Visit an exhibit of molecular machines in the cell, from last year, 05/30/2007.

NSF Funds Misleading Cartoons on Origin of Life   05/31/2008    
May 31, 2008 — A slick new multimedia website called Exploring Life’s Origins made its debut this month.  Dazzling artwork and vivid animations are highlights of the site.
    The journey begins with a timeline of life’s evolution in which the viewer can drag a marker through billions of years of evolutionary progress.  Controversial theories about the formation of the planets and the moon, the alleged Late Heavy Bombardment, and the origin of earth’s crust and atmosphere are presented in vivid artwork.  Evolution and long ages are immune from falsification on the site, if and when controversies are admitted; e.g., “it appears that life evolved within a short billion years after Earth’s formation.”  Of the Cambrian Explosion, the caption says that a sharp increase in diversity occurred in a relatively short time span, but the cause is unknown.
    The centerpiece of the site is a series of colorful animations of molecules coming together to form the first living cell.  The site gives prominence to the RNA World theory, though, surprisingly, the links page includes a reference to Robert Shapiro’s sharp criticism of it (see 02/15/2007).  Once the building blocks are assembled, animations show the ingredients of protocells coming together with little trouble at all.  The site makes all its visuals freely available to educators.
    Where did this website come from?  A look at the About page shows that the animator is Janet Iwasa, a National Science Foundation (NSF) Discovery Corps Postdoctoral Fellow, working in collaboration with Jack Szostak from Massachusetts General Hospital and the Museum of Science.  A click on the link for the NSF site reveals that Janet received a $200,000 3-year grant primarily to “present chemical evolution in a clear and engaging way” to the general public.  As could be expected, the pro-evolution blog Panda’s Thumb is thrilled.

A picture is worth a thousand blurs.  Visualization is one of the most powerful, attractive and deceptive means of propaganda.  For years we have presented technical reasons why these origin-of-life schemes do not work, mostly with admissions from the evolutionists themselves.  Recently, for instance, the treatises by Robert Shapiro and Leslie Orgel take opposite sides on the leading theories and essentially falsify each other.  Pigs don’t fly, Orgel said.  Well, with animation, they can!  Clever artwork can make anything seem real.  Mountains of contrary evidence are almost powerless against the propaganda power of misleading visualizations.
    Think of the thousands, perhaps millions, of public school students who could be subjected to the seductive mythology of chemical evolution with these videos.  How many teachers will tell them about the problems?  Damaging cross-reactions, the implausibility of a genetic code arising from repetitive crystals (10/30/2007), the thermodynamics that drive reactions toward disorder, the problem of chirality (see online book), and a dozen more falsifying facts that militate against the story are glossed over in these visuals.  There is not one stage of the evolutionary timeline that is not subject to severe objections.  Gaze into the crystal ball of Iwasa’s miracle visions, though, and it suddenly seems so real.
    What’s real is that evolutionists are enraptured by imagination, not evidence (see 01/17/2007 commentary).  Their faith rests on visions that could never come true in the real world.  This isn’t the science lab; it’s Disneyland.  It’s Journey into Imagination with Figment.  Fun.  Amusement.  Entertainment.  Escape.  Fantasy.  Virtual reality, conveyed by intelligently-designed false fronts backed by humans managing computers and machinery to create the illusion that impossible things happen every day (see 06/27/2005 commentary).  What they fail to remind you is that when it’s over, you have to re-enter the real world, get into your car, and drive home.  Then you have to balance your checkbook and realize what a fortune you just spent on titillating your imagination instead of getting any useful work done.
    Disney loves to advertise the power of imagination, as do evolutionists (see 04/17/2008 and examples in the Baloney Detector under visualization).  The difference is that the Disney company knows their imagineering is just for show, but the evolutionists believe their visions are real.  They confuse their imagination with science.  That’s a very dangerous delusion.  Now, empowered with hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars, these Priests of the Magic Kingdom are on an evangelistic crusade to spread their gospel of imagination to the next generation of impressionable students.
    Disraeli warned that error is often more earnest than truth.  It will take some earnest reality checks to snap this crowd out of their hypnotic state.  Do your duty to prevent a whole generation of amusement-addicted, imagination-inebriated zombies from overrunning the world.  Want to get really mad about what’s happening with visualization in school?  Read this.
Next headline on:  Origin of Life • Media • Evolution • Education

1. A placoderm is born:  Imagine finding a fossil of a primitive fish giving live birth.  That’s what was reported in Nature this week.¹  The scientists were not only surprised to find an animal fossilized in that maternal instant.  Another surprise was that this kind of animal was supposed to lay eggs, not give birth to live young.  Carina Dennis, commenting on the paper in the same issue of Nature,² said, “The discovery of embryos in fossils of placoderms (ancient, armoured, jawed fish) indicates that vertebrates have been copulating and giving birth to live young for at least 380 million years.”  That is over double the previous date for viviparity detected in fossil marine reptiles in the Jurassic.
       The fossil from the Gogo Formation in Australia was also remarkably well preserved.  One of the researchers said, “Gogo fish are three-dimensional, uncrushed, perfect specimens – as if they died yesterday.”  Muscle tissues, nerve fibers and a yolk sac were all detectable.  The discoverers said that it “shows additional soft-tissue preservation never before recorded in any fossil.”  They could even tell that the young inside the womb was the same species, and that it showed no sign of etching from stomach acids.  For these and other reasons they were convinced this was a young fish about to be born, not the adult’s lunch.
       Placoderms were thought to be dull, slow, primitive fish, paddling about in their armor.  This fossil implies implacably that placoderms were anything but primitive.  They had an elaborate courtship ritual, along with all the internal biology necessary for giving birth to live young.  The paper ended by saying “Further discussion of the significance of viviparity and evolution can be found in the Supplementary Information.”³  Thus teased, we went there and looked.  The first paragraph of the Supplemental Information revealed a multi-faceted conundrum about evolution:

   Live bearing evolved independently in all classes of vertebrates except birds, and also in many invertebrate clades.  Phylogenetic analysis of viviparity in living fishes indicates a non-reversible transition from egg-laying to live bearing in teleosts [bony fish, like tunas], with two possible reversals in chondrichthyans [cartilaginous fish, like sharks].... Similarly, lack of parental care has been assumed the ancestral state in fishes.... Such analyses assume oviparity [egg-laying] as a primitive and comparable condition in teleosts and chondrichthyans, and that viviparity in the latter can be interpreted as a form of parental care.  However, the complex behavioral, morphological and physiological mechanisms required for successful copulation and internal fertilisation in chondrichthyans must have evolved independently and non-reversibly 12 times in teleosts, whereas they are part of an ancient evolutionary heritage in all living chondrichthyans.  This fundamental difference has been overlooked in some recent analyses....

