How birds emerged

Mario Petrinovic

unread,

Aug 15, 2023, 2:00:19 AM8/15/23

to

Dinosaurs had feathers before that (probably because feathers are good
for water, unlike fur). Some small dinosaurs ate insects. At that time
there was more oxygen in the air, insects were bigger. So, some
dinosaurs were trying to reach insects that were living in tree barks,
so they hardened their muzzles into beaks, like woodpeckers. Since they
were eating from tree bark, they had to climb tree (like squirrels).
Weight is deteriorating force for climbing, so those animals became
lightweight. And, at the end, they stopped to go down to the ground to
reach the other tree, but started to behave like flying squirrels.
Simple as that. Everything logical, everything gradual, and for
everything we have examples in nature (maybe only not for beaks, but for
flying sure we do have).

Peter Nyikos

unread,

Aug 15, 2023, 11:32:38 AM8/15/23

to

It's great to see you posting here again, Mario. Don't be discouraged
by my corrections. That's a good way to learn, and Harshman might
have made the same points you did, because he subscribes to the
hypotheses that have been popularized about feather development.

The popularizers refer to all kinds of things as "feathers":
hairlike growths, several such growths, from the same root, hairlike growths
that are frayed like the ends of some of the longer hairs
of one of my daughters. . . . These are found on some dinosaur fossils--
only a tiny percentage even now, because these things do not fossilize easily.
But I do not know of any genuine feathers on fossils that cannot
be hypothesized as secondarily flightless birds. So I call all these things
"protofeathers" and some of them just "dinofuzz."

On Tuesday, August 15, 2023 at 2:00:19 AM UTC-4, Mario Petrinovic wrote:

> Dinosaurs had feathers before that (probably because feathers are good
> for water, unlike fur).

And unlike down. A mother ostrich always shelters her babies in the midst
of a downpour, to protect them from hypothermia.

Down would be an advanced kind of protofeather, as would the feathers of kiwis,
which lack barbules and hooks, IF they or down had ever been found
as Mesozoic fossils predating birds with genuine feathers.
But I don't know of any examples.

> Some small dinosaurs ate insects. At that time
> there was more oxygen in the air, insects were bigger. So, some
> dinosaurs were trying to reach insects that were living in tree barks,
> so they hardened their muzzles into beaks, like woodpeckers.

Very plausible. Did you read this somewhere, or did you figure
it out for yourself?

>Since they
> were eating from tree bark, they had to climb tree (like squirrels).
> Weight is deteriorating force for climbing, so those animals became
> lightweight. And, at the end, they stopped to go down to the ground to
> reach the other tree, but started to behave like flying squirrels.

So far, so good.

> Simple as that. Everything logical, everything gradual, and for
> everything we have examples in nature (maybe only not for beaks, but for
> flying sure we do have).

But NOT for feathers. Have you ever studied the intricate structure of
a contour feather, a flight feather [they are very asymmetrical -- do you know why?]
or a tail feather? Can you figure out a gradual evolution for them?

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

Mario Petrinovic

unread,

Aug 15, 2023, 12:23:20 PM8/15/23

to

This was the basic idea of the whole scenario. When I got the idea I
made a scenario over it. I was thinking about birds, beaks, and then
came woodpecker, and I said, why not, constructed the scenario, saw that
scenario is plausible, and voila, came here to write about it, :) . When
scenario has so much reference in real life, it should, pretty much, be
realistic. The similar thing happened later with mammals, squirrels.

> >Since they
>> were eating from tree bark, they had to climb tree (like squirrels).
>> Weight is deteriorating force for climbing, so those animals became
>> lightweight. And, at the end, they stopped to go down to the ground to
>> reach the other tree, but started to behave like flying squirrels.
>
> So far, so good.
>
>> Simple as that. Everything logical, everything gradual, and for
>> everything we have examples in nature (maybe only not for beaks, but for
>> flying sure we do have).
>
> But NOT for feathers. Have you ever studied the intricate structure of
> a contour feather, a flight feather [they are very asymmetrical -- do you know why?]
> or a tail feather? Can you figure out a gradual evolution for them?

Regarding feathers, it may be different variants, but they all came
from one prototype, and this prototype was present in dinosaurs before
the emergence of birds.
In general, when I think about past times, I always think about
temperature (maybe because I don't like coldness, :) ). The temperature
was higher. Per every Celsius of higher temperature you have 7 % higher
precipitation. This means more water in circulation, this means that the
whole area was pretty much flooded.
When I see dinosaurs I see huge bodies. Huge bodies fit well in water,
but not on solid ground. When I see dinosaur body shape, I see long and
strong tail. This can be for propelling in water. See all those body shapes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaur#/media/File:Bulletin_(1969)_(19798844494).jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaur#/media/File:Sinosauropteryx_color.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaur#/media/File:Herrerasaurusskeleton.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaur#/media/File:Dromaeosaurs.png
Even this one:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaur#/media/File:Argentinosaurus_9.svg
Regularly you see a horizontal line, from neck to tail, including long
tail. This fits perfectly with swimming in water, in a snake like
motion, on a flooded ground, with legs pushing on the bottom of a lake.
You have a lot of vegetation on a lake shore, because it is unobstructed
for sun.
And then I see water birds, and I realize that feathers are good in
water, unlike fur. Probably much better in salty water too (salt
crystals destroy fur, I am not sure about feathers, but maybe feathers
are good in salty water).
So, we had fish, we had reptiles, and then came dinosaurs.
In my view mammals evolved on the poles.

JTEM

unread,

Aug 15, 2023, 1:57:01 PM8/15/23

to

Feathers are great for so many things.

They started in the Triassic. But of course the rules here are a bit weird.

If it appears on anything dinosaur or whatever, it's a "Feather" or "Proto
Feather."

If it appears on anything else, it's a "Hair" or even "Fur."

Doesn't matter WHERE on the body it's located or what it looks like, these
rules apply...

[...]

-- --

https://jtem.tumblr.com/post/725665198075248640

John Harshman

unread,

Aug 15, 2023, 2:55:14 PM8/15/23

to

On 8/15/23 8:32 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> It's great to see you posting here again, Mario. Don't be discouraged
> by my corrections. That's a good way to learn, and Harshman might
> have made the same points you did, because he subscribes to the
> hypotheses that have been popularized about feather development.
>
> The popularizers refer to all kinds of things as "feathers":
> hairlike growths, several such growths, from the same root, hairlike growths
> that are frayed like the ends of some of the longer hairs
> of one of my daughters. . . . These are found on some dinosaur fossils--
> only a tiny percentage even now, because these things do not fossilize easily.
> But I do not know of any genuine feathers on fossils that cannot
> be hypothesized as secondarily flightless birds. So I call all these things
> "protofeathers" and some of them just "dinofuzz."

Can't any fossil be hypothesized as secondarily flightless? So how is
that a test? What's the scientific distinction between "genuine
feathers" and "protofeathers"?

> On Tuesday, August 15, 2023 at 2:00:19 AM UTC-4, Mario Petrinovic wrote:
>
>> Dinosaurs had feathers before that (probably because feathers are good
>> for water, unlike fur).
>
> And unlike down. A mother ostrich always shelters her babies in the midst
> of a downpour, to protect them from hypothermia.

Then again, downy ducklings do just find in the water. There must be
some way to make down work in an aquatic bird.

> Down would be an advanced kind of protofeather, as would the feathers of kiwis,
> which lack barbules and hooks, IF they or down had ever been found
> as Mesozoic fossils predating birds with genuine feathers.
> But I don't know of any examples.
>
>
>> Some small dinosaurs ate insects. At that time
>> there was more oxygen in the air, insects were bigger. So, some
>> dinosaurs were trying to reach insects that were living in tree barks,
>> so they hardened their muzzles into beaks, like woodpeckers.
>
> Very plausible. Did you read this somewhere, or did you figure
> it out for yourself?

It's not the beak that lets woodpeckers dig into bark. And the average
maniraptoran doesn't have a beak. Nor is there any evidence I'm aware of
that insects were in general bigger in the Mesozoic.

> >Since they
>> were eating from tree bark, they had to climb tree (like squirrels).
>> Weight is deteriorating force for climbing, so those animals became
>> lightweight. And, at the end, they stopped to go down to the ground to
>> reach the other tree, but started to behave like flying squirrels.
>
> So far, so good.
>
>> Simple as that. Everything logical, everything gradual, and for
>> everything we have examples in nature (maybe only not for beaks, but for
>> flying sure we do have).
>
> But NOT for feathers. Have you ever studied the intricate structure of
> a contour feather, a flight feather [they are very asymmetrical -- do you know why?]
> or a tail feather? Can you figure out a gradual evolution for them?

See Prum & Brush 2001. I presume you have read that already.

Peter Nyikos

unread,

Aug 15, 2023, 5:08:11 PM8/15/23

to

On Tuesday, August 15, 2023 at 2:55:14 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> On 8/15/23 8:32 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:

> > It's great to see you posting here again, Mario. Don't be discouraged
> > by my corrections. That's a good way to learn, and Harshman might
> > have made the same points you did, because he subscribes to the
> > hypotheses that have been popularized about feather development.
> >
> > The popularizers refer to all kinds of things as "feathers":

> > hairlike growths, several such growths from the same root, hairlike growths

> > that are frayed like the ends of some of the longer hairs
> > of one of my daughters. . . . These are found on some dinosaur fossils--
> > only a tiny percentage even now, because these things do not fossilize easily.

> > But I do not know of any genuine feathers on fossils that cannot
> > be hypothesized as secondarily flightless birds. So I call all these things
> > "protofeathers" and some of them just "dinofuzz."

> Can't any fossil be hypothesized as secondarily flightless?

Not unless you call wild stabs in the dark (including highly
counterintuitive ones) "hypotheses."

> So how is
> that a test? What's the scientific distinction between "genuine
> feathers" and "protofeathers"?

Since you are the ornithologist here, you should be giving the
scientific distinction, if there is one. I doubt that there is one.

> > On Tuesday, August 15, 2023 at 2:00:19 AM UTC-4, Mario Petrinovic wrote:
> >
> >> Dinosaurs had feathers before that (probably because feathers are good
> >> for water, unlike fur).
> >
> > And unlike down. A mother ostrich always shelters her babies in the midst
> > of a downpour, to protect them from hypothermia.

> Then again, downy ducklings do just find in the water. There must be
> some way to make down work in an aquatic bird.

It's called "oils," isn't it?

I'm reminded of a delightful children's book by Vladimir Suteyev [Cyrillic: CYTEEB]
in which the first story shows a chick imitating a duckling digging, catching a worm,...
until it jumps in the water after the duckling and starts to drown. Heeding its cries for help,
the duckling pulls the chick out of the water. The last picture shows the chick out on solid ground
with water pouring off it and the duckling telling the chick that he is returning to the water,
with the chick responding, "But not I!"

> > Down would be an advanced kind of protofeather, as would the feathers of kiwis,
> > which lack barbules and hooks, IF they or down had ever been found
> > as Mesozoic fossils predating birds with genuine feathers.
> > But I don't know of any examples.
> >
> >
> >> Some small dinosaurs ate insects. At that time
> >> there was more oxygen in the air,

This is controversial, according to the book,
_The Princeton Field Guide to Pterosaurs_.
I now have my own copy, and I'll be starting a new thread for an in-depth review this week.

> > > insects were bigger. So, some
> >> dinosaurs were trying to reach insects that were living in tree barks,
> >> so they hardened their muzzles into beaks, like woodpeckers.
> >
> > Very plausible. Did you read this somewhere, or did you figure
> > it out for yourself?

> It's not the beak that lets woodpeckers dig into bark.

So all that hammering on trees is just for attracting attention???

You really ought to consider your audience when you give
comments that are likely to induce double-takes.

> And the average
> maniraptoran doesn't have a beak. Nor is there any evidence I'm aware of
> that insects were in general bigger in the Mesozoic.

unread,

Aug 15, 2023, 7:00:28 PM8/15/23

to

Bleedin' annoying that the article here doesn't manage to cite its
actual source. But here it is:

https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1204026109

Mario Petrinovic

unread,

Aug 15, 2023, 8:06:40 PM8/15/23

to

On 16.8.2023. 0:56, John Harshman wrote:
> Notice that while all birds have beaks, it's only the woodpeckers that
> do the hammering. So it can't be the possession of a beak that matters
> for this adaptation. Woodpeckers have a number of special anatomical
> adaptations that should be detectable in a theropod skeleton if the
> comparison were apt.
>
> And in fact a high proportion of that hammering *is* just for attracting
> attention. It's called "drumming".

I really have hard time to understand how somebody can make such
faulty conclusions?
All birds have beaks, and all birds do various niches, eat various
food, and have various behavior. How you came to conclusions that birds
in the beginning did various niches, ate various food, and had various
behavior, is behind my ability to comprehend. Of course the first bird
occupied only one niche, ate only one kind of food, and had only one
type of behavior. Now, the question is, which one?
Woodpeckers evolved over time special anatomical adaptations, in the
beginning they were very similar to other similar dinosaurs. I mean,
bears emerged from bear-dogs, and didn't occupy all the niches that
today's bears occupy, and probably even didn't eat honey, or fish, and
didn't have today's bear adaptations, thye looked more like dogs. I
mean, you are writing in the paleontology forum for god's sake, you got
to have some basic understandings of those things. At least.
So, woodpeckers are that way because they are drumming. Or are they
drumming because they are that way? Jesus Christ, the older you get, the
crazier you are.

JTEM

unread,

Aug 15, 2023, 9:01:09 PM8/15/23

to

Peter Nyikos wrote:

> I'm not sure why Gregory S. Paul decided to use the word "feathers", but he seriously entertains
> the possibility that they are homologous to bird feathers.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46572782

Absent DNA, which we'll never have, and given the relationships
posed, we'd have to pass it off as convergent evolution.

These "Hairs" or "Feathers" or "Structures" are likely similar in some
regards to feathers in birds as they are subjected to some of the
same forces.

> I think he is going out on a limb,

There might be a consensus against him but without DNA he can
never be proven wrong.

