Jaws were also more complex than expected. From ScienceDaily: A tiny tooth plate of the 410 million year old fossil fish Romundina stellina indicates that teeth evolved earlier in the tree of life than recently thought. That is a while back. The tooth plate of just some millimeters in size had been in a box […]
Month: June 2015
The ocean’s microbiome resembles the human gut’s microbia
From New Scientist: The biome of the ocean resembles that of the human gut We’re a step closer to understanding the microbial community that inhabits the ocean – and it has some striking similarities to the community that lives inside our guts. The microbiome of the world’s biggest ecosystem and one of the smallest appear […]
Geologist Marcus Ross on the proposed Sixth Great Extinction
Further to: Is a sixth great extinction in progress? (It would help if a key exponent was anyone but Paul “Population Bomb” Ehrlich, a contender for the heavyweight champ of wrong-headed predictions) and Rob Sheldon on the sixth great extinction, Liberty U geologist Marcus Ross writes to say, For an abbreviated and pictorial list […]
Emergence as an Explanation for Living Systems
Yesterday I watched a re-run of a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode. There. I said it. I love Star Trek. Notwithstanding the many absurd evolution-based plotlines. In this specific episode, Data referred to a particular characteristic of a newly-developing lifeform as an “emergent property.” I’ve looked into the “emergence” ideas in the past, and […]
RNA World worst hypothesis but for all the others?
Further to: Biochemist: Is RNA world wrong after all? (As noted before, if we really wanted researchers not to find out how life originated, we would urge that they continue with full-bore Darwinism), from BioMed Central, we learn from biochemist Harold S. Bernhardt: The RNA world hypothesis: the worst theory of the early evolution of life (except […]
Biochemist: Is RNA world wrong after all?
Remember when RNA world just had to be true, in that multiverse/global warming/Darwinism way? Where the observer soon realizes that evidence is superfluous—is even a threat? According to many origin of life researchers, RNA world (RNA preceded DNA and once did its job) has had that status for some time now among science writers. Well… […]
One year on, Larry Moran attacks UK ban on teaching of non-naturalistic theories of origins in State-funded science classes
I was intrigued to read Professor Larry Moran’s latest post, UK bans teaching of creationism – which, it turns out, is a rehash of old news, which I covered over a year ago. However, I was deeply heartened to read that Professor Moran regards the British government’s decision to ban the teaching of “any doctrine […]
Could we build a really HUGE Earth?
Geek Anders Exoself (yes, we think it is a pseud too) dismisses the hope of finding a huge Earth naturally (“We can do better if we abandon the last pretence of the world being able to form naturally (natural metal microlattices, seriously?)”) and considers the issues around just building a giant habitable planet from scratch: […]
Rob Sheldon on the sixth great extinction
and others of note Further to: Is there a sixth great extinction in progress? (It would help if a key exponent was anyone but Paul “Population Bomb” Ehrlich, a contender for the heavyweight champ of wrong-headed predictions), at Evolution News & Views, Rob Sheldon offers While the criteria may sound quantitative, and the increase in […]
Researchers: Island rule of size evolution does apply to rodents
This should be a Fri Nite Frite, but only if you live on an island, so… From Duke U ScienceDaily: Island rodents take on nightmarish proportions Rodents of unusual size are 17 times more likely on islands than elsewhere Whoever wrote that release has a future in frites. Researchers have analyzed size data for rodents […]
Frank the Hippie Pope
Further to the more serious critiques of Pope Francis’ recent encyclical, is a more tongue-in-cheek critique of some of his sillier prior pronouncements: HT: Lutheran Satire
Evaluating the Pope’s encyclical, Part Three: Four internal contradictions in the Pope’s thinking
In my initial post about the Pope’s environmental encyclical, Laudato si’, I highlighted its positive aspects: its affirmation of human uniqueness, its rejection of biocentrism and its firm insistence that each species of living creature was designed by God to play its own special part in the order of Nature. The Pope also rejects population […]
Mathematician and multiverse skeptic on Perimeter conference
Further to The multiverse: Hi, Nonsense, meet Budget (This Perimeter Institute conference could be a party’s over signal; time to sweep up the streamers and bust balloons, and get back to evidence-based science): Columbia mathematician Peter Woit is following the proceedings and notes, You can follow a lot of what is going on at this […]
The multiverse: Hi, Nonsense, meet Budget
Oh and, Budget, meet Rationalization. But you two can talk later. The meeting is starting… From physicsworld.com, we hear that the Perimeter Institute at MIT North (University of Waterloo, Canada) is starting to ask some questions about crackpot cosmology. As Louise Mayor tells us, on site: Right now, top physicists from around the world are […]
Whatever became of Nicholas Wade, and the Troublesome Inheritance?
Further to PBS’s “shocking” revelation about long-ago humans (“we met and mated with other types of human” and “40 kya human bones contain Neanderthal and current genes,” one couldn’t help wondering about last year’s apparent attempt to revive Darwinian racism, in the form of science writer Nicholas Wade’s Troublesome Inheritance. In the increasingly Soviet system […]