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Dumb Ideas

Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week: Shark Chefs and Finger Food
August 15, 2007
A press release from University of Florida wins this week’s prize for trying to make dogmatism funny (or at least appealing to snackers): When the first four-legged animals sprouted fingers and toes, they took an ancient genetic recipe and simply extended the cooking time, say University of Florida scientists writing in Wednesday’s issue of the […]
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Dumb Ideas

Weird-Science Origin-of-Life Theories
August 10, 2007
Two news articles on the origin of life seem bizarre at best.  One even used the word “bizarrely” in its own self-evaluation. Living dust:  Zap the dust in your living room and it may come alive.  Is that the gist of this story in PhysOrg?  A team of international scientists thinks that cosmic dust in […]
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Dumb Ideas

The World Is a Free Lunch
August 7, 2007
One of the strangest Darwinian models to be put forth recently has to be a paper by James V. Stone (a psychologist at Sheffield U, UK), published in PLoS Computational Biology.1  He basically says that evolution is a free lunch.  Brains and whole body types can emerge if an organism can learn parts of adaptive […]
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Dumb Ideas

Darwinism Seen in Action!
August 3, 2007
An example of Darwinian evolution in action was reported by EurekAlert.  This dramatic announcement called it a “rare example” of a “controversial theory of genetic conflict” in the reproduction of certain fish: The conflict has been likened to a “battle of the sexes” or an “arms race” at the molecular level between mothers and fathers.  […]
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Dumb Ideas

The Simpsons Producer Treats Evolution as Fact
July 26, 2007
The TV cartoon The Simpsons was praised for its “greatness” in, of all places, the premiere scientific journal Nature.1  Michael Hopkin interviewed “Executive producer Al Jean, the show’s head writer and a Harvard mathematics graduate.”  One of the questions was, “One episode in which the show does take sides is the one in which Lisa […]
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Dumb Ideas

News Reporters Knuckling Under to Darwinian Storytelling
July 17, 2007
The science news media are virtually going ape over a claim about how chimpanzees might have evolved into upright-walking humans: what is going on?  It began with a paper in PNAS.1  Sockol, Raichlen and Pontzer measured the gaits of chimpanzees and humans and concluded that it is more efficient to walk upright than to propel […]
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Cosmology

Nature Celebrates Bizarre ‘Many-Worlds’ Cosmology
July 7, 2007
The cover of Nature this week (July 7) looks like a comic book.
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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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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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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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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

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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