So you think you are a a strong swimmer? Scientists tracked a leatherback turtle from Indonesia to Oregon and back to Hawaii. That's 13,000 miles, all just for food.
The 9 foot turtles, largest in the world, are facng extinction. The reduction of their natural food sources forces them to forage further and further, exposing them to more and more hazards. Many are caused by humans, such as ingesting debris like plastic, to traveling through areas that are used by multinational fisheries.
Because these powerful swimmers travel all over the Pacific, and that there are estimated only 5,000 females left, it will take an international effort to save the endangered species, which could be extinct in the next 30 years if nothing is done.
"It will be the responsibility of many countries to ensure the species survives in the Pacific Ocean for future generations," said Scott Benson of the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service in California . "It's an animal that doesn't recognize international boundaries. You can protect the nesting beaches but if you can't protect the animal in the water, you haven't done anything."
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Michelle Malkin on Talk Radio
There are few voices in the politicosphere more shrill and irrational than Michelle Malkin. In some ways she, even more than Ann Coulter, represents everything that has gone wrong with American politics in general, and the Republican party in particular. Her recent screed defending talk radio is a perfect example, as it contains all the bromides of Dittohead nation:
"Outraged that conservative talk radio has succeeded in the marketplace while liberals have bombed, and unnerved that new media outlets have upended mainstream journalism's monopoly apple cart, liberals have long crusaded against the medium."
Having been a caller and guest on talk radio on several occasions, I can testify to one inexorable fact about talk radio. Brevity is king. If you can't express yourself in 10 seconds or less, you are doomed. What this does is effectively ban any idea or position that takes some time to explain. Complicated positions will lose to simple ones every time in such a forum, regardless of which is better supported logically and factually. And which side of the American political spectrum has the simpler positions? Why the conservatives of course:
Economics: Lower taxes
Science: God did it
Geopolitical conflict: War
Teen pregnancy: Just say no
Drug use: Just say no
One promoting a thoroughly modern economic program, or modern evolutionary theory, or a strategy for war leading to peace that takes into account all the societal nuances (like that whole Shiite/Sunni thang), or a program for dealing with the realities of sex and drug use, hasn't a chance on such a forum.
Conversely, those offering such simplistic nonsense as Malkin supports have no chance in the open written forums of the blogosphere, and just as surely, get their asses handed to them on a regular basis on such forums, at least where they allow comments to their posts. And not coincidentally, it is conservatives like Bill O'Reilly and the Discovery Institute that are far more likely to disallow comments than are liberal sides. I have yet to see a liberal blog that did not allow comments. The blogosphere is choking on the conservative ones that do.
So it's real simple. People like Malkin dominate talk radio because it is the only forum where reasoned, factually based refutations of their simplistic nonsense simply cannot be elucidated (that means "stated" for all you Malkin fans reading this).
Malkin then goes on to make one of those asinine comparisons over long spans of time that politicos on both sides of the political spectrum are too eager to do. I call it "The Who's a Bigger Hypocrite Game". It goes like this: Members of political group A once supported position X, yet those same A's are now supporting position Y, and I claim X and Y are contradictory (they never are), therefore the A's... Well, they never really complete the argument, because like so many comments made by the Coulter crowd, they are really only half arguments, with little logic, and fleshing them out to their full conclusion would expose this irrationality, so better to leave the point hanging. A common example is "How can you be for abortion but against the death penalty". Observe Malkin as she defends conservative talk radio's attacks on John McCain against Republicans with the courage to call attention to it:
"These trash-talking GOP politicians and pundits had no problem when conservative talk-radio hosts used their 'ego and power' to help kill Hillary Clinton's massive government health care takeover in 1994. They had no problem when conservative talk-radio hosts used their 'ego and power' to galvanize support for the Republican revolution, two Bush presidential campaigns and the war in Iraq."
They didn't Michelle? And how, pray tell, do you know this? Did you take a survey of them? Or did you just follow the lead of too many conservatives these days and simply speculate rather than gather facts? A bit of thought will show it is clearly the latter. First, 1994 was 14 years ago. 14 years! The term for a house member is two years and for a senator it is six, and we've had quite a few incumbants bite the dust over those years. Malkin is implicitly assuming that the congressional roll has been constant over that time, when we know it has not, not by a long shot. Does Malkin cite even ONE specific congressman, and quote him changing his position? No, she does not. Why bother with facts that might overturn one's position when one can make shit up and hope no one notices? Sorry Michelle, I noticed.
