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Cool Bird Tricks

May 19, 2009

Evidence continues to mount that a lot of capability is packed into a little bird’s brain. We should use the phrase bird-brain to honor smart animals. I C U: Mockingbirds can recognize individual humans. Disturb a mockingbird nest, and the parents will single you out from a crowd and go into attack mode, researchers at […]

Dumb Ideas

Junk-DNA Stock Tumbles

May 18, 2009

Those investing credibility in the concept of “junk DNA” suffered more losses this week. Repeated hits to the paradigm that portions of non-coding DNA are useless leftovers of evolution make a recovery unlikely. In Science,1 researchers from Princeton and Indiana University reported a function for transposons and the genes that act on them, […]

Amazing Facts

Cuttlefish Inspire Reflective Screens

May 14, 2009

“Cuttlefish are masters of disguise, able to change their skin color in less than a second to hide from predators or draw in prey for the kill,” begins an article on MSNBC News. A team at MIT, fascinated with the physics of this capability, tried to imitate it. They found they could electrically control the […]

Dumb Ideas

Survival of the Slowest

May 11, 2009

Without stopping to think, the BBC News claimed that evolution is slowing snails down. “Natural selection is favouring snails with reduced metabolic rates, researchers in Chile have discovered.” Why would evolution do such a thing? Isn’t the proverbial slowest of beasts already at risk of predators? Not necessarily. Look on the positive side: “Snails with […]

Darwin and Evolution

Evolution Does What Comes Physically

May 7, 2009

Two scientists believe they have unified biology and physics into one law that both animals and falling rocks obey. They call it the “constructal law.” This “universal principle of evolution” explains the “universal design principles” that make fish swim and birds fly – the “physics of evolution.” Even if evolution does not predict what animals […]

Dumb Ideas

Mooning the Public: Life Sells

April 27, 2009

Advertisers have known for a long time that sex sells. That’s why ads often include a scantily-clad woman standing next to the pickup truck for sale. It seems that in planetary science, life sells. An icy moon can be a pretty dull thing, but announce that there might be life there, and eye appeal jumps. […]

Dumb Ideas

Publish Your Kooky Idea

April 22, 2009

Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute has a solution for sorting science from pseudoscience: publish. In the weekly SETI article for April 16 on Space.com, he said he gets lots of wacky theories in the mail and email. What’s the best way to sift through claims and find the gems? Publication. Shostak acknowledged […]

Dinosaurs

How Valid Is Computerized Dinosaur Reconstruction?

April 18, 2009

Can you reconstruct a dinosaur on a computer? Of course you can. The question is how accurate it reflects something no one has ever seen. Live Science told about Peter Falkingham at the University of Manchester who is using “genetic algorithms” and simulating evolution to figure out how dinosaurs walked. A dinosaur’s gait […]

Amazing Facts

Better Solar Cells with Diatoms

April 14, 2009

Let’s start with the operative quote before the subject matter: “Nature is the engineer, not high tech tools. This is providing a more efficient, less costly way to produce some of the most advanced materials in the world.” OK, now the subject: how to build better solar cells, by imitating diatoms. See the story on […]

Dumb Ideas

Did Nature Dictate Biological Codes?

April 9, 2009

Pangloss was a character in Voltaire’s Candide made to caricature philosophers who give simplistic, optimistic answers to difficult questions. Dr. Pangloss was fond of saying, a la Leibniz, that we live in the best of all possible worlds. One evolutionist described a theory by two other evolutionists as possibly a “Panglossian argument” about the origin […]

Amazing Facts

Your Eye Works a Precision Jigsaw Puzzle

April 7, 2009

You have twin 125 megapixel video cameras in your eyeballs. Each pixel, a rod or cone connected to a neuron, sees only a small bit of the total image. How do these bits, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, fit together? Scientists at the Salk Institute have found that they are finely tuned to fit […]

Dumb Ideas

Can Evolution Be Programmed?

April 6, 2009

Some researchers are employing “evolutionary computing” as an algorithm to solve problems. But is it really evolution? Evolved machines: A company called Evolved Machines in Palo Alto announced a 40-teraflop machine that will be used for the “artificial evolution of neural circuitry” (see press release on United Business Media). “It is self-evident that in biological […]

Amazing Facts

Quick, Make Like an Ant

April 5, 2009

Ants deserve a lot of respect, despite being a nuisance in the kitchen. The very fact they are so effective at bugging us is a testament to their ingenuity in foraging, communicating and organizing themselves into successful colonies. We might just gain some valuable knowledge by watching them more closely. Foraging: Live Science says that […]

Dumb Ideas

Evolutionists Tell Us What Nature Intended

April 3, 2009

Can nature intend anything? A true materialist lacks access to the concept of purpose and intentionality. Whatever is, is. Nevertheless, some staunch evolutionists avail themselves of the purpose-driven life by telling us what evolution intended. Meredith Small tells us on Live Science, for instance, that nature did not intend single parents. Having become […]

Amazing Facts

Envying the Tooth of the Sea Urchin

March 31, 2009

Did you know the lowly sea urchin has a tooth? It’s not just any tooth: it’s “a remarkable grinding tool,” according to a team of international scientists. They even used the word “exquisite” in the title of their paper in PNAS.1 Humans might benefit from knowing more about this tool. “The improved understanding of these […]

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