http://www.crev.infoNews from science relating to origins, creation vs. evolution, and intelligent design.Sat, 11 Mar 2006 02:33:32 -0800FeedSpring - http://feedspring.com/Fri, 09 May 2008 09:49:41 GMThttp://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rsshttp://creationsafaris.com/crev200805.htm#20080509aThanks to more efficient sequencing techniques, genomes of more and more animals are coming to light. The lastest is from one of the most unusual animals in nature: the duck-billed platypus of Australia. The long and short of it: if evolutionists were confused about the phenotype of this creature, they are just as confused by the genotype.Fri, 09 May 2008 09:49:39 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev200805.htm#20080508bNoah’s ark has landed in the Netherlands. Johan Huibers, a Dutch contractor built the model to showcase the Biblical story and renew interest in Christianity in a country that has lost its faith. Thu, 08 May 2008 21:59:46 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev200805.htm#20080508aWhere did bubonic plague come from? Science News reported that two mutations turned the bacterium from a docile, innocuous bacterium into a curse.Thu, 08 May 2008 19:44:27 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev200805.htm#20080506bFairly regularly, papers appear in journals under the heading of Evolution. The ones dealing with genetics tend to be hard to follow. They are filled with jargon, correlation scores, charts and network diagrams. They employ algorithms and databases unfamiliar to the lay reader. Overall, though, they claim to find support for Darwin’s tree of life in the genes or metabolic networks of this or that group of organisms. Does Darwinism pop right out of the data, or does it take some massaging to make Darwin fit the observations? Tue, 06 May 2008 22:04:10 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev200805.htm#20080506aWill evolutionary paleontologists ever make up their minds about Neanderthals? The story seems to change every year. Just when they had been getting more respect as Homo sapiens brethren, another researcher is demoting them to outsiders.Tue, 06 May 2008 15:01:40 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev200805.htm#20080505aHow long can a moon afford to leak? Iapetus is losing its dry ice (carbon dioxide) through sublimation at a prodigious rate, say scientists in a paper in Icarus this month. “One can see that the long-term stability of CO2 is problematic.”Mon, 05 May 2008 19:15:58 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev200805.htm#20080503ahe old picture: after the big bang, matter is diffuse. Out of the darkness, stars slowly begin to form, as the first galaxies take shape. Galaxies start out large and slowly grow more dense and structured over billions of years. The new picture: the first galaxies are very compact and dense, spinning rapidly, with stars forming at a prodigious rate.Sun, 04 May 2008 05:19:45 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev200805.htm#20080502aEvolutionists struggle to explain complex human behaviors in Darwinian terms. Sure, corporate squabbles can seem like survival of the fittest, but humans also sacrifice for people they don’t even know and do other weird, un-Darwinian things. In Darwinism, selfishness rules. How does cooperative and altruistic behavior arise from selfish motives? Here are some of the recent attempts to reconcile observations with a theory in which selfishness is key.Fri, 02 May 2008 22:59:13 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev200805.htm#20080501aA big conference on Astrobiology was held in Santa Clara, California last month. It was the fifth AbSciCon (Astrobiology Science Conference), a bi-annual event that pulled together 675 researchers from 28 countries across a variety of disciplines, all interested in life in space. Naturally, evolution is an overarching theme. From Edna DeVore’s account on Space.com, the party atmosphere was stimulating: “Astrobiology is alive and well,” the SETI Institute director of Education and Outreach reported. Thu, 01 May 2008 22:38:25 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev200804.htm#20080430bEvolutionists may not know who our human ancestors were, but they know they were vegans. That seems to be the essence of a couple of new twists on the human evolution saga.Wed, 30 Apr 2008 01:13:24 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev200804.htm#20080430aFor a theory ostensibly restricted to biology, evolution sure has a lot of supporters interested in politics and ethics. Look at what leading Darwinists are promoting. Some of them are rushing headlong where angels fear to tread. Where they will end up is anyone’s guess. Their potential for changing life, culture, religion, education – even what it means to be human – will impact every man, woman and child.Wed, 30 Apr 2008 01:12:40 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev200804.htm#20080429aHuman