> A pseudonymous paleontologist [perhaps an amateur rather than a professional] on Reddit,
> kinginyellow25, suggested a nice neutral term for these structures: filamentous integuments.

Going back way too many years, I came up with "Hair like thingies."

-- --

https://jtem.tumblr.com/post/725665198075248640

Peter Nyikos

unread,

Aug 15, 2023, 9:43:06 PM8/15/23

to

On Tuesday, August 15, 2023 at 7:00:28 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> On 8/15/23 2:27 PM, Mario Petrinovic wrote:
> > On 15.8.2023. 20:55, John Harshman wrote:

> >> It's not the beak that lets woodpeckers dig into bark. And the average
> >> maniraptoran doesn't have a beak. Nor is there any evidence I'm aware
> >> of that insects were in general bigger in the Mesozoic.

The PNAS article that you linked below provides a lot of good data on this in Fig. 1.

> > I don't know if I got this right, but it could be that my
> > theory predicted this result:
> > https://news.ucsc.edu/2012/06/giant-insects.html

> Bleedin' annoying that the article here doesn't manage to cite its
> actual source.

What I found even more annoying is that it didn't give even one
wing measurement during the whole Mesozoic while talking
about the giant Paleozoic relative of the dragonfly having a wingspan
of ca. 70 cm and even showing a picture of a fossil of a wing of one,
next to the largest Cenozoic dragonfly.

Another annoyance is that someone not well versed in paleontology
could get the impression that bats were already in existence before the
end of the Cretaceous:

"Another transition in insect size occurred more recently at the end of the Cretaceous period, between 90 and 65 million years ago. Again, a shortage of fossils makes it hard to track the decrease in insect sizes during this period, and several factors could be responsible. These include the continued specialization of birds, the evolution of bats, and a mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous."

You did us all a service by finding the PNAS article referred to in the Mario-provided article:

> But here it is:
>
> https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1204026109

It provides oodles of measurements at lots of points of time, a few of which
the news release could easily have provided. See especially Fig. 1,
which also tracks oxygen concentration over the same time interval.

One minor annoyance: the PNAS article nowhere gives the
present-day concentration of oxygen [the Mario-linked article says 21%].

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--

Univ. of South Carolina in Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

John Harshman

unread,

Aug 15, 2023, 10:11:59 PM8/15/23

to

I believe you are misunderstanding much of what I say. Woodpeckers are
very specialized and so are not a good model for the earliest birds. I
do suspect that many small theropods at mostly insects, but the chance
that they hunted them in a woodpecker-like way is nearly zero. And
that's not what beaks, in general, are for. Early birds and small
theropods do not have the skeletal features necessary for beating their
noses against trees.

Mario Petrinovic

unread,

Aug 15, 2023, 10:46:12 PM8/15/23

to

I am aware of the specializations that woodpecker have, I just don't
think that it is necessary to have them early in the game, especially
while insects are still large. Remember, the idea is that those two
things, the diminishing of insects and the evolution of birds, are
connected. So, at the very beginning you have large insects, and birds
still not evolved, only peeking into the niche. So, birds adapt to
insects, insects adapt to new conditions, to birds eating them. First it
goes bird inaugural adaptation, then insect adaptation.
Beaks could initially be adapted to similar things, like eating worms
from the ground. Ground is softer. So, beaks, here, aren't actually
crucial for flying. So this doesn't explain lightweight and flying, for
lightweight and flying you need the second stage, climbing trees and
moving from tree to tree, exactly like flying squirrels do.

Mario Petrinovic

unread,

Aug 15, 2023, 10:57:46 PM8/15/23

to

While we are at that, they don't need necessary to poke into bark,
initially they could just eat insects that are on trees. There are a lot
of insects up there. Who ate them? It has to be somebody who acquired
light bones, and later moved from tree to tree by flying. But animals
that did that had beaks. So what were those beaks for? It fits with
poking a tree bark.
So, on one hand you have lightweight, flying, on the other hand you
have beaks, on those animals who flew. It can only be for poking tree
bark, this is the connection, those two things are connected. It doesn't
have to be such a radical poking like woodpeckers have, but this is a
connection.
And when they finally learnt to fly, well, this opened a lot of other
possibilities, so those animals spread their niches.

oot...@hot.ee

unread,

Aug 16, 2023, 3:18:22 AM8/16/23

to

Most of food isn't under tree bark to this day and so only few birds care
about breaking it. Feels unlikely that it was case on prehistorc times.
Other benefits (like for example better aerodynamics, convenience of
tidying and cleaning feathers) may be bigger pressures to evolve
beak than bark of trees.

> So, on one hand you have lightweight, flying, on the other hand you
> have beaks, on those animals who flew. It can only be for poking tree
> bark, this is the connection, those two things are connected. It doesn't
> have to be such a radical poking like woodpeckers have, but this is a
> connection.
> And when they finally learnt to fly, well, this opened a lot of other
> possibilities, so those animals spread their niches.
>

Order of events might be was flight before beak. Earlier fossils
of paravians that did most likely fly (or at least glide) have teeth,
not beak yet.

Mario Petrinovic

unread,

unread,

Aug 16, 2023, 2:18:36 PM8/16/23

to

On 8/16/23 10:56 AM, Mario Petrinovic wrote:
> I mean, we do have examples in today's world, flying squirrels and
> woodpecker.

Flying squirrels don't have beaks, so what is this about? There are also
woodpecker finches and ai-ais, if you're keeping score.

Mario Petrinovic

unread,

Aug 16, 2023, 3:07:57 PM8/16/23

to

Aren't we talking about the origin of birds, which, like, fly? So, see
the name, flying squirrels. It is about flying. I presume that ai-ai is
aye-aye.
The idea is going up and down a tree. Which is excellent environment
to originate flight. The cause is eating insects. Hence beaks.

John Harshman

unread,

Aug 16, 2023, 6:00:10 PM8/16/23

to

Ah, I see. You jump from subject to subject in a very confusing way. Why
pick woodpeckers as examples of flight? And the sentence previous was
about eating insects in bark with beaks, and the next sentence is also
about eating insects in bark. How is anyone supposed to know you're
talking about flying in between?

If you want people to know what you're trying to say, you have to put
some logical structure into your paragraphs.

It seems very unlikely that the ancestral bird would have done anything
so specialized as finding insects under tree bark.

Mario Petrinovic

unread,

Aug 16, 2023, 9:23:55 PM8/16/23

to

Hm, you are right, I should put something that shows clearly what I am
talking about. Maybe I should've titled the thread "How birds emerged",
this could help.
I don't think that eating insects in times when insects were of
considerable size, would be so strange. On the other hand, didn't they
evolve a specialized, new, never seen before, feature, beaks? If they
weren't specialized, if they were doing the standard stuff, they would
look like all other animals around them, they wouldn't have special
features. And, as far as I can see, I see different animals eating meat,
I see various animals eating fish, I see animals eating seeds, but all
the animals that search for insects in bark have really special
features, woodpecker, aye-aye. Yes, you need special feature for this,
having beak is exactly the special feature that you need for this (along
with elongated fingers), and look at that, birds have them both. Now,
who would say. Well, John Harshman, for sure, wouldn't.

oot...@hot.ee

unread,

Aug 16, 2023, 11:59:12 PM8/16/23

to

Flying squirrels do not have beaks.

> What
> else would you need beak for? Eating fish? No. Eating meat? No.
> Scavenging? No. Eating seeds? No.

Why you are fixated on eating? You already ignored "tidying and cleaning
feathers" still quoted above.

> I mean, you can eat fish, meat,
> scavenge, eat seeds with beaks too, but you can do all this with teeth
> also. I mean, we even have the elongation of fingers, the Aye-Aye style,
> in birds. So, in the beginning they could use finger, then they
> developed beaks, so then fingers were used just to cling on trees, and
> feathers regrew over the fingers.

You go on and on about eating then suddenly fingers?

> >>> Compare this situation to my explanation of human kiss. Per my
> >>> idea, we ate sea shellfish. You dive for shellfish, but near surface
> >>> shellfish are first to be eaten. Then you have to dive deeper. You can
> >>> go even deeper if your partner (whom you have to trust with your life,
> >>> trust is important thing in human relationships) meet you half way up
> >>> and gives you additional air. So, basically, the principle is, first you
> >>> eat all the easily acquired food, but then you are forced to dig deeper.
> >>> And also, initially there could be much more food in shallow waters,
> >>> but, hey, you eat this out, you have to adapt for this small additional
> >>> piece.
> >>
> > You mix up individuals with species. Individuals can't mutate beaks to
> > themselves because of being low on food. Instead when hunting or
> > gathering food takes more energy than you get from eating it then
> > your population shrinks because of hunger. That lets population of
> > your food to regrow back so few survivors of your population have
> > enough of food again.
>>
>
> First, of course, the mutation idea is bogus, mutation is malfunction.
> Species adapt. So, when you need more effort to obtain food, you adapt.
>

Species adapt over hundreds of generations using mutations.

> So, I would use a lot of energy if I would run after my food standing on
> my arms, upside down. But then I would adapt to stand on my feet.
>

That is about individual you? The logic has odd premise, can you even
stand on your arms? Can you run on those? Sounds unlikely.

> So, the idea that each species has an individual Adam, the origin of
> species, a mutant, is completely wrong. We all can adapt, and the ones
> who cannot, go extinct.
>

Yes there are no individual Adams. Fossil record shows opposite, all
go extinct, very few adapt.

> I believe that it is you who mixes individuals
> with species.
>

No, see above. You talk about mutations and species, then switch to yourself
running on hands, then about extinction that is again about species.

> >> Ha, ha, there is one interesting thing, squirrels have adaptation to
> >> go up and down the tree. I wouldn't say that birds could go down the
> >> tree that easy, easier would be just to fly off, :) .
> >> So, the difficult part actually is to go down, :) .
> >>
> > Gravity is not for free anymore? The nuthatches seem to go down tree
> > head first like squirrels.
>
> For this you need to have special adaptation, not just every animal
> can do that, it has to be adapted for that.
>

Most birds do not need to climb around on trees so have dropped
such adaptations.

Mario Petrinovic

unread,

Aug 17, 2023, 12:46:55 AM8/17/23

to

Yes, and they don't eat insects. So, this fits. But flying squirrels
climb trees, so they are flying. Now, birds are flying, did they climb
trees? Of course not, because flying squirrels climb trees, and have no
beaks, lol.

>> What
>> else would you need beak for? Eating fish? No. Eating meat? No.
>> Scavenging? No. Eating seeds? No.
>
> Why you are fixated on eating? You already ignored "tidying and cleaning
> feathers" still quoted above.

Because it isn't point in feathers. Remember, dinosaurs have feathers,
yet, they don't have beaks to "tidy and clean" them.
Boy, it cannot be that I am the only one who can add two and two
together. Aren't humans intelligent beings? Of course I know that they
aren't, I know that I am not intelligent, and when I look around...

>> I mean, you can eat fish, meat,
>> scavenge, eat seeds with beaks too, but you can do all this with teeth
>> also. I mean, we even have the elongation of fingers, the Aye-Aye style,
>> in birds. So, in the beginning they could use finger, then they
>> developed beaks, so then fingers were used just to cling on trees, and
>> feathers regrew over the fingers.
>
> You go on and on about eating then suddenly fingers?

Ah, only when I am eating in the same time, :) .

>>>>> Compare this situation to my explanation of human kiss. Per my
>>>>> idea, we ate sea shellfish. You dive for shellfish, but near surface
>>>>> shellfish are first to be eaten. Then you have to dive deeper. You can
>>>>> go even deeper if your partner (whom you have to trust with your life,
>>>>> trust is important thing in human relationships) meet you half way up
>>>>> and gives you additional air. So, basically, the principle is, first you
>>>>> eat all the easily acquired food, but then you are forced to dig deeper.
>>>>> And also, initially there could be much more food in shallow waters,
>>>>> but, hey, you eat this out, you have to adapt for this small additional
>>>>> piece.
>>>>
>>> You mix up individuals with species. Individuals can't mutate beaks to
>>> themselves because of being low on food. Instead when hunting or
>>> gathering food takes more energy than you get from eating it then
>>> your population shrinks because of hunger. That lets population of
>>> your food to regrow back so few survivors of your population have
>>> enough of food again.
>>>
>>
>> First, of course, the mutation idea is bogus, mutation is malfunction.
>> Species adapt. So, when you need more effort to obtain food, you adapt.
>>
> Species adapt over hundreds of generations using mutations.

Hm, you know how they adapt? The change in genes is the product of
adaptation, not the cause. I really don't understand how you are
imagining that? You imagine random mutations? You would need millions of
random mutations in order to have a beneficial one. No, evolution isn't
a lottery, and also God doesn't fiddle with genes up from above. Set
your story straight.

>> So, I would use a lot of energy if I would run after my food standing on
>> my arms, upside down. But then I would adapt to stand on my feet.
> >
> That is about individual you? The logic has odd premise, can you even
> stand on your arms? Can you run on those? Sounds unlikely.
>
>> So, the idea that each species has an individual Adam, the origin of
>> species, a mutant, is completely wrong. We all can adapt, and the ones
>> who cannot, go extinct.
>>
> Yes there are no individual Adams. Fossil record shows opposite, all
> go extinct, very few adapt.

Who says so? Everybody will die, for god's sake.

>> I believe that it is you who mixes individuals
>> with species.
>>
> No, see above. You talk about mutations and species, then switch to yourself
> running on hands, then about extinction that is again about species.

I am not talking about bloody mutations at all.

>>>> Ha, ha, there is one interesting thing, squirrels have adaptation to
>>>> go up and down the tree. I wouldn't say that birds could go down the
>>>> tree that easy, easier would be just to fly off, :) .
>>>> So, the difficult part actually is to go down, :) .
>>>>
>>> Gravity is not for free anymore? The nuthatches seem to go down tree
>>> head first like squirrels.
>>
>> For this you need to have special adaptation, not just every animal
>> can do that, it has to be adapted for that.
>>
> Most birds do not need to climb around on trees so have dropped
> such adaptations.

