March 2015

We spotted a Darwin profbot earlier, and now over at The Blaze, Casey Luskin comments: Wood and Grabowski are both fully committed to an evolutionary paradigm, but they close their chapter with a striking admission. Although “it is difficult to believe,” they note, “the last time a review looked at the whole of what we now call the hominin fossil record” was in 1964 in a book by the British primatologist Wilfrid Le Gros Clark. Since that time, they explain that paleoanthropologists have enjoyed “an order of magnitude increase in the [amount of] fossil evidence,” but at the same time have seen “the absence of equivalent progress in how we analyze the fossil record.” If their meaning isn’t clear, they’re Read More ›

For example, Discover: Mosquitoes that colonized the London Underground in 1863 are now so different they can no longer mate with their above-ground relatives. Chinook salmon from Alaska to California needed just a human generation to become smaller and shorter-lived after an increase in commercial fishing in the 1920s. Adaptation is happening right under our noses, in our lifetimes. But all of this can be accounted for within the genome of the species without any new information. Put another way, if it is true that 1863 Tube mosquitos can no longer bred with above-ground mosquitoes, does that not signal a loss rather than a gain in information? Or are we not supposed to ask any more?

Peter M. Waterhouse & Roger P. Hellens, ” Plant biology: Coding in non-coding RNAs,” Nature (March 25, 2025) Dominique Lauressergues, Jean-Malo Couzigou, Hélène San Clemente, Yves Martinez, Christophe Dunand, Guillaume Bécar, & Jean-Philippe Combier, “Primary transcripts of microRNAs encode regulatory peptides,” Nature (March 25, 2015) G C S Kuhn, “‘Satellite DNA transcripts have diverse biological roles in Drosophila’,” Heredity (March 25, 2015) Go here for simple explanation. Nick Matzke? Darwin book burner! Where are you when we need you to dump on all this? You used to come at half o’clock and now you come at noon. Otherwise, Biological Information Follow UD News at Twitter!

So they say: Dark matter’s presence is known only by its interactions with normal matter through gravity. It does not, however, interact via the electromagnetic force, which is why we cannot directly see it — it does not emit, scatter or reflect light — it is more “invisible” than “dark.” In this new research, Harvey and his team realized just how invisible this stuff is, even to itself. As two galactic clusters collide, the stars, gas and dark matter interact in different ways. The clouds of gas suffer drag, slow down and often stop, whereas the stars zip past one another, unless they collide — which is rare. On studying what happens to dark matter during these collisions, the researchers Read More ›

Here: One of the most fascinating sections of the book is “Circus Toy Models” where Mazur interviews those scientists involved with efforts to make life in the lab – from Jack Szostak and Matt Powner to Vincent Noireaux and Albert Libchaber to Steen Rasmussen and Norm Packard. Mazur also chats with James Simons (“Impresario Extraordinaire”) whose Simons Foundation is now seriously bankrolling origins research, including protocell development. In Rethinking the Circus, i.e., the origin and evolution of life, Mazur talks with the late Carl Woese, and also with Nigel Goldenfeld – who calls for a consensus on what life is. Pier Luigi Luisi, who thinks we need all new origin of life “mindstorms.” And astrophysicist Piet Hut, who suggests that Read More ›

I don’t care why this profbot defends Darwin, but why would anyone go into debt for a degree for this kind of thing: I realized early on that many instructors teach introductory biology classes incorrectly. Too often evolution is the last section to be taught, an autonomous unit at the end of the semester. I quickly came to the conclusion that, since evolution is the foundation upon which all biology rests, it should be taught at the beginning of a course, and as a recurring theme throughout the semester. As the renowned geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky said: “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” In other words, how else can we explain why the DNA of chimps Read More ›

He likes Ayaan Hirsi Ali Yeah, yeah, that guy, still selling Darwin’s used cars [!]. But never mind, get this—he likes Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Below is Hirsi Ali’s interview with Megyn Kelly on Fox News. Kelly did a far better job than Jon Stewart, who tried to argue that Islam is no worse than any other faith, and that even without Islam and other religions, people would still be doing exactly the same amount of bad stuff. It’s a shame that it’s mainly the right-wing interviewers who give Hirsi Ali (and criticism of Islam) a fair shake, for I intensely dislike being in bed with conservatives. (Unlike Stewart, Kelly at least lets Hirsi Ali put forth her ideas.) The contrast Read More ›

