Month: September 2019

Alarmist Language Works!

 

It is certainly true that Planet Earth is all we have to live on,  and that we humans were and are mandated to look after it. The first mention of that command is in the Bible: Genesis Chapter 2. God’s idea was to put it into the care of gardeners. And yes, we have certainly messed up that instruction and something needs to be done. The point has been made, and world leaders are listening and acting, but not proceeding fast or deeply enough to satisfy the world’s Eco warriors. These activists want it done yesterday and today and tomorrow. Next week, next month, next year, will be seen as a politically motivated delay. Some, probably most of these climate warriors are fanatics, the video below proves that. Making a point is more important than the large amount of detergents it will take to clear up the mess sprayed on and around the Treasury building in London. These protests overall have meant 83.000 police officers pulled way from their normal duties since April of this year. And more protests are planned. These people do not give not a damn about anyone who stands in their way. In fact I think they enjoy being arrested, it ups their profiles and makes the law look like an enemy of those who care about the global environment. They are also pleased with themselves and even worse sanctimonious: a word meaning making a show of being morally superior to other people.

Others have trodden this path in the past. I recall the demonstrations over the Iraq war, and before that the campaigns for nuclear disarmament. This latter cause was also at face value related to saving the planet from immediate threats of annihilation. All those that preceded this lot eventually lost momentum and fizzled out without lasting effect, and so hopefully will this Extinction Rebellion protest. The world will then revert to some form of order and compromises will take the sting out of all but the most maniacal of protesters. But not before these false prophets have finished putting their campaign before anything or anyone failing to appreciate the doom laden scenario waiting to engulf the planet. The earth has according to these people recovered pretty well from five previous mass extinctions.

Pressure constantly applied will eventually make itself felt on whatever system cannot bear it; an individual person, a body politic, such as a democracy, an idea or a religion. Unrelieved pressure will break even the will to survive. The job of pressure groups is first and foremost to make themselves felt and noticed and then apply sustained pressure. The objective, in human society is to break the will and weaken the sense of purpose of those standing in the way. Our society has been under this form of attack for decades and on a number of diverse fronts; a kind of blitzkrieg! Over the last decade the pressure being applied has been to our past. Our history has undergone a revision, and what was once seen as a cause for pride has been turned into a record of shame. Guilt is a heavy load to bear, and pressure groups know how to ladle it on. If you are an adult and not engaged to some degree in the struggle then you are a part of the problem.. These groups are still insignificant numerically, but if you have your lips glued to the great majority of loudspeakers and media outlets and ride on a tide of self proclaimed sanctity and victim-hood, then you stand a good chance of swaying the undecided and uncommitted masses. Just listen to the gurus. Set them up as totems before whom the crowds must cheer and applaud; a good example being the self proclaimed victim of uncaring past generations: Greta Thunberg has been given a platform to spout what I believe are her received views on climate change. She is clearly highly motivated and well read. Does that make her anything other than a different sound and look: she is only sixteen and seems younger. Or is she another Joan of Arc? A nineteen year old who heard voices. Here in Britain we have our own self righteous warriors thinking themselves entitled to take over parts of our capital city and to deface a government building. Here is a statement from the pressure group Extinction Rebellion followed by a video of their direct action, which they managed to cock up.

The Truth

“We are facing an unprecedented global emergency. Life on Earth is in crisis: scientists agree we have entered a period of abrupt climate breakdown, and we are in the midst of a mass extinction of our own making.”

Note the word Truth in the message above. A fine word with a restricted meaning. When reduced to a slogan it becomes a device to reinforce a weak argument. The Extinction Rebellion use the word Truth as a banner heading beneath which they make a claim that cannot be substantiated, as the following makes obvious. A woman named Zion Lights, was put up as a spokeswoman for Extinction Rebellion on Andrew Neil’s BBC show. The purpose, to defend her organisation’s actions. Neil pointed out that Roger Hallam, one of the founders of Extinction Rebellion has said that “billions of people are going to die in quite short order” and “our children are going to die in the next 10 to 20 years”.

That comment is alarmist by any definition and has no scientific validation whatsoever. Zion Lights when pushed admitted that “unfortunately alarmist language works.” She is part of an organisation that continually insist that we should “listen to the scientists”.

