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Intelligent Design

SETI at 50: Onward with Style
September 20, 2002
51; It’s been fifty years since the first scientific paper suggested listening in on the stellar radio dial for signs of intelligence.1  Nature celebrated the occasion with two articles and an Editorial that said,2 “Despite the long odds against success, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence has come a long way.”     SETI sure has […]
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Dinosaurs

Waltzing with Dinosaurs
September 20, 2002
51; An international team of paleontologists wrote a kind of “State of the Tyrannosaur Address” in Science last week,1 boasting about all that is known of these creatures: Tyrannosaurs, the group of dinosaurian carnivores that includes Tyrannosaurus rex and its closest relatives, are icons of prehistory.  They are also the most intensively studied extinct dinosaurs, […]
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Amazing Facts

Big Bird Was Scary
September 20, 2002
51; A giant fossil bird with a serrated-edge beak was found in Chile, reported Science Daily, PhysOrg, Live Science, and New Scientist.  The projections on its beak look like teeth but are not true teeth.  They probably helped the sea bird hold onto fish.  The artist reconstruction gives the bird a scary-looking demeanor.     […]
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Bible and Theology

Biblical History News
August 20, 2002
Little by little, the archaeologist’s spade helps shed light on Biblical history – that is, when not hindered by wars and conflicts.  Biblical Archaeology Society published some interesting news on its website and in the Sept-Oct issue of Biblical Archaeology Review. Royal portrait:  The magazine contains a report by renowned Israeli archaeologist Gabriel Barkay of […]
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Fossils

Cambrian Explosion Still Explosive
August 20, 2002
51; Two new papers about Cambrian and Precambrian fossils did nothing to help soften the blow of the Cambrian explosion – the sudden appearance of all the animal body plans in the geological blink of an eye.  They essentially restated the problem for Darwin, who hoped that fossil discoveries would fill in the gaps where […]
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Fossils

Soft Squid Ink Sac Claimed to Be 150 Million Years Old
August 20, 2002
51; The BBC News announced the discovery of a fossil squid with its ink sac still intact.  “The fossil, thought to be 150 million years old, was found when a rock was cracked open, revealing the one-inch-long black ink sac.”  The ink has been sent to Yale for analysis.  An article on the Daily Mail […]
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Cell Biology

Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week:  Let Darwin Take Over
August 20, 2002
Jack Szostak (Harvard Medical Center) wins this week’s prize for a comment in an Associated Press article (see PhysOrg) claiming that scientists will create life in a test tube within 10 years.  Szostak was explaining the process of creating a cell membrane to the reporter: His idea is that once the container is made, if […]
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Dinosaurs

Dinos Found in Spain, Croatia
July 20, 2002
Dinosaur fossils continue to be discovered around the world.  The BBC news hints that surprises may be forthcoming from a new cache in Spain that has yielded stegosaurs, crocodilians and carnivorous dinosaurs, and a pelvic bone possibly from Diplodocus.  On a resort island of Croatia, trackways of titanosaurs have been discovered, reports EurekAlert.  The BBC […]
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Early Man

Computer Model Claims Lucy Walked Upright
July 20, 2002
A computer robot model of the gait of Australopithecus afarensis (aka, Lucy), reported in the BBC News, suggests that she walked upright.  This is partly on the skeletal structure of the foot and the distance between the Laetoli footprints preserved in fossil ash, where are claimed to date from the same time period Lucy lived.  […]
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Intelligent Design

Depressed Kerry Supporters Find New Cause: Fight Creationism
July 20, 2002
A grass-roots group of Virginia liberal Democrats has found a new cause to lift them out of their depression after John Kerry’s defeat last fall, according to a Washington Post article reprinted by MSNBC News: “Keep Virginia evolving.”  Their chosen mission is to defend evolution from intrusions by the intelligent design movement and conservative Republicans […]
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Amazing Facts

Harnessing Cellular Machines for Humans
July 20, 2002
The cell is loaded with molecular machines, so why reinvent the wheel?  or the whole truck?  Martin G. L. van den Heuvel and Cees Dekker wrote in Science that engineers ought to put the existing technology to work.1  The biological cell is equipped with a variety of molecular machines that perform complex mechanical tasks such […]
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Bible and Theology

Only Atheists Need Apply
July 20, 2002
51; He’s a Christian, yes, but he is also a leading American scientist and a harsh critic of intelligent design.  He supports research on embryonic stem cells and upholds Darwin’s theory of evolution completely.  That’s not enough to get Francis Collins off the hook with the scientific establishment.  Both Nature and Science expressed “serious misgivings” […]
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Cell Biology

“Genomic Junk” Is Cell’s Air-Traffic Control
July 20, 2002
51; Linc-RNAs (large intervening non-coding RNAs) have been promoted from junk molecules to air traffic controllers.  A mystery about these transcripts of DNA that are not translated into proteins is being explained.     Science Daily reported on work at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and the Broad Institute that found these RNA molecules […]
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Solar System

A “Completely Different Slant” on Solar System Formation
July 20, 2002
51; “Did great balls of fire form the planets?” New Scientist asks.  A new theory “challenges the notion that the solar system started out as a placid sea of dust motes which simply clumped together to form planets.” If accepted, it “puts a completely different slant on what happened in the early solar system in […]
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Biomimetics

Mutating Evolution Into Design
July 20, 2002
51; The word evolve gets used in funny ways.  As Paul Nelson has noted, it often becomes a Designer substitute.  Look how an article in New Scientist employed it: Could a 3D printer help to create in minutes what nature took millions of years to evolve – the perfect insect wing? Tiny robotic insects would […]
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