The Cambrian and Paleocene Explosions

[Peter Nyikos]

After the great end-of-Cretaceous extinction, an explosion of mammalian
types occurred during the Paleocene epoch which is a sort of microcosm
of the much more famous Cambrian explosion.

There are many parallels between the two explosions. One is the discrepancy
between "molecular clock" estimates and fossil-based estimates. In the
case of the Cambrian explosion of bilaterian types, the former puts the
deepest split (between protostomes and deuterostomes) around 670 mya,
the latter around 560 mya. In the case of the Paleocene explosion
of Placentalia, the former once went deep into the Cretaceous but is
now somewhere near 80 my. As for the latter, there is a concluding
remark in a long and fascinating paper:

No definitive crown-placental mammal has yet been found
from the Cretaceous...
Source:
"Resolving the relationships of Paleocene placental mammals"
by Thomas J. D. Halliday, Paul Upchurch and Anjali Goswami,
soon to appear in _Biological Reviews_:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/brv.12242/full

This fact would suggest that the Paleocene explosion was just that:
a rapid diversification starting just around the beginning of the
Paleocene, 65 mya. There is a reasonable hypothesis that the Cambrian
explosion has the same relationship to the Cambrian period, 542 mya.

About the term "crown-placental": a crown group is a clade of
organisms which includes the last common ancestor (LCA) of the extant
members along with all descendants, extant or extinct, of the LCA.

The placental crown group is, by definition, the clade Placentalia.
"placental" is not self-explanatory, by the way: it includes
the non-marsupial mammals with placentas, and only those.

[Most marsupials have a chorio-vitelline placenta, but some have
a chorio-allantoic placenta. All give birth to extremely early
offspring, but then so do some rodents.]

I have a lot more to say about the parallels between these
explosions, but I don't want to make this OP any longer than
it already is.

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

[John Harshman]

On 2/8/16 2:48 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> After the great end-of-Cretaceous extinction, an explosion of mammalian
> types occurred during the Paleocene epoch which is a sort of microcosm
> of the much more famous Cambrian explosion.
>
> There are many parallels between the two explosions. One is the discrepancy
> between "molecular clock" estimates and fossil-based estimates. In the
> case of the Cambrian explosion of bilaterian types, the former puts the
> deepest split (between protostomes and deuterostomes) around 670 mya,
> the latter around 560 mya. In the case of the Paleocene explosion
> of Placentalia, the former once went deep into the Cretaceous but is
> now somewhere near 80 my. As for the latter, there is a concluding
> remark in a long and fascinating paper:
>
> No definitive crown-placental mammal has yet been found
> from the Cretaceous...
> Source:
> "Resolving the relationships of Paleocene placental mammals"
> by Thomas J. D. Halliday, Paul Upchurch and Anjali Goswami,
> soon to appear in _Biological Reviews_:
> http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/brv.12242/full
>
> This fact would suggest that the Paleocene explosion was just that:
> a rapid diversification starting just around the beginning of the
> Paleocene, 65 mya. There is a reasonable hypothesis that the Cambrian
> explosion has the same relationship to the Cambrian period, 542 mya.

I don't think anyone doubts that there was a major radiation of mammals
in the Paleocene, for the obvious reason that it's a recovery from a
mass extinction. The question is whether that radiation has deeper
roots, i.e. how many placental lineages passed through the K/T boundary.
The extreme number would be one, the ancestral placental. Or it could be
dozens, many of which gave rise to modern or extinct orders. Or
somewhere in between.

Are you now claiming that the Cambrian explosion began at or near the
beginning of the Cambrian? On what basis? We don't see clear fossils
from most phyla (of those with significant fossil records) until
Cambrian Stage 3. And we see signs of metazoan diversification beginning
in the latest Precambrian. Or is 542ma just a convenient but arbitrary
number?

> About the term "crown-placental": a crown group is a clade of
> organisms which includes the last common ancestor (LCA) of the extant
> members along with all descendants, extant or extinct, of the LCA.
>
> The placental crown group is, by definition, the clade Placentalia.
> "placental" is not self-explanatory, by the way: it includes
> the non-marsupial mammals with placentas, and only those.
>
> [Most marsupials have a chorio-vitelline placenta, but some have
> a chorio-allantoic placenta. All give birth to extremely early
> offspring, but then so do some rodents.]

I didn't know any marsupials had chorio-allantoaic placentas. Do you
have a reference?

[Peter Nyikos]

On Monday, February 8, 2016 at 6:20:24 PM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
> On 2/8/16 2:48 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:

> > No definitive crown-placental mammal has yet been found
> > from the Cretaceous...
> > Source:
> > "Resolving the relationships of Paleocene placental mammals"
> > by Thomas J. D. Halliday, Paul Upchurch and Anjali Goswami,
> > soon to appear in _Biological Reviews_:
> > http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/brv.12242/full
> >
> > This fact would suggest that the Paleocene explosion was just that:
> > a rapid diversification starting just around the beginning of the
> > Paleocene, 65 mya. There is a reasonable hypothesis that the Cambrian
> > explosion has the same relationship to the Cambrian period, 542 mya.
>
> I don't think anyone doubts that there was a major radiation of mammals
> in the Paleocene, for the obvious reason that it's a recovery from a
> mass extinction. The question is whether that radiation has deeper
> roots, i.e. how many placental lineages passed through the K/T boundary.
> The extreme number would be one, the ancestral placental. Or it could be
> dozens, many of which gave rise to modern or extinct orders. Or
> somewhere in between.

Yes, we can discuss this later, along with similar issues about
the Cambrian explosion which you asked about. But now I have a technical
question for you that I don't think anyone else will be interested in
and few others can answer.

> > About the term "crown-placental": a crown group is a clade of
> > organisms which includes the last common ancestor (LCA) of the extant
> > members along with all descendants, extant or extinct, of the LCA.

I've got "crown group" down pat, and I thought I also had the concept
of "stem group" down pat, but the article keeps using the term
"stem eutherian" for what I would call "stem Placentalian"
since IIRC you told me that the stem _____________ is all animals
more closely related to crown _______________ than they are to the
nearest other crown group.

But as I understand it, "Eutheria" is what I would call
"total Placentalia" and the article talks about Cimolestes
as a "stem eutherian," but it's obviously what I understand
to be an eutherian.

To make matters worse, here is one excerpt from the article:

*Peramus*, *Deltatheridium*, and *Bobolestes* were set as
sequential outgroup taxa in the constraint, as all
are unambiguous stem eutherians (McKenna & Bell, 1997),
in order to ensure that trees were rooted appropriately.

Now *Bobolestes* is by all accounts I've seen what I would call a
"stem placental" or "non-placental eutherian." But every
site that came up on the first page of a web search has
*Deltatheridium* as a metatherian ("stem-marsupial"),
and *Peramus* is specifically listed by McKenna & Bell (1997)
as sister group to *Tribosphenida* and so it is what I would
call a "stem therian" along with *Amphitherium*. See:

http://www.helsinki.fi/~mhaaramo/metazoa/deuterostoma/chordata/synapsida/basal_mammalia/cladotheria.html

See also here, where the main mammalian clades are shown:

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

Can you straighten this "stem" mess out?

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina

http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[John Harshman]

I've so far been unable to find a clear, phylogenetic definition of
Eutheria. Nor do I know what any recent phylogenetic analyses show about
various fossil mammals. But assuming your understanding is correct
(Placentalia = crown group, Eutheria = total group), then there can be
no such thing as "stem-eutherians". Stem groups don't have to be
associated with crown groups, but they do have to be associated with
node-based groups. Total groups are branch-based.

As for Deltetheridium, you might check the reference, McKenna & Bell
1997, to see what it says. If they're using it as an outgroup, it
doesn't matter what it is as long as it's outside Placentalia.

[RSNorman]

On Mon, 8 Feb 2016 18:52:37 -0800 (PST), Peter Nyikos
<nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

> . But now I have a technical
> question for you that I don't think anyone else will
> be interested in
> and few others can answer.

Bad assumption. There are probably others besides me who don't fully
understand crown and stem.

[Burkhard]

My favourite search engine, the senior common room, came up with
bandicoots if I heard correctly. But as I have no idea what we are
talking about, it could also have been an insult for badgering (no
marsupial) him over coffee.

[Peter Nyikos]

True, but...

...that still doesn't explain the claim that *Peramus* is "stem eutherian"
("unambiguously," at that!) when McKenna & Bell (1997) place it where
it is clearly a stem *therian* -- its placement only excludes monotremes.

Even if the authors meant "stem placental" each time they wrote
"stem eutherian" and even if McKenna & Bell considered Deltatheridium
to be a stem placental, this discrepancy still remains.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina

http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

[John Harshman]

Yes, that claim would appear not to be supported by their reference.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Monday, February 8, 2016 at 5:50:24 PM UTC-5, Peter Nyikos wrote:

> After the great end-of-Cretaceous extinction, an explosion of mammalian
> types occurred during the Paleocene epoch which is a sort of microcosm
> of the much more famous Cambrian explosion.
>
> There are many parallels between the two explosions. One is the discrepancy
> between "molecular clock" estimates and fossil-based estimates. In the
> case of the Cambrian explosion of bilaterian types, the former puts the
> deepest split (between protostomes and deuterostomes) around 670 mya,
> the latter around 560 mya. In the case of the Paleocene explosion
> of Placentalia, the former once went deep into the Cretaceous but is
> now somewhere near 80 my.

>As for the latter, there is a concluding
> remark in a long and fascinating paper:
>
> No definitive crown-placental mammal has yet been found
> from the Cretaceous...
> Source:
> "Resolving the relationships of Paleocene placental mammals"
> by Thomas J. D. Halliday, Paul Upchurch and Anjali Goswami,
> soon to appear in _Biological Reviews_:
> http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/brv.12242/full

Here is a more detailed passage from the text:

Many previous studies have assessed the timing of the origin
of placental mammals (Bininda-Emonds et al., 2007;
O'Leary et al., 2013), or examined changes in rates
of evolution of body size or diversification across
the K/Pg boundary (Springer et al., 2003;
Venditti, Meade & Pagel, 2011; Slater, 2013).

I believe we've discussed that 2011 paper earlier in talk.origins
or sci.bio.paleontology. To continue:

All, however, have used data sets that mostly or entirely
excluded Paleocene taxa, and therefore lack data from the
important period during which an adaptive radiation would seem,
from a strict reading of the fossil record, to have occurred.

That was one of my complaints about the previous paper on placental
phylogeny that we discussed in depth, and IIRC it was that 2011 paper.

The authors of this new paper, still awaiting release in printed form,
do address this problem, but only part way. They still leave out
two key Paleocene orders: Taeniodonta and Tillodonta.

The latter is generally accepted as a non-placental eutherian
("stem placental, or by the article's jargon, "stem eutherian")
but I have reasons for thinking it should have been included,
and will have more to say about these two orders in a later post.

Similarly, I believe that dating of the Cambrian explosion has
suffered from not including more extinct taxa, especially extinct
phyla, in the analyses. Gould had a big number of exclusively
Cambrian taxa that he considered phyla, and although many have
found their place in extant taxa, others have not.

The article continues:

These analyses, which have mostly used divergence estimates
from molecular dating techniques, have tended to favour a 'mid'
to Late Cretaceous origin of placental orders and superorders
(Springer et al., 2003; Bininda-Emonds et al., 2007; dos Reis et al., 2012).
However, despite numerous suggestions of Cretaceous placentals,
no Cretaceous eutherian mammal has been unambiguously resolved
within the placental crown (Wible et al., 2009; Goswami et al., 2011).
The earliest definitive members of crown orders are mostly known
from the Late Paleocene or Eocene. A Cretaceous origin would
therefore require the existence of long ghost lineages. Additionally,
it has been suggested that clock models suffer from artefacts
resulting from historical changes in evolutionary rate (Beck & Lee, 2014).
Estimating the date of origin of placental mammals and reconstructing
their response to the end-Cretaceous mass extinction are therefore
highly contingent on method and data set.

The big discrepancy between molecular and fossil evidence for the
Cambrian explosion may have also been due to changes in evolutionary
rate, and that would favor the fossil over the molecular evidence
to a considerable degree.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina

http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/
nyikos @ math.sc.edu

[erik simpson]

Dating promblems with the divergences in placental mammals seems to me quite
different from dating the divergences in basal metazoa. The biggest problem
with the Paleocene fossils is in classifying the fossils with regards to
their taxonomic relationships. The Cambrian difficulty is the lack of
diagnosible fossils earlier than Cambrian stage 3. It's clear that a lot of
genetic diversification took place earlier, since stage 3 fossils have
representatives of many crown clades. As you recognize, Gould's acceptance of
some of the very early interpretations of the Burgess Shale "weird wonders" was
overly enthusiastic. Problematica remain, but aren't much use is calibrating
anything until they lose their problematic status. Almost all the Ediacaran
fossils are problematic.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Monday, February 8, 2016 at 5:50:24 PM UTC-5, Peter Nyikos wrote:

> After the great end-of-Cretaceous extinction, an explosion of mammalian
> types occurred during the Paleocene epoch which is a sort of microcosm
> of the much more famous Cambrian explosion.
>
> There are many parallels between the two explosions.

Both have fossil "wild cards" that could really affect the timing of
the beginning of the explosion, even if we ignore the molecular data.

I've posted the other day, on that "purple sock" thread, about the
enigmatic Ediacaran (558 -550?) animal Kimberella. If it is a bilaterian,
it is the ONLY confirmed bilaterian from before the Cambrian (from 543 mya).
All other confirmed metazoans from Precambrian deposits are sponges and
Cnidarans.

________________excerpt from reply to Erik Simpson_____________

> The suggestion that Kimberella may be a basal mollusc
> would place it quite a ways up the tree from basal bilaterian.

Yes, and there are those who think the case is closed on it being
a mollusc, but there are some strong dissenting voices, including some
Russians who may be intimately familiar with the White Sea specimens.

I think we've covered this ground before. The mollusc hypothesis rests
largely on scrapings that are reminiscent of marks made by a radula,
but there are important differences. See the part beginning with
Notably, the scratch marks indicate that the 'teeth' were
dragged towards the organism, not pushed away as in molluscs,
and that the maximum impact on the sediment was when the mouthpart
was furthest from the organism.[15]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimberella

========================== end of excerpt from

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/talk.origins/NhQkaaKkygI/m45wjCfeFwAJ
Message-ID: <65d1692f-a48d-4207...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Mystery of deep-sea 'purple sock' solved
Date: Thu, 4 Feb 2016 19:10:10 -0800 (PST)

If Kimberella is just a stem bilaterian, as some researchers suspect, then
the beginning of the Cambrian explosion of bilaterian taxa might have come
right about the start of the Cambrian, or even a little later.


The "wild card" in the Paleocene explosion is *Cimolestes* and its
confirmed sister taxa. The analogue of stem molluscs is stem carnivorans:


...others have likened [cimolestids] to the hypothesised ancestors
of modern carnivorans and creodonts (Hunt & Tedford, 1993). Given that
Carnivora is a group nested well within crown Eutheria, the placement of
Cimolestidae is one which impinges strongly on the timescale of placental
diversification. If Cimolestidae are indeed closer to Carnivora than
to many other Laurasiatherian groups, this would demonstrate that the
diversification of the placental mammal lineages occurred at least
before the earliest cimolestid material, which is from the Middle
Campanian Foremost Formation (approximately 80 Ma), probably
significantly earlier. If, however, Cimolestidae are shown to
be basal to crown Eutheria, along with the other clades that
originate in the Cretaceous, it would be strongly suggestive
of a Paleocene diversification event within placental mammals.

By the way, the expression "crown Eutheria" suggests that the
authors are using "eutherian" as synonymous with "placental."

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina

http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/
nyikos @ math.sc.edu

[John Harshman]

On 2/9/16 12:40 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Monday, February 8, 2016 at 5:50:24 PM UTC-5, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>> After the great end-of-Cretaceous extinction, an explosion of mammalian
>> types occurred during the Paleocene epoch which is a sort of microcosm
>> of the much more famous Cambrian explosion.
>>
>> There are many parallels between the two explosions.
>
> Both have fossil "wild cards" that could really affect the timing of
> the beginning of the explosion, even if we ignore the molecular data.
>
> I've posted the other day, on that "purple sock" thread, about the
> enigmatic Ediacaran (558 -550?) animal Kimberella. If it is a bilaterian,
> it is the ONLY confirmed bilaterian from before the Cambrian (from 543 mya).
> All other confirmed metazoans from Precambrian deposits are sponges and
> Cnidarans.

Note also the increase in small, shelly fossils, trails, and burrows
shortly before the Cambrian. This suggests a beginning of the explosion
before 542ma.

> ________________excerpt from reply to Erik Simpson_____________
>
>> The suggestion that Kimberella may be a basal mollusc
>> would place it quite a ways up the tree from basal bilaterian.
>
> Yes, and there are those who think the case is closed on it being
> a mollusc, but there are some strong dissenting voices, including some
> Russians who may be intimately familiar with the White Sea specimens.
>
> I think we've covered this ground before. The mollusc hypothesis rests
> largely on scrapings that are reminiscent of marks made by a radula,
> but there are important differences. See the part beginning with
> Notably, the scratch marks indicate that the 'teeth' were
> dragged towards the organism, not pushed away as in molluscs,
> and that the maximum impact on the sediment was when the mouthpart
> was furthest from the organism.[15]
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimberella

It's also based on the general shape and apparent possession of things
that look like a foot and a mantle. Those differences don't rule out a
homologous radula either, just one that works exactly like that of some
extant mollusks.

> If Kimberella is just a stem bilaterian, as some researchers suspect, then
> the beginning of the Cambrian explosion of bilaterian taxa might have come
> right about the start of the Cambrian, or even a little later.

Or earlier. What you mean is that if it's a stem bilaterian, Kimberella
doesn't constrain the explosion in any way.

> The "wild card" in the Paleocene explosion is *Cimolestes* and its
> confirmed sister taxa. The analogue of stem molluscs is stem carnivorans:
>
> ...others have likened [cimolestids] to the hypothesised ancestors
> of modern carnivorans and creodonts (Hunt & Tedford, 1993). Given that
> Carnivora is a group nested well within crown Eutheria, the placement of
> Cimolestidae is one which impinges strongly on the timescale of placental
> diversification. If Cimolestidae are indeed closer to Carnivora than
> to many other Laurasiatherian groups, this would demonstrate that the
> diversification of the placental mammal lineages occurred at least
> before the earliest cimolestid material, which is from the Middle
> Campanian Foremost Formation (approximately 80 Ma), probably
> significantly earlier. If, however, Cimolestidae are shown to
> be basal to crown Eutheria, along with the other clades that
> originate in the Cretaceous, it would be strongly suggestive
> of a Paleocene diversification event within placental mammals.
>
> By the way, the expression "crown Eutheria" suggests that the
> authors are using "eutherian" as synonymous with "placental."

No, they're using "crown Eutheria" as synonymous with "Placentalia".

[Peter Nyikos]

On Tuesday, February 9, 2016 at 4:55:24 PM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
> On 2/9/16 12:40 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Monday, February 8, 2016 at 5:50:24 PM UTC-5, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >> After the great end-of-Cretaceous extinction, an explosion of mammalian
> >> types occurred during the Paleocene epoch which is a sort of microcosm
> >> of the much more famous Cambrian explosion.
> >>
> >> There are many parallels between the two explosions.
> >
> > Both have fossil "wild cards" that could really affect the timing of
> > the beginning of the explosion, even if we ignore the molecular data.
> >
> > I've posted the other day, on that "purple sock" thread, about the
> > enigmatic Ediacaran (558 -550?) animal Kimberella. If it is a bilaterian,
> > it is the ONLY confirmed bilaterian from before the Cambrian (from 543 mya).
> > All other confirmed metazoans from Precambrian deposits are sponges and
> > Cnidarans.
>
> Note also the increase in small, shelly fossils, trails, and burrows
> shortly before the Cambrian.

How many mya before?

Also, is there any assurance that the Precambrian shelly fossils are
at all related to present day biota? Consider the case of Cloudina,
with its elaborate shell:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloudinidae
Excerpt:
Cloudinids are important in the history of animal evolution
for two reasons. They are among the earliest and most abundant
of the small shelly fossils with mineralized skeletons, and
therefore feature in the debate about why such skeletons
first appeared in the Late Ediacaran.

Reading hopeful hypotheses about their affinities was like seeing
a replay of earlier readings, about Rangemorphs being sea pens, various
disc-shaped impressions being jellyfish, and Dickinsonia
being an annelid. I see no resemblance to any of the animals the
cloudinids were once hypothesized to be.

>This suggests a beginning of the explosion
> before 542ma.