She then argued against the scientific mainstream: an IPCC report, attacking it as presenting “very conservative numbers… using pre-industrial levels of data.””

She is not a scientist but nevertheless seeks to correct them. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but what Zion Lights cannot do is claim to speak in the name of Climate Change science. In doing so she was, maybe inadvertently, finding fault with the conclusions of  6,000 scientific references, 91 authors, representing a global consensus with review editors from 40 countries. This is the opposite of listening to scientists, it is more like science ignored and circumvented, and any claims by Extinction Rebellion to be upholders of The Truth trashed.  Their demand of net zero emissions by 2025 directly contradicts the 2050 target that the experts are recommending. Ms Lights conceded that these claims have been disputed, with some scientists saying they are simply not true. she added: “We don’t have exact numbers, but there will be deaths and mass suffering.”

She added this little stunner of a comment. “Any amount is enough as far as we’re concerned.”

So the billions of deaths could be reduced to a few hundred thousand, or a few tens of thousands, even a few thousands, who knows since the numbers  may be well be below what can be directly attributed to climate change. The Andrew Neil interview nails the hypocrisy and the lies. Here is the entire thing, it is worth the eight minute watch.

 

For Extinction Rebellion apologists the “Truth” means next to nothing. These people are rabble rousers and alarmists who live in a world they could destroy even within their prophesied timescale. How? by wrecking the world economies. These even after every downside has been factored in, have still to their credit reduced poverty the world over. Consequently a success story for Extinction Rebellion, the almost overnight, six years until 2025 to reduce the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions to zero,  really could contribute to the deaths of millions. The wealthy economies of the world massively contribute to the overflow that is reducing world poverty, starvation and death.

“Over the last 25 years, more than a billion people have lifted themselves out of extreme poverty, and the global poverty rate is now lower than it has ever been in recorded history. This is one of the greatest human achievements of our time,” World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim said.

But lets bring this down to a scale we can all understand and does not involve a discussion about science and facts. A very pleasant, gentle young woman, part of the Extinction Rebellion protest in central London was asked about the possibility of an ambulance getting to a nearby hospital through the obstacles in the way of free access to the road. Her reply was that the ambulance should be allowed through, but if not, then sadly the Climate Change issue was of greater concern. That is zealotry with a comforting smile. When this protest movement is examined and its purposes decoded we can see an underlying subtext; stating that my protest is much more significant than guaranteeing your needs, however seemingly urgent. But political activists only see the object that most concerns them. The attitude goes something like this. Since I know best, and if you knew as much as me and believed as I do then all would be well with the world. There is no other side which has any overarching validity. And who decides? The mini deities decide, the rulers of the Extinction Rebellion. Thumb up, patient gets seen, thumb down, take whatever odds are going. Political causes override narrow individual needs. That is an argument which encapsulates all left and right wing ideologies, ideas of social order which has led to the totalitarianism of the twentieth century; the worst expressions of human evil ever seen on the planet.

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, which involved over a thousand experts, estimated a rate of extinction of up to 8,700 species a year. A United Nations reported a daily loss of up to 150 species.” Around 10 percent a decade. However the wildness of the figures bandied about can be seen from these below. The accuracy of these estimates are not known and are based on computer modelling. Real data, documented losses are tiny: about 800 extinctions over the last four centuries. This is according to data held by the the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. This figure means a tiny quota 1 % out of a recorded planetary record of roughly 1.9 million species. Those figures were given in 2015 on the website YaleEnvironment360.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature is a global authority on the status of the natural world and the measures needed to safeguard it. So there are scientists of international repute who do, or at least did challenge the data, although their website currently is far more alarmist. Is that due to peer pressure or to computer modelling or to real data?

