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Astronomy

Dust Became Knowledge
October 11, 2007
The Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week award goes to an Associated Press article reporting on a finding from the Spitzer Space Telescope.  It began in a very matter-of-fact manner, claiming that the one of the biggest questions of philosophy is being answered by dust.   Astronomers have taken a baby step in trying to […]
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Amazing Facts

Make Your Face Sparkle With Diatoms
October 10, 2007
Human engineers may join forces with cellular architects to produce the next generation of paints, cosmetics and holograms, reported Science Daily.  Scientists are finding ways to harness the rapid growth of diatoms.  Manufacturing consumer products with these properties currently requires energy-intensive, high-temperature, high-pressure industrial processes that create tiny artificial reflectors.  But farming diatom shells, which […]
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Dinosaurs

The Daily Dinosaur Media
October 9, 2007
Dinosaur discoveries continue to make news.  Here are some recent findings by those who dig getting out and digging for what they can get out: Giant Ascending the Grand Staircase:  A new species of duck-billed dinosaur was found in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, reported Science Daily, EurekAlert, Live Science and National Geographic.  High school […]
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Darwin and Evolution

Will Darwinism End With a Big Bang?
October 8, 2007
We may be seeing the end of Darwinism as we know it.
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Amazing Facts

Crow Cam Lets Scientists See Intelligence at Work
October 7, 2007
Ever want to fly like a bird?  Now you can do the next best thing: get a tail-feather view of what it is like to fly from branch to branch.  University of Oxford scientists attached a small video camera to the underside of a New Caledonian Crow to watch it in the wild, reported PhysOrg.  […]
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Biomimetics

Nanofabrication Imitates Shells, Butterflies
October 7, 2007
A new plastic “strong as steel” has been manufactured according to the specs in seashells, reported PhysOrg.  “By mimicking a brick-and-mortar molecular structure found in seashells, University of Michigan researchers created a composite plastic that’s as strong as steel but lighter and transparent.”  (See these previous entries about how marine organisms manufacture their shells: 06/26/2003, […]
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Education

European and American Politicians Attack Creationism
October 6, 2007
Actions of political bodies on both sides of the Atlantic have revived questions about the roles of science, politics and religion in public discourse and policy.     The Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly voted 48 to 25 to accept a resolution denouncing creationism and intelligent design, according to European Observer and Reuters.  The non-binding […]
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Health

Appendix to the Vestigial Organs Story: Whoops, Function Found
October 6, 2007
The appendix is not just a useless organ left over from our evolutionary past, new research is showing.  According to an Associate Press article (see MSNBC News), this “seemingly useless organ may produce, protect good germs for your gut.”  Scientists at Duke University Medical School believe that the appendix can regenerate the normal bacterial flora […]
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Dumb Ideas

Darwin Saves Junk, Makes Treasure Out of It
October 5, 2007
The Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week award goes to a press release from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which began by personifying Evolution1 as a tinkerer in its own junkyard:   Evolution has mastered the art of turning trash to treasure – though, for scientists, witnessing the transformation can require a bit of patience.  […]
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Bible and Theology

Inca Priests Fattened Children for Slaughter
October 5, 2007
National Geographic News had a disturbing story from archaeological studies of Inca rituals in what is now Peru.  Studies of hair samples and other features in mummies indicate that the Inca warlords fattened up children for up to a year before slaughtering them.  A team that analyzed the mummies believes that captured children were then […]
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Fossils

Modern Crustacean Found in Early Cambrian
October 4, 2007
A “crown-group crustacean” that is “markedly similar to those of living cephalocarids, branchiopods and copepods” has been found exquisitely preserved in early Cambrian fossil beds from China, an international team reported in Nature.1  Though such organisms have been found in middle and later Cambrian rocks, this pushes the origin of eucrustacea (crustaceans of modern aspect) […]
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Fossils

Exceptional Preservation: Can It Last Hundreds of Millions of Years?
October 3, 2007
What can happen in 460 million years?  A lot, according to the standard geological timescale.  In this diagram of geological and biological evolution, accepted by nearly all geologists, all the continents came together 260 million years ago, broke up 200 million years ago, and broke into our familiar continents 100 million years ago (mya).  In […]
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Politics and Ethics

When Myth Turns Genocidal, Who’s to Blame?
October 2, 2007
Aryan mythology was the subject of a book review by Michael Witzel (Harvard linguist) in Science last week.1  He was reviewing Stefan Arvidsson’s book Aryan Idols about the mischief done in the quasi-scientific, quasi-historical investigation of the alleged noble race behind the primitive Indo-European language.     The atrocities of Nazi Germany can be traced […]
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Cosmology

One Special Universe: Take It or Leave It
October 2, 2007
If you think this universe is odd, to what would you compare it?  Adrian Cho asked this and other basic questions in a whimsical review of cosmology since WMAP in Science.1  Closer analysis of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), as revealed in detail by WMAP (03/06/2003, 05/02/2003, 09/20/2004, 03/20/2006), has uncovered features so surprising (e.g., […]
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Biomimetics

New Atomizer Mimics Bombardier Beetle
October 2, 2007
There’s a new technology coming to market, thanks to a little bug.  The bombardier beetle has long been used by creationists as a creature with a weapon against evolutionary theory.  Its tightly-integrated combustion apparatus would be useless or dangerous to the beetle unless all the parts worked together from the start.  This, creationists argue, is […]
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