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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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Dumb Ideas

Fishing for Darwinian Stories
June 20, 2002
51; Stickleback fish can learn from each other where the best food sources are.  This proves you brain’s remarkable learning abilities have their roots in fish heads, according to science news sources this week.  Science Daily said the findings by UK scientists “show that the cognitive mechanisms underlying cumulative cultural evolution may be more prevalent […]
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Amazing Facts

Amazing Animals on Parade
June 20, 2002
You have to admire animals.  They have tricks humans still need to learn, and possess technologies that engineers are striving to imitate. Spiders:  Don’t let the black widow scare you; it’s only a picture on Science Daily.  Scientists are amazed at how these animals produce one of the best dragline silks in spiderdom.  It is […]
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Dumb Ideas

Media Becoming Ambivalent on How to Spin Evolution
June 20, 2002
Anti-evolutionists remain the whipping boys of science, but some reporters, at least, seem to be waffling on the effectiveness of the torture.  For others, the heat of the battle is apparently wearing them down.  Some even seem to be entertaining treasonous thoughts that the Darwinists are unable or unwilling to provide the promised reinforcements. Chimp […]
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Darwin and Evolution

A Hairy Evolution Story
May 20, 2002
51; A mammal hair was found in amber.  It is claimed to be 100 million years old, but it is identical to modern mammal hair.  What is the meaning of this find?  How should it be interpreted?  It may say more about the modern evolutionist than about evolution itself.     New Scientist told the […]
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Amazing Facts

Genetics: Alternate Reading Frames May Be Common
May 20, 2002
Imagine a book written in a language where there were no spaces, and every word was three letters long.  Now imagine that you could get one story by starting at the first letter, and a different story by starting at the second letter, and another by starting at the third letter.  That’s the situation with […]
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Amazing Facts

White Blood Cells Walk to Infection on Tiny Legs
May 20, 2002
51; How do white blood cells know where to go when infection strikes?  The cells have tiny little feet and crawl like millipedes, against the blood stream, if necessary, following signals from the infection site.  When they arrive, more signals tell them where to slip through the cells of the blood vessel to get to […]
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Dumb Ideas

Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week:  The Evolution of TV Dinners
April 20, 2002
Humans still have genetic memories of feasting and telling stories around the campfire, says Martin Jones at Cambridge University.  That’s why we gravitate toward eating TV dinners in front of the telly.  This opinion is expressed in all seriousness by United Press International, titled “Television dinners linked to evolution.”  Jones calls today’s TV dinners “today’s […]
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Amazing Facts

Teeth Resist Cracking
April 20, 2002
51; Here’s a story to share with your dentist.  You can crack a tooth, but it takes a lot of force.  This should be surprising, since tooth enamel is as brittle as glass.  The way the enamel develops, researchers found, absorbs excess energy and gives your teeth an extraordinary crack resistance.     “Human enamel […]
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Amazing Facts

Your Inner Postal Service
April 20, 2002
51; Zip codes – those five- or nine-digit numbers on mail – have an analogue in every one of your cells.  Like a city,1 a cell has information to ship from place to place.2  To make sure that the manufacturing instructions for protein parts arrive at the appropriate assembly site, the shipper puts a molecular […]
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Amazing Facts

Crows Use Tools in Sequence
April 20, 2002
51; Watch a one-minute video clip on the BBC News.  A New Caledonian crow in New Zealand figures out how to use three tools in sequence to get at food that is out of reach.  This amazing display of animal intelligence surprised researchers at the University of Auckland who already knew about the legendary problem-solving […]
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Amazing Facts

Flies Turn on a Dime
April 20, 2002
51; A fly can turn 180 degrees in one tenth the time it takes you to blink an eye.  Beating their wings 250 times a second, they don’t even have to think about each wing beat, PhysOrg said about studies at Brown University using high-speed cameras and image tracking software.  “[Attila] Bergou discovered that flies […]
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Amazing Facts

Bacterial Flagellum Can Tune Its Swim Speed with Network-Controlled Brakes
March 20, 2002
51; What’s new with flagella?  These are the favorite toys of intelligent design supporters, because they are irreducibly complex molecular machines that evolutionists rarely attempt to explain by a Darwinian process.  More fodder for their position comes from a paper in Cell1 that finds that bacteria can fine-tune their swimming velocity by means of a […]
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Dumb Ideas

Evolution Rules
March 20, 2002
51; It would be convenient if all a scientist had to do to prove his theory was declare it to be a law of nature.  Is that what scientists from UC Berkeley and Imperial College have done with evolution?  “First ‘rule’ of evolution suggests that life is destined to become more complex,” announced a press […]
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Dumb Ideas

Florida Wises Up and Teaches Evolution Uncritically
February 20, 2002
The Florida State Board of Education adopted, by a vote of 4 to 3, science standards that require the teaching of evolution as “the fundamental concept underlying all of biology” without critical analysis or alternatives.  Evolution News said that calling evolution a “scientific theory” instead of a scientific fact represented a meaningless compromise with the […]
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