Figures when misused or exaggerated can cause chaos, dividing peoples and families and raising fears and even hatreds. At the moment we are in the early stages of recruiting the very young. The first moves have been to encourage schoolchildren to miss school lessons in order to protest. Weaponising children  is the antithesis of good sense and leads to disorder and social breakdown. It puts levers of power in the hands of infants when it come to experience. Politicians and industrialists are bad enough; the whims and convictions of children could be worse. Such a world was graphically illustrated in the film Lord of the Flies. Children are not innocents, just watch Greta Thunberg the person, and note her attitude, her contempt, her accusative posture and loaded rhetoric. Not a hint of doubt. just an underground current of burning rage. She gives the impression of a very bright, self confident but spoilt, indulged and undisciplined child. Her courage is admirable, but zealots can be the cause of great good and appalling evil. She is not the Saviour of the World, and her character as far as I can read it lacks a sense of humour, humility, irony and most vital of all a sense of proportion. Blinkered minds focused on a single objective are liable to become obsessive. Being a global superstar is not going to help. Nor is her Asperger condition. This should rule her out as a voice to be listened to with as much reverence as it is at present; and most certainly if the following, taken from an article on the subject is accurate. In this near crazy world a disorder such as this becomes an advantage, gives her greater status, charisma even. Makes her due to the struggle against illness some kind of heroine, a person more qualified than just a plain expert. 

Some suffering with Asperger syndrome say the world feels overwhelming. Such a feeling may cause them considerable anxiety. In particular, understanding and relating to other people, and taking part in everyday family, school, work and social life, can be harder. People with Asperger syndrome may wonder why they are ‘different’ and feel their social differences mean people don’t understand them. All these factors seem to be playing on her mind. Encouraging schoolchildren to miss class in order to protest for example. Pushing a girl like Greta to the forefront of a global mission could be close to child abuse. And she cannot be blamed, she may well be a victim of the need for a unique figure upon which to devote our sense of need for an innocent pure voice. It could be that the masses are sick, and not the child.

 

 

Such certainty! Armed with sound bites and statistics which nobody listening can challenge, she makes a big impression. One of the reasons she has a global voice is precisely because of the technologies which result from technological progress. Innovations are made with probably good intents, the planetary effects would not cross the mind of most industrialists and politicians, at least not initially. The world has advanced on the back of technology since the invention of the wheel. Stopping much of it in its tracks will effect billions of people. Money makes the world go around so it is said, and making money is not going to stop because a young Swede has become a celebrity. Nor will billionaire entrepreneurs cease advancing their projects or politicians risk endangering jobs vital to their nation’s economy.

Is there a malign principle behind some of this? Almost certainly yes: greed, yes, power hungry yes, careless of the consequences yes, but Thunberg is thriving on the results. She will live on the cloud of fame and continue lecturing those who lifted her high. Soon however she will be part of it, sucked and suckered in like most of us. These people and the world in which she lives have not wrecked her future prospects, they have made them. She might one day perhaps, as she screeches her contempt for the modern world from the highest podiums and position of power on the planet, learn the virtue of humility. What thought is given to the privileges she has been given due to the world that technology has provided? Where is the slightest appreciation or gratitude owed to the life she has been given by circumstances and the accident of birth into a wealthy continent. She will never stop the human need for new things and greater comforts. She may serve as a global conscience saying our mea culpas for us. We may, if sufficiently hypocritical, applaud her while  thinking about the updates we need to fulfil our future requirements. If new Eco friendly technologies make money then all well and good. The world has been seeking new clean technologies long before this child made her appearance. New tech takes time and money, and investment involves risk. You can lose everything on pursuing a novel idea, and yes, new tech will take over from old technologies. This has been ongoing since the industrial revolution poisoned our lands with soot and fumes and caused the early death of millions. Dying of horrible diseases in a polluted world in which workers lived very close to the poverty line. We live as we do in relative comfort on a technological bedrock of suffering and grinding work. Greta has it so good and yet slams those who have made her life that good. And has she considered the context of her mission to save the planet. Has it ever occurred to her that this world, like any physical object, is wearing out and has its sell by date? A shocking thought, but one worth considering.

Here is a real prophet who did have a hotline to God.

A quote from Isaiah: 51 v 6.

“Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look at the earth below; for the heavens will vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment, and its people will die like gnats. But My salvation will last forever, and My righteousness will never fail.”

 

Stop and Think…

 

…and do it a number of times before uttering your views on any of the following: race, sexual orientation, religion, disability status, and transgender identity! Below is an official summary of the our government’s good intentions from the Equality and Human Rights commission.

As Britain’s national equality body, our work is driven by a simple belief: if everyone gets a fair chance in life, we all thrive.

