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Tuff

Tuff is a type of rock made of volcanic ash ejected from a vent during a volcanic eruption. Following ejection and deposition, the ash is lithified into a solid rock. Rock that contains greater than 75% ash is considered tuff, while rock containing 25% to 75% ash is described as tuffaceous (for example, tuffaceous sandstone). Tuff composed of sandy volcanic material can be referred to as volcanic sandstone.

Tuff is a relatively soft rock, so it has been used for construction since ancient times. Because it is common in Italy, the Romans used it often for construction. The Rapa Nui people used it to make most of the moai statues on Easter Island.

Tuff can be classified as either igneous or sedimentary rock. It is usually studied in the context of igneous petrology, although it is sometimes described using sedimentological terms.

Tuff is often erroneously called tufa in guidebooks and in television programs but tufa is a form of travertine.

Volcanic ash
The material that is expelled in a volcanic eruption can be classified into three types:

 * 1) Volcanic gases, a mixture made mostly of steam, carbon dioxide, and a sulfur compound (either sulfur dioxide, SO2, or hydrogen sulfide, H2S, depending on the temperature)
 * 2) Lava, the name of magma when it emerges and flows over the surface
 * 3) Tephra, particles of solid material of all shapes and sizes ejected and thrown through the air

Tephra is made when magma inside the volcano is blown apart by the rapid expansion of hot volcanic gases. Magma commonly explodes as the gas dissolved in it comes out of solution as the pressure decreases when it flows to the surface. These violent explosions produce particles of material that can then fly from the volcano. Solid particles smaller than 2 mm in diameter (sand-sized or smaller) are called volcanic ash.

Volcanic ash is further divided into fine ash, with particle sizes smaller than 0.0625 mm in diameter, and coarse ash, with particle sizes between 0.0625 mm and 2 mm in diameter. Tuff is correspondingly divided into coarse tuff (coarse ash tuff) and fine tuff (fine ash tuff or dust tuff). Consolidated tephra composed mostly of coarser particles is called lapillistone (particles 2 mm to 64 mm in diameter) or agglomerate or pyroclastic breccia (particles over 64 mm in diameter) rather than tuff.

Volcanic ash can vary greatly in composition, and so tuffs are further classified by the composition of the ash from which they formed. Ash from high-silica volcanism, particularly in ash flows, consists mainly of shards of volcanic glass, and tuff formed predominantly from glass shards is described as vitric tuff. The glass shards are typically either irregular in shape or are roughly triangular with convex sides. They are the shattered walls of countless small bubbles that formed in the magma as dissolved gases rapidly came out of solution.

Tuffs formed from ash consisting predominantly of individual crystals are described as crystal tuffs, while those formed from ash consisting predominantly of pulverized rock fragments are described as lithic tuffs.

The chemical composition of volcanic ash reflects the entire range of volcanic rock chemistry, from high-silica rhyolitic ash to low-silica basaltic ash, and tuffs are likewise described as rhyolitic, andesitic, basaltic, and so on.

Transport and lithification
The most straightforward way for volcanic ash to move away from the vent is as ash clouds that are part of an eruption column. These fall to the surface as fallout deposits that are characteristically well-sorted and tend to form a blanket of uniform thickness across terrain. Column collapse results in a more spectacular and destructive form of transport, which takes the form of pyroclastic flows and surges that characteristically are poorly sorted and pool in low terrain. Surge deposits sometimes show sedimentary structures typical of high-velocity flow, such as dunes and antidunes. Volcanic ash already deposited on the surface can be transported as mud flows (lahars) when mingled with water from rainfall or through eruption into a body of water or ice.

Particles of volcanic ash that are sufficiently hot will weld together after settling to the surface, producing a welded tuff. Welding requires temperatures in excess of 600 C. If the rock contains scattered, pea-sized fragments or fiamme in it, it is called a welded lapilli-tuff. Welded tuffs (and welded lapilli-tuffs) can be of fallout origin, or deposited from ash flows, as in the case of ignimbrites. During welding, the glass shards and pumice fragments adhere together (necking at point contacts), deform, and compact together, resulting in a eutaxitic fabric. Welded tuff is commonly rhyolitic in composition, but examples of all compositions are known.

A sequence of ash flows may consist of multiple cooling units. These can be distinguished by the degree of welding. The base of a cooling unit is typically unwelded due to chilling from the underlying cold surface, and the degree of welding and of secondary reactions from fluids in the flow increases upwards towards the center of the flow. Welding decreases towards the top of the cooling unit, where the unit cools more rapidly. The intensity of welding may also decrease towards areas in which the deposit is thinner, and with distance from source.

Cooler pyroclastic flows are unwelded and the ash sheets deposited by them are relatively unconsolidated. However, cooled volcanic ash can quickly become lithified because it usually has a high content of volcanic glass. This is a thermodynamically unstable material that reacts rapidly with ground water or sea water, which leaches alkali metals and calcium from the glass. New minerals, such as zeolites, clays, and calcite, crystallize from the dissolved substances and cement the tuff.

Tuffs are further classified by their depositional environment, such as lacustrine tuff, subaerial tuff, or submarine tuff, or by the mechanism by which the ash was transported, such as fallout tuff or ash flow tuff. Reworked tuffs, formed by erosion and redeposition of ash deposits, are usually described by the transport agent, such as aeolian tuff or fluvial tuff.

Occurrences
Tuffs have the potential to be deposited wherever explosive volcanism takes place, and so have a wide distribution in location and age.

High-silica volcanism
Rhyolite tuffs contain pumiceous, glassy fragments and small scoriae with quartz, alkali feldspar, biotite, etc. Iceland, Lipari, Hungary, the Basin and Range of the American southwest, and New Zealand are among the areas where such tuffs are prominent. In the ancient rocks of Wales, Charnwood, etc., similar tuffs are known, but in all cases, they are greatly changed by silicification (which has filled them with opal, chalcedony, and quartz) and by devitrification. The frequent presence of rounded corroded quartz crystals, such as occur in rhyolitic lavas, helps to demonstrate their real nature.

Welded ignimbrites can be highly voluminous, such as the Lava Creek Tuff erupted from Yellowstone Caldera in Wyoming 631,000 years ago. This tuff had an original volume of at least 1000 km3. Lava Creek tuff is known to be at least 1000 times as large as the deposits of the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, and it had a Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) of 8, greater than any eruption known in the last 10,000 years. Ash flow tuffs cover 7000 km2 of the North Island of New Zealand and about 100000 km2 of Nevada. Ash flow tuffs are the only volcanic product with volumes rivaling those of flood basalts.

The Tioga Bentonite of the northeastern United States varies in composition from crystal tuff to tuffaceous shale. It was deposited as ash carried by wind that fell out over the sea and settled to the bottom. It is Devonian in age and likely came from a vent in central Virginia, where the tuff reaches its maximum thickness of about 40 meters.

Alkaline volcanism
Trachyte tuffs contain little or no quartz, but much sanidine or anorthoclase and sometimes oligoclase feldspar, with occasional biotite, augite, and hornblende. In weathering, they often change to soft red or yellow claystones, rich in kaolin with secondary quartz. Recent trachyte tuffs are found on the Rhine (at Siebengebirge), in Ischia and near Naples. Trachyte-carbonatite tuffs have been identified in the East African Rift. Alkaline crystal tuffs have been reported from Rio de Janeiro.

Intermediate volcanism
Andesitic tuffs are exceedingly common. They occur along the whole chain of the Cordilleras and Andes, in the West Indies, New Zealand, Japan, etc. In the Lake District, North Wales, Lorne, the Pentland Hills, the Cheviots, and many other districts of Great Britain, ancient rocks of exactly similar nature are abundant. In color, they are red or brown; their scoriae fragments are of all sizes from huge blocks down to minute granular dust. The cavities are filled with many secondary minerals, such as calcite, chlorite, quartz, epidote, or chalcedony; in microscopic sections, though, the nature of the original lava can nearly always be made out from the shapes and properties of the little crystals which occur in the decomposed glassy base. Even in the smallest details, these ancient tuffs have a complete resemblance to the modern ash beds of Cotopaxi, Krakatoa, and Mont Pelé.

Mafic volcanism

Mafic volcanism typically takes the form of Hawaiian eruptions that are nonexplosive and produce little ash. However, interaction between basaltic magma and groundwater or sea water results in hydromagmatic explosions that produce abundant ash. These deposit ash cones that subsequently can become cemented into tuff cones. Diamond Head, Hawaii, is an example of a tuff cone, as is the island of Ka'ula. The glassy basaltic ash produced in such eruptions rapidly alters to palagonite as part of the process of lithification.

Although conventional mafic volcanism produce little ash, such ash as is formed may accumulate locally as significant deposits. An example is the Pahala ash of Hawaii island, which locally is as thick as 15 meters. These deposits also rapidly alter to palagonite, and eventually weather to laterite.

