If someone could really demonstrate a better explanation than evolution and natural selection, [that person] would be the new Darwin," Richmond said.

Additional reporting by Contributor Alina Bradford and Staff Writer Tanya Lewis, Follow Tanya on Twitter. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+.

Additional resources

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has a presentation on whale evolution.

To read the theory in its original form, see Darwin's book, "On the Origin of Species."

For an overview of natural selection, check out this article.

To understand the difference between a theory and fact, see this National Academy of Sciences website.

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Live Science Topic: Evolution — News and information on evolution and the battle with proponents of so-called creation science.

The last shore-dwelling ancestor of modern whales was Sinonyx, top left, a hyena-like animal. Over 60 million years, several transitional forms evolved: from top to bottom, Indohyus, Ambulocetus, Rodhocetus, Basilosaurus, Dorudon, and finally, the modern humpback whale.

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