Yes. Because they are birds. But, for gods sake, they weren't birds
before they became birds. Ever heard of the turtle and rabbit story?
Only after they became birds, they were birds, not before that. The
question is, how they became birds, not what they were doing after they
became birds.

oot...@hot.ee

unread,

Aug 17, 2023, 1:44:29 AM8/17/23

to

That logic makes no sense, as ancestors of birds did apparently
climb trees.

> >> What
> >> else would you need beak for? Eating fish? No. Eating meat? No.
> >> Scavenging? No. Eating seeds? No.
> >
> > Why you are fixated on eating? You already ignored "tidying and cleaning
> > feathers" still quoted above.
>
> Because it isn't point in feathers. Remember, dinosaurs have feathers,
> yet, they don't have beaks to "tidy and clean" them.
>

The dinosaurs do not fly so do not need the feathers to be precisely
and frequently maintained. Aircraft also need more frequent overview
and maintenance than cars.

> Boy, it cannot be that I am the only one who can add two and two
> together. Aren't humans intelligent beings? Of course I know that they
> aren't, I know that I am not intelligent, and when I look around...
>

You oversimplify flight as task, maybe because you do not fly, and so
ignore maintenance of feathers as issue.

The mutations are random and the effect is small, the distribution of that
randomness is not uniform over genome. One who got slight advantage
in senses tries to use it and other who got slight advantage in speed
tries to use that. Yes it takes lot of generations to evolve, there are no
way to just adapt your genes.

> >> So, I would use a lot of energy if I would run after my food standing on
> >> my arms, upside down. But then I would adapt to stand on my feet.
> > >
> > That is about individual you? The logic has odd premise, can you even
> > stand on your arms? Can you run on those? Sounds unlikely.
> >
> >> So, the idea that each species has an individual Adam, the origin of
> >> species, a mutant, is completely wrong. We all can adapt, and the ones
> >> who cannot, go extinct.
> >>
> > Yes there are no individual Adams. Fossil record shows opposite, all
> > go extinct, very few adapt.
>
> Who says so? Everybody will die, for god's sake.
>

Again you mix death (individual) and extinction (specie) up. Stop
conflating those then it is easier to reason.

> >> I believe that it is you who mixes individuals
> >> with species.
> >>
> > No, see above. You talk about mutations and species, then switch to yourself
> > running on hands, then about extinction that is again about species.
> I am not talking about bloody mutations at all.
> >>>> Ha, ha, there is one interesting thing, squirrels have adaptation to
> >>>> go up and down the tree. I wouldn't say that birds could go down the
> >>>> tree that easy, easier would be just to fly off, :) .
> >>>> So, the difficult part actually is to go down, :) .
> >>>>
> >>> Gravity is not for free anymore? The nuthatches seem to go down tree
> >>> head first like squirrels.
> >>
> >> For this you need to have special adaptation, not just every animal
> >> can do that, it has to be adapted for that.
> >>
> > Most birds do not need to climb around on trees so have dropped
> > such adaptations.
>
> Yes. Because they are birds. But, for gods sake, they weren't birds
> before they became birds. Ever heard of the turtle and rabbit story?
> Only after they became birds, they were birds, not before that. The
> question is, how they became birds, not what they were doing after they
> became birds.

Fossil record shows that they did climb trees before flying and did
fly before having beaks.

Mario Petrinovic

unread,

Aug 17, 2023, 5:27:05 AM8/17/23

to

I thought that this is your logic. So, they did climb trees. Alright.
Thanks for the info.

>>>> What
>>>> else would you need beak for? Eating fish? No. Eating meat? No.
>>>> Scavenging? No. Eating seeds? No.
>>>
>>> Why you are fixated on eating? You already ignored "tidying and cleaning
>>> feathers" still quoted above.
>>
>> Because it isn't point in feathers. Remember, dinosaurs have feathers,
>> yet, they don't have beaks to "tidy and clean" them.
>>
> The dinosaurs do not fly so do not need the feathers to be precisely
> and frequently maintained. Aircraft also need more frequent overview
> and maintenance than cars.
>
>> Boy, it cannot be that I am the only one who can add two and two
>> together. Aren't humans intelligent beings? Of course I know that they
>> aren't, I know that I am not intelligent, and when I look around...
>>
> You oversimplify flight as task, maybe because you do not fly, and so
> ignore maintenance of feathers as issue.

Yes, you are right here, I didn't get in at first. I still don't think
that this is a case, but right now I don't have an objection.

I think that all this is pure BS. It definitely cannot work. This
would imply that in some particular case all the other genes remain
intact for the whole time, and only the required genes get modified at
the exactly right chain. This is exactly like winning jackpot thousand
times in a row. No way. Plus, animals adapt for the reason, not
randomly, however you want to stretch this randomness. Reason and
adaptations are connected in a way science knows nothing of. We have
convergent evolution, after all, two different species go through the
same process. Because of the need for it. This mutation model is simple,
and it will not work, things aren't so simple, but yes, science is able
to research only simple things, this is big fault of science, science,
simply, cannot research complicated things. So science will *never* know
of anything complex, complex things are too complex for science.
Regarding "there are no way", hm, "there are no way" that lightning
strikes from the sky all by itself, yet it happens. Because of
electricity. Now, who would say so. What you say is called "streetlight
effect". You may say, "Science don't know of any other method, so this
is why it is insisting on this.", not "there are no way". Things are far
more complicated than science will ever know, there is no reason to
stretch this little knowledge that we now of, over the whole Universe.

>>>> So, I would use a lot of energy if I would run after my food standing on
>>>> my arms, upside down. But then I would adapt to stand on my feet.
>>>>
>>> That is about individual you? The logic has odd premise, can you even
>>> stand on your arms? Can you run on those? Sounds unlikely.
>>>
>>>> So, the idea that each species has an individual Adam, the origin of
>>>> species, a mutant, is completely wrong. We all can adapt, and the ones
>>>> who cannot, go extinct.
>>>>
>>> Yes there are no individual Adams. Fossil record shows opposite, all
>>> go extinct, very few adapt.
>>
>> Who says so? Everybody will die, for god's sake.
>>
> Again you mix death (individual) and extinction (specie) up. Stop
> conflating those then it is easier to reason.

The species that are alive today didn't go extinct. And we have so
many of them, and so various.

>>>> I believe that it is you who mixes individuals
>>>> with species.
>>>>
>>> No, see above. You talk about mutations and species, then switch to yourself
>>> running on hands, then about extinction that is again about species.
>> I am not talking about bloody mutations at all.
>>>>>> Ha, ha, there is one interesting thing, squirrels have adaptation to
>>>>>> go up and down the tree. I wouldn't say that birds could go down the
>>>>>> tree that easy, easier would be just to fly off, :) .
>>>>>> So, the difficult part actually is to go down, :) .
>>>>>>
>>>>> Gravity is not for free anymore? The nuthatches seem to go down tree
>>>>> head first like squirrels.
>>>>
>>>> For this you need to have special adaptation, not just every animal
>>>> can do that, it has to be adapted for that.
>>>>
>>> Most birds do not need to climb around on trees so have dropped
>>> such adaptations.
>>
>> Yes. Because they are birds. But, for gods sake, they weren't birds
>> before they became birds. Ever heard of the turtle and rabbit story?
>> Only after they became birds, they were birds, not before that. The
>> question is, how they became birds, not what they were doing after they
>> became birds.
>
> Fossil record shows that they did climb trees before flying and did
> fly before having beaks.

Flight isn't directly tied to beaks. Having beak is advanced method of
eating insects from bark. Flight is tied to climbing trees (for the
reason of insect eating).

erik simpson

unread,

Aug 17, 2023, 11:27:03 AM8/17/23

to

There is no way you can keep up with Mario's mercurial imagination. There's also little reason
to try.

Mario Petrinovic

unread,

Aug 17, 2023, 2:16:54 PM8/17/23

to

On 17.8.2023. 17:27, erik simpson wrote:
> There is no way you can keep up with Mario's mercurial imagination. There's also little reason
> to try.

It is called 'argumentation', not '"imagination". See how many solid
arguments, based in reality, I have. If you compare this to the other
theory, that beaks evolved so that birds can groom themselves, that is
possible, but it is based on the imaginary need for feathers to be tidy,
which can only be accomplished by grooming. It is alright, but you don't
change your chewing apparatus for that. If you needed some hard point,
you would develop it on the top of your nose, you will not change your
mouth. For example, humans developed cartilage (of course I know why).
So, a lot of things are possible, but not a lot of things are plausible
(I heard that there is some English expression about that, but I
couldn't find it, :) ).

Mario Petrinovic

unread,

Aug 18, 2023, 1:32:44 AM8/18/23

to

Actually, I see animals groom with their teeth. And actually, I could
even say that teeth would be better for grooming than beak. It is like
eating with fork, versus using Japanese sticks. So this whole theory is
actually hanging in the air, there is nothing solid behind it. This
theory is postulated out of desperation, because author couldn't think
of anything better, so he started to postulate his own imaginary things.
On the other hand, my their is solidly anchored in reality, it relies on
real things, not imaginary, things that exist already in nature.

oot...@hot.ee

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics

Univ. of South Carolina -- standard disclaimer--
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

Mario Petrinovic

unread,

Aug 18, 2023, 6:05:45 PM8/18/23

to

I have so many objections on what you wrote here, that I will not
bother to write them down, starting with Confucius himself, then the
time of that saying, the system he was living in, the type of knowledge,
and so on, and so on.

>> Of course, knowledge is very
>> important. But, it somehow shows that you cannot have both, knowledge
>> and working brain, if brain memorizes knowledge, it doesn't work. Or, at
>> least, it works in a biased manner, it is biased towards the knowledge
>> it has, and this can be deteriorating in a situations when knowledge has
>> nothing to do with the solution.
>>
> There are no such dichotomy. From where you took it? On the contrary.
> The bigger your knowledge the easier it is to reason as logic works by
> same rules everywhere.
> Birds being winners is fact as their population is massive compared to
> bats or flying squirrels. That study says between 200 to 400 billions:
> <https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1018341530497>

See, "where from did I took it?". From my own brain, this is where
from I took it. My brain and my experience. Where from do you take your
things?

>> What's wrong with tongue? Lizards have long tongue, tongue is just
>> perfect for those kind of operations. Much better than rigid beak. Yes I
>> am ignorant, but don't animals lick their young for the same purpose?
>>
> Are you claiming that birds do not have tongue? Animals help youth with
> basic hygiene. Animal youth is incompetent to deal with it yet. But they do
> not fly around potentially in rain using their fur. Birds spend great deal of
> time maintaining their feathers. It is not just basic hygiene. Read up on
> preening, what is done and why, then show how it is better to do with tip
> of nose, teeth or even with tongue alone.

Ok, lets rank it. The worst is tip of your nose, but you don't change
chewing apparatus for that. Then I would put beak (but for this you have
to change chewing apparatus). Then it would be teeth, which was,
actually, the original condition. And the best would be tongue, which is
usually used by all the other animals, for the reason that it is the
best for the purpose.

Mario Petrinovic

unread,

Aug 18, 2023, 6:33:52 PM8/18/23

to

On 18.8.2023. 22:40, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Tuesday, August 15, 2023 at 8:06:40 PM UTC-4, Mario Petrinovic wrote:
>> On 16.8.2023. 0:56, John Harshman wrote:
>>> On 8/15/23 2:08 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>>> On Tuesday, August 15, 2023 at 2:55:14 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
>
>>>>> It's not the beak that lets woodpeckers dig into bark.
>
>>>> So all that hammering on trees is just for attracting attention???
>
>>> Notice that while all birds have beaks, it's only the woodpeckers that
>>> do the hammering. So it can't be the possession of a beak that matters
>>> for this adaptation. Woodpeckers have a number of special anatomical
>>> adaptations that should be detectable in a theropod skeleton if the
>>> comparison were apt.
>>>
>>> And in fact a high proportion of that hammering *is* just for attracting
>>> attention. It's called "drumming".
>
>> I really have hard time to understand how somebody can make such
>> faulty conclusions?
>
> It would be a lot harder, if not impossible, if you had not deleted
> a really stupid comment by Harshman, which I have restored.
> Notice how he completely changed the subject and then
> said something that indirectly revealed that what he had claimed earlier
> was indeed an abysmally stupid comment.

Yes, I absolutely agree. My condolences, I really feel your pain. This
Harhman guy is here only for the destruction, he doesn't comprehend the
tiniest bit to anything good.

As if it weren't obvious:

"It's not the beak that lets woodpeckers dig into bark. "

So tell me, turkey, what DOES let them dig into bark,
now that you have eliminated their beaks?

Peter Nyikos

John Harshman

unread,

Aug 18, 2023, 8:53:49 PM8/18/23

to

Am I? But you don't say how. Again, you say I've done something bad
without managing to explain what's bad about it.

>> I'm not even sure what
>> comment you're talking about.
>
>
> As if it weren't obvious:
>
> "It's not the beak that lets woodpeckers dig into bark."
>
> So tell me, turkey, what DOES let them dig into bark,
> now that you have eliminated their beaks?

You misunderstand the comment, though perhaps I wasn't sufficiently
clear. (And why the gratuitous "turkey"?) As I said, all birds have
beaks but only woodpeckers hammer trees with them. Therefore, having
beaks is not sufficient for hammering trees, and we can't claim that
early birds did so just because they had beaks. Further, since early
birds lacked the skeletal adaptations that enable woodpeckers to hammer
trees, the evidence suggests that they did not. And beaks therefore did
not evolve for the purpose of hammering trees.

(It occurs to me, however, that advanced alvarezsaurs like Mononykus
might conceivably have done some tree-hammering, though not with their
noses.)

So how much of that was stupid, and if so, why?

Peter Nyikos

unread,

Aug 18, 2023, 9:09:13 PM8/18/23

to

If there is only one gene involved, then the answer is easy: the egg
already had the necessary genetic material of the chicken.

> In fact, they change in
> unison. The idea that genes change species by the way of mutations comes
> from this Catholic priest liar.

If you are thinking of Mendel, you are wrong. He worked with existing genes
("traits"). A recessive homozygote is not a mutation, even though it may
look like a mutation when the carriers of a recessive gene are extremely rare, like the ones
for hooves on the two side toe remnants of horses. Julius Caesar had a horse like that.