Basaltic tuffs are also found in Skye, Mull, Antrim, and other places, where Paleogene volcanic rocks are found; in Scotland, Derbyshire, and Ireland among the Carboniferous strata, and among the still older rocks of the Lake District, the southern uplands of Scotland, and Wales. They are black, dark green, or red in colour; vary greatly in coarseness, some being full of round spongy bombs a foot or more in diameter; and being often submarine, may contain shale, sandstone, grit, and other sedimentary material, and are occasionally fossiliferous. Recent basaltic tuffs are found in Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Jan Mayen, Sicily, the Hawaiian Islands, Samoa, etc. When weathered, they are filled with calcite, chlorite, serpentine, and especially where the lavas contain nepheline or leucite, are often rich in zeolites, such as analcite, prehnite, natrolite, scolecite, chabazite, heulandite, etc.

Ultramafic volcanism
Ultramafic tuffs are extremely rare; their characteristic is the abundance of olivine or serpentine and the scarcity or absence of feldspar and quartz.

Kimberlites
Occurrences of ultramafic tuff include surface deposits of kimberlite at maars in the diamond-fields of southern Africa and other regions. The principal variety of kimberlite is a dark bluish-green, serpentine-rich breccia (blue-ground) which, when thoroughly oxidized and weathered, becomes a friable brown or yellow mass (the "yellow-ground"). These breccias were emplaced as gas–solid mixtures and are typically preserved and mined in diatremes that form intrusive pipe-like structures. At depth, some kimberlite breccias grade into root zones of dikes made of unfragmented rock. At the surface, ultramafic tuffs may occur in maar deposits. Because kimberlites are the most common igneous source of diamonds, the transitions from maar to diatreme to root-zone dikes have been studied in detail. Diatreme-facies kimberlite is more properly called an ultramafic breccia rather than a tuff.

Komatiites
Komatiite tuffs are found, for example, in the greenstone belts of Canada and South Africa.

Folding and metamorphism
In course of time, changes other than weathering may overtake tuff deposits. Sometimes, they are involved in folding and become sheared and cleaved. Many of the green slates of the English Lake District are finely cleaved ashes. In Charnwood Forest also, the tuffs are slaty and cleaved. The green color is due to the large development of chlorite. Among the crystalline schists of many regions, green beds or green schists occur, which consist of quartz, hornblende, chlorite or biotite, iron oxides, feldspar, etc., and are probably recrystallized or metamorphosed tuffs. They often accompany masses of epidiorite and hornblende – schists which are the corresponding lavas and sills. Some chlorite-schists also are probably altered beds of volcanic tuff. The "Schalsteins" of Devon and Germany include many cleaved and partly recrystallized ash-beds, some of which still retain their fragmental structure, though their lapilli are flattened and drawn out. Their steam cavities are usually filled with calcite, but sometimes with quartz. The more completely altered forms of these rocks are platy, green chloritic schists; in these, however, structures indicating their original volcanic nature only sparingly occur. These are intermediate stages between cleaved tuffs and crystalline schists.

Importance
The primary economic value of tuff is as a building material. In the ancient world, tuff's relative softness meant that it was commonly used for construction where it was available.

Italy
Tuff is common in Italy, and the Romans used it for many buildings and bridges. For example, the whole port of the island of Ventotene (still in use), was carved from tuff. The Servian Wall, built to defend the city of Rome in the fourth century BC, is also built almost entirely from tuff. The Romans also cut tuff into small, rectangular stones that they used to create walls in a pattern known as opus reticulatum.

Peperino has been used in Rome and Naples as a building stone, is a trachyte tuff. Pozzolana also is a decomposed tuff, but of basic character, originally obtained near Naples and used as a cement, but this name is now applied to a number of substances not always of identical character. In the historical architecture of Naples, Neapolitan yellow tuff is the most used building material. Piperno ignimbrite tuff was also used widely in Naples and Campania.

Germany
In the Eifel region of Germany, a trachytic, pumiceous tuff called trass has been extensively worked as a hydraulic mortar. Tuff of the Eifel region of Germany has been widely used for construction of railroad stations and other buildings in Frankfurt, Hamburg, and other large cities. Construction using the Rochlitz Porphyr, can be seen in the Mannerist-style sculpted portal outside the chapel entrance in Colditz Castle. The trade name Rochlitz Porphyr is the traditional designation for a dimension stone of Saxony with an architectural history over 1,000 years in Germany. The quarries are located near Rochlitz.

United States
Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, a U.S. Department of Energy terminal storage facility for spent nuclear reactor and other radioactive waste, is in tuff and ignimbrite in the Basin and Range Province in Nevada. In Napa Valley and Sonoma Valley, California, areas made of tuff are routinely excavated for storage of wine barrels.

Rapa Nui
Tuff from Rano Raraku was used by the Rapa Nui people of Easter Island to make the vast majority of their famous moai statues.

Armenia
Tuff is used extensively in Armenia and Armenian architecture. It is the dominant type of stone used in construction in Armenia's capital Yerevan, Gyumri, Armenia's second largest city, and Ani, the country's medieval capital, now in Turkey. A small village in Armenia was renamed Tufashen (literally "village of tuff") in 1946.

Tephrochronology

Tuffs are deposited geologically instantaneously and often over a large region. This makes them highly useful as time-stratigraphic markers. The use of tuffs and other tephra deposits in this manner is known as tephrochronology and is particularly useful for Quaternary chronostratigraphy. Individual tuff beds can be "fingerprinted" by their chemical composition and phenocryst assemblages. Absolute ages for tuff beds can be determined by K-Ar, Ar-Ar, or carbon-14 dating. Zircon grains found in many tuffs are highly durable and can survive even metamorphism of the host tuff to schist, allowing absolute ages to be assigned to ancient metamorphic rocks. For example, dating of zircons in a metamorphosed tuff bed in the Pilar Formation provided some of the first evidence for the Picuris orogeny.

Etymology
The word tuff is derived from the Italian tufo.

title: Tuff


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David Fabricius

David Fabricius (9 March 1564 – 7 May 1617) was a German pastor who made two major discoveries in the early days of telescopic astronomy, jointly with his eldest son, Johannes Fabricius (1587–1615).

David Fabricius (Latinization of his proper name David Faber, or David Goldschmidt; possibly Hebrew) was born at Esens, studied at the University of Helmstedt starting in 1583 and served as pastor for small towns near his birthplace in Frisia (now northwest Germany and northeast Netherlands), at Resterhafe near Dornum in 1584 and at Osteel in 1603. As was common for Protestant ministers of the day, he dabbled in science: his particular interest was astronomy. Fabricius corresponded with astronomer Johannes Kepler.

Scientific work
Fabricius discovered the first known periodic variable star (as opposed to cataclysmic variables, such as novas and supernovas), Mira, in August 1596. At first he believed it to be "just" another nova, as the whole concept of a recurring variable did not exist at the time. When he saw Mira brighten again in 1609, however, it became clear that a new kind of object had been discovered in the sky.

Two years later, his son Johannes Fabricius (1587–1615) returned from university in the Netherlands with telescopes that they turned on the Sun. Despite the difficulties of observing the Sun directly, they noted the existence of sunspots, the first confirmed instance of their observation (though unclear statements in East Asian annals suggest that Chinese astronomers may have discovered them with the naked eye previously, and Fabricius may have noticed them himself without a telescope a few years before). The pair soon invented camera obscura telescopy so as to save their eyes and get a better view of the solar disk, and observed that the spots moved. They would appear on the eastern edge of the disk, steadily move to the western edge, disappear, then reappear at the east again after the passage of the same amount of time that it had taken for it to cross the disk in the first place. This suggested that the Sun rotated on its axis, which had been postulated before but never backed up with evidence. Johannes then published Maculis in Sole Observatis, et Apparente earum cum Sole Conversione Narratio ("Narration on Spots Observed on the Sun and their Apparent Rotation with the Sun") in June 1611. Unfortunately, after Johannes Fabricius' early death at the age of 29, the book remained obscure and was eclipsed by the independent discoveries of and publications about sunspots by Christoph Scheiner and Galileo Galilei, few months later.

Death
After Fabricius denounced a local goose thief from the pulpit at Osteel in 1617, the accused man struck him on the head with a shovel and killed him.

Legacy
Copies of a map he made of Frisia in 1589 are also still extant. He is also name-checked in Jules Verne's 1865 novel From the Earth to the Moon as someone who claimed to have seen lunar inhabitants through his telescope, though that particular fact is merely part of Verne's fiction. The large (79-kilometer) crater Fabricius in the Moon's southern hemisphere is named after David Fabricius. In 1895 a monument was erected to his memory in the churchyard at Osteel where he was pastor from 1603 until 1617.

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title: David Fabricius


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User:Iskra!

My main interests include:
 * Biology,
 * Ecology,
 * Pop Music,
 * Superstring theory,
 * Poetry,
 * Religion,
 * Editing already existing articles.

 * welcome! As you can see, lists you can do by putting * in front of sentences.

You are iskra meaning "spark"? Polish girl? szopen - Thank you, szopen and yes, ni mniej, ni więcej. Nice to hear from a countryman! -

title: User:Iskra!


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Melvin Defleur

Melvin Lawrence DeFleur (April 27, 1923 – February 13, 2017) was a professor and scholar in the field of communications. His initial field of study was social sciences.

Biography
Melvin Lawrence DeFleur was born in Portland, Oregon on April 27, 1923. DeFleur received his Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Washington in 1954. His thesis, Experimental studies of stimulus response relationships in leaflet communication, drew from sociology, psychology, and communication, to study how information diffused through American communities.

