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Amazing Facts

Mother-of-Pearl Inspires Materials Science
July 5, 2007
It’s not only beautiful, it’s strong.  EurekAlert described how scientists are intrigued by mother-of-pearl, also called nacre, because of its strength: you can drive a truck over it and it will not break.  It is 3,000 times more resistant to fracture than the aragonite from which the oyster makes it.  95% of it self-assembles in […]
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Dumb Ideas

Evolutionist Trains Toddler to Adore Darwin
July 3, 2007
Marc Hauser is an evolutionary psychologist at Harvard who believes human morals and language evolved from ape-like ancestors.1  He was interviewed in Current Biology,2 and asked the usual question – and gave the usual answer with a surprising personal twist: Do you have a scientific hero? When my youngest daughter was about three years old, […]
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Dumb Ideas

A Brain Emerged for Such a Worm as I
July 2, 2007
With no room for discussion or Q&A, a press release from European Molecular Biology Laboratory asserted, “Modern brains have an ancient core.”  How ancient?  At least as far back as the marine ragworm.  Continuing the confident assertions, it went on to say, “Multifunctional neurons that sense the environment and release hormones are the evolutionary basis […]
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Amazing Facts

Health News that Brings Hope
July 1, 2007
Why do we never see articles claiming that exercise is bad?  Here are some more reasons to get moving. Work your brain:  Who wouldn’t mind a few more brain cells?  EurekAlert reported research from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden that exercise can stimulate the formation of new brain cells.  They think this helps explain why […]
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Dumb Ideas

Darwin’s House: A Religious Shrine?
June 28, 2007
Britain withdrew Darwin’s home, Downe House (outside London), from consideration as a UN World Heritage Site, and Nature seemed downright disappointed.1  An article quoted Darwin scholar James Moore saying, “Muslims go to Mecca, Christians go to Jerusalem, Darwinians go to Downe.”  This seems to equate Darwinians with believers in a religion, but Nature quoted this […]
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Amazing Facts

Our Complex Brains: Lessons from Phrenology
June 25, 2007
This is your brain on science: it is too complex for simplistic diagrams.  Back in the 19th century, the “science” of phrenology was in full swing.  Phrenologists divided the brain into more than two dozen regions of “mental faculties” that controlled such things as instincts for eating and sex, sensation of color, language ability, and […]
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Bible and Theology

The Evolution of Pride: Psychology Trumps the Bible?
June 19, 2007
“The Bible got it wrong,” announced a subtitle on Science Daily: pride doesn’t come before a fall (Proverbs 16:18).  A proud look and haughty eyes may be the first two of the Bible’s seven deadly sins (Proverbs 6:16-19), but psychologist Jessica Tracy (U of British Columbia) begs to differ.  She says pride can be a […]
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Amazing Facts

Why Your Eyes Jitter
June 18, 2007
The coach’s advice “Keep your eye on the ball” is impossible, because your eyes are constantly in motion with tiny jerks called fixational eye movements or saccades.  Why do the eyes move all the time?  Some scientists at Boston University decided to find out.  Reporting in Nature,1 they found that saccades help you discriminate fine […]
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Amazing Facts

Plants’ International Travel Upsets Evolutionary Idea
June 16, 2007
They may be rooted in soil, but plants really get around.  Some of them make it around the world.  One example has upset a long-believed evolutionary idea.     First of all, plants have a social life.  National Geographic published a story about how plants socialize and communicate.  “Plants have family values, too, it seems, […]
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Dumb Ideas

The Evolution of Vomit
June 14, 2007
Upchucking “could have an adaptive value in evolution,” wrote Dan Jones in Nature1 in a news feature about moral psychology.  Why are we disgusted at certain things, like maggots and rotting food?  Evolution, he asserted without a burp, throwing in disgusting things like OPM and OPI (other people’s morals and other people’s ideologies) — Evolution […]
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Dumb Ideas

Invent Animals: Just Add Phosphorus
June 11, 2007
“Phosphate does a body good,” announced Leslie Mullen in an article for Astrobiology Magazine, a NASA website.  So good, in fact, it builds whole new body plans.  Her story suggests that the Cambrian explosion was due to a rise in phosphate in the oceans.     In the Cambrian explosion, virtually all the animal phyla […]
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Amazing Facts

Video Clip:  The Rich Little Bird
June 7, 2007
A popular video clip has been circulating around the internet for over a year.  It shows an Australian lyre bird imitating other birds and man-made sounds.  Click here to watch the 3.5 minute performance.  Narrated by David Attenborough, it was voted the #1 most popular Attenborough moment from the naturalist’s TV shows. Speaks for itself.  […]
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Amazing Facts

Color-Blind Cephalopods Perform Colorful Camouflage Tricks
June 6, 2007
Roger Hanlon has studied octopi, squid and cuttlefish for decades.  He stands in awe of their ability to camouflage themselves.  In a Primer article for Current Biology,1 he detailed some of their sleight-of-skin magic tricks.     His article has frames from a movie clip that show an octopus changing its skin from plain to […]
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Dumb Ideas

Did Walking Evolve in the Trees?
June 4, 2007
The news media are all echoing a report from Science1 that orangutan behavior in trees tells us something about the evolution of human bipedalism (see National Geographic, Fox News, and MSNBC News).  If this new view gains acceptance, it means the old iconic image of man emerging upright from a stooped-over ape posture (05/03/2007) is […]
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Dumb Ideas

How Best to Propagate Darwin’’s “Science”
May 31, 2007
Two book reviews recently discussed the problem of “scientific illiteracy” in society, which the authors equated with doubts about Darwinian evolution.
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