Second, who says one cannot have a political philosophy that opposes Hillarycare, supports the Republican revolution, President Bush, and the Iraq war, and still opposes viscious personal attacks against John McCain? By what reasoning does Malkin determine that these positions are inherently contradictory? She offers none of course. She just tosses it out there as if it were self-evident, except for one very revealing snark:
"Were they nothing more than empty-talking hairdressers then? "
Yes Michelle, I hate to burst your bubble head, but they were, and you are. You don't disseminate information, and you sure as hell don't deal with facts. You simply make shit up, sort of like this:
"The Republican talk-radio bashers did start having problems when many national hosts harnessed popular grassroots opposition to help kill last year's Bush/McCain/Kennedy illegal alien amnesty bill. GOP Rep. Lindsey Graham dismissed them as 'loud folks.' In other words: They were making a difference. Then-Sen. Trent Lott lamented that right-wing talk-radio hosts were a 'problem.' In other words: They were effective. McCain's defenders have made common cause with the likes of ethnocentric, open-borders groups like La Raza in redefining all conservative talk-radio opposition as unacceptable 'hate' beyond the bounds of reasonable discourse.
In other words: They must be shut up. Bill Clinton approves."
Indeed Michelle, and so would George O. Orwellian indeed. In the true spirit of talk radio, Malkin reduces three opinions to four, count em, four words, and procedes to claim they really mean something else. This is conservative talk radio in a nutshell. Thanks Michelle for giving such a perfect example of why it deserves the criticisms it gets.
Oh, and btw, the surest way to tell a conservative has nothing intelligent to say is when they invoke the name of Bill Clinton, a man who hasn't been in the White House for 7 years now, whose presidential record is superior to the current officeholder's in every objectively measureable way but one (being impeached over lying about a blowjob), and yet whose name seems to end all conversation among conservatives as if he were Satan.
This is what passes for thought among Republicans these days. How pathetic. My loyal Republican grandfather of the century past is rolling over in his grave at what his party's become.
"Outraged that conservative talk radio has succeeded in the marketplace while liberals have bombed, and unnerved that new media outlets have upended mainstream journalism's monopoly apple cart, liberals have long crusaded against the medium."
Having been a caller and guest on talk radio on several occasions, I can testify to one inexorable fact about talk radio. Brevity is king. If you can't express yourself in 10 seconds or less, you are doomed. What this does is effectively ban any idea or position that takes some time to explain. Complicated positions will lose to simple ones every time in such a forum, regardless of which is better supported logically and factually. And which side of the American political spectrum has the simpler positions? Why the conservatives of course:
Economics: Lower taxes
Science: God did it
Geopolitical conflict: War
Teen pregnancy: Just say no
Drug use: Just say no
One promoting a thoroughly modern economic program, or modern evolutionary theory, or a strategy for war leading to peace that takes into account all the societal nuances (like that whole Shiite/Sunni thang), or a program for dealing with the realities of sex and drug use, hasn't a chance on such a forum.
Conversely, those offering such simplistic nonsense as Malkin supports have no chance in the open written forums of the blogosphere, and just as surely, get their asses handed to them on a regular basis on such forums, at least where they allow comments to their posts. And not coincidentally, it is conservatives like Bill O'Reilly and the Discovery Institute that are far more likely to disallow comments than are liberal sides. I have yet to see a liberal blog that did not allow comments. The blogosphere is choking on the conservative ones that do.
So it's real simple. People like Malkin dominate talk radio because it is the only forum where reasoned, factually based refutations of their simplistic nonsense simply cannot be elucidated (that means "stated" for all you Malkin fans reading this).
Malkin then goes on to make one of those asinine comparisons over long spans of time that politicos on both sides of the political spectrum are too eager to do. I call it "The Who's a Bigger Hypocrite Game". It goes like this: Members of political group A once supported position X, yet those same A's are now supporting position Y, and I claim X and Y are contradictory (they never are), therefore the A's... Well, they never really complete the argument, because like so many comments made by the Coulter crowd, they are really only half arguments, with little logic, and fleshing them out to their full conclusion would expose this irrationality, so better to leave the point hanging. A common example is "How can you be for abortion but against the death penalty". Observe Malkin as she defends conservative talk radio's attacks on John McCain against Republicans with the courage to call attention to it:
"These trash-talking GOP politicians and pundits had no problem when conservative talk-radio hosts used their 'ego and power' to help kill Hillary Clinton's massive government health care takeover in 1994. They had no problem when conservative talk-radio hosts used their 'ego and power' to galvanize support for the Republican revolution, two Bush presidential campaigns and the war in Iraq."
