Dear Students and Faculty of Granite City High School,

I grew up in Granite City and graduated from GCHS in 1964.  My Hero, Gene Armes, my older brother, sent me a one-way bus ticket to Los Angeles so I could live with him and start college at Santa Ana College - the beginning of my new life that was beyond my wildest dreams.

I met my college sweetheart in Santa Ana, California and have been married to her for fifty-six wonderful years.

We had two daughters, Erin and Teri, and they gave us five grandchildren, Samuel, Grace, Ashley, Samantha and Trent.  

We've traveled the world and taken family with us often, but through it all, my mind often goes back to my roots in Granite City.  So, I created this weblog especially for GCHS students, your parents and teachers.

I will update it from time to time and invite you to notify me of any errors so that I may correct them. Should any GCHS student have something interesting to add to this website, please forward it to me and earn $20, or more.  You will be recognized here by name.

I love teaching as much as I love learning.  

Your friend,

John Phillip Jaeger

Author of Brilliant Creations - The Wonder of Nature and Life

JohnJaeger@live.com

 

"People who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do." - Steve Jobs

________________________________________

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

In chapter 3 of his book The Blind Watchmaker, (biologist Richard) Dawkins gave the following introduction to the program, referencing the well-known infinite monkey theorem*:

I don't know who it was first pointed out that, given enough time, a monkey bashing away at random on a typewriter could produce all the works of Shakespeare. The operative phrase is, of course, given enough time. Let us limit the task facing our monkey somewhat. Suppose that he has to produce, not the complete works of Shakespeare but just the short sentence 'Methinks it is like a weasel', and we shall make it relatively easy by giving him a typewriter with a restricted keyboard, one with just the 26 (capital) letters, and a space bar. How long will he take to write this one little sentence?

[NOTE:  How lazy of Richard Dawkins to fail to look up the author of this monkey business.  It was Sir Arthur Eddington (1882-1944). British astrophysicist Arthur Eddington presented a classical illustration of chance in his book, The Nature of the Physical World, chapter 4, page 72 (1928): “If I let my fingers wander idly over the keys of a typewriter it might happen that my screed made an intelligible sentence. If an army of monkeys were strumming on typewriters, they might write all the books in the British Museum.”

Eddington called this “a rather classical illustration of chance.”  

This is nonsense compounding nonsense. And yet my high school math teacher presented this proposition to his classes in the 1960’s.

First, an “army of monkeys” wouldn’t be very interested in hitting typewriter keys repeatedly. There is nothing for them to gain in so doing.

Second, those who did hit the keys would quickly get to the end of the line, and not be familiar with returning the carriage to type the second line.

Third, those very few who overcame the first and second hurdles, repeatedly, would find that the paper was ejected from the carriage, and they are hopelessly unable to replace the first page with a fresh sheet of paper.

Fourth, we will never get to the fourth problem of exhausting the ink in the typewriter ribbons because the “army of monkeys” would have defecated on, damaged, or otherwise ruined every typewriter.

Fifth, Sir Arthur Eddington never began to consider the statistics of monkeys “selecting” 1 out of approximately 100 different keys, counting upper and lower case of all letters, numbers, and punctuation marks. A page of an average book has 250 – 300 words.  (https://hotghostwriter.com/blogs/blog/novel-length-how-long-is-long-enough)

*Finally, the largest army in the world is the People’s Liberation Army of Communist China, with over 2,000,000 troops.   This is hardly “infinite” in number.  (https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/)

The average word has 6.47 letters. (https://capitalizemytitle.com/character-count/100-characters/)

Using the lower value of 250 words per page, times 6.47 letters equals 1,617 characters in a page.

1/100 to the 1,617th power is 10^-3,234, for just one page, much less “all the books in the British Museum.”
 

In 1943, the distinguished French mathematician Émile Borel stated that “events with a sufficiently small probability never occur” (Institute of Mathematical Statistics).  Dr. Borel chose a fairly safe number, 1 chance in 10 to the 50th power, or 10^-50 .  *

Let’s look at the volume of 10⁵⁰ marbles, one centimeter in diameter.

There are 100 such marbles per meter, and 100 times 1,000 per kilometer = 10⁵ marbles per km .

However, when identical spheres are stacked, they drop into the valley of three other spheres, which reduces their equivalent cubic volume to 74% of their diameter.

