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Intelligent Design

How Dry I.D.
March 27, 2006
Greg Schirf of Wasatch Brewery is riding the wave of publicity over the intelligent design controversy in Utah.  He came out with a new “intelligently designed” beer: Evolution Amber Ale.  The press release expresses his alarm over the alleged erosion of separation of church and state, but how serious (or sober) he was may be […]
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Early Man

Turkish Family Evolving Into Quadrupeds
March 7, 2006
Is this a hoax?  The Times Online UK posted a picture of a family in Turkey that walks naturally on all fours, and calls this a “unique insight into human evolution.”  Sean O’Neill at New Scientist is not sure what to think.  A professor Humphrey claims this is an example of “backward evolution,” or a […]
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Early Man

Paleoanthropology: Start Over?
August 22, 2005
The September issue of National Geographic, featuring the African continent, has arrived in homes.  On page 1, Joel Achenbach of the Washington Post wrote about the quest for early man, asking, “Are we looking for bones in all the right places?”  The bulk of the article describes the “messy” story of human origins.  It used […]
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Cell Biology

Cell’s High-Fidelity Proofreading and Editing Explained
July 26, 2005
—It’s unusual to have a story win both Amazing and Dumb awards simultaneously, but the reason will become clear.–ed.) Luisa Cochella and Rachel Green (Johns Hopkins) have published a primer on “Fidelity in Protein Synthesis” in Current Biology.1  This is a good article for cell biology enthusiasts to read, to learn more about the methods […]
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Early Man

Obsessed With Sex: How Much Can Be Known About the Sexuality of Hominids?
June 17, 2005
Bruce Bower in Science News (June 11, 167:24, p. 379) reported on the controversy about the sex life of Lucy and her mate(s).  Owen Lovejoy and Philip L. Reno (Kent State U, Ohio) have “unabashedly” put forth a hypothesis that Mr. and Mrs. Australopithecus afarensis (let’s call him Desi) had long-term relationships and stable families […]
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Uncategorized

Are Teens Like Roaches?
June 16, 2005
A press release from University of Manchester concluded that being a teenage mother might be a good thing.  The conclusion was based on observations of the mating behavior of cockroaches.  Dr. Patricia Moore, one of the researchers, wins Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week: “Although it’s hard to compare the experiences of the female cockroach […]
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Uncategorized

Is It Justifiable to Speculate About the Evolution of Murder?
June 10, 2005
Sharon Begley, writing in the Wall Street Journal May 20, was pretty angry that an evolutionary psychologist tried to give an evolutionary explanation for why men murder women.  She called the theory by Dr. David Buss (U. of Texas, Austin) a just-so story and bad science.  In his book, “The Murderer Next Door: Why the […]
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Media

SETI Researcher Joins NG Imagination Fest
May 31, 2005
Space.Com writer Tariq Malik reviewed the National Geographic TV series Extraterrestrial that envisions flying whales, giraffe-like predators and flesh-eating tadpoles on a mythical world undergoing its own evolution.  “Using computer models and armed with basic evolutionary theory, the scientists imagined not only what conditions might exist on their theoretical planets,” writes Malik, “but also how […]
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Uncategorized

Darwinists Excuse Prejudice as a Hard-wired, Common-Sense Evolutionary Adaptation
May 27, 2005
This week’s Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week comes from an Arizona State evo-psych press release echoed on News-Medical.net and EurekAlert: “Contrary to what most people believe, the tendency to be prejudiced is a form of common sense, hard-wired into the human brain through evolution as an adaptive response to protect our prehistoric ancestors from […]
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Origin of Life

In the Beginning, Hydrogen: Was It Miller Time?
April 22, 2005
A press release from University of Colorado says that the spark-discharge experiments of Stanley Miller in the 1950s (see 05/02/2003 entry) might be relevant again.  Why?  Researchers used new models to estimate the amount of hydrogen in the early earth’s atmosphere, and came up with numbers 100 times higher than before.  If hydrogen did not […]
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Uncategorized

Darwinians Looking for Forgiveness – in Apes
April 6, 2005
Forgiveness, a seemingly distinctive human trait, must have its roots in ape social behavior, believe some evolutionary biologists.  According to MSNBC News, the state of Iowa got a lot of money for researching this topic: Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, lead scientist, said the four-month project studying bonobos [pygmy chimps] will be funded by a $125,000 grant […]
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Uncategorized

Gentle Darwin and the Evolution of Joy
April 3, 2005
You may not be able to really enjoy a good laugh any more, because the evolutionists are now claiming that joy and humor are just evolutionary artifacts of gene mutations in our animal past.  Jaak Panksepp (Bowling Green U) opens an article in Science Now by twisting the opening words of the Apostle John into […]
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Mammals

Migration Theory Overturned: “Mammals Went Crazy” – Or Did Darwinists?
March 29, 2005
The discovery of an elephant shrew fossil in Wyoming badlands said to be 54 million years old is causing a stir.  Elephant shrews were thought to be endemic to Africa, the alleged cradle of mammals.  This find hints not only that elephant shrews may have originated in North America instead, but also that “there may […]
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SETI

Home to E.T.: You Have Mail
March 17, 2005
According to MSNBC News, 138,179 people responded to an offer to beam a message into space.  “Yet another outfit, TalktoAliens.com,” the report continues, “is offering to broadcast your 900-prefix telephone call into space for $3.99 a minute.” Let’s hope E.T. has his spam filter on.  Hey, Nigeria!  Hey, Star Registry!  Look at all these suckers […]
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Cosmology

Baloney Detecting Exercise for Students
March 17, 2005
Jeff Barbour’s brief history of everything was published on Universe Today.  His essay, entitled “Where does intelligent life come from?” paints a short but sweeping panorama from the Big Bang to humans.  Its style is somewhat like watered-down Carl Sagan or gilded Neil deGrasse Tyson (see 09/29/2004 entry).  Here’s a sample about the origin of […]
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