Readers, do you remember: What great physicists have said about immateriality and consciousness? And Being as Communion? Here’s a new one: It From Bit or Bit From It?: On Physics and Information (The Frontiers Collection) The essays in this book look at the question of whether physics can be based on information, or – as John Wheeler phrased it – whether we can get “It from Bit”. They are based on the prize-winning essays submitted to the FQXi essay competition of the same name, which drew over 180 entries. The eighteen contributions address topics as diverse as quantum foundations, entropy conservation, nonlinear logic and countable spacetime. Together they provide stimulating reading for all physics aficionados interested in the possible role(s) Read More ›

Possibly in advance of a political victory in 2016 that will provide unlimited public purse power, a Darwin follower muses thus: I can name one large museum (but I won’t) that totally avoids human evolution (but not necessarily evolution in general) because there are private donors who don’t think humans evolved. The aforementioned human evolution exhibit funded by Koch is probably a mild example of bias. I’ve seen a lot of human evolution exhibits, and so far the few that are quite willing to challenge visitors’ religious or other anti-science beliefs were entirely state funded, as far as I know. I think it is appropriate to ask the Smithsonian to dump the Kochs and their ilk as donors and board Read More ›

Hey, not much religion news today, as the new atheists must be on vacay or something. But our old fave Peter Woit is back, and offers this re discovering the parallel universe: The plan has been to inject a beam into the LHC this week, leading to a news item in the UK Daily Express about how Scientists at Large Hadron Collider hope to make contact with PARALLEL UNIVERSE in days. This nonsense comes to us courtesy ofthis paper published in Physics Letters B. Unfortunately the machine checkout going on at the LHC has identified a problem that may delay contact with the PARALLEL UNIVERSE for a little while. Looks like no beam this week, for details see this from Read More ›

Granville Sewell and Daniel Styer have a thing in common: both wrote an article with the same title “Entropy and evolution”. But they reach opposite conclusions on a fundamental question: Styer says that the evolutionist “compensation argument” (henceforth “ECA”) is ok, Sewell says it isn’t. Here I briefly explain why I fully agree with Granville. The ECA is an argument that tries to resolve the problems the 2nd law of statistical mechanics (henceforth 2nd_law_SM) posits to unguided evolution. I adopt Styer’s article as ECA archetype because he also offers calculations, which make clearer its failure. The 2nd_law_SM as problem for evolution. The 2nd_law_SM says that a isolated system goes toward its more probable macrostates. In this diagram the arrow represents Read More ›

In a review of Wallace, Darwin, and the Origin of Species, from the Weekly Standard, we read: In this deeply absorbing book, James T. Costa seeks to establish Alfred Russel Wallace as the fully vested co-creator of what he feels we should once again call the “Darwin-Wallace Theory” of evolution by natural selection. That Wallace had a part in the history of evolutionary theory is, of course, well known. While he was collecting in Malaysia, the basic facts of natural selection occurred to him with the kind of beautiful clarity most of us experience only in dreams (and Wallace was indeed suffering from malaria at the time). He sent his account to Charles Darwin, catapulting the more senior naturalist into a Read More ›

From New Scientist: Do neonicotinoid pesticides kill bumblebees? We still don’t know, but the latest research is alarming – and casts doubt on the integrity of science. … “This is a scandal,” said Matt Shardlow of the charity Buglife, which has campaigned on the issue. “The scientific process appears to have been deliberately manipulated to agree with the environment secretary’s views.” A novel development, to be sure. 😉 What is “science” anyway, as opposed to what people choose to do with certain methods of enquiry? Follow UD News at Twitter!

Here, Excerpt. from Nancy Pearcey’s Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes:, When postmodern thought was applied to literary theory, it gave rise to an offshoot called deconstructionism. Recall that for postmodernism, individuals are constituted by their membership within a community. The implication is that individuals do not really have original or creative ideas but merely reflect the ideas of their communities. For example, literary critic Roland Barthes said a piece of writing is merely a “tissue of quotations” absorbed from the surrounding culture. Barthes is best known for his slogan “the death of the author” — by which he means the death of the very concept of individual creativity. In his view, writers are Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: The study presents evidence that Yawunik was capable of moving its frontal appendages backward and forward, spreading them out during an attack and then retracting them under its body when swimming. Coupled with the long, sensing whip-like flagella extending from the tip of the claws, this makes the frontal appendages of the animal some of the most versatile and complex in all known arthropods. “Unlike insects or crustaceans, Yawunik did not possess additional appendages in the head that were specifically modified to process food,” said Aria. “Evolution resulted here in a combination of adaptations onto the frontal-most appendage of this creature, maybe because such modifications were easier to acquire. “We know that the larvae of certain crustaceans can Read More ›