8/26/20151 Creationism News -- January 2012 神创论新闻 -- 2012 年 1 月 I am indebted to David Coppedge who sacrificed his career as the Head Systems Administrator.

8/26/20151 Creationism News -- January 2012 神创论新闻 -- 2012 年 1 月 I am indebted to David Coppedge who sacrificed his career as the Head Systems Administrator for the Cassini Spacecraft in JPL to honor the Creator of the Universe. He also spent literally thousands of hours to make his excellent websites. The contents of this presentation were taken directly from Dave’s website http://crev.info. All credits are due to him.http://crev.info Pastor Chui http://ChristCenterGospel.org ckchui1@yahoo.com

8/26/20152 Loving Dark Matter Rather Than Light 爱暗物质，而不爱光 Still in the dark about dark matter (PhysOrg): “Dark matter, the mysterious stuff thought to make up about 80 percent of matter in the universe, has become even more inscrutable.”PhysOrg Variable dark energy could explain old galaxy clusters (New Scientist): Astronomers don’t even know what dark energy is, but now a Spaniard wants to twiddle with it.New Scientist Little galaxies big on dark matter (PhysOrg): “Dark matter… It came into existence at the moment of the Big Bang.” That’s how to talk with chutzpah about something nobody understands.PhysOrg

8/26/20153 Loving Dark Matter Rather Than Light 爱暗物质，而不爱光 Revolutionary new camera reveals the dark side of the Universe (PhysOrg): Now here’s an article about real stuff: ordinary electromagnetic radiation in the submillimeter range, being detected by the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope.PhysOrgJames Clerk Maxwell Nobel Winners Keep Eyes on the Real Prize: Solving Dark Energy Riddle (Live Science): Three men got a lot of money from the Nobel Committee for “discovering” dark energy. Now they want to discover what it is they discovered; “the force has yet to be directly detected, and the concept remains shrouded in mystery.”Live Science

8/26/20154 Loving Dark Matter Rather Than Light 爱暗物质，而不爱光 Could dark matter not matter? (PhysOrg): Some Italian has come up with a way to explain the rotation curves of galaxies without appealing to dark matter, but others are skeptical.PhysOrg Back to the dark ages (Live Science): A tiny smudge of red light boasts great things: “The newfound galaxy is so ancient that it and others like it may have played a role in the transition from the so- called ‘dark ages’ of the universe — a period before the first stars formed when a thick hydrogen fog permeated the cosmos — into the universe we see today.” Remember that the early medieval period was called the Dark Ages by those who felt themselves enlightened. Is history repeating itself?Live Science

8/26/20155 Nature Does It Right 大自然是正确 Get a tail: Extinct velociraptors, the terrors of the Jurassic Park movies, are inspiring robot designers. Live Science and PhysOrg told about how Tailbot, developed at UC Berkeley and modeled after “leaping lizards,” can right itself after stumbling and can jump without tumbling. “Engineers quickly understood the value of a tail,” said Thomas Libby, a grad student involved in the development of Tailbot. “Robots are not nearly as agile as animals, so anything that can make a robot more stable is an advancement, which is why this work is so exciting.” The PhysOrg article includes two entertaining video clips showing the robot clumsily attempting to duplicate the leaps a lizard does naturally. Prof. Robert J. Full remarked, “Inspiration from lizard tails will likely lead to far more agile search-and-rescue robots, as well as ones having greater capability to more rapidly detect chemical, biological or nuclear hazards.”Live SciencePhysOrg

8/26/20156 Nature Does It Right 大自然是正确 Good design in bad water: A briny pond at the lowest spot in the western hemisphere has a simple but descriptive name: Badwater. Yet in this pond in Death Valley lives a microbe worth noting. Science Daily says the “Death Valley Microbe May Spark Novel Biotech and Nanotech Uses.” Why is that? Dennis Bazylinski (U of Nevada) is impressed at the ability of the microbe to orient itself to magnetic fields. The magnetic bacterium BW-1 has genes that produce nano-sized crystals of the minerals magnetite (a form of iron oxide) and greigite (a form of iron sulfide); BW-1 is the first microbe isolated capable of synthesizing greigite. Bazylinski sees treasure in these microbes: their magnetosomes make them “useful in drug delivery and medical imaging.” The article states that “Magnetotactic bacteria are simple, single-celled organisms that are found in almost all bodies of water.” Science Daily

8/26/20157 Nature Does It Right 大自然是正确 A bird, a plane: In the tradition of the Wright Brothers, another aeronautical engineer has taken inspiration from birds. PhysOrg calls “Queensland University of Technology PhD student Wesam Al Sabban” a genius for his “unmanned aerial vehicle that uses wind power like a bird.” Does that imply that birds are even more intelligent for coming up with the design first? To develop his Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) called the Green Falcon II, Al Sabban had to learn from the masters. “As part of my PhD topic we are studying the way birds make use of wind energy to fly with minimum power, the way they glide and use all types of wind to move and change their flight path.” He boasts, “The Green Falcon II will be a zero-emissions UAV capable of round-the-clock service.” Birds are kind of like that. PhysOrg

8/26/20158 Nature Does It Right 大自然是正确 Outdoing plants? PhysOrg reported, “Researchers figure out how to outperform nature’s photosynthesis.” The body of the article, though, reveals that they didn’t invent a light-gathering engine from scratch. Rather, “They frankensteined together proteins from Synechococcus sp. with those from Clostridium acetobutylicum using molecular wire to create a ‘hybrid biological/organic nanoconstruct’ that was more efficient than either on their own.” So, even though “These researchers have created a tiny solar- powered device that works twice as fast as nature to produce hydrogen biofuel,” it would be more impressive if they got their own dirt.PhysOrgtheir own dirt

8/26/20159 Nature Does It Right 大自然是正确 Slimy computers: Some Japanese researchers became fascinated with slime molds. “A brainless, primeval organism able to navigate a maze might help Japanese scientists devise the ideal transport network design,” PhysOrg wrote. “Not bad for a mono-cellular being that lives on rotting leaves.” Somehow the cells of amoeboid yellow slime mold can find the most direct route through a maze to get to their food: “the cells appear to have a kind of information- processing ability that allows them to ‘optimise’ the route along which the mold grows to reach food while avoiding stresses – like light – that may damage them.” This means that we have something in common with slime. Toshiyuki Nakagaki sees a bright future: “it could provide the key to designing bio- computers capable of solving complex problems.”PhysOrg

8/26/201510 Nature Does It Right 大自然是正确 Butterfly materials: The blue mountain swallowtail butterfly is not just pretty; it’s downright inspiring. “Butterflies have inspired humans since the time of ancient Egypt, but now they’re also inspiring researchers to look toward nature to help create the next generation of waterproof materials for electronics and sensors,” reported PhysOrg. That’s why researchers in America and South Korea are looking carefully at the wings of this butterfly. “The wings shed water easily because of tiny structures that trap air and create a cushion between water and wing which allows water to roll easily off the surface.” Wouldn’t it be nice to have a cell phone that repels water, instead of shorting out when doused? One team member said, “Mimicking biological surfaces in nature is an important part in a variety of practical applications.”PhysOrg

8/26/201511 Nature Does It Right 大自然是正确 Spider silkworm: The desire to imitate spider silk was one of the first biomimetics stories reported in these pages. In the years since, scientists have had only partial success at duplicating the strands, or at genetically engineering goats with the silk genes to produce it in their milk. Now, researchers from Wyoming, Indiana and China have succeeded in transplanting the genes for spider dragline silk into silkworms. Since ancient times, humans have farmed silkworms, so we know about their care and feeding; wrangling spiders is much more difficult.

8/26/201512 Nature Does It Right 大自然是正确 Spider silkworm: Reporting in PNAS (Jan 3, 2012, 73/pnas.1109420109), they announced,PNAS The development of a spider silk-manufacturing process is of great interest. However, there are serious problems with natural manufacturing through spider farming, and standard recombinant protein production platforms have provided limited progress due to their inability to assemble spider silk proteins into fibers. Thus, we used piggy Bac vectors to create transgenic silkworms encoding chimeric silkworm/spider silk proteins. The silk fibers produced by these animals were composite materials that included chimeric silkworm/spider silk proteins integrated in an extremely stable manner. Furthermore, these composite fibers were, on average, tougher than the parental silkworm silk fibers and as tough as native dragline spider silk fibers. These results demonstrate that silkworms can be engineered to manufacture composite silk fibers containing stably integrated spider silk protein sequences, which significantly improve the overall mechanical properties of the parental silkworm silk fibers. BBC News announced, “Spider-Man web closer to reality.” BBC News

8/26/201513 Hear Ye: Another Darwinian Prediction Falsified by Fossils 化石否认达尔文预测 In a classic test of evolutionary “post-diction” (predicting what should be found in the fossil record), scientists made a bold prediction of what insect ears would look like before the evolution of bats. Believing that the presence of bats, a new predator with sonar, would spur the evolution of insect ears, the scientists predicted that earlier insects would have less- developed ears, or none at all. Then they found exceptionally-preserved insect fossils from the Green River formation in Wyoming, and compared the fossil evidence with their prediction. What was found?

8/26/201514 Hear Ye: Another Darwinian Prediction Falsified by Fossils 化石否认达尔文预测 Tympanal ears in insects are important for both intraspecific communication and for the detection of nocturnal predators. Ears are thought, based on modern forms, to have originated independently multiple times within insects and can be found on multiple regions of the body. Here we describe and document the exceptionally well preserved tympanal ears found in crickets and katydids from the Eocene Green River Formation of Colorado, which are virtually identical to those seen in modern representatives of these groups. These specimens are among the best preserved insect ears in the fossil record and establish the presence of ears in two major clades of Orthoptera 50 million years ago. Also discussed and evaluated are previously described insect ears from the Mesozoic and the implications of the findings of the present study for studying the evolution of ears within insects.

8/26/201515 Hear Ye: Another Darwinian Prediction Falsified by Fossils 化石否认达尔文预测 Well, the NSF needs to close up shop at the NESCent, now that Darwinism has been falsified (again). Two paleontologists went hunting, but returned wanting. The insect ears are identical to modern ones on live insects, they found, despite having 50 million years (in their timeline) to do the Darwin thing. Not only were those ears working just fine long before bats “came to be” (did you catch that cute little miracle phrase?), but they want us to believe that “Insects have evolved ears at least 17 times in different lineages.” Let’s see what this means. If one miracle has the probability of 1 in 10 150, then 17 different miracles occurring by evolution should have one chance in (10 150 ) 17.

8/26/201516 Hear Ye: Another Darwinian Prediction Falsified by Fossils 化石否认达尔文预测 Plotnick wrote with a straight face about the “appearance of hearing” and the “appearance of bats.” Tell us, Dr. Science, how did they appear? Out of a magic hat? To evolutionists, saying that something “evolved” is synonymous with saying it “appeared.” No evidence is necessary. Evidence can even contradict it, but Darwin marches on, working miracles out of thin imagination. Stephanie Pappas at Live Science told her readers this wondrous fairy tale: “Now, a new examination of 50-million-year-old cricket and katydid fossils finds that these odd ears evolved before even the appearance of the predators that these ears can hear.” Let’s try to understand this sentence. Darwinism has no foresight, no plan, and no ability to even get one mutation right, but it was able to equip insects with complex organs they would need millions of years later. What did the bugs listen to in the meantime? The bee gees?Live Science

8/26/201517 Hear Ye: Another Darwinian Prediction Falsified by Fossils 化石否认达尔文预测 Another thing you should notice about the story is the amazing preservation of detail in these fossils. “You can see every tiny feature down to the veins in their wings and the hairs on their legs,” Smith said. Try this experiment: drop a cricket in mud, wait 50 million years, and see how much detail remains. Odds are, grasshopper, after the winter rains, you would find nary a hair, even if you were knee high to a cricket.

8/26/201518 A Young Moon for Life 生命需要年轻的月球 Our moon is unique in the solar system. Just the right size and just the right distance, it is positioned to stabilize the tilt of Earth’s axis, providing stable seasonal cycles. Science lacks data so far to know just how unique the Earth-moon relationship in a habitable zone is among other stellar systems. We know from the planets of our own solar system that moons come in all sizes, from tiny Deimos to massive Titan, and orbit in apparently arbitrary radii from their host planets. What astrophysicists can do is predict what would happen on earth if things were different. That’s what one scientist did. Another discovery could change the view of the moon’s surface being unaltered for billions of years.

8/26/201519 A Young Moon for Life 生命需要年轻的月球 Our Earth-Moon system is unique in the solar system. The Moon is 1/81 the mass of Earth while most moons are only about 3/10,000 the mass of their planet. The size of the Moon is a major contributing factor to complex life on Earth. It is responsible for the high tides that stirred up the primordial soup of the early Earth, it’s the reason our day is 24 hours long, it gives light for the variety of life forms that live and hunt during the night, and it keeps our planet’s axis tilted at the same angle to give us a constant cycle of seasons. A second moon would change that. Here’s he says would happen if Earth were to capture a second moon he names Luna: Luna’s arrival would wreak havoc on Earth. Its gravity would tug on the planet causing absolutely massive tsunamis, earthquakes, and increased volcanic activity. The ash and chemicals raining down would cause a mass extinction on Earth.

8/26/201520 A Young Moon for Life 生命需要年轻的月球 The moon and Mars, however, lack the protection of a global magnetic field. That may be why Mars has such a thin atmosphere – whatever it had before has been eroded from the onslaught of the solar wind. What’s new about the NASA study is the finding that the proportion of charged helium rises from 4% to 20% in coronal mass ejections (CMEs). Because of their greater mass, helium ions can sputter away ten times more material from the lunar surface. A NASA scientist at Goddard said, “The model predicts 100 to 200 tons of lunar material — the equivalent of 10 dump truck loads — could be stripped off the lunar surface during the typical two-day passage of a CME.” Although the article did not explore the consequences over the assumed lifetime of the moon (4.5 billion years), it would seem, since almost every part of the moon except possibly at some spots near the poles is exposed to “the wrath of the sun,” that the lunar surface would have been subject to considerable reworking by CMEs over that time.

8/26/201521 Flowers in Your Nerves 你的神经花朵 Without a central nervous system, you would be dead. But how does the nervous system work? Nerves are composed of cells called neurons that rely on communication – signals they send and receive. Those signals come into a neuron by means of channels in the cell membrane. Cells have a variety of channels in their membranes. Some of the most important in neurons are the potassium channels that raise and lower the electrical voltage inside. Among these are calcium-activated potassium channels, which not only let calcium in, but export it out when the inside calcium concentration is too high. These channels make nerves communicate, make muscles work, and improve your hearing, among other things. Scientists have not understood how the inside calcium was able to activate the channel to let excess calcium back out. Now, a leading channel researcher has figured it out: the calcium binds to a gating ring inside the cell, and makes it open like a flower.

8/26/201522 Flowers in Your Nerves 你的神经花朵 They used the flowery metaphor again inside the paper: “Viewing an interpolative movie in which the Ca 2+ -free gating ring is morphed to the Ca 2+ -bound gating ring, it seems that Ca 2+ binding causes the N-terminal lobes of the RCK1 units to ‘open up’ on the membrane-facing surface of the gating ring in a way akin to petals opening on a flower (Supplementary Movie 1, part 1).” One thing still remaining to understand is how the binding generates force: “Precisely how the free energy of Ca 2+ binding in either the BK or MthK gating rings is transduced into mechanical work remains an important outstanding question that will require further experimental and theoretical work to understand at a deep level.” But now, at least, we know now that your muscles, your heart, your digestive tract, your ears and your nerves operate with flower power.

