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Politics and Ethics

Patients in Vegetative State May Be Aware
September 11, 2006
Remember the arguments put forth for why Terry Schiavo should be allowed to die?  They revolved around the awareness of those said to be in a persistent vegetative state.  Now, researchers reported in Science1 that a patient diagnosed in a vegetative state was aware of what was going on: We used functional magnetic resonance imaging […]
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Bible and Theology

Historian Reveals Isaac Newton as Biblical Economist
September 11, 2006
The image of Isaac Newton as pure mathematician and physicist ignores a big part of his persona, said Georgia Tech Professor Kenneth Knoespel in a press release reported by EurekAlert.  Living in an era when alchemy was still considered a serious subject for natural philosophers, Newton viewed alchemical research as part of his Biblical vision […]
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Politics and Ethics

Nature Backpedals Over Stem-Cell Hype
September 10, 2006
After Nature printed an upbeat press release last month that stem cells could be extracted without killing an embryo (see 08/25/2006), critics found that the experiment did indeed kill the embryos.  Also, it turns out none of the stem cell lines survived, and that more than one cell had been extracted from the embryos, contrary […]
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Genetics

Is the Fruit from Darwin’s Tree Edible?
September 8, 2006
Darwin’s “Tree of Life” fruit stand found an upbeat salesman in John Roach at National Geographic this week.  In his update on the “Assembling the Tree of Life” (AToL) project, he reported cheerfully that “New cures, supercrops, and secrets of evolution may emerge from the fast-growing branches of the ‘Tree of Life,’ scientists say.”   […]
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Uncategorized

Nothing in Evolution Makes Sense Except in the Light of Speculation
September 7, 2006
Welcome to an imaginary world of Red Queens, Green Beards and warring armies: the world of evolutionary theory.  Though its adherents work in prestigious universities and laboratories in the real world, they seem preoccupied with speculative visions of imaginative fitness landscapes – even when defending evolutionary theory as the best explanation for natural phenomena, and […]
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Astronomy

Whistling in the Dark Matter Debate
September 7, 2006
Who’s right?  Douglas Clowe’s team at U of Arizona claimed two weeks ago that they found dark matter in the Bullet Cluster – they even had a picture of it.  The Chandra X-Ray Center called it “direct proof” of dark matter.  Two days later, EurekAlert posted a story about a new proposal to bring back […]
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Amazing Facts

Flagellar Swimmers Attain Mechanical Nirvana
September 6, 2006
Those little germs that scientists love, E. coli – you know, the ones with the flagella that intelligent-design folk get all excited about – well, they move through the water pretty efficiently with those high-tech outboard motors of theirs.  Some Pennsylvania physicists reporting in PNAS1 measured the “swimming efficiency of bacterium Escherichia coli” and concluded, […]
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Dumb Ideas

Quote
September 6, 2006
The authors of the paper in the previous entry (09/06/2006) found that bacteria swim with near perfect propulsive efficiency.  They only mentioned evolution one time, but it’s short and to the pointless.  It wins Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week: “Such measurements can shed light on how this remarkable ability to swim evolves among different […]
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Biomimetics

Yoke Up Those Bacteria
September 6, 2006
My, how history repeats itself – often in unexpected ways.  In ancient times, our ancestors got the heavy work done by hitching oxen, horses or slaves (like Samson, see pictures 1 and 2) to a harness and making them turn a grinding wheel.  The same principle is now on the cutting edge of modern applied […]
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Cosmology

Big Bang Fails Prediction: Is the Theory in Trouble?
September 5, 2006
Astronomers looking at WMAP data (03/20/2006, 05/02/2003) of the cosmic background radiation failed to find shadows predicted by the big bang, reported Science Daily.  So what?  Here’s what Dr. Richard Lieu (U of Alabama) said this means: “Either it (the microwave background) isn’t coming from behind the clusters, which means the Big Bang is blown […]
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Dinosaurs

Dinosaur Bone Hunting Looks Promising
September 4, 2006
With probably less than a third of dinosaur types known, prospects are good for a new generation of young people to find one of their own, reports News@Nature.  New finds in Mongolia, South America and China over the last fifteen years indicate the vast majority of dinosaurs are still waiting to be discovered.  The authors […]
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Amazing Facts

Another Flagellum Excites Scientists
September 1, 2006
“The bacterial flagellar motor excites considerable interest because of the ordered expression of its genes, its regulated self-assembly, the complex interactions of its many proteins, and its startling mechanical abilities,” begins a paper in Nature by three Caltech scientists.1  They performed electron cryotomography imaging on the flagella of Triponema primita, a different critter with a […]
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Dumb Ideas

Express Your Inner Alley Oop
September 1, 2006
There’s a little Neanderthal in a lot of us, claims The Telegraph.  This is bad news and good news: People who have large noses, a stocky build and a beetle brow may indeed be a little Neanderthal, according to a genetic study.  But the good news is that other research concludes that Neanderthals were much […]
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Education

Evolution Back on Federal Funding List
September 1, 2006
Boy, that was a close call.  Evolution research almost got dropped from federal funding.  Turns out it was an accidental oversight.  Science Daily reported that the oversight “sparked heated protests from academics and evolution supporters” who “expressed fears that the omission might have been part of an attack on Darwinian evolution by religious groups.”   […]
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Media

Rock Video Illustrates Nihilism of Evolution
August 31, 2006
Senseless sex.  Mass death.  Religious hypocrisy.  Moral equivalence.  Impersonality.  Irresponsibility.  Male aggression, abduction and murder.  Glorification of lust.  Book burning.  Assembly-line babies.  Dehumanization.  Terrorism.  Holocaust.  Armageddon.  It’s all illustrated with raw intensity in the Pearl Jam rock video, Do the Evolution, available on YouTube.com.1  Evolution wipes out humanity, without remorse, in just 3:53 minutes.  Watch […]
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