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Bible and Theology

The Rhetoric of Mockery
November 21, 2005
Some recent stories illustrate that human rhetoric has evolved from sophistry to philosophy – then back again.  (In ancient Greece, sophistry was criticized of being nothing more than the art of making your opponent look foolish.  Socrates, among others, questioned the value of such exercises and tried to elevate rhetoric to higher purposes.)  The rise […]
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Biomimetics

Eyes on the Prize: Science Sees Gold in Biomimetics
November 19, 2005
A fly eye made the cover of Science this week.1  It’s not that the compound eye is interesting to entomologists; MSNBC News picked up on the real message: “Animal eyes inspire new technology – Researchers learn optics lessons from biology.”  The cover story is about biomimetics, or reverse-engineering nature.  Scientists are looking for ways to […]
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Intelligent Design

Catholic Astronomer Takes On the Pope, and Other ID Battles
November 19, 2005
Right after Pope Benedict XVI essentially affirmed intelligent design (11/10/2005), his court astronomer rejected it.  The Rev. George Coyne, Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory, sounded like he was reading the NCSE playbook: “Intelligent design isn’t science even though it pretends to be…. If you want to teach it in schools, intelligent design should be […]
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Physics

Butterflies Invented LEDs First
November 18, 2005
Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) were a prized invention of physicists, improved greatly in 2001, but now we find butterflies invented them first.  We already knew that butterfly wings achieve their shimmering iridescence by means of photonic crystals (01/29/2003), as do some birds (10/13/2003), but now it appears that the butterflies have even more exotic tricks up […]
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Education

SETI: Search for Educational Targets Inc.
November 18, 2005
SETI may be the laughingstock of Congress, refused funding since William Proxmire gave it his Golden Fleece Award in the 1980s, but privately it is moving apace.  The Science Channel gave it prominence in its weekly report Friday, visiting with pioneering signaler and listener Frank Drake.  It surveyed everything from the first humble attempts to […]
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Uncategorized

A New Way to Make Stars, Or One Old Way Discredited?
November 18, 2005
Several news sources sounded a rather triumphant note that astronomers are figuring out how stars form.  In actuality, the paper by Krumholz, McKee and Klein in Nature1 did more to discredit a competitive theory than to establish their own.  That competitive theory, ironically, is called “competitive accretion” and posits that clumps of material add up […]
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Uncategorized

Winter Plant’s Thermostat Keeps It Cozy As a Skunk
November 17, 2005
Skunk cabbage.  Pew.  Do you like the meditative name “Zen plant” better?  Well, meditate on how this amazing plant keeps warm while it emerges through the last snows of winter.  Skunk cabbage is one of two plants known to regulate its body temperature.  Science Now reported on research by Japanese scientists who studied its thermostat.  […]
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Education

Darwin Lovers Unite Against ID
November 17, 2005
Pictures of Darwin looking like a wise guru draped in white hair seem to adorn many articles attacking intelligent design.  With 2009 being the Darwin’s 200th birthday and the 150th anniversary of The Origin, Bruce H. Weber in Nature remarked, “Impending anniversaries and the trial over ‘intelligent design’ make this a good time to revisit […]
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Uncategorized

Blurb Face-Off
November 17, 2005
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Genetics

Does Gene Expression Evolve?
November 17, 2005
“Mutation is the ultimate source of biological diversity because it generates the variation that fuels evolution,” wrote four scientists in Nature November 10.1  Conventionally, theorists have focused on gene mutations for that fuel; what about mutations to gene expression?  That’s what they set out to discover.     One would think that positive natural selection […]
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Birds

News from the Cretaceous
November 16, 2005
Here are some recent stories about extinct reptiles and bird-like creatures from the age of dinosaurs. T. Rex Smelled Good:  A story in Science1 listed evidence that Tyrannosaurus rex had a large olfactory bulb, giving it a good sense of smell.  Analysis of the visual and auditory parts of the skull suggest that it also […]
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Biomimetics

Scientists Learning How to Harness Cellular Trucks
November 15, 2005
In an article that blurs the line between biology and technology, a press release from the Max Planck Institute (see EurekAlert for English translation) described the amazing performance of the nanoscopic trucks that ride the cell’s microtubule superhighways.  Kinesin and myosin motors, fueled by ATP, usually “sprint” on the trackways for short distances, but working […]
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Education

Like, Make a Tree
November 14, 2005
Three Darwinist professors lamented recently in Science1 that few scientists are making like a tree: “‘tree thinking’ remains widely practiced only by professional evolutionary biologists,” they said.  And just what is “tree thinking”?  It is basically thinking like Darwin; i.e., looking at the living world with phylogenetic glasses: The central claim of the theory of […]
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Politics and Ethics

Psychotherapy Struggles to Demonstrate Scientific Validity
November 13, 2005
Psychologist, heal thyself.  That may well have been the caption to the cover story of Science News,1 illustrated with an iconic cartoon of the patient on the psychoanalyst’s couch – only this time, psychotherapy itself is the patient.  “Researchers spar over how best to evaluate psychotherapy,” announced Bruce Bower, as he described the attempts of […]
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Bible and Theology

Bible History News
November 11, 2005
Three stories of interest to historians of the Holy Land were reported recently: A Is for Aleph:  A stone abecedary, or alphabet tablet, has been unearthed in the hill country south of Jerusalem.  It is dated to the 10th century BC, the time of David and Solomon.  See MSNBC News for a summary.  The New […]
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