8/26/201523 Flowers in Your Nerves 你的神经花朵 Only at the end of this paper did the authors suggest that this particular eukaryotic channel with its moving parts evolved from a simpler prokaryotic channel that uses a different opening mechanism: “This comparison presents a fascinating example in which the evolution of molecular structure has given rise to new or modified mechanical properties within a class of molecules,” they said. (This is known as fact-free speculation.) The paper needed evolutionary theory like a checkpoint gate in Iraq needs a suicide bomber. Give credit to the Designer of elegant machinery, not to blind, unguided, purposeless concourses of mindless atoms. Next time you lift weights, digest a good meal, listen to music or check your heartbeat, thank God for calcium-activated potassium channels with flower-petal activation gates.

8/26/201524 Body Talk 身体讲座 Muscle milk: Whether you’re brawny or scrawny, you care about muscle. The most assiduous bodybuilder, though, should thank a tiny little signaling molecule that makes that burn lead to a good flex. Next to a photo of big belts and biceps, Stephanie Pappas on Live Science explains:Live Science The secret lies with a chemical factor produced by muscle cells during work (such as during weight lifting) that signals muscle stem cells to multiply and take on the load. The substance, serum response factor (Srf), apparently triggers muscle stem cells — dormant cells capable of differentiating into muscle cells — to proliferate and become muscle fibers. More muscle fibers means bigger overall muscles and more strength. A researcher in France called this “unexpected and quite interesting.” Gym rats can hope that what works in mice will also work in men (women, too).

8/26/201525 Body Talk 身体讲座 Eye stash: Speaking of stem cells, there’s a good source of adult stem cells right in your eye, reported PhysOrg.PhysOrg In the future, patients in need of perfectly matched neural stem cells may not need to look any further than their own eyes. Researchers reporting in the January issue of Cell Stem Cell, a Cell Press publication, have identified adult stem cells of the central nervous system in a single layer of cells at the back of the eye. Amazingly, these cells are produced in the embryo and remain dormant throughout life; therefore, “You can get these cells from a 99-year-old,” a researcher at the Neural Stem Cell Institute in New York. The cells can be isolated and grown into other body cell types. “It’s kind of mind boggling.”

8/26/201526 Body Talk 身体讲座 Talk the dog: Your dog understands you better than you think. You can do a kind of mind-meld with your dog; Fido is already judging your intent before you tell him to fetch. How Hungarian scientists found this out is explained on PhysOrg. Apparently they track your eyes and read your intentions. Live Science described dog aptitude at about the level of pre-verbal infants, but added this strange Darwinian twist without elaboration: “The study suggests that dogs have evolved to be especially attuned to human communicative signals, and early humans may have selected them for domestication particularly for this reason, the researchers said.” Didn’t dogs evolve long before humans in the evolutionary timeline? Did the humans who selected them use intelligent design or natural selection?PhysOrgLive Science

8/26/201527 Body Talk 身体讲座 Walk the jog: Why do we find it more comfortable at a certain walking speed to switch to a running gait? Researchers at North Carolina State, publishing in PNAS, (73/pnas.1107972109 PNAS January 4, 2012), found that the calf becomes more efficient when switching to a run at about 4.5 miles per hour. The summary on PhysOrg explains:PNASPhysOrg The high-speed images revealed that the medial gastrocnemius muscle, a major calf muscle that attaches to the Achilles tendon, can be likened to a “clutch” that engages early in the stride, holding one end of the tendon while the body’s energy is transferred to stretch it. Later, the Achilles – the long, elastic tendon that runs down the back of the lower leg – springs into action by releasing the stored energy in a rapid recoil to help move you. The study showed that the muscle “speeds up,” or changes its length more and more rapidly as people walk faster and faster, but in doing so provides less and less power. Working harder and providing less power means less overall muscle efficiency. When people break into a run at about 2 meters per second, however, the study showed that the muscle “slows down,” or changes its length more slowly, providing more power while working less rigorously, thereby increasing its efficiency.

8/26/201528 Body Talk 身体讲座 Blood back-talk: How does your body know to produce more blood cells? The blood cells tell the bone marrow, and the marrow talks back. Medical Xpress reported that scientists at UCLA heard the conversation: In a new study, they show that two-way signaling from two different sets of cells is necessary for bloody-supply balance, both to ensure that enough blood cells are produced to respond to injury and infection and that blood progenitor cells remain available for future needs. According to the subheading, “this balancing act requires a complex ‘conversation’ involving more parties than originally thought.” Presumably what they found in fruit flies has a counterpart in us humans.

8/26/201529 Body Talk 身体讲座 Hang on to your appendix when you can: Bill Parker thinks your appendix could save your life. Interviewed in a guest blog by Rob Dunn on Scientific American, Parker, a professor of surgery, explained that the appendix is not a vestigial organ, but a vital part of the immune system: it “serves as a nature reserve for beneficial bacteria in our guts.” Dunn cited recent evidence that people who have had appendectomies tend to get re-infected more easily.Scientific American

8/26/201530 Body Talk 身体讲座 Amazing recovery: A student at the University of Arizona, in a coma since an October 19 car crash, had been diagnosed with a brain aneurysm and other life- threatening injuries. According to Medical Xpress, his surgeon overruled staff recommendations to take him off life support when surgery was ineffective, and recommended keeping him alive another week. In the St. Nick of time, Sam Schmid woke up, and is now speaking and walking again. “It will be a special Christmas for the family of a 21-year-old University of Arizona student who was nearly taken off life support but is now recovering after waking up from a coma,” the Dec. 23 article said.Medical Xpress

8/26/201531 What Do Scientists Know About Prehistory? Was there a Late Heavy Bombardment? You can give a prehistoric event a name – even an acronym, like LHB – and it begins to take on a life of its own. Papers and articles on earth history routinely refer to a “Late Heavy Bombardment” of the inner solar system by large impactors some 3.8 billion years ago, long after the planets are thought to have formed. Where did that idea come from? Did it really happen? The LHB was an inference from radiometric dating of Apollo rock samples from the moon. Two basins, one thought to be the oldest (Imbrium) and another thought to be the youngest (Serenitatis) turned out to be relatively close in radiometric age. Scientists “invented” the LHB theory to try to account for the surprising data. Now, however, Astrobiology Magazine and PhysOrg are saying the LHB never happened. New evidence from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has undercut the thinking on which it was based.Astrobiology Magazine PhysOrg

8/26/201532 What Do Scientists Know About Prehistory? When did ichthyosaurs go extinct? Consensus thinking about marine reptiles named ichthyosaurs (fish-lizards) was that they went extinct at the end of the Jurassic, 145 million years ago. Now, according to PhysOrg, evidence suggests they did just fine, continuing to thrive and diversify, for another 50 million years. According to the article, a new paper by European scientists “considerably changes our understanding of the evolution and the extinction of these dinosaur age sea reptiles”. Notice how drastic the reinterpretation is:PhysOrg Whilst it had been thought that these Jurassic ichthyosaurs died a little later at the end of the Jurassic, the new discoveries show that in reality almost all of these lines survived across the Jurassic-Cretaceous Boundary…. the team has been able to show that the extinction rates were very low during the Jurassic-Cretaceous Boundary. The BBC News went so far as to say the new data “rewrites [the] fossil record.” But what would cause selective extinction in the oceans? The statement that the find “considerably changes our understanding” raises questions whether “understanding” that “considerably changes” was ever understanding in the first place – and, by extension, whether what they’re saying now, if it is a mystery requiring future research, constitutes understanding.BBC News

8/26/201533 What Do Scientists Know About Prehistory? Snowball Earth never was: As mentioned in the 10/22/2011 entry and on Science Daily, some scientists think “Snowball Earth” (a period of global freeze said to have occurred 710-630 million years ago) is another myth. It never happened, say some French scientists, based on inferred carbon dioxide concentrations in certain rock strata. Yet “Snowball Earth” was more than just a hypothesis, to many evolutionists. They even named a geological age after it – the Cryogenian Period.10/22/2011Science Daily The article went on to state that “Earth has experienced several extreme glacial events,” including not one, but two Snowball Earth episodes during the so-called Cryogenian. But then the article admitted, “Today still, the question of how this episode came to an end remains unanswered, given that ice reflects more solar radiation back into space than rocks do.” If carbon dioxide levels could not provide enough global warming to melt the ice, the Earth should have remained frozen ever since. How, then, could anyone believe it happened not once, but multiple times?

8/26/201534 What Do Scientists Know About Prehistory? Overconfidence? One would think that upsets like the previous two would cause scientists to humbly hedge their bets about other theories, but another article on PhysOrg gave good press to Hamed Sanei, a Canadian researcher, whose new explanation for the Permian extinction was stated as a matter of settled scientific fact. His co-author, Benoit Beauchamp of the University of Calgary said, “this study is significant because it’s the first time mercury has been linked to the cause of the massive extinction that took place during the end of the Permian.” How anyone could replicate or test this new notion was no hindrance to his chutzpah. He even tied it to global warming: “We are adding to the levels through industrial emissions. This is a warning for us here on Earth today,” he preached. Simultaneously, though, he was encouraging geologists to re-interpret five other assumed separate extinction events, suggesting earlier theories have left out a key cause. He left it unanswered how mercury could have had selective effects on different organisms, removing most marine animals while preserving ichthyosaurs for 50 million years, till some other cause (more mercury?) did them in.PhysOrg

8/26/201535 What Do Scientists Know About Prehistory? Seeing is believing: Geologists deal so routinely with theories of millions of years of slow processes, it’s not often that geology can be watched in real time. It happened on December 19. From the sea and satellites, eyewitnesses watched the birth of a new island in the Red Sea on one day. PhysOrg has the pictures to prove it: before-and-after images from the Earth Observing Satellite 1 of “an apparent island where previously there was none.” The article added, “According to news reports, fishermen witnessed lava fountains reaching up to 30 meters(90 feet) tall on December 19.” Instantaneous island formation, like that of Surtsey in 1963, are reminders that geological effects can occur quickly, depending on the forces applied. There’s nothing like eyewitness testimony.PhysOrgSurtsey

8/26/201536 What Do Scientists Know About Prehistory? One of the big problems in creation-evolution discussions, often, is failing to question the assumptions of the evolutionary timeline. Evolutionists have succeeded in generating a large vocabulary of so-called events that are incestuously tied to the long-age, slow-and-gradual, bottom-up, evolutionary world view. These events take on a life of their own and are frequently never questioned. But they should be, as the examples above show. Here are a few of their hypothetical pseudo-events masquerading as facts: Big BangInflation Primordial SoupRNA WorldOrigin of Life Snowball Earth Late Heavy Bombardment Great Oxidation Event Cryogenian and all the other assumed periods, epochs and eras Permian Extinction Jurassic Extinction Cretaceous-Tertiary Impact Out of Africa

8/26/201537 What Do Scientists Know About Prehistory? If they answer that this is how science makes progress, point out that it was not progress at all. It was a rabbit trail, a dead end. It never happened, but it was spoken of as scientific fact. It was used to misinform the whole scientific community and the public. TV documentaries and textbooks were produced about a mythical event that never happened. That’s no different than teaching Alice and Wonderland as scientific fact. Pound the point home: How do you know? How do you know? How do you know? Point them to Surtsey, now hosting a diverse community of plant and animal life, and ask them, if you landed on this island for the first time, knowing nothing about it, how old would you say it is? Memorize some of the major recent upsets in evolutionary theories. Don’t accept their terms, their acronyms, their assumptions. Get them to realize they may be living in Fantasyland. Ten thousand Frenchmen in Fantasyland (sorry, French readers) do not constitute a society of knowledge. The consensus might just be collective believers of a popular mythology.Surtsey

8/26/201538 What Do Scientists Know About Prehistory? Another comeback from some evolutionists is that you have no right to criticize the consensus without coming up with a better model yourself. That’s fallacious. There is nothing in science that requires replacing one myth with another. What are we supposed to do, replace Alice in Wonderland with Harry Potter? Science is supposed to represent knowledge, not speculation. It is perfectly fine to criticize a theory as implausible without proposing an alternative. Saying “I don’t know” is better than serving up myths as if they were facts. Better no LHB, no RNA World, than introducing visions of fictional fantasies as if they were realities. Admitting what science doesn’t know, and cannot know, is a more honest form of progress.

8/26/201539 Titanosaur Bones Found in Antarctica Strange as it seems, large sauropods of the Titanosaur variety have been found in Antarctica. This is the highest latitude sauropod ever found. It means that the large reptiles inhabited every continent; they walked the globe. A short article on New Scientist describes how Ignacio Cerda from the National University of Comahue in Argentina uncovered the fossil on James Ross Island, about 700 miles from Cape Horn, Argentina. He surmises that the beasts got there on an ancient isthmus that connected the island to South America. A previous post by PhysOrg about this discovery calls it an “advanced titanosaur.”New ScientistPhysOrg The PhysOrg article states, “Although they were one of the most widespread and successful species of sauropod dinosaurs, their origin and dispersion are not completely understood.”PhysOrg

8/26/201540 Titanosaur Bones Found in Antarctica What did they eat, ice? Think of the tons of plant material these giant animals require. No such large plant-eaters inhabit Antarctica today. Finds like this speak of a very different world. It doesn’t require millions of years to change the world; just sufficient hydraulic energy. The Bible speaks of a very different world, with different climatic and geographic conditions, that would have allowed the migration of large animals like these to polar latitudes. It also speaks of a global hydraulic catastrophe that had the energy to bury titanosaurs suddenly, else their bones would have decayed on the surface when they died.

8/26/201541 Darwinian Explanations: Show or Snow? We all know the proverbial “snow job.” That’s putting on an entertaining song and dance without doing the assignment. A college sophomore (wise fool) writes a 15-page term paper full of jargon that, on closer inspection, didn’t follow directions or didn’t answer the question – it reveals ignorance of the subject. A job applicant makes an impression with humor or appearance without demonstrating ability to do the work. A junior makes up a fanciful story to cover up why he didn’t mow the lawn. Scientists are supposed to explain things based on observation and testable hypotheses. If Darwinians really believe that an unguided, impersonal, purposeless mechanism led to the diversity of life on Earth, they need to show the evidence. Here are a few recent examples of evolutionary explanations. Check whether they “show” evolution, or distract attention with a “snow” job.

8/26/201542 Darwinian Explanations: Show or Snow? Introducing: TNA! (ta-daah). An article on New Scientist purports to show that you don’t need to start life with the familiar DNA or RNA. A “simpler” molecule called TNA that uses threose instead of ribose might have gotten things started. In fact, the early earth might have been a “hodge-podge world” of many different molecules that could store genetic information. The imagination goes wild with the possibilities.New Scientist Only by getting into the nitty-gritty of the article do you come to realize that this is all guesswork. (1) TNA is “not found in nature today.” (2) TNA “would not have arisen on its own.” (3) There is “no trace of TNA or its cousins in modern organisms.” (4) “no one has actually made it in the conditions that existed on Earth before life began….” (5) John Chaput and team at U. of Arizona intelligently designed TNA molecules and “evolved them” in their lab with purpose and intent. (6) “Chaput points out that we still know very little about what TNA can do, because the technology to evolve the molecules in the lab is so new.” Yet reporter Michael Marshall titled his exploration of TNA, “Before DNA, before RNA: Life in the hodge-podge world.” Did he show any life?