They didn't Michelle? And how, pray tell, do you know this? Did you take a survey of them? Or did you just follow the lead of too many conservatives these days and simply speculate rather than gather facts? A bit of thought will show it is clearly the latter. First, 1994 was 14 years ago. 14 years! The term for a house member is two years and for a senator it is six, and we've had quite a few incumbants bite the dust over those years. Malkin is implicitly assuming that the congressional roll has been constant over that time, when we know it has not, not by a long shot. Does Malkin cite even ONE specific congressman, and quote him changing his position? No, she does not. Why bother with facts that might overturn one's position when one can make shit up and hope no one notices? Sorry Michelle, I noticed.
Second, who says one cannot have a political philosophy that opposes Hillarycare, supports the Republican revolution, President Bush, and the Iraq war, and still opposes viscious personal attacks against John McCain? By what reasoning does Malkin determine that these positions are inherently contradictory? She offers none of course. She just tosses it out there as if it were self-evident, except for one very revealing snark:
"Were they nothing more than empty-talking hairdressers then? "
Yes Michelle, I hate to burst your bubble head, but they were, and you are. You don't disseminate information, and you sure as hell don't deal with facts. You simply make shit up, sort of like this:
"The Republican talk-radio bashers did start having problems when many national hosts harnessed popular grassroots opposition to help kill last year's Bush/McCain/Kennedy illegal alien amnesty bill. GOP Rep. Lindsey Graham dismissed them as 'loud folks.' In other words: They were making a difference. Then-Sen. Trent Lott lamented that right-wing talk-radio hosts were a 'problem.' In other words: They were effective. McCain's defenders have made common cause with the likes of ethnocentric, open-borders groups like La Raza in redefining all conservative talk-radio opposition as unacceptable 'hate' beyond the bounds of reasonable discourse.
In other words: They must be shut up. Bill Clinton approves."
Indeed Michelle, and so would George O. Orwellian indeed. In the true spirit of talk radio, Malkin reduces three opinions to four, count em, four words, and procedes to claim they really mean something else. This is conservative talk radio in a nutshell. Thanks Michelle for giving such a perfect example of why it deserves the criticisms it gets.
Oh, and btw, the surest way to tell a conservative has nothing intelligent to say is when they invoke the name of Bill Clinton, a man who hasn't been in the White House for 7 years now, whose presidential record is superior to the current officeholder's in every objectively measureable way but one (being impeached over lying about a blowjob), and yet whose name seems to end all conversation among conservatives as if he were Satan.
This is what passes for thought among Republicans these days. How pathetic. My loyal Republican grandfather of the century past is rolling over in his grave at what his party's become.
Egnor, O’Leary and Cowardly Pseudoscience Predictions
One of the most common, and piercing, critiques of Intelligent Design proponents is their unwillingness, or inability, to make testable, falsifiable predictions specific to their claims, using their theory. Two recent articles by Michael Egnor and Denyse O'Leary illustrate this problem.
Egnor waxes sophomorically about the brain and consciousness often. I shan't get into the details of brain function, that has been covered better by others more qualified than I. What caught my attention was this comment by Egnor:
"...dualists propose that the mind is in part caused by matter, and in part caused by something else. Mental causation is dual."
An interesting hypothesis, one worthy of study. Yet where in all Egnor's gibbering about materialism is a falsifiable specific prediction made by it? You won't find one. But you will find this:
"What is genuinely remarkable is what hasn't been found, and it's a real problem for materialism. "
This is the tell tale sign of a crank: refusing to discuss in detail one's own theory and instead attacking one's opponents. This is exactly what HIV denialists and global warming denialists do, and Egnor is true to form, rambling on speculatively about what has and has not been found in brain research to end on what he apparently considers a prediction that qualifies for what I'm searching:
"In fact, the inability to find a unique material cause adequate to completely account for each mental state is a fundamental prediction of dualism."