He has taught at Indiana University (1954–1963), the University of Kentucky (1963–1967), Washington State University (1967–1976), the University of New Mexico (1976–1980), the University of Miami (1981–1985), Syracuse University (1987–1994) and the University of Washington before taking his last position as professor of communication at Boston University's Department of Mass Communication, Advertising and Public Relations. In addition, he was a Fulbright Professor to Argentina twice: and was affiliated with the Argentine Sociological Society and the Ibero-Interamerican Sociological Society, for which he served as secretary general.

DeFleur was married to Margaret DeFleur, Associate Dean for Graduate Studies and Research.

DeFleur died on February 13, 2017, aged 93.

Academic work
His early work owes a debt to Stuart C. Dodd and George A. Lundberg, sociologists and psychologists. This group applied quantitative measure, statistical data analyses, and descriptive mathematical models used in the physical sciences to the development of sociology.

Another force affected his work: He began his career when the memories of World War II were fresh, and entered into the academic world when the Cold War played a critical role in shaping the United States' political, economic and social atmosphere. Social psychology research added to the knowledge that the United States government and military felt they needed for operating in a new world dynamic (East v. West). For example, the leafleting processes studied by Project Revere were an obvious way to communicate information to a displaced, captive, or isolated population.

He maintained a sociological focus during the early 1970s, co-writing an introductory sociology textbook that went into several editions. He co-authored a study of discrimination in university hiring practices, particularly in sociology departments (Wolfe et al., 1973), again with a strong emphasis on statistics and survey methods. However, his focus shifted. With the spread of television, he began to study the mass media. Specifically, he researched the effect of television on children's knowledge of occupational roles, and on the factors that influence the content and output of the American broadcasting systems. He and others established a formal definition of social expectations theory, applied to a model to predict that watching television attunes a viewer to social organization patterns of various groups, even if they "have never been members or never will be". Other works examined the potential relationships forged by mass media between the perception of social problems and their portrayal by the media. He wrote of his suggestion of a cultural norms theory in 1970, an idea that, in his estimation, "provided the foundation for the more comprehensive social expectations theory".

In the 1970s and 1980s he continued studies on news diffusion. In reviewing some major studies (DeFleur, 1988), he found that despite emerging technology, word of mouth is still important, and major events that concern a broader population will travel further and faster. His research lead to the creation of the Media Systems Dependency Theory with Sandra Ball-Rokeach in 1976.

DeFleur cites his idea (formed with Timothy Plax) of the language-shaping function of the media as one of four theories on how media shape messages, and what that means for social conduct (DeFleur & Ball-Rokeach, 1989). The other three are the meaning-construction function of the press; cultivation theory; the agenda setting function of the press. His transition from "pure" social psychology to mass communication mirrors the growth of this field. His theories, are widely cited in mass communication studies and in general theoretical surveys.

He is on the executive board of the Center for Global Media Studies at Washington State University, an organization whose motto, "Global Media Cover the World ... We Cover Global Media," connects with the focus of his recent work studying the accuracy of audience recall of news media in a cross-cultural vein (Faccoro & DeFleur, 1993).

Selected bibliography
Dennis, E. E. & DeFleur, M. L. (2010). Understanding Media in the Digital Age. Allyn & Bacon.
 * DeFleur, M. L. (1983). Social Problems in American Society. Prentice Hall.
 * DeFleur, M. L. (1987). The growth and decline of research on the diffusion of the news: 1945–1985. Communication Research, 14(1),109-130.
 * DeFleur, M. L. (1988). Diffusing information. Society, 2, 72–81.
 * DeFleur, M. L. & Ball-Rokeach, S. (1989). Theories of mass communication (5th ed.). White Plains, NY: Longman.
 * DeFleur, M. L. & Cronin, M. M. (1991). Completeness and accuracy of recall in the diffusion of the news from a newspaper vs a television source. Sociological Inquiry, 61(2), 148–166.
 * DeFleur, M. L. & Dennis, E. (1998). Understanding mass communication. (6th ed.). Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
 * DeFleur, M. L. et al. (1992). Audience recall of news stories presented by newspaper, computer, television and radio. Journalism Quarterly, 69: 1010–1022.
 * DeFleur, M. L., Kearney, P. & Plax, T. G. (1993). Mastering communication in contemporary America: Theory, research, and practice. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing Company.
 * DeFleur, M. L., Kearney, P. & Plax, T. G. (1997). Fundamentals of Human Communication. (2nd ed.). Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing.
 * DeFleur, M. L. & Larsen, O. N. (1987). The flow of communication. (2nd ed.). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, Inc. (Original work published 1958).
 * DeFleur, M. L. & Plax, T. G. (1980). Human Communication as a Bio-Social Process. Paper presented to the International Communication Association, Acapulco, Mexico.
 * DeFleur, M. L. & Westie, F. (December 1958) Verbal attitudes and overt acts: An experiment on the salience of attitudes. American Sociological Review, 12 (6).
 * Faccoro, L. B. & DeFleur, M. L. (1993). A cross-cultural experiment on how well audiences remember news stories from newspaper, computer, television, and radio sources. Journalism Quarterly, 70, 585–601.
 * Hawkins, R. P. et al. Advancing communication science- Merging mass and interpersonal processes. Sociological Inquiry, 60, 434–437.
 * Hubbard, J. C., DeFleur, M. L. & DeFleur, L. B. (1975). Mass media influences on public conceptions of social problems. Social Problems, 23(1), 22–34.
 * Lowery, S. A. & DeFleur, M. L. (1995). Milestones in mass communication research: Media effects. (3rd edition). White Plains, NY: Longman.
 * Wolfe, J. C., DeFleur, M. L. & Slocum, W. L. (1973). Sex discrimination in hiring practices of graduate sociology departments: Myths and realities. American Sociologist, 8(4), 159–164.

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Indymedia

The Independent Media Center, better known as Indymedia, is an open publishing network of activist journalist collectives that report on political and social issues. Following beginnings during the 1999 Carnival Against Capital and 1999 Seattle WTO protests, Indymedia became closely associated with the global justice movement. The Indymedia network extended internationally in the early 2000s with volunteer-run centers that shared software and a common format with a newswire and columns. Police raided several centers and seized computer equipment. The centers declined in the 2010s with the waning of the global justice movement.

Content and distribution
Indymedia is a website for citizen journalism that promotes activism and counters mainstream media news and commentary perspectives. Indymedia originated from protests against the concentrated ownership and perceived biases in corporate media reporting. The first Indymedia node, attached to the Seattle anti-corporate globalization protests, was seen by activists as an alternative news source to that of the corporate media, which they accused of only showing violence and confrontation, and portraying all protesters negatively. Indymedia initially covered protests between 1999 and 2001. As protests began to wane, Indymedia covered global social justice movements, such as opposition to the war in Iraq. Indymedia was purported to be the first network on-the-scene in reporting the 2008 Greek riots and the resistance towards the 2009 Honduran coup. The network also has a focus in covering the social justice campaigns of students, Indigenous people, immigrants, and peace activists. A slogan was "Don't Hate the Media, Become the Media!"

Active, the software used as the basis for the first Indymedia center websites, was written by activists in Sydney. It went live in January 1999 and featured open publishing, calendars, events and contacts. Indymedia also ran a global radio project which aggregated audio RSS feeds from around the world.

History
The origins of Indymedia can be traced to the global justice protest Carnival Against Capital, which took place in over forty countries on June 18, 1999. In late November 1999, the first dedicated Indymedia project was ready to cover the 1999 Seattle WTO protests. The first post was made on November 24. It read: "The resistance is global ... The web dramatically alters the balance between multinational and activist media. With just a bit of coding and some cheap equipment, we can set up a live automated website that rivals the corporates'. Prepare to be swamped by the tide of activist media makers on the ground in Seattle and around the world, telling the real story behind the World Trade Agreement." When the protests began, a hundred videographers were on the streets filming, joined by photographers and journalists, all working as volunteers.

After Seattle, local, autonomous collectives formed. Local sociopolitical context determined each individual center's focus. However, it was a core theme that centers would have both an open publishing structure to which anyone could contribute and an open archive. Centers tended to be set up in response to meetings of groups such as the World Bank or G8, to world forum events, or to party conventions, such as Democrat or Republican meetings in the US. By 2002, there were 90 Indymedia websites, mainly in the US, Canada and Western Europe but also Australia, New Zealand and Latin America. The number of centers continued growing, especially in Europe, reaching 142 in 2004 and 175 by 2010.

The Indymedia movement reached its peak in the mid-2000s. Centers in the United States began to atrophy around 2008, and by 2014, the global network had declined significantly, with the number of active sites down to 68. A number of reasons for the decline have been put forward. In February 2013, Ceasefire magazine had noted a decline in the use of Nottingham Indymedia, stating that activist usage of commercial social media had increased. The poverty of activist collectives to invest in resources was contrasted with the massive investments made by corporations such as Facebook and Twitter. In an article published by the journal Convergence Eva Giraud summarised some of the different arguments that had been made by academics and activists, which included informal hierarchy, bureaucracy, security issues including IP address logging, lack of regional engagement, lack of class politics, increase in web 2.0 social media use, website underdevelopment, decline in volunteers and decline in the global justice movement. Corporate Watch saw the rise of social media sites and the normalization of 'open publishing' as recommodifying Indymedia's key innovations for the cultural industry.