8/26/201543 Darwinian Explanations: Show or Snow? Witness evolution in an English quarry: Reporter Carl Yapp of the BBC News is going to “shed light” on evolution through amazingly-preserved fossils found in an abandoned quarry. They’re 450 million years old, he tells us. Eagerly, the reader looks into the quarry for the evolution, with the powerful flashlight beam Yapp is holding, and sees amazing things: complex hydroids (related to sea anemones), chambered nautiloids, sponges – a whole “community that was entirely new and surprising.” These animals, the reader learns, were buried alive so quickly that they fossilized intact – a unique, “spectacular,” “astonishing” collection of animals, some so delicate they rarely fossilize.BBC News

8/26/201544 Darwinian Explanations: Show or Snow? Witness evolution in an English quarry: Yapp said, “Scientists believe they shed new light on how ocean communities have evolved.” Sufficiently dazzled by the fossils, the impatient reader asks about the promised evidence for evolution, only to hear paleontologist Dr. Lucy Muir say (watch for the operative word imagined): “It’s not a discovery that you can point to and say: ‘This proves such-and-such,’” said Dr Muir. “Rather, it’s a question of adding a large new chunk of knowledge, and in turn suggesting that there are many more chunks left to find. “This type of ecological community type was simply unknown from rocks this old, and for it to suddenly appear makes paleontologists wonder what else they’ve been missing. “It shows us that Ordovician ecosystems were even more diverse and complicated than we imagined.”

8/26/201545 Darwinian Explanations: Show or Snow? Your inner fish, v.2: Alfred Romer’s old idea of fish evolving legs as they hopped between drying desert ponds is implausible. Tiktaalik is a has-been. But now, thank Charles Darwin, “A new theory emerges for where some fish became four-limbed creatures.” Let’s let PhysOrg set the stage from a University of Oregon press release:PhysOrgUniversity of Oregon press release A small fish crawling on stumpy limbs from a shrinking desert pond is an icon of can-do spirit, emblematic of a leading theory for the evolutionary transition between fish and amphibians. This theorized image of such a drastic adaptation to changing environmental conditions, however, may, itself, be evolving into a new picture.

8/26/201546 Darwinian Explanations: Show or Snow? Your inner fish, v.2: Hero of the new “evolving…picture” is University of Oregon scientist Gregory J. Retallack. He’s motivated to provide a new “scenario,” because “such a plucky hypothetical ancestor of ours probably could not have survived the overwhelming odds of perishing in a trek to another shrinking pond.” So out with the old, in with the new: the ancestor wasn’t in a desert after all. It was in a jungle. “Judging from where their fossils were found, transitional forms between fish and amphibians lived in wooded floodplains,” Retallack explains. “Our distant ancestors were not so much foolhardy, as opportunistic, taking advantage of floodplains and lakes choked with roots and logs for the first time in geological history.”

8/26/201547 Darwinian Explanations: Show or Snow? Now, the evidence, please. It sounds too good to be true: “eight-foot- long, 395-million-year-old tetrapods in ancient lagoonal mud in southeastern Poland.” Wow! That would be the evolutionary fossil find of the century. PhysOrg informs us that the tetrapods were announced a year ago – Oh, that was the story about tetrapod tracks we reported on 1/06/2010 (to be making tetrapod tracks, they had to be tetrapods, not fish). The reader looks for other corroborating evidence, such as Softpedia.com, only to find that Retallack studied “ancient soils,” not actual tetrapods. The soils had “tracks” of fish and other animals that he assumes were evolving. This is old news, anyway; the actual paper in the Journal of Geology came out last May. The abstract didn’t announce any new tetrapod transitional forms; just fossilized soils where he thought showed the transition took place. “A woodland hypothesis of evolution is presented here,” the paper says. So why did this make news in late December on PhysOrg? Elementary; it’s the theory, you recall, that is evolving, not necessarily the fish. But that’s OK; finish with a rhetorical flourish, and no one will notice: “The Darwin fish of chrome adorning many car trunks represents a particular time and place in the long evolutionary history of life on earth.”PhysOrg 1/06/2010Softpedia.comJournal of GeologyPhysOrg

8/26/201548 Cosmologists Forced to “In the Beginning” The late astronomer Robert Jastrow detailed in his 1978 book God and the Astronomers how cosmologists were repulsed by the idea the universe had a beginning. He found it quizzical that they would have such an emotional reaction. They all realized that a beginning out of nothing was implausible without a Creator. Since then, various models allowing for an eternal universe brought secular cosmologists relief from their emotional pains. It now appears that relief was premature. In New Scientist today, Lisa Grossman reported on ideas presented at a conference entitled “State of the Universe” convened last week in honor of Stephen Hawking’s 70 th birthday. Some birthday; he got “the worst presents ever,” she said: “two bold proposals posed serious threats to our existing understanding of the cosmos.” Of the two, the latter is most serious: a presentation showing reasons why “the universe is not eternal, resurrecting the thorny question of how to kick- start the cosmos without the hand of a supernatural creator.”New Scientist

8/26/201549 Cosmologists Forced to “In the Beginning ” It is well-known that Hawking has preferred a self-existing universe. Grossman quotes him saying, “‘A point of creation would be a place where science broke down. One would have to appeal to religion and the hand of God,’ Hawking told the meeting, at the University of Cambridge, in a pre-recorded speech.” In her article, “Why physicists can’t avoid a creation event,” Grossman explains that “For a while it looked like it might be possible to dodge this problem, by relying on models such as an eternally inflating or cyclic universe, both of which seemed to continue infinitely in the past as well as the future.” These models were consistent with the big bang, she notes. Unfortunately, “as cosmologist Alexander Vilenkin of Tufts University in Boston explained last week, that hope has been gradually fading and may now be dead.” Here are the models in brief and why they don’t work:

8/26/201550 Cosmologists Forced to “In the Beginning” Eternal inflation: Built on Alan Guth’s 1981 inflation proposal, this model imagines bubble universes forming and inflating spontaneously forever. Vilenkin and Guth had debunked this idea as recently as 2003. The equations still require a boundary in the past. Eternal cycles: A universe that bounces endlessly from expansion to contraction has a certain appeal to some, but it won’t work either. “Disorder increases with time,” Grossman explained. “So following each cycle, the universe must get more and more disordered.” Logically, then, if there had already been an infinite number of cycles, the universe would already been in a state of maximum disorder, even if the universe gets bigger with each bounce. Scratch that model. Eternal egg: One last holdout was the “cosmic egg” model that has the universe hatching out of some eternally-existing static state. “Late last year Vilenkin and graduate student Audrey Mithani showed that the egg could not have existed forever after all, as quantum instabilities would force it to collapse after a finite amount of time (arxiv.org/abs/1110.4096).” No way could the egg be eternal. The upshot of this is clear. No model of an eternal universe works. Vilenkin concluded, “All the evidence we have says that the universe had a beginning.” An editorial at New Scientist called this, “The Genesis Problem.”New Scientist

8/26/201551 Cosmologists Forced to “In the Beginning ” Genesis problem? What problem? I don’t see a problem. You got a problem? Genesis 1:1 makes perfect sense, just like it always has: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” What’s the problem? The problem is not with Genesis, but with unbelieving man running from the light of God’s revelation for the darkness of their own imagination. The problem is that it keeps taking thousands of years for them to realize their imaginary escape hatches from “In the beginning” do not comport with reality.

8/26/201552 Cosmologists Forced to “In the Beginning ” Notice that the pro-Darwin, anti-creation forces in the sciences repeatedly attack “intelligent design” as necessarily requiring a supernatural Creator. They ply their talking points endlessly that one cannot talk about “design” without delving into religion, which they love to portray as completely separate, hostile to, and inferior to “science” (their religion). Well, look here. Some of the greatest of them, gathered together to proudly discuss the “State of the Universe,” cannot escape the obvious. If hostile witnesses declare the universe had to have a beginning, and that this implies an appeal to religion and the hand of God, then so be it. Now the problem is whether or not they will follow the evidence where it leads and believe in the Creator they have so unscientifically rejected.

8/26/201553 Tilt-A-World: Another Constraint on Habitability 倾斜的世界：关于宜居的另一项限制 Did you ever ride a Tilt-A-Whirl, one of those cheap carnival rides that makes you dizzy and sick? Our planet would be like that (in slow motion) if its inclination were out of control. Without tilt stability, a new study reveals, we wouldn’t be sick, we’d be dead, or never alive in the first place. It’s not enough to be in the Habitable Zone. Would-be inhabited planets need to avoid a new problem, called “tilt erosion.”

8/26/201554 Tilt-A-World: Another Constraint on Habitability The new constraint on habitability is described in an article by Adam Hadhazy on NASA’s Astrobiology Magazine, “Loss of Planetary Tilt Could Doom Alien Life.” Astronomers considering the factors needed to sustain life already knew that inclination was important. They knew that it provides for alternating seasons, distributing the temperate zones so that the equator is not eternally hot and the high latitudes eternally frozen. They also knew that red dwarf stars (the majority of stars), with their narrower habitable zones closer in, tend to tidally lock one face of a planet toward its star, dramatically reducing its habitable real estate (2/09/2006).Astrobiology Magazine2/09/2006 The new study by René Heller, a postdoctoral research associate at the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics in Potsdam, Germany, shows that stable inclination is far more important for life than previously assumed. Cheerful astrobiologists envisioning life everywhere are going to have to worry about this new constraint; “The findings do not bode well for planets residing in the habitable, or ‘Goldilocks’ zones around red stars smaller than the Sun,” the article said. Here’s a summary of Heller’s findings and the implications:

8/26/201555 Tilt-A-World: Another Constraint on Habitability Time limit: “According to computer simulations, red dwarf stars quickly erase the axial tilt of habitable, Earth-like exoplanets. This temperature-moderating tilt is nullified in such a short time that life may never have a chance to get going.” Far out: Habitable planets around sun-like stars suffer far less tilt erosion. So far, so good – provided they have at least 5 degrees of tilt. If not, watch out: Gasping for air: “In theory, bands of habitability in temperate, mid-latitude zones could persist. In a worst-case scenario, however, the entire atmosphere of a zero-obliquity planet could collapse, Heller said. Gases might evaporate into space around the planet’s blazing middle and freeze to the ground in the bleak north and south. Life, had it ever emerged, would be stopped dead in its tracks.”

8/26/201556 Tilt-A-World: Another Constraint on Habitability 倾斜的世界：关于宜居的另一项限制 Zero tolerance: All planets suffer tilt erosion, including Earth. “Over time, this mechanism forces the planet into a zero-obliquity equilibrium.” This limits the time available for life to originate and persist: “The length of a window of significant obliquity could be critical for the development of life.” Narrowing and harrowing: Most stars have too short an obliquity window: “For relatively cool, dim stars with less than half the Sun’s mass, the obliquity window becomes quite narrow.”

8/26/201557 Tilt-A-World: Another Constraint on Habitability Life stopwatch: Assuming that evolution needs more than a billion years for life to originate and evolve up to sentience, it’s never going to happen on worlds around stars less than 90% the sun’s mass. Red dwarfs have an obliquity window of about 100 million years; stars with 90% the sun’s mass might have a billion years before it’s too late, and the planet is forced to zero obliquity. Heller said, “We found that extrasolar terrestrial planets in the habitable zone of low-mass stars lose their primordial obliquities on time scales much shorter than life required to evolve on Earth.” Size doesn’t matter: Won’t larger planets fare better? Sorry; “The obliquities for ‘super-Earths’ – worlds several to 10 times the mass of the Earth – would also rapidly vanish around red dwarfs.” Lockout: “To make matters worse,” the article continued, tidal locking gets added to tilt erosion. One side becomes locked to face the star forever. “That side can become superheated and sterilized while the dark half of the planet enters a permanent, frozen night.”

8/26/201558 Tilt-A-World: Another Constraint on Habitability Jupiter’s wrath: A habitable planet too close to a gas giant suffers its gravitational blows. Thank God Earth is farther from Jupiter than Mars. “Hulking Jupiter wreaks havoc with the Red Planet’s obliquity, causing it to vary by perhaps as much as 60 degrees over the course of a million years, Heller said. Those disturbances lead to big swings in global temperatures and glacier cover, and on more habitable worlds that sort of climatic chaos could spell the end for life.” Lucky moon? Our moon helps keep Earth’s obliquity stable for long periods, but that’s partly because we orbit a rare star “Yet big moons might not be a saving grace for habitable-zone, terrestrial worlds around red dwarfs. The habitable planet’s necessary close proximity to a dim star could destabilize lunar orbits, said Caleb Scharf, director of Columbia University’s multidisciplinary Astrobiology Center, who was not involved in Heller’s research.”

8/26/201559 Tilt-A-World: Another Constraint on Habitability Note that the list of Habitable Zone factors ignores other requirements, like water, the right atmosphere, the right crustal composition, a global magnetic field, plate tectonics, the right moon at the right distance, and more. A planet could win the Habitable Zone lottery and still be lifeless if too volcanic (like Io), or shrouded in carbon dioxide and sulfuric acid (like Venus), or lacking surface carbon (see 05/21/2011).05/21/2011 Let’s face it: either we are pretty darn lucky, or Earth was designed for life, as the Creator spoke through the prophets (Isaiah 45:18). If you take the former view (luck), you have said good-bye to science. Why? Because sheer dumb luck is none other than the Stuff Happens Law (9/15/2008, 9/22/2009), the law of nature for science quitters (“Why is there life on Earth? Stuff happens”). It’s a hand-waving answer that provides no useful information or understanding.Isaiah 45:189/15/20089/22/2009

8/26/201560 Tilt-A-World: Another Constraint on Habitability When you combine extremely low probability (see our online book) with functional information (a planet that supports sentient life), you get intelligent design science. When you combine that with consciousness and intelligence, you get philosophy. When you combine that with revelation from the Creator, you get all the necessary and sufficient evidence you need to understand yourself, the world, and the universe. What’s the problem? Why would anyone wish to resist the only answer that makes sense of the world? Stop riding the Tilt-A-World theory of evolution, and stand on the solid rock (Matthew 7:13- 29).online bookthe solid rockMatthew 7:13- 29

8/26/201561 Science Grab Bag 科学集锦 Optical illusion: You won’t believe your eyes at this optical illusion posted on New Scientist.New Scientist The Science of Tebow: Watch Stephanie Pappas on Live Science explain the Tim Tebow phenomenon from a naturalistic perspective. Can Tebow pray for her? Prayers help the athletes to accept outcomes.Live Science “Drunken sailor” in your muscles: A walking machine in your cells does the sidestep, explains Science Daily.Science Daily The Plantimal: It’s half plant and half animal, claims New Scientist, playing “merry hell” with our classification systems. “The division between plants and animals is collapsing completely.”New Scientist

8/26/201562 Science Grab Bag 科学集锦 Spider clothes: This is really noteworthy. “Eighty people collected, harnessed, and released wild spiders” in Madagascar “every day to produce enough silk” to make some clothes, reports the BBC News in a slide show worth watching. Did you know spider silk is golden yellow?BBC News Saturnalia: Browse through the 10 biggest discoveries from the Cassini mission to Saturn in 2011 (Jet Propulsion Laboratory).Jet Propulsion Laboratory Reagan vindicated: Remember the laughter when Ronald Reagan said trees cause acid rain? Now read this. PhysOrg confirms that trees cause 90% of it.PhysOrg Microribbit: The world’s tiniest frog has been discovered in New Guinea (BBC News), so small a dime is a large lilypad for it. It’s a contender for the world’s smallest vertebrate.BBC News

8/26/201563 Science Grab Bag 科学集锦 Wonder machines of the nucleus: Helicases drive down DNA strands covering hundreds of bases per second without falling off. Let Live Science tell you how (100% Darwin-free).Live Science Weird dinosaur: This otherwise fierce-looking dinosaur would never win an arm-wrestling contest (PhysOrg).PhysOrg Breath of life: Evolutionists have their Genesis stories, too: this one on Live Science uses “may have” and “appeared” in classic Darwin storytelling style, alleging that a complex protein “appeared” to give life its first breath. Invokes the mythical Great Oxygenation Event (see 1/09/2012 commentary).Live Science1/09/2012

8/26/201564 Science Grab Bag 科学集锦 Babel artifact: Fox News showed a photo of pictorial cuneiform inscription that shows King Nebuchadnezzar II and a ziggurat, with the Babylonian king’s own words. Readers can decide whether it (1) refers to a historical Tower of Babel, (2) inspired the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel, as the article claims, or (3) none of the above. (Hint: If professor Todd at BiblePlaces believed it, he would have said so.)Fox NewsBiblePlaces Apps for apes: New Scientist informs us that orangutans at the Milwaukee County Zoo seem fascinated by iPads, provided they can’t take them with them into the cage. They like to use the finger-painting apps. Buried in the article: “If they got a hold of it, they’d take it apart… Orangutans pee on everything.” Don’t expect an ape-designed app any time soon.New Scientist

8/26/201565 SETI Finds Intelligent Humans SETI 查找智能的人类 The Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is 50 years old this year. SETI’s latest scientific discovery was the detection of a human-made satellite in Earth orbit. In a sense, this counts as a success: the detection of a signal of intelligent origin from an extra-terrestrial source (i.e., beyond terra firma). The false alarm helped calibrate the instrumentation, but did little to garner support for the effort to find aliens. The SETI Institute was all SETI-ready to party hardy at the 50 th anniversary of Frank Drake’s first search, but instead, found itself struggling to keep its doors open after a severe shortfall of private funds, highlighting questions about the scientific status of the long-shot project.

