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How Dry I.D.

March 27, 2006

Greg Schirf of Wasatch Brewery is riding the wave of publicity over the intelligent design controversy in Utah. He came out with a new “intelligently designed” beer: Evolution Amber Ale. The press release expresses his alarm over the alleged erosion of separation of church and state, but how serious (or sober) he was may be […]

Early Man

Human Missing Link Skull Found in Ethiopia

March 26, 2006

Reuters reported that a skull intermediate between Homo erectus and Homo sapiens has been found in Ethiopia (see MSNBC News): “Ethiopian find could fill gap in human origins,” reads the title. “Skull seen as ‘intermediate’ between modern humans and older ancestors.” Associated Press (see Fox News) says this fossil is 250,000 to 500,000 years old, […]

Uncategorized

Plant Species Divisions Are As Distinct As Those of Animals

March 25, 2006

Plants were thought to speciate differently than animals. Evolutionary taxonomists presumed that their species barriers were more fuzzy, with hybridization, polyploidy and other mechanisms blurring the lines between species. Not so, claim three scientists from Indiana University writing in Nature.1 These perceptions may just be artifacts of the plants selected for study: Many botanists doubt […]

Uncategorized

Non-Coding DNA: Whatcha Calling Junk?

March 24, 2006

The focus on genes continues to blur, as more geneticists look outside the box. Some 98% of DNA in the nucleus of human cells does not code for genes. Long dismissed as genetic junk, much of it may turn out to be the hands on the controls. A press release from Johns Hopkins […]

Education

New Book: Traipsing Into Evolution

March 23, 2006

The Discovery Institute has published a new book, Traipsing Into Evolution, analyzing the Dover decision. (Traipsing is defined as walking or traveling about without apparent plan but with or without a purpose.) An article on Evolution News introduces the contents, and describes the authors: “The book was written by David K. DeWolf, professor of law […]

Origin of Life

Dry-Marsers Score Points

March 23, 2006

Those looking for water on Mars in hopes that life would grow in it had some setbacks this week. National Geographic and Mars Daily reported on work by Gwendolyn Bart (U of Arizona) who found gullies on the moon similar to those on Mars thought to be formed by water. Since the moon never had […]

Fossils

Stromatolites Can Form By Non-Biological Processes

March 22, 2006

Exclusive Stromatolites have been Exhibit A for stories of the rise of life on the early earth. These column-shaped rocks found in Precambrian strata are usually assumed to be evidence of microbial mats that grew upward as sediment slowly accumulated on top of them. Scene 1 is usually Shark’s Bay in Australia, where stromatolites form […]

Astronomy

Planet-Making a Lost Art

March 21, 2006

Exclusive Solar system theorists are trying to reverse engineer the planets without the recipe. Planets exist, but they can’t get from a rotating disk of dust and gas to a solar system from their models. They are at a loss to explain Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and a host of Jupiter-class planets around other stars. […]

Intelligent Design

Can Scientific Journals Perpetuate False Ideas?

March 17, 2006

An unusual paper appeared in PNAS this week.1 Four social scientists from Columbia and Yale argued that scientific papers can actually perpetuate false ideas rather than correct them. The abstract says that an influential paper can generate momentum that becomes merely cited as fact by subsequent authors: We analyzed a very large set of molecular […]

Fossils

Go to the Ant Farm, Thou Darwinist

March 16, 2006

It’s the 50th anniversary of the Ant Farm, and inventor Milton Levine is still tickled about the impact his toy has had on millions of kids, reported AP on MSNBC. The charm of Uncle Milton’s Ant Farm was in “creating a whole world that you can see,” a world of creative and industrious ants. Moms […]

Biology

This Is a Problem: Dino-Feather Story Gets Scaly

March 15, 2006

Just when proponents of dinosaur-to-bird evolution were getting agreement on their story, along came Juravenator. Announced in Nature,1 this new dinosaur fossil from Germany is dated later than the earliest alleged “feathered dinosaur,” but had no feathers. The finely-preserved specimen, in the same Solnhofen limestone that preserved Archaeopteryx (dated 2-3 million years later), had clear […]

Dumb Ideas

The Darwin Empire Strikes Back

March 14, 2006

It would seem the ID republic is imprisoned on its own ice-world of Hoth, scrambling to escape as the empire has mobilized its machinery against the rebels. The AAAS, for instance, held its “Evolution on the Front Line” event in St. Louis and has posted its weaponry on its Center for Public Engagement with Science […]

Solar System

Stardust Finds Burnt Rock in Comet Dust

March 14, 2006

Major upset in solar system origin theories indicated by minerals that had to form hot.

Origin of Life

The Astrobiology Sky Is Falling

March 13, 2006

Rocco Mancinelli (Principal Investigator, SETI Institute) made an impassioned plea on Space.com for continued funding of astrobiology projects, calling threatened funding cuts a “national disaster” if not reversed. And what is astrobiology? He defined it as “the study of the origin, evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe.” His reasons for keeping astrobiology […]

Cell Biology

Misfolded Proteins Cause Cascade of Harmful Effects

March 12, 2006

There are a myriad ways a polypeptide chain could collapse into a shapeless mass.

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