In a 2019 article published on occasion of Indymedia's 20th anniversary, April Glaser suggested that factors such as volunteer burnout, lack of resources, lack of centralized accountability, lack of leadership development, and the waning of the anti-globalization movement all contributed to the decline of Indymedia.

United Kingdom
Police seized servers in the UK in June 2005. An anonymous post on the Bristol Indymedia server came to police attention for suggesting an "action" against a freight train carrying new cars as part of a protest against cars and climate change in the run up to that year's Gleneagles G8 summit. A member of the Bristol Indymedia group was arrested. Indymedia was supported in this matter by the National Union of Journalists and Liberty.

In August 2014, Bristol Indymedia's servers were again seized by police after a string of attacks in the Bristol area were claimed on the Indymedia service, including a communique signed by Informal Anarchist Federation claiming the successful arson of a police firearms training centre. Bristol Indymedia stated that they would not cooperate with the authorities and that they "do not intend to voluntarily hand over information to the police as they have requested".

United States
On October 7, 2004, the Federal Bureau Investigation took possession of several server hard drives used by a number of IMCs and hosted by U.S.-based Rackspace Managed Hosting. The servers in question were located in the United Kingdom and managed by the British arm of Rackspace, but some 20 mainly European IMC websites were affected, and several unrelated websites were affected, including the website of a Linux distribution. Some, but not all, of the legal documents relating to the confiscation of the servers were unsealed by a Texas district court in August 2005, following legal action by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The documents revealed that the only action requested by the government was to surrender server log files.

The move was condemned by the International Federation of Journalists, who stated that, "The way this has been done smacks more of intimidation of legitimate journalistic inquiry than crime-busting" and called for an investigation. European civil liberties organization Statewatch and the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC) also voiced criticism. EFF attorney Kurt Opsahl compared the case with Steve Jackson Games, Inc. v. United States Secret Service.

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title: Indymedia


text:
Talk:The Selfish Gene/Archive 1

Odds and ends
In terms of the physical laws which result in natural selection occuring, Dawkins does mention the tendency of matter to move to the most stable configuration it can have in its current environment. Not only is there much evidence in terms of thermodynamics that stable states tend to prevail over unstable ones, but it prevents me (v. much a layperson) from being overly influenced by Dawkins' anthropomorphic language. --Edhinton 14:35, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

--- However, the view that selection on other levels such as organisms and populations almost never opposes selection on genes is increasingly viewed as extreme.

How do you know it is extreme?

 * If there is no evidence, it should be removed. I know there are multi-level selection models, but species selction has never made a comeback, so the sentence should be modified. - JeffBurdges 22:16, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

--- I'm wondering, Do books like the selfish gene actually make the world a better place to live? To be honest, it is quite depressing...
 * Sure it does, its wonderful. If memetics is really true, it allows us to discover how to really make the world a better place. The truth is almost always beautiful and inspirining. - JeffBurdges 14:13, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Why do we have to be so pragmatic about truth. Truth can be ugly as well. Linking truth to morality, touchy-feeliness, or whatever isn't science. Let the facts speak for themselves. Cursif 03:55, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
 * It gives you knowledge and promotes lots of thinking. Like, whether your want to fight your own selfish genes by deciding not to breed. (As listed in the article) Made me laugh and then i thought about it... The genes are part of you. And they are selfish. How strange. Fierywindz 10:42, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Check out the first chapter (Digital river) and the third chapter (God's utility function) in River out of Eden for answers. Fred Hsu 01:59, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

I cut this sentence:
 * Instead of thinking in terms of evolution shaping organisms to reproduce more effectively, it is more accurate to think in terms of those genes which are replicated more effectively being selected.

I see the problems Vicki Rosenzweig saw in the earlier version and while I aprpeciate her efforts, I just don't thin it is salvagable.

First, I think the first sentence of the article is much much clearer, and sufficient. Second, this sentence is obfuscatory, because it reintroduces the issue of evolution. In standard Darwinian theory, evolution acts on species, and natural selection acts on organisms. According to this theory, it is the gene, and not the organism, that natural selection acts on. Very interesting and very clear. The question is, does this change the way evolution itself acts? This is the subject of the second (now deleted) sentence. But I do not think sociobiology requires a radical reformulation of evolutionary theory (beyond the reformulation of natural selection); it does suggest that a different understanding of natural selection helps us understand evolutionary trends, and I think the rest of the article is clear about that.

So it just seems to me that the simplest solution is to get rid of the sentence. Do others agree with me that the article makes sense without it? SR
 * Yes. I'm still concerned about NPOV--is this idea generally accepted by biologists? (The article states it as a given, not one of several competing hypotheses--if that's the case, cool.) Vicki Rosenzweig

I didn't see much resemblance in this article to the book at all, so I thought it deserved a major rewrite. Did any of you folks actually read the book? --Lee Daniel Crocker

 * I did, and I think the article is decent. I just threw in a reference to ESS's, because that's an important focus in the book.  Zensufi 00:24, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, not me. But I always loved the title. It implies via metaphor that the gene has a desire, as if it had intelligence. I enjoy the delicious irony of imputing intelligence to a gene while denying it to God.

Don't worry, I'm not going to wreak havoc in this article. It's very NPOV as it is. User:Ed Poor

 * This is a major improvement -- good job! I don't see any major NPOV issues; I think most biologists accept the notion that the gene is the object of natural selection, and I think the article does a good job of presenting the arguments.

 * I do see one problem in this sentence:
 * Describing genes with the term "selfish" is not meant to imply that they have actual motives or will--only that the results of their actions can be described as if they do.
 * Genes do not "act," at least not in the same way as people (I suppose you could say they "act" in the same way as reagents do). I wouldn't make a big deal of this except for the context, which is a sentence that specifically aims to de-anthropomorphize the concept.  The predicate of the sentence therefore has to steer clear of any language that could suggest intentionality.  So I am changing 'actions" to "effects," although I invite LDC to come up with another solution.  SR

You're right, that's what the sentence was trying to do and your wording is better. --LDC

-

I wrote the version that this edit is being based on, and FWIW I have read the book and I have a genetics degree.

This rewrite is an improvement, especially in dealing separately with genetic determinism, but it's still not ideal.

The problem is that the article comes too close to implying that "selfish gene" is Dawkins' provocative spin on evolution and is nothing more than a useful way of looking at the problem.

In fact, the central point of the idea, that the gene is the unit of selection, is a more accurate recasting of evolution than Darwin. Darwin couldn't have explained natural selection in these terms because the basic mechanisms of genetics weren't understood at the time.

To say "most of the time the gene and the organism share common goals" and to treat the selfish gene as explaining certain additional phenomena is understating the case.

What I was groping for is a clear statement that if the selfish gene idea is true, an organism is expected to evolve to maximise its inclusive fitness - the number of copies of its genes passed on globally (rather than by a particular individual).

As far as NPOV goes, I think the selfish gene idea is accepted as a central tenet of neo-Darwinism. Any mathematical geneticist will view things in terms of inclusive fitness. I know that Gould doesn't accept it, but he is the exception.

So basically, I think we need an article that pushes the importance of the concept more strongly than the current one does.

 * The sentence about the gene and the organism having "common goals" really needs to be changed. One reason why philosophers have picked on Dawkins is this sort of sloppy thinking (mainly, to be fair, from disciples rather than Dawkins himself) about "goals" and "aims" and so on.  Genes don't have goals, the process of evolution will tend to select particular genes - talk about "goals" implies that the genes want to be selected, or act with the intention of being selected.  Organisms, even ones which operate on a very basic mental level, have goals and intentions even if they are driven by instinct rather than rationality, but genes don't.  This is rather like saying "water wants to flow into the sea" - water flows into the sea because of gravity and topology, not because it has the goal of flowing into the sea.  Dawkins protests vigorously that he doesn't impute motives to genes, while using this sort of language which does impute motives, and the article ought to back off from this.  I'll try to think of another way of putting it. --Andrew Norman 14:00, Apr 25, 2005 (UTC)

 * He very clearly says he is using that language merely for convenience, in a way to make it more accessible to laypeople. Unfortunately it seems like his plan backfires and the laypeople take it literally.  :-) - Omegatron 15:58, Apr 25, 2005 (UTC)

 * That's the problem - he spends a lot of time getting himself out of the hole he's dug himself with his use of language (and most of the intemperate attacks, in the seventies in particular, were due to people feeling he had intentionally not dug himself out completely). The Wikipedia article, as it stands, doesn't make it clear that the "selfish" gene isn't literally selfish, and it needs to do that.  As I said, I'll have a think unless someone else comes up with a better way of putting things.--Andrew Norman 16:49, Apr 25, 2005 (UTC)

I think I've improved the wording somewhat - and I think it's important to put in links to Fisher and Williams, because Dawkins himself would admit that the book is almost entirely based on their theories and research. One thing puzzling me (and I can't find my copy to check) - does the selfish gene theory actually explain "junk DNA"? Surely, if the DNA doesn't express itself, it can't be selected and is therefore not involved in evolution?--Andrew Norman 19:23, Apr 27, 2005 (UTC)