> > ________________excerpt from reply to Erik Simpson_____________
> >
> >> The suggestion that Kimberella may be a basal mollusc
> >> would place it quite a ways up the tree from basal bilaterian.
> >
> > Yes, and there are those who think the case is closed on it being
> > a mollusc, but there are some strong dissenting voices, including some
> > Russians who may be intimately familiar with the White Sea specimens.
> >
> > I think we've covered this ground before. The mollusc hypothesis rests
> > largely on scrapings that are reminiscent of marks made by a radula,
> > but there are important differences. See the part beginning with
> > Notably, the scratch marks indicate that the 'teeth' were
> > dragged towards the organism, not pushed away as in molluscs,
> > and that the maximum impact on the sediment was when the mouthpart
> > was furthest from the organism.[15]
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimberella
>
> It's also based on the general shape and apparent possession of things
> that look like a foot and a mantle.

The general shape is also like that of the "purple sock" that I've been
conversing with people about in your absence. You get a mention
in the one I did today:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/talk.origins/NhQkaaKkygI/917TMglVGQAJ

Subject: Re: Mystery of deep-sea 'purple sock' solved

> Those differences don't rule out a
> homologous radula either, just one that works exactly like that of some
> extant mollusks.

Nor can we rule out convergent evolution due to a similar life style.
Not only was the action apparently different, but the purpose was also.
How many molluscs are capable of grazing on bacterial mats these days?

Concluded in next reply, to be posted as soon as I see this one has
posted.

Peter Nyikos

[Peter Nyikos]

On Tuesday, February 9, 2016 at 4:55:24 PM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:

> On 2/9/16 12:40 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:

Picking up where I left off in my first reply:

> > If Kimberella is just a stem bilaterian, as some researchers suspect, then
> > the beginning of the Cambrian explosion of bilaterian taxa might have come
> > right about the start of the Cambrian, or even a little later.
>
> Or earlier. What you mean is that if it's a stem bilaterian, Kimberella
> doesn't constrain the explosion in any way.

You do a lousy job of guessing what I mean. Kimberella makes a case for
being such a successful bilaterian, that other bilateria were overshadowed
completely: no corpus delicti. And they may have been confined to one or two
evolutionary lines. Hardly an explosion.

I'll have more to say about the one-sided wording "...in any way" below.

> > The "wild card" in the Paleocene explosion is *Cimolestes* and its
> > confirmed sister taxa. The analogue of stem molluscs is stem carnivorans:
> >
> > ...others have likened [cimolestids] to the hypothesised ancestors
> > of modern carnivorans and creodonts (Hunt & Tedford, 1993). Given that
> > Carnivora is a group nested well within crown Eutheria, the placement of
> > Cimolestidae is one which impinges strongly on the timescale of placental
> > diversification. If Cimolestidae are indeed closer to Carnivora than
> > to many other Laurasiatherian groups, this would demonstrate that the
> > diversification of the placental mammal lineages occurred at least
> > before the earliest cimolestid material, which is from the Middle

> > Campanian Foremost Formation (approximately 80?Ma), probably
> > significantly earlier.

Note a logical inverse of what you were saying: if the cimolestids
are NOT stem placentals, then their appearance in the fossil record
80 Ma DOES constrain the beginning of the Paleocene explosion -- back
at least as far as 80 Ma.

Might you have been confusing inverse with contrapositive when you put
words in my mouth?

> > If, however, Cimolestidae are shown to
> > be basal to crown Eutheria, along with the other clades that
> > originate in the Cretaceous, it would be strongly suggestive
> > of a Paleocene diversification event within placental mammals.

Do I have your permission, when e-mailing the authors about *Peramus*
being a stem therian, to tell them that you think that they meant
to say that if Cimolestidae are shown to be basal to crown Eutheria,
that this doesn't constrain the Paleocene diversification in any way?

> > By the way, the expression "crown Eutheria" suggests that the
> > authors are using "eutherian" as synonymous with "placental."
>
> No, they're using "crown Eutheria" as synonymous with "Placentalia".

You have an illogical way of writing "No" and then supplementing what
I wrote with related information. Note my use of "suggests that":
the suggestion becomes a lot stronger when I put "stem" in front
of both "eutherian" and "placental."

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina

nyikos @ math.sc.edu

[John Harshman]

On 2/9/16 4:59 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Tuesday, February 9, 2016 at 4:55:24 PM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
>> On 2/9/16 12:40 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>> On Monday, February 8, 2016 at 5:50:24 PM UTC-5, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>>> After the great end-of-Cretaceous extinction, an explosion of mammalian
>>>> types occurred during the Paleocene epoch which is a sort of microcosm
>>>> of the much more famous Cambrian explosion.
>>>>
>>>> There are many parallels between the two explosions.
>>>
>>> Both have fossil "wild cards" that could really affect the timing of
>>> the beginning of the explosion, even if we ignore the molecular data.
>>>
>>> I've posted the other day, on that "purple sock" thread, about the
>>> enigmatic Ediacaran (558 -550?) animal Kimberella. If it is a bilaterian,
>>> it is the ONLY confirmed bilaterian from before the Cambrian (from 543 mya).
>>> All other confirmed metazoans from Precambrian deposits are sponges and
>>> Cnidarans.
>>
>> Note also the increase in small, shelly fossils, trails, and burrows
>> shortly before the Cambrian.
>
> How many mya before?

It's gradual, but conventionally the beginning is generally somewhere
between 560 and 550ma.

> Also, is there any assurance that the Precambrian shelly fossils are
> at all related to present day biota?

Well of course they're related. What you mean to ask is whether they're
relevant to the explosion. No way to be sure, but the pattern fits, as
fossils with clearer relationships to the Cambrian Stage 3 biota
gradually appear. Add the ichnofossils and you have a clear signal, it
seems to me.

The general shape I'm talking about is much more specific than "vaguely
elongated".

> You get a mention
> in the one I did today:
>
> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/talk.origins/NhQkaaKkygI/917TMglVGQAJ
> Subject: Re: Mystery of deep-sea 'purple sock' solved
>
>> Those differences don't rule out a
>> homologous radula either, just one that works exactly like that of some
>> extant mollusks.
>
> Nor can we rule out convergent evolution due to a similar life style.
> Not only was the action apparently different, but the purpose was also.
> How many molluscs are capable of grazing on bacterial mats these days?

There aren't a lot of bacterial mats around to talk about.

[John Harshman]

On 2/9/16 5:20 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Tuesday, February 9, 2016 at 4:55:24 PM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
>> On 2/9/16 12:40 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
> Picking up where I left off in my first reply:
>
>>> If Kimberella is just a stem bilaterian, as some researchers suspect, then
>>> the beginning of the Cambrian explosion of bilaterian taxa might have come
>>> right about the start of the Cambrian, or even a little later.
>>
>> Or earlier. What you mean is that if it's a stem bilaterian, Kimberella
>> doesn't constrain the explosion in any way.
>
> You do a lousy job of guessing what I mean. Kimberella makes a case for
> being such a successful bilaterian, that other bilateria were overshadowed
> completely: no corpus delicti. And they may have been confined to one or two
> evolutionary lines. Hardly an explosion.

I'm afraid that makes no sense to me. How does Kimberella make such a
case? How does Kimberella as stem bilaterian suggest that the Cambrian
explosion postdates the start of the Cambrian?

So that wasn't what you meant. But it's what you should have meant if
you wanted be correct.

> I'll have more to say about the one-sided wording "...in any way" below.
>
>>> The "wild card" in the Paleocene explosion is *Cimolestes* and its
>>> confirmed sister taxa. The analogue of stem molluscs is stem carnivorans:
>>>
>>> ...others have likened [cimolestids] to the hypothesised ancestors
>>> of modern carnivorans and creodonts (Hunt & Tedford, 1993). Given that
>>> Carnivora is a group nested well within crown Eutheria, the placement of
>>> Cimolestidae is one which impinges strongly on the timescale of placental
>>> diversification. If Cimolestidae are indeed closer to Carnivora than
>>> to many other Laurasiatherian groups, this would demonstrate that the
>>> diversification of the placental mammal lineages occurred at least
>>> before the earliest cimolestid material, which is from the Middle
>>> Campanian Foremost Formation (approximately 80?Ma), probably
>>> significantly earlier.
>
> Note a logical inverse of what you were saying: if the cimolestids
> are NOT stem placentals, then their appearance in the fossil record
> 80 Ma DOES constrain the beginning of the Paleocene explosion -- back
> at least as far as 80 Ma.

You mean, I assume, if they're crown placentals. True. Similarly, if
Kimberella is a stem-mollusk, that means the explosion is at least as
old as Kimberella.

> Might you have been confusing inverse with contrapositive when you put
> words in my mouth?

No.

>>> If, however, Cimolestidae are shown to
>>> be basal to crown Eutheria, along with the other clades that
>>> originate in the Cretaceous, it would be strongly suggestive
>>> of a Paleocene diversification event within placental mammals.
>
> Do I have your permission, when e-mailing the authors about *Peramus*
> being a stem therian, to tell them that you think that they meant
> to say that if Cimolestidae are shown to be basal to crown Eutheria,
> that this doesn't constrain the Paleocene diversification in any way?

No. I make no claims about what the authors meant to say.

>>> By the way, the expression "crown Eutheria" suggests that the
>>> authors are using "eutherian" as synonymous with "placental."
>>
>> No, they're using "crown Eutheria" as synonymous with "Placentalia".
>
> You have an illogical way of writing "No" and then supplementing what
> I wrote with related information. Note my use of "suggests that":
> the suggestion becomes a lot stronger when I put "stem" in front
> of both "eutherian" and "placental."

When I wrote "no", I meant that what the expression suggests is not what
you said it did; it's something moderately similar, but that doesn't
mean the answer shouldn't be "no".

I find this entire controversy about some author using the wrong term to
be uninteresting.

[Peter Nyikos]

OOps, I meant the former. I'm not sure what consensus, if any,
there is about the Tillodonta.

I'm not sure what you mean by "diagnosible". Presumably, those
"small shellies" fall into various categories, distinguishable
from each other. Are you saying that one cannot tell which shelly
bits actually belong to different animals? That problem even
arises with huge dinosaurs. Witness "Ultrasaurus," for example.

> It's clear that a lot of
> genetic diversification took place earlier, since stage 3 fossils have
> representatives of many crown clades.

Well, duh. That's what the whole Cambrian explosion problem is
all about to scientifically oriented people like you and me.
The issue is, just how much genetic diversification had taken
place by what part of the Cambrian -- and most importantly,
how much had taken place before the Cambrian.

> As you recognize, Gould's acceptance of
> some of the very early interpretations of the Burgess Shale "weird wonders" was
> overly enthusiastic. Problematica remain, but aren't much use is calibrating
> anything until they lose their problematic status.

Surely it is possible to run a cladistic analysis on these "problematica"
and start trying to fit them in, just like the two extinct orders
of mammals I mentioned. It's gratifying to see just how many extinct
orders the article deals with, but they themselves admit that this
is only a good beginning:

Ultimately, a phylogeny of Paleocene mammals is sorely needed,
but has not been forthcoming, despite a great deal of energy
directed towards study of the end-Cretaceous mass extinction
and its aftermath.

Later on, they stress the importance of including extinct members even
of extant clades:

The reason for preferring fossil taxa over extant forms
is that extensive evolutionary change has inevitably
occurred within each clade over the last 66 million years.
By taking the basalmost and/or earliest members of an order,
the chances that key synapomorphies of that group have been
obscured through convergence or reversal are far lower.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/brv.12242/full

[Peter Nyikos]

On Tuesday, February 9, 2016 at 9:15:19 PM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
> On 2/9/16 5:20 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Tuesday, February 9, 2016 at 4:55:24 PM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
> >> On 2/9/16 12:40 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >
> > Picking up where I left off in my first reply:
> >
> >>> If Kimberella is just a stem bilaterian, as some researchers suspect, then
> >>> the beginning of the Cambrian explosion of bilaterian taxa might have come
> >>> right about the start of the Cambrian, or even a little later.
> >>
> >> Or earlier. What you mean is that if it's a stem bilaterian, Kimberella
> >> doesn't constrain the explosion in any way.
> >
> > You do a lousy job of guessing what I mean. Kimberella makes a case for
> > being such a successful bilaterian, that other bilateria were overshadowed
> > completely: no corpus delicti. And they may have been confined to one or two
> > evolutionary lines. Hardly an explosion.
>
> I'm afraid that makes no sense to me. How does Kimberella make such a
> case? How does Kimberella as stem bilaterian suggest that the Cambrian
> explosion postdates the start of the Cambrian?

The same way the position of Cimolestidae as stem placentals
suggests to the authors of the article that the Paleocene explosion
*of Placentalia* might postdate the start of the Paleocene.
See below.

[By the way, neither they nor I put things as strongly as you
do in your last question.]

> So that wasn't what you meant. But it's what you should have meant if
> you wanted be correct.

Wow, you sure are providing me with lots of juicy things
to tell the authors of the article! See below.

> > I'll have more to say about the one-sided wording "...in any way" below.
> >
> >>> The "wild card" in the Paleocene explosion is *Cimolestes* and its
> >>> confirmed sister taxa. The analogue of stem molluscs is stem carnivorans:
> >>>
> >>> ...others have likened [cimolestids] to the hypothesised ancestors
> >>> of modern carnivorans and creodonts (Hunt & Tedford, 1993). Given that
> >>> Carnivora is a group nested well within crown Eutheria, the placement of
> >>> Cimolestidae is one which impinges strongly on the timescale of placental
> >>> diversification. If Cimolestidae are indeed closer to Carnivora than
> >>> to many other Laurasiatherian groups, this would demonstrate that the
> >>> diversification of the placental mammal lineages occurred at least
> >>> before the earliest cimolestid material, which is from the Middle
> >>> Campanian Foremost Formation (approximately 80?Ma), probably
> >>> significantly earlier.

<snip for focus>

> >>> If, however, Cimolestidae are shown to
> >>> be basal to crown Eutheria, along with the other clades that
> >>> originate in the Cretaceous, it would be strongly suggestive
> >>> of a Paleocene diversification event within placental mammals.
> >
> > Do I have your permission, when e-mailing the authors about *Peramus*
> > being a stem therian, to tell them that you think that they meant
> > to say that if Cimolestidae are shown to be basal to crown Eutheria,
> > that this doesn't constrain the Paleocene diversification in any way?
>
> No. I make no claims about what the authors meant to say.

Ah, but now I have something not so implausible to tell them:
you think that this is what they *should* have said.

That is, unless you want to be as illogical as, well, someone
in this newsgroup who is almost universally regarded as illogical.

Note how, out of courtesy to you, I haven't named that someone.
You are even free to claim that you have no idea whom I am
talking about. Not that I would recommend that course of action,
mind you.

> >>> By the way, the expression "crown Eutheria" suggests that the
> >>> authors are using "eutherian" as synonymous with "placental."
> >>
> >> No, they're using "crown Eutheria" as synonymous with "Placentalia".
> >
> > You have an illogical way of writing "No" and then supplementing what
> > I wrote with related information. Note my use of "suggests that":
> > the suggestion becomes a lot stronger when I put "stem" in front
> > of both "eutherian" and "placental."
>
> When I wrote "no", I meant that what the expression suggests is not what
> you said it did; it's something moderately similar, but that doesn't
> mean the answer shouldn't be "no".
>
> I find this entire controversy about some author using the wrong term to
> be uninteresting.

That's because you haven't seen how often they use the term "stem
eutherian," including some key places. I'd like to see you do
a word search and then tell me that there is any controversy
at all about what it means to the authors.

Peter Nyikos

[erik simpson]

On Wednesday, February 10, 2016 at 6:40:17 PM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> <...>

> Surely it is possible to run a cladistic analysis on these "problematica"
> and start trying to fit them in, just like the two extinct orders
> of mammals I mentioned. It's gratifying to see just how many extinct
> orders the article deals with, but they themselves admit that this
> is only a good beginning:
>

Are you talking about the Cambrian problem (as I was), or are you back to
the Paleocene? If it's the former, you are apparently still largely ignorant
of what has been done. There's little point in pursuing this argument until
you do some reading.

[John Harshman]

On 2/10/16 7:37 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Tuesday, February 9, 2016 at 9:15:19 PM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
>> On 2/9/16 5:20 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>> On Tuesday, February 9, 2016 at 4:55:24 PM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
>>>> On 2/9/16 12:40 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>>
>>> Picking up where I left off in my first reply:
>>>
>>>>> If Kimberella is just a stem bilaterian, as some researchers suspect, then
>>>>> the beginning of the Cambrian explosion of bilaterian taxa might have come
>>>>> right about the start of the Cambrian, or even a little later.
>>>>
>>>> Or earlier. What you mean is that if it's a stem bilaterian, Kimberella
>>>> doesn't constrain the explosion in any way.
>>>
>>> You do a lousy job of guessing what I mean. Kimberella makes a case for
>>> being such a successful bilaterian, that other bilateria were overshadowed
>>> completely: no corpus delicti. And they may have been confined to one or two
>>> evolutionary lines. Hardly an explosion.
>>
>> I'm afraid that makes no sense to me. How does Kimberella make such a
>> case? How does Kimberella as stem bilaterian suggest that the Cambrian
>> explosion postdates the start of the Cambrian?
>
> The same way the position of Cimolestidae as stem placentals
> suggests to the authors of the article that the Paleocene explosion
> *of Placentalia* might postdate the start of the Paleocene.
> See below.

So what you mean (possibly; again I have to guess because you don't say)
is that since Cimolelstes doesn't force the divergence to be Cretaceous
is allows the possibility that the divergence is Paleocene, i.e. the
same thing that would be possible if there were no fossil at all. That
was a very odd way to say it. Isn't it the same as saying that the
diversification isn't constrained in any way?

> [By the way, neither they nor I put things as strongly as you
> do in your last question.]
>
>> So that wasn't what you meant. But it's what you should have meant if
>> you wanted be correct.
>
> Wow, you sure are providing me with lots of juicy things
> to tell the authors of the article! See below.

This is most bizarre. Are you proposing to tattle on me to some people I
don't know?

Not only don't I have any idea what you're talking about, I don't care.

>>>>> By the way, the expression "crown Eutheria" suggests that the
>>>>> authors are using "eutherian" as synonymous with "placental."
>>>>
>>>> No, they're using "crown Eutheria" as synonymous with "Placentalia".
>>>
>>> You have an illogical way of writing "No" and then supplementing what
>>> I wrote with related information. Note my use of "suggests that":
>>> the suggestion becomes a lot stronger when I put "stem" in front
>>> of both "eutherian" and "placental."
>>
>> When I wrote "no", I meant that what the expression suggests is not what
>> you said it did; it's something moderately similar, but that doesn't
>> mean the answer shouldn't be "no".
>>
>> I find this entire controversy about some author using the wrong term to
>> be uninteresting.
>
> That's because you haven't seen how often they use the term "stem
> eutherian," including some key places. I'd like to see you do
> a word search and then tell me that there is any controversy
> at all about what it means to the authors.

Still not interesting.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Wednesday, February 10, 2016 at 11:05:16 PM UTC-5, erik simpson wrote:
> On Wednesday, February 10, 2016 at 6:40:17 PM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > <...>
>
> > Surely it is possible to run a cladistic analysis on these "problematica"
> > and start trying to fit them in, just like the two extinct orders
> > of mammals I mentioned. It's gratifying to see just how many extinct
> > orders the article deals with, but they themselves admit that this
> > is only a good beginning:
> >
>
> Are you talking about the Cambrian problem (as I was),

Yes, in the first clause of the first sentence. The rest of what you
quote was me just continuing the parallels between the two explosions.

> or are you back to
> the Paleocene? If it's the former, you are apparently still largely ignorant
> of what has been done. There's little point in pursuing this argument until
> you do some reading.

Thanks for that formulaic response, devoid of any references.

And thanks for snipping so much of what I wrote. If Richard Norman is
following this, I think he can see which one of us starting to act the way
he told us, tongue-in-cheek, to act, on his OP in the "Hiatus" thread.

Peter Nyikos

[erik simpson]

Ok. I'd have though you could imagine a reference. There are hundreds if not
thousands relevant to the Cambrian explosion. There's this book:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Cambrian-Explosion-Construction-Biodiversity/dp/1936221039

You've reacted very negatively to the suggestion that you have a look at it.
It's not the same as Meyer's book, but it discusses in considerable depth
many of the questions you claim interest in. It's not as expensive as it
used to be, but in any event your library probably has a copy. Many of your
questions don't have simple answers, and can't be adequately given in this
forum. Some of your questions, such as 'Surely it is possible to run a
cladistic analysis on these "problematica"' are pretty naive.