Sound familiar? It should. It is the close cousin of creationist claims that the inability to flesh out a step-by-step evolutionary pathway for the eye or the flagellum is a fundamental prediction of creationism. It has no more substance than "You couldn't prove your case to the nth degree, therefore hobgoblins exist." I could "prove" any manner of foolishness in similar manner.
Creationist cranks cannot seem to get it through their supposedly intelligently designed heads that one must predict what will be, not what will not be, to earn scientific muster.
Few illustrate this problem better than Denyse O'Leary, as her pathetic attempts to list ID predictions shows:
"1. No good theory will be found for a random origin of the universe, either by the Large Hadron Collider or anything else. The universe will consistently behave more like a great idea than a great machine."
A random origin of the universe? I never heard of anything like that in physics class. And just what does "behave like a great idea" mean? For a prediction to be scientific, it needs to be specific and objective, not some bit of pseudo poetry that can be molded to fit any preconception.
"Positive prediction: An end to unfalsifiable ideas about zillions of flopped universes and a focus on how we can best explore our own universe, as per The Privileged Planet."
An end to an idea is a positive prediction to Denyse.
"2. No good theory will be found for a random origin of life, though there will be plenty of huffing and puffing in favour of bad ideas. All theories that exclude purpose and design fail because they leave out the key driver - the purpose that life should come into existence."
"Good" here no doubt means "impressive to Michael Behe".
"Positive prediction: We will learn more about the real nature of our universe and our place in it, and how best we can explore it when we accept the fact that it didn't 'just happen.'"
Learn "more" than what Denyse? How is this to be objectively measured? And who, exactly, believes it "just happened"? No one I've ever read espoused such nonsense, well, except for creationists.
"3. Complete series of transitional fossils will not usually be found because most proposed series have never existed. Eventually, researchers will give up on ideologically driven nonsense and address the history that IS there."
There is a good reason scientists dont't phrase their theories in terms of what "usually" or "eventually" happens. One cannot falsify such claims, since "eventually", like "tomorrow", never comes.
"Positive prediction: Discovering the true mechanisms of bursts of natural creativity may be of immense value to us, especially if we need to undo some significant harm to our environment. "
MAY BE? That's worse than "usually".
The rest of her "predictions" follow the same pattern. They are cowardly pseudoscience pretending to be real science. There is not one prediction in any of her or Egnor's writings in the same league with the kinds of predictions scientists made when they found Tiktaalik right where they risked their time and efforts digging for it. Creationists simply do not understand science at the most basic level, which is, of course, why they do it so poorly.
Egnor waxes sophomorically about the brain and consciousness often. I shan't get into the details of brain function, that has been covered better by others more qualified than I. What caught my attention was this comment by Egnor:
"...dualists propose that the mind is in part caused by matter, and in part caused by something else. Mental causation is dual."
An interesting hypothesis, one worthy of study. Yet where in all Egnor's gibbering about materialism is a falsifiable specific prediction made by it? You won't find one. But you will find this:
"What is genuinely remarkable is what hasn't been found, and it's a real problem for materialism. "
This is the tell tale sign of a crank: refusing to discuss in detail one's own theory and instead attacking one's opponents. This is exactly what HIV denialists and global warming denialists do, and Egnor is true to form, rambling on speculatively about what has and has not been found in brain research to end on what he apparently considers a prediction that qualifies for what I'm searching:
"In fact, the inability to find a unique material cause adequate to completely account for each mental state is a fundamental prediction of dualism."
Sound familiar? It should. It is the close cousin of creationist claims that the inability to flesh out a step-by-step evolutionary pathway for the eye or the flagellum is a fundamental prediction of creationism. It has no more substance than "You couldn't prove your case to the nth degree, therefore hobgoblins exist." I could "prove" any manner of foolishness in similar manner.
Creationist cranks cannot seem to get it through their supposedly intelligently designed heads that one must predict what will be, not what will not be, to earn scientific muster.
Few illustrate this problem better than Denyse O'Leary, as her pathetic attempts to list ID predictions shows:
"1. No good theory will be found for a random origin of the universe, either by the Large Hadron Collider or anything else. The universe will consistently behave more like a great idea than a great machine."
A random origin of the universe? I never heard of anything like that in physics class. And just what does "behave like a great idea" mean? For a prediction to be scientific, it needs to be specific and objective, not some bit of pseudo poetry that can be molded to fit any preconception.