 * pp 44-5 in my edition (1989): "Sex is not the only apparent paradox that becomes less puzzling the moment we learn to think in selfish gene terms. For instance, it appears that the amount of DNA in organisms is more than is strictly necessary for building them: a large fraction of the DNA is never translated into protein.  From the point of view of the individual organisms this seems paradoxical.  If the 'purpose' of DNA is to supervise the building of bodies, it is surprising to find a large quantity of DNA which does no such thing.  Biologists are racking their brains trying to think what useful task this apparently surplus DNA is doing.  But from the point of view of the selfish genes themselves, there is no paradox.  The true 'purpose' of DNA is to survive, no more and no less.  The simplest way to explain the surplus DNA is to suppose that it is a parasite, or at best harmless but useless passenger, hitching a ride in the survival machines created by other DNA."  There is also a mention of it on page 182 and an interesting rebuttal to Gould's argument in the endnotes on page 275.  There is, according to this, a more full discussion of this "junk DNA" in The Extended Phenotype on pp. 156-164.  Finally, Andrew, it seems to me that in Dawkins' explanation, genes need not have an effect on the phenotype.  "Junk DNA" is a specific kind of selfish gene that happens to not have an effect on the phenotype.  They survive, because they have properties which tend to them not being broken up or changed as they pass from one generation to the next. Zensufi 22:15, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I've been reading it lately (very slowly). Are there common criticisms of the notion? Include if so. - Omegatron 23:50, Jan 2, 2005 (UTC)

Critique / Clarification
Removed the clarification of the theory as an indeterminist model of causality. The notion of an "indeterminist model of causality" seems oxymoronic.

Also, has anybody ever encountered any critique of the Selfish Gene model? I haven't had time to educate myself fully on the theory, but something about it is making my Spidey sense tingle--it just seems intuitively "off," and I wondered if there was any critical analysis out there.

--Pariah 03:20, Mar 15, 2005 (UTC)

 * According to the book, the alternative theories are things like group selection and species selection, as opposed to "gene selection" which can also be called kin selection. - Omegatron 04:34, Mar 15, 2005 (UTC)

 * Thanks Omegatron. I suppose there's a certain explanatory value in a gene or kin selection theory, for talking about certain self-sacrificial behaviours.  Something still doesn't sit right about it--my pseudo-science detectors are very suspicious.  I guess I'll have to read the book.  So many books, so little time...  --Pariah 09:42, Mar 16, 2005 (UTC)

 * Isn't it all "explanatory value"? Yes, I recommend the book.  Do you know of any "opposing" viewpoints that would be in similar books that I could read? - Omegatron 19:50, Mar 17, 2005 (UTC)

 * You need to look at kin selection, and memorise Hamilton's rule. As a trained biologist, I baulk at the idea of group selection.  Adaptation and Natural Selection is quite readable; Dawkins does go over the top a bit sometimes (and most of the book does go into trying to explain what a chromosome is...).  A critique of adaptationism can be found in Not in Our Genes! by Lewontin, Rose and ... (but I'm an unavowed adaptationist).  The big advocate of group selection was V.C. Wynne-Edwards who has a couple of books.  Group selection is generally ignored unless there are high extinction rates of small groups, and there are a few examples, SIV I think is one, but they are few and far between.  Nature is red in tooth and claw.  Dunc|☺ 22:55, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * I am not even an amateur biologist. I am just telling what I know of the book. - Omegatron 06:26, Mar 18, 2005 (UTC)

Gene-centered view of evolution
This could be merged with the above, since it's not just about a book but an idea. --Erauch 00:17, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)

 * That's a bad idea. You might as well try to merge Adaptation and Natural Selection, which predates this book by 10 years, or even The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection which is even older.  The book is also significant in terms of memetics and the history of popular science writing. Dunc|☺ 11:07, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

 * OK. But some of the material not specific to the book or its presentation would fit better in an article on the idea rather than the book. --Erauch 14:32, May 4, 2005 (UTC)

Segregation Distortion
I'm not a biologist but I read up a bit on this. Neither the Wikipedia article or any of the items I read support the position that a Segregation Distortion gene is bad for the host. Anyone want to explain why this is the case (assuming it is true)? If it is not true let's remove it from the article. Robertbrockway 18:49 May 22, 2005 (UTC)

 * I've never seen segregation distortion arise in any context other than as very bad genetic disorders, but I'm no biologist either. Your clearly correct that they don't *inherently* harm the animal; getting all your mitochondria from your mother isn't bad for you.  However, it is true that selection pressures act diffrently on any genetic material which cheats, so its much easier for such material to become a disorder.  I've seen people suggest that mitochondrial DNA probably does try to bias towards female children, but that presumably germ line DNA just fights back & is much more powerful.  I've also seen people suggest geneticallly engenering segregation disorders to destroy various populations of pests, say by creating a Y chromosome for a pest which ensured that all sperm would contain the Y, release it into the wild, and watch the species drift towards extinction. - JeffBurdges 14:08, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

"philosophical and moral questions"
I removed the following sentence from the article:
 * Another criticism of the book is that it attempts to answer philosophical and moral questions that are beyond the scope of the biological arguments presented therein.

First, this sentence not only asserts that the criticism is made, but also that it is valid (in my reading at least). Second, I don't believe that this is a frequent criticism of the book, though I'm open to being corrected. So I'd be happy to see a similar statement included if someone could cite a published criticim using this argument, and reword the assertion to make it clear that the article neither supports nor opposes it. —Rory ☺ 00:14, August 1, 2005 (UTC)

--- Lots of critiques are based on Dawkins' philosophical conclusions. For example,  and indeed anything by Mary Midgeley (even though she is a bit too verbose) e.g. sure I can find a lot more people if you need more examples that this is a common criticism. I'd also be surprised to find a philosopher who would believe that it is not valid to criticise somebody for using science to make moral judgements. In fact Dawkins often goes to great pains to refute this by appealing against religion - but this is a straw man imho. cheers, Brendanurbanwarrior 14:13, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

 * I agree with Brendanurbanwarrior that it's a fairly common criticim of Dawkins, so I've readded the sentence, with a link to Mary Midgley. I've changed the wording of the sentence slightly, so I hope that you think it's NPOV- obviously feel free to change it, but I think it needs to be kept in the article. --G Rutter 21:20, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

I've just removed a chunk of stuff relating to this. It's downright dishonest to pretend that Midgley wants Dawkins's views "silenced because they may have moral implications" - her point is precisely that the science does not help us with morality, and that Dawkins makes this link despite claiming that he agrees with her (see is-ought problem, which also impacts on the question of whether psychological, game-theoretic or genetic discoveries about behaviour of humans or other animals have anything to say about morality). Midgley's off-course some of the time when she writes about Dawkins, but she does have a very real point and it's one that Dawkins and some of his supporters don't have enough philosophical background to be able to grasp. I count myself as a supporter of Dawkins in many areas, by the way, but he got into a real muddle about the moral implications of genetics when he wrote the introduction to TSG, and he hasn't shown much sign of understanding what the problem is, let alone dealing with it. Midgley's intemperate and occasionally stupid criticisms haven't helped, of course. Fundamentalist Christians don't like evolution and SG theory not because of alleged moral implications, but because the theories disagree with biblical literalism. "Intelligent design" tends to be touted by Christians who aren't fundamentalist in that sense - the types who accept that the world is more than a few thousand years old and was not created by God in seven days, but who still want to get a "god of the gaps" in the rapidly diminishing gaps. It doesn't help to combat ignorance if you confuse different types of ignorance. --ajn (talk) 15:48, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

 * First, the intelligent design movement internal-ish propoganda quite clearly claims that science like evolution is weakening the moral fiber of the nation. Seems quite clearly parallel to Midgley's critisism.   Actually it seems *more* thought out than Midgley's critisism, although also more incorrect.  Second, I'm not sure I really grasp the point where Dawkins gets into "moral implications".  Yes, many people object tot he fact that he "used the word selfish and had to dig himself out of a hole."  Is that what you mean?  His other major foray into philosophical thought is that understanding the selfish replicators, and the iterated prisoner's dilemma, is necissary if you want to correct flaws in human society.  This idea comes with an extremely high pedigree from serious philosophers, read A Darwinian Left by Peter Singer, an ethics professor at Princeton.  - JeffBurdges 16:39, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

BTW, I should confess that I've never really understood quite why so much ado was made over the is-ought problem. Popper's extremely restrictive definition of science, the ruling out of bad hypotheses, seems to provide just as good a model for transitioning from "is" to "ought" as science. And philosophers actually seem to do this under the name of consequentialism, or consequence utilitarianism. Now I don't really believe that science is exactly as Popper described it, but a pretty useful over simplification, and consequentialism seems similarly useful for a number of serious philosophers. - JeffBurdges 17:15, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

