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Dumb Ideas

Darwin Credited with Intelligent Design
November 14, 2006
Exclusive  In an unusual mix of metaphors, a pioneer in advanced computing technology gave a lecture at JPL on 11/14 entitled, “Intelligent Design: Using Evolution to Create Complex Systems.”  By evolution, it was clear that astronomer Dr. Richard Terrile meant the Darwinian kind.  The point of his presentation was that humans can mimic the processes […]
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Amazing Facts

Brain Compensates for Eye Movements
November 10, 2006
Your eyes are continually jumping in little movements called saccades, yet your brain interprets the view as a steady image.  How can that be?  Scientists at the University of Pittsburgh are on the track of finding out “why our shifty eyes don’t drive us crazy.”  They’ve discovered that the signal that sends a command to […]
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Dumb Ideas

Urchin Genome Hyped by Media as Human Cousin
November 10, 2006
The publication of a new genome for a plant or animal is becoming routine.  For some reason, the news media instantly jumped on claims that the genome of the sea urchin, published in Science, means that evolution is all but figured out, and that we should each feel a special place in our hearts for […]
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Dumb Ideas

Junk Is the Essence of Mankind
November 9, 2006
Christians may proclaim “God don’t make no junk” but evolutionists boast of our junky heritage.  Erika Check wrote in Nature this week,1 “It’s the junk that makes us human.”  She was referring to non-coding DNA, long considered “junk DNA.”  There is growing awareness that these sections of unclear function are involved in the regulation of […]
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Amazing Facts

Bacterial Flagellum Multitasking and Assembly Described
November 8, 2006
Since the bacterial flagellum has become a de facto icon of the intelligent design movement, it’s instructive to see what new discoveries come to light on the molecular machine par excellence.  Two papers appeared recently. Ferry Boats:  A Cambridge team publishing in PNAS1 studied how the parts get to the assembly site.  The studied one […]
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Dumb Ideas

Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week:  It’s a Gas
November 8, 2006
This week’s entry by Sara Goudarzi in Live Science requires no comment.  The title of the article is, “Life’s Origin a Gas.” Life on Earth emerged out of thin air, scientists now say.     By mimicking in a lab the gases that could have been present on early Earth, researchers have concluded that a […]
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Amazing Facts

You’ll Love Beetle-Foot Tape
November 6, 2006
If beetles can do it, scientists should be able to: climb the wall, that is.  Some researchers at Max Planck Institute have invented an adhesive that sticks to glass like beetle feet.  The secret was to manufacture thousands of microscopic pads that adhere to smooth surfaces by van der Waals forces (the attraction of neighboring […]
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Dumb Ideas

Have Darwinian Anthropologists Learnt Their Lessons?
October 18, 2006
Chris Stringer, writing for the BBC News, talked about “Piltdown’s lessons for modern science.”  After telling the history of the famous “missing link” fraud, he discussed four “lessons learnt” by one of the most notorious hoaxes in science history.  For one, “we mustn’t let preconceived ideas run away with us.”  For another, “specimens have to […]
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Amazing Facts

Self-cleaning Surfaces Take the Lotus Position
October 17, 2006
Photovoltaic cells and microelectromechanical systems have a problem: they collect dirt.  What to do?  Look to the lotus, says a EurekAlert article about research at Georgia Institute of Technology.  Dr. C. P. Wong and team took inspiration from the self-cleaning surfaces of lotus leaves.  “Despite growing in muddy conditions, the leaves and flowers remain clean […]
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Geology

Gold Can Form in a Geological Instant
October 15, 2006
You can’t say something is old just because it looks old, like gold.
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Dumb Ideas

Active SETI: If the Mountain Will Not Come to MyHomeET
October 14, 2006
SETI researchers must be getting bored sitting around waiting for a message.  To bide the time, some have come up with a game called “Active SETI” – sending our messages to the aliens.  It’s not that this game hasn’t been played before.  The Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft each carried messages from earthlings, and the Arecibo […]
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Amazing Facts

Glory Be Behind Saturn
October 12, 2006
Don’t look at this picture till you’re ready.  Switch off the phone, turn off the radio, rub your eyes, and sit down.  Ready?  Click Here.     This is a view of Saturn we could never see from Earth.  It’s the backside of the planet, with the sun shining through the rings.  According to a […]
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Dumb Ideas

Early Hunters Evolved Into Marathoners
October 11, 2006
Why are humans so good at endurance running?  According to Dan Lieberman of Harvard, “our body shape evolved to allow our ancestors to run long distances, and reach animal carcasses before other scavengers.”  He figured that “chasing animals until they collapse from exhaustion yields more meat per hunt than hunting with spears or a bow […]
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Amazing Facts

Archer Fish Shoot Efficiently
October 10, 2006
Archer fish, the sharpshooters of the underwater world, have another trick in their blowguns: energy efficiency.  Three German scientists were curious how they knew how hard to shoot at targets of differing mass.  Publishing in Current Biology,1 the team first determined that the prey’s ability to cling to its leaf or stem is proportional to […]
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Amazing Facts

Biological Nanomachines Inspire Nanotechnology
October 7, 2006
Nano, nano; we’re hearing that morkish prefix a lot these days.  It means 10-9 of something: most often, of meters (see powers of ten).  A nanometer is a billionth of a meter.  This gets down into the range of protein molecules and small cellular components.  A DNA molecule, for instance, is about 20 nanometers across; […]
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