   So here they admitted that a transition from egg-laying to live birth involves multiple overhauls of body shape, organ function and behavior, yet claim that evolution figured out how to do this a dozen times independently in teleost fish, to say nothing of all the other classes of vertebrates where it also emerged independently.  At the end of the Supplemental Information they said, “whether internal fertilisation was ancestral for, or evolved within placoderms, it can be assumed now to have been acquired independently of internal fertilisation in chondrichthyans.”
       What this means is that a highly improbable event on one branch of Darwin’s tree must have occurred multiple times on other branches.  The complex morphological-physiological-behavioral package for giving live birth was not bequeathed by a common ancestor to all the upper branches, as Darwin supposed, but was invented independently and irreversibly – and that multiple times.  National Geographic News repeated the evolutionary interpretation and provided a video of the fossil and its soft parts, along with an artist’s rendering of the fish giving live birth, umbilical cord and all.  The article did quote Long remarking, “Having such advanced reproduction for a fish that primitive is amazing.”  David Catchpoole and Jonathan Sarfati of Creation Ministries International analyzed the plausibility of this evolutionary story.
2. Wood this happen twice?  Lignin, the molecule responsible for the toughness of wood, is a complex molecule manufactured by complex enzymes in plants.  Wikipedia⁴ states that the complexity of lignin biosynthesis is still challenging biochemists after a century of study:

   Lignin biosynthesis (Figure 4) begins in the cytosol with the synthesis of glycosylated monolignols from the amino acid phenylalanine.  These first reactions are shared with the phenylpropanoid pathway.  The attached glucose renders them water soluble and less toxic.  Once transported through the cell membrane to the apoplast, the glucose is removed and the polymerisation commences.[citation needed] Much about its anabolism is not understood even after more than a century of study.[3]
       The polymerisation step, that is a radical-radical coupling, is catalysed by oxidative enzymes.  Both peroxidase and laccase enzymes are present in the plant cell walls, and it is not known whether one or both of these groups participates in the polymerisation.  Low molecular weight oxidants might also be involved.  The oxidative enzyme catalyses the formation of monolignol radicals.  These radicals are often said to undergo uncatalyzed coupling to form the lignin polymer, but this hypothesis has been recently challenged.[12]  The alternative theory that involves an unspecified biological control is however not accepted by most scientist [sic] in the field.

   Given the complexity of lignin synthesis, it challenges credibility that a random process like evolution would achieve this feat even once.  Yet now, according to Science Daily, evolutionists are saying it happened twice – once in gymnosperms and again in lycophytes.  The title carries the theme: “Fundamental Building Block In Flowering Plants Evolved Independently, Yet Almost Identically In Ancient Plants.”

Evolutionists believe in miracles.  You have just seen it right here.  Let’s get them to stop this psychological game they play against creationism, wherein they claim that believers in God as an intelligent Designer of these complex structures resort to “faith” in the “supernatural” and “miracles” of creation.  What, pray tell, is the difference?  They have an endless stream of miracles themselves.  And they have much more faith in the miracle-working power of their naturalistic deity, natural selection, than any closed-minded, irrational religious nutcase you want to exhibit.
    You would think that contrary evidence this strong would be devastating to any scientific theory.  Look at them; no amount of falsification overcomes their faith.  These two cases alone, beside the dozens of others we have reported for years, should have tossed Darwinism overboard, but the evolution-talk, like the Titanic theme song, goes on and on and on, as their ship of evidence sinks into the night.  What does that take?  Belief.  Undying devotion to Charlie can produce miracles in the imagination, no matter what happens in reality.

Near, far, where bad data are
I believe that the theory goes on;
Once more no watertight door
But he’s here in my heart
And my faith will go on and on and on and on and on and on and on.....

Evolution is out of sync.  The H.M.S. Darwin is not only sinking.  It sank, and it is sunk.
Next headline on:  Marine Life • Plants • Fossils • Evolution

1. Toxic salty stew:  Space.com summarized a new paper in Science¹ that concluded Mars has way too much salt.  Although some earth organisms are adapted to high saline environments, evolutionists believe they descended from less-tolerant progenitors.  Besides, the Mars salt levels are way above the most salt-tolerant creatures on earth.
       This is bad news for Martian hunters.  Team member Andrew Knoll (Harvard U) told Space.com, “Our sense has been that while Mars is a lousy environment for supporting life today, long ago it might have more closely resembled Earth.  But this result suggests quite strongly that even as long as four billion years ago, the surface of Mars would have been challenging for life.  No matter how far back we peer into Mars’ history, we may never see a point at which the planet really looked like Earth.”  The paper said that any Martian life “would require biochemistry distinct from any known in even the most robust halophiles on Earth.”  Indeed, the Opportunity rover may have been treading on “the last, best places for life on the early martian surface” even though it, too, was extremely salty.  See also Science Daily’s report.  National Geographic News called any past Martian water a “toxic stew.”  This is an update to our 02/18/2008 entry.
2. Death knell for Mars interior:  Mars has big volcanic domes.  Scientists have assumed it must still have an active core, despite no plate tectonics or global magnetic field.  A new measurement reported in Science² casts doubt on that supposition.  If the core were fluid, the load of ice at the poles should depress the surface a little.  A shallow radar instrument on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter measured no dent at all.  This, they infer, means that the surface is frozen solid.  “Is Mars geodynamically dead?” Matthias Grott of the German Aerospace Center asked in the same issue of Science.³  He is not convinced this measurement sounds the funeral bell, but the paper “will cause some controversy and stimulate activity as the planetary science community tries to fit their results into our current view of Mars.”

The centuries-long myth of life on Mars is about to come to an end.  Let’s see if Phoenix closes the book, or if hopes rise from the fires of disappointment in the last chapter.
Next headline on:  Solar System • Origin of Life

Think Like a Neanderthal Child   05/29/2008    
May 29, 2008 — How should you stop a child’s tantrum?  Think like a Neanderthal, reports Live Science.  Dr. Harvey Karp, a pediatrician, “sees our little darlings as less-evolved savages driven by instinct and emotion, not thoughtful reasoning, and he suggests it’s our job as parents to civilize them into Homo sapiens.”
    It’s fruitless, therefore, to talk like a Homo sapiens to your little cave boy or girl.  Karp suggests you just speak short phrases to the child, like “You are angry,” rather than try to reason with him or her.  To prepare for this, you need to do a mind meld with your evolutionary past:

And so parents need not read the history of human evolution to know how to deal with their unruly kids.
    All we have to do, even in the middle of the most embarrassing public tantrum, is to reach inside and feel that same frustration and anger with the world, and then bend down and say, as Dr Karp would, “I know just how you feel.”

Of course, Dr. Karp maligns Neanderthals by suggesting there were instinctual creatures swayed by emotions rather than thought.  Neanderthals didn’t have language, but they had bigger brains than modern humans and could probably do logic problems with the best of us.
    His advice is better couched in the notion that Homo sapiens, and presumably our ancestors, were designed to feel very deeply, and little kids simply want their emotions acknowledged, just like adults.

