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Comparing Geological and Biological Patterns

December 26, 2008

Beehives have hexagons. So do lava flows. Is there any difference in how they form? Science Daily shows a picture of polygon-shaped tops of basalt columns at the Giant’s Causeway in Ireland. Similar formations are found in the Grand Canyon, at Devil’s Postpile in California, and in many places around the world. Researchers […]

Solar System

This Day in History: Genesis from the Moon

December 24, 2008

Forty years ago this day, Christmas Eve, a riotous and troubled world stopped in its tracks and held its breath. The crew of Apollo 8, which had blasted off 3 days earlier in the new behemoth rocket Saturn V, masterminded by rocket pioneer Wernher von Braun, had reached orbit around the moon, and was about […]

Mammals

Bat Evolution: The Plays the Thing

December 23, 2008

According to the Darwinian script, each animal evolved its particular adaptations from an ancestor lacking those adaptations. Take bats. They must have evolved their wings and sonar from mouse-like ancestors that lived on the ground. Is it enough to imagine these things, or should we expect science to provide evidence that is what really happened? […]

Media

Science Intrudes Into Morality

December 23, 2008

The Pope recently declared that we need to save humanity from self-destructive behaviors, like homosexuality. Can science intrude on questions of human behavior and morals? New Scientist thought so; a blog entry today says the Pope “misuses science to attack homosexuality.” One would think that moral behavior would lie outside the field for […]

Cosmology

Dream On, Astrobiology

December 22, 2008

An astrobiologist at Open University (UK) has classified habitable worlds into four types, even though only one of them is known to have life. Astrobiology Magazine reported the list by Jan Hendrik Bredeh?ft: earth-like, Mars-like, Venus-like and water-worlds. After considering all the facts, Bredeh?ft says our best bet to find extraterrestrial ecosystems is to hunt […]

Astronomy

Water, Water Everywhere

December 21, 2008

A press release from the Max Planck Institute says that water has been detected at a distant quasar 11.1 billion light-years away – the farthest detection of water yet. “The water vapour is thought to exist in clouds of dust and gas that feed the supermassive black hole at the centre of the distant quasar,” […]

Education

Which Evolution Should Be Taught?

December 19, 2008

Two articles in Scientific American’s cover feature on evolution in preparation for Darwin Day (12/15/2008, 12/16/2008) quoted a favorite line by Dobzhansky, “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” Assuming a teacher or textbook writer wants to illustrate how true this proverb is, which evolutionary proposal should be presented? Recent articles […]

Solar System

Cassini Celebrates Season of Change

December 18, 2008

It’s approaching equinox on Saturn. Cassini is now well into its first extended mission, aptly dubbed the Equinox Mission, till Sept. 2010. The Cassini Team just exhibited its snazzy new website. It’s not all bells and whistles. The science is ringing the phones off the hook. Even without the pictures the following announcements could stop […]

Health

Who Wants Embryonic Stem Cells?

December 17, 2008

Amazing treatments continue to spring forth from adult stem cells – the stem cells with no ethical qualms attached. With adult stem cells easy to obtain doing so much good, why would anyone want embryonic stem cells (the stem cells with ethical qualms attached), when no usable treatments have yet been found? Here are some […]

Dumb Ideas

Blame Hiccups on Your Inner Fish

December 16, 2008

Why do humans get hernias and hiccups? Neil Shubin says it’s because of your inner fish. In the Scientific American series on Darwin, the discoverer of Tiktaalik was trying to show how evolutionary theory sheds light on human anatomy. He looked back to fish and amphibians and found insight. “A glimpse inside the […]

Education

Expel the Creationists

December 16, 2008

Apparently Eugenie Scott of the NCSE is feeling no remorse from her appearance in Ben Stein’s documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, where she defended the actions of those who ruined careers, denied tenure, and deprived students and teachers of their academic freedom because they dared to question Darwin. Her latest piece in Scientific American is […]

Uncategorized

Sci Am Jumpstarts Darwin Day

December 15, 2008

It’s not even Christmas or 2009 yet, but the cover stories on Darwin have started to hit newsstands. Latest to feature a whole issue to Darwin is Scientific American. Predictable themes are all there: Darwin was a genius, he was the greatest scientist in history, evolution is the keystone of all biology, and creationists are […]

Bible and Theology

Darwins New Terror: Islamic Creationism

December 13, 2008

The Darwinists must be feel like victims of a pincer strategy. After years of hassling with American creationists and the Intelligent Design movement in the west, here come the Muslims on the east. A couple of recent reports express the uneasiness evolutionists feel over the rise of anti-Darwin sentiments in Turkey and other parts of […]

Terrestrial Zoology

Evolutionary Mutualism Flutters

December 12, 2008

A story on Science Daily is decorated with a butterfly collection. Amazonian butterflies studied by an international team were chosen to test Darwin’s theory of mutualism – a kind of symbiosis in which two species benefit one another. The test yielded a surprise. The idea going in was that sister species would evolve […]

Marine Biology

Fish and Reptiles Converge on Magnetic Navigation

December 11, 2008

Two very different kinds of animal both have outstanding ability to navigate by earth’s magnetic field: salmon and sea turtles. A new hypothesis by scientists at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, published in PNAS,1 suggests that the young are “imprinted” with their local magnetic field signature at birth. From a navigational perspective, some […]

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