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What Good Are Science Societies?
June 25, 2010
It’s the 350th anniversary of the Royal Society, England’s oldest and most prestigious scientific organization. Amid the celebrations are essays and commentaries about the role scientific societies play for the public, the government, and the advancement of natural knowledge. It should only be expected that the scientific journals will give the positive side, but between […]
The RNA Code: Pseudogenes Functional, Help Prevent Cancer
June 24, 2010
A surprising function has been discovered for a “pseudogene” – an apparently mutated copy of a regular gene that till recently was thought to be genetic junk. This pseudogene, reported in Nature today,1 not only has a function unrelated to the production of proteins, but a function that could save your life. It is part […]
Can the Earth Thwart Darwinism?
June 23, 2010
Microbes were all set to evolve into complex life, but the ocean held them back. That seems to be the thinking of Dr. Simon Poulton of Newcastle University. “Toxic seas may have been responsible for delaying the evolution of life on Earth by 1 billion years,” PhysOrg reported. That seems to imply that it would […]
Lucy Gets a Date with Big Man
June 22, 2010
Another specimen of Australopithecus afarensis has been announced from Ethiopia. This one supposedly preceded Lucy by 400,000 years, and according to its discoverers, belonged to a group of primates that shows they “were almost as proficient as we are walking on two legs, and that the elongation of our legs came earlier in our evolution […]
Secular Geology Admits to Rapid Canyon Formation by Megafloods
June 21, 2010
It’s hard to deny catastrophic canyon formation when you have the evidence right in front of you. Look what happened in Texas a few years ago, as reported by PhysOrg: In the summer of 2002, a week of heavy rains in Central Texas caused Canyon Lake – the reservoir of the Canyon Dam – to […]
Evolution Tries to Figure Out Dads
June 19, 2010
Why did evolution produce fathers? After male adult humans deliver their genetic component of the zygote, what are they good for? This is a subject in which the Darwinian and the Judeo-Christian concepts of fatherhood begin at opposite poles. But they have to converge on the practical observations of what fathers do best when they […]
Fossils Without Evolution
June 18, 2010
New fossils continue to turn up around the world. Many of them have an amazing characteristic in common: they look almost exactly like their living counterparts, despite being millions of years old, according to the evolutionary timescale. It’s interesting sometimes to hear how the evolutionists explain the remarkable lack of evolution in all that time. […]
How Well Do We Know What Stuff Is Made Of?
June 17, 2010
When we think of the “hard sciences,” physics usually tops the list. A closer look at what physicists think the universe is made of, though, hardly makes the science look hard. Look at this headline on PhysOrg, for instance: “Study finds there may be multiple ‘God particles’”. The title refers, of course, to the famed […]
An Ugly Head Rises in Lenins Land
June 16, 2010
According to Andy Coghlan, reporter for New Scientist, the spectre of an “ugly head” is rising in Russia. What is it? It’s not atheism, because Coghlan admits that Russia once made that the state religion. It’s not communism, because Coghlan admits “Godless communism” once prevailed in the Soviet Union. No, it is an ugly head […]
Butterfly Wing Shimmer Done With 3-D Crystals
June 15, 2010
Those shimmering flashes of light seen on butterfly wings are not done with pigments. They’re done with tiny, geometric crystals called gyroids stacked in 3-D patterns, scientists have found. They are so effective at concentrating color, the scientists want to imitate the trick. “A precise characterization of color-producing biological nanostructures is critical to […]
The Limits of Scientific Speculation
June 14, 2010
How far can a scientist speculate and get a respectful hearing, just because he or she is a scientist? One case to examine is a story on PhysOrg, “The Chance for Life on Io” (see also Astrobio.net). Jupiter’s innermost large moon Io might be considered the last place to look for life. It is the […]
Planets Seen Forming! (or Dust Spreading )
June 13, 2010
Science headline writers were almost beside themselves with joy at the prospect of watching other planetary systems in the process of forming. Science Daily nearly set a record with a large-print, bold, 22-word headline: “Zooming in on an Infant Solar System: For the First Time, Astronomers Have Observed Solar Systems in the Making in Great […]
Flagellum Replaces Parts on the Fly
June 12, 2010
A new study appears to show that the bacterial flagellum, a molecular rotary motor that has become iconic of the intelligent design movement, can repair parts of its rotor while it is rotating. The results of the study by Oxford University were published in PNAS,1 and were also the focus of a Commentary in PNAS […]
Could Cosmology Be Based on Flawed Calibrations?
June 11, 2010
This is the era of “precision cosmology,” we have been told (09/20/2004 04/13/2007). Especially since the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), measurements of faint deviations in the cosmic microwave background have reached exceptional detail (02/14/2003, allowing cosmologists to discriminate between cosmological models and, hopefully, provide insight into the nature and origins of the universe. But […]
Not Lamarck Again
June 11, 2010
Remember Lamarck? He was the pre-Darwin evolutionist whose theories we were all taught were overthrown by Darwin’s superior theory of natural selection. Lamarck’s theory of “inheritance of acquired characteristics” was shown to be demonstrably false by the dramatic experiments of Weismann, right? It was never really so clear-cut as that, as evolutionary historians know, but […]
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