De Vries is sometimes credited with the idea of mutations, while Goldschmidt
is associated with saltations ("hopeful monsters").

> As I explained, science insists on it
> because it doesn't know better, it is the only thing it can grasp.
> Lets ask Wikipedia:
> "Mutations result from errors..."

Unnecessarily pejorative term.

> "Mutation is the ultimate source of all genetic variation, providing
> the raw material on which evolutionary forces such as natural selection
> can act."
> See "...can act." Do you know of any other way to change genes?

Mutation is just another word for change. If that is not what is confusing you, try this:

The action of natural selection is not ON genes;
what it does is favor the carriers of some genes over others.

Radiation, for instance, changes genes themselves, converting one allele into a different one.

When you use Wikipedia, you have not only to be careful to read
what is there correctly, you may also be seeing false or misleadingly worded statements
that have since been corrected elsewhere. I've even seen purely scientific entries
on the same subject contradict each other. Sometimes that is because both
are taking the result of two different very recent research papers as the last word on the subject.
Just taking the word of one is hazardous enough.

Short version: Wikipedia entries mutate, not always beneficially.

> Science doesn't know of any other way, mutations are the only mechanism
> that science knows of. This doesn't mean that there are no other ways.

> Evolution by mutations doesn't work, for sure.

Are you forgetting about natural selection? There are other ways,
because natural selection only selects *within* populations.
Then there is species selection, which pits one species against another
within the same genus. For some reason, biologists don't like to think about
competition between such widely separated animals as birds and pterosaurs,
but a good look at the fossil evidence says that there was intense competition between them.

If you like that kind of large-scale competition, I will try to include some for you
in the thread I start next week.

> There have to be other
> ways, only science doesn't know about them. Those other ways developed
> during 3.5 billion years. Long enough time to develop complex ways to
> change genes, not just by stupid errors.

Like I said, "errors" is needlessly pejorative. It should be reserved for
deleterious or neutral mutations. Beneficial mutations are rare, but
there have been something like 10^15 (ten to the fifteenth power) birds
over the eons -- plenty of material for an immense number of beneficial mutations.

> >>> Ha, ha, there is one interesting thing, squirrels have adaptation to
> >>> go up and down the tree. I wouldn't say that birds could go down the
> >>> tree that easy, easier would be just to fly off, :) .
> >>> So, the difficult part actually is to go down, :) .
> >>>
> >> Gravity is not for free anymore? The nuthatches seem to go down tree
> >> head first like squirrels.
> >
> > It takes special anatomy, and not all birds have it. Similarly, as you probably know,
> > cats cannot go down trees headfirst because they cannot turn their hind legs
> > around as well as squirrels can.

> Yes, exactly. Squirrels developed their hind legs, birds developed
> their front legs.

Don't get in the way of a kick by an ostrich or cassowary. You may
not live to talk about it.

> This is the name of the game.

On the whole, though, you are right.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of So. Carolina at Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

oot...@hot.ee

unread,

Aug 18, 2023, 9:17:40 PM8/18/23

to

Logic has not changed. Human has evolved very little with 100 generations
since he said it. Nation that followed his philosophy during most of those
generations is biggest on that planet. I have lived in very diverse set of
political situations during last half of century: communism, perestroika, coup,
anarchy, relatively ruthless capitalism and currently EU. I can only say that
methods of gathering wisdom were always same. Gather facts, read how
others reason about those and reason yourself. Otherwise you fail.

> >> Of course, knowledge is very
> >> important. But, it somehow shows that you cannot have both, knowledge
> >> and working brain, if brain memorizes knowledge, it doesn't work. Or, at
> >> least, it works in a biased manner, it is biased towards the knowledge
> >> it has, and this can be deteriorating in a situations when knowledge has
> >> nothing to do with the solution.
> >>
> > There are no such dichotomy. From where you took it? On the contrary.
> > The bigger your knowledge the easier it is to reason as logic works by
> > same rules everywhere.
> > Birds being winners is fact as their population is massive compared to
> > bats or flying squirrels. That study says between 200 to 400 billions:
> > <https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1018341530497>
>
> See, "where from did I took it?". From my own brain, this is where
> from I took it. My brain and my experience. Where from do you take your
> things?
>

I have observed that both of those who trust their imagination too much
or trust what some book says too much will fail and be unhappy about it.
Usually they blame others in their misfortune. So Confucius was right.

> >> What's wrong with tongue? Lizards have long tongue, tongue is just
> >> perfect for those kind of operations. Much better than rigid beak. Yes I
> >> am ignorant, but don't animals lick their young for the same purpose?
> >>
> > Are you claiming that birds do not have tongue? Animals help youth with
> > basic hygiene. Animal youth is incompetent to deal with it yet. But they do
> > not fly around potentially in rain using their fur. Birds spend great deal of
> > time maintaining their feathers. It is not just basic hygiene. Read up on
> > preening, what is done and why, then show how it is better to do with tip
> > of nose, teeth or even with tongue alone.
>
> Ok, lets rank it. The worst is tip of your nose, but you don't change
> chewing apparatus for that. Then I would put beak (but for this you have
> to change chewing apparatus). Then it would be teeth, which was,
> actually, the original condition. And the best would be tongue, which is
> usually used by all the other animals, for the reason that it is the
> best for the purpose.
>

That does not match with facts as birds have tongue but do not use
it to lick their feathers. Test with reality failed. Reality can not be
mistaken about itself so error has to be somewhere in your reasoning.

Peter Nyikos

unread,

Aug 18, 2023, 9:50:39 PM8/18/23

to

Harshman, you are getting to be as flagrant at trolling as JTEM.

Mario, take note: you were right about Harshman, and if you've needed
any more proof for warning others about him, you have it below.

You will get them all the time if you continue to say abysmally
stupid things and then lie about what you said, like you do below.

> > You are indulging in the moral equivalent of a frivolous lawsuit.

> Am I? But you don't say how. Again, you say I've done something bad
> without managing to explain what's bad about it.

You are just adding to your frivolous lawsuit equivalent. Read on.

> >> I'm not even sure what
> >> comment you're talking about.
> >
> >
> > As if it weren't obvious:
> >
> > "It's not the beak that lets woodpeckers dig into bark."
> >
> > So tell me, turkey, what DOES let them dig into bark,
> > now that you have eliminated their beaks?

> You misunderstand the comment, though perhaps I wasn't sufficiently
> clear.

There is no other way to read the comment, liar.

(And why the gratuitous "turkey"?)

Poor baby. You once gaslighted me with an accusation of megalomania,
a clinical form of insanity, when I was only a wee bit melodramatic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting

[I wrote "Poor baby" instead of "Hypocrite" because you are used to having
that word go like water off a duck's back.]

> As I said,

You are just filibustering below and making no attempt to clarify the abysmally stupid thing you wrote.

> all birds have
> beaks but only woodpeckers hammer trees with them. Therefore, having
> beaks is not sufficient for hammering trees, and we can't claim that
> early birds did so just because they had beaks. Further, since early
> birds lacked the skeletal adaptations that enable woodpeckers to hammer
> trees, the evidence suggests that they did not. And beaks therefore did
> not evolve for the purpose of hammering trees.
>
> (It occurs to me, however, that advanced alvarezsaurs like Mononykus
> might conceivably have done some tree-hammering, though not with their
> noses.)

>
> So how much of that was stupid, and if so, why?

Writing a bunch of interesting facts does not cancel out the fact that
you said something abysmally stupid, then lied when confronted by what you had done.

Peter Nyikos

John Harshman

unread,

Aug 18, 2023, 10:12:51 PM8/18/23

>>>> What's wrong with tongue? Lizards have long tongue, tongue is just
>>>> perfect for those kind of operations. Much better than rigid beak. Yes I
>>>> am ignorant, but don't animals lick their young for the same purpose?
>>>>
>>> Are you claiming that birds do not have tongue? Animals help youth with
>>> basic hygiene. Animal youth is incompetent to deal with it yet. But they do
>>> not fly around potentially in rain using their fur. Birds spend great deal of
>>> time maintaining their feathers. It is not just basic hygiene. Read up on
>>> preening, what is done and why, then show how it is better to do with tip
>>> of nose, teeth or even with tongue alone.
>>
>> Ok, lets rank it. The worst is tip of your nose, but you don't change
>> chewing apparatus for that. Then I would put beak (but for this you have
>> to change chewing apparatus). Then it would be teeth, which was,
>> actually, the original condition. And the best would be tongue, which is
>> usually used by all the other animals, for the reason that it is the
>> best for the purpose.
>>
> That does not match with facts as birds have tongue but do not use
> it to lick their feathers. Test with reality failed. Reality can not be
> mistaken about itself so error has to be somewhere in your reasoning.

Yes, you are right here. Yet, I still think that I am right regarding
the origin of birds. But thanks, your objections were the right ones.

Mario Petrinovic

unread,

Aug 19, 2023, 12:37:30 AM8/19/23

to

On 19.8.2023. 4:12, John Harshman wrote:
> You might try asking Mario what these "other ways" are. I'd be
> interested in knowing. Perhaps he's thinking of "natural genetic
> engineering" or "morphic resonance", but I'm willing to bet it's some
> kind of woo.

No, I have not the slightest idea what these "other ways" are. I just
said that science doesn't know about them. I, too, have not the
slightest idea what they are.

Mario Petrinovic

unread,

> I see a lot of different people around me. Everybody has
> different dimensions, although we have similar genes.

Slightly different alleles of some of those genes, though, and this
accounts for a good fraction of the differences you observe.

> This is enough for
> evolution to work, you don't need a gene manipulation, there is enough
> of change already in it, you don't need more of it.

That's true. Standing genetic variation can power evolution for a while.
But eventually it runs out and evolution would stop unless there were a
source of new variation, i.e. mutation.

> You only need
> deliberate "gene change" if you want God to be involved in the story,
> and if you really desperately need some special extraterrestrial magical
> effects, like "intelligence".

Nobody said any of this mutation is deliberate. Well, nobody except ID
crackpots.

> So, now I have to deal with a lot of
> idiots who prey to magic, because they see themselves as being magical.
> No, we are just normal animals, earthly beings, nothing else. But if you
> see all those scientific theories, they all revolve around
> "intelligence". We are tall because we are intelligent, we have long
> hair because we are intelligent, we have blue eyes because we are
> intelligent, and so on, and so on, the source of every trait in humans
> is our "intelligence", "intelligence" is answer to everything (I just
> saw a video, "Jesus is always the answer", kid wrote in test, :) ). And
> this has to, somehow, fall from skies. And voila, we have genes, and
> they can produce, literally, anything, including the "magical stuff",
> and my god aren't we so magical.

Nothing you say in that paragraph is true. Nobody (again, with the
exception of a few ID crackpots) thinks any of that. You are arguing
against a small minority of people who aren't even here.

John Harshman

unread,

Aug 19, 2023, 3:22:12 PM8/19/23

to

No, he didn't. Mendel has nothing to do with mutations. He discovered
that inheritance is particulate using standing variation in a couple of
species.

> It wasn't accepted. It was accepted when Mendel was
> "rediscovered", 34 years later (Mendel was already dead). What was the
> difference between 1866 AD and 1900 AD? In the number, and the magic
> number is three. We evolved to trust something if it comes from three
> independent sources, automatically, without *thinking*. So, the whole
> science accepted the major idea because it heard it from three
> "independent" sources in the same time (two months apart). And that's
> it. And we are talking about science, about scientists, who are supposed
> to have a scientific thinking. And Catholic church sold them simple
> trick, like they are sheep. And those same people claim that they are
> soooo intelligent. My god.

Again, you are sounding insane here.

Mario Petrinovic

unread,

Aug 19, 2023, 4:20:48 PM8/19/23

to

On 19.8.2023. 21:19, John Harshman wrote:
> On 8/19/23 11:13 AM, Mario Petrinovic wrote:
>> On 19.8.2023. 15:04, John Harshman wrote:
>>> On 8/18/23 9:37 PM, Mario Petrinovic wrote:
>>>> On 19.8.2023. 4:12, John Harshman wrote:
>>>>> You might try asking Mario what these "other ways" are. I'd be
>>>>> interested in knowing. Perhaps he's thinking of "natural genetic
>>>>> engineering" or "morphic resonance", but I'm willing to bet it's
>>>>> some kind of woo.
>>>>
>>>> No, I have not the slightest idea what these "other ways"
>>>> are. I just said that science doesn't know about them. I, too, have
>>>> not the slightest idea what they are.
>>>>
>>> How do you know they exist? How do you know they're important?
>>
>> Because "evolution by errors" is stupid to the bone. I don't
>> know who actually invented this, but it is sneaked into science by
>> Catholic church, and called Genetic Mutation Theory, a very well known
>> fact. A typical story of science,stupid, and manipulated by church. No
>> sense in it at all.
>
> I'm sorry, but that's insane. The Catholic Church had nothing to do with
> introducing the concept of mutations into biology, and they were
> introduced because they were actually observed. We know mutations
> happen, we know how they happen, and we know what happens to them
> afterwards. It's not weird magic.

Good for mutations. More than 20 years when I found myself learning
about paleoanthropology "Genetic Mutation Theory (Mendel is the author)
was them main word. It made fun of Darwin, Darwin was the past,
everybody was talking about Genetic Mutation Theory. Today, if you type
"Genetic Mutation Theory" into Wikipedia you will get no results. But
no, I am not insane, the whole science is insane. And all this changed
after I started to write about it on forums. And yes, this actually
happened, I am not insane.

>> I see a lot of different people around me. Everybody has
>> different dimensions, although we have similar genes.
>
> Slightly different alleles of some of those genes, though, and this
> accounts for a good fraction of the differences you observe.
>
>> This is enough for evolution to work, you don't need a gene
>> manipulation, there is enough of change already in it, you don't need
>> more of it.
>
> That's true. Standing genetic variation can power evolution for a while.
> But eventually it runs out and evolution would stop unless there were a
> source of new variation, i.e. mutation.

unread,

Aug 19, 2023, 9:21:37 PM8/19/23

to

What are you quoting there? What are the cited references? If it's about
genetic algorithms is would seem very peripheral to evolutionary
biology, and I wouldn't be confident that it's right in its attributions.