[John Harshman]

You should explain why they're naive. It's for two main reasons. First,
the fossils don't generally have all that many characters that could be
used, and the ones they have are difficult to homologize (i.e. to see
similarities that you think might be potential homologies) between
isolated groups. Better fossils, better analysis, and more fossils can
help, and they have chipped away at the problematica, most notably in
the case of Hallucigenia and other armored lobopods. Phylogenetic
analysis requires data in the form of presumed homologous characters and
character states, and it's the absence of such things that makes
problematica problematic.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Thursday, February 11, 2016 at 10:35:15 AM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
> On 2/10/16 7:37 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Tuesday, February 9, 2016 at 9:15:19 PM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
> >> On 2/9/16 5:20 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>> On Tuesday, February 9, 2016 at 4:55:24 PM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
> >>>> On 2/9/16 12:40 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Picking up where I left off in my first reply:
> >>>
> >>>>> If Kimberella is just a stem bilaterian, as some researchers suspect, then
> >>>>> the beginning of the Cambrian explosion of bilaterian taxa might have come
> >>>>> right about the start of the Cambrian, or even a little later.
> >>>>
> >>>> Or earlier. What you mean is that if it's a stem bilaterian, Kimberella
> >>>> doesn't constrain the explosion in any way.
> >>>
> >>> You do a lousy job of guessing what I mean. Kimberella makes a case for
> >>> being such a successful bilaterian, that other bilateria were overshadowed
> >>> completely: no corpus delicti. And they may have been confined to one or two
> >>> evolutionary lines. Hardly an explosion.
> >>
> >> I'm afraid that makes no sense to me. How does Kimberella make such a
> >> case? How does Kimberella as stem bilaterian suggest that the Cambrian
> >> explosion postdates the start of the Cambrian?
> >
> > The same way the position of Cimolestidae as stem placentals
> > suggests to the authors of the article that the Paleocene explosion
> > *of Placentalia* might postdate the start of the Paleocene.
> > See below.
>
> So what you mean (possibly; again I have to guess because you don't say)

Try just sticking with what I originally said, instead of first
coming up with a paraphrasal careening in one direction
("suggests that the Cambrian explosion postdates the start of the Cambrian")
and then careening in the opposite direction, like you do below:

> is that since Cimolelstes doesn't force the divergence to be Cretaceous
> is allows the possibility that the divergence is Paleocene,
> i.e. the same thing that would be possible if there were no fossil at all.

By melting everything down to the one shade of gray, "possibility,"
you are showing a lack of interest in scientific discussion.

> That
> was a very odd way to say it. Isn't it the same as saying that the
> diversification isn't constrained in any way?

If you'd just take your gaze off your navel, you'd note that
you are guessing all kinds of silly things instead of
just going with my carefully chosen words, and the carefully
chosen words of the authors of that article.

> > [By the way, neither they nor I put things as strongly as you
> > do in your last question.]
> >
> >> So that wasn't what you meant. But it's what you should have meant if
> >> you wanted be correct.
> >
> > Wow, you sure are providing me with lots of juicy things
> > to tell the authors of the article! See below.
>
> This is most bizarre. Are you proposing to tattle on me to some people I
> don't know?

Juvenile phraseology "tattle on me" noted. I also note your
persistent failure to put two and two together below.

I've snipped a tad just to get to the words in the article:

> >>>>> ...others have likened [cimolestids] to the hypothesised ancestors
> >>>>> of modern carnivorans and creodonts (Hunt & Tedford, 1993). Given that
> >>>>> Carnivora is a group nested well within crown Eutheria, the placement of
> >>>>> Cimolestidae is one which impinges strongly on the timescale of placental
> >>>>> diversification. If Cimolestidae are indeed closer to Carnivora than
> >>>>> to many other Laurasiatherian groups, this would demonstrate that the
> >>>>> diversification of the placental mammal lineages occurred at least
> >>>>> before the earliest cimolestid material, which is from the Middle
> >>>>> Campanian Foremost Formation (approximately 80?Ma), probably
> >>>>> significantly earlier.
> > <snip for focus>
> >
> >>>>> If, however, Cimolestidae are shown to
> >>>>> be basal to crown Eutheria, along with the other clades that
> >>>>> originate in the Cretaceous, it would be strongly suggestive
> >>>>> of a Paleocene diversification event within placental mammals.

Note that THEY are using words ("strongly suggestive") that mirror what
YOU originally wrote better than my words did. The only other difference
is that I was talking about Kimberella and they are talking about
Cimolestidae.

But the reasoning behind the two statements is the same.

> >>> Do I have your permission, when e-mailing the authors about *Peramus*
> >>> being a stem therian, to tell them that you think that they meant
> >>> to say that if Cimolestidae are shown to be basal to crown Eutheria,
> >>> that this doesn't constrain the Paleocene diversification in any way?
> >>
> >> No. I make no claims about what the authors meant to say.
> >
> > Ah, but now I have something not so implausible to tell them:
> > you think that this is what they *should* have said.
> >
> > That is, unless you want to be as illogical as, well, someone
> > in this newsgroup who is almost universally regarded as illogical.
> >
> > Note how, out of courtesy to you, I haven't named that someone.
> > You are even free to claim that you have no idea whom I am
> > talking about. Not that I would recommend that course of action,
> > mind you.
>
> Not only don't I have any idea what you're talking about, I don't care.

Oh, so you *don't* care if I tell them that you think they should have
said what you keep telling me I should have said [with obvious
substitutions, Cambrian for Paleocene, etc]?

Remainder deleted, to be replied to later. Duty calls.

Peter Nyikos

[John Harshman]

On 2/11/16 12:18 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Thursday, February 11, 2016 at 10:35:15 AM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:

>>>>>>> If, however, Cimolestidae are shown to
>>>>>>> be basal to crown Eutheria, along with the other clades that
>>>>>>> originate in the Cretaceous, it would be strongly suggestive
>>>>>>> of a Paleocene diversification event within placental mammals.
>
> Note that THEY are using words ("strongly suggestive") that mirror what
> YOU originally wrote better than my words did. The only other difference
> is that I was talking about Kimberella and they are talking about
> Cimolestidae.
>
> But the reasoning behind the two statements is the same.

I don't think you understand what I wrote, and I think the authors'
claims are wrong. The presence of a stem-placental in the Cretaceous
does not strongly suggest a Paleocene diversification event. It suggests
nothing. To suppose otherwise demands that we consider the fossil record
complete enough that we should consider Cimolestes as representative of
Cretaceous mammals and can be reasonably assured that there are no
undiscovered Cretaceous placentals.

This is like claiming that discovery of a paleognath fossil shows that
the radiation of Neoaves probably came later than that fossil. Again, it
would show nothing of the sort.

In general, what a fossil tells us is that the node below it on the tree
must be earlier than the fossil. It says nothing about nodes that are
not below it.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Thursday, February 11, 2016 at 3:10:13 PM UTC-5, erik simpson wrote:
> On Thursday, February 11, 2016 at 11:50:17 AM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Wednesday, February 10, 2016 at 11:05:16 PM UTC-5, erik simpson wrote:
> > > On Wednesday, February 10, 2016 at 6:40:17 PM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > > > <...>
> > >
> > > > Surely it is possible to run a cladistic analysis on these "problematica"
> > > > and start trying to fit them in, just like the two extinct orders
> > > > of mammals I mentioned. It's gratifying to see just how many extinct
> > > > orders the article deals with, but they themselves admit that this
> > > > is only a good beginning:
> > > >
> > >
> > > Are you talking about the Cambrian problem (as I was),
> >
> > Yes, in the first clause of the first sentence. The rest of what you
> > quote was me just continuing the parallels between the two explosions.
> >
> > > or are you back to
> > > the Paleocene? If it's the former, you are apparently still largely ignorant
> > > of what has been done. There's little point in pursuing this argument until
> > > you do some reading.
> >
> > Thanks for that formulaic response, devoid of any references.
> >
> > And thanks for snipping so much of what I wrote. If Richard Norman is
> > following this, I think he can see which one of us starting to act the way
> > he told us, tongue-in-cheek, to act, on his OP in the "Hiatus" thread.
> >
> > Peter Nyikos
>
> Ok. I'd have though you could imagine a reference. There are hundreds if not
> thousands relevant to the Cambrian explosion.

I don't like looking for needles through big haystacks. All you were hinting
at, in the context of what I wrote, was that there were comprehensive
cladistic analyses encompassing ALL the phyla and all the problematica of the Cambrian explosion.

This is a highly dubious claim since ALL analyses that
I have seen, including a PNAS article claiming a 670 mya date
for the protostome-deuterostome split, omit Chaetognatha, which
has sometimes been put in protostomes, sometimes in deuterostomes
and perhaps also in "Bilateria Incertae Sedis."

It is also dubious in analogy with the Paleocene radiation.

The article I've been referenced is, AFAIK, the first one that included
the clades Cimolestidae and Pantodonta. Together with Tillodonta and
Taeniodonta, omitted by ALL the analyses I've seen,
these are absolutely crucial in determining the true depth
of the explosion that we see from fossils of placental mammals.

It's evidently a 15 million difference, at least, from the first
appearance of cimolestids to the fossils we have that are recognizably
from orders of extant mammals.

> There's this book:
>
> http://www.amazon.com/The-Cambrian-Explosion-Construction-Biodiversity/dp/1936221039
>
> You've reacted very negatively to the suggestion that you have a look at it.

I can't recall doing that, and I certainly can't remember why. If
it's anything like the miscommunication that has taken between us
here, then the fault is yours, not mine.

> It's not the same as Meyer's book, but it discusses in considerable depth
> many of the questions you claim interest in. It's not as expensive as it
> used to be, but in any event your library probably has a copy.

Is it any better than James W. Valentine's _On the Origins of Phyla_?
I've checked that book out and it is within hand's reach as I type this.

Can you find any place in it that answers the issue I was dealing with?

> Many of your
> questions don't have simple answers, and can't be adequately given in this
> forum. Some of your questions, such as 'Surely it is possible to run a
> cladistic analysis on these "problematica"' are pretty naive.

Why? It's finally been done on the problematica wrt the placental
crown group.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina

http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/
nyikos "at" math.sc.edu

PS What the hell did you THINK I

[Peter Nyikos]

<snip for focus>

> > Some of your questions, such as 'Surely it is possible to run a
> > cladistic analysis on these "problematica"' are pretty naive.

That was the ONLY thing I was expressing curiosity about in the snippet
that Erik left in, and from this two line revelation, it seems Erik
snipped way too much and thus completely misunderstood what he
had left in.

I tried to do a detailed reply to Erik just now, but some infernal
key (or button on the side of my mouse) canceled the whole
thing without even the usual warning "are you sure you want to leave?"
coming up. If I'm extra lucky, it will post.

> You should explain why they're naive. It's for two main reasons. First,
> the fossils don't generally have all that many characters that could be
> used,

There are some notorious animals that look very different from those
known from fossils before the Burgess Shales were discovered, and some
of them are pretty well preserved. Can you direct me to a webpage
which includes them in a cladistic analysis?

I'm not holding my breath. As you know, none of the phylogenetic
analyses that handle most extant phyla, among the ones that
I've seen, include Chaetognatha.

This includes a PNAS article using molecular data to locate
the protostome-deuterostome split at 670 mya. Yet chaetognaths
have sometimes been classed with the former, sometimes the
latter, and for all I know may have also been classed as
"Bilateria incertae sedis" somewhere.

> and the ones they have are difficult to homologize (i.e. to see
> similarities that you think might be potential homologies) between
> isolated groups.

Was this your second reason?

> Better fossils, better analysis, and more fossils can
> help, and they have chipped away at the problematica, most notably in
> the case of Hallucigenia and other armored lobopods.

What about Amalocanthus [sp?] ?

> Phylogenetic
> analysis requires data in the form of presumed homologous characters

"presumed" by whom, on what grounds? Anyway, you may have put
your finger on why feathers and protofeathers are systematically
excluded from analyses as to where birds sit: they aren't
presumed homologous to any other structures. Yet I used flight
remiges and contour feathers -- true feathers, not dinofuzz --
to find what most people, given the adjustments that Archie
and kiwis occasioned, would consider the bird clade.

> and
> character states, and it's the absence of such things that makes
> problematica problematic.

You really make me wonder just how much is excluded from the
cladistic analyses that are responsible for the current
shape of the limbs and branches in the Tree of Life.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina

http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/
NYIKOS "at" math.sc.edu

[John Harshman]

Not offhand.

> I'm not holding my breath. As you know, none of the phylogenetic
> analyses that handle most extant phyla, among the ones that
> I've seen, include Chaetognatha.
>
> This includes a PNAS article using molecular data to locate
> the protostome-deuterostome split at 670 mya. Yet chaetognaths
> have sometimes been classed with the former, sometimes the
> latter, and for all I know may have also been classed as
> "Bilateria incertae sedis" somewhere.

Yes, it would be good to include some chaetognaths. How does this affect
the point about Cambrian problematica?

>> and the ones they have are difficult to homologize (i.e. to see
>> similarities that you think might be potential homologies) between
>> isolated groups.
>
> Was this your second reason?

It was.

>> Better fossils, better analysis, and more fossils can
>> help, and they have chipped away at the problematica, most notably in
>> the case of Hallucigenia and other armored lobopods.
>
> What about Amalocanthus [sp?] ?

Doesn't ring a bell. What about it?

>> Phylogenetic
>> analysis requires data in the form of presumed homologous characters
>
> "presumed" by whom, on what grounds?

Presumed by the person coding the characters, on grounds of similarity.
Every character coded is a hypothesis of homology.

> Anyway, you may have put
> your finger on why feathers and protofeathers are systematically
> excluded from analyses as to where birds sit: they aren't
> presumed homologous to any other structures. Yet I used flight
> remiges and contour feathers -- true feathers, not dinofuzz --
> to find what most people, given the adjustments that Archie
> and kiwis occasioned, would consider the bird clade.

Your use of "yet" implies some kind of incongruity between what comes
before and what comes after; yet (see how that works?) I see none.

>> and
>> character states, and it's the absence of such things that makes
>> problematica problematic.
>
> You really make me wonder just how much is excluded from the
> cladistic analyses that are responsible for the current
> shape of the limbs and branches in the Tree of Life.

No, you really make you wonder, based on your limited understanding of
phylogenetic analysis. Your apparent moral and mental superiority to
professional systematists is a source of wonder.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Thursday, February 11, 2016 at 3:40:15 PM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
> On 2/11/16 12:18 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Thursday, February 11, 2016 at 10:35:15 AM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
>
> >>>>>>> If, however, Cimolestidae are shown to
> >>>>>>> be basal to crown Eutheria, along with the other clades that
> >>>>>>> originate in the Cretaceous, it would be strongly suggestive
> >>>>>>> of a Paleocene diversification event within placental mammals.
> >
> > Note that THEY are using words ("strongly suggestive") that mirror what
> > YOU originally wrote better than my words did. The only other difference
> > is that I was talking about Kimberella and they are talking about
> > Cimolestidae.
> >
> > But the reasoning behind the two statements is the same.
>
> I don't think you understand what I wrote,

Really? You kept writing things pooh-poohing things I wrote
[including a condescending remark about what I supposedly meant]
that were actually more modest than what the authors wrote,
yet you gave the authors a free pass. You even got juvenile
when I talked about letting the authors in on what you
would have been thinking about if you had actually given
any thought to your insulting remarks to me.

Is it just a coincidence that you snipped ALL of that in
the post where you finally do apply some reasoning to
the words of the authors? [Meaning, of course, the
post to which I am replying.]

> and I think the authors'
> claims are wrong. The presence of a stem-placental in the Cretaceous
> does not strongly suggest a Paleocene diversification event. It suggests
> nothing. To suppose otherwise demands that we consider the fossil record
> complete enough that we should consider Cimolestes as representative of
> Cretaceous mammals and can be reasonably assured that there are no
> undiscovered Cretaceous placentals.

I see you've forgotten about Oxyaena's documentation of a Cretaceous
taeniodont in sci.bio.paleontology.

But now perhaps you can see why I would like the next such
analysis to sample Taeniodonta. Anyway, as matters now stand,
it IS considered to be a stem placental:

"Rooting Around the Eutherian Family Tree: the Origin and Relations of the Taeniodonta," by Deborah L. Rook, John P. Hunter
Journal of Mammalian Evolution, March 2014, Volume 21, Issue 1, pp 75-91
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10914-013-9230-9

excerpt from abstract [most of article paywalled]:
Our studies suggest that taeniodonts arose from Cimolestes through
Alveugena, that Procerberus is more distantly related to taeniodonts,
and that taeniodonts and their relatives are stem eutherians.
We diagnose the Taeniodonta based on these analyses.
Other Paleogene groups, especially those allied with
Cimolestes such as tillodonts and pantolestans, merit further study.

[the text soon falls into line with the reigning "sister group" orthodox
terminology]

How many more such examples do we need before you soften your
"...suggests nothing. To suppose otherwise demands..."
pontification?

Rest snipped, will deal with it if you insist.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --
U. of S. Carolina at Columbia
nyikos 'at' math.sc.edu

[John Harshman]

On 2/12/16 9:41 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Thursday, February 11, 2016 at 3:40:15 PM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
>> On 2/11/16 12:18 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>> On Thursday, February 11, 2016 at 10:35:15 AM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
>>
>>>>>>>>> If, however, Cimolestidae are shown to
>>>>>>>>> be basal to crown Eutheria, along with the other clades that
>>>>>>>>> originate in the Cretaceous, it would be strongly suggestive
>>>>>>>>> of a Paleocene diversification event within placental mammals.
>>>
>>> Note that THEY are using words ("strongly suggestive") that mirror what
>>> YOU originally wrote better than my words did. The only other difference
>>> is that I was talking about Kimberella and they are talking about
>>> Cimolestidae.
>>>
>>> But the reasoning behind the two statements is the same.

[snipping pointless and largely unintelligible accusations]

>> and I think the authors'
>> claims are wrong. The presence of a stem-placental in the Cretaceous
>> does not strongly suggest a Paleocene diversification event. It suggests
>> nothing. To suppose otherwise demands that we consider the fossil record
>> complete enough that we should consider Cimolestes as representative of
>> Cretaceous mammals and can be reasonably assured that there are no
>> undiscovered Cretaceous placentals.
>
> I see you've forgotten about Oxyaena's documentation of a Cretaceous
> taeniodont in sci.bio.paleontology.

Yes, I definitely have. What about it?

> But now perhaps you can see why I would like the next such
> analysis to sample Taeniodonta.

I see nothing wrong with increased taxon sampling.

> Anyway, as matters now stand,
> it IS considered to be a stem placental:
>
> "Rooting Around the Eutherian Family Tree: the Origin and Relations of the Taeniodonta," by Deborah L. Rook, John P. Hunter
> Journal of Mammalian Evolution, March 2014, Volume 21, Issue 1, pp 75-91
> http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10914-013-9230-9
>
> excerpt from abstract [most of article paywalled]:
> Our studies suggest that taeniodonts arose from Cimolestes through
> Alveugena, that Procerberus is more distantly related to taeniodonts,
> and that taeniodonts and their relatives are stem eutherians.
> We diagnose the Taeniodonta based on these analyses.
> Other Paleogene groups, especially those allied with
> Cimolestes such as tillodonts and pantolestans, merit further study.
>
> [the text soon falls into line with the reigning "sister group" orthodox
> terminology]
>
> How many more such examples do we need before you soften your
> "...suggests nothing. To suppose otherwise demands..."
> pontification?

You will have to make your claim explicit here. I would say that no
quantity of examples would be relevant. What is your case for relevance?

[Peter Nyikos]

On Friday, February 12, 2016 at 1:05:10 PM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
> On 2/12/16 9:41 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Thursday, February 11, 2016 at 3:40:15 PM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
> >> On 2/11/16 12:18 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>> On Thursday, February 11, 2016 at 10:35:15 AM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
> >>
> >>>>>>>>> If, however, Cimolestidae are shown to
> >>>>>>>>> be basal to crown Eutheria, along with the other clades that
> >>>>>>>>> originate in the Cretaceous, it would be strongly suggestive
> >>>>>>>>> of a Paleocene diversification event within placental mammals.
> >>>
> >>> Note that THEY are using words ("strongly suggestive") that mirror what
> >>> YOU originally wrote better than my words did. The only other difference
> >>> is that I was talking about Kimberella and they are talking about
> >>> Cimolestidae.
> >>>
> >>> But the reasoning behind the two statements is the same.
>
> [snipping pointless and largely unintelligible accusations]

You are being a rotten sport about being caught, for the second time
in two days, of claiming to have a "belief" about our earlier exchanges
which was indefensible. The other one was on the thread "Hiatus."

Are you going to make a habit of posting such "beliefs"?