Remember, this is the same Live Science news site that recently embellished tales of a frog-amander (05/28/2008), told us the platypus holds clues to evolution (05/09/2008) and explained that evolution made us adulterers (03/19/2008) but called the movie Expelled bad in every way (04/07/2008) and called creationism creepy (05/22/2008) and anti-science (05/17/2008).
    So now we have the little evolutionist darlings doing mind-melds with people they never met, whose intelligence and parenting skills they know nothing about, and converting their imaginations into bad parenting.  Would any parents of toddlers like to vouch for the effectiveness of Neander-therapy?  If it works on children, why not on heads of state?  After all, Small said that adults have the same needs for acceptance as children.  Why don’t we tell the president of Iran, who is having a little nuclear tantrum right now, that we know just how he feels?
    Sometimes debunking the Darwin propagandists is too easy.  All we have to do is quote them.
Next headline on:  Early Man • Dumb Ideas

Which of these stories is absurd, pseudoscientific and an egregious abuse of taxpayer money?  Pick any two.
Next headline on:  SETI • Dumb Ideas

Thank you, Alister Doyle, for attempting to give fair and balanced reporting on this question.  Was a floating refuge for the animals possible?  Consider Noah’s Ark: A Feasibility Study by John Woodmorappe (see Answers in Genesis), or an article on the subject by Jonathan Sarfati on Creation Ministries International.  Don’t ridicule it till you’ve heard it defended with competence.  Consider also that dozens of people groups have legends of a worldwide flood during which people and animals were preserved on a floating vessel.  Only the Biblical account comes close to feasibility and plausibility.  Don’t forget, too, that geology provides evidence of sedimentation and erosion on colossal scales far greater than anything occurring today.  For more evidences of a global flood, see a brief article on Answers in Genesis by geologist Dr. Andrew Snelling.
Next headline on:  Bible and Theology

Fossil Frog-amander Claimed to Be Missing Link   05/28/2008    
May 28, 2008 — It looks like a frog with four equal legs and a tail; is it the ancestor of frogs and amphibians?  It depends on whether you read the original paper or the popular press.
    Live Science writer Jeanna Brynner is absolutely certain this puts a feather in Darwin’s cap: “the creature represents a transitional amphibian, sporting features of both frogs and salamanders.”  The “walking frog” has fused bones in the ankle characteristic of salamanders, and a wide skull and large eardrum characteristic of frogs.  She quoted Jason Anderson (U of Calgary) who described the five-inch Texas fossil, named Gerobatrachus hottoni, as “kind of an early frog-amander.”  Brynner said the fossil “provides a marker of when frogs and salamanders went their separate ways along the evolutionary path toward modern forms.”  She did, however, quote a team member who remarked that the divergence date according to the fossil’s position in the geological record occurred “much more recently than previous molecular data had suggested.”
    What did the original paper in Nature claim?¹  Right off the bat, Anderson et al remarked, “The origin of extant amphibians (Lissamphibia: frogs, salamanders and caecilians) is one of the most controversial questions in vertebrate evolution, owing to large morphological and temporal gaps in the fossil record.”  This indicates that one alleged transitional fossil could only provide a partial solution at best.  They did claim that G. hottoni “bridges the gap between other Palaeozoic amphibians and the earliest known salientians and caudatans from the Mesozoic,” but the paper revealed a number of questions and problems.  First, the specimen appears to be from a juvenile.  We don’t know what the adult form looked like.  Frogs undergo a dramatic transformation from tailed tadpole to hopping adult.  Second, only one specimen was found.  Third, frogs and salamanders already share a great many traits, both being amphibians, and a good deal of diversity exists within both groups.  Add to that the thousands of extinct species, and the result is a lot of leeway in where a specimen might fit into a big evolutionary picture.
    The following excerpt illustrates the amount of wiggle room involved in inferring evolutionary relationships:

If our interpretations are correct, the preaxial pattern of digital development is either independently derived in Gerobatrachus and salamanders, or primitive in batrachians but reversed in frogs.  Knowledge of development in fossil taxa is always inferential, especially when based on a single specimen, but our speculative hypothesis is testable with a more complete developmental series of either Gerobatrachus or another amphibamid.  A preaxial pattern of digital development has recently been demonstrated in branchiosaurids, which are thought to be closely related to, if not included within, Amphibamidae (Fig. 4), but branchiosaurids lack ossified carpals and tarsals and thus it remains unknown if they possessed a basale commune [fused distal tarsals].  This observation, however, may support the possibility that preaxial development is primitive for batrachians (and more basal amphibamids), and will be the subject of future research.

We hope this little excursion into how evidence for Darwinism is manufactured was revealing.  The popular press (especially Darwin-loving, creation-hating sites like Live Science) stretches hypothetical possibilities into confident truths.  Get to the source; look at the raw data and see if the inference is justified.
    Look how much human tinkering was required to get the data to fit their inference.  Even if one accepts their dating scheme the match is imperfect and subjective.  Without the dating assumption, the fit is almost completely arbitrary.  Any number of relationships could be hypothesized between living and extinct individuals.  Besides, this is just a claim about a missing link within the amphibians.  We don’t see transitional forms between the higher-level taxa.  Where are the clam-frogs, echino-flies, and sponge-worms?  (No fair mentioning lionfish and scorpionfish – those are just fish.)
    The bottom line: data don’t jump up and draw Darwin’s tree of life.  Evolutionary trees are manufactured by certain people with biases, agendas and world views.  If you asked G. hottoni if it was a Tree frog, it would just say ribbit.
Next headline on:  Terrestrial Zoology • Fossils • Evolution

The model assumes, in other words, that a small number of people have a genetic predisposition to communicate unverifiable information to others.  They passed on that trait to their children, but they also interacted with people who didn’t spread unreal information.
    The model looks at the reproductive success of the two sorts of people – those who pass on real information, and those who pass on unreal information.
    Under most scenarios, “believers in the unreal” went extinct.  But when Dow included the assumption that non-believers would be attracted to religious people because of some clear, but arbitrary, signal, religion flourished.
    “Somehow the communicators of unreal information are attracting others to communicate real information to them,” Dow says, speculating that perhaps the non-believers are touched by the faith of the religious.”