8/26/201566 SETI Finds Intelligent Humans SETI 查找智能的人类 A group of SETI astronomers at UC Berkeley thought they might cut to the chase in the needle-in-a-haystack search by focusing on potentially Earth-like planets detected by the Kepler spacecraft, code-named “Kepler Objects of Interest” (KOI). Using the Green Bank Radio Telescope, they pointed to some of these objects and generated graphs of time vs. radio frequency. Two of the objects, KOI-812 and KOI-817, showed traits predicted for intelligent signals: narrow bands that oscillated in intensity, so they published the graphs as “first candidates” (available here). The news generated a very brief flutter of interest (see PhysOrg and Universe Today), even though the announcement was qualified with the statement, “it is most likely to be interference” from artificial satellites. And it was; leading to a hasty “sorry” from the Berkeley team for the false alarm (Huntsville Times).herePhysOrgUniverse TodayHuntsville Times

8/26/201567 SETI Finds Intelligent Humans SETI 查找智能的人类 Jason Palmer at the BBC News paid a visit to the Allen Telescope Array of the SETI Institute, its facilities were closed due to lack of funds. He published two stories and video clips. In the first on the BBC News he called it “array of hope.” Because a successful detection of alien life is such a long shot, hope is needed in the best of times; but “it’s never been this bad,” SETI Institute principal astronomer Seth Shostak lamented. With the Allen Array out of operations pending fund-raising efforts, hope is focused on other efforts like SETI@Home or signals other than radio. For instance, Paul Davies thinks aliens may have left their imprint on our DNA.BBC News The video clip gave Seth Shostak, Frank Drake, Paul Vakoch and Jill Tarter a moment to state some SETI selling points:

8/26/201568 SETI Finds Intelligent Humans Signals might be coming through our bodies right now, if we were only detecting them (Shostak). We might be on the verge of the biggest discovery in human history, and one that might be able to help humanity solve some of its largest problems (Palmer). With the right technology, we could be within 20 years of detection (Vakoch). Knowledge that an alien civilization has survived its own problems would assure us there are solutions to global warming and pollution (Tarter). Alien detection is not just a curiosity, but would tell us we are “not a miracle, not so special, but another duck in the row,” Shostak said. Catching himself on why anybody would want to know that, he added, “It’s very important to find that you’re not the center of the universe. Ask Copernicus or Galileo.”

8/26/201569 SETI Finds Intelligent Humans At the end of the article, Tarter found an alternative energy source to keep “array of hope” alive. If electrical power costs more than funds permit, SETI “hasn’t lost any of its impact and its emotive power,” she said. In his second installment on the BBC News, Palmer focused on the “What if?” part of SETI. What if we detected an alien civilization? Shostak, Davies, and Vakoch opined on that question. Short answer is: no, Earth would not panic. The other half of the “What if?” coin is whether we should respond back. Vakoch thinks we should let them know how nice we are. We should send evidence of our altruism and love for beauty. He even prepared a simple powerpoint-like series of images to show a human figure helping another off a cliff. A message showing a nautilus shell with its design based on the Fibonacci Series might help aliens realize our love for mathematical elegance. Asking “What if?” is not utterly worthless, Vakoch argued, even if no aliens are ever detected. “Perhaps more important than even communicating with extraterrestrials, this whole enterprise of composing messages is a chance to reflect on ourselves and what we care about and how we express what’s important.” Anyone can do that without millions of dollars running 42 linked radio telescopes, so it’s not clear how helpful that idea will be raising the money they need.BBC News

8/26/201570 SETI Finds Intelligent Humans SETI 查找智能的人类 In the accompanying video clip in the BBC article, Drake admitted that a radio pulse from aliens would tell us nothing about the nature of the creatures that sent it, unless we can listen in on their TV. Eavesdropping on their programs might reveal all kinds of interesting things, like whether their quarterbacks pray after touchdowns. Shostak isn’t worried about a detection sending a wave of panic through the human race; “Don’t cry wolf,” he says, just verify the signal and leave the reply to the governments. Palmer adds that detection couldn’t be hidden for long, anyway. News would probably go from backroom chatter to Twitter in no time.BBC article

8/26/201571 SETI Finds Intelligent Humans SETI 查找智能的人类 There’s a “small outfit in Vienna” called the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), presumably tasked with speaking for the Earth. But it hasn’t been too helpful letting the American SETI advocates provide input for their “notional red binder” of what our reply should be, Palmer noted. Vakoch once again suggested his powerpoint-slide idea for showing the aliens how altruistic humans are. Shostak just wants to get on with the search. “You can think of lots of ways that this experiment wouldn’t work,” he admitted; “So what do you do? Sit around on your hands? No, you say, let’s try the experiment anyway, because if you succeed, you’ve really learned something interesting.” For now, though, the SETI Institute has to content itself with running its Array of Hope on “emotive power,” which is cheap and universally available.

8/26/201572 Selling Darwinism as a Cinch 销售进化论是容易的事 Multicellularity: “Scientists replicate key evolutionary step in life on earth,” trumpets a headline on PhysOrg based on a press release from the National Science Foundation. One doesn’t have to read far to get the matter-of-fact assertion: “More than 500 million years ago, single-celled organisms on Earth’s surface began forming multi-cellular clusters that ultimately became plants and animals.” No good novel is without a conflict, though: “Just how that happened is a question that has eluded evolutionary biologists.”PhysOrgNational Science Foundation

8/26/201573 Selling Darwinism as a Cinch 销售进化论是容易的事 Why, it’s no problem at all, announced some scientists from University of Minnesota, with NSF money in hand. Sam Scheiner of the NSF’s Division of Experimental Biology called the study “the first to experimentally observe that transition, providing a look at an event that took place hundreds of millions of years ago.” They got yeast cells to evolve into clusters so quickly it’s a wonder nobody ever thought of the experiment before. “Then came the big surprise: it wasn’t that difficult,” the article said. The clusters fragmented into sub-clusters and even exhibited division of labor, with some cells committing suicide to allow others to thrive.

8/26/201574 Selling Darwinism as a Cinch How did the team leap over this evolutionary hurdle? It’s elementary, as long as you centrifuge the cells for a hundred generations till they get so dizzy, they cling to one another for dear life. How that happens in nature was not explained, but “The results have earned praise from evolutionary biologists around the world.” The Scientist called it “provocative.” Why would that be? My goodness; think of the possibilities for more NSF money to centrifuge jellyfish and giraffes to see what evolves. “The first step toward multi-cellular complexity seems to be less of an evolutionary hurdle than theory would suggest,“ said George Gilchrist of the NSF, grant money in hand ready to pass around. “This will stimulate a lot of important research questions.” Indeed, “There aren’t many scientists doing experimental evolution,” the NSF said, as if that is a bad thing. Left wondering if “experimental evolution” is some kind of oxymoron, the taxpayer might be worrying that the press release will draw more research beggars to dry up the public trough.The ScientistNSF

8/26/201575 Selling Darwinism as a Cinch 销售进化论是容易的事 One little problem is that if the transition to multicellularity is so easy, why didn’t it happen more often in the last two billion years? Let them ask it: “Travisano and Ratcliff wonder why it didn’t evolve more often since it’s not that difficult to recreate in a lab. Considering that trillions of one-celled organisms lived on Earth for millions of years, it seems like it should have, Ratcliff says.” And it’s not clear what this has to do with nature, wrote The Scientist, with “just one experiment under admittedly contrived conditions.” Contrived; doesn’t that word conjure up Paley’s watch and other “contrivances of nature” he argued were evidence of nature? An article by Ed Yong in Nature News about this (Jan 16) revealed another tidbit; evolutionists believe yeast evolved from a multicellular ancestor. If so, the experiment demonstrates, at best, a return to a more complex past.The ScientistNature News

8/26/201576 Selling Darwinism as a Cinch Complex phenotypes: A paper in PNAS (January 4, 2012, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1119859109, open access) offers new insight into “understanding the development of complex phenotypic characters.” Using whiz-bang phylogenetic analysis and developmental theory, they devoted 5,000 words and 21 references to explain the evolution of – what? – color patterns on snail shells (See PhysOrg summary). Since even creationists believe these kinds of horizontal variations can occur over time, it’s not clear what the seven scientists from UC Berkeley and University of Pittsburgh intended to prove about evolution. “We infer the evolutionary history of these parameters and use these results to infer the pigmentation patterns of ancestral species,” they boasted, even though inferring what ancestral marine snail shells looked like is untestable without having the ancestors to look at. If anybody is impressed with the power of Darwinian evolution by this paper, call in.PNASPhysOrg

8/26/201577 Selling Darwinism as a Cinch Blessed subtractions: A recently-announced explanation for the origin of complexity sounds for all the world like the joke about the salesman who lost money on every sale, but thought he could make it up in volume. Joe Thornton [U of Chicago] and his team believe complexity emerges due to “selective losses of function rather than the sudden appearance of new capabilities.” Does this imply that enough loss of function can build a giraffe from an amoeba? His subject was molecular machines in the cell, but he didn’t suggest any limits to the concept. To sell his idea on PhysOrg, Thornton awed readers with the sci-fi phrase, “molecular time travel.” By this he meant they could conjure up visions of original molecular machines before and after increases in complexity. If that didn’t sell, he had a backup plan: assert that his notion could embarrass the creationists who have long pointed to the origin of complexity as a “favorite target” to discredit evolution. According to Thornton, evolution by subtraction refutes the “irreducible complexity” argument of intelligent design:PhysOrg

8/26/201578 Selling Darwinism as a Cinch 销售进化论是容易的事 Thornton proposes that the accumulation of simple, degenerative changes over long periods of times [sic] could have created many of the complex molecular machines present in organisms today. Such a mechanism argues against the intelligent design concept of “irreducible complexity,” the claim that molecular machines are too complicated to have formed stepwise through evolution. “I expect that when more studies like this are done, a similar dynamic will be observed for the evolution of many molecular complexes,” Thornton said.

8/26/201579 Selling Darwinism as a Cinch 销售进化论是容易的事 “These really aren’t like precision-engineered machines at all,” he added. “They’re groups of molecules that happen to stick to each other, cobbled together during evolution by tinkering, degradation, and good luck, and preserved because they helped our ancestors to survive.” Dr. Michael Behe, author of Darwin’s Black Box where the concept of “irreducible complexity” was introduced, was very charitable in his rebuttal on Evolution News & Views. Yes; it is indeed possible that a blind man carrying a legless man can safely cross the street.Darwin’s Black Box Evolution News & Views

8/26/201580 More Upsets for Darwin 更多达尔文翻转 Treehopper evolution wasn’t: Recently a “spectacular” announcement that some bugs called treehoppers had evolved a new functional appendage has been found false. “Evidence for a spectacular evolutionary novelty was recently reported,” wrote nine scientists in PLoS ONE, 1 claiming that the treehopper bugs evolved their odd-looking “helmet” as new thoracic appendages. Those evolutionists, publishing in Nature, 2 were not at all modest in their pronouncement: “Here we show that the treehopper (Membracidae) ‘helmet’ is actually an appendage, a wing serial homologue on the first thoracic segment. This innovation in the insect body plan is an unprecedented situation in 250 Myr of insect evolution.”PLoS ONE

8/26/201581 More Upsets for Darwin 更多达尔文翻转 Wrong, the new team reports. It’s not a novelty, but a common and widely-distributed feature among hemiptera (true bugs) – just an invagination of tissue, not a distinct limb. The new paper not only corrects the error but criticizes the evolutionists who proposed the wrong idea, telling them basically they should have consulted the insect experts (entomologists) before hopping to a Darwin- tree conclusion. “The treehopper pronotal wing hypothesis yields examples of misinterpretation that could have been avoided through updated best practices in phenotype knowledge representation and the broader development of anatomical references,” they said.

8/26/201582 More Upsets for Darwin 更多达尔文翻转 Wish Ida known: Remember Ida, the extinct lemur that briefly made a splash in the science headlines as being a possible human ancestor? (5/19/2009, 3/03/2010). The discoverer even paid homage to Darwin by naming it Darwinius masillae, and it became the star of a TV documentary. Live Science reported this month that new evidence is casting doubt on it having anything to do with the human line. Another similar lemur fossil from Wyoming shows a grooming claw characteristic of mammals on other branches of the assumed evolutionary line of primates. “After examining the data, both with and without information about the grooming claw,” therefore, “it appeared both these ancient primates were more closely related to lemurs than to monkeys, apes and humans.”5/19/20093/03/2010Live Science

8/26/201583 More Upsets for Darwin 更多达尔文翻转 Darwin wouldn’t like this: Biologists can’t conjure up gradualism out of the data. Charles Darwin’s theory depended on the slow accumulation of gradual changes over long periods of time. In Current Biology last month, 3 Douglas Erwin tried hard to put a happy face on the ugly problem of “punctuated equilibria” that causes mismatches between molecular methods of tracing the unfolding tree of evolution, and the fossil record that shows stasis and explosive diversification. Factoring in the ad hoc method of “rate heterogeneity” (something like artist Salvador Dali’s stretchy clocks in The Persistence of Memory) still doesn’t get the data in sync.Current BiologyThe Persistence of Memory

8/26/201584 More Upsets for Darwin 更多达尔文翻转 Erwin recalled the long-standing “tension between microevolutionists and macroevolutionists” – the former looking for processes they can tweak in the lab, the latter looking at the fossils. It’s a tension that has lasted for over a century. Even though Erwin grinned like a hungry flashlight salesman that “Several recent papers now shed new light on macroevolutionary processes,” his light was lacking batteries in the body of his Dispatch.