It's true that De Vries had a theory of mutation, though Mendel did not.

If only that were true.

>>>>> You only need deliberate "gene change" if you want God to be
>>>>> involved in the story, and if you really desperately need some
>>>>> special extraterrestrial magical effects, like "intelligence".
>>>>
>>>> Nobody said any of this mutation is deliberate. Well, nobody except
>>>> ID crackpots.
>>>
>>> It allows for god's intervention, this is why Catholic
>>> church is pushing it. Just like the Big Bang Theory, which allows for
>>> God's creation.
>>
>> It also allows for God's non-intervention. Again, your statements are
>> just wrong. I don't think the Catholic church is even pushing
>> mutation. Where do you get this idea?
>
> From the fact that the Genetic Mutation Theory was accepted
> after it was rediscovered by three independent scientists in a matter of
> two months, in a time when there wasn't even a radio. If you would use
> your brain you would figure out the trick, but I don't expect this from
> you:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Mendel#Rediscovery_of_Mendel's_work

Notice that nowhere in that article is there any mention of mutation.
And if you actually read it you will find that the rediscovery of Mendel
is all about the fact that inheritance is particulate, not blending.
That's Mendel's work and that's Mendel's theory.

> First, this Catholic priest was a liar, then "somebody" used
> trick to sell his theory to the world.

Nobody is saying any of that.

> Harshman, I had enough of you.
> Suddenly you "play stupid" (Croatia expression), like "First time I ever
> heard this, are you imagining things?". Don't you say.
> I mean, I don't know anything about genetics. But, somehow I
> know who is the father of genetics, and you don't know anything about
> it. Hm, "strange".

Mendel is the father of genetics. But there is no "genetic mutation
theory" in Mendel's work. Mutation was added to genetics later. I will
agree that you know nothing about genetics or, apparently, about its
history.

Strange indeed.

Mario Petrinovic

unread,

Aug 22, 2023, 9:37:17 AM8/22/23

to

On Tuesday, August 22, 2023 at 12:10:29 AM UTC-4, Mario Petrinovic wrote:
> On 22.8.2023. 4:42, Peter Nyikos wrote:

Note how all the following were on the same PM, once you account
for the time zone difference. You should really consider slowing down
your responses. Harshman cannot be expected to do that. He is just
as quick to reply to me as he is to you. It is I who am responsible
for a much slower overall pace between us.

> > On Saturday, August 19, 2023 at 11:01:52 PM UTC-4, Mario Petrinovic wrote:
> >> On 20.8.2023. 4:50, John Harshman wrote:
> >>> On 8/19/23 7:33 PM, Mario Petrinovic wrote:
> >>>> On 20.8.2023. 3:21, John Harshman wrote:
> >>>>> On 8/19/23 5:10 PM, Mario Petrinovic wrote:
> >>>>>> On 20.8.2023. 1:46, John Harshman wrote:

> >>>>>>> But what you describe is not recognizable as anything in actual
> >>>>>>> evolutionary biology. Nor does Mendel have anything at all to do
> >>>>>>> with mutations. If paleoanthropologists said that, which I strongly
> >>>>>>> doubt, they were wrong.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> You may not be insane, but what you're saying is nonsensical.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Hm, on papers 10 and more years old you can read that
> >>>>>> Genetic Mutation Theory is by Mendel: "Genetic algorithm (GA) is an
> >>>>>> optimization searching algorithm based on the theory of evolution
> >>>>>> and the genetic mutation theory of Mendel (Atmar, 1994, Chaudhry et
> >>>>>> al., 2000, Fogel, 1994, Srinivas and Patnaik, 1994)." These days,
> >>>>>> though, everybody says that it is De Vries's. Now, what and why?
> >>>>>> And, frankly, I am really puzzled how suddenly you don't know
> >>>>>> anything about it.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> What are you quoting there? What are the cited references? If it's
> >>>>> about genetic algorithms is would seem very peripheral to
> >>>>> evolutionary biology, and I wouldn't be confident that it's right in
> >>>>> its attributions.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> It's true that De Vries had a theory of mutation, though Mendel did not.

> >>>>>>> Organisms do correct mutations; that's called proofreading and
> >>>>>>> repair. But repair doesn't fix all mutations and it actually causes
> >>>>>>> some of them. Observed mutation rates take repair into account. Not
> >>>>>>> sure what "it didn't stop to evolve" is about. Mutations do happen,
> >>>>>>> some of them affect phenotype, and some of them are beneficial.
> >>>>>>> That's how adaptive evolution works.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> I am giving up.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> If only that were true.
> >>>>>

> >>>>>> From the fact that the Genetic Mutation Theory was accepted
> >>>>>> after it was rediscovered by three independent scientists in a
> >>>>>> matter of two months, in a time when there wasn't even a radio. If
> >>>>>> you would use your brain you would figure out the trick, but I don't
> >>>>>> expect this from you:
> >>>>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Mendel#Rediscovery_of_Mendel's_work
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Notice that nowhere in that article is there any mention of mutation.
> >>>>> And if you actually read it you will find that the rediscovery of
> >>>>> Mendel is all about the fact that inheritance is particulate, not
> >>>>> blending. That's Mendel's work and that's Mendel's theory.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> First, this Catholic priest was a liar, then "somebody"
> >>>>>> used trick to sell his theory to the world.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Nobody is saying any of that.
> >>>>
> >>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Mendel#Mendelian_paradox
> >>>
> >>> That has nothing to do with any of your claims.

Here is where I came in.

I'm glad you are willing to discuss this so openly.

Before we go further, I think I know why you are of the impression
that the Big Bang Theory is a false product of the Vatican.
It's because the Soviet Union was committed to the universe
having always been here, and never ending. What you write below
is very much in line with that.

> Ok, lets start with clearing misconceptions about my uprising,
> regarding Catholicism. My mother was strong believer. She had some
> problems with communists in her life, so she never raised us in
> Catholicism and nationalism, so, she, although being strong Catholic,
> kept it for herself.

And rightly so: there was danger for her if your "Sunday school teacher"
[see what you wrote below] had asked you for details about what she
had told you about her faith.

> We (me and my two twin sisters) went to Catholic
> Sunday School. Here children go by the age of 8. I didn't go at that age
> because my mother wanted me to go along with my sisters (for obvious
> reasons, you say that there 5 % pedophiles,

No, only about 1%: note what I said about the word "pedophile."

But this was about Catholic priests. You didn't have one in the schools,
so what was your mother afraid of? bullies? Your sisters were safe
from the male ones, by the codes of behavior in those days,
and could have been witnesses to any bullying you may have suffered
on the way to school. Or even attacked a bully themselves if they
attacked you -- being beaten by girls would have been too much
humiliation for them, no?

>this are just the proven ones),

Ever since the scandal broke in 2002, all charges are thoroughly
investigated, with the burden of proof on the accused rather
than the accuser, as in the case of Cardinal Pell.
There is plenty of money to be had in lawsuits, plenty of incentive
to make false accusations. So I see no reason to think that the
number was higher than that.

>so I started to go by the age of 10 (when my sisters were 8). At
> that age I was old enough to understand things, and smart enough to pick
> up the logic of it. I was eager to find out what it is all about. I
> presumed that the basis of it are 10 commandments. We had Sunday School
> in one of the more known church in Zagreb, St.Peter's Church, in Vlaska
> street, very close to the center of the town. But the teacher wasn't a
> priest, ti was a layman. So, I was eager to pick up the logic behind it,
> and I was shocked when the guy said, "We will not talk about 10
> Commandments, you have it in catechism (small white booklet), you can do
> it at home by yourself.". Frankly, I got the impression that the guy
> wouldn't be able to name all 10 Commandments if somebody would ask him
> to do it.

I think you are right. Was there any reason to think he was a
Catholic at all?

> This was extremely strange to me, since the whole logic should
> lay upon 10 Commandments. Instead of that he was talking about two
> things every time:

He was probably a communist put in your school to make sure
you got the official party line.

> 1) The first Catholics, those in Roman Empire, were living in
> communes. This is the original Communism, a system we should strive to have.
> 2) "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle then
> for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God!", explaining how in the
> past those "rich men" were Pharisees, while today they are those ugly
> fat American capitalists.

> In other words, he was saying how communism is a system we should
> strive to achieve, and how capitalism is bad.
> He was talking about it and explaining it widely every single time, in
> fact this was the only thing he was doing. Of course, he was young. I
> don't know what relationship he had with some of the girls of my age,
> but they were all in love with him, and close with him.

> Regarding official education, Yugoslavia wasn't so rigid, in fact Tito
> had very warm relationships with the West, so there wasn't anti-catholic
> education at all in our school. I remember only once, our elementary
> school teacher was asking who believes in God. There were some people
> from my class that also went to Sunday School, but only I replied that I
> believe in God. In fact, I didn't believe in God at that time (nor
> ever), I just tried to protect my mother's views, who is she (that
> teacher) to ridicule the believes of my mother.

Sounds like she was anti-Catholic after all.

> And this was the only
> occasion when anybody said anything against Catholic religion.

What did she say about your belief in God?

> I was never raised to be against communism also, but it was obvious,
> from a faces she made, that my mother doesn't like it at all. Of course
> I had strong feeling for justice since I was a kid, and I noticed how
> bad communism is, very early. I didn't like it at all, in fact, when
> everybody was accepted in Communist Youth (I believe it is by the age of
> 12 or 13), I was contemplating not to do it. At the last moment I
> decided to do it, otherwise I would be the only pupil in the whole
> school not to do it (maybe even in the whole town, :) ), and this would
> affect my life very badly, so I decided to do it.

I suspect that was the main reason the vast majority joined.

My wife's father left Hungary in 1956, with six (!) children, of whom
my wife was the youngest, because he had been repeatedly
asked to join the Communist party and felt that he could no
longer hold out without suffering severe repercussions.

> When I started to hate Catholicism? My country went through some
> transitions, the moral standards of Croats were extremely low, and I
> realized that Catholic church is the main responsible for it.

The communism-suppressed Catholic Church. Where could you
have been taught the 10 commandments in a more mature form
than what you had in your little catechism?

> I followed
> politics, and what's going on around me, saw what is happening, and
> realized that Catholic church is extremely bad institution. Didn't you
> notice that Pope condemns the West for Ukrainian war, and justifies
> Putin?

I never noticed any such thing. It is the Russian Orthodox Patriarch
who does what you describe. He is of all the Orthodox by far the
most subservient to the civil authorities, and the most at odds with the Pope.

> Vatican hates UK and USA for the reason that those two countries
> are the sources of democracy, Vatican thinks that people should be
> Vatican's sheep.

This has been largely obsolete since the Vatican II general council.
Now it is the traditional Catholics who like the pre-Vatican II Church
who are the target of the Vatican. They were recently commanded
to refrain from performing the old Latin Mass except under the most
severe restrictions. The pre-1989 Communist countries could hardly
have been more draconian about that.

What animosity the Vatican has against the US and UK is
that these are the most influential sources of secularization.
Now they have the financial pressure on third world countries to promote
abortion under the Biden and Obama administrations to add to that.
Also the promotion of LGBTQ+ to add to that.

This may partly account for whatever lack of condemnation of Putin
by the Pope there may be. But even Viktor Orban, Hungarian prime minister, condemned the
February 24 "military action" and stood for the freedom and independence of Ukraine.
Do you really think the Pope feels any different?

> People take this lightly, but what really is going on
> is that Vatican sees it in the most ugly way, they really do think, and
> behave towards humans, like humans are their stupid sheep.
> I even went to Catholic kindergarten, and as a really small kid I
> noticed how soulless those nuns are. They were behaving towards children
> as they are things, like they are not something worthy.

That was before the end of the Vatican II council, and I too had
that influence back then. We didn't even know what the word
"atheist" meant until secondary school! The word was never spoken or written.

However , the religious Sisters who taught us were a very mixed bunch.
Two of them treated us as good individuals. Two others were tyrants and sadists,
and they were our first and second grade teachers! The second grade
teacher was not as bad as the first in that respect, but she taught
us insane stories about children (totally unlike us) who were "saintly."

> Anyway, I didn't learn anything in Sunday School, I didn't like that I
> had to use my free Sundays for it (at that time normal school was from
> Monday to Saturday), so as soon as I got first Communion I stopped to go
> there (my sisters continued with it).

I'm curious to know how you got influenced the way I suspected.
Was it the daily media?

Peter Nyikos

Peter Nyikos

unread,

Aug 22, 2023, 11:15:59 AM8/22/23

to

I had originally intended to include two versions, one with your amazing
paragraph intact, then picked apart. But then I got absent-minded.

Here is your amazing paragraph:

"Mendel was a liar (just like all Catholic priests are, plus a lot of
them are pedophiles, plus, the ones who aren't, those protect
pedophiles), and Catholic church used psychological trick to sneak in
Mendel's work. And the Big Bang Theory also originated in Vatican. More
than enough said."

And here is how I picked it apart:

> > In fact, Christmas was a holiday in Yugoslavia, and Midnight
> > Mass was big celebration, the whole town celebrated. It wasn't quiet, it
> > wasn't "Silent Night", because this was a night when Croats were
> > celebrating their Christianity publicly, so this was huge celebration,
> > and everybody went to Zagreb Cathedral at that night. You may picture
> > how big celebration it is when even the nonbelievers (including me)
> > attended. Especially if you take into account that Orthodox Serbs
> > celebrate it using Gregorian calendar, so 15 days after Catholics.

Don't you mean the Julian calendar? if so, 15 days before.
Easy way to remember: the Glorious October Bolshevik Revolution
actually took place in November by the Gregorian calendar.

But my impression is that the Orthodox calendar has a different
basis than the dates for the Catholic calendar. They celebrate Easter
later than we do.

Anyway, Zagreb is in Croatia, so you would have celebrated it on the 24-25th of December.

> > So at Christmas it was a time for celebration for Croats. But it was so huge
> > celebration that even young Serbs would come to Zagreb Cathedral and
> > have fun. So, nothing like you think was happening in Yugoslavia,
> > Christianity was tolerated, especially if you know that Vatican actually
> > works for communists.