Therefore the volume of 105 marbles cubed equals  (.74 x 105) cubed = 4.05 x

 1014 cubic kilometers.

The volume of earth is 108.3 x 1010cubic kilometers. **

4.05 x 1014 marbles/cubic km x 108.3 x 1010cubic kilometers per earth volume = 2.28 x 1026 earth sized spheres

This is 228,000 billion billion earth sized spheres filled with marbles, with only one chance to pick the special unique marble on the first and only try.  This is the definition of "one chance in..."  No probability is ever shown as an infinite number of chances.

* https://owlcation.com/stem/Borels-Law-of-Probability

** https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/earthfact.html

 

 Dawkins then goes on to show that a process of cumulative selection can take far fewer steps to reach any given target. In Dawkins' words:

"We again use our computer monkey, but with a crucial difference in its program. It again begins by choosing a random sequence of 28 letters, just as before ... it duplicates it repeatedly, but with a certain chance of random error - 'mutation' – in the copying. The computer examines the mutant nonsense phrases, the 'progeny' of the original phrase, and chooses the one which, however slightly, most resembles the target phrase, METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL.

By repeating the procedure, a randomly generated sequence of 28 letters and spaces will be gradually changed each generation.  The sequences progress through each generation:

Generation 01:   WDLTMNLT DTJBKWIRZREZLMQCO P ^[2]

Generation 02:   WDLTMNLT DTJBSWIRZREZLMQCO P

Generation 10:   MDLDMNLS ITJISWHRZREZ MECS P

Generation 20:   MELDINLS IT ISWPRKE Z WECSEL

Generation 30:   METHINGS IT ISWLIKE B WECSEL

Generation 40:   METHINKS IT IS LIKE I WEASEL

Generation 43:   METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL

+The exact time taken by the computer to reach the target doesn't matter. If you want to know, it completed the whole exercise for me, the first time, while I was out to lunch. It took about half an hour. (Computer enthusiasts may think this unduly slow. The reason is that the program was written in BASIC,  a sort of computer baby-talk. When I rewrote it in Pascal, it took 11 seconds.) Computers are a bit faster at this kind of thing than monkeys, but the difference really isn't significant. What matters is the difference between the time taken by cumulative selection, and the time which the same computer, working flat out at the same rate, would take to reach the target phrase if it were forced to use the other procedure of single-step selection: about a million million million million million years. This is more than a million million million times as long as the universe has so far existed.

[So much for Dawkins’ specious argument in defense of Darwinism, which he proudly claimed, “… made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.”  - Uncommon Dissent, William A. Dembski, Editor

 Twenty-six capital letters plus the space bar equals twenty-seven.

Twenty-seven to the twenty-eighth power equals ten to the fortieth different possible combinations, of which we seek only one specifically.  Dawkins admits his definition of “impossible” is 1 chance in 10 to the 40^th power.^a  This is not for all of Shakespeare’s works, but for one short sentence, and even that typed on a dramatically altered keyboard, not of fifty possible keys, lower case, and fifty more keys, upper case, but for only twenty-six keys, all upper case.

Of critical but neglected importance is the fact that for “selection” to occur, the intermediary produced by the random mutation MUST confer a “selective advantage” for the host organism, otherwise it will be lost. 

It is therefore incumbent on the advocate for Darwinism to demonstrate, for every random mutation, what that improvement is and how it operates, every single time, without exception.   This is easily done when copying short sentences on a sophisticated computer program, but not so easily done when originally constructing over 20,000 proteins in humans^b, the largest of which is titin, at 38,138^c amino acid residues in length. One out of twenty amino acids “selected” consecutively 38,138 times has a probability of 1 chance in 10^49,618.  This is for only one protein! Calculating for chirality, i.e. the “selection” of L amino acids instead of D amino acids^d and all peptide bonds rather than the equally probable non-peptide bonds^e reduces the probability of original naturalistic synthesis to 1 chance in 10^72,578. As large as 10⁵⁰ is, it is effectively 0 compared to 10^72,578. Twenty thousand more proteins to go!   (Please do not invoke the Bible.  We are talking science.)

a – Climbing Mount Improbable, page 142

b- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4889822/

c -  https://www.omim.org/entry/188840\

d - ½ to the 38,138 = 10^-11,480

e - ½ to the 38,138 = 10^-11,480

10^-49,618  x 10^-11,480 x 10^-11,480  = 10^-72,578      . ]

10^-72,578  means 1 over 10 followed by 72,577 zeroes.