engineers continue to look at plants and animals for inspiration. Biomimetics – the imitation of biology for design technology – shows no sign of running out of ideas.Wed, 30 Apr 2008 16:47:43 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev200804.htm#20080428a“Orchids might be considered the epitome of plant evolution,” said David Roberts [Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew] and Kingsley Dixon [Kings Park and Botanic Garden, Australia] in a primer on orchids in Current Biology.1 Yet some of the facts they shared about these amazingly diverse and well-adapted plants are puzzling for evolutionary theory.Wed, 30 Apr 2008 03:08:06 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev200804.htm#20080427aThe men of muddle earth are wondering what to do with their hobbit prisoners. Elizabeth Culotta wrote in Science about the ongoing debates among paleoanthropologists about how to interpret the diminutive skeletons found in the Liang Bua cave of Flores in Indonesia, affectionately dubbed hobbits.1 After four years there is still no consensus on whether they were diseased modern humans or some evolutionary side branch of hominids from Africa.Wed, 30 Apr 2008 02:35:44 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev200804.htm#20080426aThe dinosaur legbone with the soft tissue was back in the news. Back in 2005 (03/24/2005), a femur from a T. rex broke open during transport and was found to contain pliable tissue and blood vessels with apparent red blood cells. This was a “phenomenon, once thought impossible” for such tissues to have survived for 68 million years. In 2007, the team of Mary Schweitzer announced the presence of collagen in the dinosaur and in a mastodon bone (04/12/2007). A short update on the story was printed in Science.1 This paper said nothing about the sensation of finding soft tissue in old fossils. The focus was almost entirely on evolution.Mon, 28 Apr 2008 19:43:31 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev200804.htm#20080421aThe Galex satellite (Galaxy Evolution Explorer) found “bright features” with an ultraviolet glow in the outskirts of a spiral galaxy, reported the BBC News. What are they? Scientists “think” they are large clusters of stars. How much is known, and how much is interpreted?Thu, 24 Apr 2008 17:08:07 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev200804.htm#20080420aWhat part of the following story is a finding, and what is a supposition? Science Daily told about work by Julie Baker (Stanford) and a graduate student who set out to discover the evolutionary origin of the mammalian placenta. They evaluated differences between placentas and eggs of a number of different animals, and told stories about how they came to be – but the article spoke of all the above as “findings.”Thu, 24 Apr 2008 16:16:29 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev200804.htm#20080419aIt’s easier to knock down a straw man than a strong man. Maybe that explains the human tendency to fantasize about victory over one’s enemies. In scientific journals, however, one would expect to deal in facts and to realistically portray adversarial positions. Even better would be to let the adversary respond. Nature, however, in its latest issue, did neither. Sat, 19 Apr 2008 04:33:57 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev200804.htm#20080418aGuth and others have claimed that it has passed every test thrown at it (02/21/2005). Astronomers have pretty much incorporated one of the varieties of inflation into the standard model. This week in News at Nature, however, a study was reported that doesn’t need cosmic inflation. Sat, 19 Apr 2008 02:23:22 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev200804.htm#20080417aCan a science exist without evidence? Astrobiology, and its subcategory “the search for extraterrestrial intelligence,” involve a great deal of scientific equipment, trained researchers, and funding, but still have no observational evidence to support their reason for being: extraterrestrial life. Where is the line between imagination and reality in these fields?Thu, 17 Apr 2008 16:03:21 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev200804.htm#20080416aIf there is anything critics of Ben Stein’s documentary Expelled are griping about, it is the association of Hitler with Darwin. What is the movie claiming and not claiming, and how solid is the historical connection?Thu, 17 Apr 2008 05:06:47 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev200804.htm#20080415aHere are some free deductions to take the edge off Income Tax Day.Wed, 16 Apr 2008 01:16:49 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev200804.htm#20080414aScience and logic are inseparable. Whether one approaches the study of nature from reason (rationalism) or evidence (empiricism), logical inferences and deductions are essential for understanding – or for claiming one’s scientific work