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Dumb Ideas

Big Pieces Missing in Darwin’s Theory, Says USC Scientist
September 27, 2004
A USC professor of gerontology has “explored a new way to look at aging that directly opposes principles set forth by Darwin in his theory of natural selection,” reports EurekAlert   (Emphasis added in all quotes).  Valter Longo’s theory of aging employs group selection instead of individual selection (see 05/31/2004 headline).  He thinks that in […]
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Dumb Ideas

Name-Calling at the Human Evolution Meeting
September 23, 2004
As predicted earlier this month (see 09/03/2004 commentary), Lucy’s lovers were not going to take her demotion lying down.  Proponents of Orrorin claim their 6 million year old rival walked upright millions of years before the 2-4 million year old australopithecines, and even had a gait more human-like than Lucy.  To Ann Gibbons, reporting in […]
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Dumb Ideas

Can Naturalism Design Anything?
September 22, 2004
Philip Ball in the Sept. 23 issue of Nature1 gave a title to a news feature that might catch a reader off guard and think he is allowing the Intelligent Design Movement to have a voice in a scientific debate: “Enzymes: By chance, or by design?”  Upon further reading, however, it is clear the debate […]
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Dumb Ideas

Scientists Try to Read Neandertal Minds
September 21, 2004
If dead men tell no tales, living ones certainly do.  Most of us have trouble reading one another’s minds when staring face to face, but some paleoanthropologists, with nothing but skeletons and a few stone tools and burial sites to look at, have no hesitation in reading the Neandertal mind.  Bruce Bower writes in Science […]
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Birds

Humans Lose Some, Win Some in Animal Olympics
August 17, 2004
Imagine humans competing in Olympic events with animals.  Astrobiology Magazine predicts we would lose many events, but excel in others: “In most cases of physical competition, the animals beat us at our own games,” says the website’s staff writer, Dr. David Noever. 100 Meter Sprint:  Cheetah wins the gold at 3 seconds.  Silver goes to […]
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Dumb Ideas

The Evolution of Drunkenness
August 12, 2004
No kidding; an evolutionist is trying to figure out why humans evolved into the stoned age.  “What Would Darwin Say About Drinking?“ reads the title of an article on WineSpectator.com: “Some Scientists Believe Humans Evolved to Enjoy Alcohol.”  Reporter Jacob Gaffney proposes the strange idea that survival of the fittest produced alcoholics: “your desire to […]
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Dumb Ideas

Fish Evolved by Sunbathing
August 3, 2004
A new slant on how the first land creatures evolved is found in New Scientist: sunbathing fish received more energy, and this made them better predators.  In all seriousness, James Randerson writes, Our distant fishy ancestors first hauled themselves on to land in order to warm up in the Sun.  So claims a team that […]
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Awards

Modern Cosmology Goes Schizophrenic
July 27, 2004
According to Charles Seife writing in Science,1 more cosmologists are taking parallel universes seriously.  This is a consequence of the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, one possible mathematical solution to the effects of quantum “weirdness.”  If you think our headline is too harsh, read Seife’s opening in a Rod Serling voice while playing the […]
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Dumb Ideas

Zoo Monkey Walks Upright
July 22, 2004
For what it’s worth, there’s a story going around about a macaque in an Israeli zoo started walking on its hind legs after a near-death experience (see MSNBC News and picture).  One news source is calling it a missing link, another claiming the strange behavior is due to brain damage. This calls for a monkey […]
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Dumb Ideas

“Domesticated Computer Viruses” Demonstrate Adaptive Radiation
July 4, 2004
Lenski and Adami are at it again (see 05/08/2003 headline), attempting to demonstrate Darwinian evolution in the computer with “digital organisms” which they describe as ”domesticated computer viruses”  Their digital organisms are small computer programs with logic functions that can reproduce and respond to mutations.  They reward the ones that evolve with more resources (CPU […]
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Dumb Ideas

Key to Evolution of Culture Suggested
June 28, 2004
Visualize chimpanzees exercising their antics in the jungle: grooming, screeching at one another, chasing off rivals.  Now shift the scene to human activities in a large city: fans cheering their team at a stadium, an audience applauding a concert, kids screaming on an amusement park roller coaster, a congregation singing hymns at church, students taking […]
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Cell Biology

Biochemists Mutate Protein, Make a Catalyst
June 25, 2004
“Enzymes are among the most proficient catalysts known,” wrote three Duke University scientists, “and they catalyze a wide variety of reactions in aqueous solutions under ambient conditions with exquisite selectivity and stereospecificity.”  The team set out to rationally design their own enzyme.  Their work is reported in the June 25 issue of Science.1  Building on […]
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Dumb Ideas

NASA-Ames Gives Darwin Credit for Antenna Design Project
June 16, 2004
A press release from NASA-Ames Research Center claims, “NASA ‘Evolutionary’ Software Automatically Designs Antenna.”  Using artificial intelligence software, their approach converged on the best design.  The article explains: “The AI software examined millions of potential antenna designs before settling on a final one,” said project lead Jason Lohn, a scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center, […]
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Dumb Ideas

The Evolution of Infidelity
June 7, 2004
The BBC News placed a sultry photo of a likely-undressed man and woman about to kiss alongside the headline of a story, “Genes may be to blame for infidelity.”  They report on the speculation by Tim Spector (Twin Research Unit, St. Thomas Hospital) that “if one of a pair of twins had a history of […]
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Dumb Ideas

Can a Cell Improve by Lowering Its Standards?
May 26, 2004
The title of a paper in PNAS is intriguing: “Artificially ambiguous genetic code confers growth yield advantage.”  An international team claims to have created a beneficial mutation.  They removed the editing ability of a protein involved in translating the genetic code, and got it to survive in a nutrient-starved environment.  They suggest that the resulting […]
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