In spite of the movie Expelled, and years of sophisticated criticisms of evolutionary theory, the Darwinists continue to flaunt their stupidity in public.  We don’t persist in the tedious task of unraveling their tangled logic with any hope of changing them.  They are incorrigible, hooked and stoned on Darwin beyond recovery.  For our sophisticated and discriminating readers, in hopes of empowering the paradigm revolution, let’s do the analysis.
    Always start by looking for pertinent questions to ask.  To an evolved monkey-brain, what is the difference between real information and unreal information?  What is information in the first place?  What is reality?  Can a theoretical system built on chance and necessity include abstract concepts and laws of logic?  (Remember, without laws of logic, you can prove anything, and if anything is true, nothing is true – including evolutionary theory.)  How can a genetic trait produce abstract concepts such as information?  What kind of genetic trait attracts the members of the population who do not have the trait?  What is an evolutionary force?  Can you write an equation for it?  How can I tell a selection force that maintains unreal information from one that causes real information to “emerge”?
    Good questions just warm the discussion up.  Next, test the evolutionists’ logic on their own assumptions.  They are assuming that their theorizing is immune from the same selection forces.  That’s a no-no.  Inconsistency and arbitrariness are two sins in logic.  If you commit either, you can prove anything, even opposite propositions, therefore you prove nothing.  Let’s see if evolutionary theory itself survives Dow’s Law.  He said that selection pressures on a genetic trait caused a population to wish to spread unreal information.  We observe that many Darwinists are eager to spread their ideas with evangelistic fervor.  Could we propose that the Darwin-dogma trait is genetic, that it emerged from selection pressure, and that evolutionary theory consists of unreal information?  Indeed we could.  The evolutionist has no basis to define reality, information, logic, truth or evidence.  He’s just doing what selection forces in his animal past are making him do.  He cannot stand outside the world of the evolved like some all-wise Yoda on a platform of neutrality and wisdom, observing what the silly humans are doing.
    Once you diagnose the Yoda complex in the evolutionist, the argument is over.  It becomes obvious his theory is self-refuting.  If it refutes itself, guess what!  It is refuted – it is necessarily false.  Dow’s own theory cannot survive itself.  The gig is up.  Salvation requires repenting of this sin of arbitrariness and inconsistency, and accepting the premise that at least some religious beliefs (certainly not all) might be real.  Why?  Because meaning requires an ultimate reference point.  Reality requires a reality-Maker.  Information requires an intelligent Communicator.  Logic requires a Thinker who is neither arbitrary nor inconsistent.  Truth requires a truth-Teller.  Only with those presuppositions can one reason inductively and deductively.  Only with those presuppositions is there a standard by which to make sense of the world.  The evolutionary world view does not provide a pole star; it wobbles uncontrollably and chaotically.  What’s up one moment is down the next.
    For overkill, let’s remind the evolutionist that writing programs requires intelligent design, and human designers are subject to bias (see 04/26/2008 commentary).  Dr. Dow conveniently defined his parameters to guarantee the outcome his bias preferred.  Could his critics design a computer program that shows Darwinism emerging and becoming established in a population?  Certainly.  Could they decide that Darwinism represents unreal information?  Why not?  Sounds like fun.
    A perceptive reader offered these additional thoughts:

The analysis assumes that those first promulgated the ‘unreal info” had no real experience--in other words they were liars.  The moral standards of religious people either do or do not support their claims.
    In the case of Judaism and Christianity, the high moral standard--perhaps the highest moral standard on earth--that developed at exactly the same time and by the exact same people who supposedly developed the “unreal info” contradicts the assumption that they were liars.
    It is more likely that Moses, for example, when he came down the mountain with the Ten Commandments described the truth about what he saw and heard than that he fabricated it.  If he had been lying, he quickly would have been exposed by the multitude that didn’t like his standards very much.

So you see that selection pressure in a population would actually work against someone commanding them to not bear false witness.  Let’s ask Dr. Dow if he agrees that bearing false witness is wrong.  Did that standard evolve?  Does it ever change?  Don’t let him appeal to the Ten Commandments.  He doesn’t believe in them.  When you cut off the Judeo-Christian grounding assumptions (truth, morals, logic, absolutes) from the evolutionary belief network, it short circuits.  When you force Darwinism to run on its own operating system, without a proper BIOS (Bible input-output system), every algorithm produces a blue screen of death.
Next headline on:  Evolution • Theology • Dumb Ideas

The mission proceeds on the assumption that if conditions do not rule life out, then life will evolve.  Despite the dubious assumption, any achievement in space this demanding and complex is worthy of celebration and appreciation.
    This lander is not capable of discovering life.  It will only try to find if water and organics exist under the surface.  Marsologists already know that the radiation environment is too hostile to expect anything walking or crawling around.  It will take future missions like the Mars Science Laboratory, being prepped for a 2009 launch, to be capable of detecting life.  Optimism is bound to outrun empiricism, so we will try to help sort out the claims from the data as the mission continues.
Next headline on:  Solar System

Geology: Another Catastrophic Rethink   05/23/2008    
May 23, 2008 — Amphitheater-shaped canyons are common throughout the West – and even on Mars.  Geologists had them pretty well figured out.  Water seeps out the bottom of a wall, weakening the face of a cliff.  Gradually, material collapses and leaves a large alcove that continues to recede headward.  That idea is now questioned by a new theory that says catastrophic flooding produces these canyons suddenly.
    Space.com has a summary of a paper published in Science this week that re-evaluated a classic case, Box Canyon in Idaho.  The new theory is that sudden flooding, perhaps from melting ice sheets to the north, released a torrent of water that cut the canyon at one time.  The article estimated the complete canyon, cut into solid basalt, was eroded in 35 to 160 days at most.  The flood theory explains unusual features, like scour marks on the walls and large boulders sitting out in the middle of nowhere, that were difficult to explain with the old theory.
    An idea of the size of this “megaflood” was given in the article.  Michael Lamb, geomorphologist at UC Berkeley, said, “Imagine forcing a quarter of the flow in the Mississippi through a chute 32 times as narrow and 1,000 times as steep as the Mississippi River channel.”  800 to 2,800 metric tons of water could have blasted through the channel at 22 miles per hour.
    Space.com reported this article because of its implications for Mars research.  If megafloods also formed the amphitheater-shaped canyons on the red planet, perhaps calm water did not exist for long periods – a blow for those hoping life would have time to exist.

Another old-age paradigm has had to shift under new investigation.  These kinds of canyons are very common in the arid southwest, like in the Grand Canyon.  Where did the water come from in the desert?  In the aftermath of a worldwide flood, such phenomena would be expected, but not in a place where geologists feel huge seas of Sahara-like sand ruled for millions of years.
    Access Research Network also reported on this paradigm-shifting theory.
Next headline on:  Geology • Dating Methods