 * Evidence for your first sentence? It quite clearly is not parallel to Midgley's criticism, as you'd know if you had read any of her books.  She's very strongly pro-science, but not in favour of scientists making philosophical claims they don't have any grounds for (it's a pity she doesn't take her own advice sometimes, as her own knowledge of science is woefully poor in some areas).  Much of Beast and Man (published in 1980) anticipates Singer's call for a left which takes Darwinian reality into account.  Regarding Dawkins, here is a Desert Island Discs transcript in which he says much the same thing as he does in the introduction to TSG - "You can expect no help from biological nature if you want to be nice and unselfish and generous so we have got to work at being nice, unselfish and generous."  Now he's spent half of the last quarter-century saying that sort of thing (which goes directly against all the work that has been done on game theory, some of which was reported in TSG and more particularly in The Extended Phenotype), and the other half denying that he has ever said that sort of thing.  Here's the Wikipedia article: "Interestingly, the "selfish" actions of genes lead to unselfish actions by organisms."  See the problem?  Where Midgley is spot-on is in identifying this as a conceptual problem with reductionism - things do work differently at different levels, and you have to be extraordinarily careful if you're using the same word to describe different concepts at different levels of organisation.  Dawkins says "genes don't act altruistically towards other genes, so organisms don't naturally act altruistically towards other organisms".  Then he says "I never said that".  --ajn (talk) 17:28, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

 * Heh, they even call it the wedge strategy. I didn't mean parallel in terms of positive/negative views of science, but on wanting it out of philosophy, but I see your point, she doesn't want it out, she just doesn't want philosophy treated naively.  I never really bought "how" Dawkins phrased that stuff about being nice, unselfish, etc., but I always took "we have to work at being nice" to mean, "we have to figure out how to change the game to keep human nature in check".  What else could it mean if your talking about using the IPD to create positive social change (as I believe Dawkins does)?  - JeffBurdges 20:09, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Changes as per comments
I read through these comments and implemented some of the contents changes, plus some of my own, and a bunch of language fixes. Mostly, I tried to add some examples and tone down the NPOV portions and unsupported claims. If you have comments about the content changes, it's probably safer to make them here before doing any heavy edits. Alienus 20:04, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

AN's revert
Andrew Norman, You have reverted two of my constructive edits, claimed you would justify them on the talk page, and did not do so. Please explain? I'm willing to discuss whether ID should be mentioned around Mary Midgley, but your flat wrong and have not read the book if you think Dawkins "argued for" memetics. At that point in the book, he was quite clearly only making conjecture, and not even claiming to believe it himself. - JeffBurdges 22:02, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

 * I did justify the reversion, here and amended here. You could try checking the talk page history before flinging these accusations around.  I've read the book several times, thanks.  I've no quarrel with toning down the discussion of memes (though my recollection is that he's at best ambiguous about whether memes could be explained by a "selfish" theory).  Your point about conjecture is interesting, as it's one of Midgley's criticisms of Dawkins and others - a book of solid science, bookended by conjecture and claims which go beyond the arguments as presented, and it's the lurid conjecture which lay readers pick up on as the important ideas, not the science.  --ajn (talk) 10:02, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

 * Oops, I'll respond about to that one. Dawkins conjecture about memes is literally "genes may not be the only selfish replicatiors, ideas may be self replicatiors too," and follows the section on another replicator being responcible for the creation of life.  So, yes, it is definitely about a selfish theory.  Its as a negative conjecture about excessive gJKJKJenetic exuberance, which is a valid warning to scientists, and need not be taken to have any philosophical content.  - JeffBurdges 16:21, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Iterated prisoner's dilemma
The iterated prisoner's dilemma clearly diserves mention in the 2nd to last paragraph, as it is a major theme of the non-Dawkins philosophical thought which ID and M.M. attacking Dawkins over. I vaguely recall it also being mentioned in the book, in the same hopeful (vaguely pro-but-post Marxist) light where its mentioned everywhere. - JeffBurdges 22:07, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

 * I agree. In my last change, I hinted towards the IPD in mentioning that selfish genes can lead to altruistic organisms, but I never did spell out how iteration leads to a more optimial solution to the PD. Someone should do it.  If necessarily, I'll give it a try, but I'd like to step back from this topic for a bit to let others contribute.  I've liked the changes made since mine. Alienus 22:57, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Brains and Computers
From Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene; Oxford University Press; ISBN: 0192860925; p. 276—Brains and Computers.

 * Note to p. 49 Brains may be regarded as analogous in function to computers. They are analogous in that both types of machines generate complex patterns of output, after analysis of complex patterns of input, and after reference to stored information.

 * Statements like this worry literal-minded critics. They are right, of course, that brains differ in many respects from computers. Their internal methods of working, for instance, happen to be very different from the particular kind of computers that our technology has developed. This in no way reduces the truth of my statement about their being analogous in function. Functionally, the brain plays precisely the role of on-board computer—data processing, pattern recognition, short-term and long-term data storage, operation coordination, and so on.

Yesselman 22:03, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Added headers into the article, and a comment
I split the article into secitons to try and make it a little easier to digest when reading. I think the article as it stands is very well written - bravo to the editors! I have read the book and am a great fan, and overall the article represents it well.

My one, if only gripe would be that there is a great deal of explanation given to the criticisms of the book, but not really any mention of the book's popularity. I'd like to see, for instance that it has sold more than a million copies and been translated into over 25 languages - I think that would give the layman a better idea of the impact the book originally made 30 years ago? Thoughts, please! Thanks. Mushintalk 23:18, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Nobody replied, so I've carried out the edits myself. Mushintalk 16:12, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Seminal?
I've removed the "seminal" addition - Dawkins himself admits in the book that most of what's in it came from Williams, Hamilton and others. It's a popularisation and summary, not a piece of wholly original theory (which doesn't mean it's a bad book, far from it - but The Extended Phenotype is more about Dawkins's own ideas). The article probably needs to make that plainer. --ajn (talk) 20:39, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
 * The Blind Watchmaker now, that has more of a claim, although again Dawkins reasonably drew on the shoulders of giants to produce it. Origin of Species, the sequel.  Midgley 16:02, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Unit of selection
The article Unit of selection seems to have major Gould? POV inspired errors, conflaits individual & gene level selection, etc. JeffBurdges 11:31, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Here is an older more correct vresion, but its also very short, and significantly overstated Dawkins contributions. JeffBurdges 11:35, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

removed info about band
I've removed a brief paragraph about a band from Madison, WI named The Selfish Gene (after this book). I don't believe they are of more than local interest - please see WP:MUSIC. FreplySpang (talk) 21:12, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Agreed. Mushintalk 00:00, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Opening sentence
I changed the wording in the title section to Although accepted by biologists as somewhat mainstream now, it was considered quite controversial when it was first published in 1976. The original version stated that it is a somewhat controversial book.

This has now been changed back.

Most biology and evolutionary books can be considered controversial to at least some people, specifically religious people. But in terms of the The Selfish Gene when it was first published the relevant (to evolution/biology)aspect of it’s controversy was that it promoted a gene-centric view of evolution during a time when thinking in this field was dominated by individual and group selection arguments.

However as Dawkins' arguments are no longer new and have been integrated into current evloutionary boiology (most evolutionists now think in terms of a combination of individual, kin and group selection in with a view to how they are affected by genes) I don't think it's fair to say the book IS a very controversial one.

Thus my revision made clear that what WAS a controversial theory when it was first published is now considered less so. Whereas the original merely states the book IS controversial without saying who it's controversial to and why. - GB

80.195.35.180 17:57, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

 * I agree that selfish gene theory should not really be considered controversial any more, but the fact remains that it does still arouse controversy all these years on. Thank you for your input. Laurence Boyce 18:12, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

title: Talk:The Selfish Gene/Archive 1


text:
Charles Fort

Charles Hoy Fort (August 6, 1874 – May 3, 1932) was an American writer and researcher who specialized in anomalous phenomena. The terms "Fortean" and "Forteana" are sometimes used to characterize various such phenomena. Fort's books sold well and are still in print. His work continues to inspire admirers, who refer to themselves as "Forteans", and has influenced some aspects of science fiction.

Fort's collections of scientific anomalies, including The Book of the Damned (1919), influenced numerous science-fiction writers with their skepticism and as sources of ideas. "Fortean" phenomena are events which seem to challenge the boundaries of accepted scientific knowledge, and the Fortean Times (founded as The News in 1973 and renamed in 1976) investigates such phenomena.

Biography
Fort was born in Albany, New York, in 1874, of Dutch ancestry. His father, a grocer, was an authoritarian, and in his unpublished autobiography Many Parts, Fort mentions the physical abuse he endured from his father. Fort's biographer, Damon Knight, suggested that his distrust of authority began in his treatment as a child. Fort developed a strong sense of independence during his early years.

As a young adult, Fort wanted to be a naturalist, collecting sea shells, minerals, and birds. Although Fort was described as curious and intelligent, he was not a good student. An autodidact, his considerable knowledge of the world was due mainly to his extensive personal reading.

At age 18, Fort left New York to embark on a world tour to "put some capital in the bank of experience". He travelled through the western United States, Scotland, and England, until becoming ill in Southern Africa. When he returned home, he was nursed by Anna Filing, whom he had known since childhood. They were married on October 26, 1896, at an Episcopal church. For a few years, the newly married couple lived in poverty in the Bronx while Fort tried to earn a living writing stories for newspapers and magazines. In 1906, he began to collect accounts of anomalies.

