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Another Darwinian Assumption Overturned: Results “Too Radical”
June 7, 2005
Evolutionists are stunned at a study in comparative genomics performed by University of Chicago researchers that overturns a common belief about natural selection.  EurekAlert summarizes the finding: “The new data show that if more mutations show up at a gene, that gene tends to accept a higher percentage of those mutations.”  This means that mutations […]
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Uncategorized

Evangelical Christians Split on How to Handle Evolution
June 3, 2005
A dismal picture of controversy dividing Christian brother against brother, with no resolution in sight, is painted by Paul Nussbaum in the Philadelphia Inquirer.  He says evangelical Christians are not monolithic in their opposition to evolution, but as divided as much of the rest of the nation.  He quotes a spokesperson for the American Scientific […]
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Education

Who Wins and Loses in the Darwin Wars?
June 3, 2005
Sandra Lilley, writing in MSNBC News, pictures sad-faced students, whose scientific inquisitiveness has been stifled by the controversy over evolution.  The article starts with a touching photo of a young girl, a look of wonder in her eyes, examining a toy human skeleton.  “Science is becoming a political ‘hot potato’ for some students,” she describes, […]
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Birds

Soft T-Rex Tissue Claimed Bird-Like; Age Ignored
June 3, 2005
More details about the soft tissue found in a T. rex thigh bone (see 03/24/2005 story) were published in Science this week.1  Mary Schweitzer’s team claims to have found evidence of medullary bone [MB], a type of mineralized and vascularized bony tissue found only in certain birds during ovulation as a buffer against calcium loss.  […]
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Education

Kansas Debate Over ID Reverberates in Holland
June 3, 2005
“Is Holland becoming the Kansas of Europe?” asked Martin Enserink in Science this week.1  All that education minister Maria van der Hoeven wants to do is have some public debate about intelligent design, but the suggestion has caused an uproar among scientists who claim she wants to take Holland back to the Dark Ages.  On […]
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Darwin and Evolution

He’s Ba-a-a-ck: Lamarck Puts Pressure on Darwin – and ID, Too?
June 3, 2005
To historians of evolutionary theory, Lamarck is a 19th-century loser.  His hypothesis of “inheritance of acquired characteristics,” according to high school textbooks and common knowledge, was debunked by experiment, and overturned when Darwin proposed natural selection as a mechanism for evolution.  Why, then, does Massimo Pugliucci (Dept. of Ecology and Evolution, State University of New […]
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Dumb Ideas

Something from Nothing Dept.
June 2, 2005
How do you get optimization by chance?  In a Concepts piece in Nature this week,1 William J. Sutherland (U. of East Anglia, UK) suggested that the constraints of the environment will drive living systems toward optimal solutions.  He thinks that’s how “selective forces” shaped your teeth and jaw, for instance.  Economists and engineers use optimization […]
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Intelligent Design

ID Film To Be Aired at Smithsonian
June 1, 2005
The intelligent-design film The Privileged Planet will be shown at the Smithsonian on June 23.  See story on The Ames Tribune.  Pam Sheppard at AIG has a report also.  Following the showing at the National Museum of Natural History, the film will air on PBS stations around the country. Update 06/02/2005: The Smithsonian appears to […]
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Solar System

Jupiter Moon Throws Curve Ball
June 1, 2005
The little inner moon of Jupiter, Amalthea, isn’t dense enough.  A press release from Jet Propulsion Laboratory says that data from the Galileo spacecraft “shakes up long-held theories of how moons form around giant planets.”  Density of moons is supposed to decrease with radius around Jupiter, meaning that Amalthea should be the most solid.  Instead, […]
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Uncategorized

Mars Dry Areas More Extensive than Thought
June 1, 2005
If Mars had oceans or lakes, it wasn’t for long, at least in the Syrtis Major region.  Results of observations of the thermal emission imaging system (THEMIS) aboard the 2001 Mars Odyssey reveal about four times as much olivine as previously recognized in the Nili Fossae adjacent to the Syrtis volcanic shield.  Olivine quickly degrades […]
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Astronomy

Stars: Born of Violence, or Doing Violence to Theories?
May 31, 2005
Two stunning images from the giant orbiting telescopes are breeding tales of violence, but the reader can decide if the trauma is building stars and planets, or pummeling theories.  Space.com tells about the new Spitzer infrared photo of Eta Carina, announcing, “As they destroy the huge cloud that is their home, wildly energetic stars may […]
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Media

SETI Researcher Joins NG Imagination Fest
May 31, 2005
Space.Com writer Tariq Malik reviewed the National Geographic TV series Extraterrestrial that envisions flying whales, giraffe-like predators and flesh-eating tadpoles on a mythical world undergoing its own evolution.  “Using computer models and armed with basic evolutionary theory, the scientists imagined not only what conditions might exist on their theoretical planets,” writes Malik, “but also how […]
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Health

Health Beliefs Re-examined
May 30, 2005
Scientists continue to find new things that undermine commonly-held beliefs about health and the environment.  For example, Shower power:  Drinking more and showering less may not help conserve water, say Australian scientists reported by EurekAlert.  Sun bath:  We were always warned to keep out of the midday sun to avoid cancer, right?  Science Daily talks […]
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Uncategorized

Darwinists Excuse Prejudice as a Hard-wired, Common-Sense Evolutionary Adaptation
May 27, 2005
This week’s Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week comes from an Arizona State evo-psych press release echoed on News-Medical.net and EurekAlert: “Contrary to what most people believe, the tendency to be prejudiced is a form of common sense, hard-wired into the human brain through evolution as an adaptive response to protect our prehistoric ancestors from […]
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Education

Can the Courts Define Science?
May 27, 2005
Last December, the ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State filed a lawsuit in Pennsylvania against the Dover Area School District that was considering adding intelligent design material to the curriculum.  The lawsuit attempts to define intelligent design as “inherently religious” and therefore unacceptable in science classrooms.  The move appears aimed at […]
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