I cannot know something that is not so. When you were almost an adult,
the Catholic world was astounded by the new Pope being a Pole--
the first non-Italian elected Pope in four centuries.

Then it got a shock when an assassination attempt was made on
John Paul II. It later was determined that the would-be assassin
was the agent of Soviets. So where was the Vatican working
for communists, eh?

> Oh yes, it was big celebration, loud, with firecrackers. Actually, it
> was the only occasion when you could hit firecracker behind a policeman
> (police was very austere back then), and he wouldn't do anything about
> it, :) .

What, no firecrackers on New Year's Eve?

Just northeast of you, in Hungary, what we call Christmas
was called "little Christmas" [kis Karácsony] while New Year's day
was "great Christmas" [nagy Karácsony]. That was the day
when Father Winter [Télapó] went around distributing gifts to the good children.

[Trivia: Alexander the Great is called "Nagy Sándor" in Hungarian.
It sounds to my ears like an ordinary everyday Magyar name,
like the names of the people you meet on the street every day.
My youngest brother is named Nyíkos Sándor -- surname first, as in oriental languages.]

Peter Nyikos [Nyíkos Péter]

Mario Petrinovic

unread,

Aug 22, 2023, 3:15:26 PM8/22/23

to

On 22.8.2023. 15:37, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Tuesday, August 22, 2023 at 12:10:29 AM UTC-4, Mario Petrinovic wrote:
>> On 22.8.2023. 4:42, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
> Note how all the following were on the same PM, once you account
> for the time zone difference. You should really consider slowing down
> your responses. Harshman cannot be expected to do that. He is just
> as quick to reply to me as he is to you. It is I who am responsible
> for a much slower overall pace between us.

Sorry, but I don't do that (adjusting my behavior).

Again this Soviet Union. You see me through Hungarian eyes. Yugoslavia
had nothing to do with Soviet Union. In fact Stalin wanted to kill Tito,
and Tito was very against Soviet Union. Tito made pact with the West to
defend himself against Stalin. During the time of Tito West was
glorified, this is from where my love for West comes, we were raised in
a sense that West is free and democratic, while Soviet Union is all the
worst. There was a saying "Bear entered a store, he didn't say 'Good
Day', bear get out of store, you didn't say 'Good Day'." So, I was even
more surprised hearing this religious teacher bashing on the West.
When I was kid I was excellent in physics. The model of Big Bang never
looked alright to me. It has no sense, it isn't based on anything
(except "Red Shift" but Red Shift also looked very suspicious to me).
Just like the question "Who made God.", the same question you can ask,
what was before Big Bang? All this has absolutely no sense, it doesn't
answer any question, it just postulate a dogma, nothing else.

>> Ok, lets start with clearing misconceptions about my uprising,
>> regarding Catholicism. My mother was strong believer. She had some
>> problems with communists in her life, so she never raised us in
>> Catholicism and nationalism, so, she, although being strong Catholic,
>> kept it for herself.
>
> And rightly so: there was danger for her if your "Sunday school teacher"
> [see what you wrote below] had asked you for details about what she
> had told you about her faith.

No, there was no such a danger. It is just that she was very cautious.
She didn't teach me about religion, about Croatian nation, about
anything. I mean, everybody was celebrating Christmas and everything, it
wasn't such a big deal in Yugoslavia. Some very stern communists would
ridicule this, but this wasn't an official politics, this were
exceptions, nothing else, it was the private view of those stern
communists, nothing more than that. But my mother was very cautious,
because she lived in the worse times (my mother was 40 years older than
me), in the time before Tito left Stalin, when Tito was mass murderer.
But when I was alive, this wasn't such a big deal.

>> We (me and my two twin sisters) went to Catholic
>> Sunday School. Here children go by the age of 8. I didn't go at that age
>> because my mother wanted me to go along with my sisters (for obvious
>> reasons, you say that there 5 % pedophiles,
>
> No, only about 1%: note what I said about the word "pedophile."

Well, my mother wanted me to go to Sunday School with my sisters, she
knew why.

> But this was about Catholic priests. You didn't have one in the schools,
> so what was your mother afraid of? bullies? Your sisters were safe
> from the male ones, by the codes of behavior in those days,
> and could have been witnesses to any bullying you may have suffered
> on the way to school. Or even attacked a bully themselves if they
> attacked you -- being beaten by girls would have been too much
> humiliation for them, no?

I believe you got it wrong, Sunday School (religious school) wasn't in
public schools, it happened in church, on Sundays. It was in big church,
with priests and nuns in there, and this religious teacher wasn't
appointed by public officials, this was a guy tied to church, appointed
by church. The only difference was that he wasn't a priest, he was
laymen, but very religious laymen. Or, at least, this is what he was
supposed to be, and this is how he was introduced to us. He had nothing
to do with communist party. Actually, he was, probably, a Stalinist, and
church acted in agreement with Stalinists. But the official politics
prosecuted Stalinists.

>> this are just the proven ones),
>
>
> Ever since the scandal broke in 2002, all charges are thoroughly
> investigated, with the burden of proof on the accused rather
> than the accuser, as in the case of Cardinal Pell.
> There is plenty of money to be had in lawsuits, plenty of incentive
> to make false accusations. So I see no reason to think that the
> number was higher than that.

Hm, you are selecting one case, a case from not so Catholic country,
which has proper jurisdictional system, freedom of press, and all other
freedoms. In proper Catholic countries the numbers were enormous.

> >so I started to go by the age of 10 (when my sisters were 8). At
>> that age I was old enough to understand things, and smart enough to pick
>> up the logic of it. I was eager to find out what it is all about. I
>> presumed that the basis of it are 10 commandments. We had Sunday School
>> in one of the more known church in Zagreb, St.Peter's Church, in Vlaska
>> street, very close to the center of the town. But the teacher wasn't a
>> priest, ti was a layman. So, I was eager to pick up the logic behind it,
>> and I was shocked when the guy said, "We will not talk about 10
>> Commandments, you have it in catechism (small white booklet), you can do
>> it at home by yourself.". Frankly, I got the impression that the guy
>> wouldn't be able to name all 10 Commandments if somebody would ask him
>> to do it.
>
> I think you are right. Was there any reason to think he was a
> Catholic at all?

I wrote above, he was brainwashing children against the West. This
wasn't Tito's politics. When Tito left Stalin he imprisoned the
prominent Stalinists onto island called Goli Otok (Naked Island). But,
in fact, every communist was actually Stalinist, even Tito was hardcore
Stalinist before he left Stalin. So, he couldn't imprison every
communist, because he ruled with those communists. So, Stalinism was
always somewhere in the background, and when Tito finally died
Stalinists took power again. Tudjman was a Stalinist, and Catholic
church was supporting him with everything it had.

This teacher was just a stupid chicken, nothing more. And this was the
only occasion that she did such a thing. She was just kissing ass of the
rulers, and communism was concurrent religion to Catholicism, so she
was, like, on communist side (as opposed to Catholic side), nothing more
than that.

> > And this was the only
>> occasion when anybody said anything against Catholic religion.
>
> What did she say about your belief in God?

She just said that I am too young, nothing more. I didn't have any
problems because of that, and she didn't dislike me because of that. It
was just a clash of concepts, nothing more.

>> I was never raised to be against communism also, but it was obvious,
>> from a faces she made, that my mother doesn't like it at all. Of course
>> I had strong feeling for justice since I was a kid, and I noticed how
>> bad communism is, very early. I didn't like it at all, in fact, when
>> everybody was accepted in Communist Youth (I believe it is by the age of
>> 12 or 13), I was contemplating not to do it. At the last moment I
>> decided to do it, otherwise I would be the only pupil in the whole
>> school not to do it (maybe even in the whole town, :) ), and this would
>> affect my life very badly, so I decided to do it.
>
> I suspect that was the main reason the vast majority joined.
>
> My wife's father left Hungary in 1956, with six (!) children, of whom
> my wife was the youngest, because he had been repeatedly
> asked to join the Communist party and felt that he could no
> longer hold out without suffering severe repercussions.

Yes, your view is the logical one, and this is how things should be.
But, things weren't like that, actually there were a lot of people who
wanted to join communists. In Croatia, which had 4,500,000 people
(including children), you had 400,000 members of the Party. Being a
member of the Party opens possibilities for you. When system changed
those same communists started acting like they are Democratic
Christians, Catholic Church organized fast courses for them, to become
Catholics overnight, evening schools, and today the prominent
ex-communists are sitting on the first benches in church, and priests
give them their blessing. Today, if you want opportunities to open for
you, you have to do this. So, the same people were eager to became
members of the Party, later were eager to become members of the church,
and tomorrow will be eager to become members of whatever opens you the
opportunities. Complete immorality. And Church gives its blessing to it.
In China you have 90 million members of the Party. China has 1,410
million people (including a lot of children). And this Party drives
tanks over Chinese people, yet a lot of Chinese people want to become
members of that Party.

>> When I started to hate Catholicism? My country went through some
>> transitions, the moral standards of Croats were extremely low, and I
>> realized that Catholic church is the main responsible for it.
>
> The communism-suppressed Catholic Church. Where could you
> have been taught the 10 commandments in a more mature form
> than what you had in your little catechism?

Things became worse when Catholic church wasn't suppressed anymore,
more immoral, just like in every country where Catholic church is
strong. In every such country you have mafia connected to Catholic
church, and dictators connected to Catholic church, Catholic church help
them to steal money from sheep, and then shares that stolen money with
those thieves. This is how things are going where Catholic church has
its way. She brainwashes people and gets rewards from thieves which she
installed on power. And if you take a closer look, very often in such
countries in power are people who actually aren't the same nationality
as the majority, actually it is nationality that is in conflict with the
majority. Because that guy does very bad things to the majority. If they
can find one such guy, they will install him on power rather than the
guy which is the same nationality as majority.

>> I followed
>> politics, and what's going on around me, saw what is happening, and
>> realized that Catholic church is extremely bad institution. Didn't you
>> notice that Pope condemns the West for Ukrainian war, and justifies
>> Putin?
>
> I never noticed any such thing. It is the Russian Orthodox Patriarch
> who does what you describe. He is of all the Orthodox by far the
> most subservient to the civil authorities, and the most at odds with the Pope.

Oh yes, he doesn't like Pope, but Pope likes him. Just watch.

>> Vatican hates UK and USA for the reason that those two countries
>> are the sources of democracy, Vatican thinks that people should be
>> Vatican's sheep.
>
> This has been largely obsolete since the Vatican II general council.
> Now it is the traditional Catholics who like the pre-Vatican II Church
> who are the target of the Vatican. They were recently commanded
> to refrain from performing the old Latin Mass except under the most
> severe restrictions. The pre-1989 Communist countries could hardly
> have been more draconian about that.

I don't understand the whole section. In Croatia we had Mass in
Croatian language for thousand years.

> What animosity the Vatican has against the US and UK is
> that these are the most influential sources of secularization.
> Now they have the financial pressure on third world countries to promote
> abortion under the Biden and Obama administrations to add to that.
> Also the promotion of LGBTQ+ to add to that.

"Financial pressures"? The West is abandoning third world countries.
Countries who dislike West often make big fuss about Pride (LGBT)
events. They organize Pride events, and then they say that West forced
them to do this. They put a lot of LGBT people on front pages
everywhere. This is a psychical trick.
First, LGBT is the last thing West wants to impose. The West wants to
impose freedom of press, free market, democracy, get rid of corruption,
and things like that. This is what West wants to impose, but those
countries don't do any of that, they just do Pride events, and nothing
else. And now you have a situation when there is just the same number of
LGBT people like before, but you get the impression that there are twice
as many of them, because they are on all front pages. Usually you see
only few people on those pages (always the same few people), but nobody
sees it like that, everybody sees like now our society has twice as many
LGBT as before. And LGBT is a handicap. Now, you know that there are
some number of handicapped people, for example, some number of blind
people, and you can tolerate this. But imagine, suddenly you get twice
as many blind people as before. Well, you notice that things are
deteriorating, and becoming worse, where this will lead us, is the world
falling down? So, people suddenly go to find safety in God, they prey to
God to save them. So, when Pride events start, usually you have enormous
raise of believers who are looking to find sanctuary in church. And in
church they preach against the West, like, this evil comes from the
West. So, this is why countries who dislike West don't introduce free
press, free market, free justice, but they are very eager to organize
Pride events. And guess who's idea this is, who has nothing else to do
but to construct psychological tricks to sell to people?

> This may partly account for whatever lack of condemnation of Putin
> by the Pope there may be. But even Viktor Orban, Hungarian prime minister, condemned the
> February 24 "military action" and stood for the freedom and independence of Ukraine.
> Do you really think the Pope feels any different?
>
>
>> People take this lightly, but what really is going on
>> is that Vatican sees it in the most ugly way, they really do think, and
>> behave towards humans, like humans are their stupid sheep.
>> I even went to Catholic kindergarten, and as a really small kid I
>> noticed how soulless those nuns are. They were behaving towards children
>> as they are things, like they are not something worthy.
>
> That was before the end of the Vatican II council, and I too had
> that influence back then. We didn't even know what the word
> "atheist" meant until secondary school! The word was never spoken or written.
>
> However , the religious Sisters who taught us were a very mixed bunch.
> Two of them treated us as good individuals. Two others were tyrants and sadists,
> and they were our first and second grade teachers! The second grade
> teacher was not as bad as the first in that respect, but she taught
> us insane stories about children (totally unlike us) who were "saintly."

We had one nice old nun, she was really nice, and her duty was to
watch on us. But the rest were just robots doing their robotic, soulless
things, like they are on a different level, separated from humans.

>> Anyway, I didn't learn anything in Sunday School, I didn't like that I
>> had to use my free Sundays for it (at that time normal school was from
>> Monday to Saturday), so as soon as I got first Communion I stopped to go
>> there (my sisters continued with it).
>
> I'm curious to know how you got influenced the way I suspected.
> Was it the daily media?

Oh, I wrote this in some other post, you may find it. If you don't
find it, I'll repeat.

