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Early Man

Hominids, Homonyms, and Homo sapiens
May 27, 2009
How’s the story of human evolution hanging together these days?  There’s no better place to look than the Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences.  In the yearly issue released this month, Ian Tattersall and Jeffrey Schwartz gave a pretty thorough overview of the “Evolution of the Genus Homo.”1  Their account is fraught with controversy, […]
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Dumb Ideas

Junk-DNA Stock Tumbles
May 18, 2009
Those investing credibility in the concept of “junk DNA” suffered more losses this week.  Repeated hits to the paradigm that portions of non-coding DNA are useless leftovers of evolution make a recovery unlikely.     In Science,1 researchers from Princeton and Indiana University reported a function for transposons and the genes that act on them, […]
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Dumb Ideas

Survival of the Slowest
May 11, 2009
Without stopping to think, the BBC News claimed that evolution is slowing snails down.  “Natural selection is favouring snails with reduced metabolic rates, researchers in Chile have discovered.”  Why would evolution do such a thing?  Isn’t the proverbial slowest of beasts already at risk of predators?  Not necessarily.  Look on the positive side: “Snails with […]
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Education

High School Biology Teachers Have Clout
May 8, 2009
Two professors at Minnesota State surveyed a thousand students on the impact of their high school biology teachers when it comes to the subject of evolution or creation: Students whose high school biology class included creationism (with or without evolution) were more likely to accept creationist views as entering college students.  Similarly, students exposed to […]
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Fossils

The Long Precambrian Fuse Gets Longer
April 28, 2009
Why did complex multicellular life explode on the scene some 550 million years ago?  That’s mystery enough, but finding complex single-celled life a billion years earlier makes it worse.  A new paper evaluated claims of Cambrian-like fossils from India dated 1.6 billion years old in the evolutionary timeline.  It did not explain the Cambrian explosion, […]
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Dinosaurs

How Valid Is Computerized Dinosaur Reconstruction?
April 18, 2009
Can you reconstruct a dinosaur on a computer?  Of course you can.  The question is how accurate it reflects something no one has ever seen.  Live Science told about Peter Falkingham at the University of Manchester who is using “genetic algorithms” and simulating evolution to figure out how dinosaurs walked.     A dinosaur’s gait […]
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Cell Biology

Is Horizontal Gene Transfer a Force for Evolution?
April 13, 2009
Two more genomes were published last week: the information libraries of two tiny microbes.  They are members of Micromonas, green algae less than two microns across.  The original paper and summary both bragged about how the genetic information is helping shed light on evolution, but did the data really contain any light?  If so, the […]
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Biomimetics

Animal Flight Control: Where’s the Evolution?
April 12, 2009
A couple of articles in Science last week discussed the marvels of flight control in birds.  “Being earthbound save for the ability to fly airplanes and helicopters, humans stand in awe of animals that power their own movement through the air by flapping their wings, and of the spectacular maneuvers that some of these animals […]
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Dumb Ideas

Can Evolution Be Programmed?
April 6, 2009
Some researchers are employing “evolutionary computing” as an algorithm to solve problems.  But is it really evolution? Evolved machines:  A company called Evolved Machines in Palo Alto announced a 40-teraflop machine that will be used for the “artificial evolution of neural circuitry” (see press release on United Business Media).  “It is self-evident that in biological […]
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Dumb Ideas

Evolutionists Tell Us What Nature Intended
April 3, 2009
Can nature intend anything?  A true materialist lacks access to the concept of purpose and intentionality.  Whatever is, is.  Nevertheless, some staunch evolutionists avail themselves of the purpose-driven life by telling us what evolution intended.     Meredith Small tells us on Live Science, for instance, that nature did not intend single parents.  Having become […]
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Education

Big Texas Win on “Critical Thinking”
March 27, 2009
Students in Texas schools will now have more opportunities to hear the flaws in Darwinism as well as evidences for it.  After months of acrimonious debate, the Texas State Board of Education adopted science standards that require students learn to “analyze, evaluate and critique scientific explanations” including theories of evolution and the origin of life. […]
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Fossils

Fossil Fish Pushes Evolutionary Time
March 26, 2009
Quick!  When was the Age of Fishes?  If you said “Devonian,” you were correct according to the textbooks and museums, but where’s your evidence?  Look at this diorama in the Smithsonian depicting the seas of the Silurian, the period preceding the Devonian: crinoids, trilobites, corals and nautiloids, but no fish.  It may be time to […]
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Uncategorized

Animal Protein Appears in Plant
March 25, 2009
Science Daily reported a “a first-of-its-kind discovery that overturns conventional wisdom” – an animal substance produced by a plant.  The white bird of paradise tree, a large plant that resembles a palm or banana plant (see picture), has bright orange flowers with a substance previously known only in animals.     Animals produce bilirubin from […]
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Mammals

Is a Hippo a Pig or a Whale?
March 24, 2009
Two teams of evolutionists are having a spat over whale evolution.  Thewissen and team (Northeastern Ohio U) say the hippo is close to the pig, but Jessica Theodor (U of Calgary) and Jonathan Geisler (Georgia Southern U) say it’s in the whale family tree.  Their arguments and counter-arguments were published in Nature last week.1  Science […]
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Physics

Evolution of Photosynthesis: A Theory in Crisis
March 23, 2009
“Although the last word on the origins of oxygen-making photosynthesis isn’t in,” writes Mitch Leslie in Science,1 “researchers say they are making progress.  One thing is for certain, however: Without this innovation, Earth would look a lot like Mars.”  That’s the end of his story.  What did he say in the beginning and middle?  Not […]
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