Category: News

Fossils of insects pollinating plants from 100 million years ago

Given that 80% of today’s flowering plants depend on insect pollination, there must have been a good deal of co-evolution and horizontal gene transfer. more

Anomalous Cambrian creature reconstructed, amazing

Some Cambrian animals really do sound like science fiction. more

If you have been an ardent believer in dark matter, revise your expectations, maybe

“Employing exotic unobservable entities such as dark matter may be an escape from scientific rigor in more ways than one. ” more

Doubts about Darwin spreading into the Brit population?

Jones should enjoy her freedom to notice that because it may soon be made clear to her that Darwinism is in fact a source of Really Important Enlightenment to power brokers … more

Kiddie neurosurgeon Ben Carson, evolution, and morality

“many evolutionists — from Darwin to the present — have argued and are still arguing precisely the point that Dr. Carson was highlighting” more

Wall art discovered from 37,000 years ago

“Hundreds of personal ornaments have been discovered, including pierced animal teeth, pierced shells, ivory and soapstone beads, engravings, and paintings on limestone slabs.” more

Darwin in the schools debate revisited in Texas?

“Here, politics play a significant role because the State Board of Education is an elected, rather than appointed, body.” more

Evolutionary Informatics Lab- a look inside …

Head, Bob Marks, interviewed by the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society History Committee. more

Y chromosome durability: AKA secret sex worries of science writers

“Y chromosomes are here to stay, and are not the genetic wasteland that they were once thought to be.” more

Fashionable bashing of “scientism” merely disguises its collision course with reality

” … everything is supposed to be weighed and measured even though the human mind that evaluates the results is supposed to be an illusion.” more

David Abel: Formalism not only describes, but preceded, prescribed, organized, and continues to govern and predict Physicality.

“Chance, necessity and mere constraints cannot steer, program or optimize algorithmic/ computational success to provide desired nontrivial utility.” more

Deprogramming “neuro”politics in an election year

“Political beliefs are hugely complex, and can change rapidly and quickly over time.” more

We must pretend there is free will so as to go on using the language of ethics?

Odds are, given that they don’t really believe in free will, after a while they won’t use the language of ethics and won’t really miss it. more

Philosophy: Contact with death improves people’s behaviour?

“‘Once we started developing this study we were surprised how much research showed positive outcomes from awareness of mortality,’ said Arndt. ” more

John Gray: Evolutionary theorists assume their own leanings in morality are universal

“… self-evident to secular social scientists in American universities, but it hardly squares with how most human beings (or most Americans, for that matter) understand morality.” more

They used to wonder, but now they take medication for that.

So official explanation just got a whole lot easier. more

Psychology association – target of a bunk watch, no less! – fronts politics as “brain wiring”

So, if voters are losing their jobs because of government decisions, the best way to understand their response is to theorize about neuroscience findings? Hither, bunkwatch! more

Early bipedalism walked no straight line?

It’s not clear that there’s much to learn here if we want to know why humans walk exclusively upright, which is different in principle from sometimes using an upright stance more

Nothing to see here? New book might change that – Peter Woit

“While the argument between Krauss, Albert and their fellow combatants was mind-numbingly dumb, boring, narrow, petty and ill-mannered, Holt’s discussion of the topic is brilliant, … ” more

From The Best Schools: Credentialism, Part II: The less well-advertised reasons why credentialism is so popular today

“It forms an industry for the people who create the courses and grant the credentials.” Not a bad thing in principle, but … more

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