Billions of billions is a very small number in comparison to 10^72,578 

Five billion times five billion is only 25 x10¹⁸ 

If you divide 10^72,578 by 25 x 10¹⁸ you get 4 x 10^72,559  (This is 4 followed by 72,559 zeroes. Each multiple of ten is called "an order of magnitude."  If you reduce these exponentials by a few thousand, it makes no real difference.  "Billions and billions" are equivalent to zero by comparison.)

_______________________________

• TO:  johnjaeger

 

• 
  

Thu 9/14/2023 11:35 AM

Hi John—

Your critique of the Dawkins weasel demonstration found its way to me, and I agree with it entirely. I offered my own critique in Undeniable (p198-200). You hit the nail on the head!

Regrettably, even solid refutations of evolutionary arguments like this don’t seem to get their proponents to rethink their position. I’ve become convinced that this is because the root problem is spiritual, not scientific or intellectual.

Best regards,

Doug Axe

Douglas Axe, PhD
Rosa Endowed Chair of Molecular Biology
Professor of Computational Biology
Co-Director of Stewart Science Honors Program
School of Science, Technology & Health
Biola University

	______________________ The motto of Oxford University, home of militant atheist, Richard Dawkins, is "The Lord is my light." The motto of Cambridge University is "From here, light and sacred cups." __________________________ Scientific evidence of Intelligent Design https://godevidence.com/2012/02/god-is-real/ “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”   – George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman Call me unreasonable.    __________________________________  Consensus is not Science;   Science is Not Consensus   The Semmelweis reflex or “Semmelweis effect” is a metaphor for the reflex-like tendency to reject new evidence or new knowledge because it contradicts established norms, beliefs, or paradigms.[1] The term derives from the name of Ignaz Semmelweis, a Hungarian physician who discovered in 1847 that childbed fever mortality rates fell ten-fold when doctors disinfected their hands with a chlorine solution before moving from one patient to another, or, most particularly, after an autopsy. (At one of the two maternity wards at the university hospital where Semmelweis worked, physicians performed autopsies on every deceased patient.) Semmelweis’s procedure saved many lives by stopping the ongoing contamination of patients (mostly pregnant women) with what he termed “cadaverous particles”, twenty years before germ theory was discovered.[2] Despite the overwhelming empirical evidence, his fellow doctors rejected his hand-washing suggestions, often for non-medical reasons. For instance, some doctors refused to believe that a gentleman’s hands could transmit disease.[3]   In the preface to the fiftieth anniversary edition of his book The Myth of Mental Illness, Thomas Szasz says that Semmelweis’s biography impressed upon him at a young age, a “deep sense of the invincible social power of false truths.”[5] _______________   “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die…..” – Max Planck (1858 – 1947) _____________   In 1983, Barry Marshall and John Warren presented a paper to the Australian Gastroenterological Society claiming that stomach ulcers are caused by infection of Helicobacter pylori. They never finished their presentation because they were laughed off the stage.  Twenty-two years later, they were awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2005 for their discovery.          Doctors and nurses, experts in their fields, kill 250,000 to 400,000 patients a per year through medical malpractice.(www.HopkinsMedicine.org)   ___   Here is a thought experiment with an obvious conclusion.  In 1895, Lord Kelvin, the President of the Royal Society, the oldest science organization in the world, declared:  “Heavier-than- air human flight is impossible.”   Imagine that two years later, a distinguished member of the Royal Society introduced Lloyd and Wilbur Wright to a meeting of The Society, and they announced, “We have been experimenting with our heavier-than-air invention and our experiments have confirmed that we can fly it.”   What would the Royal Society members have said?  The same thing that doubters have always said because the Wright Brothers did not have the scientific credentials of Lord Kelvin.  “Throw them out of here!”  ___________________________ Climate Change Cultists, like Darwinists, relentlessly censor all who disagree: http://Climate-Change-Cult.blogspot.com __________________________ While American and European wackos obsess over a few parts per billion of atmospheric carbon dioxide, millions of tons of waste and trash  continue to be dumped in the world's rivers.   Drowning in Sewage and Dumping Money into a Climate Rathole Drowning in Sewage and Dumping Money into a Climate Rathole – Watts Up With That?   