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Do Birds of a Feather Demonstrate Parallel Evolution?

March 19, 2004

A puzzling phenomenon emerges from evolutionary considerations of bird plumage coloration and patterning. Hopi E. Hoekstra and Trevor Price describe the problem in the March 19 issue of Science1 and provide examples: The pages of any bird guide reveal a spectacular diversity of colors and color patterns. Although color patterns vary within species, often they […]

Terrestrial Zoology

Butterflies in Amber Stun Discoverers

March 17, 2004

New Scientist reports that exquisitely-preserved butterflies have been found in amber from the Dominican Republic. “It was just incredible,” exclaimed a Smithsonian researcher. It’s no different than if you took a modern day butterfly and put it under a light microscope.” But this prompted a puzzle: the amber is estimated to be up to 25 […]

Dumb Ideas

The Evolution of Cultural Diversity

March 17, 2004

Darwinism can explain anything these days, including everything from war (see 09/16/2003 headline) to the Golden Rule (see 02/22/2004 headline), so why not culture? All the arts, sciences, and languages are candidates for naturalistic explanation this week. The self-proclaimed successors of Adam Smith, Mark Pagel and Ruth Mace, put forward their conjectures in “The cultural […]

Early Man

Neanderthals Not Our Cousins, Expert Claims

March 16, 2004

The news media are reporting claims that Neanderthals and modern humans never interbred, based on work from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Both EurekAlert and Nature Science Update repeat the claim that the institute’s study of DNA and bones from four Neanderthals and five modern humans from scattered locations rules out any interbreeding. […]

Cosmology

Privileged Planet Website Opens

March 16, 2004

A website featuring a new book by Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay Richards, The Privileged Planet, has opened. The subtitle of the book is How Our Place in the Cosmos Is Designed for Discovery. The authors take issue with pessimistic views, such as those of Steven Weinberg and Carl Sagan, that our planet is “pointless” or […]

Politics and Ethics

Scientific Elitism Trumps Democracy

March 12, 2004

They don’t want it, but they’re going to get it. Britons have expressed outrage and anger over genetically-modified foods, such as pesticide-resistant maize, reports Jim Giles in Nature.1 But the government has listened to scientists who have assured government ministers it is safe. On March 9, they approved commercial planting of GM maize “in the […]

Dumb Ideas

Much Ado About Nothing

March 12, 2004

How much can you say about nothing? Some people can say quite a lot. One astrobiologist just wrote a large book about it: Lonely Planets: The Natural Philosophy of Alien Life by David Grinspoon (Harper Collins, 2003). Larry R. Nittler reviewed this new book in the March 12 issue of Science.1 Nittler describes […]

Uncategorized

Major Cave with Fossils Found in Arizona

March 11, 2004

Arizona Central has announced a major cave discovery east of Tucson. The cave, named La Tetera, was discovered eight years ago but was kept secret till today. The first human exploration only began New Years Day 2002. The cave, located within Colossal Cave State Park, is said to rival or exceed Kartchner Caverns in the […]

Cosmology

The Evolution of Omnipotence

March 11, 2004

With a headline like “New Theory: Universe Created by Intelligent Being,” one might think that National Geographic News has gone creationist and rediscovered Genesis 1. The opposite would be true. The article by John Roach explores the radical thinking of a lawyer/scientist named James Gardner, who has just published a book, Biocosm: The New Scientific […]

Education

Evolution Battle Heats Up in Ohio

March 10, 2004

CNN has reported that the Ohio school board voted 13-5 in favor of an optional set of lessons called “Critical Analysis of Evolution.” The usual opponents are lining up on both sides; some scientific organizations are claiming it is a “religious effort cloaked as science,” but others consider it a victory for students and for […]

Astronomy

Hubble Deep Field Surpassed: Ultra Deep Field

March 9, 2004

If you remember the awe of seeing the first Hubble Deep Field image in 1995, check out the new HUDF: Hubble Ultra Deep Field (see also the New Scientist report). The field of view, just one-tenth the size of the full moon, is a composite of 800 images taken for 11.3 days. The 1995 image […]

Amazing Facts

Chameleon Tongue Beats Jet Aircraft

March 8, 2004

Did you know a chameleon’s tongue is so fast as it shoots out toward its prey, it reaches 50 G’s – five times faster than a fighter jet can accelerate? Science Now describes how the chameleon does it. Scientists only recently found out the secret with high-speed photography and careful examination of the tongue structure, […]

Geology

Rethinking the Geological Layers

March 5, 2004

One of the most formative ideas in Darwin’s intellectual journey was the concept of gradualism, the principle of “small agencies and their cumulative effects.” This idea became a dominant motif in his philosophy of life. Describing how the assumption of gradualism permeated his last book (on earthworms) shortly before his death, Janet Browne, in her […]

Early Man

The Paleoanthropologist Mantra: We Need More Fossils!

March 5, 2004

Everyone join in and chant “the mantra of all paleontologists: We need more fossils!” If you are a seeker of bones that might give clues of human ancestry, repeating this phrase might relieve stress. In quotes above is the concluding line of an editorial by David R. Begun in the March 5 issue […]

Cell Biology

Cellular Cowboys: How the Cell Rounds Up Chromosomes Before Dividing

March 4, 2004

Cell division is like cowboys lassoing cattle and pulling ones that match into two identical corrals.

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