1. USA:  In Live Science, senior editor Robin Lloyd described creationism as “creeping” into U.S. classrooms.  “One in eight U.S. high school biology teachers presents creationism or intelligent design in a positive light in the classroom, a new survey shows, despite a federal court’s recent ban against it.”  The basis of her report was a paper in PLoS Biology by Berkman, Pacheco, and Plutzer.¹  The paper said 38% of the public would prefer that creationism be taught instead of evolution.  A survey of 939 teachers showed that between 12% and 16% are creationists, and only 23% feel strongly that evolution is a central unifying theme for biology.
       The federal ban that Lloyd referred to was the decision by John E. Jones in Dover, Pennsylvania – a ruling that had no bearing on any school outside that county.  She referred vaguely to “many other legal victories at the state and local level for the teaching of evolution.”  One should recall that calling a decision a “victory” depends on one’s point of view.  Science Daily and PhysOrg also alleged that creationism violates the Establishment Clause, but did not describe creationism as “creeping” into schools.  Actually, the US Supreme Court, while forbidding “equal time” laws, allows teachers “considerable leeway” in how the subject of origins is presented – a point Berkman admitted in his paper.
       Did Lloyd provide evidence that creationism is “creeping” into schools, as opposed to declining or maintaining a presence that has always been there?  She quoted Berkman saying “The status of evolution in the biology and life sciences curriculum remains highly problematic and threatened,” but otherwise there was no indication of a conspiracy to sneak creationism into schools – which is what the phrase “creationism creeps into U.S. classrooms” suggests.
       Lloyd used additional language to portray creationism as something sinister and threatening.  Whereas creationists believe life was created by God, “Scientists, on the other hand, agree that humans evolved from a common primate ancestor in a process that stretches back tens of millions of years,” she proclaimed.  “The theory of evolution on which this is based is one of the most well-supported theories in science.”  Other statements stressed the “victory for evolution” theme or the “all experts agree” theme: “This issue [the teaching of evolution] is particularly interesting in that context because the public opinion on it is in many ways so far away from where the experts are,” Berkman told Live Science.  He also told the reporter, “Victory in the courts and state standards will not ensure that evolution is included in high school science classes.”
       As usual, Live Science included icons at the bottom for its featurettes that mock creation beliefs: “Top ten creation myths” and “Top 10 missing links.”
2. Et tu, Turkey?  “Creationism is creeping into the universities to the alarm of researchers supporting Ataturk’s vision of a secular state,” Nigel Williams wrote in Current Biology this week.²  His article has the bellicose title, “Secular Turkey’s evolution battle.”  Later he said, “Ankara is now the centre of a battle against the rise of creationism in Turkey.”
       Williams also did not provide evidence that creationism is “creeping” in under the wire.  He admitted that an Islamic version of creationism has been taught in Turkish high schools since 1985.  That’s 23 years – hardly a creepy new threat, though creationist leanings seem more prevalent among younger teachers.  If anything is creeping in now, it is American evolutionists like Douglas Futuyma and Jerry Coyne who came to lecture against creationism in Ankara.
       Like the Live Science article, the editorial in Current Biology stressed the warfare metaphor: “Ankara is now the centre of a battle against the rise of creationism in Turkey.”  There was a reference to Adnan Oktar (a.k.a. Hahrun Yahya), whose thick and lavishly illustrated Atlas of Creation was sent to teachers and researchers.  This person and his group, which also supports an elaborate multi-language website (see HarunYahya.com) has no connection to American creationists, who oppose the Islamic slant and many aspects of the beliefs presented.  American creationists also lack the kind of funding that supported this one organization’s effort, which most likely came from rich Muslim supporters, perhaps Saudis.³  American evolutionists, by contrast, are amply funded by the American government.  All creationist organizations in the West and Australia are privately funded and get no such government subsidies.
       Williams not only lumped Islamic and Christian creationism into the same pot, he linked it to the highly-charged word “fundamentalism” and described evolution as “secular” in the vision of Ataturk.  This begs the question whether Darwinism is devoid of religious implications, and whether scientific evidence for intelligent design could be presented with the same secular criteria as evolution.  The last word: “Although creationists are spending incredible amounts of funds of unknown origin in their campaign against evolution, we believe that science will win in the end.”

The wording in these articles was rigged to color creationism in fundamentalist, religious, superstitious, insidious, sneaky, dark tones and evolution in secular, scientific, victorious, brave strokes, as the stalwart soldiers of Scientific Truth battle this “threat.”  Statistics were carefully selected to support the portrayal of creationism as a creepy minority view.  Lloyd and Berkman used the figure 38% for those wanting creationism taught instead of evolution – a minority, but substantial enough to appear threatening indeed.  When people are asked if they want both views taught, the number can be as high as 65-85% or more.  As few as 10-20% want DODO (Darwin-only, Darwin-only), yet that minority view is imposed by dictatorial courts and lawsuit-threatening organizations like the ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State (a.k.a. secularists determined to overthrow the First Amendment free-exercise clause), funded by radical leftist liberals.
    Boy, could we have fun setting the record straight on what is really going on by the Darwinist minority imposing their religious view (atheism) onto the public, fighting Academic Freedom bills, shutting down debate, and issuing shrill, heated propaganda with no understanding of the issues involved, and precious little attempt to honestly articulate distinctions or weigh evidence.  Take a little tour through the Chain Links on Evolution and Education for plenty of supporting material.  A look at the history of the Darwin revolution, too, would be very illuminating about creepiness.  CEH does not endorse Yahya’s Atlas of Creation but would like to point out that even that was privately funded and offered as a free gift to teachers and academics.  Was anything stopping Dr. Hatecreationism from simply depositing it in the trash can?  It’s not like the organization was invading libraries and burning copies of Origin of Species or something.  The Darwinists, by contrast, get government funding to build pro-evolution websites taking positions on religion, and can send every teacher in the country their propaganda, like the NAS booklet Science, Evolution and Creationism.  How do they indoctrinate?  With bad science in textbooks (Haeckel’s embryos and other hoaxes, see 07/25/2003), with one-sided museum extravaganzas (04/30/2008) and with ridicule and intimidation by arrogant teachers and threats from the courts.  When someone doesn’t tow the party line, as shown in Expelled, the Darwinists ruin careers, lambaste, marginalize, deny degrees and tenure, and act in other creepy ways.
    Creationism is not creeping like some insidious spider or snake under the door, seeking opportunity to multiply and strike.  Belief in creation was the dominant view for centuries till a creeping secularism usurped the scientific institutions and shut off debate (the hallmark of science).  Today’s creationist ladies and gentlemen, well-dressed and educated, knock patiently on the door of public opinion, seeking an opportunity to talk rationally about the evidence once again.  This may seem creepy to inbred liberals unaccustomed to such things, but creepiness is in the eye of the beholder.  Does a creation scientist with a PhD in geology or biochemistry appear creepy?  To whom does a Doctor of Divinity with expertise in archaeology and history appear creepy?  Does a book written by PhD scientists and philosophers of science and a science curriculum writer like Explore Evolution appear creepy to a Darwin-indoctrinated high school biology teacher?  Undoubtedly conservatives appear creepy to liberals.  Why, under certain circumstances, sheep might even appear creepy to wolves.  (Especially those sheep with the big horns.)
    Teachers, would you like to really freak out the Darwinists?  Teach ALL the facts about Darwinism.  Spend lots of time on the subject.  Teach both the strengths and weaknesses about Darwinism.  You don’t even have to mention creation, God, or anything even remotely religious.  Just say something like, “Today, class we are going to talk about evolution.  Many scientists believe that humans came from bacteria.  They have lots of evidence for this.  Here, for instance, are some finch beaks that got longer and shorter as the weather changed.  Here are some moths that scientists glued to tree trunks.  Here is a display of embryos – whoops, I’m sorry, that turned out to be a hoax.  Here is the fossil record, where all the major phyla burst onto the scene without any apparent ancestors.  And here is the inside of a cell, with thousands of molecular machines and a coded language, which they say came from lucky mud.  Any questions?”  To Darwin Party enforcers, the giggles among the students would sound really, really creepy.
Next headline on:  Education • Evolution • Intelligent Design

