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Wallace for Darwin Running Mate
March 3, 2008
Shouldn’t Darwin Day be named Darwin-Wallace Day?  After all, Alfred Russell Wallace is by most accounts the co-discoverer of natural selection.  Papers by Wallace and Darwin were read together at the Linnean Society meeting of 1858, over a year before Origin of Species was published.  Some groups are seeking to give Wallace his due in […]
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Education

Polls Produce Politically-Incorrect Results
March 2, 2008
Polls are like a box of chocolates; you never know what you are going to get.  In a survey conducted by the Channel One Network, a broadcast service for public schools, students were asked if they thought schools should teach only intelligent design, teach only evolution, or teach both.  A majority (52%) responded for teaching […]
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Amazing Facts

Cool Bat Tricks
March 1, 2008
Bats put on a dazzling air show.  Science Daily revealed that the acrobatic mammals have magnetic instruments.  Somehow, they are able to use the magnetite in their cells as navigational aids.  Scientists from Leeds University and Princeton conducted experiments on large brown bats.  They were able to steer the bats off course by issuing magnetic […]
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Bible and Theology

The Fruits of Two Worldviews
February 29, 2008
Of all the arenas of state-sponsored genocides of the 20th century, the Killing Fields of Cambodia were among the most disturbing.  There, in a massive social engineering project, a radical communist government systematically starved, tortured and murdered nearly two million people with the brutal efficiency of an assembly line operation.  The regime outlawed all religions.  […]
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Astronomy

Is Cosmology Getting Wimp-y?
February 28, 2008
Physics and astronomy are usually thought of as the “hard” sciences, where empiricism is king.  Read the following excerpts from a story on the BBC News science page with that in mind (suggestion: replace “dark matter” with “mysterious unknown stuff”). The first stars to appear in the Universe may have been powered by dark matter, […]
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Amazing Facts

Why Blood Clots Are Stretchy
February 27, 2008
A team of biophysicists at University of Illinois ran a computation for six months to find out why blood clots are stretchy.  The primary protein in the clot, fibrinogen, can stretch two to three times its resting size.  By studying the force on every atom in the protein, Science Daily said, they produced a force […]
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Amazing Facts

Sea Monsters Were for Real, and Other Wonders Under the Sea
February 26, 2008
National Geographic News published a story about a real sea monster.  A fossil pliosaur nearly 50 feet in length, the largest marine reptile ever found, was discovered in permafrost just 800 miles from the North Pole, on the Arctic island of Spitsbergen in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago.  Scientists estimate it had such strong teeth and muscles […]
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Amazing Facts

Prevent Drought: Hire a Beaver
February 25, 2008
“Beavers can help ease drought,” say scientists from University of Alberta.  EurekAlert published a press release about a 54-year study that showed beaver kept open water wetlands available.  They seem to even mitigate the effects of global warming.  “Climate models predict the incidence of drought in parts of North America will increase in frequency and […]
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Early Man

Paleofantasy: Brain Evolution Is Mere Storytelling
February 22, 2008
When it comes to explaining the brain, evolutionists are completely in the dark.  That was the surprising message in a presentation to the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science by Harvard evolutionist Richard Lewontin.  James Randerson blogged the presentation in the UK Guardian, beginning, “We know nothing about brain evolution.  […]
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Early Man

Evolutionary Theory Can’t Handle Language
February 21, 2008
Did a gene turn on speech?  Five years ago, evolutionary geneticists were claiming that mutations in a gene called Foxp2 were the key to human language (see 08/15/2002, 05/26/2004).  This was based on two observations: chimps do not have these mutations, and people with alterations to Foxp2 have language impediments.  This idea is very unlikely […]
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Astronomy

Distant Galaxy Surprises Astronomers
February 19, 2008
Using the Hubble Space Telescope viewing a distant galaxy cluster as a gravitational lens, astronomers detected a new record-holder: a galaxy bright with stars almost as old as the big bang.  The story on Science Daily called this a galaxy, with redshift 7.6, a “strong contender for the galaxy distance record.”     According to […]
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Health

For Healthy Society, Father Knows Best
February 18, 2008
Science Proves Common Sense Dept.  Swedish scientists have found that “Children Who Have An Active Father Figure Have Fewer Psychological And Behavioral Problems,” according to a report on Science Daily.  In addition, “Children who lived with both a mother and father figure also had less behavioural problems than those who just lived with their mother.”  […]
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Origin of Life

Mars Life Hung Out to Dry in Salt
February 18, 2008
Scientists have just about hanged the possibility for life on Mars.  At first, the acid measured by the Spirit and Opportunity rovers made the environment look inhospitable.  “Now, we also appreciate the high salinity of the water when it left behind the minerals Opportunity found,” said Mark Knoll on a JPL press release.  “This tightens […]
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Politics and Ethics

Nazi-Era Scientists Were Willing Colluders
February 17, 2008
A seven-year study of the conduct of the German research funding agency, the DFG, was completed last month.  Historians focused specifically on the Nazi years, 1933-1945.  The report was mentioned by both Nature1 and Science.2     The upshot is that many German scientists went along with Hitler’s regime without resistance.  Ulrich Herbert, a historian […]
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Mammals

Oldest Bat Fossil: Was It Evolving?
February 16, 2008
A bat fossil surpassing the previous record holder for the oldest by 2 million years made the cover of Nature this week.1  The news media immediately began saying that it provided insight into evolution. The BBC News announced “Bat fossil solves evolution poser.” National Geographic called it the icing on the cake, and said that […]
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