Monthly Archives: August 2010
“Subway Science”
| August 31, 2010 | Posted by William Dembski under Intelligent Design |
Check this out: LINK more
The Evolutionary Psychology Journal, Serious Entertainment
| August 31, 2010 | Posted by Clive Hayden under Culture, Darwinism, Education, Evolution, Science |
“That scientific gentleman with the bald, egg-like head and the bare, bird-like neck had no real right to the airs of science that he assumed. He had not discovered anything new in biology; but what biological creature could he have discovered more singular than himself? Thus, and thus only, the whole place had properly to… more
On the Vastness of the Universe
| August 30, 2010 | Posted by Barry Arrington under Intelligent Design |
Nevada is mostly empty; I mean really empty. Ninety percent of the state’s residents live in the vicinity of Las Vegas or Reno, and the rest of the state is all but uninhabited. I realized just how empty the state is when I was riding my motorcycle across the desert last month, and I passed… more
Message from a really small part of the disastrous population overload
| August 30, 2010 | Posted by O'Leary under Darwinism |
A friend advises that Darwinist Douglas Futuyma’s recent book, A New Biology for the 21st Century informs us, Now more than ever, biology has the potential to contribute practical solutions to many of the major challenges confronting the United States and the world. A New Biology for the 21st Century recommends that a “New Biology”… more
Evolutionary psychology: Pseudo-science’s biggest academic racket takes a hit?
| August 30, 2010 | Posted by O'Leary under Evolutionary psychology |
The fact is that monkeys and humans do not behave similarly in key ways, as should be obvious. Otherwise, why are they in our zoos and we are not in theirs?
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Evolution of live birth: Provided we ignore the placenta
| August 30, 2010 | Posted by O'Leary under Darwinism |
Here’s an article on the supposed evolution of live birth: … even the live-bearers have not got rid of the shell entirely. Baby skinks that are born live come out encased in a membrane – all that is left of the eggshell. With a bit of help from their mothers, most of them break out… more
If Darwinian Evolution Can’t Fix Broken Genes, How Can It Create New Ones?
| August 30, 2010 | Posted by Jonathan M under Intelligent Design |
The Darwinian model of evolution holds that one of the key mechanisms of evolutionary innovation is the duplication of genes and the subsequent divergence of one of the duplicate copies to undertake a new functional role. Because a probability of a single gene stumbling upon a significantly different (yet functionally advantageous) sequence is so small,… more
Search for Search Paper Finally Out
| August 29, 2010 | Posted by William Dembski under Informatics, Intelligent Design |
Comments off
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William A. Dembski and Robert J. Marks II, “The Search for a Search: Measuring the Information Cost of Higher Level Search,” Journal of Advanced Computational Intelligence and Intelligent Informatics, Vol.14, No.5, 2010, pp. 475-486. LINK more
Coffee! Smiling android is a great date?
| August 29, 2010 | Posted by O'Leary under Culture |
A friend wrote recently to advise re this article, that goes to the 365 000 members of the largest engineering society in the world, about an effort to create a female android that smiles. Look, even Dilbert would not take her out for the evening, and that is saying a lot. He would otherwise spend… more
Darwin as racist, vs. Darwin as anti-slavery hero
| August 29, 2010 | Posted by O'Leary under Darwinism |
From some correspondence with a friend: Darwin was a racist, pure and simple. Why can’t people just accept that fact, and get PAST it? I have become increasingly suspicious of efforts to excuse Darwin’s racism by saying that the old boy was also anti-slavery. Lots of racists are anti-slavery. That was true thousands of years… more
Bug With Bifocals Baffles Biologists
| August 29, 2010 | Posted by Cornelius Hunter under Intelligent Design |
Take a close look at this organism—a very close look. Now answer these questions: Are you an evolutionist? Was this bug created by random mutations? Is it a Lucretian concoction? For evolutionists the answer is yes, all organisms must be such concoctions, and in so saying they are their own accuser—this is not about science. … more
The Parameterized Evolution of Dogs
| August 28, 2010 | Posted by johnnyb under Evolution, Genomics, Intelligent Design |
I was digging around for some good examples for a talk I am doing on mutation theory in a few weeks, and came upon this great paper in PNAS – Molecular Origins of Rapid and Continuous Morphological Evolution. Their argument? “tandem repeat expansions and contractions are a major source of phenotypic variation in evolution”. Hmmm….… more
Altruism as Darwinian natural selection: How rats help natural selection
| August 26, 2010 | Posted by O'Leary under Evolutionary psychology |
Carrying some groceries home from the plaza today, I came across an interesting sight: Note: More altruism vs. Darwinism stories here. A rat in broad daylight. We see this sometimes here, in good years for rats. The rat rushed into traffic and got its right hind foot run over. I wasn’t about to rush out… more
Science and society: Defending the right to differ
| August 26, 2010 | Posted by O'Leary under Creationism, Darwinism |
A friend advises me that the Creation Museum in Kentucky disturbs some visitors, according to LiveScience. Its sponsors chose to respond by defending their beliefs. It seems to me that there is a larger principle at stake here. People can have a private museum on their own land about whatever interests them. I could have… more
Albert Mohler’s Open Letter to Karl Giberson
| August 26, 2010 | Posted by Clive Hayden under Culture, Darwinism, Education, Evolution, Religion |
Al Mohler has written an interesting open letter to Karl Giberson, titled “On Darwin and Darwinism: A Letter to Professor Giberson“, which is a response to Giberson’s article at The Huffington Post, titled “How Darwin Sustains My Baptist Search for Truth“. The disagreement between the two is ultimately about the compatibility of Darwinism and Christianity,… more
Evolutionary psychology: The grandmother thesis, yet again
| August 26, 2010 | Posted by O'Leary under Darwinism |
Darwinists have long had a problem with the fact of human longevity, compared to that of chimps. Presumably, that is because they need equivalence between humans and chimps. The article referenced here, from Nature, takes, for once, a skeptical view of Darwinist claims. I don’t see why an explanation is required at all. If you… more
Evolutionary psychology: Evolutionary psychologists get stressed and start to cry over the evolution of crying
| August 26, 2010 | Posted by O'Leary under Intelligent Design |
If you want to hear some silly explanations of crying (weeping), go here. One theory is that crying may have evolved as a kind of signal — a signal that was valuable because it could only be picked up by those closest to us who could actually see our tears. Tears let our intimates in… more
Further news from The End of All Things department
| August 24, 2010 | Posted by O'Leary under Intelligent Design |
I was writing about this earlier. Michael Moyer at Scientific American notes, Once again, the world is about to end. The latest source of doomsday dread comes courtesy of the ancient Mayans, whose calendar runs out in 2012, as interpreted by a cadre of opportunistic authors and blockbuster movie directors. Not long before, three separate… more
Coffee!! Bats more dangerous than mothballs?
| August 24, 2010 | Posted by O'Leary under Darwinism |
A reader kindly shares this BBC story with me, “Bat and moth arms race revealed” (19 August 2010 ) by Jason Palmer. In a strategy that may be a moth-hunting adaptation, some bats are known to use clicks that are at a frequency, or pitch, either above or below moths’ hearing ranges. High-pitched clicks have… more
Neuroscience: Memory treatment is possible, when impairment is not disastrous
| August 23, 2010 | Posted by O'Leary under Neuroscience |
This is a media release, obviously, but I know from experience that its basic thesis is true, and that it can work, even with seniors of advanced age: Increasing scientific evidence shows that actively participating in appropriately designed brain fitness workouts aids mental agility. Scientific Brain Training PRO exercises were developed by a team of… more