Dinosaur tracks are fairly common throughout the world.  There are even some in southern Israel.  Texas, California, Utah, Mexico, Russia, and many other places have preserved tracks.  They don’t come with dates on them.  Certain reasonable inferences can be made about species, stride, and velocity.  Estimating the conditions necessary for preservation is also fair game.  The stories made up about when the creatures evolved and made the tracks, though, are interpretations of empirical evidence, not evidence itself.
Next headline on:  Dinosaurs • Fossils

Moon Still Feeling the Impact   05/21/2008    
May 21, 2008 — Craters on the moon seem so old.  Astronomers count them to try to figure out how long ago the surface was battered by impacts.  Although amateurs have claimed to see flashes on the moon’s surface through backyard telescopes, serious astronomers dismissed many of the reports as stories from the lunatic fringe.  “Not any more,” says Space.com and PhysOrg.  NASA astronomers decided to watch a little more closely and have so far counted over 100 flashes in the last two and a half years.
    More impacts occur during known meteor showers, but there is never a time of year that is impact-free.  “A typical blast is about as powerful as a few hundred pounds of TNT and can be photographed easily using a backyard telescope,” said an observer at Marshall Space Flight Center.
    A good question is why this was never noticed before.  The moon is, after all, our closest neighbor in space.  Astronomers at Marshall decided to start looking in late 2005 when NASA announced plan to return astronauts to the moon.  They figured we had better understand better the risk of impacts.  Though the chance of an astronaut being hit directly is nil, the article explained that debris can shoot out sideways like bullets for long distances.  These “secondary impacts” are of greater concern for extended visits or lunar bases.  A spacesuit could be pierced by a particle as small as a millimeter.
    The reporter said that while the article was being written, three more flashes on the moon were recorded.  The PhysOrg article included a map of the impacts seen since 2005, and a video of a bright explosion.

The article did not delve into a follow-up question: if impacts are coming in this frequently, how many would have occurred at this rate over the assumed age of the solar system?  And what effect would the explosions have had on the lunar surface?  Let’t do a little back-of-the-envelope calculation.  A hundred impacts over 2.5 years is 40 per year.  Over 4 billion years, that would equate to 160 billion impacts.
    Keep in mind, though, that 100 is all that was observed.  We can only see the near side of the moon, so assume another 100 or more hits the parts we cannot see.  Also, the moon is not observable all month due to lunar phases and weather.  It is very likely the impact rate is considerably higher.  And by most astronomical reckonings, the impact rate was much higher in the past, when the moon was formed and during the “late heavy bombardment” postulated by leading solar system models.
    Yet we see large areas of the moon with few impacts.  Some of the maria are nearly as smooth as when the lava flowed supposedly billions of years ago.  Wouldn’t it seem plausible that this continuous rain of impactors would have churned up the surface and coated the moon with a substantial layer of dust from secondary debris?
    You might recall that the Apollo astronauts could scratch bedrock with the toes of their boots in many places.  Without the necessary fiction of billions of years for Darwin, this would be easily explained as evidence the moon is relatively young.
    The earth gets bombarded continually, too.  Fortunately for living things, our atmosphere burns up most fragments harmlessly high above us, providing us not only safety, but a nightly fireworks show in celebration of our privileged planet.
Next headline on:  Solar System • Dating Methods

We have here a strange situation in science.  Leading cosmologists have been willing for a decade now to posit an imponderable substance, dark energy, to preserve favored theories of physics and views of the large scale structure of the universe.  Even more astonishing, they have been telling the world that this mysterious unknown stuff constitutes 74% of reality.  In addition, they have lived with the paradoxes of the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics for decades – a position that allows for instantaneous action at a distance and for objects to occupy two incompatible states simultaneously.  Are they dabbling in the occult or really getting a grip on the universe?
    Perhaps someday they will come up with an acceptable solution for the paradoxes of quantum mechanics, and figure out what dark energy is.  If so, they will be hailed as visionaries who predicted the nature of reality then found it.  If not, future scientists will look back at this period and wonder how brilliant thinkers could have clung to occult forces and unobservable substances for so long.  Today’s science could be regarded as tomorrow’s alchemy.
    There is a view of science that doubts man’s ability to comprehend reality as it is.  The job of science, many have argued, is to organize experience to give us a degree of explanation, prediction and control – not to comprehend reality.  This is a pragmatic view.  If by using the equations of quantum mechanics we can make lasers and Geiger counters and cell phones, and explain why a spectrum has broad emission lines, that’s all fine and good.  It may have nothing to do with reality.  Why?  Because there is no way we can get outside of our experience to compare our theories with reality and see if there is a good fit.  A corollary is that scientific knowledge is never universal, timeless, necessary and certain.  It is only tentative.  It is the best we can do for now.  The best theory, though, is not ipso facto a good theory (see best-in-field fallacy).
    We know from history that civilizations have had views of nature that we consider wrong, but those views at the time gave them useful degrees of explanation, prediction and control.  In fact, the whole industrial revolution in Western civilization proceeded on ideas about the earth, the universe, the atom and the mind that modern scientists long ago discarded or overhauled completely.  Who could know what revolutions are coming that will render today’s best scientific concepts as hopelessly inadequate?
    The tension between observation and theory in today’s cosmology underscores the tentative and historical nature of scientific knowledge.  We should not view science as necessarily progressing toward the truth.  Often, it is more the work of blind men striving to understand the elephant.  Just when they think they have the trunk understood, the tusk presents itself as an anomaly difficult to reconcile with theory.
    A few smart blind men might be able to put all the parts of one elephant together into an acceptable theory.  The universe is far too vast for such a program.  There is plenty of space in isolated pockets of the universe for sentient beings to do some work that might prove temporarily useful while such beings are completely out of touch with reality.  Dark matter and dark energy at the moment have all the attributes of occult phenomena.  We will have to wait and see whether dark energy becomes a truly productive hypothesis or joins the scrap heap of phlogiston, caloric, spider eyes, bat wings and rubber chickens.
Next headline on:  Cosmology • Physics