That statement is a myth and its enforcement leads to absurdities and injustices. There was in the past another prescription given for a good and fair society, it goes something like this:

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”

Equality is a myth in human society, and Jesus whose quote is above, understood it very well. There will always be the haves and the have not’s, and there were many factors which determined who fell into which category. The rich were supposed to care for the poor and not centre their lives on feathering their nests. They were to ensure that justice was upheld regardless of a persons position in society. The advantaged were to help the disadvantaged, and there was a hope set before the poor: a kingdom to come. We have largely lost sight of and faith in that consoling vision. A place where there would be no injustice, no tears, no suffering; but this paradise would never be found or established on earth. A true and lasting utopia would never arise through legislation or social gerrymandering or even good intentions, because systems ordering society at the micro level always ends badly, with its objectives enforced by bureaucracies exercising penal consequences to maximum effect: which is exactly what is happening. When it comes to real social justice, all that can be done is establish a rough guide when it comes to equalising the inherent advantages given by nature or genetics to the strong; the practical, the conscientious, the intelligent, the healthy and the talented. Before any of these advantages are seen or established in the new born, the fact is that given normal circumstances these will flourish both in childhood and adulthood. The truth is that whatever commandment is set, whether it be an individual’s decision, a government decree or those written on tablets of stone by God, we humans will find ways of circumventing their effects. The only way to put into full effect the objectives of the Equality and Human Rights Commission is through enforcement; hence hate crime legislation. This is true in many areas where very different worldviews collide. The management of these difficulties have historically formed the basis of a free society. Speech must be freely spoken in the public arena without fear of police action, unless it is so inflammatory it endangers the stability of a society.

Britain had a proud heritage of managing these pressures, while only rarely invoking the police or the law. Give and take and speak your mind were once an admired characteristic of our union of nations. As was a sense of humour and a sense of proportion. No-one in my experience of growing up ever sieved through a remark made by someone else, however demeaning or insulting for any signs  of a hate crime. You toughened up and learned from the playground experience up, that bearing the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune was a great way to grow up. The wounds, both physical and mental picked up on the way could be worked through, and would in time build what was once described as, character. The very opposite of the Snowflake generation, who seem to require nursing through life on a feathered rug of affirmation and the avoidance of anything that was challenging: such as an opposing opinion. Sadly the status of self perceived victim has risen from the bottom to the top of the pile. Which is why so many pressure groups have presented themselves as victimised and applied for special status and protection.

Police action and being taken to court was normally a last and not an immediate resort to any perceived slur. Opinions and convictions were argued out both in private and in public without having recourse to law courts. That was our way, and it was admired. What has replaced that old fashioned debating style which has become close to outlawed, is a mean spirited, knit picking, overbearing authoritarian nanny state with penal consequences. Hate crime potential hovers in the air like an unseen drone picking up the tiniest infringement, elevating it into a thoroughly threatening device which makes us all think twice and thrice about making our opinion heard. Hate crime has put the power in the hands of the self proclaimed victim. I have been upset. I have been more than upset, I feel victimised, my very identity threatened. I will make you a pariah and see you in court. The motives and attitudes of the accuser in a hate crime seem not to be questioned. The real hate crime may well reside in the heart, manner and attitude of the accuser. But these are not questioned as to any hidden hatreds for those they may accuse. As the police’s hate crime operational guidance makes clear: ‘Evidence of… hostility is not required for an incident or crime to be recorded as a hate crime or hate incident… the victim does not have to justify or provide evidence of their belief

The victim’s word is accepted as gospel. How do you become a victim? By feeling like one, by interpreting a remark as malicious or derogatory of your identified group. You cannot defend yourself against another person’s interpretation of your body language, your manner or your words. A Feminist, heavily laden with shopping bags may hate a man who offers her a seat on a crowded train and accuse him of demeaning her sense of herself or sexuality. That in his mind the accused was trying to be kind and considerate may well prove an insufficient defence.To repeat and underline the above; ‘Evidence of… hostility is not required for an incident or crime to be recorded as a hate crime or hate incident… the victim does not have to justify or provide evidence of their belief.’

