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Education

Is the Internet Age Redefining Science?
April 2, 2010
To a middle school student, science is a clear category; it’s a subject you take, along with history, language, or P.E.  You have a science teacher; you read a science textbook.  You learn about the scientific method.  In the real world, though, categories are not always so clearly delineated.  In fact, the leading science journal, […]
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Darwin and Evolution

Tree of Life – or of Evil Knowledge?
April 1, 2010
Evolutionary trees are now widely available in a web database.  Scientists can upload and download huge amounts of information on evolutionary relationships of plants, animals and protists.  But is this a case of scientific progress, or of mass deception?     You can go to TreeBase.org and find a treasure trove of phylogenetic information.  The […]
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Uncategorized

Stem Cells Promise Regeneration
March 31, 2010
Imagine being able to grow a new limb or jaw.  Adult stem cells may one day make possible something almost unimaginable in hospitals today: the regeneration of new limbs or organs.  There’s growing evidence, too, that mammals once had a regenerative potential that has been lost.     Hydras do it.  Salamanders do it.  Why […]
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Amazing Facts

Elephants Equipped with 4WD
March 30, 2010
An elephant is built like a four-wheel drive vehicle, say scientists from the Royal Veterinary College in London.  Unlike other mammals, which divide acceleration and braking between the front and rear legs, “power is applied independently to each limb,” reported PhysOrg from a paper in PNAS.1 “Elephant limbs operate analogously to four-wheel-drive vehicles,” the authors […]
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Solar System

Comets Are Cracking Up
March 29, 2010
An amateur astronomer observed a comet splitting in two, reported (PhysOrg), but it’s not just the comets that are breaking up.  Theories about them have undergone a revolution at revelations they are not all they were cracked up to be.  They used to be pristine remnants of the formation of the solar system.  Analysis of […]
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Cosmology

Explaining the Undetectable: Science or Faith?
March 28, 2010
Scientists routinely portray themselves superior to religious people who (in their estimation) accept things on faith.  This ignores the fact that many theories in science walk by faith, too.  Theories frequently posit entities that cannot be detected by any means – and may not exist at all, except as props for the consensus.  When a […]
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Amazing Facts

Biomimetics: Science for Now
March 27, 2010
Do you want science that makes a difference in our lives?  Look at real plants and animals with real solutions to practical problems.  That’s where researchers are making amazing discoveries with practical spinoffs. Shellfish materials:  Strong, lightweight structures are coming, thanks to the imitation of oysters and shellfish.  PhysOrg reported that researchers at the University […]
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Dinosaurs

How Much Can One Bone Say?
March 26, 2010
Two fossil discoveries are generating a lot of news from a single bone.  The first is a dinosaur hip.  The second is a human finger.  How much weight can a single bone carry? Australian tyrannosaur:  The tyrannosaurid dinosaurs had a distinctive hip bone.  Live Science cast any doubt on the claims: “it’s still a hypothesis […]
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Bible and Theology

Can Morality Be Darwinized?
March 25, 2010
There’s a cottage industry within the Darwin empire that tries to explain morality in terms of natural selection.  Hardly a week passes without some new paper trying to explain why humans reward moral behavior and punish immoral behavior.  Some try to do it by finding morality in animals, as if to portray a continuity in […]
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Intelligent Design

Archaeologist Employs Design Detection with Little Evidence
March 24, 2010
There are hundreds of large stone spheres in Costa Rica, some up to 8 feet in diameter weighing 16 tons.  There are no written records or tribal traditions about them.  John Hoopes, an anthropologist at the University of Kansas, has been studying these spheres for a long time.  According to PhysOrg, he’s had to dispel […]
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Amazing Facts

Beetle Pulls 1,141 Times Its Weight
March 23, 2010
Ever watch those contest shows for the World’s Strongest Man?  Compared to dung beetles, they’re wimps.  Scientists at Queen Mary, University of London found that the strongest beetle tested could pull an astonishing 1,141 times its own weight – “the equivalent of a 70kg person lifting 80 tonnes (the same as six full double-decker buses),” […]
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Early Man

Laetoli Footprints Fully Modern Too Early
March 22, 2010
Science Daily has reported a bombshell announcement from the University of Arizona School of Anthropology: the famous Laetoli footprints in Africa said to be 3.6 million years old are identical to modern human prints. “Based on previous analyses of the skeletons of Australopithecus afarensis, we expected that the Laetoli footprints would resemble those of someone […]
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Darwin and Evolution

Everything You Know About Evolution Is Wrong (Again)
March 21, 2010
There’s a genre of science news stories characterized by pointing out things Darwin got wrong.  It’s not creationists that do this – these are secular reporters and evolutionary biologists.  They seem to try to one-up Darwin by proposing new theories that do evolution better.  They usually don’t go far enough to jettison Darwin completely, but […]
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Cosmology

The Whole Universe Is Crazy
March 19, 2010
Suppose you engaged a mental patient about the origin of the universe.  He tells you that it banged and it whooshed and it crunched.  He elaborates and says that there’s lots of universes out there crashing into each other all the time.  “Yep, that’s how it happened, and that’s how we got here.  I’s sure […]
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Physics

No Clear Explanation for Saturn’s Rings After 6 Years of Cassini
March 19, 2010
Those who hoped Cassini would solve the puzzles of Saturn’s rings should read the paper today in Science.1  The state-of-the-rings report, authored by a Who’s Who of ring scientists, is filled with questions.  Titled “An Evolving View of Saturn’s Dynamic Rings,” the report cannot determine their origin, their age, or their composition.  List the points […]
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