8/26/201585 More Upsets for Darwin 更多达尔文翻转 First, the darkness: “The discrepancy between plots of the diversity of taxa through time as inferred from molecular phylogenies and those based on counts documented by the fossil record has long been troubling,” he said, “largely because molecular phylogenies appear to underestimate the frequency of extinction.” In hopes of mitigating the damage, he presented three recent papers. One team of evolutionists found additional ways to tweak their models to get a better fit, particularly with dolphins and whales. But the next subtitle states, “Punctuations Are Not Passé.” The second study, this one more extensive, covering 40 species from fish to mammals, was not so gradual: “Their analysis supports a model of rare bursts of extensive evolutionary change in a sea of shorter-term fluctuations.” At the end of the section, Erwin lists three possible explanations for this:

8/26/201586 More Upsets for Darwin 更多达尔文翻转 The bursts of evolutionary change over longer timescales remain to be explained but could reflect episodic changes in the optimal adaptive phenotype as the environment changes, as the authors suggest, the construction of new ecological environments, or the longer waiting time for significant developmental innovations. A third paper Erwin cited showed another episodic, not gradual, record of life, this time modeling developmental changes in light of the fossil record. Try as he might to save Darwin’s face, Erwin waved his hands, smiling, while writing what sounds like evolutionary gobbledygook to save macroevolution from the evidence of sudden, explosive change:

8/26/201587 More Upsets for Darwin 更多达尔文翻转 In each of these papers [2,3,4] the results document a greater range of evolutionary processes, including great differences in origin and extinction rates in different clades through time, bursts of phenotypic change interrupting intervals of greater phenotypic quiescence, and a structuring of the developmental sources of evolutionary change. If anyone can understand that last clause without invoking intelligent design, it would make a good project in the psychology of evolution.

8/26/201588 More Upsets for Darwin 更多达尔文翻转 What do we have here? (1) Treehoppers are out as evidence for evolution. (2) Ida is out as evidence for human evolution. And (3) punctuated equilibria, completely contrary to what Darwin envisioned, is a gremlin in the Darwin camp that cannot be escaped with prodigious exercise in hand-waving, ad hoc models and gobbledygook.

8/26/201589 More Upsets for Darwin Erwin’s statement above is classic Darwinian obfuscational confability. Let’s parse it with our Baloney Detectors on:Baloney Detectors The bursts of evolutionary change…. [He acknowledges the evidence is bursty, but then embeds his own evolutionary assumptions into the phrase “evolutionary change” here. What if it is not evolutionary (i.e., gradual) change? What if it is creationary change?] over longer timescales… [Longer timescales embeds more of his evolutionary assumptions of slow, gradual change over millions of years.] remain to be explained… [Notice the subtle use of passive voice infinitive here; some nebulous entity will have to explain it someday over the rainbow. He should fess up and write in active voice, declarative sentences: “We can’t explain it. They can’t explain it. I can’t explain it. We are all clueless. I can only wish upon a star that someday, somebody will explain it.”]

8/26/201590 More Upsets for Darwin 更多达尔文翻转 but could reflect episodic changes in the optimal adaptive phenotype as the environment changes,… [Stop right there! We put you under citizen’s arrest for impersonating a scientist (9/30/2007 commentary). That’s miracle talk. Erwin is assuming that if a landslide occurs, or the sea level changes, or a volcano blows its top, the Goddess of Evolution will produce an “optimal adaptive phenotype” on demand. How? By snapping her fingers? By waving her Tinker Bell Mutation Wand? This is crazy! Don’t let them get away with obfuscation like this.]9/30/2007 commentaryobfuscation

8/26/201591 More Upsets for Darwin as the authors suggest,… [You know, we’re really not interested in your suggestions. We want our scientists to do real science – observable, testable, repeatable science.] the construction of new ecological environments,… [More hand-waving and gobbledygook. This is an offhand reference to “niche construction” theory, that organisms not only adapt to environments but construct them. Such notions personify evolution and beg the question of how adaptation occurs.]personify or the longer waiting time for significant developmental innovations…. [Aaagh! Stop it. This is more miracle-talk assuming the Stuff Happens Law. Wait long enough and “significant developmental innovations” will just occur. How? Will they just arise? Will they just emerge? Will they somehow develop? When the "waiting time" is up, will they pop into existence, like the Pop-Eye theory of evolution? Stop the funnies. We thought we were watching The Science Channel, not the Cartoon Network.]

8/26/201592 More Upsets for Darwin 更多达尔文翻转 Learn how to slice, dice and analyze these baloney tales from the evolutionists. Learn how to blow away the fogma* and get to the evidence. We naturally tend to defer to “scientists” because they are supposedly so smart. Their jargon sounds intimidating. The list of references to other baloney-generating scientists in science journals presents an aura of credibility. But it’s all aura and no substance, aurora with no charged particles of data, a roar a minute with no teeth. Understand that the structure in which Erwin and the evolutionists act with rhetorical flourish is just a façade like a movie set, with the script already written. Darwin’s script is being directed by ideologues that care less about the facts of nature than preserving their epic tale. Charlie’s Angles is one script so implausible, so out of touch with reality, it deserves to be left on the cutting room floor.

8/26/201593 More Evidence Cambrian Explosion was Un-Darwinian 更多寒武纪大爆发不是达尔文 The Cambrian Explosion (the abrupt appearance of animal phyla in the earliest fossil layers bearing multicellular body plans) remains unmuffled. Known by Darwin as a problem for his theory, it has become more problematic to his followers over time. There are now many more Cambrian fossils than Darwin knew of, and they continue the pattern: sudden appearance of complex animals, complete with legs, digestive systems, eyes, and nervous systems. Discoveries of Precambrian fossils have not helped: the ones that are more than microbial appear to be mere colonies of cells with no relationship to animals. Here are more discoveries that fit this pattern.

8/26/201594 More Evidence Cambrian Explosion was Un-Darwinian 更多寒武纪大爆发不是达尔文 Burgess shale tulip animals: A new species of filter- feeding marine animal that resembles a tulip has been found on Mt. Stephen in British Columbia, Canada, site of the internationally famous Burgess Shale fossil bed. Pictures of the fossils and an artist reconstruction can be found on PhysOrg. Named Siphusauctum gregarium, the animal is about 8” high and lived in colonies. The Burgess Shale is dated Middle Cambrian, but the existence of this fully-formed animal, complete with gut, foot anchor and pump to drive water through its “unusual filter-feeding system” implies a very short fuse between the Precambrian and its abrupt appearance.PhysOrg

8/26/201595 More Evidence Cambrian Explosion was Un-Darwinian 更多寒武纪大爆发不是达尔文 Crustaceans with modern aspect: Like lobster? Think of the complexity of this animal with eyes, antennae, claws, legs, mouth parts equipped with mandibles, and internal organ systems, including a digestive tract and sexual organs. Crustaceans are a highly diverse group of arthropods that include lobsters, crayfish, and crabs. Among the crustacean subphylum are the branchiopods (which includes the fairy shrimp and water flea), ostracods (small shelled crustaceans; see diagram of complex internal organs on the Lake Biwa Museum site), and copepods (“oar-foot” swimmers; see Smithsonian for description).Lake Biwa MuseumSmithsonian

8/26/201596 More Evidence Cambrian Explosion was Un-Darwinian 更多寒武纪大爆发不是达尔文 At another site in western Canada called the Deadwood Formation, a trio of scientists from Cambridge, Hawaii and Canada found exquisitely-preserved crustaceans “of surprisingly modern aspect” in mudstone, a type of rock that was thought to form very slowly (12/14/2007). The abstract of their paper in PNAS says it best: 112/14/2007PNAS The early history of crustaceans is obscured by strong biases in fossil preservation, but a previously overlooked taphonomic mode yields important complementary insights. Here we describe diverse crustacean appendages of Middle and Late Cambrian age from shallow marine mudstones of the Deadwood Formation in western Canada. The fossils occur as flattened and fragmentary carbonaceous cuticles but provide a suite of phylogenetic and ecological data by virtue of their detailed preservation. In addition to an unprecedented range of complex, largely articulated filtering limbs, we identify at least four distinct types of mandible.

8/26/201597 More Evidence Cambrian Explosion was Un-Darwinian 更多寒武纪大爆发不是达尔文 Other crustaceans had been found in the Cambrian, the authors say (see 7/20/2001, 10/4/2007 ), but “until recently, have been represented almost exclusively by “Orsten-type” taxa of minute body size (< 2 mm) and limited appendage differentiation,” the authors said. Even the Burgess Shale arthropods lacked the “key diagnostic characters among the inner leg branches and mouthparts,” they said. The only previous fossil with convincing a crustacean mandible was dated Late Cambrian.7/20/200110/4/2007

8/26/201598 More Evidence Cambrian Explosion was Un-Darwinian 更多寒武纪大爆发不是达尔文 Previous “cryptic” fossils hinted at the presence of crustaceans in the Early Cambrian, but now, the new discovery shows them alive and well in the Middle Cambrian: “the Deadwood fossils provide crucial phylogenetic and ecologic datapoints for charting a major Cambrian radiation of crustaceans.” The Deadwood Formation extends from western Canada to the Black Hills of South Dakota, they noted. After showing an array of beautifully detailed fossils and discussing them, the authors concluded that their discovery pushes back the date of branchiopods 80-100 million years (Lower Devonian to Middle Cambrian), ostracods 70 million, and copepods 190-210 million years. They did their best to maintain their evolutionary belief, pointing to differences between the fossil forms and modern or later fossil forms, for example, “In any case, they offer clear potential for reconciling the Orsten forms with adults and larger bodied relatives for a new, high-definition narrative of early mandibulate evolution.”

8/26/201599 More Evidence Cambrian Explosion was Un-Darwinian 更多寒武纪大爆发不是达尔文 It’s hard to see evolution in the picture of “early origination and subsequent conservation in crustacean form and function” these fossils illustrate, especially when the fossil copepods are larger than modern ones. To reconcile that with evolution, they postulated that the presence of fish with predatory eyes would drive crustacean size down. Maybe they forgot that the Chinese found fish fossils in the early Cambrian (8/21/2002, 1/30/2003), but that seems the least of their worries. The complex body parts represented in these fossils begs for explanation how a gradual, unguided Darwinian process would lead to such high levels of functional complexity in short order, abruptly, with no fossil pathway evident, much earlier than expected.8/21/20021/30/2003

8/26/2015100 More Evidence Cambrian Explosion was Un-Darwinian 更多寒武纪大爆发不是达尔文 Up periscope! Sea spider eyes: Did you know there are spiders at the bottom of the sea? A paper in PLoS ONE talked about them. 2 They are called pycnogonids, and they have unusual eyes on stalks that look like periscopes. The authors of the paper did not find Cambrian fossils of sea spiders. Instead, they tried to infer their evolutionary origins, and placed them in the Cambrian as the oldest arthropods. “Recently it was suggested that arthropod eyes originated from simple ocelli similar to larval eyes,” they said. “Hence, pycnogonid eyes would be one of the early offshoots among the wealth of more sophisticated arthropod eyes.”PLoS ONE

8/26/2015101 More Evidence Cambrian Explosion was Un-Darwinian 更多寒武纪大爆发不是达尔文 Putting puzzle pieces together in some kind of evolutionary arrangement, though, seems the least of their worries. They found that these eyes had nerves from the stalks down to the brains of these eight-legged creatures. How eyes popped into existence suddenly in the earliest layers bearing animal fossils is the “elephant in the room” that most evolutionists dodge. They ended with an “if-then” statement of doubtful premise: “If arthropod eyes originated from simple ocelli similar to larval eyes, pycnogonid eyes could be one of their early offshoots, which date back at least 500 Myr to the Cambrian, and be older than the appearance of distinct lateral and median eyes.” Notice that they are not saying sea spiders have “simple” ocelli (light-sensitive organs, as in dragonflies; see 8/13/2004), just that they were a later offshoot of a presumed ancestor, “if” arthropod eyes “originated” by evolution.8/13/2004

8/26/2015102 More Evidence Cambrian Explosion was Un-Darwinian 更多寒武纪大爆发不是达尔文 The Cambrian Explosion is not a problem for special creation; it is a problem for evolution. Why do evolutionists get over 150 years of leadership in science for clinging to a belief that has been falsified by the evidence? This is like giving astrologers hegemony in a day of modern astronomy. Charlie’s little Victorian myth needs to go to the dumpster with phrenology, mesmerism and table- turning. We need to look at the fossil record anew, without the black-tinted glasses of evolutionary assumptions. That will “shed light on evolution,” all right; it will take the dark glasses off so that the pre-existing light that was ignored can reveal it for what it is, a chosen world view that demands all evidence be interpreted within its dark world of imaginary light.

8/26/2015103 Liberal Bias Detected in Science Media Nature against abstinence: Last month, the editors of Nature (480, 22 December 2011, p. 413, doi:10.1038/480413a), excoriated President Obama for backtracking on his promise to bring more “integrity” to science (meaning, acquiescing to the views of the scientific establishment). What, in particular, were they complaining about? They were appalled that he would cave in to pressure from conservatives to backtrack on plans to distribute the “morning after” pill to schoolgirls under 17. “It certainly is inconvenient, on the cusp of an election year, in what is at heart a deeply conservative country, to acknowledge that young adolescents can and do have sex, and that they may not have thought out the potential consequences in advance,” they wrote. “So inconvenient, apparently, that the work of the scientists, who spent long hours weighing risks and benefits for the public good, must be thrown under a bus.” The views of many conservatives against the pill as a form of abortion without parental knowledge did not appear relevant to the editors.Nature

8/26/2015104 Liberal Bias Detected in Science Media NCSE goes climatic: The news media uniformly supported the NCSE’s decision to add climate skeptics to their targets, along with evolution skeptics. New Scientist portrayed Eugenie Scott’s organization that fights for Darwin-only education as “US science education advocates,” ignoring the fact that Scott has not only interfered with the voice of the people through their legislatures for years, but has also praised the institutions that have destroyed careers of evolution skeptics. Nature News, naturally, gave Scott good press, noting her “reputation for doggedly defending the teaching of evolution in US classrooms,” and portraying the NCSE decision to “expand its mandate to include the politically charged issue of global warming.” Where she got that “mandate” was not stated; the NCSE is a private organization whose agenda has never been voted on by the public affected by her actions (primarily conservatives and evolution skeptics).New ScientistNature News

8/26/2015105 Liberal Bias Detected in Science Media 科学媒体自由派偏差 Huffington Post: What’s a science news site doing reporting a decision by the Huffington Post, the anti- conservative website, to go French? PhysOrg did not warn its readers about the political bias of Arianna Huffington. It only called her a “US socialite blogger” who has become an “Internet multimillionaire” for her “gossipy mix of celebrity, political and lifestyle stories”. If anyone has an example of a science news site celebrating the success of a conservative enterprise in such glowing terms, it would be an interesting search.PhysOrg

8/26/2015106 Liberal Bias Detected in Science Media 科学媒体自由派偏差 Defending corruption: Last month, PhysOrg told about a psychologist who wrote a paper about “Why do people defend unjust, inept, and corrupt systems?” The examples provided were about alleged failings during the Bush administration, with liberal slant evident on positions about government funding for education and fair salaries between the sexes. Psychologist Aaron C. Kay of Duke University got a one-way megaphone to portray those not wanting “social change” as victims of irrational, psychological forces.PhysOrg

8/26/2015107 Liberal Bias Detected in Science Media 科学媒体自由派偏差 Sicko evolution skeptics: PhysOrg gave its microphone to David Haury at Ohio State, who has a patronizing view of evolution skeptics as hapless pawns of gut feelings instead of rationality. “Research in neuroscience has shown that when there’s a conflict between facts and feeling in the brain, feeling wins,” he opined, speaking of those who have not yet gained the enlightenment that leads to “acceptance of evolution.” Strangely, he did not consider the power of gut feelings to influence his own beliefs about evolution. Looking at students as his lab rats, he proposed ways to overcome their brutish beliefs with more nuanced methods that might trick their guts into accommodating the “greater knowledge of evolutionary facts” available. This “researcher” was empowered to promote his views with funding from the National Science Foundation.PhysOrg