Mario Petrinovic

unread,

Aug 22, 2023, 3:32:18 PM8/22/23

to

Uh, yes, Croats are Gregorian. I don't know which is which, I confused
things, Croats - Gregorian, Serbs - Julian (I hope this is correct, I
really don't know which name is which). Anyway, Croats celebrate like
the rest of the world, while Serbs celebrate like it was before.

>>> So at Christmas it was a time for celebration for Croats. But it was so huge
>>> celebration that even young Serbs would come to Zagreb Cathedral and
>>> have fun. So, nothing like you think was happening in Yugoslavia,
>>> Christianity was tolerated, especially if you know that Vatican actually
>>> works for communists.
>
> I cannot know something that is not so. When you were almost an adult,
> the Catholic world was astounded by the new Pope being a Pole--
> the first non-Italian elected Pope in four centuries.
>
> Then it got a shock when an assassination attempt was made on
> John Paul II. It later was determined that the would-be assassin
> was the agent of Soviets. So where was the Vatican working
> for communists, eh?

To set things strait, communist don't work for Vatican, Vatican works
for communists. Communists don't want competing religion, while Pope
uses communists for fight against West. Pope cannot fight alone, he
doesn't have army, he is using communists. And Muslim migrants. Anybody.
In America it is using poor people from Latin America to invade USA.
Pope is using anybody, anywhere, anytime, against West.

>> Oh yes, it was big celebration, loud, with firecrackers. Actually, it
>> was the only occasion when you could hit firecracker behind a policeman
>> (police was very austere back then), and he wouldn't do anything about
>> it, :) .
>
> What, no firecrackers on New Year's Eve?

We had few firecrackers celebrating Christmas, and wide use of
firecrackers on New Years Eve. Then we had holiday, one day for
Christmas, and two days for New Year, now we have two days for
Christmas, and one day for New Year.

Peter Nyikos

unread,

Aug 23, 2023, 3:53:26 PM8/23/23

to

On Friday, August 18, 2023 at 10:15:14 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> On 8/18/23 6:50 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:

> > Harshman, you are getting to be as flagrant at trolling as JTEM.

> Your characterization of everything here is grossly erroneous. But I see
> there's no point in talking to you.

Stop grandstanding, liar. You could easily have extricated yourself at the beginning
by saying something like:

"Correction: I meant to say that the beak is not the *only*
thing involved in woodpeckers digging into bark.

But you just kept on digging yourself in deeper, as I show below.

> > Mario, take note: you were right about Harshman, and if you've needed
> > any more proof for warning others about him, you have it below.
> >
> > On Friday, August 18, 2023 at 8:53:49 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> >> On 8/18/23 5:25 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>> On Friday, August 18, 2023 at 6:50:34 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> >>>> On 8/18/23 1:40 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>>>> On Tuesday, August 15, 2023 at 8:06:40 PM UTC-4, Mario Petrinovic wrote:
> >>>>>> On 16.8.2023. 0:56, John Harshman wrote:
> >>>>>>> On 8/15/23 2:08 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>>>>>>> On Tuesday, August 15, 2023 at 2:55:14 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>>>>> It's not the beak that lets woodpeckers dig into bark.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>>>> So all that hammering on trees is just for attracting attention???

This would have been a perfect time to say what I suggested above just now.
And it would not have caused you any loss of face, only a trifling bit of embarrassment.
But your hubris wouldn't let you do it.

Your curt two-line response to everything in this post is typical of another
destructive aspect to your overall behavior.

You are like a one-ton shark at the end of a five-pound-test line. If I pull too hard,
as I apparently did at the end, the line breaks and you swim away, free to be equally perverse another day.
But if I pull too gently lest the line break, you try to lord it over me like you did with
your first response, and in the majority of replies you do to me.

You just ran out of ideas to get the upper hand this third time around.

Peter Nyikos

PS I left in the whole documentation below, so that anyone who thinks I
am being unfair to you can check for themselves how the whole thing unfolded.

> >>>>>>> Notice that while all birds have beaks, it's only the woodpeckers that
> >>>>>>> do the hammering. So it can't be the possession of a beak that matters
> >>>>>>> for this adaptation. Woodpeckers have a number of special anatomical
> >>>>>>> adaptations that should be detectable in a theropod skeleton if the
> >>>>>>> comparison were apt.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> And in fact a high proportion of that hammering *is* just for attracting
> >>>>>>> attention. It's called "drumming".
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> I really have hard time to understand how somebody can make such
> >>>>>> faulty conclusions?
> >>>>>
> >>>>> It would be a lot harder, if not impossible, if you had not deleted
> >>>>> a really stupid comment by Harshman, which I have restored.
> >>>>> Notice how he completely changed the subject and then
> >>>>> said something that indirectly revealed that what he had claimed earlier
> >>>>> was indeed an abysmally stupid comment.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> All birds have beaks, and all birds do various niches, eat various
> >>>>>> food, and have various behavior. How you came to conclusions that birds
> >>>>>> in the beginning did various niches, ate various food, and had various
> >>>>>> behavior, is behind my ability to comprehend.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Instead of nailing Harshman on his stupidity and his attempt to wiggle out of it,
> >>>>> you say something that doesn't fit anything he had said earlier.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Maybe you wouldn't make such mistakes if you slowed down to about
> >>>>> half as many posts per day as you do now, and spread out over
> >>>>> more than one thread. Next week I'll be starting a thread on pterosaurs,
> >>>>> so if you are interested in them, you can talk about them on the same days
> >>>>> you talk about birds.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> Of course the first bird
> >>>>>> occupied only one niche, ate only one kind of food, and had only one
> >>>>>> type of behavior. Now, the question is, which one?
> >>>>>> Woodpeckers evolved over time special anatomical adaptations, in the
> >>>>>> beginning they were very similar to other similar dinosaurs. I mean,
> >>>>>> bears emerged from bear-dogs, and didn't occupy all the niches that
> >>>>>> today's bears occupy, and probably even didn't eat honey, or fish, and
> >>>>>> didn't have today's bear adaptations, thye looked more like dogs. I
> >>>>>> mean, you are writing in the paleontology forum for god's sake, you got
> >>>>>> to have some basic understandings of those things. At least.
> >>>>>> So, woodpeckers are that way because they are drumming. Or are they
> >>>>>> drumming because they are that way? Jesus Christ, the older you get, the
> >>>>>> crazier you are.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> If you had not hurried so much through this paragraph, you might
> >>>>> have realized that you aren't referring to anything Harshman explicitly wrote.
> >>>>> Just think of how you could have been even more critical
> >>>>> of what he actually did write!
> >>>
> >>>> I get tired of posts where you say I'm saying something stupid but don't
> >>>> manage to explain just what's stupid about it.
> >
> > You will get them all the time if you continue to say abysmally
> > stupid things and then lie about what you said, like you do below.
> >
> >>> You are indulging in the moral equivalent of a frivolous lawsuit.
> >
> >> Am I? But you don't say how. Again, you say I've done something bad
> >> without managing to explain what's bad about it.
> >
> > You are just adding to your frivolous lawsuit equivalent. Read on.
> >
> >
> >>>> I'm not even sure what
> >>>> comment you're talking about.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> As if it weren't obvious:
> >>>
> >>> "It's not the beak that lets woodpeckers dig into bark."
> >>>
> >>> So tell me, turkey, what DOES let them dig into bark,
> >>> now that you have eliminated their beaks?
> >
> >> You misunderstand the comment, though perhaps I wasn't sufficiently
> >> clear.
> >
> > There is no other way to read the comment, liar.
> >
> > (And why the gratuitous "turkey"?)
> >
> > Poor baby. You once gaslighted me with an accusation of megalomania,
> > a clinical form of insanity, when I was only a wee bit melodramatic.
> >
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting
> >
> > [I wrote "Poor baby" instead of "Hypocrite" because you are used to having
> > that word go like water off a duck's back.]
> >
> >
> >> As I said,
> >
> > You are just filibustering below and making no attempt to clarify the abysmally stupid thing you wrote.
> >
> >> all birds have
> >> beaks but only woodpeckers hammer trees with them. Therefore, having
> >> beaks is not sufficient for hammering trees, and we can't claim that
> >> early birds did so just because they had beaks. Further, since early
> >> birds lacked the skeletal adaptations that enable woodpeckers to hammer
> >> trees, the evidence suggests that they did not. And beaks therefore did
> >> not evolve for the purpose of hammering trees.
> >>
> >> (It occurs to me, however, that advanced alvarezsaurs like Mononykus
> >> might conceivably have done some tree-hammering, though not with their
> >> noses.)
> >
> >>
> >> So how much of that was stupid, and if so, why?
> >
> > Writing a bunch of interesting facts does not cancel out the fact that
> > you said something abysmally stupid, then lied when confronted by what you had done.
> >
> >
> > Peter Nyikos

John Harshman

unread,

Aug 23, 2023, 6:31:42 PM8/23/23

to

On 8/23/23 12:53 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Friday, August 18, 2023 at 10:15:14 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
>> On 8/18/23 6:50 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
>>> Harshman, you are getting to be as flagrant at trolling as JTEM.
>
>> Your characterization of everything here is grossly erroneous. But I see
>> there's no point in talking to you.
>
> Stop grandstanding, liar. You could easily have extricated yourself at the beginning
> by saying something like:
>
> "Correction: I meant to say that the beak is not the *only*
> thing involved in woodpeckers digging into bark.
>
> But you just kept on digging yourself in deeper, as I show below.

You show nothing below. Much of your online life happens in your
imagination.

>>> Mario, take note: you were right about Harshman, and if you've needed
>>> any more proof for warning others about him, you have it below.
>>>
>>> On Friday, August 18, 2023 at 8:53:49 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
>>>> On 8/18/23 5:25 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>>>> On Friday, August 18, 2023 at 6:50:34 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
>>>>>> On 8/18/23 1:40 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>>>>>> On Tuesday, August 15, 2023 at 8:06:40 PM UTC-4, Mario Petrinovic wrote:
>>>>>>>> On 16.8.2023. 0:56, John Harshman wrote:
>>>>>>>>> On 8/15/23 2:08 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>>>>>>>>> On Tuesday, August 15, 2023 at 2:55:14 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> It's not the beak that lets woodpeckers dig into bark.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> So all that hammering on trees is just for attracting attention???
>
> This would have been a perfect time to say what I suggested above just now.
> And it would not have caused you any loss of face, only a trifling bit of embarrassment.
> But your hubris wouldn't let you do it.
>
>
> Your curt two-line response to everything in this post is typical of another
> destructive aspect to your overall behavior.
>
> You are like a one-ton shark at the end of a five-pound-test line. If I pull too hard,
> as I apparently did at the end, the line breaks and you swim away, free to be equally perverse another day.
> But if I pull too gently lest the line break, you try to lord it over me like you did with
> your first response, and in the majority of replies you do to me.
>
> You just ran out of ideas to get the upper hand this third time around.

I have no interest in getting the upper hand or in lording it over you.
Are we done yet?

Peter Nyikos

unread,

Aug 25, 2023, 5:53:28 PM8/25/23

to

Harshman, you've painted yourself tightly into a corner where a stupid comment
you made about woodpeckers has been the issue. I told you that your hubris
has kept you from using the lifeline I've tossed you. Now I will demonstrate,
going back to the original exchange between us, why I use the word "hubris."

But don't go away already: I have some interesting comments that
may not offend you before I get into the corner into which you've painted yourself.

On Tuesday, August 15, 2023 at 6:56:30 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> On 8/15/23 2:08 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Tuesday, August 15, 2023 at 2:55:14 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:

> >> On 8/15/23 8:32 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >
> >>> It's great to see you posting here again, Mario. Don't be discouraged
> >>> by my corrections. That's a good way to learn, and Harshman might
> >>> have made the same points you did, because he subscribes to the
> >>> hypotheses that have been popularized about feather development.
> >>>
> >>> The popularizers refer to all kinds of things as "feathers":
> >>> hairlike growths, several such growths from the same root, hairlike growths
> >>> that are frayed like the ends of some of the longer hairs
> >>> of one of my daughters. . . . These are found on some dinosaur fossils--
> >>> only a tiny percentage even now, because these things do not fossilize easily.
> >
> >>> But I do not know of any genuine feathers on fossils that cannot
> >>> be hypothesized as secondarily flightless birds. So I call all these things
> >>> "protofeathers" and some of them just "dinofuzz."
> >
> >> Can't any fossil be hypothesized as secondarily flightless?

> > Not unless you call wild stabs in the dark (including highly
> > counterintuitive ones) "hypotheses."

> So you would need some kind of evidence in order to reasonably suppose
> that a dinosaur was secondarily flightless. What evidence are you
> thinking of here?

You will find a lot in a book you've pronounced "mostly useless" with initials
RotFD [1] on page 173. Plenty of evidence there that *Caudipteryx* was
a secondarily flightless bird, with plumaceous feathers, and evidence
of being descended from birds with flight remiges. Where is your evidence
to the contrary?

[1] No, it isn't "Rolling on the Floor Dying [of laughter]." The last two
words are "Feathered Dragons".

> >> So how is
> >> that a test? What's the scientific distinction between "genuine
> >> feathers" and "protofeathers"?
> >
> > Since you are the ornithologist here, you should be giving the
> > scientific distinction, if there is one. I doubt that there is one.

> That's right, there is none. So why are you making this distinction?

It took me a long time to remember, but there is such a word,
one undoubtedly familiar to you:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennaceous_feather

good old Thomas Holtz, a frequent participant in s.b.p. in the 1990's, is featured in a link to
a webpage where he plays a prominent role:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maniraptoriformes

A nice detailed phylogenetic tree of this clade is included, along with an old fashioned
character-based definition of an almost identical group by Gregory S. Paul,
the author of two Princeton Field Guides [one to dinosaurs, one to pterosaurs] that
I've been talking about here in s.b.p.