"Positive prediction: An end to unfalsifiable ideas about zillions of flopped universes and a focus on how we can best explore our own universe, as per The Privileged Planet."
An end to an idea is a positive prediction to Denyse.
"2. No good theory will be found for a random origin of life, though there will be plenty of huffing and puffing in favour of bad ideas. All theories that exclude purpose and design fail because they leave out the key driver - the purpose that life should come into existence."
"Good" here no doubt means "impressive to Michael Behe".
"Positive prediction: We will learn more about the real nature of our universe and our place in it, and how best we can explore it when we accept the fact that it didn't 'just happen.'"
Learn "more" than what Denyse? How is this to be objectively measured? And who, exactly, believes it "just happened"? No one I've ever read espoused such nonsense, well, except for creationists.
"3. Complete series of transitional fossils will not usually be found because most proposed series have never existed. Eventually, researchers will give up on ideologically driven nonsense and address the history that IS there."
There is a good reason scientists dont't phrase their theories in terms of what "usually" or "eventually" happens. One cannot falsify such claims, since "eventually", like "tomorrow", never comes.
"Positive prediction: Discovering the true mechanisms of bursts of natural creativity may be of immense value to us, especially if we need to undo some significant harm to our environment. "
MAY BE? That's worse than "usually".
The rest of her "predictions" follow the same pattern. They are cowardly pseudoscience pretending to be real science. There is not one prediction in any of her or Egnor's writings in the same league with the kinds of predictions scientists made when they found Tiktaalik right where they risked their time and efforts digging for it. Creationists simply do not understand science at the most basic level, which is, of course, why they do it so poorly.
Monday, February 18, 2008
Kayaking with a Shark
When a scientist who takes a lot of photos says it is "the most amazing wildlife image I've ever seen", take notice. The guy looks like he's about to become shark food, but apparently he survived.
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Florida Oranges and Looking forward to a Heavenly Death
Via Dispatches comes this gem of a quote from a creationist speaking at the Florida science standards debates.
"Now I have in my hand an orange. I was about to eat this orange yesterday, but before I did I sat down and read about this evolution stuff. I learned that this orange is actually my first cousin. I didn't want to eat the orange no more. So now I'm going to give it to you people on the committee, and you can eat it if you want. But if you do decide to eat it, it shows that you don't believe in this evolution either. And we shouldn't be teaching our kids something no one believes."
I wonder if he puts peanut butter on his oranges and bananas? It fun when all you have to do to win a debate is to let your opponent talk, and since that's all this took, I won't bother with the science side of this. But I will show how the speaker doesn't apply his argument consistently.
For example, good Christians believe they go to heaven after they die, and that paradise is far more pleasant than what we have here. So if I take a loaded gun and place it to your head and threaten to kill you, this is going to make you happy right? You'll be glad to be going to heaven, right? No? Then I guess you don't believe in this heaven either. And we shouldn't be teaching our kids something no one believes.
"Now I have in my hand an orange. I was about to eat this orange yesterday, but before I did I sat down and read about this evolution stuff. I learned that this orange is actually my first cousin. I didn't want to eat the orange no more. So now I'm going to give it to you people on the committee, and you can eat it if you want. But if you do decide to eat it, it shows that you don't believe in this evolution either. And we shouldn't be teaching our kids something no one believes."
I wonder if he puts peanut butter on his oranges and bananas? It fun when all you have to do to win a debate is to let your opponent talk, and since that's all this took, I won't bother with the science side of this. But I will show how the speaker doesn't apply his argument consistently.
For example, good Christians believe they go to heaven after they die, and that paradise is far more pleasant than what we have here. So if I take a loaded gun and place it to your head and threaten to kill you, this is going to make you happy right? You'll be glad to be going to heaven, right? No? Then I guess you don't believe in this heaven either. And we shouldn't be teaching our kids something no one believes.
Friday, February 15, 2008
Davescot unwittingly reveals why we must inquire as to the nature of the Designer
In yet another case of Intelligent Design proponents unknowingly destroying their own argument, Davescot blathers on about how one can make a "design inference" with regard to a change he made in a URL of an article that made the link not work:
"We all know that bits can flip at random in computer data from various causes just like they can flip at random in DNA from various causes. This wasn’t a complex mutation. A single letter changed. Yet the Darwinist STILL made a design inference. That’s the power of specification. The mutation that occured was specified in that it served a purpose. In this case it served to make the offensive article inaccessable from Uncommon Descent. Even with a very small level of complexity to work with the commenter successfully employed the concept of CSI - complex specified information - and reached a correct design inference.