Career as a full-time writer
His uncle Frank A. Fort died in 1916, and a modest inheritance gave Fort enough money to quit his various day jobs and to write full-time. In 1917, Fort's brother Clarence died; his portion of the same inheritance was divided between Fort and his other brother, Raymond.

Fort's experience as a journalist, coupled with his wit and contrarian nature, prepared him for his real-life work, ridiculing the pretensions of scientific positivism and the tendency of journalists and editors of newspapers and scientific journals to rationalize.

Fort wrote 10 novels, although only one, The Outcast Manufacturers (1909), a tenement tale, was published. Reviews were mostly positive, but it was unsuccessful commercially. During 1915, Fort began to write two books, titled X and Y, the first dealing with the idea that beings on Mars were controlling events on Earth, and the second with the postulation of a sinister civilization extant at the South Pole. These books caught the attention of writer Theodore Dreiser, who tried to get them published, but to no avail. Discouraged, Fort burnt the manuscripts, but soon began work on the book that would change the course of his life, The Book of the Damned (1919), which Dreiser helped to get published. The title referred to "damned" data that Fort collected, phenomena for which science could not account, and that was thus rejected or ignored.

Fort and Anna lived intermittently in London between 1920 and 1928, so Fort could carry out research in the Reading Room of the British Museum. Fort lived most of his life in the Bronx. He was, like his wife, fond of movies, and often took her from their Ryer Avenue apartment to a movie theater nearby, stopping at an adjacent newsstand for an arm full of various newspapers. Fort frequented the parks near the Bronx, where he sifted through piles of clippings. He often rode the subway down to the main Public Library on Fifth Avenue, where he spent many hours reading scientific journals, newspapers, and periodicals from around the world. Fort also had literary friends who gathered at various apartments, including his own, to drink and talk.

Following
Fort was pleasantly surprised to find himself the subject of a cult following. Talk arose of the formation of a formal organization to study the type of odd events related by his books. Jerome Clark writes, "Fort himself, who did nothing to encourage any of this, found the idea hilarious. Yet he faithfully corresponded with his readers, some of whom had taken to investigating reports of anomalous phenomena and sending their findings to Fort".

Death
Suffering from poor health and failing eyesight, Fort distrusted doctors and did not seek medical help for his worsening health. Rather, he emphasized completing Wild Talents.

After he collapsed on May 3, 1932, Fort was rushed to Royal Hospital. Later that same day, Fort's publisher visited him to show him the advance copies of Wild Talents. Fort died only hours afterward, probably of leukemia. He was interred in the Fort family plot in Albany, New York.

Overview
For more than 30 years, Fort visited libraries in New York City and London, assiduously reading scientific journals, newspapers, and magazines, collecting notes on phenomena that were not explained well by the accepted theories and beliefs of the time.

Fort took thousands of notes during his lifetime. In his undated short story "The Giant, the Insect and The Philanthropic-looking Old Gentleman" (first published by the International Fortean Organization in issue No. 70 of the INFO Journal: Science and the Unknown), Fort spoke of having often toyed with the idea of burning a collection of some 48,000 notes, and of one day letting "several" notes be blown away by the wind because he couldn't be bothered to save them (they were supposedly returned to him by a gentleman on a neighbouring park bench). The notes were kept on cards and scraps of paper in shoeboxes, in Fort's cramped handwriting. More than once, depressed and discouraged, Fort destroyed his work, but began anew. Some notes were published by the Fortean Society magazine Doubt, and upon the death of its editor Tiffany Thayer in 1959, most were donated to the New York Public Library, where they are still available to researchers. Material created by Fort has also survived as part of the papers of Theodore Dreiser, held at the University of Pennsylvania.

From this research, Fort wrote four books: The Book of the Damned (1919), New Lands (1923), Lo! (1931), and Wild Talents (1932). One book was written between New Lands and Lo! but it was abandoned and absorbed into Lo!.

Fort's writing style
Fort suggested that a Super-Sargasso Sea exists, into which all lost things go, and justified his theories by noting that they fit the data as well as the conventional explanations. As to whether Fort believed this theory, or any of his other proposals, he himself noted, "I believe nothing of my own that I have ever written".

Notable literary contemporaries of Fort's openly admired his writing style and befriended him. Among these were: Ben Hecht, John Cowper Powys, Sherwood Anderson, Clarence Darrow, and Booth Tarkington, who wrote the foreword to New Lands.

After Fort's death, the writer Colin Wilson said that he suspected that Fort took few if any of his "explanations" seriously, and noted that Fort made "no attempt to present a coherent argument". He described Fort as "a patron saint of cranks" while at the same time he compared Fort to Robert Ripley, a popular contemporary cartoonist and writer who found major success publishing similar oddities in a syndicated newspaper panel series named Ripley's Believe It or Not!

Wilson called Fort's writing style "atrocious" and "almost unreadable", yet despite his objections to Fort's prose, he allowed that "the facts are certainly astonishing enough." In the end, Fort's work gave him "the feeling that no matter how honest scientists think they are, they are still influenced by various unconscious assumptions that prevent them from attaining true objectivity. Expressed in a sentence, Fort's principle goes something like this: People with a psychological need to believe in marvels are no more prejudiced and gullible than people with a psychological need not to believe in marvels."

By contrast, Jerome Clark, wrote that Fort was "essentially a satirist hugely skeptical of human beings'—especially scientists'—claims to ultimate knowledge". Clark described Fort's writing style as a "distinctive blend of mocking humor, penetrating insight, and calculated outrageousness". Fort was skeptical of sciences and wrote his own mocking explanations to defy scientists who used traditional methods.

In a review of Lo!, The New York Times wrote: "Reading Fort is a ride on a comet; if the traveler returns to earth after the journey, he will find, after his first dizziness has worn off, a new and exhilarating emotion that will color and correct all his future reading of less heady scientific literature."

Fortean phenomena
Examples of the odd phenomena in Fort's books include many occurrences of the sort variously referred to as occult, supernatural, and paranormal. Reported events include teleportation (a term Fort is generally credited with inventing), falls of frogs, fishes, and inorganic materials, spontaneous human combustion, ball lightning (a term explicitly used by Fort), poltergeist events, unaccountable noises and explosions, levitation, unidentified flying objects, unexplained disappearances, giant wheels of light in the oceans, and animals found outside their normal ranges (see phantom cat). He offered many reports of out-of-place artifacts (OOPArts), strange items found in unlikely locations. He was also perhaps the first person to explain strange human appearances and disappearances by the hypothesis of alien abduction, and was an early proponent of the extraterrestrial hypothesis, specifically suggesting that strange lights or objects sighted in the skies might be alien spacecraft.

Forteans
Fort's work has inspired some people to consider themselves "Forteans". The first of these was Hecht, a screenwriter, who in a review of The Book of the Damned, declared, "I am the first disciple of Charles Fort... henceforth, I am a Fortean".

Precisely what is encompassed by the term "Fortean" is a matter of great debate; the term is widely applied to people ranging from Fortean purists dedicated to Fort's methods and interests, to those with open and active acceptance of the actuality of paranormal phenomena, a belief with which Fort may not have agreed. Most generally, Forteans have a wide interest in unexplained phenomena, concerned mostly with the natural world, and have a developed "agnostic skepticism" regarding the anomalies they note and discuss. For Hecht, as an example, being a Fortean meant hallowing a pronounced distrust of authority in all its forms, whether religious, scientific, political, philosophical, or otherwise. It did not, of course, include an actual belief in the anomalous data enumerated in Fort's works.

The Fortean Society was initiated at the Savoy-Plaza Hotel in New York City on January 26, 1931, by some of Fort's friends, including such significant writers as Hecht, Dreiser, and Alexander Woollcott, and organized by fellow American writer Thayer, half in earnest and half in the spirit of great good humor, like the works of Fort himself. The board of founders included Dreiser, Hecht, Tarkington, Powys, Aaron Sussman, former Puck editor Harry Leon Wilson, Woollcott, and J. David Stern, publisher of The Philadelphia Record. Active members of the Fortean Society included prominent science-fiction writers such as Knight and Eric Frank Russell.

Fort, however, rejected the society and refused the presidency, which went to his friend Dreiser; he was lured to its inaugural meeting by false telegrams. As a strict nonauthoritarian, Fort refused to establish himself as an authority, and further objected on the grounds that those who would be attracted by such a group would be spiritualists, zealots, and those opposed to a science that rejected them; it would attract those who believed in their chosen phenomena—an attitude exactly contrary to Forteanism. Fort did hold unofficial meetings and had a long history of getting together informally with many of New York City's literati such as Dreiser and Hecht at their apartments, where they would talk, have a meal, and then listen to brief reports.

The magazine Fortean Times (first published in November 1973) is a proponent of Fortean journalism, combining humor, skepticism, and serious research into subjects that scientists and other respectable authorities often disdain. Another such group is the International Fortean Organization (INFO), which was formed during the early 1960s (incorporated in 1965) by brothers and writers Ron and Paul Willis, who acquired much of the material of the Fortean Society, which had largely ceased by 1959 with the death of Thayer. INFO publishes the INFO Journal: Science and the Unknown and organizes the FortFest, the world's first continuously running conference on anomalous phenomena dedicated to the spirit of Charles Fort. INFO, since the mid-1960s, also provides audio CDs and filmed DVDs of notable conference speakers, including Colin Wilson, John Michell, Graham Hancock, John Anthony West, William Corliss, John Keel, and Joscelyn Godwin. Other notable Fortean societies include the London Fortean Society, Edinburgh Fortean Society, in Edinburgh and the Isle of Wight.