> >> and I think the authors'
> >> claims are wrong. The presence of a stem-placental in the Cretaceous
> >> does not strongly suggest a Paleocene diversification event. It suggests
> >> nothing. To suppose otherwise demands that we consider the fossil record
> >> complete enough that we should consider Cimolestes as representative of
> >> Cretaceous mammals and can be reasonably assured that there are no
> >> undiscovered Cretaceous placentals.
> >
> > I see you've forgotten about Oxyaena's documentation of a Cretaceous
> > taeniodont in sci.bio.paleontology.
>
> Yes, I definitely have. What about it?

See below. I thought you were indulging in hyperbole with "It suggests
nothing," so I thought one example would start to make you moderate
your tone. It hasn't.

> > But now perhaps you can see why I would like the next such
> > analysis to sample Taeniodonta.
>
> I see nothing wrong with increased taxon sampling.

Coming from you, that is one namby-pamby comment!

> > Anyway, as matters now stand,
> > it IS considered to be a stem placental:
> >
> > "Rooting Around the Eutherian Family Tree: the Origin and Relations of the Taeniodonta," by Deborah L. Rook, John P. Hunter
> > Journal of Mammalian Evolution, March 2014, Volume 21, Issue 1, pp 75-91
> > http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10914-013-9230-9
> >
> > excerpt from abstract [most of article paywalled]:
> > Our studies suggest that taeniodonts arose from Cimolestes through
> > Alveugena, that Procerberus is more distantly related to taeniodonts,
> > and that taeniodonts and their relatives are stem eutherians.
> > We diagnose the Taeniodonta based on these analyses.
> > Other Paleogene groups, especially those allied with
> > Cimolestes such as tillodonts and pantolestans, merit further study.
> >
> > [the text soon falls into line with the reigning "sister group" orthodox
> > terminology]
> >
> > How many more such examples do we need before you soften your
> > "...suggests nothing. To suppose otherwise demands..."
> > pontification?
>
> You will have to make your claim explicit here. I would say that no
> quantity of examples would be relevant.

So even if fossils of hundreds of Cretaceous near-placentals are
discovered, spread across Cimolestidae, Taeinodonta, Pantodonta,
Tillodonta, and families yet undiscovered, with nary a single
confirmed crown placental, that STILL would not suggest to you
that the crown placentals originated in the Paleocene!

Next thing you know, you'll be saying that the fact that
no fossils of pterosaurs are known beyond the Cretaceous,
does not suggest that they became extinct before the Holocene.

That would come as welcome news to Ruben Safir, over in
sci.bio.paleontology.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --

U. of South Carolina at Columbia
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[John Harshman]

>> What is your case for relevance?

I believe that you have now hinted at your case: each new fossil gives
us a better sample of Cretaceous mammals, and each new fossil that isn't
a placental is more evidence that there were no placentals. And this is
correct, in exactly the same way that a green frog is evidence that all
crows are black.

The relevant question is the size of the universe. Is our current sample
of Cretaceous mammals good enough to make statements about all
Cretaceous mammals? You seem to believe that it is. I think that it
isn't. If placentals were there, would we have found them by now? You
think we would. I start with asking what you mean by "there"; how good
is the geographic sampling? Your hypothetical case in which there are
hundreds of samples (which you might imagine are independent, though
that would be unlikely), certainly would improve the inference. But in
fact we don't have that hypothetical case, do we? Instead we have a very
few examples. Do you think they are good evidence that placentals
originated int he Paleocene?

[Peter Nyikos]

On Tuesday, February 16, 2016 at 11:15:00 AM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
> On 2/16/16 5:10 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Friday, February 12, 2016 at 1:05:10 PM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
> >> On 2/12/16 9:41 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
> >>> "Rooting Around the Eutherian Family Tree: the Origin and Relations of the Taeniodonta," by Deborah L. Rook, John P. Hunter
> >>> Journal of Mammalian Evolution, March 2014, Volume 21, Issue 1, pp 75-91
> >>> http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10914-013-9230-9
> >>>
> >>> excerpt from abstract [most of article paywalled]:
> >>> Our studies suggest that taeniodonts arose from Cimolestes through
> >>> Alveugena, that Procerberus is more distantly related to taeniodonts,
> >>> and that taeniodonts and their relatives are stem eutherians.
> >>> We diagnose the Taeniodonta based on these analyses.
> >>> Other Paleogene groups, especially those allied with
> >>> Cimolestes such as tillodonts and pantolestans, merit further study.
> >>>
> >>> [the text soon falls into line with the reigning "sister group" orthodox
> >>> terminology]
> >>>
> >>> How many more such examples do we need before you soften your
> >>> "...suggests nothing. To suppose otherwise demands..."
> >>> pontification?

> >> You will have to make your claim explicit here.

You will have to stop snipping words of yours which make
YOUR claim explicit, as opposed to the sentence fragment
I've quoted, which is meaningless without your earlier
comment:

I think the authors' claims are wrong. The presence of a
stem-placental in the Cretaceous does not strongly suggest a
Paleocene diversification event. It suggests nothing.

But of course, you were knocking down a straw man, because:

1. You are conveniently omitting the absence of all
definitive crown placentals and

2. It isn't just one fossil; it is all the Cretaceous fossils
of various species of Cimolestidae. The authors list three genera.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/brv.12242/full

I'd ask the authors just how many fossils representing how many
species just in Cimolestidae that have been collected to date,
except that no number will make the slightest difference
in your attitude, as you've subsequently made clear:

> >> I would say that no quantity of examples would be relevant.
> >
> > So even if fossils of hundreds of Cretaceous near-placentals are
> > discovered, spread across Cimolestidae, Taeinodonta, Pantodonta,
> > Tillodonta, and families yet undiscovered, with nary a single
> > confirmed crown placental, that STILL would not suggest to you
> > that the crown placentals originated in the Paleocene!
> >
> > Next thing you know, you'll be saying that the fact that
> > no fossils of pterosaurs are known beyond the Cretaceous,
> > does not suggest that they became extinct before the Holocene.
>
> >> What is your case for relevance?
>
> I believe that you have now hinted at your case: each new fossil gives
> us a better sample of Cretaceous mammals, and each new fossil that isn't
> a placental is more evidence that there were no placentals.

As before, you are knocking down a straw man. There are big
qualitative differences between fossils; a hundred fossils
from the same Cretaceous population are worth less than
half a dozen from different species. And note, you are
ignoring what I wrote in the paragraph about representatives
of different orders, etc.

> And this is
> correct, in exactly the same way that a green frog is evidence that all
> crows are black.

Even your straw man wasn't extreme enough to warrant the
new embellishment "exactly."

> The relevant question is the size of the universe.
>Is our current sample
> of Cretaceous mammals good enough to make statements about all
> Cretaceous mammals?

Now the full idiocy of your straw man comes out: your use
of "all Cretaceous mammals" when the issue was merely the
total absence of crown placentals. Where did you see me
talking about marsupials, multituberculates, monotremes, etc.
on this thread? Nowhere, except for pointing out a strange
use of "stem eutherian" by the authors!

> You seem to believe that it is.

Do I also seem to believe in the tooth fairy, in The World
According to John Harshman?

> I think that it
> isn't. If placentals were there, would we have found them by now? You
> think we would.

No, I don't. You are abandoning all scientific thinking here,
turning a "suggests" into something totally different.

Only Ray Martinez, of all the people I've interacted with, has
been more illogical this month than you are here.

> I start with asking what you mean by "there"; how good
> is the geographic sampling? Your hypothetical case in which there are
> hundreds of samples (which you might imagine are independent, though
> that would be unlikely), certainly would improve the inference.

Finally!!!

Finally you are backpedaling from your "no amount of data".
Are you too full of yourself to acknowledge that this is
what you are doing?

> But in
> fact we don't have that hypothetical case, do we?

Irrelevant to your "no quantity of data" up there. THAT
is what you need to deal with, not a totally imaginary
Peter Nyikos to whom you are addressing a bunch of nonsense.

> Instead we have a very
> few examples. Do you think they are good evidence that placentals
> originated int he Paleocene?

Somewhere between this latest strawman and your "no quantity
of data" lies a realistic picture of where I stand.

In case that was too subtle for you, the one-dimensional
answer is "No".

Peter Nyikos
Professor of Mathematics
U. of S.Carolina -- standard disclaimer --

[John Harshman]

That would be a different sort of evidence, if it were evidence at all.

> 2. It isn't just one fossil; it is all the Cretaceous fossils
> of various species of Cimolestidae. The authors list three genera.

So?

> http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/brv.12242/full
>
> I'd ask the authors just how many fossils representing how many
> species just in Cimolestidae that have been collected to date,
> except that no number will make the slightest difference
> in your attitude, as you've subsequently made clear:
>
>>>> I would say that no quantity of examples would be relevant.
>>>
>>> So even if fossils of hundreds of Cretaceous near-placentals are
>>> discovered, spread across Cimolestidae, Taeinodonta, Pantodonta,
>>> Tillodonta, and families yet undiscovered, with nary a single
>>> confirmed crown placental, that STILL would not suggest to you
>>> that the crown placentals originated in the Paleocene!
>>>
>>> Next thing you know, you'll be saying that the fact that
>>> no fossils of pterosaurs are known beyond the Cretaceous,
>>> does not suggest that they became extinct before the Holocene.
>>
>>>> What is your case for relevance?
>>
>> I believe that you have now hinted at your case: each new fossil gives
>> us a better sample of Cretaceous mammals, and each new fossil that isn't
>> a placental is more evidence that there were no placentals.
>
> As before, you are knocking down a straw man. There are big
> qualitative differences between fossils; a hundred fossils
> from the same Cretaceous population are worth less than
> half a dozen from different species. And note, you are
> ignoring what I wrote in the paragraph about representatives
> of different orders, etc.

I wasn't ignoring that. I was assuming that we were talking about
species, not individuals.

>> And this is
>> correct, in exactly the same way that a green frog is evidence that all
>> crows are black.
>
> Even your straw man wasn't extreme enough to warrant the
> new embellishment "exactly."

In what way is it a straw man? Are you acquainted with the controversy
in logic? The statement "all crows are black" is logically equivalent to
the statement "all non-black things are non-crows". A black crow is some
evidence for the statement, and a green frog, being a non-black
non-crow, is likewise some evidence. Would you agree?

Similarly, the statement "all placentals are Cenozoic" is logically
equivalent to "all non-Cenozoic mammals are non-placental", and that's
why a Cretaceous non-placental is evidence for the claim that all
placentals are Cenozoic.

Now, there's a slight difference between the cases, and it involves the
size of the universe of possible data. There are astronomically many
non-black non-crows, and one green frog is so tiny a datum as to be
pretty much useess. Presumably, there are somewhat fewer Cretaceous
mammal species, so one non-placental counts for more than one frog. But
the principle is the same.

There are other differences. We aren't sampling randomly from Cretaceous
mammals, which we presumably are from non-frogs. But I would argue that
our mammal sample is highly biased, which makes the sample less useful
than a random one would be.

>> The relevant question is the size of the universe.
>> Is our current sample
>> of Cretaceous mammals good enough to make statements about all
>> Cretaceous mammals?
>
> Now the full idiocy of your straw man comes out: your use
> of "all Cretaceous mammals" when the issue was merely the
> total absence of crown placentals. Where did you see me
> talking about marsupials, multituberculates, monotremes, etc.
> on this thread? Nowhere, except for pointing out a strange
> use of "stem eutherian" by the authors!

Perhaps I expressed myself poorly. By "all Cretaceous mammals" I meant
that you are supposing that all Cretaceous mammals would not include
placentals.

>> You seem to believe that it is.
>
> Do I also seem to believe in the tooth fairy, in The World
> According to John Harshman?

Ask yourself if your hostility is serving a useful purpose for either of us.

>> I think that it
>> isn't. If placentals were there, would we have found them by now? You
>> think we would.
>
> No, I don't. You are abandoning all scientific thinking here,
> turning a "suggests" into something totally different.

Totally? "Suggests" is a hypothesis. I merely stated your hypothesis
explicitly.

>> I start with asking what you mean by "there"; how good
>> is the geographic sampling? Your hypothetical case in which there are
>> hundreds of samples (which you might imagine are independent, though
>> that would be unlikely), certainly would improve the inference.
>
> Finally!!!
>
> Finally you are backpedaling from your "no amount of data".
> Are you too full of yourself to acknowledge that this is
> what you are doing?

I might answer that question if you asked it in a less hostile way.

>> Instead we have a very
>> few examples. Do you think they are good evidence that placentals
>> originated in the Paleocene?
>
> Somewhere between this latest strawman and your "no quantity
> of data" lies a realistic picture of where I stand.
>
> In case that was too subtle for you, the one-dimensional
> answer is "No".

Could you state your position more explictly?

[*Hemidactylus*]

On 02/16/2016 09:25 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:

[snip]

> No, I don't. You are abandoning all scientific thinking here,
> turning a "suggests" into something totally different.
>
> Only Ray Martinez, of all the people I've interacted with, has
> been more illogical this month than you are here.

I guess if you're not being hyberbolic you're saying I'm not more
illogical than Harshman here? You heard he dislikes me? Funny that. He
loves you. Hilarious.

I was talking about structuralism and how Gould had those tendencies and
he dislikes me. And you're still avoiding a reply to a very non-meta
post of mine.

Apparently interpersonal jibber jabber and toxicity are what the people
want. Give them what they need oh fountain of insults. Pour forth your
gifts to the people.

[erik simpson]

I continue to be uncertain of "where you stand". Without further bush-beating,
would you say that the presence of Cimolestids, Taeinodonts, etc. makes the
existence of Cretaceous placentals more likely or less likely? Phrased more
expansively, what is the "realistic picture" you prefer?

[Peter Nyikos]

On Wednesday, February 17, 2016 at 4:24:56 AM UTC-5, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
> On 02/16/2016 09:25 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> > No, I don't. You are abandoning all scientific thinking here,
> > turning a "suggests" into something totally different.
> >
> > Only Ray Martinez, of all the people I've interacted with, has
> > been more illogical this month than you are here.
>
> I guess if you're not being hyberbolic you're saying I'm not more
> illogical than Harshman here?

Implicitly, yes. You are wackier than Harshman, but your wackiness comes
out in different ways than tangible illogic.

> You heard he dislikes me? Funny that. He
> loves you. Hilarious.

With people like Harshman "loving" me the way Harshman does, I have no need
of enemies. That doesn't stop others from becoming overt enemies, of course,
like Ray Martinez, whom Harshman dislikes far less than he dislikes me.

Note this though: unlike Ron O, whom you seem to love, I am cordial
even towards implacable enemies of mine, like Mark Isaak, when they
are cordial towards me. So don't be surprised if you find me
cordial towards you from time to time.

> I was talking about structuralism and how Gould had those tendencies and
> he dislikes me.

Sorry, I haven't been following what you write closely enough
to have seen any explanation about how Harshman dislikes you.

> And you're still avoiding a reply to a very non-meta
> post of mine.

Um...which one would that be? It isn't on this thread, that's for sure.

> Apparently interpersonal jibber jabber and toxicity are what the people
> want.

That does seem to be what Harshman wants in the post to which I was
replying. Your gargantuan snips, hiding his misbehavior, suggest
that you love him and dislike me.

> Give them what they need oh fountain of insults. Pour forth your
> gifts to the people.

I'm in a mellow mood at the moment, so I am not taking offense at this
jibber jabber by you.

Please take note of what I wrote about cordiality.

Peter Nyikos

[John Harshman]

On 2/19/16 1:14 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Wednesday, February 17, 2016 at 4:24:56 AM UTC-5, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
>> On 02/16/2016 09:25 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>
>> [snip]
>>
>>> No, I don't. You are abandoning all scientific thinking here,
>>> turning a "suggests" into something totally different.
>>>
>>> Only Ray Martinez, of all the people I've interacted with, has
>>> been more illogical this month than you are here.
>>
>> I guess if you're not being hyberbolic you're saying I'm not more
>> illogical than Harshman here?
>
> Implicitly, yes. You are wackier than Harshman, but your wackiness comes
> out in different ways than tangible illogic.
>
>> You heard he dislikes me? Funny that. He
>> loves you. Hilarious.
>
> With people like Harshman "loving" me the way Harshman does, I have no need
> of enemies. That doesn't stop others from becoming overt enemies, of course,
> like Ray Martinez, whom Harshman dislikes far less than he dislikes me.

It seems that some clarification is necessary for both of you. Of the
three of you, I dislike Ray the most, Peter second, and Hemidactylus
only third.

>> I was talking about structuralism and how Gould had those tendencies and
>> he dislikes me.
>
> Sorry, I haven't been following what you write closely enough
> to have seen any explanation about how Harshman dislikes you.

I dislike him because he seems either incapable of or uninterested in
explaining himself clearly. I have presented the hypothesis that he's
more interested in sounding clever than in communicating.

>> Apparently interpersonal jibber jabber and toxicity are what the people
>> want.
>
> That does seem to be what Harshman wants in the post to which I was
> replying.

No, that's what I like least. Why, your penchant for it is the main
reason I dislike you.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Wednesday, February 17, 2016 at 2:44:56 PM UTC-5, erik simpson wrote:

> I continue to be uncertain of "where you stand". Without further bush-beating,
> would you say that the presence of Cimolestids, Taeinodonts, etc. makes the
> existence of Cretaceous placentals more likely or less likely? Phrased more
> expansively, what is the "realistic picture" you prefer?

Sorry, Erik. I have decided to do no more replies on this thread
until Richard Norman returns from his hiatus.

Meanwhile, you have two replies from me on the "Hiatus" thread, done today,
to attend to. Unlike here, I will continue on that thread even in the
absence of Richard.

Peter Nyikos

[*Hemidactylus*]

That's funny. I hold you in higher esteem than Peter and Ray, but
because I like you. Maybe you read me uncharitably. Read that thread of
mine more closely with wther Larry read Gould close enough in mind. I
like Larry a lot (and PZ too). But I have my own space for
disagreements. Larry's views on ENCODE are gold. Or GOLD!

You must give me credit for reading Gould's Brick (hernia and all) all
the way through and trying to address what I thought were Larry Moran's
shortcomings wrt Gould's underlying sympathies for structuralism. Larry
likes to parade that book on his blog BTW!

Recently I've been doing remedial work in ev bio and Gould's Brick was a
major factor in this. Give me some props? Even if I'm not as
knowledgeable as you, Larry or Coyne, though find myself thinking
something ain't quite right intuitively from time to time. I don't think
I'm an idiot. I could be wrong. Communication ain't my strong suit. You
should be more helpful. Wish Larry would hit me point by point where I
was wrong. He woke me from dogmatic slumber (sensu Kant).

>>> Apparently interpersonal jibber jabber and toxicity are what the people
>>> want.
>>
>> That does seem to be what Harshman wants in the post to which I was
>> replying.
>
> No, that's what I like least. Why, your penchant for it is the main
> reason I dislike you.

Well you at least got that.

[John Harshman]

I don't think Gould ever defined structuralism either. I checked some of
the many index references without locating any clarity on the point.

> Recently I've been doing remedial work in ev bio and Gould's Brick was a
> major factor in this. Give me some props? Even if I'm not as
> knowledgeable as you, Larry or Coyne, though find myself thinking
> something ain't quite right intuitively from time to time. I don't think
> I'm an idiot. I could be wrong. Communication ain't my strong suit. You
> should be more helpful. Wish Larry would hit me point by point where I
> was wrong. He woke me from dogmatic slumber (sensu Kant).

None of that has anything to do with why I don't like you, except the
bit about communication not being your strong suit, and I think that's
only because it's not a high priority for you.

If you recall, I asked only for a definition of structuralism, never
supplied.

[*Hemidactylus*]

Will you be avoiding my questions too? Granted Richard has higher Howler
Monkey status than me and Harshman puts me well below Gould (and perhaps
Larry the Gould scholar...grumpy...Muppet...grumpy). IOW I did reference
IC right? Maybe I am in an alternate universe? OMG I don't know! Howler
monkey stature is important but truth wins out. Can we wait for Norman's
decisive opinion? I dunno. What is your deal Norman? Why are we in limbo
on this? You left us hanging oh physiocrat SCHOLAR!

What were we talking about? Beer? Hops? Umm..NOOOO! I hate hops by
fiat!!! Dammit! And Peter should rule on hops? I think not! That's a
complex topic. Behe? Dembski?

[Peter Nyikos]

On Friday, February 19, 2016 at 8:14:48 PM UTC-5, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
> On 02/19/2016 05:12 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Wednesday, February 17, 2016 at 2:44:56 PM UTC-5, erik simpson wrote:
> >
> >> I continue to be uncertain of "where you stand". Without further bush-beating,
> >> would you say that the presence of Cimolestids, Taeinodonts, etc. makes the
> >> existence of Cretaceous placentals more likely or less likely? Phrased more
> >> expansively, what is the "realistic picture" you prefer?
> >
> > Sorry, Erik. I have decided to do no more replies on this thread
> > until Richard Norman returns from his hiatus.
> >
> > Meanwhile, you have two replies from me on the "Hiatus" thread, done today,
> > to attend to. Unlike here, I will continue on that thread even in the
> > absence of Richard.

