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Fossils

Cambrian Mollusk: Does It Help Animal Evolution Story?
July 13, 2006
A soft-bodied mollusk named Odontogriphus known from the Burgess Shale, placed in the Middle Cambrian, has been described in more detail in Nature.1  If the Middle Cambrian is well after the Cambrian explosion, how can the authors claim this pushes the story of animal evolution far back into the Precambrian, before the explosion?  A reporter […]
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Intelligent Design

How Atheistic Is Darwinism?
July 12, 2006
Many evolutionary biologists argue that the theory of evolution is religiously neutral.  Why then, does Nature, arguably the most widely read pro-evolution journal in the world, seem to go out of its way to glorify atheism and present religion as an evolutionary artifact?  Clearly, whatever evolved as an adaptation by an unguided process cannot have […]
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Amazing Facts

Saturn E-Ring Oxygen Bubble Blown by Enceladus
July 11, 2006
From a distance, the little moon Enceladus at Saturn looks for all the world like a leaking water balloon.  The Cassini Mission just released a new photo of Enceladus that fits that description well.  The plumes are faintly visible emanating from the south pole of the 300-mile-across moon as it orbits beyond the rings.  A […]
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Amazing Facts

Why Your Knuckles Pop
July 10, 2006
Science reporter Corey Binns occasionally decorates LiveScience with articles about the human body that are informational as well as amusing.  His latest is about cracking knuckles and creaking joints.  We have four kinds of joints (pivot, ball-and-socket, sliding and hinge), which he illustrates with diagrams that look like machinery.  The pops and creaking noises, he […]
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Politics and Ethics

Science Attacked by Mother Nature of the Spiritual Left
July 10, 2006
“Think only the religious right is anti-science?  How about the spiritual left?” asks Lee M. Silver in The Scientist.  His article details the holistic thinking invading much of popular culture and university student minds, that pictures nature as a benevolent super-organism (with usually feminine characteristics).     The article is an excerpt from his book […]
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Bible and Theology

Rocket Pioneer Remembered as Man of Faith
July 10, 2006
Wernher von Braun (1912-1977) deserves a good reputation, said Anthony Young in an article for The Space Review.  He was loved and admired by the people who worked with him but vilified by others because of his involvement with the German V2 rocket.  Young desired to set the record straight about his integrity.  To round […]
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Education

Darwinists Foment Civil Disobedience Against Questioning Darwinism
July 8, 2006
The new science standards in Kansas require students to learn more about evolution, including evidence for and against it (see Discovery Institute press release).  The standards specifically exclude the teaching of intelligent design theory.  To some activist groups, however, this requirement is so intolerable, they want teachers to disobey it.  According to Evolution News, there […]
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Human Body

Evolving Consciousness Without a Soul
July 7, 2006
A paper tackling the theory of consciousness begins, Any scientific study of consciousness is based on the premise that phenomenal experience is entailed by neuronal activity in the brain.  Given this premise, an adequate theory of consciousness must be consistent with physics and with evolutionary principles.  Nonphysical or dualistic forces or processes must be excluded, […]
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Uncategorized

Nature Gives Top Blog Honors to Radical Atheists
July 6, 2006
P. Z. Myers (U of Minnesota) has been one of the most foul-mouthed critics of creation, intelligent design and religion in general.  He has said that Abraham was worse than Hitler (see Evolution News).  He has ridiculed the crucifixion of Christ (see Evolution News).  His opinion on how to treat anti-evolutionists: “I say, screw the […]
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Genetics

Genetic Code Began by Lamarckian Evolution
July 5, 2006
It takes guts to tackle the origin of the genetic code from a naturalist perspective.  It also takes guts to resurrect Lamarck in the age of Darwin.  Carl Woese and colleagues tried a new hypothesis in PNAS1 that boldly goes headlong into both challenges.  To preserve a natural explanation for the genetic code, they felt […]
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Health

Rip Van Winkle Revives
July 3, 2006
A man in a coma 19 years has regained some brain function, surprising scientists.  Terry Wallis is relearning how to count and speak, and thinks Ronald Reagan is still president.  The story of his remarkable recovery has been reported widely in the news (see Fox News) and was featured on both News@Nature and Science Now.  […]
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Astronomy

Paper View:  Why SETI Hears Only a “Great Silence”
June 30, 2006
Enrico Fermi posed a curious question in 1950: “Where is everybody?”  If life emerges on planets as a consequence of evolution, there should be other intelligent civilizations out there, and some of them must have colonized other worlds.  He thought there must have been plenty of time for galactic colonizers to achieve technologies far beyond […]
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Uncategorized

Rockfish Prefer Oil-Rig Real Estate
June 30, 2006
Environmentalists may complain about offshore oil platforms, but the rockfish in the Santa Barbara channel aren’t paying attention.  According to a study announced by UC Santa Barbara, rockfish are finding better living through human chemistry.  The platforms provide security and prime nursing habitat, such that their numbers, once dangerously low, are now resurging.  The artificial […]
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Intelligent Design

Ant Pedometer Discovered
June 29, 2006
Ants have dumbfounded scientists again.  It appears they count their steps when they walk, and keep track how far they have gone.  Reporting in Science,1 a trio of German and Swiss scientists tested desert ants by making some walk on specially-designed stilts and others walk on stumps of cut-off legs.  The first overshot their target, […]
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Education

Doubters Defy Darwin Dogma
June 29, 2006
One would think that the near unanimous opinion of international scientific societies opposing creationism and ID would carry a lot of weight with the public, but it doesn’t.  There are indications that a substantial percent of the population is not impressed with the dogmatic pronouncements that evolution is a fact, and that anyone who disagrees […]
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