produces understanding. When it comes to the reigning evolutionary perspective, though, how can a blind, chancy process like evolution produce reason, laws of logic, morality or knowledge?Mon, 14 Apr 2008 05:29:18 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev200804.htm#20080413aOne of the field researchers most identifiable with dinosaurs is Dr. Bob Bakker, whom Brian Switek interviewed on Laelops Science Blog. Switek introduced Bakker as “one of the most famous paleontologists working today, an iconoclastic figure who has played a leading role of rehabilitating our understanding of dinosaurs from the inception of the ‘Dinosaur Renaissance’ through the present.” Wait till you see whom Bakker considers the “greatest enemy of science education in the U.S.”Sun, 13 Apr 2008 06:05:33 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev200804.htm#20080412aA moth weighs little more than a piece of paper, but it does things no paper blowing in the wind can do: it can navigate with and against the wind to get where it needs to go.Sun, 13 Apr 2008 04:39:07 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev200804.htm#20080411aDarwin’s “tree of life” icon is suffering another blow. The root of multicellular life was supposed to be the simplest, most primitive animal. Now, scientists are seriously considering that the mother of all animals was a complex animal with a gut, tissues, a nervous system and amazing light displays: a comb jelly.Sat, 12 Apr 2008 23:08:33 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev200804.htm#20080410aJust when the park rangers were getting familiar telling the public the Grand Canyon was carved about 5 million years ago, some geologists announced the shocking news that it might be less than a million (05/31/2002, 07/22/2002). The age was plummeting as recently as November (11/30/2007). But then last month, another revision came: it’s 17 million years old. Now, another team claims it is 55 million years old, or older. National Geographic News announced that the majestic gorge is 9 times older than thought, and PhysOrg claimed it may be as old as the dinosaurs.Sat, 12 Apr 2008 09:11:19 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev200804.htm#20080409aHas “Big Science” lost contact with the public it serves? Several recent reports show the scientific establishment (as represented by the leading journals) taking positions at polar opposites of the majority, and wagging the dog of the body politic.Wed, 09 Apr 2008 17:51:01 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev200804.htm#20080408bPhysOrg announced “Evolution on the table top.” Reporting on a paper in PLoS Biology by Brian Paegel and Gerald Joyce at Scripps,1 the article claims that the two scientists “have produced a computer-controlled system that can drive the evolution of improved RNA enzymes—biological catalysts—without human input.” They claim they have achieved “Darwinian evolution on a chip.”Tue, 08 Apr 2008 16:41:09 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev200804.htm#20080408aA long-standing problem of origin-of-life theories is how proteins became left-handed. Amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, come in right-handed and left-handed forms, yet life uses only the left-handed form.Tue, 08 Apr 2008 05:10:19 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev200804.htm#20080407aTwo weeks before Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed hits the theaters (April 18), reviewers are starting to weigh in. One could hardly find a bigger contrast between two reviews that came out a day apart.Mon, 07 Apr 2008 16:10:04 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev200804.htm#20080404aMany scientific theories are evaluated on their ability to make predictions. They suggest experiments that lead a researcher to discover new things. In biology, however, “evolution” is a word often invoked as an after-market explanation for observations that emerged outside of the theory.Fri, 04 Apr 2008 18:35:36 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev200804.htm#20080403aForget all those optimistic, futuristic sci-fi tales of humans landing on Mars. It isn’t safe, said Space.com. Fri, 04 Apr 2008 04:46:35 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev200804.htm#20080402aIt remains one of the biggest obstacles to belief in evolution that a random, unguided process could build an eye, a wing or any of thousands of complex structures that abound in living things on earth. To a Darwinist, who sees all life in terms of common ancestry, none of these structures existed in the first cell. Evolutionary theory is an attempt to reduce the challenge of life’s complexity to small changes at the genetic level that, though contingent, exhibit some law-like behavior that can produce increasing complexity over millions of years. Does a new paper in Nature1 succeed at making Darwin’s mechanism plausible?Wed, 02 Apr 2008 05:43:34 GMT