Funny, Erik disappeared from that thread on the 13th and hasn't been
seen there since. Didn't even say Hello to Richard since he returned
yesterday to that thread.

> Will you be avoiding my questions too?

I believe I've answered the questions you posed to me on this thread.
Did you also want me to answer questions you posed to Harshman?
Sorry, I don't want to steal Harshman's thunder, and I might even
guess wrong as to what that thunder might be like.

By the way, you haven't answered my question that began with "Ummmm..."
earlier on this thread.

> Granted Richard has higher Howler
> Monkey status than me

Wow, does Richard go all the way back to the days of Ted Holden?

> and Harshman puts me well below Gould (and perhaps
> Larry the Gould scholar...grumpy...Muppet...grumpy). IOW I did reference
> IC right?

I'll have to check the appropriate thread. But if you really
want to know the answer, why don't you link the thread and
thus make my task easier?

[Oops, scratch that last question. The second half of the
main clause implicitly answers the first half and hangs
the subordinate clause out to dry.]

> Maybe I am in an alternate universe? OMG I don't know! Howler
> monkey stature is important but truth wins out. Can we wait for Norman's
> decisive opinion? I dunno. What is your deal Norman? Why are we in limbo
> on this? You left us hanging oh physiocrat SCHOLAR!
>
> What were we talking about? Beer? Hops? Umm..NOOOO! I hate hops by
> fiat!!! Dammit! And Peter should rule on hops? I think not! That's a
> complex topic. Behe? Dembski?

I really enjoy beer where the taste of hops is palpable,
but I leave rulings to real connoiseurs who have tried
hundreds of micro-brewed beers and ales and porters and stouts
in dozens of states and half a dozen European countries
including, of course, Belgium and the Czech Republic. .

Anyway, thanks for confirming my suspicion that when you
were claiming to have become more serious [I forget which thread
that was], you had your tongue firmly in cheek.

Peter Nyikos, still mellow from a nice weekend.

[RSNorman]

I am not at all interested in tracing back through all this to see why
I acquired howler monkey status or why Peter must await my august
presence (OK, my february presence). I stop reading any thread where
Peter starts in with who did what to whom years ago and his analysis
of interpersonal conflicts and alliances that he thinks might underlie
arguments. And I have great difficulty even following Hemi's stream
of semi-consciousness meanderings.

Perhaps Peter awaits me because, when I take an actual scientific
interest, I try to avoid acrimony no matter how ripe the target that
is handed to me. And ripe targets abound here. Of course I do stick
my oar in here and there just to keep amused but I assume that anyone
here with any intelligence can tell when I am being serious.

Most important, a good, bitter, full-blown hoppiness is absolutely
esential for a fine ale. See
http://homebrewmanual.com/beer-bitterness-ratios/

Peter, I would gladly share a brew with you and let Hemi gulp his
ice-cold Bud Light mistakenly thinking it to be potable.

[erik simpson]

On Monday, February 22, 2016 at 3:14:42 PM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Friday, February 19, 2016 at 8:14:48 PM UTC-5, *Hemidactylus* wrote:

> <...>

I haven't responded since GG wouldn't let me. Actually, there's been little
I've felt like I wanted to respond to anyway. Maybe I'll say something if this
gets through.

[*Hemidactylus*]

I find that remark very offensive. Bud Light? Are you kidding me? I
dislike hoppy beers because they taste like grapefruit juice to me and
annoy me almost as much as Peter's crazed Hemi narratives. The exploding
head from Scanners applies as much today as it did a couple years ago.
I've tried being nicer to Nyikos recently and he still does this crap to me.

Let's see how many examples of me clowning around that are beneath your
snooty condescending acknowledgement (high five to your buddy Harshman):


Coyne's "failure to adapt":
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/talk.origins/MDsCwNZGjSE

A critique of Moran's views on structuralism especially since Gould as I
demonstrate uses a version of it, yet Harshman says what we have here is
a failure to communicate:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/talk.origins/8443hCugUHE

Shifting adeptly from classical Owenian/Geoffroyian structuralism to
Cuvierian functionalism I demonstrate why the IC notion Peter so
cherishes is historically saddled with parts correlational baggage:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/skv9VK_q2UE/eAwCMeAuHAAJ

I critique creationist mumbo jumbo of "ontogenetic depth" and call out a
quote mine of a respectable evo devo guru named Wallace Arthur:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/coJzQD-yxL8/YqOVqN4fHAAJ

I critique mentalism applied to the universe:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/mpeJ6pdbVfI/MLTkahypHAAJ

I question Glenn's usage of a paper about de novo genes seemingly
arising from non-coding regions in a relatively small proportion of genes:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/sIp6gwSYBrY/gyg7tVMiHAAJ

And I still had time to analyze Hume's guillotine twice:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/jt_n25QYYZ4/35ujDcG_HAAJ

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/410O3wYgvks/zFuOob-tHAAJ

Unless you want to buy into Peter's misrepresentations of me and
Harshman's dismissal of me as beneath usefulness, you need to assess the
data I've presented for yourself. Or would you both rather bitch and
whine about lack of substance in your absence as Jillery has called you
out for your mutual admiration bro-fest with Harshman?

And what has Nyikos been doing with his time spent on this newsgroup?
His content speaks for itself.

[*Hemidactylus*]

Second try as first didn't seem to bother getting through. Ironic that.
As thick as Peter's head!

On 02/22/2016 06:12 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Friday, February 19, 2016 at 8:14:48 PM UTC-5, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
>> On 02/19/2016 05:12 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>> On Wednesday, February 17, 2016 at 2:44:56 PM UTC-5, erik simpson wrote:
>>>
>>>> I continue to be uncertain of "where you stand". Without further bush-beating,
>>>> would you say that the presence of Cimolestids, Taeinodonts, etc. makes the
>>>> existence of Cretaceous placentals more likely or less likely? Phrased more
>>>> expansively, what is the "realistic picture" you prefer?
>>>
>>> Sorry, Erik. I have decided to do no more replies on this thread
>>> until Richard Norman returns from his hiatus.
>>>
>>> Meanwhile, you have two replies from me on the "Hiatus" thread, done today,
>>> to attend to. Unlike here, I will continue on that thread even in the
>>> absence of Richard.
>
> Funny, Erik disappeared from that thread on the 13th and hasn't been
> seen there since. Didn't even say Hello to Richard since he returned
> yesterday to that thread.

Why don't you say this directly to Erik? I consider it extremely rude
that you piggyback comments like this. Well that and your habitual
interjections of other peoples names in posts to another person entirely.

>> Will you be avoiding my questions too?
>
> I believe I've answered the questions you posed to me on this thread.
> Did you also want me to answer questions you posed to Harshman?
> Sorry, I don't want to steal Harshman's thunder, and I might even
> guess wrong as to what that thunder might be like.
>
> By the way, you haven't answered my question that began with "Ummmm..."
> earlier on this thread.

What question was that? I can't be bothered to look for it.

>> Granted Richard has higher Howler
>> Monkey status than me
>
> Wow, does Richard go all the way back to the days of Ted Holden?
>
>> and Harshman puts me well below Gould (and perhaps
>> Larry the Gould scholar...grumpy...Muppet...grumpy). IOW I did reference
>> IC right?
>
> I'll have to check the appropriate thread. But if you really
> want to know the answer, why don't you link the thread and
> thus make my task easier?

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/SJdtl0xKQ_4/Wxuy7lTUFwAJ

Don't know why I bother.

> [Oops, scratch that last question. The second half of the
> main clause implicitly answers the first half and hangs
> the subordinate clause out to dry.]
>
>
>> Maybe I am in an alternate universe? OMG I don't know! Howler
>> monkey stature is important but truth wins out. Can we wait for Norman's
>> decisive opinion? I dunno. What is your deal Norman? Why are we in limbo
>> on this? You left us hanging oh physiocrat SCHOLAR!
>>
>> What were we talking about? Beer? Hops? Umm..NOOOO! I hate hops by
>> fiat!!! Dammit! And Peter should rule on hops? I think not! That's a
>> complex topic. Behe? Dembski?
>
> I really enjoy beer where the taste of hops is palpable,
> but I leave rulings to real connoiseurs who have tried
> hundreds of micro-brewed beers and ales and porters and stouts
> in dozens of states and half a dozen European countries
> including, of course, Belgium and the Czech Republic. .
>
> Anyway, thanks for confirming my suspicion that when you
> were claiming to have become more serious [I forget which thread
> that was], you had your tongue firmly in cheek.

That's the way to misrepresent someone. You are the master. Keep it up.

[*Hemidactylus*]

Hey what do you know it made it through. Here's I will make it easier
for Peter to see the post he has repeatedly ignored:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/SJdtl0xKQ_4/Wxuy7lTUFwAJ
[quote]
On 02/02/2016 11:11 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Sunday, January 31, 2016 at 8:10:49 PM UTC-5, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
>> On 01/31/2016 07:37 PM, RSNorman wrote:
>>> On Sun, 31 Jan 2016 19:03:45 -0500, *Hemidactylus*
>>> <ecph...@allspamis.invalid> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 01/31/2016 04:54 PM, RSNorman wrote:
>
>>>>> I admit to not reading a lot of Peter's stuff but it seems like you
>>>>> are putting words and ideas into what he does write. And what
you put
>>>>> in I totally discount, not coming from Peter.
>
> That was a wise decision on Richard's part, as I told him yesterday.
>
> <snip things to be dealt with in about three weeks if you insist,
> and earlier if you play ball as described last night>
>
>> I was defending myself from your ridicule by providing supporting
>> documentation.
>
> +++++++++++++++++++++ Hemidactylus posting style on
>
> Yeah, I can see where you might be concerned about being
> ridiculed by an Alpha Male like Norman (and Harshman too?).
>
> +++++++++++++++++++++ Hemidactylus posting style off
>
>> You weren't here nearly 20 years ago. I was. My memory
>> hasn't failed me that Peter has gone to bat for Behe on this issue of IC
>
> Only in the sense of being willing to pinch hit for him after
> he has been hit by a beanball. I then let people see what Behe
> might have said if he were here to defend himself. But I seldom
> endorse what he would have said, except where the IC nature of
> the bacterial flagellum (experimentally verified by
> Minnich) and except where the methodology of ID as practiced by Behe
> is concerned.
>
> That methodology hasn't yielded much tangible fruit, but as
> they said about various branches of science and technology
> in their infancy, "Of what use is a newborn baby?" We'll just
> have to wait and see whether they come up with anything substantial
> (not counting my branch of DP that Crick and Orgel originated,
> and which that none of them really endorses).

So would it be fair to say that the irreducible complexity of the
bacterial flagellum is loosely or tangentially related to your DP theory
then?

>> and not only has, but as above even more recently appears to be
>> incorporating IC into his DP theory.
>
> Wrong. My DP theory *per se* does not include anything about the
> bacterial flagellum, let alone its IC nature. Unlike my other hypothesis
> that abiogenesis is a once-in-a-galaxy (or worse) occurrence, which
> is important for my DP hypothesis, the designedness of this or that
> feature is an extra hypothesis, not affecting my arguments for DP
> itself.

So IC is not at the core only subsidiary?
- show quoted text -
So clotting cascade and immune system are off the table and evolvable,
you're not sure about vision molecules (though not germane to DP proper
as vision comes way after seeding and the bacterial flagellum as
indicator feature)?

>> and I attack the broader non-DP IC/ID approach with
>> pseudogenes. Read more carefully next time.
>
> Physician, heal thyself! Those cascades were an *embarrassment*
> to my DP hypothesis until I saw the Robison demolition.

Because they couldn't have evolved on their own after initial seeding if
they were IC? I'm trying to flesh out differences between Behe and you here.

>> I have provided ample support for my more narrowly focused contentions.
>
> The cascades may well be IC in their present form in humans; that
> has precious little to do with whether the original, rudimentary form
> was designed or not.

So they could be IC, but still evolved as "IC"-ness isn't due to design,
but the foggy nature of molecular evolution and plausibility of
potential scenarios?

OK so I'm not sure I'm entirely clear where you stand overall but this
is a good start. Thanks.
[/quote]

Or maybe he'd rather brag about things on s.b.p. or whatever the acronym
for that other newsgroup is where I'm sure his reputation proceeds him
too and follows like a nasty chem trail.

[RSNorman]

I retract my comment (included above) where I wrote " I assume that

anyone here with any intelligence can tell when I am being serious."

I mentioned in the "hiatus" thread that in my absence there were over
1300 posts. You claim to have written a half dozen that had some
content, although I could quibble about the style of several which I
admit I dropped after the first few sentences of clever badinage. So
my claim about the quality of t.o. is not absolute but good only to
the 0.01 level of significance. Good enough for government work.

[jillery]

On Mon, 22 Feb 2016 16:40:56 -0700, RSNorman <r_s_n...@comcast.net>
wrote:

For some reason that escapes me, I am reminded of 1920's bluenoses
who lamented the loose morals of the proletariat, and then bent elbows
with the mobsters who ran the speakeasys and casinos and houses of ill
repute.
--
This space is intentionally not blank.

[RSNorman]

On Tue, 23 Feb 2016 07:56:00 -0500, jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>

I am quite capable of enjoying a well prepared meal with quality
beer/ale/wine/liquor at a fine restaurant or brew pub with friends of
mine even though we disagree markedly on politics.

[jillery]

On Tue, 23 Feb 2016 07:45:48 -0700, RSNorman <r_s_n...@comcast.net>

I said nothing about politics. A more apt analogy would be if you
would call someone a friend who is for example a mass murderer.

[RSNorman]

On Tue, 23 Feb 2016 14:08:03 -0500, jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>

I said nothing about mas murderers. Suppose I had a friend who
performed abortions? Does that count?

Does your issues with Peter put him in your evaluation into a category
akin to mass murderers?

[Paul J Gans]

RSNorman <r_s_n...@comcast.net> wrote:

[deletions]

>I am not at all interested in tracing back through all this to see why
>I acquired howler monkey status or why Peter must await my august
>presence (OK, my february presence). I stop reading any thread where
>Peter starts in with who did what to whom years ago and his analysis
>of interpersonal conflicts and alliances that he thinks might underlie
>arguments. And I have great difficulty even following Hemi's stream
>of semi-consciousness meanderings.

>Perhaps Peter awaits me because, when I take an actual scientific
>interest, I try to avoid acrimony no matter how ripe the target that
>is handed to me. And ripe targets abound here. Of course I do stick
>my oar in here and there just to keep amused but I assume that anyone
>here with any intelligence can tell when I am being serious.

>Most important, a good, bitter, full-blown hoppiness is absolutely
>esential for a fine ale. See
> http://homebrewmanual.com/beer-bitterness-ratios/

> Peter, I would gladly share a brew with you and let Hemi gulp his
>ice-cold Bud Light mistakenly thinking it to be potable.

Of course it is potable. I have, with my own eyes, seen folks carrying
it around.

--
--- Paul J. Gans

[jillery]

On Tue, 23 Feb 2016 12:16:12 -0700, RSNorman <r_s_n...@comcast.net>

False equivalence. I specified mass murderer as an example. You
implied politics was a relevant issue.

>Suppose I had a friend who
>performed abortions? Does that count?

Sure, go with that. No doubt rockhead will appreciate you comparing
him to an abortionist.

>Does your issues with Peter put him in your evaluation into a category
>akin to mass murderers?

Actually, I had thought of many and much worse examples, but I didn't
want to sound prejudiced.

But you're entitled to choose your own social acquaintances and for
your own reasons. I suppose even Osama bin Laden had friends.

[RSNorman]

On Tue, 23 Feb 2016 20:09:17 -0500, jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>

Thank you for your allowing me to choose my own acquaintances. I was
afraid for a moment that you would screen my drinking companions.

Osama bin Laden presumably abstained from alcohol so he was off my
list.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Monday, February 22, 2016 at 10:04:38 PM UTC-5, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
> Second try as first didn't seem to bother getting through. Ironic that.

It happened to me too. So now I am piggybacking onto an earlier
post of yours to see whether that helps, and slightly revising
that attempted post on account of this posting problem.

> As thick as Peter's head!

You haven't even hinted to me why my reposting something involving
Aristotle made your head feel like exploding, so don't call me thick headed
for not being able to figure it out the reason all by myself.

> On 02/22/2016 06:12 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Friday, February 19, 2016 at 8:14:48 PM UTC-5, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
> >> On 02/19/2016 05:12 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>> On Wednesday, February 17, 2016 at 2:44:56 PM UTC-5, erik simpson wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> I continue to be uncertain of "where you stand". Without further bush-beating,
> >>>> would you say that the presence of Cimolestids, Taeinodonts, etc. makes the
> >>>> existence of Cretaceous placentals more likely or less likely? Phrased more
> >>>> expansively, what is the "realistic picture" you prefer?
> >>>
> >>> Sorry, Erik. I have decided to do no more replies on this thread
> >>> until Richard Norman returns from his hiatus.
> >>>
> >>> Meanwhile, you have two replies from me on the "Hiatus" thread, done today,
> >>> to attend to. Unlike here, I will continue on that thread even in the
> >>> absence of Richard.
> >
> > Funny, Erik disappeared from that thread on the 13th and hasn't been
> > seen there since. Didn't even say Hello to Richard since he returned
> > yesterday to that thread.
>
>

> Why don't you say this directly to Erik?

I did, a few hours later. I posted to a thread Erik started on
endosymbionts, asked him whether he'd lost track of the "Hiatus"
thread and told him Richard had weighed in there.

Now I see Erik is also having trouble posting. I wish him luck in
overcoming that, especially since he might want to say some
more things on that thread which he started yesterday.

>I consider it extremely rude
> that you piggyback comments like this.

You mean that, even though I had been replying to Erik, I'm not
supposed to say anything about him even though you left his words in?

> Well that and your habitual
> interjections of other peoples names in posts to another person entirely.

You did it to me on that "Hiatus" thread in the last post to that
thread so far, and even made an unsupported accusation about
(unspecified) misreprestations by me. And this, in reply to a
post by Richard where he hadn't been talking to or about me.

So it seems that you have codes of etiquette and morality
that are a lot harder on people you dislike than on yourself.

> >> Will you be avoiding my questions too?
> >
> > I believe I've answered the questions you posed to me on this thread.
> > Did you also want me to answer questions you posed to Harshman?
> > Sorry, I don't want to steal Harshman's thunder, and I might even
> > guess wrong as to what that thunder might be like.
> >
> > By the way, you haven't answered my question that began with "Ummmm..."
> > earlier on this thread.
>

> What question was that? I can't be bothered to look for it.

You had claimed that I owed you an answer to a question, and the "Ummmm ..."
preceded my asking what thread that was. I pointed out that it certainly
wasn't on this thread.

If you can't be bothered with remembering what your question
was, nor what thread you asked it on, that's fine with me.

> >> Granted Richard has higher Howler
> >> Monkey status than me
> >
> > Wow, does Richard go all the way back to the days of Ted Holden?
> >
> >> and Harshman puts me well below Gould (and perhaps
> >> Larry the Gould scholar...grumpy...Muppet...grumpy). IOW I did reference
> >> IC right?

You didn't say enough on the post you link below for me to tell
whether you got the concept of IC right. Is that what you are asking?

> > I'll have to check the appropriate thread. But if you really
> > want to know the answer, why don't you link the thread and
> > thus make my task easier?
>

> https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/SJdtl0xKQ_4/Wxuy7lTUFwAJ
>
> Don't know why I bother.

Well, I'm glad you did, because I keep losing track of THAT thread!

But gosh, you didn't have to repost it here--I could have answered
on that thread, now that you linked the post.

Wasn't it the re-posting of something to a different thread
that really got you ranting about how I make your head explode?
Or was it ONLY the subject matter that did the trick?

Anyway, since I'm having posting problems, I think I'd better
answer on that other thread. Besides, IC and ID and DP are better
discussed on threads that don't talk about the Cambrian explosion.

<snip of something on which you didn't comment>

> >> Maybe I am in an alternate universe? OMG I don't know! Howler
> >> monkey stature is important but truth wins out. Can we wait for Norman's
> >> decisive opinion? I dunno. What is your deal Norman? Why are we in limbo
> >> on this? You left us hanging oh physiocrat SCHOLAR!
> >>
> >> What were we talking about? Beer? Hops? Umm..NOOOO! I hate hops by
> >> fiat!!! Dammit! And Peter should rule on hops? I think not! That's a
> >> complex topic. Behe? Dembski?
> >
> > I really enjoy beer where the taste of hops is palpable,
> > but I leave rulings to real connoiseurs who have tried
> > hundreds of micro-brewed beers and ales and porters and stouts
> > in dozens of states and half a dozen European countries
> > including, of course, Belgium and the Czech Republic.

