Mt. St. Helens Recalls Overturned Paradigms
May 18, 2010
The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in May 1980 not only eroded mountains and canyons, it caused earthquake shifts in geological paradigms.
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Media Continues to Denounce ID, Crown Darwin
May 14, 2010
The news media and journals continue to publish one-sided statements against intelligent design (ID) – even though scientific evidence continues to support design on many fronts (see 05/11/2010, 05/07/2010, 05/06/2010 from just this past week). Sometimes, in other venues, the kind of rhetoric employed would be characterized as hate speech. These statements are usually printed […]
Should Scientists Take Sides as Political Activists?
May 13, 2010
“Scientists’ turn to win votes” announced a Nature editorial today. The science journal argued it’s no time to bemoan the loss of “science-savvy politicians,” but rather time to “make new friends” in the political arena. “Other scientific societies should rally their memberships to get the word out to new parliamentarians about the value of science.” […]
Farewell, Once Mighty Jordan River
May 9, 2010
The Jordan River is dying. PhysOrg said it could be dried up by next year. Already, much of its flow is sewage. The source streams from Mt. Hermon are diverted into farming, leaving very little to flow out of the Sea of Galilee down to the Dead Sea. Christian pilgrims wishing to be baptized in […]
Can Darwin Be Rescued from a New Eye Discovery?
May 7, 2010
Scientists find waveguides and noise receptors built into the retina.
Noahs Ark on Mars
April 28, 2010
We apologize for this improbable headline to draw attention to two stories making the rounds: new claims about Noah’s Ark on Mt. Ararat, and new claims about life on Mars. Headlines on these topics show up periodically in the news. What do the subjects have in common? How do they differ? Do the most recent […]
Cosmologist Suffers Paranoid Delusions: Media Promotes His Views
April 26, 2010
“They’re coming to get us, and I’m sure of it, because I know everything.” What would you think of someone who talked like that? What if he were one of the most famous cosmologists alive today? The man is Stephen Hawking – that wheelchair-bound math wizard who talks with a speech synthesizer and once fell […]
Darwin as Canary in a Coal Mine
April 16, 2010
The state of evolution teaching is like the fabled canary in a coal mine, Sean Carroll told Science.1 That’s why the molecular biologist from the University of Wisconsin, Madison is cutting back on his research and undergraduate teaching to concentrate on his new appointment: vice president for science education at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. […]
Evolution as Scientific Literacy Dropped by NSB; Sets Off Firestorm
April 11, 2010
Can you be called scientifically literate if you deny that humans evolved from lower animals? What if you deny the universe began with an explosion? American students have typically scored low on those questions, leading to charges that they are scientifically illiterate compared to other countries in Europe and Asia. But now, the National Science […]
Early City Uncovered in Syria
April 6, 2010
A complex, stratified society with industry appears to have burst on the scene 4000 to 6000 years ago in northern Syria. Science Daily reported, “The mound of Tell Zeidan in the Euphrates River Valley near Raqqa, Syria, which had not been built upon or excavated for 6,000 years, is revealing a society rich in trade, […]
Is the Internet Age Redefining Science?
April 2, 2010
To a middle school student, science is a clear category; it’s a subject you take, along with history, language, or P.E. You have a science teacher; you read a science textbook. You learn about the scientific method. In the real world, though, categories are not always so clearly delineated. In fact, the leading science journal, […]
How Much Can One Bone Say?
March 26, 2010
Two fossil discoveries are generating a lot of news from a single bone. The first is a dinosaur hip. The second is a human finger. How much weight can a single bone carry? Australian tyrannosaur: The tyrannosaurid dinosaurs had a distinctive hip bone. Live Science cast any doubt on the claims: “it’s still a hypothesis […]
Can Morality Be Darwinized?
March 25, 2010
There’s a cottage industry within the Darwin empire that tries to explain morality in terms of natural selection. Hardly a week passes without some new paper trying to explain why humans reward moral behavior and punish immoral behavior. Some try to do it by finding morality in animals, as if to portray a continuity in […]
The Copernican Geological Revolution
March 17, 2010
The Copernican Revolution did not just affect astronomy and physics: it revolutionized geology.
Whos In Control: Your Brain or You?
March 12, 2010
Do you have a self that controls your brain, or is thought a secretion of the brain, as Darwin claimed? Do you use your brain, or does your brain operate you? Who is in charge? These are deep philosophical questions with a long history, that some people prefer to avoid, as in the common joke: […]