> >>> On Tuesday, August 15, 2023 at 2:00:19 AM UTC-4, Mario Petrinovic wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> Dinosaurs had feathers before that (probably because feathers are good
> >>>> for water, unlike fur).
> >>>
> >>> And unlike down. A mother ostrich always shelters her babies in the midst
> >>> of a downpour, to protect them from hypothermia.
> >
> >> Then again, downy ducklings do just find in the water. There must be
> >> some way to make down work in an aquatic bird.
> >
> > It's called "oils," isn't it?
> >
> > I'm reminded of a delightful children's book by Vladimir Suteyev [Cyrillic: CYTEEB]
> > in which the first story shows a chick imitating a duckling digging, catching a worm,...
> > until it jumps in the water after the duckling and starts to drown. Heeding its cries for help,
> > the duckling pulls the chick out of the water. The last picture shows the chick out on solid ground
> > with water pouring off it and the duckling telling the chick that he is returning to the water,
> > with the chick responding, "But not I!"

> Don't know that one, but it sounds reasonable (the drowning, not the
> rest of it). And presumably this has something to do with differences in
> grooming habits and use of the preen gland secretions.

Like I said, "oils."

> >>> Down would be an advanced kind of protofeather, as would the feathers of kiwis,
> >>> which lack barbules and hooks, IF they or down had ever been found
> >>> as Mesozoic fossils predating birds with genuine feathers.
> >>> But I don't know of any examples.

Don't you know either, John? I mean, of fossils of down, or of "feathers" like the ones
of kwis, predating the first birds with pennaceous feathers.

> >>>
> >>>> Some small dinosaurs ate insects. At that time
> >>>> there was more oxygen in the air,
> >
> > This is controversial, according to the book,
> > _The Princeton Field Guide to Pterosaurs_.
> > I now have my own copy, and I'll be starting a new thread for an in-depth review this week.
> >
> >
> >>>> insects were bigger. So, some
> >>>> dinosaurs were trying to reach insects that were living in tree barks,
> >>>> so they hardened their muzzles into beaks, like woodpeckers.
> >>>
> >>> Very plausible. Did you read this somewhere, or did you figure
> >>> it out for yourself?

OK, here comes the corner:

> >> It's not the beak that lets woodpeckers dig into bark.
> >
> > So all that hammering on trees is just for attracting attention???

Note the word "just". You ignored it in your answer, yet it is the logical
outgrowth of the way your stupid sentence is worded.

> Notice that while all birds have beaks, it's only the woodpeckers that
> do the hammering. So it can't be the possession of a beak that matters
> for this adaptation. Woodpeckers have a number of special anatomical
> adaptations that should be detectable in a theropod skeleton if the
> comparison were apt.
>
> And in fact a high proportion of that hammering *is* just for attracting
> attention. It's called "drumming".

If my use of "just" didn't register, a red flag should have gone up in your mind
after reading this:

> > You really ought to consider your audience when you give
> > comments that are likely to induce double-takes.

But all you wrote was:

> It's hard to be sure how much the audience knows.

This is either stupefying cluelessness or *hubris* at work.

Believe it or not, I am such an astute audience member
that I thought you *might* have some arcane distinction in mind.
For instance, that you distinguish between the beak,
which you define as the bony part of the bill, and the horny sheath that covers it,
and that you think it is the latter that really lets woodpeckers dig into the bark.

That's why I put three question marks into my immediate response,
and why I made that remark about "double-takes." But your bland
response made me strongly suspect that you had no
arcane distinction in mind, and I was right: you didn't.

The rest is history that is still unfolding between us.

Concluded in next reply, to be done soon after I see that this one has posted.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of So. Carolina in Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

Peter Nyikos

unread,

Aug 25, 2023, 6:29:30 PM8/25/23

to

On Tuesday, August 15, 2023 at 6:56:30 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> On 8/15/23 2:08 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Tuesday, August 15, 2023 at 2:55:14 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:

> >> And the average
> >> maniraptoran doesn't have a beak. Nor is there any evidence I'm aware of
> >> that insects were in general bigger in the Mesozoic.
> >
> > Nor I.

But then, Mario posted something that indicates that there is evidence.
The Mesozoic average size was greater than the Cenozoic, even though
there were ups and downs in both eras. But the Paleozoic records were
unsurpassed.

> > The real biggies were during the Paleozoic. Also, at one point
> > there were millipedes two meters long and the better part of a meter wide.
> > I saw a model of one in a museum about a decade ago.

> So did I, and the fossil it was based on. Always thought it would have
> made a good bench.

Or a good corrugated sidewalk, or a hammock for a person who prefers
to "rough it" without a cloth hammock.

But the Eurypterids were the largest arthropods known. They were
confined to the Paleozoic, and may have survived until the greatest
mass extinction of which we know, the Permian-Triassic one.

Here's another misnomer for Mario: eurypterids are popularly
called "sea scorpions," but many were fresh water species and
may even have made forays out of the water. I don't know whether
the greatest giants, almost 9 feet long, were among these.
One could make a good horror/science fiction flick out of
such material.

> >> On 8/15/23 8:32 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>> On Tuesday, August 15, 2023 at 2:00:19 AM UTC-4, Mario Petrinovic wrote:

> >>>> Since they
> >>>> were eating from tree bark, they had to climb tree (like squirrels).
> >>>> Weight is deteriorating force for climbing, so those animals became
> >>>> lightweight. And, at the end, they stopped to go down to the ground to
> >>>> reach the other tree, but started to behave like flying squirrels.
> >>>
> >>> So far, so good.
> >>>
> >>>> Simple as that. Everything logical, everything gradual, and for
> >>>> everything we have examples in nature (maybe only not for beaks, but for
> >>>> flying sure we do have).
> >>>
> >>> But NOT for feathers. Have you ever studied the intricate structure of
> >>> a contour feather, a flight feather [they are very asymmetrical -- do you know why?]
> >>> or a tail feather? Can you figure out a gradual evolution for them?

IIRC Mario never addressed this question.

> > You obviously have some strange ideas for what the word "gradual" meant
> > to Darwin; that's the default meaning of the word in these contexts, isn't it?
> >
> >> See Prum & Brush 2001. I presume you have read that already.
> >
> > Yes, but all it shows are a few isolated stages. Since they don't believe in hopeful monsters,
> > they are leaving out dozens if not hundreds of finely graded steps between
> > hairlike growths and feathers that are complete with calamus, central shaft, barbs, barbules and hooks.

> Hundreds are probably not necessary. A few incipient structures that can
> then be refined by selection, more likely.

Selection needing mere dozens of finely graded steps? Why didn't you
help me out when I was trying to persuade Kleinman ON HIS OWN MATHEMATICAL TERMS
how "reptiles could grow feathers" in 40 million years? I might have
been able to cut that number in half.

> > PS On the whole, I prefer JTEM's post to yours. But there is a very recent exception
> > to what he says, and I'll tell him about it.

> On the whole, I think you have quite bad judgment on matters like that,
> possibly due to personal bias.

I think it is YOUR personal bias that makes you write such things. And now you
know the reason why I said what I did -- see my first reply to this post of yours, John.

You aren't getting off the hook until you admit that I was NOT biased towards JTEM in
*this* particular instance. [keywords: beak, digging].

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics

University of So. Carolina -- standard disclaimer--
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

Mario Petrinovic

unread,

Aug 25, 2023, 7:27:12 PM8/25/23

to

On 26.8.2023. 0:29, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>>>>> Simple as that. Everything logical, everything gradual, and for
>>>>>> everything we have examples in nature (maybe only not for beaks, but for
>>>>>> flying sure we do have).
>>>>>
>>>>> But NOT for feathers. Have you ever studied the intricate structure of
>>>>> a contour feather, a flight feather [they are very asymmetrical -- do you know why?]
>>>>> or a tail feather? Can you figure out a gradual evolution for them?
>
> IIRC Mario never addressed this question.

The question was about evolution of feathers, I just said that in my
view feathers evolved because of water. But that's just superficial, I
have no deeper knowledge.

John Harshman

unread,

Aug 27, 2023, 9:37:41 AM8/27/23

to

On 8/25/23 2:53 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> Harshman, you've painted yourself tightly into a corner where a stupid comment
> you made about woodpeckers has been the issue. I told you that your hubris
> has kept you from using the lifeline I've tossed you. Now I will demonstrate,
> going back to the original exchange between us, why I use the word "hubris."

The fact is that you're very bad at understanding what people are
saying. Part of this is due to your strong desire to place the least
charitable possible interpretation on anything said by people you don't
like. And in the process you ignore any clues from context.

> But don't go away already: I have some interesting comments that
> may not offend you before I get into the corner into which you've painted yourself.

We'll see.

I don't currently have access to that book. Could you mention some of
that evidence? Caudipteryx of course does have feathers with barbs
arranged in parallel. Not at this point sure that it had barbules or
that they were interlocking. But of course if that were the evidence,
the claim would be circular. What does Feduccia mention?

> [1] No, it isn't "Rolling on the Floor Dying [of laughter]." The last two
> words are "Feathered Dragons".
>
>
>
>>>> So how is
>>>> that a test? What's the scientific distinction between "genuine
>>>> feathers" and "protofeathers"?
>>>
>>> Since you are the ornithologist here, you should be giving the
>>> scientific distinction, if there is one. I doubt that there is one.
>
>> That's right, there is none. So why are you making this distinction?
>
> It took me a long time to remember, but there is such a word,
> one undoubtedly familiar to you:
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennaceous_feather
>
> good old Thomas Holtz, a frequent participant in s.b.p. in the 1990's, is featured in a link to
> a webpage where he plays a prominent role:
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maniraptoriformes
>
> A nice detailed phylogenetic tree of this clade is included, along with an old fashioned
> character-based definition of an almost identical group by Gregory S. Paul,
> the author of two Princeton Field Guides [one to dinosaurs, one to pterosaurs] that
> I've been talking about here in s.b.p.

If I can decipher this, you mean to use "pennaceous" rather than
"genuine" in the future. Is that it?

>>>>> On Tuesday, August 15, 2023 at 2:00:19 AM UTC-4, Mario Petrinovic wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Dinosaurs had feathers before that (probably because feathers are good
>>>>>> for water, unlike fur).
>>>>>
>>>>> And unlike down. A mother ostrich always shelters her babies in the midst
>>>>> of a downpour, to protect them from hypothermia.
>>>
>>>> Then again, downy ducklings do just find in the water. There must be
>>>> some way to make down work in an aquatic bird.
>>>
>>> It's called "oils," isn't it?
>>>
>>> I'm reminded of a delightful children's book by Vladimir Suteyev [Cyrillic: CYTEEB]
>>> in which the first story shows a chick imitating a duckling digging, catching a worm,...
>>> until it jumps in the water after the duckling and starts to drown. Heeding its cries for help,
>>> the duckling pulls the chick out of the water. The last picture shows the chick out on solid ground
>>> with water pouring off it and the duckling telling the chick that he is returning to the water,
>>> with the chick responding, "But not I!"
>
>> Don't know that one, but it sounds reasonable (the drowning, not the
>> rest of it). And presumably this has something to do with differences in
>> grooming habits and use of the preen gland secretions.
>
> Like I said, "oils."

Variously called oils and waxes, sure.

>>>>> Down would be an advanced kind of protofeather, as would the feathers of kiwis,
>>>>> which lack barbules and hooks, IF they or down had ever been found
>>>>> as Mesozoic fossils predating birds with genuine feathers.
>>>>> But I don't know of any examples.
>
> Don't you know either, John? I mean, of fossils of down, or of "feathers" like the ones
> of kwis, predating the first birds with pennaceous feathers.

Given the nature of the fossil record, it's too much to expect a simple
temporal sequence. You would be better to ask if there is such a
sequence in the reconstructed phylogeny. Many maniraptorans have
branched feathers lacking interlocking barbules. Even Sinosauropteryx
appears to have bundles of fibers growing from a central point, though
the fibers themselves are not branched.

>>>>>> Some small dinosaurs ate insects. At that time
>>>>>> there was more oxygen in the air,
>>>
>>> This is controversial, according to the book,
>>> _The Princeton Field Guide to Pterosaurs_.
>>> I now have my own copy, and I'll be starting a new thread for an in-depth review this week.
>>>
>>>
>>>>>> insects were bigger. So, some
>>>>>> dinosaurs were trying to reach insects that were living in tree barks,
>>>>>> so they hardened their muzzles into beaks, like woodpeckers.
>>>>>
>>>>> Very plausible. Did you read this somewhere, or did you figure
>>>>> it out for yourself?
>
>
> OK, here comes the corner:
>
>>>> It's not the beak that lets woodpeckers dig into bark.
>>>
>>> So all that hammering on trees is just for attracting attention???
>
> Note the word "just". You ignored it in your answer, yet it is the logical
> outgrowth of the way your stupid sentence is worded.

In fact it has nothing to do with the way my stupid sentence is worded.
And you entirely ignore the context.

>> Notice that while all birds have beaks, it's only the woodpeckers that
>> do the hammering. So it can't be the possession of a beak that matters
>> for this adaptation. Woodpeckers have a number of special anatomical
>> adaptations that should be detectable in a theropod skeleton if the
>> comparison were apt.
>>
>> And in fact a high proportion of that hammering *is* just for attracting
>> attention. It's called "drumming".
>
> If my use of "just" didn't register, a red flag should have gone up in your mind
> after reading this:
>
>>> You really ought to consider your audience when you give
>>> comments that are likely to induce double-takes.
>
> But all you wrote was:
>
>> It's hard to be sure how much the audience knows.
>
> This is either stupefying cluelessness or *hubris* at work.
>
> Believe it or not, I am such an astute audience member
> that I thought you *might* have some arcane distinction in mind.
> For instance, that you distinguish between the beak,
> which you define as the bony part of the bill, and the horny sheath that covers it,
> and that you think it is the latter that really lets woodpeckers dig into the bark.

I wouldn't call that astute, and it's placing a very uncharitable
interpretation on what I said, as is your habit.

> That's why I put three question marks into my immediate response,
> and why I made that remark about "double-takes." But your bland
> response made me strongly suspect that you had no
> arcane distinction in mind, and I was right: you didn't.
>
> The rest is history that is still unfolding between us.

Extremely boring and useless history, essentially your quest to make me
into an idiot inside your head, rather than an actual attempt to
understand what I said.