So here we have a fine thing; evolutionists using the loss of something as evidence that humans had bacteria ancestors.  Tell us how to get an ear, teeth, a spine, skin and a nose in the first place before picking at little bits to call useless.
    A number of questions should be raised about this old vestigial-organs argument.  Did Spinney connect any of these items with its actual effect on reproduction?  Are people with wisdom teeth dropping out of the dating game and failing to have children?  Are people with malformed bumps on their ears failing to hear the call of love?  Are people with a coccyx unable to have kids?  Is she a Lamarckian?  Does disuse itself lead to loss of structure?  Why isn’t evolution more effective at getting rid of vestigial structures if humans have been around for 300,000 years?  Stickleback fish got rid of their armor, and got it right back within human memory, according to a recent news report (SeattlePI.com) that tells us “Evolution is much faster than people give it credit for.”  Why has evolution been so slow at getting rid of useless structures in our case?  And who says they are useless, anyway?  Evolutionists told us the appendix, the pineal gland, the pituitary gland and a hundred other things were vestigial, only to have science find out they had a function after all.  How do we know that they are not wrong now about these five items?  If an organ or structure has a function at some stage in development, is it valid to call it vestigial?  If it is deformed in today’s physiology due to a congenital defect that became established in the population, but was once well adapted, is it valid to call that vestigial?  Has Spinney done any experiments to show what happens when the item is surgically removed?  Dare say she would not sit comfortably without her coccyx.  Many people were exposed to increased infections during the tonsillectomy craze of the 1960s.
    Spinney alleged that creationists have been anxious to deny that vestigial organs and evolution exist at all.  Let’s turn that ploy around.  We hereby allege that evolutionists have been anxious to deny that complex specified information and (and hence creation) exist at all.  We allege that Darwinism is a vestigial philosophy from an atheistic past.  Prove us wrong.
Next headline on:  Darwinism • Human Body

Did Music Evolve?   05/19/2008    
May 19, 2008 — Nature is running a nine-part series on music.  The most recent entry by Josh McDermott, psychologist at University of Minnesota, asked how music might have evolved.¹  The theme, with variations, is that nobody knows.
    Music is a uniquely human trait.  It is ubiquitous across cultures.  Bird songs and animal calls, while musical to us, do not appear to have a music-appreciation function to the animals themselves.  The great apes have nothing like it.  McDermott stated the theme in paragraph one:

We think we understand why we are driven to eat, drink, have sex, talk and so forth, based on the uncontroversial adaptive functions of these urges.  The drive to engage in music, a compulsion that is arguably just as pervasive in our species, has no such ready explanation.  Music was one human behaviour that Charles Darwin was uncertain he could explain, writing in The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex: “As neither the enjoyment nor the capacity of producing musical notes are faculties of the least use to man ... they must be ranked amongst the most mysterious with which he is endowed.”

Music is universal, a significant feature of every known culture, and yet does not serve an obvious, uncontroversial function.  As such it stands in contrast to other universal human behaviours.  Speculation about its possible adaptive functions has been popular since the time of Darwin, and shows few signs of resolution.  Empirical approaches offer a promising alternative.  There is no guarantee that a full account of music’s origins will ever emerge; in fact, that seems quite unlikely at present.  Nonetheless, the right experiments will reveal a great deal – about the innate core of musical behaviour, the traits that might be unique to music, and the possible origins of those components that are not.  All of which promises to enrich our appreciation of this human obsession.

Do you want to follow the Darwinians, who admit that after 149 years they have nothing but speculations and just-so stories?  How much time should they get before admitting defeat?  Why not come back to the theists who love music as a gift of God to sentient creatures?  Music demonstrates that we are more than physical bodies.  Music is the expression of souls and spirits who are able to communicate rationally on a divine level.  Drive a Darwinist crazy: sing a hymn.
    May we suggest a short piece to cleanse out of your mind all thoughts that music evolved?  Of the thousands of beautiful pieces of music that could be selected (and we are sure each person has their favorites), here is one that approaches musical perfection – a blend of human voice and orchestra that, to a well-trained ear, will lift one’s soul to heaven.  It achieves a perfect balance of simplicity and complexity, melody and harmony, dynamism and tranquillity, loud and soft, orchestral tone color, alternating masculine and feminine voices, and a designed structure that enhances its spiritual message.  It’s the fourth movement from the Brahms German Requiem, “How Lovely Is Thy Dwelling Place.”*  English versions are available, but a particularly superb performance is sung in German by Gachinger Kantorei of Stuttgart, conducted by Helmuth Rilling, available for just 99 cents on iTunes or at eMusic.  This gem is only 5 minutes long.  Listen through good headphones and try to convince yourself that musical artistry this superb is a product of evolution.
*Text: How lovely is Thy dwelling place, O Lord of hosts.  O my soul; it longeth, yea fainteth for the courts of the Lord.  My heart and flesh cry out for the living God.  Blessed are they that dwell in the house of the Lord; they will ever praise Thee.
Next headline on:  Human Body • Darwin • Bible and Theology

1. Record flare:  A little star 16 light-years away in Lacerta just went whoosh!  On April 25, it “unleashed what is considered the brightest burst of light ever seen in the universe from a normal star,” reported Space.com.  If that is normal, be glad our sun is abnormal (see 03/07/2007).  A NASA scientist said, “Flares like this would deplete the atmospheres of life-bearing planets, sterilizing their surfaces.”  Science Daily called this star “the mouse that roared.”  For an artist conception of a planet near a roaring star, see Astronomy Picture of the Day for 5/21/2008.
2. Electric dust:  Future moon astronauts will have new challenges only briefly experienced by the Apollo crews.  NASA Science reported that the moon flies through Earth’s magnetotail once a month.  That’s a stream of charged particles from the sun that flows around Earth’s magnetic field and hits the full moon.  The Apollo astronauts never felt the full brunt of this stream.
       Physicists believe that electrons from the sun can charge moon dust and make it levitate above the surface.  Not only that, it can start moving from one hemisphere to the other in a kind of lunar wind, depending on charge differences.  The Apollo astronauts learned a little about the hazards of moon dust.  It scratched visors, got into everything, stuck like glue and smelled like gunpowder.  Future astronauts living through magnetotail crossings may get the full brunt of hazards that electrified dust will throw at them.

Our waterful, airful world is such a blessing, we often take it for granted.  Skeptics can argue all they want that if it weren’t this way we wouldn’t be here arguing about it.  Don’t be such an ingrate.  Thank God for that blue sky with its ozone and magnetic shield.  It’s not just a necessity for survival; it’s a blessing that didn’t have to be.
Next headline on:  Stars • Solar System • Health

Kauffman, director of the Institute for Biocomplexity and Informatics at the University of Calgary, takes a slightly New Age tack, saying we must “heal” the schism between science and religion by “reinventing the sacred” and evolving from a supernatural God to a “new sense of a fully natural God as our chosen symbol for the ceaseless creativity in the natural universe.”

