VIEW HEADLINES ONLY
Education

Legality Argument
February 3, 2004
The Discovery Institute has posted remarks by David DeWolf, a law professor, to the Darby, Montana School District.  He addresses concerns that have been raised about the legality and constitutionality of a proposed change to their science policy that would permit “teaching the controversy” about origins in the science classroom. Has it come to this, […]
CONTINUE READING
Darwin and Evolution

E-I-E-I-O in Old McDarwin’s Animal Farm
February 3, 2004
Some beliefs about origins are more equal than others.
CONTINUE READING
Solar System

Accretion: The Missing Link in Planetary Evolution
February 3, 2004
Every school child has seen artwork of planets evolving from a disk of dust and gas around a star like our sun, but there’s a missing link in the story. How did the dust particles stick together?
CONTINUE READING
Dinosaurs

How Snakes Lost Their Limbs
February 2, 2004
Penn State scientists have a story for how snakes, which presumably evolved from lizards, lost their legs.  They had to burrow through tight places.     Part of their story involved disproving that snakes evolved from sea-going reptiles, like mosasaurs, explains the press release from Penn State’s Eberly College of Science.  They compared genes from […]
CONTINUE READING
Dating Methods

Hundreds of Whales Buried Suddenly in Diatoms
February 2, 2004
A remarkable fossil find has been found in Peru: 346 whales buried in diatomaceous earth. The preservation of the whales is so pristine and complete, the authors of the paper in the Feb. 2004 issue of Geology1 conclude that the whales had to be buried rapidly, in days or weeks. If so, it represents a […]
CONTINUE READING
Fossils

Extinction Puzzle Explained as Selection Effect
February 1, 2004
It’s not evolution, it’s statistics.  That’s the conclusion of Robert Scotland and Michael Sanderson in the Jan. 30 issue of Science.  What’s the puzzle? When biodiversity is examined in the context of species richness, a consistent feature emerges: Most taxonomic groups are species-poor, relatively few are species-rich, and the frequency distribution has the shape of […]
CONTINUE READING
Dumb Ideas

Proof of Life in Martian Meteorite Alleged – Again
January 30, 2004
Some Aussies are trying to scoop the Mars prize, it seems from a headline in the down-under Daily Telegraph.  While two American rovers are busily sniffing about for evidence of water (as a prerequisite for life) on opposite sides of the surface of Mars, the Australians are saying, “No worries, mate,” they already found Martian […]
CONTINUE READING
Dumb Ideas

Georgia to Teach Evolution, but Avoid the E Word
January 30, 2004
It’s not “evolution,” it’s “biological changes over time,”  asserts Georgia Superintendent of Schools Kathy Cox.  But sometimes good intentions can make both sides of a dispute upset, reports MSNBC News.  Pro-evolutionists think the state is trying to water down the teaching of evolution, and anti-evolutionists think changing the word does not change the meaning.  Cox […]
CONTINUE READING
Dumb Ideas

For Complex Life, Just Add Oxygen
January 29, 2004
When you take in a breath of fresh air, you let in a lively but dangerous molecule that would kill you if it were not that your cells have elaborate controls to utilize its energy for good and avoid its damaging potential.  Oxygen makes forests burn to ashes but also powers your muscles.  Astrobiologists realize […]
CONTINUE READING
Intelligent Design

How to Get Engineering Without an Engineer
January 28, 2004
The study of complex systems is all the rage these days (see, for example, 08/18/2003 entry).  In the Jan. 28 issue of Nature,1 J. M. Ottino (Northwestern University) mixes up biology with human design in his Concepts essay on “Engineering complex systems.”     “Complex systems,” he explains, “can be identified by what they do […]
CONTINUE READING
Intelligent Design

10 More Questions
January 27, 2004
As a follow-up to Jonathan Wells’ popular (or notorious, depending on your point of view) 10 Questions to Ask Your Biology Teacher About Evolution, William Dembski has come up with 10 Questions to Ask Your Biology Teacher About Design.     Dembski has also recently published a new book, The Design Revolution, “Answering the Toughest […]
CONTINUE READING
Dumb Ideas

The New Phrenology Ostracizes Neanderthals
January 27, 2004
Scientists contrasted different points on Neanderthal skulls to modern human skulls, and concluded Neanderthals were a separate species.  The New York Times report by John Noble Wilford says that not all scientists are convinced, however, by the analysis published by Katerina Harvati et al. in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences1 Jan. 26 […]
CONTINUE READING
Origin of Life

Early Oxygen Causes Evolutionary Gasps
January 24, 2004
The rise of oxygen in the primitive Earth’s atmosphere has been pushed back 100 million more years, according to Sid Perkins writing for the Jan. 24 issue of Science News.  This is based on studies of sediments in South Africa.  Though estimated at just a millionth of today’s concentrations, the finding comes as a surprise.  […]
CONTINUE READING
Fossils

La Brea Tar Pits Trap Scientists
January 24, 2004
Visitors to the La Brea Tar Pits are not told the whole truth about the fossils.
CONTINUE READING
Astronomy

Should Cosmologists Get Worried Yet?
January 23, 2004
The unexpected finding of mature galaxies in the early universe (see 01/02/2004) has Robert Irion worried, but he seems surprised the theorists are not.  Reporting on last week’s meeting of the American Astronomical Society in the Jan. 23 issue of Science,1 he titles his article, “Early Galaxies Baffle Observers, But Theorists Shrug.”  He begins: “It’s […]
CONTINUE READING
Posts by Date
[archives type="yearly"]