By the way, I never had the chance to try beer in Belgium, but
I've had some wonderful beers in Prague. The best ever, I think,
was on tap in a place where I had lunch with some fellow topologists
back in 1976. It was much better than the bottled Pilsner Urquell
that I could get in the USA, which in turn was far better than
any other beer I could get in the USA in 1976.

> > Anyway, thanks for confirming my suspicion that when you
> > were claiming to have become more serious [I forget which thread
> > that was], you had your tongue firmly in cheek.
>

> That's the way to misrepresent someone. You are the master. Keep it up.

Misrepresent? Do you mean to claim that everything you write
up there is supposed to be as serious as a treatise on Aristotle?

Or is what you wrote an indication of how far you want to go with being
serious, and that a greater degree of seriousness risks making your
head feel like it wants to explode. [Well, YOU brought the topic
up on this thread, not I!]

Peter Nyikos

[jillery]

On Tue, 23 Feb 2016 19:39:06 -0700, RSNorman <r_s_n...@comcast.net>
wrote:

>Thank you for your allowing me to choose my own acquaintances. I was
>afraid for a moment that you would screen my drinking companions.

You continue your chronic habit of blaming me for things I neither
state nor imply, a habit you share with your drinking companions. My
impression is that correlation isn't a coincidence.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Wednesday, February 24, 2016 at 4:29:34 AM UTC-5, jillery wrote:
> On Tue, 23 Feb 2016 19:39:06 -0700, RSNorman <r_s_n...@comcast.net>
> wrote:
>
>
> >Thank you for your allowing me to choose my own acquaintances. I was
> >afraid for a moment that you would screen my drinking companions.
>
>
> You continue your chronic habit of blaming me for things I neither
> state nor imply,

I would have thought that your comparison of me to something much worse
than a mass murderer [unspecified] would have been a strong
hint to him that he ought to be more selective in his choice
of his drinking companions.

Hence his sarcastic comment to you. But then, you seem to
be deficient at recognizing sarcasm -- a trait you've
projected onto me.

> a habit you share with your drinking companions. My
> impression is that correlation isn't a coincidence.

This was the second half of your GIGO.


Peter Nyikos

[RSNorman]

On Wed, 24 Feb 2016 04:27:32 -0500, jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>
wrote:

I blame you for things that you both stated explicitly and implied.
Perhaps when you snipped all previous text you completely forgot that
you wrote "But you're entitled to choose your own social acquaintances

[jillery]

On Wed, 24 Feb 2016 09:15:10 -0700, RSNorman <r_s_n...@comcast.net>
wrote:

>On Wed, 24 Feb 2016 04:27:32 -0500, jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>
>wrote:
>
>>On Tue, 23 Feb 2016 19:39:06 -0700, RSNorman <r_s_n...@comcast.net>
>>wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Thank you for your allowing me to choose my own acquaintances. I was
>>>afraid for a moment that you would screen my drinking companions.
>>
>>
>>You continue your chronic habit of blaming me for things I neither
>>state nor imply, a habit you share with your drinking companions. My
>>impression is that correlation isn't a coincidence.
>
>I blame you for things that you both stated explicitly and implied.

Apparently the old rnorman has returned from vacation.

Please identify where I stated explicitly that I allowed you to choose
your own acquaintances, or retract your statement above.

>Perhaps when you snipped all previous text you completely forgot that
>you wrote "But you're entitled to choose your own social acquaintances
>and for your own reasons."

Not for a New York minute did I think even you would deliberately
misrepresent the obvious and clear meaning of what I wrote. Do you
deny that you're entitled to choose your own social acquaintances? Or
that you do so for your own reasons? I suppose it's possible that
your wife chooses your acquaintances for you, but I can hardly be
blamed for not knowing that.

And how do you get from what I wrote to inferring that I'm "allowing"
you to do anything? How do I have any control over anything you do?

Do your issues with me justify these repetitive, stupid manufactured
arguments of yours?

[jillery]

On Wed, 24 Feb 2016 07:43:25 -0800 (PST), Peter Nyikos
<nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

>On Wednesday, February 24, 2016 at 4:29:34 AM UTC-5, jillery wrote:
>> On Tue, 23 Feb 2016 19:39:06 -0700, RSNorman <r_s_n...@comcast.net>
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>> >Thank you for your allowing me to choose my own acquaintances. I was
>> >afraid for a moment that you would screen my drinking companions.
>>
>>
>> You continue your chronic habit of blaming me for things I neither
>> state nor imply,
>
>I would have thought that your comparison of me to something much worse
>than a mass murderer [unspecified] would have been a strong
>hint to him that he ought to be more selective in his choice
>of his drinking companions.

You have demonstrated time after time that what you "would have
thought" has utterly no relevance to what other posters actually
think.

>Hence his sarcastic comment to you. But then, you seem to
>be deficient at recognizing sarcasm -- a trait you've
>projected onto me.

You offer nothing to suggest I don't recognize sarcasm. The above is
just another one of your TbBAs.

>> a habit you share with your drinking companions. My
>> impression is that correlation isn't a coincidence.
>
>This was the second half of your GIGO.

Your entire post is nothing but GIGO. Tu quoque back atcha, bozo.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Thursday, February 25, 2016 at 2:49:34 AM UTC-5, jillery wrote:
> On Wed, 24 Feb 2016 07:43:25 -0800 (PST), Peter Nyikos
> <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> >On Wednesday, February 24, 2016 at 4:29:34 AM UTC-5, jillery wrote:
> >> On Tue, 23 Feb 2016 19:39:06 -0700, RSNorman <r_s_n...@comcast.net>
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >> >Thank you for your allowing me to choose my own acquaintances. I was
> >> >afraid for a moment that you would screen my drinking companions.
> >>
> >>
> >> You continue your chronic habit of blaming me for things I neither
> >> state nor imply,
> >
> >I would have thought that your comparison of me to something much worse
> >than a mass murderer [unspecified] would have been a strong
> >hint to him that he ought to be more selective in his choice
> >of his drinking companions.
>
>
> You have demonstrated time after time that what you "would have
> thought" has utterly no relevance to what other posters actually
> think.

True enough, as far as it goes. My thoughts and the thoughts of ethical
nihilists, which you give every indication of being, are bound to be
utterly different.

And if you aren't an ethical nihilist, then your thoughts, which
here are illogical enough to resemble Ray's, are utterly different
from my thoughts, which never flout sound logic.

>
> >Hence his sarcastic comment to you. But then, you seem to
> >be deficient at recognizing sarcasm -- a trait you've
> >projected onto me.
>
>
> You offer nothing to suggest I don't recognize sarcasm. The above is
> just another one of your TbBAs.

Your exchange with Richard speaks for itself. If you don't realize that,
you are just confirming that you are poor at recognizing sarcasm.

>
> >> a habit you share with your drinking companions. My
> >> impression is that correlation isn't a coincidence.
> >
> >This was the second half of your GIGO.
>
>
> Your entire post is nothing but GIGO. Tu quoque back atcha, bozo.

This last comment of yours was an especially childish and
smart-alecky Pee Wee Hermanism.

I'd tell you to grow up, except that it would probably only cause
you to express the Peter Pan within you even more, out of sheer spite.

Peter Nyikos

[jillery]

On Thu, 25 Feb 2016 13:02:50 -0800 (PST), Peter Nyikos

<nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

>On Thursday, February 25, 2016 at 2:49:34 AM UTC-5, jillery wrote:
>> On Wed, 24 Feb 2016 07:43:25 -0800 (PST), Peter Nyikos
>> <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>>
>> >On Wednesday, February 24, 2016 at 4:29:34 AM UTC-5, jillery wrote:
>> >> On Tue, 23 Feb 2016 19:39:06 -0700, RSNorman <r_s_n...@comcast.net>
>> >> wrote:
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> >Thank you for your allowing me to choose my own acquaintances. I was
>> >> >afraid for a moment that you would screen my drinking companions.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> You continue your chronic habit of blaming me for things I neither
>> >> state nor imply,
>> >
>> >I would have thought that your comparison of me to something much worse
>> >than a mass murderer [unspecified] would have been a strong
>> >hint to him that he ought to be more selective in his choice
>> >of his drinking companions.
>>
>>
>> You have demonstrated time after time that what you "would have
>> thought" has utterly no relevance to what other posters actually
>> think.
>
>True enough, as far as it goes. My thoughts and the thoughts of ethical
>nihilists, which you give every indication of being, are bound to be
>utterly different.

So you admit that your previous comment is just meaningless noise.
Don't you just hate proving me right all the time?

>And if you aren't an ethical nihilist, then your thoughts, which
>here are illogical enough to resemble Ray's, are utterly different
>from my thoughts, which never flout sound logic.

Right here would have been a good place for you to identify anything
that supports your TbBAs. One can only wonder why you didn't.

>> >Hence his sarcastic comment to you. But then, you seem to
>> >be deficient at recognizing sarcasm -- a trait you've
>> >projected onto me.
>>
>>
>> You offer nothing to suggest I don't recognize sarcasm. The above is
>> just another one of your TbBAs.
>
>Your exchange with Richard speaks for itself. If you don't realize that,
>you are just confirming that you are poor at recognizing sarcasm.

Ah yes, the old "it's self-evident" ploy. How dishonest can you get?

>> >> a habit you share with your drinking companions. My
>> >> impression is that correlation isn't a coincidence.
>> >
>> >This was the second half of your GIGO.
>>
>>
>> Your entire post is nothing but GIGO. Tu quoque back atcha, bozo.
>
>This last comment of yours was an especially childish and
>smart-alecky Pee Wee Hermanism.

That's what you do. Tu quoque back atcha, bozo.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Thursday, February 25, 2016 at 5:04:30 PM UTC-5, jillery wrote:
> On Thu, 25 Feb 2016 13:02:50 -0800 (PST), Peter Nyikos
> <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> >On Thursday, February 25, 2016 at 2:49:34 AM UTC-5, jillery wrote:
> >> On Wed, 24 Feb 2016 07:43:25 -0800 (PST), Peter Nyikos
> >> <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> >>
> >> >On Wednesday, February 24, 2016 at 4:29:34 AM UTC-5, jillery wrote:
> >> >> On Tue, 23 Feb 2016 19:39:06 -0700, RSNorman <r_s_n...@comcast.net>
> >> >> wrote:
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >> >Thank you for your allowing me to choose my own acquaintances. I was
> >> >> >afraid for a moment that you would screen my drinking companions.
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >> You continue your chronic habit of blaming me for things I neither
> >> >> state nor imply,
> >> >
> >> >I would have thought that your comparison of me to something much worse
> >> >than a mass murderer [unspecified] would have been a strong
> >> >hint to him that he ought to be more selective in his choice
> >> >of his drinking companions.
> >>
> >>
> >> You have demonstrated time after time that what you "would have
> >> thought" has utterly no relevance to what other posters actually
> >> think.
> >
> >True enough, as far as it goes. My thoughts and the thoughts of ethical
> >nihilists, which you give every indication of being, are bound to be
> >utterly different.
>
>
> So you admit that your previous comment is just meaningless noise.

More illogic. Do you take "ethical nihilist" to be a compliment?

> Don't you just hate proving me right all the time?

You really don't mind being seen as a troll, do you?

> >And if you aren't an ethical nihilist, then your thoughts, which
> >here are illogical enough to resemble Ray's, are utterly different
> >from my thoughts, which never flout sound logic.
>
>
> Right here would have been a good place for you to identify anything
> that supports your TbBAs. One can only wonder why you didn't.

I did, but now you are acting like an epistemological nihilist.

Incidentally, what you are writing in these last two posts
looks like it could have been ghost-written by "J. J. O'Shea."
He was a troll's troll in his exchanges with me, not caring
a whit whether he was appealing to anyone except part-time
trolls like yourself.

> >> >Hence his sarcastic comment to you. But then, you seem to
> >> >be deficient at recognizing sarcasm -- a trait you've
> >> >projected onto me.
> >>
> >>
> >> You offer nothing to suggest I don't recognize sarcasm. The above is
> >> just another one of your TbBAs.
> >
> >Your exchange with Richard speaks for itself. If you don't realize that,
> >you are just confirming that you are poor at recognizing sarcasm.
>
>
> Ah yes, the old "it's self-evident" ploy. How dishonest can you get?

More trolling by you--in a way that you share with a much earlier
re-inventing of the "jillery" persona by the anonymous jerk
who types the things that are posted under the "jillery" byline:

___________________excerpt from 2011 reply to that "jillery" persona________

> > You "took on" his ridiculous and totally unsupported claim that
> > belaboring the obvious was necessary where I was concerned.
> > And, of course, you didn't support it. You issued an *ipse dixit* in
> > its favor.

> Ah yes, another standard usenet tactic.

Don't try to lecture on standard usenet tactics. You're not good at
it.

[Lecturing on them, I mean; you are an expert at employing them,
including the Pre-Emptive Peremptory Ploy, the One Shade of Gray
Meltdown, and the Deletion Advantage, to name three which I plan to
document you having used, before the month is over.]

================ end of excerpt from a long post at

Message-ID: <971cdeed-2196-4f43...@a28g2000prb.googlegroups.com>
http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/dbf099eab97be9f7?dmode=source
Subject: Re: a farewell (correction post)
Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2011 05:39:18 -0800 (PST)
>

That was only two and a half months after we first encountered
each other, but already after you had unilaterally decided
to become my adversary. Back then, you had not yet realized
what a dedicated adversary I was of iniquity, and so
you didn't post anything as pantently insincere as "How dishonest

can you get?"

> >> >> a habit you share with your drinking companions. My
> >> >> impression is that correlation isn't a coincidence.
> >> >
> >> >This was the second half of your GIGO.
> >>
> >>
> >> Your entire post is nothing but GIGO. Tu quoque back atcha, bozo.
> >
> >This last comment of yours was an especially childish and
> >smart-alecky Pee Wee Hermanism.
>
>
> That's what you do. Tu quoque back atcha, bozo.

That does it: it is obvious that if I keep at this, you will
be all too happy to go on trolling, knowing that you are
only one of many people I am dealing with. Go ahead, post
another round of trolling, and crow like Ron Okimoto that
I am "running away" when I ignore your reply.

In fact, you can start crowing now by re-establishing your
old "rockhead rant" troll Subject: line and lying to
people that I've run away already. Here is that Subject line:

Re: Re OT: yet another rockhead rant: was... it doesn't matter

I can afford to quit like this, because if anyone is
foolish enough to support you, I can always reply to them.

More importantly, I am showing what a highly dishonest person
you are on the thread I began,

Subject: Re: Dirty Debating Tactics 2: Snip-n-deceive

whose subject line you've changed in your highly dishonest
replies, to make it hard for some people to figure out what you
are replying to, because their newsreaders change threads
with each change in subject line.

But with this, you are only digging yourself in deeper.

Peter Nyikos

[jillery]

On Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:32:50 -0800 (PST), Peter Nyikos

Since you called yourself one, apparently you take it as a compliment.

>> Don't you just hate proving me right all the time?

Apparently that's a "yes".

>You really don't mind being seen as a troll, do you?

That's what you do. Tu quoque back atcha. bozo.

>> >And if you aren't an ethical nihilist, then your thoughts, which
>> >here are illogical enough to resemble Ray's, are utterly different
>> >from my thoughts, which never flout sound logic.
>>
>>
>> Right here would have been a good place for you to identify anything
>> that supports your TbBAs. One can only wonder why you didn't.
>
>I did, but now you are acting like an epistemological nihilist.

Of course, you did not. Apparently you can't tell the difference
between saying it's so and it being so, anymore than you can tell the
difference between your opinions and reality.

>> >> >Hence his sarcastic comment to you. But then, you seem to
>> >> >be deficient at recognizing sarcasm -- a trait you've
>> >> >projected onto me.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> You offer nothing to suggest I don't recognize sarcasm. The above is
>> >> just another one of your TbBAs.
>> >
>> >Your exchange with Richard speaks for itself. If you don't realize that,
>> >you are just confirming that you are poor at recognizing sarcasm.
>>
>>
>> Ah yes, the old "it's self-evident" ploy. How dishonest can you get?
>
>More trolling by you--

...apparently lots more dishonest...

Don't start what you can't finish. Just sayin'.

>In fact, you can start crowing now by re-establishing your
>old "rockhead rant" troll Subject: line and lying to
>people that I've run away already. Here is that Subject line:
>
> Re: Re OT: yet another rockhead rant: was... it doesn't matter
>
>I can afford to quit like this, because if anyone is
>foolish enough to support you, I can always reply to them.
>
>More importantly, I am showing what a highly dishonest person
>you are on the thread I began,
>
>Subject: Re: Dirty Debating Tactics 2: Snip-n-deceive
>
>whose subject line you've changed in your highly dishonest
>replies, to make it hard for some people to figure out what you
>are replying to, because their newsreaders change threads
>with each change in subject line.

That topic is the most dishonest and off-topic series of posts you
have ever made, and that's saying a lot.

>But with this, you are only digging yourself in deeper.

That's what you do. Tu quoque back atcha, bozo.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Tuesday, February 16, 2016 at 11:14:57 PM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
> On 2/16/16 6:25 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Tuesday, February 16, 2016 at 11:15:00 AM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
> >> On 2/16/16 5:10 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>> On Friday, February 12, 2016 at 1:05:10 PM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
> >>>> On 2/12/16 9:41 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>
> >>>>> "Rooting Around the Eutherian Family Tree: the Origin and Relations of the Taeniodonta," by Deborah L. Rook, John P. Hunter
> >>>>> Journal of Mammalian Evolution, March 2014, Volume 21, Issue 1, pp 75-91
> >>>>> http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10914-013-9230-9
> >>>>>
> >>>>> excerpt from abstract [most of article paywalled]:
> >>>>> Our studies suggest that taeniodonts arose from Cimolestes through
> >>>>> Alveugena, that Procerberus is more distantly related to taeniodonts,
> >>>>> and that taeniodonts and their relatives are stem eutherians.
> >>>>> We diagnose the Taeniodonta based on these analyses.
> >>>>> Other Paleogene groups, especially those allied with
> >>>>> Cimolestes such as tillodonts and pantolestans, merit further study.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> [the text soon falls into line with the reigning "sister group" orthodox
> >>>>> terminology]
> >>>>>
> >>>>> How many more such examples do we need before you soften your
> >>>>> "...suggests nothing. To suppose otherwise demands..."
> >>>>> pontification?
> >
> >>>> You will have to make your claim explicit here.
> >
> > You will have to stop snipping words of yours which make
> > YOUR claim explicit, as opposed to the sentence fragment
> > I've quoted, which is meaningless without your earlier
> > comment:
> >
> > I think the authors' claims are wrong. The presence of a
> > stem-placental in the Cretaceous does not strongly suggest a
> > Paleocene diversification event. It suggests nothing.
> >
> > But of course, you were knocking down a straw man, because:
> >
> > 1. You are conveniently omitting the absence of all
> > definitive crown placentals and
>
> That would be a different sort of evidence, if it were evidence at all.

Nice to see you didn't dispute the fact that your allegation
about the authors' claims doesn't match what they actually wrote.

> > 2. It isn't just one fossil; it is all the Cretaceous fossils
> > of various species of Cimolestidae. The authors list three genera.
>
> So?

So, again, you were talking about a straw man instead of what
the authors wrote, once the context (i.e., everything they have
in the article) is taken into account.

Those three genera [including five species of *Cimolestes* alone] were
barely more than a drop in the bucket, as you will find out
if you penetrate Figures 3 and 4 in the paper we've been arguing about:

> > http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/brv.12242/full

For the longest time, it seemed to take forever to get these
figures to enlarge. But when I finally succeeded, I realized what
an understatement I had made up there. I'll report on it in
sci.bio.paleontology, in the thread with the same title as this one.

> > I'd ask the authors just how many fossils representing how many
> > species just in Cimolestidae that have been collected to date,
> > except that no number will make the slightest difference
> > in your attitude, as you've subsequently made clear:
> >
> >>>> I would say that no quantity of examples would be relevant.
> >>>
> >>> So even if fossils of hundreds of Cretaceous near-placentals are
> >>> discovered, spread across Cimolestidae, Taeinodonta, Pantodonta,
> >>> Tillodonta, and families yet undiscovered, with nary a single
> >>> confirmed crown placental, that STILL would not suggest to you
> >>> that the crown placentals originated in the Paleocene!
> >>>
> >>> Next thing you know, you'll be saying that the fact that
> >>> no fossils of pterosaurs are known beyond the Cretaceous,
> >>> does not suggest that they became extinct before the Holocene.
> >>
> >>>> What is your case for relevance?
> >>
> >> I believe that you have now hinted at your case: each new fossil gives
> >> us a better sample of Cretaceous mammals, and each new fossil that isn't
> >> a placental is more evidence that there were no placentals.
> >
> > As before, you are knocking down a straw man. There are big
> > qualitative differences between fossils; a hundred fossils
> > from the same Cretaceous population are worth less than
> > half a dozen from different species. And note, you are
> > ignoring what I wrote in the paragraph about representatives
> > of different orders, etc.
>
> I wasn't ignoring that. I was assuming that we were talking about
> species, not individuals.