Here we have classic "seeing what you want to see" reasoning. The design inference wasn't drawn from an analysis of purposefulness. Even completely random errors can serve a purpose, especially one that prevents a process like a link from functioning. For all we knew it was a simple typo.
What tipped people off here is what Davescot and the IDers have banned from the discussion: the nature of the designer. Those who drew the design inference did so based on extensive knowledge of the designer, in this case, that he's a clueless hack who is not above trying to censor or make access difficult to information that counters his arguments. Once one is aware of Davescot's distaste for the article, his history of memory hole use, and the fact that the typo in question was more than one key away from the correct one, one can easily and logically draw the conclusion that Davescot was monkeying around again. No pseudoscience of CSI was necessary.
This is similar to what archaeologists do when determining the uses of ancient tools. Their knowledge of the designers is crucial in their analysis. One cannot infer that a sick with bristle on the end is a toothbrush without first understanding the designers had teeth that needed cleaning. Likewise, a situation like that with Davescot could easily be interpreted as a simple error coming from another designer, whether it served a purpose or not.
It is also important to point out that despite the logic of the design inference drawn, it could easily be in error. There could simply be a mindless, nonpurposeful, cause for the perceived design, of which we are ignorant. One cannot draw a design inference based on one's inability to think of an alternative explanation. Yet this is exactly what the IDers ask us to do.
The hypocrites here are not scientists who make design inferences. That is so common it is passe'. The hypocrites are the ID proponents who insist they can draw reliable design inferences without knowledge of the designer, who is, of course, the Christian God, which is why they so desperately cling to the notion that we should not inquire into the nature of the designer. It gives their religious agenda away.
"We all know that bits can flip at random in computer data from various causes just like they can flip at random in DNA from various causes. This wasn’t a complex mutation. A single letter changed. Yet the Darwinist STILL made a design inference. That’s the power of specification. The mutation that occured was specified in that it served a purpose. In this case it served to make the offensive article inaccessable from Uncommon Descent. Even with a very small level of complexity to work with the commenter successfully employed the concept of CSI - complex specified information - and reached a correct design inference.
Here we have classic "seeing what you want to see" reasoning. The design inference wasn't drawn from an analysis of purposefulness. Even completely random errors can serve a purpose, especially one that prevents a process like a link from functioning. For all we knew it was a simple typo.
What tipped people off here is what Davescot and the IDers have banned from the discussion: the nature of the designer. Those who drew the design inference did so based on extensive knowledge of the designer, in this case, that he's a clueless hack who is not above trying to censor or make access difficult to information that counters his arguments. Once one is aware of Davescot's distaste for the article, his history of memory hole use, and the fact that the typo in question was more than one key away from the correct one, one can easily and logically draw the conclusion that Davescot was monkeying around again. No pseudoscience of CSI was necessary.
This is similar to what archaeologists do when determining the uses of ancient tools. Their knowledge of the designers is crucial in their analysis. One cannot infer that a sick with bristle on the end is a toothbrush without first understanding the designers had teeth that needed cleaning. Likewise, a situation like that with Davescot could easily be interpreted as a simple error coming from another designer, whether it served a purpose or not.
It is also important to point out that despite the logic of the design inference drawn, it could easily be in error. There could simply be a mindless, nonpurposeful, cause for the perceived design, of which we are ignorant. One cannot draw a design inference based on one's inability to think of an alternative explanation. Yet this is exactly what the IDers ask us to do.
The hypocrites here are not scientists who make design inferences. That is so common it is passe'. The hypocrites are the ID proponents who insist they can draw reliable design inferences without knowledge of the designer, who is, of course, the Christian God, which is why they so desperately cling to the notion that we should not inquire into the nature of the designer. It gives their religious agenda away.
Bat Flight Preceded Bat Sonar
In more of that pathetic level of detail that scientists are so keen on, a recent fossil find shows that bat sonar came after bat flight. That makes intuitive sense to me (not that that's a requirement), since echolocution would be far more effective for a flying being than a walking or stationary one.
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