Scholarly evaluation
Religious scholars such as Jeffrey J. Kripal and Joseph P. Laycock view Fort as a pioneering theorist who helped define "paranormal" as a discursive category and provided insight into its importance in human experience. Consistently critical of how science studied abnormal phenomena in his day, Fort remains a point of reference for those who engage in such studies today.

Literary influence
More than a few modern authors of fiction and nonfiction who have written about the influence of Fort are sincere devotees of Fort. One of the most notable is British philosopher John Michell, who wrote the introduction to the edition of Lo!, published by John Brown in 1996. Michell says: "Fort, of course, made no attempt at defining a world-view, but the evidence he uncovered gave him an 'acceptance' of reality as something far more magical and subtly organized than is considered proper today." Stephen King also uses the works of Fort to illuminate his main characters, notably It and Firestarter. In Firestarter, the parents of a pyrokinetically gifted child are advised to read Fort's Wild Talents rather than the works of baby doctor Benjamin Spock.

Loren Coleman is a well-known cryptozoologist, author of The Unidentified (1975) dedicated to Fort, and Mysterious America, which Fortean Times termed a Fortean classic. Coleman terms himself the first Vietnam era conscientious objector to base his pacificist ideas on Fortean thoughts. Jerome Clark has described himself as a "skeptical Fortean". Mike Dash is another Fortean, bringing his historian's training to bear on all manner of odd reports, while being careful to avoid uncritically accepting any orthodoxy, be it that of fringe devotees or mainstream science. Science-fiction writers of note including Philip K. Dick, Robert Heinlein, and Robert Anton Wilson were also fans of the work of Fort. Alfred Bester's teleportation-themed novel, The Stars My Destination, pays homage to the coiner of the term by naming the first teleporter "Charles Fort Jaunte". Fort's work, of compilation and commentary on anomalous phenomena has been carried on by William R. Corliss, whose self-published books and notes bring Fort's collections up to date.

In 1939, Eric Frank Russell first published the novel which became Sinister Barrier, in which he names Fort explicitly as an influence. Russell included some of Fort's data in the story. In chapter 3 of William Gaddis’s 1955 novel The Recognitions, protagonist Wyatt Gwyon twice quotes from Fort’s The Book of the Damned--“By the damned, I mean the excluded”; “By prostitution, I mean usefulness”—and paraphrases him from the same book: “Charles Fort says maybe we’re fished for, by supercelestial beings.” Ivan T. Sanderson, Scottish naturalist and writer, was a devotee of Fort's work, and referenced it heavily in several of his own books on unexplained phenomena, notably Things (1967), and More Things (1969). Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier's The Morning of the Magicians was also heavily influenced by Fort's work and mentions it often. Author Donald Jeffries referenced Charles Fort repeatedly in his 2007 novel The Unreals. Joe Milutis writes a short chapter in his book Failure, a Writer's Life on Charles Fort, characterising Fort's prose as "well-nigh unreadable, yet strangely exhilarating".

Noted UK paranormalist, Fortean, and ordained priest Lionel Fanthorpe presented the Fortean TV series on Channel 4, between 1997 and 1998. Paul Thomas Anderson's popular movie Magnolia (1999) has an underlying theme of unexplained events, taken from the 1920s and '30s works of Charles Fort. Fortean author Loren Coleman has written a chapter about this motion picture, entitled "The Teleporting Animals and Magnolia", in one of his recent books. The film has many hidden Fortean themes, notably "falling frogs". In one scene, one of Fort's books is visible on a table in a library and an end credit thanks him by name. In the 2011 film The Whisperer in Darkness, Fort is portrayed by Andrew Leman.

American crime and science-fiction author Fredric Brown included an excerpt from Fort's book Wild Talents as an epigraph to his novel Compliments of a Fiend. In that quote, Fort speculated about the disappearance of two people named Ambrose and wondered "was someone collecting Ambroses?" Brown's novel concerns the disappearance of a character named Ambrose, and the kidnapper calls himself the "Ambrose collector" as an obvious homage to Fort.

In Blue Balliett's bestselling children's novel, Chasing Vermeer, Fort is given several mentions throughout the book, such as Fort's Lo! being found and thoroughly read by one of the book's protagonists, and being an inspiration to the main characters.

title: Charles Fort


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List of areas in the United States National Park System

The National Park System of the United States is the collection of physical properties owned or administered by the National Park Service. The collection includes all national parks and most national monuments, as well as several other types of protected areas of the United States.

As of July 2024, there are units of the National Park System. However, this number is somewhat misleading. For example, Denali National Park and Preserve is counted as two units, since the same name applies to a national park and an adjacent national preserve. Yet Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve is counted as one unit, despite its double designation. Counting methodology is typically based on the language of a park's authorizing legislation.

Although the designations generally reflect sites' features, all units of the system are considered administratively equal and with few exceptions the designations themselves do not define their level of protection. Each site has a management plan consistent with its ecological, historic, and recreational resources and its enabling legislation.

In addition to areas of the National Park System, the National Park Service also provides technical and financial assistance to several affiliated areas authorized by Congress. Affiliated areas are marked on the lists below.

National Park System units are found in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. territories of Guam, American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico. The territory of the Northern Mariana Islands has an affiliated area but not an official NPS unit.

Nearly all units managed by the National Park Service participate in the National Park Passport Stamps program.

National parks
There are 63 officially designated national parks in the United States and its dependent areas, as of 2021. The national parks are considered the "crown jewels" of the system and are typically larger than other areas, including a variety of significant ecological and geological resources.

National monuments
There are 129 national monuments, 84 of which are administered by the NPS and are listed below. Of these, 83 (all except Grand Canyon-Parashant) are NPS official units. The remaining 46 monuments are administered by five other federal agencies. Two, Grand Canyon–Parashant and Craters of the Moon National Monuments, are jointly administered by the NPS and the Bureau of Land Management, and Tule Lake National Monument is joint with the Fish and Wildlife Service. National monuments are typically smaller and protect just one or few major resources. They include both natural and historical sites and can be established by the president under the Antiquities Act. 34 former national monuments have been redesignated or incorporated into national parks.

National preserves
There are 21 national preserves in the United States, 19 of which are counted by the National Park System as official units. Ten are stand-alone official units, while eleven others are designated areas where hunting or grazing is permitted as part of a larger "national park and preserve" or "national monument and preserve". Nine of those are counted as separate units, while Oregon Caves National Monument and Preserve and New River Gorge National Park and Preserve are single units (there is no functional difference). Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve is not officially a national preserve but has similar management policies, while Salt River Bay National Historical Park and Ecological Preserve is unrelated.

National historical parks
There are 63 national historical parks.

 * Authorized national historical parks

National historic sites
There are 86 national historic sites, of which 76 are NPS units, 9 are affiliated areas, and one, Grey Towers National Historic Site, is managed by the U.S. Forest Service (not listed here).

National memorials
There are 31 national memorials that are NPS units and five affiliated national memorials.

National recreation areas
There are 18 national recreation areas administered by the National Park Service. Another 22 national recreation areas are administered by the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management.

National seashores
There are 10 national seashores.

National lakeshores

There are three national lakeshores, located in Michigan and Wisconsin.

National rivers and national wild and scenic rivers
There are four national rivers (marked with an asterisk) and ten national wild and scenic rivers administered as distinct units of the National Park System. There are many more national wild and scenic rivers that run through other units.

National reserves
National reserves are partnerships between federal, state, and local authorities. Within the boundaries of the three national reserves are combinations of federal land (Park Service or National Wildlife Refuges), state parks and forests, local public lands, and private properties. Two national reserves are currently managed as official units.

National parkways
Ten roadways and surrounding scenic areas are managed by the NPS as parkways, four of which as official units and five as part of other units.

National historic and scenic trails
These National Park Service trails are part of the larger National Trails System. Only six of the trails are considered official units of the park system.

National cemeteries
Most national cemeteries are administered by the Department of Veterans Affairs, although a few are managed by the National Park Service and the U.S. Army. None of the cemeteries are considered official units of the system; they are all affiliated with other parks.

National heritage areas
The National Park Service provides limited assistance to national heritage areas, but does not administer them.

Other NPS protected areas and administrative groups

There are 11 NPS units of other designations, as well as other affiliated areas. The National Mall and National Capital Parks have many sites, some of which are also units of other designations.

In addition, there are sites where the NPS is authorized to provide financial and technical assistance to local authorities for interpretive or educational purposes, but do not have the right to acquire land or have a say in land use or zoning. These include the 55 National Heritage Areas, as well as National Commemorative Sites such as Quindaro Townsite or the Kennedy-King National Commemorative Site. There are also various administrative groups of listed parks, such as Manhattan Sites, National Parks of New York Harbor, and Western Arctic National Parklands. The NPS also owns conservation easements (but not the land itself) for part of the area called the Green Springs National Historic Landmark District.

Former other areas
In the 1930s and 1940s, the NPS developed dozens of recreational demonstration areas, most of which eventually became national or state parks.