8/26/2015108 Liberal Bias Detected in Science Media Sicko people of faith: “Are religious people better adjusted psychologically?” Medical Xpress asks, expecting a “no” answer. Once again, “psychological research” was granted uncritical authority to weigh in on the question. Some German researchers noted that many previous studies seemed to indicate that faith is good for one’s sense of well-being – but now, the but – “On average, believers only got the psychological benefits of being religious if they lived in a country that values religiosity.” This according to their “new study” published in Psychological Science. “In countries where most people aren’t religious, religious people didn’t have higher self-esteem.” This assumes that people embrace their faith only for what they can get out of it. It also assumes their highest value is self-esteem. If self- esteem happens to be low on the priority list among the millions of persecuted believers around the world, many who have been willing to die for their faith, these psychological experts did not seem to be aware of it or concerned about it.Medical Xpress

8/26/2015109 Liberal Bias Detected in Science Media Undermining traditional values: It is well known that conservatives support traditional marriage and abstinence from sex outside marriage. They don’t get very good press among science reporters, who seem to be on a campaign to portray alternative lifestyles as blessed by science. Some recent examples: “Same-sex marriage laws reduce doctor visits and health care costs for gay men,” reported Medical Xpress. “Gay men are able to lead healthier, less stress-filled lives when states offer legal protections to same-sex couples, according to a new study,” the article continued, begging the question whether a stress-free life is the arbiter of morality. An assumed expert from Columbia got this statement in: “These findings suggest that marriage equality may produce broad public health benefits by reducing the occurrence of stress-related health conditions in gay and bisexual men.” What does “marriage equality” imply?Medical Xpress

8/26/2015110 Liberal Bias Detected in Science Media “Study finds few well-being advantages to marriage over cohabitation,” reported PhysOrg this week. Well; if a “study finds” this, that settles it; traditional marriage has no legs. Again, a psychologist got to state a strong anti-conservative viewpoint without any conservative rebuttal, saying, “our research shows that marriage is by no means unique in promoting well-being and that other forms of romantic relationships can provide many of the same benefits.” Readers were not warned that this amounts to pragmatism – the end justifies the means – a philosophy, not a science. It also presumes that societal decisions about marriage are to be made entirely on the well-being of those choosing to engage in “other forms of romantic relationships,” while ignoring the well-being of children, family members and society as a whole – points conservatives would undoubtedly rush to express, had they the reporters’ ear.PhysOrg

8/26/2015111 Liberal Bias Detected in Science Media 科学媒体自由派偏差 Pushing cohabitation: Live Science was even more militant in its coverage, calling the study on the blessings of cohabitation “extremely valuable.” Experts were quoted describing those holding to traditional marriage as having “an extremely naïve view.” Marriage was portrayed as passé. With no hint of desire for balanced reporting (such as giving time to the Family Research Council or Focus on the Family), the article ended, incredibly, with blatant advocacy: “Pass it on: Cohabitation may be just as good as marriage in promoting happiness and well-being” (italics theirs).Live Science

8/26/2015112 Liberal Bias Detected in Science Media 科学媒体自由派偏差 Get thee to a nunnery: Imagine the impact on traditional Catholics of this headline on Live Science: “Catholic Church Should Offer Nuns the Pill, Researchers Say.” Well, if “researchers” say it, the Vatican should genuflect. With no attempt at getting the Church’s response to a “study” by two Australian “researchers” speaking with the imprimatur of science, the article ended with this promotion: “Pass it on: The pill may reduce the risk of ovarian and uterine cancer in nuns, researchers argue” (italics theirs).Live Science

8/26/2015113 Liberal Bias Detected in Science Media 科学媒体自由派偏差 Many scientists and science reporters, as these examples show, betray a liberal bias. Let us count the ways: (1) never giving equal time or emphasis to conservatives, (2) portraying conservative viewpoints, if even acknowledged, as out of step with the times, (3) portraying conservatives (especially those of religious faith) as irrational pawns of psychological urges, (4) using loaded words, (5) employing unargued assumptions embedded in suggestive euphemisms (like “marriage equality”), (6) assuming that “researchers” are infallible, (7) assuming that any scientific “study” is authoritative, (8) rushing to sanctify the liberal viewpoint with the authority of “science,” (9) considering all sciences, including psychology, as equally authoritative, and (10) never dealing with thorny issues of philosophy of science – i.e., what science is capable of knowing, proving, or preaching.loaded wordssuggestive

8/26/2015114 Oozing Life Up Against All Odds 渗出生命反对所有赔率 The origin of life clearly requires a major leap in complexity, but not just any complexity. A conglomerate rock is complex, but not alive. Life has functional complexity – the ability to selectively take in materials to grow, move and reproduce. Life also requires growth, but not just any growth. Fire grows and reproduces, but is not alive, whereas a living cell grows and reproduces according to internal programmed instructions. Evolutionists think the origin of life by natural causes is a tractable problem that will eventually be solved. Let’s see a couple of examples of how their work is coming along.

8/26/2015115 Oozing Life Up Against All Odds 渗出生命反对所有赔率 Metabolism-first domino effect: In the long-standing debate between genetics-first and metabolism-first scenarios for how life began (see 1/26/2008), Günter Wächtershäuser has been a strong advocate for the latter. Working his ideas into experimental form has been the project of Claudia Huber and Wolfgang Eisenreich at the Munich Technical University. PhysOrg reported that they believe a single, fortuitous reaction can lead to an avalanche of fruitful chemical products, like the first falling domino can trigger cannons firing, pinwheels turning and all kinds of downstream effects.1/26/2008PhysOrg Like JPL’s Michael Russell, Wächtershäuser and colleagues envision deep sea hot-water vents as ideal settings for where life began: “it is precisely this extreme environment, where the two mechanisms could have emerged, which are at the root of all life:

8/26/2015116 Oozing Life Up Against All Odds 渗出生命反对所有赔率 The multiplication of biomolecules (reproduction) and the emergence of new biomolecules on the basis of previously formed biomolecules (evolution). ” This glittering generality ignores serious problems like destructive cross-reactions, the conundrum of homochirality, and error catastrophe from inaccurate reproduction.glittering generality

8/26/2015117 Oozing Life Up Against All Odds 渗出生命反对所有赔率 Nevertheless, Huber’s experiments seem to show that a self-stimulating mechanism is possible: some transition metals like nickel aided the production of new molecules starting with some simple amino acids. Wächtershäuser’s imagination went spinning: “Life arises, if subsequently a whole cascade of further couplings takes place, and this primordial life leads eventually to the formation of genetic material and of the first cells” (gaps to be filled in later, since his metabolism-first theory doesn’t concern itself with genetics). The article ended with a grand scenario of chemical predestination, making this all sound so natural, so inevitable, so simple:

8/26/2015118 Oozing Life Up Against All Odds 渗出生命反对所有赔率 The most important property of the system is its autonomy: As opposed to the notion of a cool prebiotic both [sic, broth], the first metabolism was not dependent on accidental events or an accumulation of essential components over thousands of years. As soon as the first domino stone is toppled, the others will follow automatically. The origin of life proceeds along definite trajectories, pre- established by the rules of chemistry – a chemically determined process giving rise to the tree of all forms of life.

8/26/2015119 Oozing Life Up Against All Odds 渗出生命反对所有赔率 Certainly he cannot take his determinism too far, though, or he would be saying that a giraffe or peacock necessarily follows from the first chemical catalytic cycle. The falling-domino analogy is an unfortunate choice, too; the wondrous displays of complexity we see on gym floors like this world breaker on YouTube, this parallel example, and this climbing example, do not arise from rules of chemistry or unguided natural processes, but by intelligent design. A more accurate analogy would be to dump dominoes on a trampoline and subject them to random forces of wind, earthquakes and tidal waves.YouTubeparallel exampleclimbing example

8/26/2015120 Oozing Life Up Against All Odds 渗出生命反对所有赔率 Want salt in your soup? Salt is a blessing and a curse for origin-of-life research. Without the ions salts produce, it’s hard to get many biological processes going. The ions interfere, though, with the formation of genetic material and lipids (9/17/2002, 11/23/2007). Soap scum is an example, an article on PhysOrg illustrates; the ions in hard water cling to the soap molecules, forming solids instead of lather.9/17/200211/23/2007PhysOrg David Deamer puzzled over salt in his new book, First Life (June 2011). For a long time, evolutionists have assumed that the salt in our blood is a consequence of salt in the oceans where life arose – a kind of recapitulation of the primordial oceans they envision. He knows, though, that salts mean trouble: “Seawater, in his estimation, is too reactive with certain biomolecules to have served as the ‘broth’ for the primordial soup.”

8/26/2015121 Oozing Life Up Against All Odds The salt conundrum divides origin-of-life researchers two more ways: those who favor the deep sea, like Michael Russell, and those who favor fresh-water ponds subjected to wetting and drying cycles. “A freshwater origin seems to have been what Charles Darwin was proposing when he imagined the spontaneous formation of biomolecules in ‘some warm little pond,’” the article mentioned. In that imaginary picture, Deamer is turning up the heat. Others feel the salt conundrum will be solved some other way. Shiladitya DasSarma of the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute, for instance, said, “I wouldn’t think ions could play such an important role unless they were around in the beginning.” Deamer responds that seawater contains dissolved calcium and magnesium. With their doubly-charged ions, they tend to precipitate with phosphates and fatty acids, taking them out of the mix. Jack Szostak of Harvard agrees. He votes for the freshwater scenario.

8/26/2015122 Oozing Life Up Against All Odds 渗出生命反对所有赔率 But magnesium and calcium ions are needed for life, DasSarma contends. You can’t get them in fresh water, Russell adds, and “It is the inorganic elements that bring organic chemistry to life.” What to do? Russell tries doing away with the need for a lipid membrane. Start with metabolic cycles within cracks in hot deep-sea vents, he imagines. Add the “castle wall” of a membrane after the kingdom gets started, courtesy of proteins and DNA he envisions forming within gradients in the channels that serve the function of membranes.

8/26/2015123 Oozing Life Up Against All Odds Deamer is not convinced. “At some point during its origin, life started using membranes,” he pointed out. One cannot put the problem off into neverland. Deamer believes fresh water is more conducive to membrane formation. Salt is good, he agrees, so he is willing to compromise with a pinch of salt, but still thinks “seawater is too much of a good thing.” He and Szostak have come up with the ideal crock pot: volcanoes. “Being near volcanoes could have provided heat for creating wet-dry cycles.” Off to Hawaii he went to test the idea. “He and his colleagues went so far as to dump lipid molecules into the ponds to see if they might form membranes ‘in the wild,’” the article continued, the hope building. But alas, “The answer was no. The organic material attached itself to clay minerals at the bottom of the ponds,” the disappointing field test showed. (The article speculated that this “wouldn’t have likely been a problem on the early Earth,” without explaining why.)

8/26/2015124 Oozing Life Up Against All Odds So, back to his intelligently-designed lab setup Deamer has gone, fixing the temperature, the ingredients, and the concentrations: His team has built a “hot pond” simulator. Little vials with freshwater and the basic ingredients of life are heated to above 60 degrees Celsius and routinely re-wetted with “rain water” from a syringe. Recent results have shown that membrane-forming lipids not only form vesicles, but they may help drive DNA replication – something that modern cells need protein enzymes to do. It’s not clear who snuck the DNA in the rig. The qualifier “may help” leaves a lot to be clarified, too. But when he adds sea salt, what will happen? “Deamer says they plan to test saltwater to see how the results change.” Look forward to blobs of phosphate and lipid solids on the bottom of the tank that won’t be evolving anywhere soon.

8/26/2015125 Oozing Life Up Against All Odds 渗出生命反对所有赔率 The OOL follies continue. Here we are, 60 years after Stanley Miller wowed the world with his Frankenstein spark chambers, and there is no progress – only more questions, more problems, more controversies, and no results. Meanwhile, the complexity of life as we know it continues to astonish biochemists. How much longer do they get? What are the criteria for failure? Do they have a perpetual license to fOOL the public with suggestions that they are getting warmer, when the reality is that they are still clueless how life started? Deamer writes a book on “How Life Began” when he hasn’t the foggiest idea.

8/26/2015126 Oozing Life Up Against All Odds 渗出生命反对所有赔率 Ask yourself if this is science. It’s not enough to have a PhD in science, because lay people can make scientific discoveries (Darwin’s only degree was in theology, remember). It’s not enough to be a scientist; not everything a scientist does is scientific, such as having lunch. It’s not enough to use lab equipment; the alchemists perfected lab techniques. Similar arguments can be made for fellowshipping with scientific friends, attending scientific conferences, writing scientific books, publishing peer- reviewed papers with math and graphics, and having science reporters drool over the opportunity to speak with you. None of that matters if the evidence doesn’t support your hypothesis. Science demands, “Put up or shut up.”

8/26/2015127 Oozing Life Up Against All Odds 渗出生命反对所有赔率 The kind of science we were all taught to adore is that which is observable, testable, and repeatable. Philosophers of science like to point to historic examples of frenzied enthusiasm in pursuit of wrong leads, like alchemy, astrology, phrenology, the caloric hypothesis, the phlogiston theory, animal magnetism, psychoanalysis and other projects whose advocates swore they were on the right track and were on the verge of a breakthrough. It didn’t matter. The evidence didn’t support it.

8/26/2015128 Oozing Life Up Against All Odds Intelligent design advocates have both negative and positive reasons for declaring these origin-of-life experiments unscientific. On the negative side, they argue that the complexity required for the simplest conceivable living cell exceeds the universal probability bound (one chance in 10 150 calculated by Dembski, very generously in favor of chance), and therefore cannot arise by random, unguided processes anywhere in the entire history of the universe; it’s a complete waste of time to think so. Similarly, natural law cannot produce the kind of specified complexity evident in life. Natural law produces repetitive patterns, not codes.

8/26/2015129 Oozing Life Up Against All Odds As a positive argument, intelligent design theory argues that from our uniform experience, the only cause we know that can produce specified complexity is intelligence. This is argued cogently by Stephen Meyer in Signature in the Cell. The signals, codes, and functional specifications so evident in even the simplest life are diagnostic of intelligent causes. The scientific approach to the origin of life, therefore, is to avoid what we already know is a dead end (chance, natural law or a combination of the two), and to pursue the explanation that we already know has the causal resources to deliver the observations.Signature in the Cell It doesn’t matter that Wächtershäuser, Huber, Russell, Szotak, Deamer and the other OOL folks have PhDs, use lab equipment, know a lot about organic chemistry, and write papers and books. They aren’t doing science. They are doing anti-science. They are pursuing leads that are demonstrably false, evidentially, logically, and philosophically.

8/26/2015130 Oozing Life Up Against All Odds 渗出生命反对所有赔率 In one sense they are helping science; they are providing more opportunities for falsification. But since there are an infinite number of falsifiable hypotheses, they are destined to wander around the island, looking for a treasure that is not there, falsifying this dig and that dig forever. The treasure is on a different island than the one on which they have chosen to limit their search. It’s on the island where intelligent causes have been banished. Fortunately for the ID scientists in exile there, it’s also the island with the treasure map.

