The Onion has identified a possible cause: Lack of activism. Some of us are not sure how well Onionized activism would work for them.
Month: March 2019
Evolution: If mental illness helped us adapt, Michael Behe is right
But, of course, Michael Behe’s point in Darwin Devolves is that natural selection primarily breaks or blunts complex things, resulting in survival at a cost. Sounds like Dr. Nesse is saying the same thing, not that he would admit it.
Michael Behe: How to tell if scientists are bluffing
Behe: :Darwin’s mechanism of random mutation and natural selection strains to explain even the very simplest molecular example of cooperation (called a “disulfide bond”: Yet we are told that Darwinism explains all the complex machinery.
2018 Creationist paper: Retraction notice isn’t enough for Jerry Coyne
Hmmm. To please Jerry, maybe the author will have to disappear too. 😉
Theorizing information out of a black hole
Not really being able to integrate information with matter and energy surely means it is hard to say whether information could really be destroyed.
Why people don’t “trust science”: The “Cancer Personality”
Some of us remember the spate of sciencey articles that appeared in women’s mags on the cancer-prone personality. It sounded wrong at the time. Many of us knew so many people who had died of cancer who didn’t fit the type at all.
Michael Egnor: The Real Reason Why Only Human Beings Speak
Dr. Egnor explains, “Language is a tool for abstract thinking—a necessary tool for abstraction—and humans are the only animals who think abstractly”: In his discussion of why only humans have language, science writer Tom Siegfried gets a lot right, but he misses the crucial reason. … Siegfried is right that many non-human animals have the Read More…
Paul Davies: Incorporating information into science as a physical quantity
In a world where some believe that consciousness must be a material thing, perhaps it’s not surprising that others seek to see information as a physical quantity. Computer scientist Robert J. Marks would ask, what is the weight difference between a full CD and an empty one? Could we start there?
Conventional non-ET explanations for Oumuamua
ut hey, like we always say, They Will Always Be Out There if you need them to be. Also, be kind to ET. He is somebody’s deity.
Surprise superhighway: Cambrian worms lived in “unsustainable” ocean 500 mya
Problem the find creates: “It has always been assumed that the creatures in the Burgess Shale — known for the richness of its fossils — had been preserved so immaculately because the lack of oxygen at the bottom of the sea stopped decay, and because no animals lived in the mud to eat the carcasses.”
Spiders mimic two different ant types while growing (but secretly signal spidery mates)
Yeah, the story does sound like as plotline from Saturday night with popcorn at the old Downtown Grand but… From ScienceDaily: Viewed from above, the mimics look like skinny, three-segmented ants to fool predators. But in profile, the adult mimics retain their more voluptuous and alluring spider figure to woo nearby mates. UC researchers presented Read More…
Logic and First Principles, 12: The crooked yardstick vs plumb-line self-evident truths
Let’s propose a silly example, that a certain Emperor (maybe, just before he went out in his new invisible clothes) decides that a certain crooked stick is now the standard of length, straightness, uprightness and accuracy, a crooked yardstick. Suddenly, what is genuinely such things will be deemed the opposite. And then, suppose that somehow Read More…