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Did Evolution Hardwire Our Instincts?

September 25, 2007

Jeanna Brynner in Live Science is claiming that evolution hard-wired our brains to pay attention to people and animals more than to inanimate threats. This is based on a paper by evolutionary psychologists at UC Santa Barbara. The researchers say the finding supports the idea that natural selection molded mechanisms into our ancestors’ brains that […]

Dumb Ideas

Early Beetle Was Armed

September 23, 2007

According to Live Science, a beetle preserved in amber, dated at 100 million years old, was caught in the act of using chemical warfare. “Soldier beetles” capable of this kind of advanced defense system were not thought to have evolved till 60 million years later. This article contains several statements worthy of the […]

Dumb Ideas

Early Reptile Had Modern Ears

September 18, 2007

Modern ears are nothing new; they go back 260 million years. That’s the gist of a paper in PLoS ONE that reported on a Russian reptile fossil.1 The research team was surprised to discover that the creature had impedance-matched ears, a novelty thought to have evolved 50 million years later. Somehow this innovation survived one […]

Dumb Ideas

Dust to Dust, or Dust to Life?

September 17, 2007

National Geographic gave prominent press to last month’s theory of living dust (see 08/10/2007, bullet 1). Criticisms were mild; scientists were quoted who thought this claim raises interesting questions about the definition of life. Tsytovich’s ideas were described by Mihaly Horanyi (U of Colorado) as “amazing.” He said, “This is a very original, very intelligent […]

Dumb Ideas

Potatoes: Brain Food for Evolutionary Health

September 11, 2007

A claim that eating starchy foods, like potatoes, made men out of monkeys made it all the way to the BBC News. “Man’s ability to digest starchy foods like the potato may explain our success on the planet, genetic work suggests,” the subtitle read. Not only that, it claimed “these extra calories may have been […]

Amazing Facts

New World Record for Winged Migration

September 11, 2007

The BBC News reports that a female bar-tailed godwit flew 11,500km (almost 7200 mi) nonstop from Alaska to New Zealand. The journey took about a week. Observers at Massey University used electronic tags to catalog the birds’ flight. This distance is nearly double what ornithologists used to consider an “extremely long” flight. This […]

Dumb Ideas

Can Humans Use Evolution?

September 10, 2007

Evolution is being used. A press release from University of Wisconsin-Madison was titled, “Using evolution, UW team creates a template for many new therapeutic agents.” How does one use evolution? It continued, “By guiding an enzyme down a new evolutionary pathway, a team of University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers has created a new form of an […]

Amazing Facts

Eyes Do Precision Digital Sampling

September 8, 2007

What is the shutter speed of the eye? Have you ever considered this question? After all, the eye functions like a camera in some respects. Shutterbugs know that shutter speed and aperture are factors in proper exposure. Most of us know that the iris of the eye controls the aperture, but what controls the shutter […]

Birds

Birds Eat Dark Moths, Therefore God Does Not Exist

September 3, 2007

Michael Majerus watched birds eat peppered moths from his window for seven years (06/25/2004), then drew his conclusions. In a presentation to a science conference in Uppsala, Sweden on August 23, he said that the peppered moth story proves evolution, which means there is no supernatural being to save us, there is no second coming, […]

Dumb Ideas

Messy Evidence Proves Humans Evolved

September 1, 2007

An article from Live Science seems to suggest that the way to do science these days is to believe things in spite of the evidence – at least when it comes to human evolution. In a juxtaposition of imponderables that might make a schizophrenic feel at home, Meredith Small asserted that evolution is a fact […]

Dumb Ideas

Solar System Solved?

August 30, 2007

Those who deal in models of the origin of the solar system sometimes have to entertain themselves to overcome grief. See if you can detect this attitude in the following Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week from Space.com: “This has been a stumbling block for 30 years,” said Mordecai-Marc Mac Low, an astrophysicist at the […]

Darwin and Evolution

Evolution Takes Credit

August 24, 2007

It may be more blessed to give than to receive, but evolution often just takes.

Amazing Facts

Crows Use Tools on Tools

August 21, 2007

Crows can use one tool on another to get food. A report in Science Daily says they appear to use analogical reasoning, not just trial and error, to figure out how to manipulate objects. They used a short stick to get a longer stick out of a toolbox in order to reach a snack too […]

Dumb Ideas

SETI Camp Promotes Make Believe

August 17, 2007

“Every kid loves to play make believe,” wrote Lisa Grossman for Space.com’s “SETI Thursday” feature. How did Lisa spend her summer? Playing make believe with 16 undergraduates at a NSF- and NASA-funded SETI camp. “For many of us, the experience was nothing short of fantasy fulfillment,” she cheerfully said in her report entitled, “How I […]

Dumb Ideas

Artificial Selection Is Not Natural Selection

August 16, 2007

From Nature1 comes this point to ponder: Evolution has crafted thousands of enzymes that are efficient catalysts for a plethora of reactions. Human attempts at enzyme design trail far behind, but may benefit from exploiting evolutionary tactics. The subheading summarized a commentary by Michael P. Robertson and William G. Scott (UC Santa Cruz) on “directed […]

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