VIEW HEADLINES ONLY
Amazing Facts

Feather Color Is a Costly “Complex System Design”
March 13, 2011
The brilliant, shimmering colors in the breast feathers of the Bird of Paradise have long fascinated ornithologists.  Alfred Russell Wallace was perhaps the first Englishman to see the magnificent birds in their native Malaysian habitats and wrote, “the richness of their glossy orange colouring, and the exquisite delicacy of the loosely waving feathers, were unsurpassable.”1 […]
CONTINUE READING
Bible and Theology

Don’t Tell the Creationists
March 12, 2011
John Horgan, a blogger for Scientific American, wanted to use this headline 20 years ago, but the editor didn’t let him.  Now that editor is gone, so Horgan let the cat out of the bag: “Pssst!  Don’t tell the creationists, but scientists don’t have a clue how life began.”  Well, he just did.     […]
CONTINUE READING
Mind and Brain

If Pigs Have Wings, SETI Could Be Robots
March 11, 2011
The SETI program is still waiting to catch a sentient signal from deep space, but in the absence of data, people are free to speculate.  Michael Dyer, a computer science professor at UCLA, is certain that the first aliens to visit Earth will be robots.  He even attached a probability to it, according to Adam […]
CONTINUE READING
Darwin and Evolution

Assessing Evolutionary Explanations
March 11, 2011
No matter the biological discovery, evolutionists are ready with their explanations.  The explanations, however, are often riddled with puzzles, surprises, and seemingly arbitrary appeals to chance.  Do such explanations really provide more understanding than those of creationists, who explain that living things were designed for a purpose? Shrimp deal:  “Many deep-sea species have close relatives […]
CONTINUE READING
Biomimetics

Bone Structure Matches Animal Size
March 10, 2011
The bigger the animal, the more weight it has to carry.  How can large animals maintain strong bones without making them heavier?  It turns out all animals have struts in their bones called trabeculae, but the larger the animal, the fewer, stronger, and farther apart are the struts.  This new finding is leading to ideas […]
CONTINUE READING
Dumb Ideas

Evolution by Loss
March 10, 2011
Evolutionists have added a counter-intuitive notion to their explanatory toolkit.  It surfaced this week in Nature,1 then reverberated around the media: our ancestors became human when they lost genetic information from ape-like ancestors.     New Scientist exemplified the new story line: “Key to humanity is in missing DNA.”  Reporter Andy Coghlan explained the central […]
CONTINUE READING
Cosmology

Young Galaxy Cluster Already Mature
March 9, 2011
“Isn’t that special.”  The remark, in common parlance, is a generic way of avoiding a judgment call.  When astronomers were confronted with the sight of a galaxy too mature for its age, Space.com reported the response: “And that makes it special, researchers said.”     The headline was, “Surprise!  Ancient Galaxy Cluster Still Looks Young.”  […]
CONTINUE READING
Education

Word Choice Affects Scientific Impact
March 8, 2011
The emotional reaction to scientific ideas can change depending on the words used.  Can words manipulate public opinion?     “Wording matters,” said Jonathon Schuldt [U of Michigan] in a press release posted on PhysOrg.  His team found that opinion polls yielded a 16% difference among Republicans depending on whether they were asked if global […]
CONTINUE READING
Physics

Enceladus Geyser Heat Much Higher Than Thought Possible
March 7, 2011
The Enceladus problem – accounting for the heat source of a tiny moon of Saturn – just jumped by more than an order of magnitude.  “Cassini Finds Enceladus Is a Powerhouse,” reported Jet Propulsion Laboratory today.  “Heat output from the south polar region of Saturn’s moon Enceladus is much greater than was previously thought possible,” […]
CONTINUE READING
Amazing Facts

You Have Electronic Skin
March 7, 2011
Your skin has resistance with memory.  That makes it like a memristor, researchers at the University of Oslo are saying.  A memristor is a device that remembers the last current it experienced, and varies its resistance accordingly.     New Scientist explained what they found: They found that when a negative electrical potential is applied […]
CONTINUE READING
Origin of Life

Alien Life in Meteorites Claimed
March 6, 2011
After scrutinizing rare meteorites for over a decade, a NASA astrobiologist decided to go with his announcement: he may have found alien life.  Fox News began his story, “We are not alone in the universe – and alien life forms may have a lot more in common with life on Earth than we had previously […]
CONTINUE READING
Mind and Brain

Is the Mind a Computer?
March 5, 2011
After a computer named Watson beat two contestants on Jeopardy last month, people are asking if the human mind is becoming obsolete.  What are the similarities and differences between gray matter and deep blue?     PhysOrg asked, “Machines beat us at our own game: What can we do?”  For one thing, they should have […]
CONTINUE READING
Uncategorized

What Scientists Don’t Know and How They Don’t Know It
March 4, 2011
In light of another huge science scandal, questions rise about what scientists know.  Several recent stories cast doubt on the infallibility of the scientific method – and even the ability of scientific inquiry to solve some mysteries. Fraud exposed:  92 peer-reviewed papers published over a decade, now found out to be fraudulent?  How is that […]
CONTINUE READING
Darwin and Evolution

Daffy Daffodil Darwinism
March 3, 2011
The daffodil flower has an extra part.  This can only mean it evolved.  That’s what science reporters are saying, leading some readers to wonder how they got there from here.     Most flowers are made of petals, sepals, carpels and stamens, but the distinctive trumpet-shaped corona of the daffodil seems unrelated.  The BBC News […]
CONTINUE READING
Amazing Facts

Go to the Cell, Thou Sluggard
March 2, 2011
Solomon ordered the lazy man, Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise (Proverbs 6:6).  Today, he would probably tell lazy materialists needing wisdom to consider the cell.  Several recent scientific papers and news stories illustrate why materialism faces a stiff challenge from design features found in the fundamental units of […]
CONTINUE READING
All Posts by Date
[archives type="yearly" cat_id=""]