Vijay Jayaraj We humans dream of colonizing Mars, building flying cars, and achieving immortality. Yet, amidst this fervent pursuit of futures that sometimes drift into fantasy, we’re neglecting critical problems of the present. An example is rampant pollution of our waters. This neglect exists even in advanced societies such as the United Kingdom, where untreated sewage spills into the Thames and other rivers, turning them into fetid cesspools. This isn’t some dystopian vision of the future. It’s happening right now, under the noses of complacent governments and a distracted public. While headlines scream about a fabricated climate emergency decades away, actual environmental crises fester — not to mention potholed streets and collapsing bridges. Thames filled with Sewage: A Global Problem The U.K.’s aging sewage infrastructure simply can’t handle the demands of a growing population. During heavy rain, overflows release raw sewage directly into rivers. Recent findings suggest that since 2020, Thames Water—the U.K.’s largest water and wastewater services company—has discharged a minimum of 72 billion liters of sewage into the river Thames, equivalent to approximately 29,000 Olympic swimming pools of water. In 2024, the company was fined 3.3 million pounds after causing the death of over 1,400 fish with the release of millions of liters of untreated sewage. Despite these incidents, Thames Water continues to discharge sewage into bodies of water. Numerous images and videos shared on social media depict holidaymakers witnessing the presence of brown-colored sewage-contaminated waters along beaches and river banks in the U.K. The neglect of river pollution has dire consequences for public health from a range of waterborne diseases, including cholera, dysentery and hepatitis A. The presence of harmful bacteria such as E. coli in rivers and coastal waters poses a direct threat to communities that rely on these sources for drinking, bathing and recreation. In fact, recently, thousands of people fell ill with diarrhoea as they ingested parasites from contaminated water in Devon, U.K. In Bangladesh, the Buriganga and linked rivers in the country’s capital region receive daily about 60,000 cubic meters of wastes from the nine major industrial clusters. The river is so toxic that locals consider it biologically dead. In New Delhi, the capital of India, the Yamuna River has been heavily affected by the disposal of harmful chemicals and untreated sewage. As a result, certain parts of the river exhibit a murky appearance, with foamy froth and plastic waste along its banks. Another river in India, the Ganges, is one of the world’s most polluted, receiving every day more than one billion gallons of raw sewage and industrial waste. The problem is not exclusive to these countries. The list goes on and on. But the elephant in the room is the fact that these nations have allocated billions of dollars towards initiatives aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions—an endeavor that remains scientifically unjustified. The U.K. has been vocal about it’s desires to implement net zero—an amorphous term used to denote zero greenhouse gas emissions from human activity. India is spending billions on wind and solar, and even Bangladesh has been waxing eloquent on the subject, launching its first ever Climate Action Plan. Net zero will have zero effect on the climate and threatens devasting consequences for the supply of affordable and reliable electricity. Net zero is perhaps the most futile initiative mankind has ever undertaken and certainly the most expensive. Pouring trillions of funds annually into managing an uncontrollable climate is utterly ridiculous. Instead of addressing pressing environmental issues such as river pollution, governments are misdirecting resources and energy in response to unsubstantiated claims like the climate crisis. More people will die from real environmental problems than from the climate in 2050, whether it’s warmer or colder. We need to move beyond attention-grabbing headlines about distant imaginary threats and focus on actual ones.                                                  _______________________________ From the book "Flourish," by psychiatrist Martin Seligman: "We scientists have found that doing a kindness produces the single most reliable increase in well-being of any exercise we have tested."   _______________________________ Enjoy a fascinating journey at: http://www.2001Principle.net _________________________________ What is wrong with this page from January, 1991 National Geographic magazine? Ten million people read National Geographic every month.  I wrote to them and they wrote back "You're right!  We goofed!", but they never printed my letter.  Too embarrassed I suppose. The answer is on the next page. __________________________________________ http://TheEndOfDarwinianEvolution.blogspot.com _______________________________________ An autographed copy of my book is available in the GCHS Library, as I mailed a hard cover to the GCHS Librarian.  I invite you to read this inspirational book of science.  Michael McCartney, D.D.S, said "It should be required reading for every high school student."  John Orosz, M.D., said "Wow, beyond incredible!  Required reading for every literate person."