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Education

Kansas Removes Darwinism from Protected Status
November 8, 2005
It’s official; the Kansas school board has accepted new science standards that permit criticisms of Darwinism, reported Evolution News.  This makes Kansas the fifth state to allow both evidences for and against Darwinism to be taught, and brings their definition of science in line with the majority of other states.     News reactions were […]
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Genetics

Genome Complexity No Measure of Evolution
November 7, 2005
Do genes show an increasing pattern of complexity from lower to higher organisms?  Not necessarily, reported Elizabeth Pennisi in Science Now.  Cnidarians, including sea anemones and corals, for example, show almost as much complexity in their genomes as humans, whereas fruit flies and worms, seemingly more complex than cnidarians (06/25/2005, 2nd par.) appear to have […]
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Dumb Ideas

Stupid Evolution Quotes of the Week
November 7, 2005
Two articles in the popular press tried to make the case that monkeys have humanlike characteristics.  Maybe they proved the converse, at least for some humans. Does this add up?  Reporting on experiments suggesting monkeys have the rudiments of math skills, at least in the ability to compare sizes of things, MSNBC News writer Bjorn […]
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Media

ICR Challenges Validity of Radiometric Dating
November 5, 2005
acked out the facilities of Shadow Mountain Community Church in El Cajon, California Saturday.  Their frequent applause was not for contemporary musicians or a preacher, but for scientists.  Ten miles from their headquarters, the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) had rented the large auditorium for the formal presentation of the results of its eight-year research […]
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Dumb Ideas

A Just-So Story Digest
November 5, 2005
For your weekend reading entertainment, here is a collection of recent science stories that rely more on imagination than evidence, in the tradition of Kipling’s Just-So Stories for children. How the Brown Dwarf Sowed Planet Seeds:  Apai et al. in Science found magic crystals, hidden by the six brown dwarfs, that turn into planets over […]
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Education

Evolution Thriving in Mexico; Creationismo No Comprendo
November 4, 2005
Mexicans, religious or not, have no problem with Darwinism, and cannot understand their American neighbors who get so uptight about it.  That’s the gist of an article by Antonio Lazcano, a Mexican biology professor and origin-of-life researcher, who was given lengthy press in Science1 this week under the heading “Global Voices of Science.” I am […]
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Biomimetics

Living Wonders at a Glance
November 4, 2005
Here is an assortment of recently-reported biological marvels at the cellular level.  Researchers into creation and evolution explanations may wish to delve into these more deeply. Clock Conductor:  The brain is a “time machine,” reports EurekAlert on research at Duke University about the human biological clock.  Each structure in the brain has a resonant frequency […]
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Education

Dover Darwin Defenders Provide After-Game Impressions
November 3, 2005
Like a TV commentator with the MVPs in the locker room after a big game, Geoff Brumfiel in Nature1 interviewed two pro-evolution witnesses who testified in the Dover trial.  Brumfiel asked Ken Miller and Kevin Padian what it was like, what they had to do to get ready, how the lawyers treated them, and what […]
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Cell Biology

Bacterial Flagellum Visualized
November 2, 2005
Tom Magnuson at Access Research Network found this link that came out last year but is too good to pass up: another visualization of the bacterial flagellum, the “poster child of the ID movement,” by Japanese researchers on NanoNet, the Nanotechnology Researchers Network Center of Japan.  The 02/05/2004 NanoNet Bulletin features the bacterial flagellum with […]
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Education

Educator Suggests Inoculation Technique Against Creationism
November 1, 2005
Give them some ID, then swamp it with counter-arguments.  That’s the new method of “educational intervention” that Stephen Verhey of Central Washington University has found most effective in overcoming college student objections to evolution, reported EurekAlert.  Verhey tested 103 students with prior exposure to creationism.  He assigned the book Icons of Evolution by Jonathan Wells, […]
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Intelligent Design

Darwinists Refute ID “Irreducible Complexity” Argument
October 31, 2005
“New book explains how evolution really works, rebuts intelligent design.”  That’s the triumphant title of a new book announcement from Harvard Medical School, reported on EurekAlert.  According to the release, Marc W. Kirschner (Harvard Medical School) and John C. Gerhart (UC Berkeley) have addressed a “key problem in evolutionary theory that has puzzled scientists from […]
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Education

Is Darwin or ID the New Halloween Spook?
October 30, 2005
Scary, isn’t it?  A textbook committee in Montgomery, Alabama approved dozens of new textbooks, but found objectionable material in three of them: they contained material on evolution that was deemed controversial for children.  They decided that pictures of reptiles evolving from amphibians and humans evolving from apes was not appropriate for elementary children who were […]
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Biomimetics

Georgia Tech “Bioneers” Plagiarize Mother Nature to Advance Science
October 29, 2005
“Copying the ideas of others is usually frowned upon, but when it comes to the work of Mother Nature, scientists are finding they can use nature as a template.”  That’s how an interesting press release from Georgia Tech begins (reproduced on EurekAlert) about a new center on campus called the Center for Biologically Inspired Design […]
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Mammals

Charity?  Chimps Don’t Get It – Nor Give It
October 28, 2005
The science news media took note of an experiment showing that chimpanzees don’t care to share, even when it costs them nothing (see the BBC News and Science Now, “Tightwad Primates”).  Joan Silk and a team at UCLA created an apparatus where a chimp could pull one rope to get a treat for itself, or […]
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Botany

It’s Official: Mangroves Would Have Prevented Most Tsunami Damage
October 28, 2005
EurekAlert summarized a paper in Science1 that confirmed an earlier claim (02/10/2005) that intact mangrove forests along the Asian coastlines would have prevented the bulk of damage and death from last year’s mega-tsunami.  A large, diverse research team from seven nations estimated that more than 90% of the damage could have been prevented by the […]
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