8/26/2015131 Living Surprises, Living Hopes 活的惊喜，活的希望 Fish-o-pus: Slinking through Indonesian waters is a master of impersonation: an octopus that can elude predators by imitating a fish. But that’s just part of the story. Scientists have now found a fish that imitates the octopus that imitates the fish! Story on Science News. The jawfish apparently hangs around with the mimic octopus to share in its protective strategy.Science News

8/26/2015132 Living Surprises, Living Hopes 活的惊喜，活的希望 Mind meld with apes: German scientists studied the four anthropoid apes, chimps, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans, Science Daily said, and found that some (but not all) appeared to be able to calculate risks before acting. Their experiment involved choices between small banana pieces in reliable spots, and larger banana pieces hidden behind variable locations. The gorillas didn’t do so well. It’s not clear whether readers will be as impressed with this as the researchers were, considering that birds seem to do even better at these kinds of brain teasers. Last month, Live Science reported that pigeon brains are on par with primates.Science DailyLive Science

8/26/2015133 Living Surprises, Living Hopes 活的惊喜，活的希望 Brazilian worm-eating plant: A new kind of carnivorous plant has been found in the Cerrado of Brazil, a unique tropical biodiversity hotspot. Reported in PNAS (January 9, 2012, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1114199109), the plant Philcoxia apparently uses sticky underground leaves to trap and eat roundworms. PhysOrg has a picture and summary of the predatory plant.PNAS PhysOrg

8/26/2015134 Living Surprises, Living Hopes 活的惊喜，活的希望 Flower power: PhysOrg featured a researcher at Kansas State that is trying to untangle sunflower genetics. Different species living in different climates have apparently become successful through gene duplications, hybridization and mobile genetic elements – pieces of genetic code that can relocate and insert themselves in different parts of the genome. Although Mark Ungerer is couching his explanations in evolutionary terms, the article seems to indicate a kind of controlled adaptability that has occurred recently. It seems premature to credit unguided processes with success at adapting to climates as different as Texas and Canada, considering Ungerer’s humble admission, “Although virtually all plants and animals have these types of sequences in their genomes, we still know very little about what phenomena cause them to amplify and make extra copies of themselves.”PhysOrg

8/26/2015135 Living Surprises, Living Hopes 活的惊喜，活的希望 Rhinoceros foot puzzle: The Royal Veterinary College is playing footsie with rhinos to see how their “stumpy little feet” can support so much weight. Their weight- bearing strategy is apparently different from that of elephants. According to the BBC News article, Dr. John Hutchinson has another reason for investigating this unknown marvel: “From understanding the feet of rhinos, as an example of a big land mammal, we could draw inspiration and understand how to build devices that can handle heavy loads and carry them around while moving.”BBC News

8/26/2015136 Living Surprises, Living Hopes 活的惊喜，活的希望 Pause for paws: Speaking of feet, why don’t dogs get frostbite from walking in the snow? Think of those brave Alaskan huskies on the Iditerod. Actually, dogs can get frostbitten paws, depending on the breed, but they rarely do. PhysOrg told how scientists from Tokyo checked out the paws of four dog breeds and discovered an ingenious heat-exchanging system in the blood vessels that not only transfers warmth to the bare surfaces of paws but ensures blood returning to the heart is warm enough. Cool pet tip: spray the paws with cooking spray before taking your best friend into the snow.PhysOrg

8/26/2015137 Living Surprises, Living Hopes 活的惊喜，活的希望 Gecko fish: Ever heard of the northern clingfish? These are small fish on the north Pacific coast that have mastered the art of clinging to shoreline rocks as they search for food. Remarkably, their modified fins use a similar adhesion technique as geckos, reported ScienceMagazine (20 January 2012: Vol. 335 no. 6066 p. 277, doi: 10.1126/science.335.6066.277). Their modified belly fins have tiny hairs that make use of atomic forces, adhering to rough surfaces better than suction cups. An undergraduate student found that the clingfish can support 180 times their own weight.ScienceMagazine

8/26/2015138 Living Surprises, Living Hopes 活的惊喜，活的希望 Do the fish walk: The headline at Life’s Little Mysteries promises to show how “Discovery Reveals How Fish Learned to Walk,” but the article is actually about real living fish called Pacific leaping blennies that do the twist as they flip around the intertidal zones of Guam. These are not Darwin fish; they have no feet, and their muscles are really not different from those of other fish. Their flip-flop “walk” is more an adaptive behavior than evolution. Researcher Tonia Hsieh was astonished to find half her lab blennies walked out of the tank overnight. Then she found some of them on the wall.Life’s Little Mysteries

8/26/2015139 Living Surprises, Living Hopes 活的惊喜，活的希望 Leaping lizards: Speaking of Tonia Hsieh, a biologist at Temple University who developed a childhood fascination with lizards and other animals, she has a cool lab to study lizard leaps in slow motion. She especially likes the basilisk, a lizard that stands up and runs fast, reported the Philadelphia Inquirer – so fast it can run over water, giving the nickname the “Jesus lizard.” You can watch these amazing lizards in action on Hsieh’s track at the Temple University website. “It’s important to realize that animals do not have a specific program to tell them how to react to each and every possible perturbation scenario in the real world,” she said, yet they manage to keep going even when encountering a slippery spot. Understanding their locomotion strategies, she believes, can help robot designers walk out of the wheel rut. Her research might also help the elderly prevent falls.Philadelphia InquirerTemple University

8/26/2015140 Living Surprises, Living Hopes Miracle tree: Readers may remember Moringa oleifera, the “miracle tree” that not only provides food and fuel, but can actually disinfect water for poor countries (3/09/2010). Previously we learned that crushed Moringa seeds, sprinkled in turbid water, took out the turbidity and killed bacteria. One problem was making the process sustainable and affordable. Without proper techniques, the dissolved organic compounds could return to cloud the water again. Now, according to PhysOrg, clean drinking water for the poor is a step closer to reality. The American Chemical Society published a paper by scientists who identified the protein in the seeds that has the antibacterial effect. By attaching it to sand, they can attract both the bacteria and the dissolved organic compounds to the sand particles, which carry the impurities to the bottom, leaving clean water suitable for drinking. The paper is published in the ACS journal Langmuir. The new process is inexpensive and sustainable, said Science Daily, and a billion people stand ready to benefit from this one remarkable plant, “one of the world’s most useful trees.”3/09/2010PhysOrgLangmuirScience Daily

8/26/2015141 Living Surprises, Living Hopes 活的惊喜，活的希望 We love good science here. Most of this is good old, Darwin-free scientific discovery. What has evolution done for any of it? Sure, the sunflower wizard believes in evolution, but he was watching built-in adaptation tricks of the genome in action, not some external “natural selector” corralling chance mutations. Sure, Tonia believes in evolution, but her lizard track meets are designed to improve senior health and robotics. In every case, evolution had nothing of substance to add to the science. What wonderful benefits await poor people from research on how to employ a tree’s built-in codes to purify water! Evolution is like a ball and chain on this kind of science. Take it off, and let science take off.

8/26/2015142 Geologists 750% Wrong in Death Valley 地质学家在死亡之谷 750 ％错误 A volcanic explosion in northern Death Valley occurred 800 years ago, not 6,000, “far more recently than generally thought,” according to new dating estimates. The event that created Ubehebe Crater is so recent, in fact, geologists think another devastating explosion could happen today.

8/26/2015143 Geologists 750% Wrong in Death Valley “This certainly adds another dimension to what we tell the public,” a park ranger said after hearing the announcement reported on Science Daily. Using isotopic ages on rocks blown out of the crater, geologists from Columbia University calculated dates from 2,100 to 800 years old from the debris, with the biggest explosion at 800 years ago perhaps being the grand finale of a series of eruptions. The article said some of the other pits in the vicinity, called maars, gave dates of 3,000 to 5,000 years.Science Daily Explosion pits like Ubehebe (pronounced you-be-hee-bee) are thought to result from groundwater hitting a magma pocket. It seems surprising to envision water in this hottest, driest part of North America, but if the explosion occurred in the middle ages (around 1200 A.D.), tree ring evidence shows it was even hotter and drier then. If explosions occur periodically every thousand years or less, it’s not out of the question another one is coming.

8/26/2015144 Geologists 750% Wrong in Death Valley 地质学家在死亡之谷 750 ％错误 Here’s what the geologists estimate an eyewitness would see: Study coauthor Brent Goehring, (now at Purdue University) says this would have created an atom-bomb-like mushroom cloud that collapsed on itself in a donut shape, then rushed outward along the ground at some 200 miles an hour, while rocks hailed down. Any creature within two miles or more would be fatally thrown, suffocated, burned and bombarded, though not necessarily in that order. “It would be fun to witness — but I’d want to be 10 miles away,” said Goehring of the explosion. In all fairness, the write-up on Live Science pegs the earlier estimate at 4,000 years. That would make the earlier geologists only 500% wrong.Live Science

8/26/2015145 Geologists 750% Wrong in Death Valley 地质学家在死亡之谷 750 ％错误 When you go to national parks, do you accept the interpretive signs as authoritative? There have been other examples of misinformation, some even worse – like the realization in the 1980s after Mt. St. Helens erupted that the Yellowstone fossil forests must not have grown in place (long shown by park signs), but were buried quickly by catastrophic volcanic mudflows. Scientists don’t know when Ubehebe erupted. Even the revised date is based on indirect evidence that might be overturned again.

8/26/2015146 Geologists 750% Wrong in Death Valley 地质学家在死亡之谷 750 ％错误 What parks and geologists should do is state that the date is only an estimate based on certain assumptions, and that other interpretations are possible. They won’t do that, because they like the air of authority that comes from matter-of-fact statements, like “x million years ago, y happened.” Let’s see how long it takes them to rewrite the interpretive signs at the crater. Meanwhile, park visitors be forewarned. Don’t You Be Heeby.* *Since there is no such word, we will assign it the temporary meaning of gullible for present pun-itive purposes.

8/26/2015147 News for the Birds 鸟类新闻 Our amazing feathered friends range from tiny hummingbirds to fast-running ostriches, from penguins to pigeons. In both living and fossil forms, they provide endless opportunities for study and fascination. Here are a few recent examples of news for the birds, in both good and bad connotations of the phrase.

8/26/2015148 News for the Birds 鸟类新闻 Star Wars goshawks: Fast-moving goshawks and some other species zip through the forest like the Millennium Falcon through an asteroid field or speeder bikes in the forests of Endor, never crashing into tree trunks. According to New Scientist, a team at MIT has calculated a theoretical speed limit at which they are guaranteed to crash. “The team believe that birds avoid this fate by gauging the density of their environment and adjusting their speed accordingly, knowing that they can always find a gap to fly through,” the article states. Like skiers looking for the openings in front of them, “This allows a bird to fly much faster than if it just relied on the limits of its vision.” Researcher Emilio Frazzoli believes mimicking this strategy would allow unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to fly faster through obstacles without having to add more sensors.New Scientist Don’t pass up the stunning video clip on Live Science. It’s a literal bird’s- eye view of a goshawk, “the master of maneuverability,” flying through the forest at high speed. The bird banks left and right, pulls in its wings, spreads its tail and flies effortlessly between tree trunks, threading the smallest gaps in a split second. “No aircraft invented comes anywhere close.”Live Science

8/26/2015149 News for the Birds 鸟类新闻 Optical illusion bowerbirds: Male great bowerbirds spend a good deal of their 30-year lifetimes building elaborate ground nests called bowers to attract hens. Two Australian scientists have figured out that the winning males are the ones who create the best optical illusions of a type called forced perspective. The bowers have a tunnel-like entry that leads to the nuptial chamber. Live Science reported that the male bowerbirds adorn the entryway with shells and pieces of bone, and “arrange items in such a way that the court appears uniform and small to a female viewing it from within the avenue, which makes the male appear much larger and more impressive than he really is.” They put the large pieces at the end of the tunnel farther apart to make the tunnel look uniform. If the pattern is disturbed, they will put things back the way they were. The best illusionists got the best sex. According to the researchers, who this is the only known case of an animal using an optical illusion to attract mates.Live Science

8/26/2015150 News for the Birds 鸟类新闻 The study by Kelley and Endler was published in Science magazine (20 January 2012: Vol. 335 no. 6066 pp. 335-338, doi: 10.1126/science.1212443). Barton Anderson in the same issue of Science (pp. 292-293) was not ready to concede that the link between bower illusions and mating success has been proved: “Have male bowerbirds mastered the laws of perspective and learned to manipulate them to achieve lascivious ends?” he asked. “Although this possibility is intriguing, the current data are not yet sufficiently rich to sustain this remarkable hypothesis.” In the Live Science article, John Endler commented, “it’s amusing to think that forced perspective was invented by bowerbirds millions of years before humans. Bird art has a bigger history than human art.” He did not explain why the females didn’t figure out the trick in those alleged millions of years. The BBC News article has a good photo of a bower and the bird, but reporter Ella Davies made the odd comment that “Although this is the first time such a display has been positively linked to mating success, Dr Kelley believes the trick could be employed across the animal kingdom.” Science Science Live ScienceBBC News

8/26/2015151 News for the Birds 鸟类新闻 Pigeon-monkey IQ competition: Birds can do math, Live Science reported last month. “Pigeons may not be so bird-brained after all, as scientists have found the birds’ ability to understand numbers is on par with that of primates.” Pigeons are not alone in IQ power; crows can make tools by several steps (4/20/2010), and Clark’s nutcrackers can remember thousands of places where they have stashed seeds (2/17/2004). Damien Scarf’s work on pigeons shows that the birds can use numerical rules to count up to nine. It was a puzzle to him how such distantly related animals as pigeons and rhesus monkeys could have evolved this capability independently. “What’s the origin of the ability?” he asked.Live Science 4/20/20102/17/2004

8/26/2015152 News for the Birds 鸟类新闻 Pigeon puzzle: “What we found through this study is that birds that are only distantly related to each other can have very similar traits, and others that are very closely related to each other can look quite different in terms of their traits.” That’s what biologist Michael Shapiro [U of Utah] is trying to figure out with pigeons, according to Science Daily. The traits don’t always match the genetics. Why? He notes that Charles Darwin was fascinated with pigeon breeding, and that the variations achieved by artificial selection were formative in his notions of natural selection: “pigeons have an important place in the history of evolutionary thought,” he said. Pigeons are among the most diverse animals known; they “differ in color, color pattern, body size, beak size and shape, structure of the skeleton, posture, vocalizations, feather placement and flight behavior.” Shapiro’s genetic findings could help humans understand alleged racial characteristics, too: “the race categories we use are quite imperfect and there is a lot of overlap genetically between populations,” he said. “So there would be many instances in which a black person would be more similar to some white people than to other black people.” Science Daily echoed these sentiments.Science Daily

8/26/2015153 News for the Birds 鸟类新闻 Black Archaeopteryx: One would think by now that everything that could be said about one of the world’s most famous fossils, Archaeopteryx, has been said already in the 150 years since its discovery. Opinion has swung back and forth about whether this feathered creature could fly. Now, PhysOrg reported, Ryan Carney and colleagues at Brown University, using a scanning electron microscope on a fossilized feather found in 1861, have determined that the flight feathers were black, and were “identical to modern bird feathers down to the smallest detail” (see Carney say this in the embedded video interview). The melanosomes in the feathers that give the black color provide clues to answer one of the main questions about this creature: “The color and parts of cells that would have supplied pigment are evidence the wing feathers were rigid and durable, traits that would have helped Archaeopteryx to fly.”PhysOrg

8/26/2015154 News for the Birds 鸟类新闻 Both PhysOrg and Live Science insisted on calling these birds “winged dinosaurs,” even though it would require believing that “that completely modern bird feathers evolved as early as 150 million years ago” as if out of nowhere. Carey believes the feathers “would have been advantageous during this early evolutionary stage of dinosaur flight,” even though he admitted in the video clip that the “origin of birds and flight is something scientists have been debating for centuries.” He admits being fascinated by Archaeopteryx as a child, learning to view the fossil as a “missing link” or “transitional form” between dinosaurs and birds, but now his own research on the feathers shows them being identical to those on modern flying birds.PhysOrg Live Science

8/26/2015155 News for the Birds 鸟类新闻 Like bacteria in milk or bird droppings on the windshield, these otherwise fascinating scientific stories about birds are defiled by evolution-ese. Look at this sentence from the PhysOrg article on Archaeopteryx: “The team also learned from its examination that Archaeopteryx’s feather structure is identical to that of living birds, a discovery that shows modern wing feathers had evolved as early as 150 million years ago in the Jurassic period.” Does everyone see how crazy that sentence is? It makes absolutely no sense unless one is drunk on Dar- wine. They are asking us rational, reasonable, common-sense members of the public to believe that modern feathers popped into existence 150 million years ago, and either were not used for flying (incredible that evolution would produce a complex flight feather for running along the ground) or were used for flying (incredible, considering all the hardware and software required to go along with flight), and didn’t evolve ever since in terms of basic structural plan.PhysOrg

8/26/2015156 News for the Birds 鸟类新闻 Do you realize how complex feathers are, with precisely- interlocking barbs, barbules and hooks, providing lightweight yet strong surfaces for flight? Feathers are completely different from reptile scales. We must stop letting the evolutionists spew forth their opinions as scientific facts and use some basic logic. Carey and his Dar-wino friends did not watch feathers evolve 150 million years ago. They found a perfectly modern flight feather in German limestone. That is the science; the rest are bald assertions of Darwinism (B.A.D.). Common sense requires filtering scientific evidence from corrupt interpretations drawn out of (or in spite of) the evidence. Now, watch that video of the goshawk speeding through the trees again and enjoy it free of polluting notions.

