VIEW HEADLINES ONLY
Amazing Facts

Seeing Sound and Hearing Light
November 28, 2009
Synesthesia, the syndrome in which people’s senses become confused, may not be so off the wall.  Research at the University of British Columbia “flips the traditional view of how we perceive the world on its head.” Experiments show that our brains perceive the world by synthesizing multiple inputs.  The latest evidence of this is that […]
CONTINUE READING
Amazing Facts

Gap Between Origin-of-Life Research and Simplest Life Grows
November 27, 2009
Evolutionists are celebrating experiments that allegedly showed RNA chains can assemble in water – given nucleotides to start with (see Science Daily).  The suggestive steps over the gap from nonlife to life should be tempered with other discoveries that life is anything but simple.     New Scientist reported today that a “‘Simple’ bacterium shows […]
CONTINUE READING
Amazing Facts

Hammerhead Sharks Have 360-degree Stereo Vision
November 23, 2009
Scientists at Florida Atlantic University have found that the strange heads of hammerhead sharks give them exceptional binocular vision.  This has long been debated.  By placing electrodes in the eyes of three hammerhead species, and comparing the visual overlap they obtain compared to other sharks, the scientists confirmed that there is a “massive 32-degree overlap” […]
CONTINUE READING
Amazing Facts

Giraffe Has Supercharged Heart
November 22, 2009
In many ways, the giraffe has been an icon of evolution.  Why, and how, did it get its long neck?  These questions have often been the focal point of a clash of Darwinian and Lamarckian explanations.  Today, many just assume it evolved somehow.  For instance, BBC News article stated flatly, “A giraffe’s heart has evolved […]
CONTINUE READING
Amazing Facts

Insect Wing Photocopied for Good
November 15, 2009
Biomimetics is the new science of imitating nature – but why not save a step, and just copy the design directly?  That’s what Aussie and British researchers did.  They wanted a self-cleaning surface that could repel moisture and dust, so they made a template of an insect wing.  And why not?  “Insects are incredible nanotechnologists,” […]
CONTINUE READING
Dumb Ideas

Darwin Marketed to Kids
November 10, 2009
There’s a move on to get Darwin’s ideas taught to tots.  Britain is giving a “birthday present to Darwin,” wrote Andrew Copson for The Guardian, in the form of national curriculum for primary schools that will mention evolution for the first time – and prohibit teaching of creationism or intelligent design in science lessons.   […]
CONTINUE READING
Dumb Ideas

Inefficiency Made You Complex
November 3, 2009
Remember the old Darwinian story?  Slight variations that prove beneficial are naturally selected when they help an organism adapt to its environment.  Wrong.  According to Ariel Fernandez of Rice University, we humans are complex because natural selection is inefficient.  He said, “the origins of some key aspects of the evolution of complexity may have their […]
CONTINUE READING
Amazing Facts

To Advance Science, Imitate Nature
November 1, 2009
Biomimetics – the imitation of nature – continues to be one of the hottest areas in science.  Here are a few of the latest findings coming from the world of living creatures. Fish robot:  National Geographic News shows a photo of the latest thing in underwater robotics: a robotic submarine modeled after the Amazonian knifefish.  […]
CONTINUE READING
Dumb Ideas

Can SETI Be Quantified?
October 31, 2009
What is the probability of finding intelligent life on other planets?  In 1960, Frank Drake attempted to quantify that question with his famous Drake Equation (see MSNBC and NOVA, which allows you to estimate the probability with an interactive meter).  Trouble is, Stanley Miller and Leslie Orgel of primordial soup fame thought it was meaningless.  […]
CONTINUE READING
Dumb Ideas

Cambrian Explosion Solved: Elementary, My Dear Darwin
October 28, 2009
Two articles announced solutions to the evidential problem that most troubled Darwin – the sudden appearance of complex animals at the base of the Cambrian fossil record.  Both of them involve chemical elements.  The only difference is which element.     Science Daily announced a “Novel Evolutionary Theory For The Explosion Of Life.”  The article […]
CONTINUE READING
Dumb Ideas

How the Octopus Built Its Own Brain for Better Fishing
October 25, 2009
The octopus was glad to see fish evolve, but needed a bigger brain to catch them, so it evolved one of the most complex brains in the animal kingdom.  Is that the gist of this story in the Science blog Origins?  Greg Miller wrote in the style of a children’s storybook: Cephalopods—octopuses, squid, and their […]
CONTINUE READING
Dumb Ideas

Beethoven: It All Began With a Thump
October 17, 2009
Live Science in all seriousness, “When monkeys drum, they activate brain networks linked with communication, new findings that suggest a common origin of primate vocal and nonvocal communication systems and shed light on the origins of language and music.”     Choi reported on work at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics to determine […]
CONTINUE READING
Dumb Ideas

What’s in a Name?  Sima Fossils Confuse Human Evolution Story
October 14, 2009
“A hush fell over the room….”  Ian Tattersall had just astonished paleoanthropologists gathered for a meeting on human origins in Gibraltar.  The group was puzzling over a treasure trove of hominin bones found in the mid-1990s at Sima de los Huesos in Spain.  What should they be called?     The co-discoverer, Juan Luis Arsuaga, […]
CONTINUE READING
Dumb Ideas

Fossil Said to Enlighten Evolution of the Ear
October 13, 2009
Did mammal ear bones evolve?  If so, it was not a straightforward Darwinian progression.  Authors of a paper in Science who announced a new Cretaceous mammal fossil from China had to invoke convoluted explanations to keep the evolution story intact. Science Daily shows an artist’s conception of Maotherium, a chipmunk-sized mammal said to have lived […]
CONTINUE READING
Amazing Facts

DNA Organization Is Fractal
October 13, 2009
How would you pack spaghetti in a basketball (07/28/2004) such that you could get to any strand quickly?  You might try the “fractal globule” method.  You form little knots, or globules, on each strand.  These become like beads on a string.  Now you fold the beads into globules, and then fold those into higher-level globules.  […]
CONTINUE READING
All Posts by Date
[archives type="yearly" cat_id="2"]