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Itemized Deductions

April 15, 2008

Here are some free deductions to take the edge off Income Tax Day…. as long as one deduces correctly. Israel is picking a national bird. So what feathered friend will represent the Holy Land? “The nine finalists include the hoopoe, the owl, the spur-winged plover, and the griffin vulture, but no doves.” Source: Science, Random […]

Bible and Theology

Darwinism and Logic: How Strong a Grip?

April 14, 2008

Science and logic are inseparable. Whether one approaches the study of nature from reason (rationalism) or evidence (empiricism), logical inferences and deductions are essential for understanding – or for claiming one’s scientific work produces understanding. When it comes to the reigning evolutionary perspective, though, how can a blind, chancy process like evolution produce reason, laws […]

Dinosaurs

Dinosaur Expert Criticizes Uber-Darwinists More than Biblical Creationists

April 13, 2008

One of the field researchers most identifiable with dinosaurs is Dr. Robert Bakker, a colorful individual who’s had a long friendly rivalry with an equally iconic figure of the modern dinosaur hunter, Jack Horner (e.g., 11/24/2007). Brian Switek interviewed Bakker on the Laelops Science Blog. He introduced him as “one of the most famous paleontologists […]

Amazing Facts

Moths Navigate in the Dark Against the Wind

April 12, 2008

A moth weighs little more than a piece of paper, but it does things no paper blowing in the wind can do: it can navigate with and against the wind to get where it needs to go. Science Daily reported on work by UK scientists who used “entomological radar” to monitor where the […]

Fossils

Not Even Wrong: Darwins Tree Suffers Base Blow

April 11, 2008

Darwin’s “tree of life” icon is suffering another blow. The root of multicellular life was supposed to be the simplest, most primitive animal. Now, scientists are seriously considering that the mother of all animals was a complex animal with a gut, tissues, a nervous system and amazing light displays: a comb jelly. PhysOrg […]

Uncategorized

Grand Canyon Age Estimates Fluctuate Wildly

April 10, 2008

Just when the park rangers were getting familiar telling the public the Grand Canyon was carved about 5 million years ago, some geologists announced the shocking news that it might be less than a million (05/31/2002, 07/22/2002). The age was plummeting as recently as November (11/30/2007). But then last month, another revision came: it’s 17 […]

Intelligent Design

Big Science Fights Its Customers

April 9, 2008

Has “Big Science” lost contact with the public it serves? Several recent reports show the scientific establishment (as represented by the leading journals) taking positions at polar opposites of the majority, and wagging the dog of the body politic. Chimeras: Even though ethicists have called it “a monstrous attack on human rights,” to blend human […]

Education

Darwin on a Chip

April 8, 2008

PhysOrg, EurekAlert and and Science Daily announced “Evolution on the table top.” Reporting on a paper in PLoS Biology by Brian Paegel and Gerald Joyce at Scripps, the article claims that the two scientists “have produced a computer-controlled system that can drive the evolution of improved RNA enzymes—biological catalysts—without human input.” The scientists claim they […]

Cell Biology

Watch for Falling Amino Acids

April 8, 2008

A long-standing problem of origin-of-life theories is how proteins became left-handed. Amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, come in right-handed and left-handed forms, yet life uses only the left-handed form. The two isoforms are otherwise identical—yet one amino acid of the wrong hand in a protein spells doom for its function. Wherever […]

Intelligent Design

Expelled: Battle of the Reviews

April 7, 2008

Two weeks before Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed hits the theaters (April 18), reviewers are starting to weigh in. One could hardly find a bigger contrast between two reviews that came out a day apart. Dave Mosher, writing for Live Science, used every trick in the book to call this “a bad film in […]

Fossils

Evolution After the Fact

April 4, 2008

Many scientific theories are evaluated on their ability to make predictions. Good theories suggest experiments that lead a researcher to discover new things. In biology, however, “evolution” is a word often invoked as an after-market explanation for observations that emerged outside of the theory. Here are some recent examples: Ant farm: Science Daily reported on […]

Health

Mars Lacks Safety Shield for Humans

April 3, 2008

Forget all those optimistic, futuristic sci-fi tales of humans landing on Mars. It isn’t safe, said Space.com. NASA’s space radiation program doubts that a human body could survive prolonged exposure to space. This is a problem for long stays on the moon, too. “The magnetic field of Earth protects humanity from radiation in […]

Darwin and Evolution

Darwin and Complexity: Another Genetic Solution?

April 2, 2008

It remains one of the biggest obstacles to belief in evolution that a random, unguided process could build an eye, a wing or any of thousands of complex structures.

Dumb Ideas

Fooling Oneself About Aliens

April 1, 2008

Would you give a Bible to a Neanderthal, or invite a porpoise to your church? Who would ask such questions? Seth Shostak would – director of the SETI Institute. On Space.com, he speculated about “alien sociology.” Shostak wrote the weekly SETI column for Space.com to answer critics who think that broadcasting our presence […]