8/26/2015157 Turning an Unevolved Horseshoe Crab Into a Darwin Showpiece Horseshoe crabs are survivors by anyone’s measure; they have carried on their lives virtually unchanged, according to the standard evolutionary timeline, for 450 million years. This not only points to incredible stasis against alleged forces of evolution; it also means they have survived at least three global extinctions that evolutionary biologists and geologists say wiped out most other species. Not only that, the world has changed drastically since they allegedly evolved from who-knows-what arthropod ancestors – perhaps trilobites, that appeared in the Cambrian Explosion without ancestors. But the numerous, successful trilobites did not survive the global extinctions. Given these contradictory facts, how can the horseshoe crab possibly be an exhibit for evolution? A recent article shows how.

8/26/2015158 Turning an Unevolved Horseshoe Crab Into a Darwin Showpiece 马蹄蟹演变成达尔文展示品 Horseshoe crabs are not crabs; they are arthropods, similar in some ways to scorpions. The UK Natural History Museum gave facts and fancies about these amazing, complex animals on the verge of a BBC News special TV program about them:UK Natural History Museum The Great Dying wiped out most of the Earth’s species. Some scientists have estimated 96% of marine species, 70% of terrestrial vertebrates and 57% of insect families became extinct. But the strange-looking horseshoe crab, with its armoured shell and long rigid pointed tail, lived on… These animals have survived 3 of Earth’s extinctions that wiped out most other species.

8/26/2015159 Turning an Unevolved Horseshoe Crab Into a Darwin Showpiece 马蹄蟹演变成达尔文展示品 If humans learned their secrets, maybe they could do better on the Survivor reality shows. What are their secrets? Fossil expert Richard Fortey lists some possibilities in the article: (1) being able to eat almost anything, (2) getting by with less oxygen, (3) salt tolerance, and (4) having a kind of blood that shields against bacteria. If those traits are so evolutionarily successful in one of the earliest animals, it’s a wonder every other animal didn’t mimic them. Presumably the trilobites had these traits, but they went extinct anyway.

8/26/2015160 Turning an Unevolved Horseshoe Crab Into a Darwin Showpiece Evolution not only brings about ‘improvements’ in body shapes and design that help a species adapt better to its surroundings. It also allows some species to remain basically the same. “These creatures tell us that evolution does not move inevitably forwards towards new morphology and new designs,” comments Fortey. “Evidence for evolution is also found in past designs that endure to the present day. As long as the right habitat endures, then so will some of the creatures that inhabited the distant past.” The article dubs this “strange evolution.” Indeed. In the same article, Fortey said that the duckbill platypus has survived for 200 million years. With flexible explanations like this, Darwin can’t lose.

8/26/2015161 Turning an Unevolved Horseshoe Crab Into a Darwin Showpiece 马蹄蟹演变成达尔文展示品 Articles like this are more evidence that once the level of public credulity is sufficiently reduced by accurate information about the logical tricks of evolutionists, people will laugh Darwin off the stage of history and wonder how on earth so many smart people fell for his view of the world. Let’s review what we were just told.

8/26/2015162 Turning an Unevolved Horseshoe Crab Into a Darwin Showpiece Complex designs just popped into existence without ancestors. These designs were not only complex, they were better at surviving than more than 90% of other animals that followed. They endured virtually unchanged for 450 million years. Evolution improves body designs, but it also allows them to remain basically the same. A past design that endures to the present day constitutes evidence for evolution. If you are sufficiently dumbfounded at these shenanigans committed in the name of science, stop taking it. Fight back. Demand logic. Demand integrity. Call a spade a spade. This spadeful of nonsense calls for a ultrasaurus-size pooper scooper.

8/26/2015163 Lunar Upsets Challenge Paradigms 月球挑战范式 Shocking physics: Looking into the crystal balls Apollo astronauts brought back from the moon, namely zircon minerals, geologists at Curtin University decided their data “challenges” the “current paradigm” known as the Late Heavy Bombardment (see 1/09/2012). PhysOrg reported that “impact-related shock features in lunar zircon, giving scientists a new conceptual framework to explain the history and timing of meteorite impact events in our solar system.” When a “new conceptual framework” challenges a “current paradigm,” the ripple effects can undermine textbooks and other related theories. Since theories about the “timing of meteorite impact events” are built on lunar data, this puts theories of the entire history of the solar system at risk.1/09/2012PhysOrg

8/26/2015164 Lunar Upsets Challenge Paradigms 月球挑战范式 Alternative energy source: The moon had a long-lasting dynamo. That statement should floor you if you are a typical planetary scientist. To see why, read on Space.com why physicists are scrambling to find alternative power, like homeowners frantically searching for a backup generator when the lights just went out. The data come from crystals in basalt sample #10020 from the moon that, according to the evolutionary view of radiometric dating, is 3.7 billion years old – yet has remnant magnetism. In their dating scheme, that’s almost a billion years after the formation of the moon. Any primeval dynamo that could have magnetized the rock should have been long gone by then. PhysOrg put the surprise in the first sentence: “The moon has this protracted history that’s surprising. This provides evidence of a fundamentally new way of making a magnetic field in a planet a new power source [sic].”Space.comPhysOrg

8/26/2015165 Lunar Upsets Challenge Paradigms 月球挑战范式 “Such a long-lived lunar dynamo probably required a power source other than thermochemical convection from secular cooling of the lunar interior,” they wrote, referring to the consensus dynamo theory. “The inferred strong intensity of the lunar paleofield presents a challenge to current dynamo theory.” What powered it? “an alternative energy source,” they suggested. Have they found one? No. They tossed out a couple of possibilities at the end of the paper: maybe stirring from precession did it. Maybe a big meteor walloped the interior into a temporary molten stir. It hardly seems they considered those options seriously when they ended, “the late, intense paleomagnetic record from 10020 presents a challenge to current dynamo theory.”

8/26/2015166 Lunar Upsets Challenge Paradigms Ray tracing algorithm: This story’s not from our moon, but from the asteroid Vesta, where the DAWN spacecraft is undertaking an orbital reconnaissance. A new photograph displayed on PhysOrg shows a crater with both dark and light rays. “There is dark and bright material located across Vesta,” the article said, “but it is unusual to have a crater with both bright and dark ejecta rays.” Although the press release didn’t say so, the darkness of crater rays is usually taken as an indicator of age. Looking at our moon, planetary scientists assume that crater rays begin bright and darken over time due to “space weathering,” the effect of solar wind particles on lunar dust. (See, for instance, in the “Geology of the Moon” article on Ask.com, which states: “The impact process excavates high albedo materials that initially gives the crater, ejecta, and ray system a bright appearance. The process of space weathering gradually decreases the albedo of this material such that the rays fade with time.”) The new Vesta combo crater shows that dark and light rays can originate from the same impact, potentially undermining the ray-dating algorithm.DAWN spacecraftPhysOrg Ask.com

8/26/2015167 Lunar Upsets Challenge Paradigms 月球挑战范式 Which moon? We may not be able to talk about “the moon” in our nighttime sky. New Scientist just announced that “Hundreds of tiny moons may be orbiting Earth.” The idea is that wandering asteroids may get captured in Earth orbit from time to time. The Earth sits in a gravity well, after all, so it’s not surprising that it would pull objects into its tractor beam. “They orbit at distances between five and 10 times as far from Earth as the moon,” the article said. “Most stay in orbit less than a year, although some stay much longer. One object in the team’s simulations stayed in orbit for almost 900 years.” This could provide some water cooler conversation. When someone talks about “the moon,” you might respond, “To which moon are you referring?” They’ll think you are Looney Tunes till you explain. You can even quote Shakespeare; “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”New Scientist

8/26/2015168 Lunar Upsets Challenge Paradigms 月球挑战范式 Blue marble: We end with a breathtaking finale. The historic Apollo 8 mission in 1968 provided the first human-photographed image of the Earth from a distance. Subsequent spacecraft have improved on “Earth from space” views over the years. Now, an Earth-observing spacecraft launched in October, dubbed Suomi NPP, has just released a stunner – a realistic photograph of our “Blue Marble” from 512 miles that is so clear, so beautiful, it deserves to be set to music. At Space.com you can download it for a screen save in several sizes. At the Suomi NPP website, you can download the complete highest-resolution image (16.4 mb, 8000 x 8000 pixels) and soar over North and Central America with incredible detail (for starters, check out Lake Mead, Grand Canyon and Lake Powell). Because the spacecraft flies in a sun- synchronous orbit (see Suomi NPP feature), we can expect more fully-lit images of other faces of our planet as Earth rotates underneath.Suomi NPPSpace.comSuomi NPP websiteSuomi NPP feature

8/26/2015169 Mouse to Elephant? Just Add Time 鼠变大象？只需添加时间 How do you evolve a mouse into an elephant? Just add 24 million generations. But you can shrink it back down in just 100,000 generations. This and other eyebrow-raising stories have been told in the secular science media recently.

8/26/2015170 Mouse to Elephant? Just Add Time 鼠变大象？只需添加时间 Monash University published the mousephant story alongside a photo of a jolly professor, Dr Alistair Evans, holding a mouse skull in his fingers with an elephant skull towering behind him. For those who move past the headline, this admission needs a megaphone: “Dr Evans, an evolutionary biologist and Australian Research Fellow, said the study was unique because most previous work had focused on microevolution, the small changes that occur within a species.” The original paper is in PNAS (January 30, 2012, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1120774109). Monash UniversityPNAS

8/26/2015171 Mouse to Elephant? Just Add Time 鼠变大象？只需添加时间 So, did Prof. Evans actually watch a mouse-sized mammal evolve into an elephant with a controlled lab experiment? No, he just assumed the evolutionary time scale of fossils, and divided the millions of years into generations based on the lifespan of the organisms involved. Well, then, did he use a sliding scale from mouse lifetime to elephant lifetime? If so, was it a linear rate, exponential rate, or chaotic rate? It wouldn’t have mattered, because he didn’t cover a law of nature that makes predictions. “While mammals got steadily bigger after the dinosaurs disappeared,” the article claimed, “the rates at which they did so varied among the groups.” Whales, for instance, evolved into giants at twice the rate of land mammals, while primates seem to have limits on how big they can evolve.

8/26/2015172 Mouse to Elephant? Just Add Time 鼠变大象？只需添加时间 Post-dinosaur era: “It’s a classic story of taking advantage of a new opportunity — the vacant landscape devoid of dinosaurs.” Whales: “Dr Erich Fitzgerald, Senior Curator of Vertebrate Palaeontology at Museum Victoria and a co-author, said changes in whale size occurred at twice the rate of land mammals. This is probably because it’s easier to be big in the water – it helps support your weight,” he said. Primates: “There seems to be some intrinsic maximum rate that each order evolves at, which may have something to do with the basic construction or physiology of each group,” Evans wrote. “So it may be really hard to be built like a primate and get very big.”

8/26/2015173 Mouse to Elephant? Just Add Time 鼠变大象？只需添加时间 The science media got embarrassed by a peer-reviewed paper that shouldn’t have been. Several sites uncritically posted a press release from Case Western Reserve University that alleged to be a “theory of everything.” Erik Andrulis claimed that the earth is alive and so is the solar system. Andulis, an otherwise legitimate biochemist, wove his tale of “gyres” and “macroelectrogyres” that circulate in lifelike patterns. Jesse Emspak exposed the “crackpot theory” of on Live Science. It’s not clear if Andrulis was pulling a hoax, but if so, Emspak said the incident “reveals the dark side of peer review,” a process that is supposed to eliminate bias and nutty ideas, but doesn’t always succeed. Live Science.

8/26/2015174 Mouse to Elephant? Just Add Time 鼠变大象？只需添加时间 Dr. Alistair Evans calls himself an “evolutionary biologist.” To demonstrate that his title is not an oxymoron, he needs to go out into the woods, take off his clothes, and let natural selection act on him. Otherwise, if he uses his mind, he is an intelligent design biologist in spite of himself.

8/26/2015175 Mouse to Elephant? Just Add Time 鼠变大象？只需添加时间 What if the weirdos took over science? What if by sheer power of numbers, they were able to get their nonsense published with alacrity, while denying a hearing to those outside their party? What if peer review is a sham? What if mice-sized animals never evolved into elephants? What if there is no multiverse to go dating in? What if men are not more aggressive because of evolution, but because of misuse of well-designed traits due to true moral evil? What if creatures in sea caves have nothing whatsoever to do with life in outer space? What if there were no millions of years for dogs to evolve into whales? What if the ones calling creationists nuts are the real nuts? What if nuttery has been reclassified as science? What if passive citizens let the nutters get away with this? What if they laughed loud and long, instead, and were able to shame the nutters out of the science lab and back into the Cartoon Network?

8/26/20151 Creationism News -- January 2012 神创论新闻 -- 2012 年 1 月 I am indebted to David Coppedge who sacrificed his career as the Head Systems Administrator.

Similar presentations

Presentation on theme: "8/26/20151 Creationism News -- January 2012 神创论新闻 -- 2012 年 1 月 I am indebted to David Coppedge who sacrificed his career as the Head Systems Administrator."— Presentation transcript:

Similar presentations

About project

Feedback

Log in

Auth with social network:

8/26/20151 Creationism News -- January 2012 神创论新闻 -- 2012 年 1 月 I am indebted to David Coppedge who sacrificed his career as the Head Systems Administrator.

Similar presentations

Presentation on theme: "8/26/20151 Creationism News -- January 2012 神创论新闻 -- 2012 年 1 月 I am indebted to David Coppedge who sacrificed his career as the Head Systems Administrator."— Presentation transcript:

Similar presentations

About project

Feedback