"each new fossil" doesn't say that, unless you somehow think
each fossil represents a new species.

I see now, reading what you wrote below, that your smugness is
based on a fallacy I would have been ashamed to make when I
was (IIRC) still a high school student.

And I will deal with it in my next reply.

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

PS the reply will post as soon as I've seen this one post.

[John Harshman]

I grow tired of your constant spin. You (or someone) have deleted the
quote on which this argument is based.

>>> 2. It isn't just one fossil; it is all the Cretaceous fossils
>>> of various species of Cimolestidae. The authors list three genera.
>>
>> So?
>
> So, again, you were talking about a straw man instead of what
> the authors wrote, once the context (i.e., everything they have
> in the article) is taken into account.
>
> Those three genera [including five species of *Cimolestes* alone] were
> barely more than a drop in the bucket, as you will find out
> if you penetrate Figures 3 and 4 in the paper we've been arguing about:

I smugly await your reply in which you explain your argument.

>>> http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/brv.12242/full

[Peter Nyikos]

On Tuesday, February 16, 2016 at 11:14:57 PM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
> On 2/16/16 6:25 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Tuesday, February 16, 2016 at 11:15:00 AM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:

The first three lines below have been dealt with and are only there
for context.

> >> I believe that you have now hinted at your case: each new fossil gives
> >> us a better sample of Cretaceous mammals, and each new fossil that isn't
> >> a placental is more evidence that there were no placentals.

> >> And this is
> >> correct, in exactly the same way that a green frog is evidence that all
> >> crows are black.
> >
> > Even your straw man wasn't extreme enough to warrant the
> > new embellishment "exactly."
>
> In what way is it a straw man? Are you acquainted with the controversy
> in logic? The statement "all crows are black" is logically equivalent to
> the statement "all non-black things are non-crows".

Yeah, I read about it in Martin Gardner's long-running Mathematical Games
column in _Scientific American_ back in the 1960's. You are treating
it here as though you had read about it only a few days before you
posted the above, and are still starry-eyed over what a pretty new
toy you've found.

> A black crow is some
> evidence for the statement, and a green frog, being a non-black
> non-crow, is likewise some evidence. Would you agree?

This "paradox" shows the danger of transporting the Argument from
Contrapositive from the realm of PROOF (as in mathematics) to the
realm of "empirical evdience." For proofs it is airtight, for
empirical evidence, it may actually be counterproductive.

Whether a green frog is (pathetically weak) evidence that all
crows are black is not nearly so interesting as the question
of what a green raven (when all ravens heretofore seen were black),
has to say about the case for all crows being black.

I say a green raven would be evidence that we'd better reassess
the statment that all crows are black. Do you agree?

> Similarly, the statement "all placentals are Cenozoic" is logically
> equivalent to "all non-Cenozoic mammals are non-placental",

What a laugh! You've simply drawn one "equivalence" out of a hat
while ignoring innumerable other "equivalences."

These "equivalences" range all the way from "All non-Cenozoic
organisms -- ranging from bacteria to mammals and dinosaurs --
are non-placental" to "All non-Cenozoic fossils of "total Placentalia"
are non-[crown] placental."

Total Placentalia is obviously the "universe" that the authors have
in mind, contrary to your arbitrarily chosen "equivalence."

<snip further harping on your "equivalence">


> There are other differences. We aren't sampling randomly from Cretaceous
> mammals, which we presumably are from non-frogs. But I would argue that
> our mammal sample is highly biased, which makes the sample less useful
> than a random one would be.
>

This is just a fancy way of saying "I would argue that there are
tons of undiscovered crown placental fossils in Cretaceous strata,
if we just knew where to look," isn't it?

> >> The relevant question is the size of the universe.
> >> Is our current sample
> >> of Cretaceous mammals good enough to make statements about all
> >> Cretaceous mammals?
> >
> > Now the full idiocy of your straw man comes out: your use
> > of "all Cretaceous mammals" when the issue was merely the
> > total absence of crown placentals. Where did you see me
> > talking about marsupials, multituberculates, monotremes, etc.
> > on this thread? Nowhere, except for pointing out a strange
> > use of "stem eutherian" by the authors!
>
> Perhaps I expressed myself poorly. By "all Cretaceous mammals" I meant
> that you are supposing that all Cretaceous mammals would not include
> placentals.

I never supposed such a thing, and besides you missed my
point, which has to do with your arbitrarily universe "all
Cretaceous mammals."

> >> You seem to believe that it is.
> >
> > Do I also seem to believe in the tooth fairy, in The World
> > According to John Harshman?
>
> Ask yourself if your hostility is serving a useful purpose for either of us.

Just as I've always suspected: you have NO sense of humor
when the joke is on you.

And you've probably been told this many times, and I suspect your
perennial claim about me lacking a sense of humor is made to
throw people off the scent.


Remainder deleted, to be replied to later.

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

nyikos "at" math.sc.edu

PS Ask yourself whether treating me like a none-too-bright 16 year old
with little aptitude for the subtleties of scientific reasoning
is serving a useful purpose.

[erik simpson]

This post is a perfect illustration of why you're no fun anymore.

[Peter Nyikos]

Yeah, it must have been great fun pretending not to understand what I had
written, all through one thread late last year, and many times in
most of the other threads in which we've encountered each other.

But your behavior on the "Hiatus" thread made it clear that
you had been hoping that I would somehow slip and reveal my
[nonexistent] ulterior motives for writing what I did,
while not being the least bit interested in the real explanations
of the many things I had written on numerous subjects.

But now that you know I won't answer such questions unless you give
me feedback on my answers, you'll have to find a new source of fun.
And it's tough doing that after having been essentially
a one-trick pony for the last two years or so.

Peter Nyikos

[erik simpson]

On Tuesday, March 1, 2016 at 6:44:13 PM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> <...>

>
> Yeah, it must have been great fun pretending not to understand what I had
> written, all through one thread late last year, and many times in
> most of the other threads in which we've encountered each other.

Believe me, no pretense was necessary. And it still isn't.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Wednesday, March 2, 2016 at 11:04:12 AM UTC-5, erik simpson wrote:
> On Tuesday, March 1, 2016 at 6:44:13 PM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > <...>

[restoration]

>> On Tuesday, March 1, 2016 at 8:09:15 PM UTC-5, erik simpson wrote:

>>> This post is a perfect illustration of why you're no fun anymore.

[end of restoration]

> > Yeah, it must have been great fun pretending not to understand what I had
> > written, all through one thread late last year, and many times in
> > most of the other threads in which we've encountered each other.
>
> Believe me, no pretense was necessary. And it still isn't.

I don't believe you. Your arrogant reaction to my asking for feedback to
the two posts where I bent over backwards to try and accommodate
your alleged "incomprehension" speaks for itself, as in "Actions
speak louder than words".

Here is where that matter came to a head:

https://groups.google.com//talk.origins/ehAeD9wIw9I/WjEIv_J2HwAJ
Message-ID: <8a39e748-624b-466f...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Hiatus
Date: Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:07:13 -0800 (PST)

and you thumbed your nose at it, calling it a "ranting"; and then
you took Truman's advice about leaving the kitchen:

I'm through with this thread.
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/talk.origins/ehAeD9wIw9I/WaE8sMN3HwAJ

In the part you've snipped below, I said:

But now that you know I won't answer such questions
unless you give me feedback on my answers, you'll have
to find a new source of fun. And it's tough doing that
after having been essentially a one-trick pony for
the last two years or so.

"To be fair," the nose-thumbing and kitchen-leaving you did is symptomatic
of another trick you've picked up [from Harshman?], but I don't think
you get any fun out of it.

On the other hand, your "perfect illustration" trick is something
I've seen jillery get a lot of fun out of, and maybe you get
fun out of it too, but opportunities for getting fun in this
way are rather few and far between.

Peter Nyikos

[Robert Camp]

On 3/2/16 11:55 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Wednesday, March 2, 2016 at 11:04:12 AM UTC-5, erik simpson wrote:
>> On Tuesday, March 1, 2016 at 6:44:13 PM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>> <...>
>
> [restoration]
>>> On Tuesday, March 1, 2016 at 8:09:15 PM UTC-5, erik simpson wrote:
>
>>>> This post is a perfect illustration of why you're no fun anymore.
>
> [end of restoration]
>
>
>>> Yeah, it must have been great fun pretending not to understand what I had
>>> written, all through one thread late last year, and many times in
>>> most of the other threads in which we've encountered each other.
>>
>> Believe me, no pretense was necessary. And it still isn't.
>
> I don't believe you.

(I'll ask a question, make some observations, then depart. Do with it
what you will.)

Have you ever noticed how often you infer deception and pretense on the
part of others? When someone says they don't understand you, or they
don't think you have a sense of humor, or suggests you are being
excessively suspicious - or even when someone expresses a modicum of
sympathy - you invariably accuse them of having ulterior motives, or
just making it all up.

I know you don't want to believe these things about yourself, nobody
does. But I assure you that I (and I suspect many others) am not lying
when I say you are unclear, or paranoid, or have a deficient sense of
humor. I really believe these things, I'm not saying them to defame you.

I offer these comments because (yes, I'm aware you will not believe me)
I think you have something to contribute and wish you could get past
those other problems. Accepting that they might be true would be a good
first step.

[Peter Nyikos]

Piggybacking after my first attempt to post a reply to Camp failed.

On Wednesday, March 2, 2016 at 4:09:11 PM UTC-5, Robert Camp wrote:
> On 3/2/16 11:55 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Wednesday, March 2, 2016 at 11:04:12 AM UTC-5, erik simpson wrote:
> >> On Tuesday, March 1, 2016 at 6:44:13 PM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>> <...>
> >
> > [restoration]
> >>> On Tuesday, March 1, 2016 at 8:09:15 PM UTC-5, erik simpson wrote:
> >

> >>>> This post is a perfect illustration of why you're no fun anymore.
> >

> > [end of restoration]
> >
> >
> >>> Yeah, it must have been great fun pretending not to understand what I had
> >>> written, all through one thread late last year, and many times in
> >>> most of the other threads in which we've encountered each other.
> >>
> >> Believe me, no pretense was necessary. And it still isn't.
> >
> > I don't believe you.
>
> (I'll ask a question, make some observations, then depart. Do with it
> what you will.)
>
> Have you ever noticed how often you infer deception and pretense on the
> part of others?

Only a few select people, of whom Erik is one, who have a
proven track record of deception and pretense.

The worst such people are jillery, Ron O, and Ray Martinez, although
Mark Isaak is not all that far behind. Sneaky O. Possum (S.O.P.) is a
separate case: he has accused me of one of the unforgivable sins in a
left-learning [on the whole] forum such as this one: hatred of gays.
I am boycotting him until he either retracts the charge or posts
something I wrote that could plausibly lead a rational person to suspect
such a heinous charge.

Despite that, if S.O.P. were to say he doesn't understand
something I wrote, and someone were to leave his words intact
in a reply to him, I would explain it, because he doesn't have
the 2+ year track record of being essentially a one-trick pony
of saying I am being unclear and then essentially never giving
me feedback when I do try to explain what I meant.

> When someone says they don't understand you, or they
> don't think you have a sense of humor, or suggests you are being
> excessively suspicious - or even when someone expresses a modicum of
> sympathy - you invariably accuse them of having ulterior motives, or
> just making it all up.

Where do you get such sweeping generalizations as as "someone" (implying
"each and everyone") and "invariably"? Unless you spent
all your free time following my posts, you couldn't begin
to support such a statement -- but then, you would also see
how false it is in each and every detail.

I defy you to find even ONE person besides Erik and John Harshman
to whom I've said nasty things as a result of them claiming to
have trouble with understanding something I say.

Here is the "exception that proves the rule": when Richard Norman
got carried away in a thread where Erik was hitting me again and
again and again with the charge of being unclear, I did politely point
out to Richard that he wasn't giving me feedback on my explanations,
but he quickly backed off and we had a pleasant conversation
after that. Contrast that with Erik's behavior (described in
more detail below).

"modicum of sympathy" -- are you referring to a poison-pen
"defense" of me by John Stockwell back around 1998 in which
he essentially accused me of not being able to help myself,
and so in effect accused me of being mentally ill? Because
that's the only "modicum of sympathy" about which I can recall
taking umbrage...

...except for when you did it: you kept claiming
I needed to get help. "Seriously." And you claimed to be worried
about my state of mental health. But that was because I was
accusing people of being dishonest and hypocritical, wasn't it?

Are you so hopelessly naive that you think everyone in this
newsgroup never does anything dishonest or hypocritical?
I don't think so.

> I know you don't want to believe these things about yourself, nobody
> does. But I assure you that I (and I suspect many others) am not lying
> when I say you are unclear, or paranoid, or have a deficient sense of
> humor. I really believe these things, I'm not saying them to defame you.

How about explaining your charge that I am in need of psychiatric help
instead of harping on these trivial actions?

You could go on telling me I am unclear a dozen times each month
for several months, and unless you adamantly refuse to give me feedback
on my answers, I will not treat you the way I am treating Erik here.

"and I suspect many others" -- you have no idea of what
has gone on between me and Erik these last two years. Time and
again I was on the verge of accusing him of insincerity,
and time and again I decided to give him another chance.

Matters finally came to a head just before I went on my
Christmas break, and since I returned, he has not shown
any sign of reforming -- in fact, he has displayed an
arrogance towards me which was completely lacking before this
January. Take a look at the last half dozen posts by him and
me on the "Hiatus" thread, and see how he adamantly refused
to give me feedback even after I had bent over backwards.
And that isn't the half of it.

> I offer these comments because (yes, I'm aware you will not believe me)
> I think you have something to contribute and wish you could get past
> those other problems. Accepting that they might be true would be a good
> first step.

Erik is one of those other problems. If he were to disappear from
talk.origins, I would be able to get past that one, no problem.

Erik's main role, in his interactions with me at any rate, has been to
reinforce John Harshman in some of John's worst traits -- traits that
Erik may actually have picked up as a result of using John as a role model.
Unfortunately, he has picked up precious little of John's good traits,
which may have a chance to blossom out once Erik is gone.

Peter Nyikos

[*Hemidactylus*]

On 03/02/2016 09:46 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:

[snip]

> Erik is one of those other problems. If he were to disappear from
> talk.origins, I would be able to get past that one, no problem.

That has to be one of the most hateful things I've seen posted here
recently. I dealt with Harshman saying he dislikes me, but you saying
that is far worse.

> Erik's main role, in his interactions with me at any rate, has been to
> reinforce John Harshman in some of John's worst traits -- traits that
> Erik may actually have picked up as a result of using John as a role model.
> Unfortunately, he has picked up precious little of John's good traits,
> which may have a chance to blossom out once Erik is gone.

Not sure what good traits Harshman has, but I'm not going to stand by
while you say such hideous things about Erik. Your overwhelming tendency
to get interpersonal and vindictively ugly makes you a monster. My head
explodes yet again.

[John Harshman]

On 3/2/16 7:56 PM, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
> On 03/02/2016 09:46 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
>> Erik is one of those other problems. If he were to disappear from
>> talk.origins, I would be able to get past that one, no problem.
>
> That has to be one of the most hateful things I've seen posted here
> recently. I dealt with Harshman saying he dislikes me, but you saying
> that is far worse.
>
>> Erik's main role, in his interactions with me at any rate, has been to
>> reinforce John Harshman in some of John's worst traits -- traits that
>> Erik may actually have picked up as a result of using John as a role
>> model.
>> Unfortunately, he has picked up precious little of John's good traits,
>> which may have a chance to blossom out once Erik is gone.
>
> Not sure what good traits Harshman has,

I'm kind to animals.

[jillery]

On Wed, 2 Mar 2016 21:01:30 -0800, John Harshman
<jhar...@pacbell.net> wrote:

>On 3/2/16 7:56 PM, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
>> On 03/02/2016 09:46 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>
>> [snip]
>>
>>> Erik is one of those other problems. If he were to disappear from
>>> talk.origins, I would be able to get past that one, no problem.
>>
>> That has to be one of the most hateful things I've seen posted here
>> recently. I dealt with Harshman saying he dislikes me, but you saying
>> that is far worse.
>>
>>> Erik's main role, in his interactions with me at any rate, has been to
>>> reinforce John Harshman in some of John's worst traits -- traits that
>>> Erik may actually have picked up as a result of using John as a role
>>> model.
>>> Unfortunately, he has picked up precious little of John's good traits,
>>> which may have a chance to blossom out once Erik is gone.
>>
>> Not sure what good traits Harshman has,
>
>I'm kind to animals.

Apparently only some animals.

>> but I'm not going to stand by
>> while you say such hideous things about Erik. Your overwhelming tendency
>> to get interpersonal and vindictively ugly makes you a monster. My head
>> explodes yet again.
>>

[jillery]

I recall a past post where someone compared rockhead to Captain Queeg.
Having recently watched another famous Bogart movie, I remark about
the uncanny resemblance between rockhead and Fred C. Dobbs.

[Mark Isaak]

On 3/2/16 6:46 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> Piggybacking after my first attempt to post a reply to Camp failed.
>
> On Wednesday, March 2, 2016 at 4:09:11 PM UTC-5, Robert Camp wrote:
>> On 3/2/16 11:55 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>> On Wednesday, March 2, 2016 at 11:04:12 AM UTC-5, erik simpson wrote:
>>>> On Tuesday, March 1, 2016 at 6:44:13 PM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>>>> <...>
>>>
>>> [restoration]
>>>>> On Tuesday, March 1, 2016 at 8:09:15 PM UTC-5, erik simpson wrote:
>>>
>>>>>> This post is a perfect illustration of why you're no fun anymore.
>>>
>>> [end of restoration]
>>>
>>>
>>>>> Yeah, it must have been great fun pretending not to understand what I had
>>>>> written, all through one thread late last year, and many times in
>>>>> most of the other threads in which we've encountered each other.
>>>>
>>>> Believe me, no pretense was necessary. And it still isn't.
>>>
>>> I don't believe you.
>>
>> (I'll ask a question, make some observations, then depart. Do with it
>> what you will.)
>>
>> Have you ever noticed how often you infer deception and pretense on the
>> part of others?
>
> Only a few select people, of whom Erik is one, who have a
> proven track record of deception and pretense.
>
> The worst such people are jillery, Ron O, and Ray Martinez, although
> Mark Isaak is not all that far behind.

That's five, and it does not even count the less-than-worst offenders.
That's a lot, not a few. I cannot think of *any* regular posters whom I
think are insincere or are attempting deliberately to deceive (except to
deceive themselves).

> Sneaky O. Possum (S.O.P.) is a
> separate case: he has accused me of one of the unforgivable sins in a
> left-learning [on the whole] forum such as this one: hatred of gays.

The gross insensitivity in your attitude for gays regarding marriage
(judging by you have told us) could easily be regarded as not
functionally different from hatred. S.O.P. is doing no more that
repeating back a perspective of your own view. That you regard his
statement as unforgivable is easily the far worse sin, at least
according to my understanding of Catholic teaching.

> [...]

> I defy you to find even ONE person besides Erik and John Harshman
> to whom I've said nasty things as a result of them claiming to
> have trouble with understanding something I say.

I don't keep track of all the attacks you make, but I believe I am one
whom you accused of dissembling when I said I did not understand what
you meant by something. (And you are obscure quite a lot.)

> [...]

> "modicum of sympathy" -- are you referring to a poison-pen
> "defense" of me by John Stockwell back around 1998 in which
> he essentially accused me of not being able to help myself,
> and so in effect accused me of being mentally ill? Because
> that's the only "modicum of sympathy" about which I can recall
> taking umbrage...
>
> ...except for when you did it: you kept claiming
> I needed to get help. "Seriously." And you claimed to be worried
> about my state of mental health. But that was because I was
> accusing people of being dishonest and hypocritical, wasn't it?

Don't forget that I, independently, have also suggested you consult a
mental health professional. Partly it is because of your priority of
attacking people rather than their ideas, and partly because you seem
not to understand subtleties of language such as hyperbole. I no longer
make such a recommendation only because the likely outcome -- that the
shrink incurs your enmity for telling you what you don't want to hear --
would help no one.