It is sometimes the role of the state to punish people for what they do to other people or to property, but it should never be the role of the state to punish for what a person may think. We can all agree that many beliefs are false, foul or depraved, but so what? A million people may have between them a hundred thousand different beliefs. Can the State decide and judge between them as to what status should be accorded each one? Is Christ true God and Allah an invention? Maybe one day the State, which is turning against its historic faith will favour the newcomer. The legal protections are piling up in favour of Islam, so who knows? The modern State has become a welcoming filter which channels the best interests of extreme pressure groups promoting the causes of climate change warriors, to LGBT activists, from feminists, to apologists for the protected status of Islam. While those are advanced others are eroded. An ideology once implanted into the state machinery will continue to grind inexorably onwards. It sees a piece of untilled land and wants nothing less than to carve a deep furrow across it, which is why the Law Commission is exploring the possibility of going further. Making misogyny, misandry and even hatred for groups like goths and punks into aggravating factors that can make a crime a hate crime and lead to tougher penalties. This is wrong!

How did we get here? Hate crime is extending into Orwellian thought crime. Hate crime brings in belief-policing by the backdoor. Thought crime should terrify anyone who thinks about it, because with it comes a shadow of things to come that have been seen and experienced before in totalitarian regimes. Dictatorships are not a remote possibility, when you see the first signs of thought crime watch out: a Stalin or a Hitler or a Mao Tse Tung may be waiting in the wings. These things happen when our institutions, hierarchies, bureaucracies etc take powers to themselves which cause every tier of oversight and governance to become corrupt and ultimately self serving. At that point Christian values, like loving your neighbour as you love yourself, and forgiving your enemies, and doing good to those who use you badly are abandoned in favour of rigid laws aimed at designated targets.

Isaiah 59 v 14

“So justice is driven back, and righteousness stands at a distance; truth has stumbled in the streets, and honesty cannot enter.”

 

Chance Versus No Chance!

 

We have been fed a diet of myths concerning nature and its wonders for so long we have developed a taste for them. We gobble them up and fail to spit them out. Life from non life, humankind from bacteria, over billions of years, I must not miss that caveat, since the premise is that time, if sufficient, can achieve almost anything. Richard Dawkins in his book The Greatest Show on Earth spends chapter after chapter promising to explain evolution in all its glory until finally, you get to the Great Reveal, The answer is TIme! Loads of it ! If you want to add the cautionary note, that time without a plan or an idea or an end in view might get nowhere fast, then prepare yourself for derision. In the Dawkins world time is a creator. A benefactor, whereas to most of us, while being a wondrous thing which generates experiences, and gives space for creative works, to produce children, technologies and all manner of other things, there remains a problem. It has a limited span, a lifetime; which is why scientists talk about the ultimate end of the universe. As a physical object powered by energy it must end. Its size is no protection from this inexorable process. Energy is finite and ultimately its capacity to build systems will fail. The final words of its last coherent gasp will be: breakdown, decay and death.

Thermodynamics concerns heat and energy and how it moves around within any given system: an atom, an engine or our galaxy. The first law of thermodynamics describes how energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be transformed from one kind to another. The second law is about breakdown and degeneration and decay. I once had a healthy body. I am now 75 years old and have cancer. My body is subject to this second law, and I am not an isolated case. This second law tells us all we do is inherently wasteful, unless of course you have a faith life, in which case it may, following death,  take part in the most exciting journey imaginable. There are irreversible processes in the universe at work right now which will eventually bring all things to an end. If you are an atheist, our universe along with all purpose and meaning, has just one inescapably bleak and desolate future: memory loss and extinction!

But back to the vision of nature’s diversity; from its finely tuned laws of physics and chemistry to other incomparable wonders: metamorphosis, the leaping gazelle, the humming bird, bioluminescence, sexual reproduction and photosynthesis to name just a few. According to Dawkins and his cohorts all of which just happened, and without a hint of a plan or an idea.

Here is profound remark. Carl Sagan said: “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”

