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Cell Biology

Darwinism Demonstrated in the Lab
June 10, 2008
Lenski’s done it.  The champion of Avida, a computerized evolution demo (see Evolution News) has demonstrated Darwinian evolution with real live organisms.  His achievement announces his inauguration into the prestigious National Academy of Sciences.1     Lenski and team ran one of the longest-running evolution experiments ever with E. coli bacteria.  After more than 30,000 […]
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Uncategorized

The Andes: Pop-Up Mountains
June 10, 2008
The majestic Andes of South America did not rise smoothly and gradually, a team of geologists reported in Science.1  Instead, long periods of stasis for tens of millions of years were punctuated by rapid periods of uplift.  It sounds as if punctuated equilibria theory has been stolen from evolutionary biology and applied to geology.  They […]
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Dumb Ideas

Evolution’s Tinkerer Creates the Brain that Creates Evolutionary Theory
June 9, 2008
A tinkerer usually implies a human being with a brain.  A man in his garage, for instance, might look around for spare parts to arrange into some new contraption.  What would he think if he were told that his own brain was made that way?  That’s what evolutionists commonly teach: our bodies and our brains […]
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Early Man

Will Evolutionary Psychology Be the First Darwinian Theory to Go?
June 6, 2008
Evolutionary psychologists are not getting much respect these days.  Some evolutionists, like Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin, criticized them for years.  Now, a new book came out against them and Science gave it a good review.1  To turn a Darwinian phrase, reviewer Johan J. Bolhuis said that the field of evolutionary psychology is undergoing […]
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Intelligent Design

Alien Messages via Neutrinos
June 6, 2008
Three scientists are suggesting that SETI researchers comb neutrinos for alien messages.  Nothing natural could produce high-energy neutrinos, they said in Science,1 so aliens may use their cosmic accelerators to send neutrino packets across the intergalactic internet.  They suggested watching for them in the neutrino detector at the South Pole. 1.  Random Samples, Science, Volume […]
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Uncategorized

Living Iridescence Dazzles Scientists
June 5, 2008
The flashing colors of butterflies and birds (peacocks being the classic example) do not come from pigments, but from black structures on a microscopic scale.  How and why they do it is of great interest to scientists and engineers.  Susan Milius explored this topic in Science News this week.1     The basic principle behind […]
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Amazing Facts

Asian Bees Speak European
June 4, 2008
Asian honeybees and European honeybees went their separate ways millions of years ago, say evolutionists.  Why, then, were Asian bees able to readily learn the European language?  An international team watched this happen.  They ran some affirmative-action integration experiments on the two species, and reported their results today in PLoS One.1     “The honeybee […]
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Birds

An Evaluation of Evolution as an Explanatory Device
June 3, 2008
It is very common for scientists to claim this or that phenomenon “evolved.”  How well do such statements qualify as scientific explanations?  How much scientific heavy lifting is done by merely stating that things are the way they are because they evolved that way?  The following recent examples can be considered representative of the evolutionary […]
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Genetics

Can Darwin Fit into Designer Genes?
June 2, 2008
Humans are tinkering with DNA in ways that appear to blur the boundaries between design and nature. PhysOrg reported that geneticists at the University of Nottingham have created capsules that can coax bacteria to transfer their genetic information.  The title is “Life, but not as we know it?” PNAS reported that scientists at UC Santa […]
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Dumb Ideas

Lamarckism Still Shuffles Around
June 1, 2008
Examine the following quotation and see if it sounds like what Darwin or Lamarck would say: Somewhere in the murky past, between four and seven million years ago, a hungry common ancestor of today’s primates, including humans, did something novel.  While temporarily standing on its rear feet to reach a piece of fruit, this protohominid […]
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Education

NSF Funds Misleading Cartoons on Origin of Life
May 31, 2008
A slick new multimedia website called Exploring Life’s Origins made its debut this month.  Dazzling artwork and vivid animations are highlights of the site.     The journey begins with a timeline of life’s evolution in which the viewer can drag a marker through billions of years of evolutionary progress.  Controversial theories about the formation […]
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Fossils

Evolution Out of Sync
May 30, 2008
Evolutionary theory explains everything but the kitchen sink, but what if things get out of sync?  According to Darwin’s tree of life, things happen in a particular order.  The same complex trait should not emerge on separate branches independently.  Findings contrary to the tree pattern could sink the theory – or at least give some […]
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Origin of Life

Mars Life Hopes Suffer Double Disappointment
May 29, 2008
Just when the new Phoenix lander was flexing its arm and going to work (see JPL), hoping to determine the habitability of Mars, two papers came out expressing doubt it will find anything. Toxic salty stew:  Space.com summarized a new paper in Science1 that concluded Mars has way too much salt.  Although some earth organisms […]
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Dumb Ideas

Think Like a Neanderthal Child
May 29, 2008
How should you stop a child’s tantrum?  Think like a Neanderthal, reports Live Science.  Dr. Harvey Karp, a pediatrician, “sees our little darlings as less-evolved savages driven by instinct and emotion, not thoughtful reasoning, and he suggests it’s our job as parents to civilize them into Homo sapiens.”     It’s fruitless, therefore, to talk […]
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Dumb Ideas

Preparing the World for Aliens
May 29, 2008
Some people are so convinced there are alien intelligences in the universe, we should be getting ready to meet them.     The Telegraph, a UK newspaper, reported that NASA has partly financed a creative writing class on “interstellar message composition” at the University of Wyoming.  Professor Jeffrey Lockwood wants to help the 11 students […]
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