--
Mark Isaak eciton (at) curioustaxonomy (dot) net
"The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good
intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack
understanding." - Albert Camus, _The Plague_

[Peter Nyikos]

This is a twofer in reply to two posts by Hemidactylus. I already replied to
the first one, but a lot of water has gone over the dam since I did,
and now I can answer one question that had me puzzled back then.

On Friday, February 19, 2016 at 8:14:48 PM UTC-5, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
> On 02/19/2016 05:12 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:

Interesting coincidence: Feb 19 was when I bent over backwards on the
"Hiatus" thread to accommodate Erik Simpson's complaint that he couldn't
understand my answers to two questions in my latest reply to him.

First, I went back and answered the two questions more carefully and clearly
than before:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/talk.origins/ehAeD9wIw9I/tjE40hVeHAAJ

Then, I made a stab at answering the question that covered
new ground:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/talk.origins/ehAeD9wIw9I/YvEgmtBmHAAJ

Erik has adamantly refused to do replies to these posts
to let me know how good or how poor he had found my explanations
and answers.

> > Sorry, Erik. I have decided to do no more replies on this thread
> > until Richard Norman returns from his hiatus.
> >
> > Meanwhile, you have two replies from me on the "Hiatus" thread, done today,
> > to attend to. Unlike here, I will continue on that thread even in the
> > absence of Richard.
>

> Will you be avoiding my questions too?

Yes, unless you were joking when you said flat out to Ray Martiez that I
am a closet creationist. The questions you asked me seem pointless
if you were serious: you'd simply disbelieve my truthful answers
since they would run contrary to your stated belief that I am
a creationist.

And now for the second part of the twofer:

On Wednesday, March 2, 2016 at 10:59:10 PM UTC-5, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
> On 03/02/2016 09:46 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> > Erik is one of those other problems. If he were to disappear from
> > talk.origins, I would be able to get past that one, no problem.
>
> That has to be one of the most hateful things I've seen posted here
> recently. I dealt with Harshman saying he dislikes me, but you saying
> that is far worse.

Your buddy Ron Okimoto has said more hateful things about me,
including his saying several times that there is nothing left of me
but a twitching sphincter. And you yourself called me a "monster"
below.

There are about eight people whose departure from talk.origins
would leave it a healthier place, including Erik and Ron O.
Those eight people could drag it down to the hellhole level
that james g. keegan jr. and only about six other people were
able to drag talk.abortion down.

You aren't among the eight -- but you will be a ninth if
you were actually serious about charging me with being a
closet creationist.

Erik has "merely" posted for the last two years
under the *suspicion* that I am a closet creationist
and a closet supporter of Alan Feduccia.

Harshman has also harbored these suspicions, but he
only voiced them infrequently, whereas almost every reply
Erik made to me, before things came to a head last
December, can be seen in hindsight as his acting on
these suspicions.

> > Erik's main role, in his interactions with me at any rate, has been to
> > reinforce John Harshman in some of John's worst traits -- traits that
> > Erik may actually have picked up as a result of using John as a role model.
> > Unfortunately, he has picked up precious little of John's good traits,
> > which may have a chance to blossom out once Erik is gone.
>
> Not sure what good traits Harshman has,

Good grief, man! Can't you see how you are undermining your case
against me by not being able to name any good traits he has?!

Here's one: he can be courageous on occasion, like he was in
sci.bio.paleontology when he admitted that his wife frequently
accuses him of having Asperger's.

In my reply to that memorable post, I said that henceforth, anyone who
calls Harshman a coward will be answerable to me.

Since then, Harshman has done many cowardly things, but since I am
answerable to my very active conscience, I have refrained from
simply calling him a coward.

But Harshman's ideology forbids him to accept compliments from me,
and he denied that he had done anything courageous by making
that admission.

> but I'm not going to stand by
> while you say such hideous things about Erik. Your overwhelming tendency
> to get interpersonal and vindictively ugly makes you a monster. My head
> explodes yet again.

All you are doing here is showing how hideously biased you are against me.
YOU criticized Harshman for discussing science with me instead
of just ripping into me like he often does. And you've egged
others on to rip into me. Would you like to see an example?

Peter Nyikos

[Peter Nyikos]

Piggybacking onto the last post of Erik's, as I did for Camp:

On Thursday, March 3, 2016 at 1:34:12 PM UTC-5, Mark Isaak wrote:
> On 3/2/16 6:46 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > Piggybacking after my first attempt to post a reply to Camp failed.
> >
> > On Wednesday, March 2, 2016 at 4:09:11 PM UTC-5, Robert Camp wrote:
> >> On 3/2/16 11:55 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>> On Wednesday, March 2, 2016 at 11:04:12 AM UTC-5, erik simpson wrote:
> >>>> On Tuesday, March 1, 2016 at 6:44:13 PM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>>>> <...>
> >>>
> >>> [restoration]
> >>>>> On Tuesday, March 1, 2016 at 8:09:15 PM UTC-5, erik simpson wrote:
> >>>

> >>>>>> This post is a perfect illustration of why you're no fun anymore.
> >>>

> >>> [end of restoration]
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>> Yeah, it must have been great fun pretending not to understand what I had
> >>>>> written, all through one thread late last year, and many times in
> >>>>> most of the other threads in which we've encountered each other.
> >>>>
> >>>> Believe me, no pretense was necessary. And it still isn't.
> >>>
> >>> I don't believe you.
> >>
> >> (I'll ask a question, make some observations, then depart. Do with it
> >> what you will.)

Camp was already anticipating coming off badly, but I think he
was only thinking of himself when he prepared his exit this
way. I doubt that he anticipated collateral damage to Erik,
whose habits he probably doesn't know the first thing about.

> >> Have you ever noticed how often you infer deception and pretense on the
> >> part of others?
> >
> > Only a few select people, of whom Erik is one, who have a
> > proven track record of deception and pretense.
> >
> > The worst such people are jillery, Ron O, and Ray Martinez, although
> > Mark Isaak is not all that far behind.
>
> That's five, and it does not even count the less-than-worst offenders.

Camp himself is one, now that his tirade against me has shown him
capable of rank hypocrisy: after I posted my reply to him, I
chanced across a post where he labeled the kind of <cough> hyperbole
<cough, cough> I've reposted below as "laughably silly" when somone
out of favor with the likes of him and you indulged in it.

Would you like to know the names of the other two (2) people I had in mind
for the "gang of eight" that I alluded to in reply to Hemidactylus?
And the two (2) other active regulars I had in mind that fit the general
description?

Then promise, never again, to mark YOUR snips as though they
were MY snips. I've caught you at this kind of action several
times now.

> That's a lot, not a few.

If you count ten people as "a lot" among at least five times that
many regular participants, you are indulging in a mild variation
of "le talk.origins, c'est Simpson et Harshman" in which Camp
indulged.

> I cannot think of *any* regular posters whom I
> think are insincere or are attempting deliberately to deceive (except to
> deceive themselves).

So you allege, but you have a vested interest in saying such things,
and I've already listed you months ago among the people
(four) who refuse to accuse Martinez of deceit
and insincerity, knowing that if he falls, they will be among
the first dominoes to fall.

> > Sneaky O. Possum (S.O.P.) is a
> > separate case: he has accused me of one of the unforgivable sins in a
> > left-learning [on the whole] forum such as this one: hatred of gays.
>
> The gross insensitivity in your attitude for gays regarding marriage

With such millennia-old substitutes for the word "marriage"
as "blood brothers" [and I'd gladly add "blood sisters" for lesbians]
available, it is just plain silly to raise such a big hue and cry over my
opposition to the label "marriage."

> (judging by you have told us) could easily be regarded as not
> functionally different from hatred.

...by fanatics such as yourself and S.O.P., thanks to the way
the word "hate" has been co-opted by the radical left for
"politically incorrect attitudes" with academia and the moderate
left playing "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" wrt
such violence to the real meaning of "hate."

> S.O.P. is doing no more that
> repeating back a perspective of your own view.

A "perspective" of irrational fanaticism.

> That you regard his
> statement as unforgivable

Are you deliberately misunderstanding my usage of the term
"unforgivable sin"?

IF not, you are compromising your already compromised integrity
by ignoring the loophole I've given him, and which you snipped
below [see repost].

Be glad I am not boycotting you along with him-- you'd be hard
pressed to show anything resembling hate in the moral sense
of the word.

> is easily the far worse sin, at least
> according to my understanding of Catholic teaching.

Your understanding of "forgiveness" is worse than useless until
you face the issue of FGM (Female Genital Mutilation) squarely
and tell me whether you think stiff prison sentences for
perpetrators are compatible with your idea of forgiveness.

> > [...]

That was a snip by YOU, not by me.

_______________repost___________________

I am boycotting him until he either retracts the charge or posts
something I wrote that could plausibly lead a rational person to suspect
such a heinous charge.

Despite that, if S.O.P. were to say he doesn't understand
something I wrote, and someone were to leave his words intact
in a reply to him, I would explain it, because he doesn't have
the 2+ year track record of being essentially a one-trick pony
of saying I am being unclear and then essentially never giving
me feedback when I do try to explain what I meant.


> When someone says they don't understand you, or they
> don't think you have a sense of humor, or suggests you are being
> excessively suspicious - or even when someone expresses a modicum of
> sympathy - you invariably accuse them of having ulterior motives, or
> just making it all up.

Where do you get such sweeping generalizations as as "someone" (implying
"each and everyone") and "invariably"? Unless you spent
all your free time following my posts, you couldn't begin
to support such a statement -- but then, you would also see
how false it is in each and every detail.

===============end of repost of material you snipped

> > I defy you to find even ONE person besides Erik and John Harshman
> > to whom I've said nasty things as a result of them claiming to
> > have trouble with understanding something I say.
>
> I don't keep track of all the attacks you make, but I believe I am one
> whom you accused of dissembling when I said I did not understand what
> you meant by something.

Harshman has expressed at least two false "beliefs" of that nature
in the past half year, and he is not as dishonest as you are.
So I'm holding out for documentation.

> (And you are obscure quite a lot.)
>
> > [...]

> > "modicum of sympathy" -- are you referring to a poison-pen
> > "defense" of me by John Stockwell back around 1998 in which
> > he essentially accused me of not being able to help myself,
> > and so in effect accused me of being mentally ill? Because
> > that's the only "modicum of sympathy" about which I can recall
> > taking umbrage...
> >
> > ...except for when you did it: you kept claiming
> > I needed to get help. "Seriously." And you claimed to be worried
> > about my state of mental health. But that was because I was
> > accusing people of being dishonest and hypocritical, wasn't it?
>
> Don't forget that I, independently, have also suggested you consult a
> mental health professional.

"independently" is ignoring the concept of statistical dependence.
It is a commonplace among the more reprehensible people in dominant
cliques of forums to use hints of mental instability in revenge
for having their dishonesty and/or hypocrisy exposed in the forum.

> Partly it is because of your priority of
> attacking people rather than their ideas,

Seldom the same people.

> and partly because you seem
> not to understand subtleties of language such as hyperbole.

Since you snipped "hyperbole" by Camp, this brings you
under suspicion of insincerity. AT BEST, you need to find
some place where "seem not to" is not refuted by the
hypocrisy of the person guility of the "hyperbole".

> I no longer
> make such a recommendation only because the likely outcome -- that the
> shrink incurs your enmity for telling you what you don't want to hear --
> would help no one.

You're just digging yourself in deeper. The only excuse you might
have is that you are only acquainted with psychiatrists
who look upon publicly denouncing dishonesty and hypocrisy of
people with clout as a sign of mental instability.

Since there were many such psychiatrists in the Soviet Union,
it's not out of the question that you are only familiar with that sort.

Peter Nyikos

[Peter Nyikos]

In anticipation of a challenge to something I wrote, I follow
up to my own post.

On Friday, March 4, 2016 at 7:09:05 PM UTC-5, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> Piggybacking onto the last post of Erik's, as I did for Camp:
>
> On Thursday, March 3, 2016 at 1:34:12 PM UTC-5, Mark Isaak wrote:
> > On 3/2/16 6:46 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:

> > > The worst such people are jillery, Ron O, and Ray Martinez, although
> > > Mark Isaak is not all that far behind.
> >
> > That's five, and it does not even count the less-than-worst offenders.
>
> Camp himself is one, now that his tirade against me has shown him
> capable of rank hypocrisy: after I posted my reply to him, I
> chanced across a post where he labeled the kind of <cough> hyperbole
> <cough, cough> I've reposted below as "laughably silly" when somone
> out of favor with the likes of him and you indulged in it.

Here is that kind of hyperbole, with names added in brackets:

_________excerpt from reply to Glenn______________________
[Bill:]> >> It's a case of confirmation bias. If
> >> one believes that there is no design then of course he'll never see it
> >> whereas one who believes that things in nature are designed will always
> >> see it. The bias determines how phenomena is understood, making evidence
> >> superfluous.

[Camp:]
> > Your use of words like "never" and "always" render the above comments
> > laughably silly.
> >
> Oh what a picture.

Yeah, Robert Camp turned a blind eye to Stockwell's laughably silly
caricature of how Behe operates.

And Camp himself is not above slinging laughably silly generalities.

================ end of excerpt from

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/talk.origins/88qfQjjSVQg/lOWC0mEmIAAJ
Message-ID: <f61df020-a00d-4920...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Chemistry Nobel Prize Based on Design Inference
Date: Wed, 2 Mar 2016 18:41:58 -0800 (PST)

And then I reposted something Mark Isaak oh-so-conveniently-for-Camp
snipped from my reply to Camp on this thread:

<snip to get to repost I did in reply to Mark here>

_______________repost from my reply to Camp___________________

> > When someone says they don't understand you, or they
> > don't think you have a sense of humor, or suggests you are being
> > excessively suspicious - or even when someone expresses a modicum of
> > sympathy - you invariably accuse them of having ulterior motives, or
> > just making it all up.
>
> Where do you get such sweeping generalizations as as "someone" (implying
> "each and everyone") and "invariably"? Unless you spent
> all your free time following my posts, you couldn't begin
> to support such a statement -- but then, you would also see
> how false it is in each and every detail.
>
> ===============end of repost of material you snipped

Mark's snip was also oh-so-convenient for Mark, in view of
his condescending canard:

<snip for focus>

> > and partly because you seem
> > not to understand subtleties of language such as hyperbole.
>
> Since you snipped "hyperbole" by Camp, this brings you
> under suspicion of insincerity. AT BEST, you need to find
> some place where "seem not to" is not refuted by the

> hypocrisy of the person guilty of the "hyperbole".

Peter Nyikos

[Mark Isaak]

On 3/4/16 4:08 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> [...]

>>>> Have you ever noticed how often you infer deception and pretense on the
>>>> part of others?
>>>
>>> Only a few select people, of whom Erik is one, who have a
>>> proven track record of deception and pretense.
>>>
>>> The worst such people are jillery, Ron O, and Ray Martinez, although
>>> Mark Isaak is not all that far behind.
>>
>> That's five, and it does not even count the less-than-worst offenders.

> [... snip five more]

> Then promise, never again, to mark YOUR snips as though they
> were MY snips. I've caught you at this kind of action several
> times now.

???

>> That's a lot, not a few.
>
> If you count ten people as "a lot" among at least five times that
> many regular participants, you are indulging in a mild variation
> of "le talk.origins, c'est Simpson et Harshman" in which Camp
> indulged.

Yes, I count ten people as "a lot". A heck of a lot.

>> I cannot think of *any* regular posters whom I
>> think are insincere or are attempting deliberately to deceive (except to
>> deceive themselves).
>
> So you allege, but you have a vested interest in saying such things,

Nyikos : liar :: Martinez : atheist.

> and I've already listed you months ago among the people
> (four) who refuse to accuse Martinez of deceit
> and insincerity, knowing that if he falls, they will be among
> the first dominoes to fall.

Ray is illogical, inconsistent, oblivious, and many other adjectives
which bode ill for epistemology. But I have never seen the slightest
hint of his being insincere. I don't think anyone *could* be as
dedicatedly wrong as he is without being sincere.

>>> Sneaky O. Possum (S.O.P.) is a
>>> separate case: he has accused me of one of the unforgivable sins in a
>>> left-learning [on the whole] forum such as this one: hatred of gays.
>>
>> The gross insensitivity in your attitude for gays regarding marriage
>
> With such millennia-old substitutes for the word "marriage"
> as "blood brothers" [and I'd gladly add "blood sisters" for lesbians]
> available, it is just plain silly to raise such a big hue and cry over my
> opposition to the label "marriage."

You asked for a quote that shows that you hate gays? There it is.

Yes, I know you don't see it. That is part of what makes it so bad.

> [snip N's take on forgiveness. Make it a separate thread if you wish.]

> Be glad I am not boycotting you along with him-- you'd be hard
> pressed to show anything resembling hate in the moral sense
> of the word.

It seems you are boycotting me on issues of substance.

>>> [...]
>
> That was a snip by YOU, not by me.

I never said otherwise.

> _______________repost___________________

This, as always, is where I get off.

[Jason Lispi]

On Monday, February 8, 2016 at 5:50:24 PM UTC-5, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> After the great end-of-Cretaceous extinction, an explosion of mammalian
> types occurred during the Paleocene epoch which is a sort of microcosm
> of the much more famous Cambrian explosion.
>
> There are many parallels between the two explosions. One is the discrepancy
> between "molecular clock" estimates and fossil-based estimates. In the
> case of the Cambrian explosion of bilaterian types, the former puts the
> deepest split (between protostomes and deuterostomes) around 670 mya,
> the latter around 560 mya. In the case of the Paleocene explosion
> of Placentalia, the former once went deep into the Cretaceous but is
> now somewhere near 80 my. As for the latter, there is a concluding
> remark in a long and fascinating paper:
>
> No definitive crown-placental mammal has yet been found
> from the Cretaceous...
> Source:
> "Resolving the relationships of Paleocene placental mammals"
> by Thomas J. D. Halliday, Paul Upchurch and Anjali Goswami,
> soon to appear in _Biological Reviews_:
> http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/brv.12242/full
>
> This fact would suggest that the Paleocene explosion was just that:
> a rapid diversification starting just around the beginning of the
> Paleocene, 65 mya. There is a reasonable hypothesis that the Cambrian
> explosion has the same relationship to the Cambrian period, 542 mya.
>
> About the term "crown-placental": a crown group is a clade of
> organisms which includes the last common ancestor (LCA) of the extant
> members along with all descendants, extant or extinct, of the LCA.
>
> The placental crown group is, by definition, the clade Placentalia.
> "placental" is not self-explanatory, by the way: it includes
> the non-marsupial mammals with placentas, and only those.
>
> [Most marsupials have a chorio-vitelline placenta, but some have
> a chorio-allantoic placenta. All give birth to extremely early
> offspring, but then so do some rodents.]
>
> I have a lot more to say about the parallels between these
> explosions, but I don't want to make this OP any longer than
> it already is.

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

Jason, JNE Technologies.
Hello.
I find it interesting that you used the word "explosion" when expressing your "connected dots" between parallels. To explain, I will have to seemingly go off topic, then I hope that the freedom of understanding will pull it all together.
From a genetics standpoint, I believe that a broader view is required to fully appreciate why these parallels occurred at all. Speaking only from a non-microbiological aspect, these creatures were in fact, genetically unstable. In particular, the auto-adaptive nature of genetics in response to various, in this case, environmental factors we call genestressors. We have, as a witness, very high quality tissue samples from several of these Cambrian creatures. These are all under just a few countries governed control. America, of course, holds the finest data and analytics. We found that the amount of +oxy RNA did not discriminate when pairing as we understand. It seemed to act as an orgy of sorts. The forming speed of the actual double helix was far above comprehension. As a result, there were only a few end points for life at the most basic level. You make it, you break it or you may get lucky and hold it together. For a while and even a very long while. In mentioning this, I am attempting to allow a view from what we as modern genetic leaders consider an acceptably understandable norm, in use as a global standard. We have uncovered artifacts of genetic nature, which have NO reason for being and doing what was discovered. Only in a good lab would you see such evidence of involvement of directed manipulative genetics. As a result of classifying the research, my team was forced into a summary report. To be fair, we factored and valued within reasonable limits. Confident yet hasty, we always ended with the statement that "With ALL of Genetic Sciences considered, we conclude, without a scientifically known doubt, that this is NOT the result of nature or any natural process. As a result, we feel that further investigation should be of top consideration". I hope this helps explain the "explosions". I also hope this helps you understand. Jason Lispi.
JNE Technologies. Leaders in Technology Bio-Integration

[Peter Nyikos]

I think I'd better get an explanation of what you really wanted
to say here before going any further. The Cambrian ended almost 500
million years ago. There have been rumors of tissue samples from
Tyrannosauruses less than one-eighth that age, but even those are
controversial if not already discredited.

The rest of what you write is rather disorganized, and I hope you
can write more clearly next time.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Maths -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina