Origins

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Can the Interior Design Itself?

March 26, 2007

Calling all interior designers: has Darwinism rendered you superfluous? J. Scott Turner thinks so. He wrote a book called The Tinkerer’s Accomplice: How Design Emerges from Life Itself (Harvard, 2007). It was reviewed by Claus Wedekind in last week’s Nature with the title, “The interior designer.” This does not imply that interiors need an exterior […]

Education

Free Speech? Not When Darwin Is at Stake

March 25, 2007

Radicals get away with saying or doing almost anything on campuses these days. There’s one “radical” view, however, that even though believed by a majority of Americans, is sure to be met with outrage: creationism. It doesn’t even have to be creationism. Just to suggest that Darwin and his views might not be infallible is […]

Botany

Is a 100-Year Misunderstanding about Plants Solved?

March 15, 2007

Part of “one of the biggest misunderstandings in botanical history,” a plant has moved from an upper part of the family tree down to the bottom. Trithuria submersa, an underwater flowering plant from India and Australia that was thought to be a monocot is really not a cot at all, says Science Daily reporting on […]

Darwin and Evolution

Darwinists Blur Science with Fiction

March 9, 2007

One would think make-believe is for kids, and science is for adults. Some recent evolution stories, however, seem to portray a seamless continuum between imagination and testable scientific hypotheses. You be the judge: Darwin in cyberspace: If it happens in a computer simulation, is it really evolution? National Geographic reported on a new computer game […]

Cosmology

Deconstructing Darwinese: Delighting in Ignorance

March 8, 2007

When is ignorance a good thing? When is confidence in one’s answers a bad thing? One science writer expressed his desire for mystery over explanation – as long as the mysterious allowed room for lucky breaks without design. Science writer Ben Shaberman got to share his views on the last page of the […]

Media

History Highlight: The Two Wilberforces

February 25, 2007

Those seeing the new movie Amazing Grace (opened Feb 2, 2007) about England’s long political battle to end slavery may not realize the family connection of the film’s hero with the controversy over Darwinism. William Wilberforce, the champion of abolition who brought an end to the slave trade as depicted in the film, had a […]

Origin of Life

Extrasolar Gas Giants Turn Up Dry

February 22, 2007

A “dramatic step” led to a “big surprise”, said a press release from Jet Propulsion Laboratory. NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope was able to capture the first spectral information from two planets orbiting other stars. HD 209458b and HD 189733b are so-called “hot Jupiters” – similar in size to our gas giants, they orbit much closer […]

Amazing Facts

Watch a Ribosome in Action

February 21, 2007

A remarkable article about a remarkable machine: that’s what Chemical and Engineering News has published about the ribosome, a molecular machine vital to everything alive in the world. Stu Borman’s article lavishes praise on the details of this assembly-line factory that translates RNA into proteins. He surveys the history of investigation into the ribosome’s secrets. […]

Intelligent Design

Article: Phillip Johnson Still Wields the Wedge

February 19, 2007

The standard-bearer of the Intelligent Design Movement (IDM) since 1991, Berkeley Law Professor Dr. Phillip E. Johnson, still wields his pen like a wedge against Darwinism. His latest article for Think magazine (The Royal Institute of Philosophy) is reproduced on the Discovery Institute website. He shares the current status of the movement, his disappointments with […]

Origin of Life

OOL on the Rocks

February 15, 2007

Robert Shapiro demolishes the RNA World just in time for Leslie Orgel to demolish Shapiro's own myth. Ashes, ashes; they all fall down.

Amazing Facts

Cells Perform Nanomagic

February 13, 2007

The cell is quicker than the eye of our best scientific instruments. Biochemists and biophysicists are nearing closer to watching cellular magic tricks in real time but aren’t quite there yet. They know it’s just a trick of the eye, but it sure is baffling how cellular machines pull off their most amazing feats. Think, […]

Bible and Theology

Evolution Sunday Honors Darwin Over God

February 11, 2007

An essay by Edna Devore of the SETI Institute on Space.com encourages churches to join in Mike Zimmerman’s “Evolution Sunday” celebrations. Zimmerman, with his Clergy Letter Project (see also New Scientist), has gotten over 10,000 pastors to sign a statement affirming evolution as an essential part of science and religion (02/11/2006). Devore thinks this is […]

Intelligent Design

Dodo Prey Fights Back

February 7, 2007

Irked at falsehoods promulgated by Randy Olsen’s film Flock of Dodos, the intelligent design (ID) think tank Discovery Institute (DI) is fighting back. The film presents a viewpoint that what ID lacks in science it makes up for in public relations. The DI is convinced the reverse is true. In an attempt to rebut what […]

Cell Biology

Contingency and the Structure of Lifes Building Blocks

February 6, 2007

Some Yale scientists found they could construct protein-like molecules using amino acids of a type not found in living things. They found that beta-amino acids can fold into shapes similar to the proteins made of alpha-amino acids used in living things. Beta-amino acids have an extra carbon on the backbone. “Yale chemists show that nature […]

Human Body

The Space Race: Just Staying Alive

January 30, 2007

“Ad astra!” the sci-fi slogan announces with eternal optimism: “To the stars!” Medical doctors and astrobiologists are not sure you would want to stay there long, though. Some recent findings give a dismal picture of the prospects for life – human or bacterial – at least in our solar system, if that can be assumed […]

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