And he was quite right. A universe, its laws, a planet like earth with its unique atmosphere allowing air and colour and life needed to be all in place before your grandmother could bake her famous apple tart. Sagan was an atheist, I am not. He believed everything he saw and appreciated arose from thoughtless atoms without a Creator’s impulse or signature. I believe the reverse to be true. So here is my pitch; without an idea, a plan capable of almost infinite development and the raw materials out of which each creation can be made already in place, plus an Eco system able to support the entire height, width and breadth of it all, then creation is nothing less than a vast multivarigated miracle. And miracles belong in the realm of an Almighty Creator God, not in the world of chance and lucky breaks. To incorporate an atheistic, so called rational view, science in the West has had to unhinge itself from its well established theistic roots. Virtually all the Father’s of modern scientific disciplines were bible believing Christians, not materialists like Dawkins, Hubble, and Hawking. So the question did creation have an apple pie in mind is the great one which deserves an answer. A scientist not so very far behind Sagan regards fame in the world of cosmology, and who provides a voice and reputation of high repute in the scientific world is George Ellis. He has made it very plain that before the universe ever existed there has to be something he calls a “possibility space”. This must as a matter of necessity, not choice, incorporate mathematics, fractals, the laws with uphold physics and chemistry, thought, and therefore mind, and even ethics: a sense of right and wrong. George Ellis is a South African theoretical physicist who is considered to be a world leader in relativity and cosmology. The book he co-wrote with Stephen Hawking, The Large Scale Structure of Space–Time examined general relativity theory that was first investigated by Einstein. He pioneered a study to classify anisotropic solutions of Einstein’s equations, and formalised the analysis of observables in cosmology. He will not admit a Creator God, even though he does come close on occasions.

Take that Creator God out, and you are stuck with stories like this; whales were not created, they evolved from a land based mammal over a very long period of time. This theory is based on unproveable assumptions and pseudo science. In fact thoroughly deceitful science; that is if the two videos below represent the true facts. As both scientists interviewed admit to camera that their work includes some aspects of make believe and extrapolation, this seems to be verified. Evolutionary apologists have little compunction beginning with statements of fact before delivering these “facts” to the public as breakthroughs in scientific knowledge through the medium of museums, scientific publications and the media. When later falsified nothing is said, no apologies and no rectifications. Consequently false information remains around for decades, maybe centuries in some cases, deceiving the credulous and the unwary. Whale evolution is one of the best examples of a belief system that in my view simply beggars belief, whatever criteria you use as a measuring stick. How a did a dog like creature became a whale?

There are candidates proposed for the changes required; for example fossils that could illustrate a land dwelling mammal evolving into a whale. Search the internet for whale evolution and images and you will see the illusion coming to life. Pakicetus is an early example. A doglike, possibly marsh living mammal found in freshwater deposits.. But it had no specialisations of the inner ear for underwater hearing, proving beyond reasonable doubt that it was far removed from any salt water aquatic transition.

‘Pakicetus looked very different from modern cetaceans, and its body shape more resembled those of land-dwelling hoofed mammals. Unlike all later cetaceans ( a marine mammal of the order Cetacea: a whale, dolphin, or porpoise ) Pakicetus had four fully functional long legs, a long snout; a typical complement of teeth that included incisors, canines, premolars, and molars; a distinct and flexible neck; and a very long and robust tail. As in most land mammals, the nose was at the tip of the snout.’

Wikipedia

Further along the supposed evolutionary line from land based mammals to whales there appears another creature, this time, or at least for a time, believed to be a fully qualified sea creature named Rodhocetus. The video below should deflate any expectations or indeed trust in what you will see and read in the evolutionary textbooks or look up online.

 

Here is a video about the Walking Whale, named Ambulocetus. A whale blowhole is illustrated but its existence is unproved, and its appearance therefore something close to fraudulent. There is nothing to indicate this creature actually had a blowhole beyond the desire to find a fossil that could tick this box. Altogether there is a fine collection of missing parts: flippers, blowholes and flukes. But who cares when an artist or sculptor can fill the voids.

 

A final word on the subject. Whales are creatures of the open ocean; they feed, mate, give birth, suckle and raise their young at sea. So extreme is their adaptation to life underwater that they are unable to survive on land. Many changes would have been necessary to convert a land-mammal into a whale, including the emergence of a blowhole, with musculature and nerve control, modification of the eye for permanent underwater vision, the ability to drink sea water, forelimbs transformed into flippers, modification of the skeletal structure, the ability to nurse young underwater, the origin of tail flukes and musculature and the blubber for temperature insulation. A truly staggering transformation whatever the timescale. The chances of surviving any of these changes while continuing to successfully locate and mate with an equally adapted partner, reproduce, nurture whatever kind of offspring was possible, hunt, feed and drink is beyond calculation. To conclude a real connection between creatures so far removed from one another by incremental evolutionary steps by cutting and pasting possible fossils intermediates into the story-line is hard to imagine, even after a long day spent on hallucinatory drugs.