Foolishness.  This is like a bunch of leopards pretending to be sensitive to their prey, and saying maybe the prey would like them better if they washed off some of their spots or maybe didn’t growl so hard before pouncing.  “After all, we’re not the only predators in the jungle,” they say to one another.  “Just the coolest, sleekest and best!”
    Whom does Live Science and Michael Shermer think they are kidding?  Live Science never ceases to twist facts to ridicule any idea of God while pushing Darwin inches into miles of storytelling.  This party was of Darwin-worshipers, by Darwin-worshipers, and for Darwin-worshipers.  True worship requires two things this crowd doesn’t have: spirit and truth.
    Sorry, no deal.  God does not share the stage with idols.  All idols must go.  That includes Darwin and scientism.  Only when they stop telling God what to do, and telling Him what He must act like, and start listening to Him in humility, will they begin to stop committing idolatry.  “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me,” the eternal Creator said.  The Creator makes the rules.  The Creator defines reality.  The Creator is the Truth.  All else is lies and idolatry, and there is no compromise.
    We don’t need Kauffman’s Neanderthal Dance around the Naturalistic Campfire to drum up some phony sense of the sacred.  We need the Lofty One who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy.  One does not get sacredness (holiness) while worshiping one’s own reason and inventing one’s own philosophy.  One gets there by dropping all one’s baggage and humbling oneself before the Creator, who declares, “I am.”
    The question to be asking is not “How can we scientists, who already know it all, be nicer to stupid people of faith,” but “Is there a Creator?” and “Who is He?”  For those questions, ample empirical evidence is available to the true scientist (seeker of knowledge) and philosopher (lover of wisdom).
Next headline on:  Bible and Theology

1. Pulsar outside the box:  Theory has it all laid out nice and neat.  Pulsars form when a red giant drops matter onto a binary companion, making it go boom in a supernova, leaving behind a spinning pulsar.  Why, then, is PSR J1903+0327 orbiting a sun-like star?  This “wacky pulsar,” said Space.com, is sending surprised theorists back to the drawing board.  Maybe its red giant kicked it out of orbit towards the sunlike star.  Who knows?  Maybe not.  See also Science Now.  Science Daily, quoted an astronomer saying, “What we have found is a millisecond pulsar that is in the wrong kind of orbit around what appears to be the wrong kind of star.”
2. Where are the supernovae?  Astronomers are glad to have found another supernova remnant in the Milky Way, but they should have found six times as many by now.  Science Now said this is “a step in the right direction,” but “there are a lot of steps.”  Since the material from this burst is expanding out at a record speed of 15,000 kilometers per second (yes, that is per second), it must have gone off just a hundred years ago.  Now they’re trying to find if it shot off starstuff so they can figure out where life comes from.  Should they look for the other supernova remnants first?
3. Wear your starglasses:  The night sky may look dark, but astronomers just discovered it is twice as bright as it appears.  This is news from astronomers who just recently figured out that dust blocks half the light we see.  Space.com quoted a Scottish astronomer who was “shocked by the sheer scale of the effect” of the dust.  Oh no; “We’ve really got to take dust seriously and we’ve got to make large adjustments to our magnitude calculations.”  Magnitude calculations are the cornerstone of almost everything in astronomy.

Well, what do you know.  Seriously.
Next headline on:  Astronomy • Cosmology • Dating Methods

Animals Outsmart Scientists   05/15/2008    
May 15, 2008 — In science, long-standing beliefs are often challenged by new evidence.  Several recent findings not only show animals to be more remarkable than thought, they pose some new questions for evolutionists.

1. Slothlessness:  Sleeping almost all day, the sloth is the epitome of laziness in the animal kingdom.  Or is it?  The BBC News now tells us that the animal’s lazy image is a myth.  The sloth only sleeps 9.6 hours a day, not 16, as formerly thought.  Some government workers can relate to that.
2. Cheetah whales:  There were thought to be limits on how fast a whale could dive.  Nothing like a little measurement to find out; the BBC News reported that scientists in Spain tagged short-finned pilot whales and found them diving 1000 meters in just 15 minutes, and sprinting after their prey like cheetahs, even at great depth.
3. Insect aeronauts:  Dragonflies can hover, move backwards, and do other tricks with their four independently-operable wings (recall the 08/13/2004 entry).  Computer models had shown it came at a cost: reduced lift.  Scientists decided to compare the models with a robotic dragonfly, reported Science Now, and found the models were wrong.  The dragonfly actually gets more of a lift at less energetic cost, because the back wings ride the rush of air from the front wings.
4. Human efficiency:  We the people have gotten a leg up on our furry primate friends.  Science Now says that we are more efficient at walking on the ground than monkeys are at climbing in the trees.  A graduate student at Duke University found this out with a specially-designed vertical treadmill she built.  She was “surprised to find that no studies had been done in nonhuman primates to measure the amount of energy needed to climb up a tree or wall.”  The bigger your body size, she found, the more efficient it is to walk on the ground than to climb up a limb.
5. Bird’s-eye view:  How do we know the eye of the beholder, when the beholder is a peahen studying a peacock’s feather bouquet?  We don’t, said an article on Science Daily.  Scientists at Uppsala University are upsetting evolutionary assumptions about sexual selection with their findings.  Birds perceive colors differently in 39% of cases they studied, suggesting that “it is possible that more than one third of previous studies have been based on inaccurate information.” 
6. Scalloped turkey:  Why would a molecular machine named myosin 2 be structurally identical in two animals on completely different evolutionary branches?  Science Daily wondered about that, especially since in humans, any changes to this motor protein cause disease or death.  The protein performs different functions in the bird than in the seafood creature, but the structure is the same.  The finding was called “puzzling” and “astonishing.”
       A professor at University of Leeds apparently knows more about evolution than what is right in front of his nose: “The fact that the scallop has retained all the functions of its myosin 2 over hundreds of millions of years tells us that this folding is of fundamental functional importance in muscle and that we don’t know as much about it as we need to know.”
7. Mouse in your genes?  Though mice share 85% genetic similarity to humans, the way their proteins interact is apparently vastly different.  Science Daily reported on knockout experiments at University of Michigan that showed in mice you can knock out 22% of 120 genes that are essential in humans, but the mice do just fine.  This is adding evidence to a growing realization that it’s not the genome alone that determines the animal phenotype (physical nature).  The way gene products interact – the “interactome” may be more important.
8. Counting fly genes:  Humans have only 72% more genes than a fruit fly, but 10 times the protein interactions.  Science Daily said this shows earlier ideas about the differences between animals based on genetic differences have been called into question.  “Understanding the human genome definitely does not go far enough to explain what makes us different from more simple creatures,” a researcher at Imperial College London explained.  “Our study indicates that protein interactions could hold one of the keys to unraveling how one organism is differentiated from another.”

Surprises in biology are fun.  They keep the Darwinists dancing, like the drunk in the Western providing sport for the gunslingers.  It’s not clear a Dar-wino could walk a straight line anyway.
Next headline on:  Mammals • Terrestrial Zoology • Marine Biology • Birds • Genetics • Evolution