Is this the best snake mimic caterpillar to date?
Today is 9-11-01 + 18 years, let us remember
We owe a debt of honour to remember. So, in absence of the full 9 -hour CNN feed that seems to no longer be there, first NBC live: Here is a timeline: Let us remember, and let us remember that September 11, 2001 was the 318th anniversary of the lifting of the last, 1683 Ottoman siege of Vienna by Jan Sobieski of Poland and Lithuania, less one day. I add, the Jan Sobieski story: Yes, Osama bin Laden was making a claim to pick up from the previous high water mark of Islamist expansion to the West. And, he did that from a place that relative to Mecca is in the direction of Khorasan, which is of deep eschatological significance Read More ›
Why Thomas Huxley was wrong about monkeys, typing forever, producing Shakespeare
Researchers: Biology’s optimal ‘molecular alphabet’ may be preordained
How are science journals changing?
Sean Carroll: Physicists don’t even want to understand quantum mechanics
Food for thought on digital media manipulation and potential impacts (think about, on how ID, theism, the gospel and gospel ethics, etc. are often perceived)
While we of UD have but little interest as a blog in 2020 US election campaign tactics etc and endorse no candidate, the research by Dr. Robert Epstein on How Big Tech’s Algorithms Can Impact Opinions and Votes speaks far more broadly. We have cause to be concerned (and no, it’s not just Wikipedia’s notorious biases): Let’s clip from the YT blurb, to help focus discussion: Just what are some of the methods that tech giants like Google and Facebook can [–> and per the discussion, sometimes DO] use to shift their users’ attitudes, beliefs [–> think, worldviews and policy/cultural agendas], and even votes? How do search engine rankings impact undecided voters? [–> strongly] How powerful of an impact can Read More ›
Does The Bible “condone” slavery, even as Darwin opposed it?
It seems, this issue is on the table here at UD again, and it needs to be publicly corrected for record. As a first step, I link a discussion in response to the oppression thesis used to try to discredit and marginalise the historical contribution of the Christian faith (and to create the false impression that due to “obvious” ethical failure, the gospel can be dismissed). It is also worthwhile to link my recently updated discussion on moral government, objectivity of ethics and law. (While we are at it, here is a summary response on the rhetorical challenge of evil.) Let me also again put up an infographic that has been featured several times here at UD in response to Read More ›
Did you know that much of the diversity of the human brain results from epigenetics
More Salt in the Peppered Moth’s Wounds
The entire history of Kettlewell’s Peppered Moth experiment is littered with problems: doctored photographs, wrong assumptions and slim evidence, followed by genetic analysis revealing that the protein exons coding for color were not changed, but, rather, a transposon (non-random) was inserted in an intron (“junk DNA”). And now there’s this paper. It seems that the “Caterpillars of the peppered moth perceive color through their skin.” From the Abstract: We previously reported that slow colourchange in twig-mimicking caterpillars of the peppered moth (Biston betularia) is a response to achromatic and chromatic visual cues. Here we show that the perception of these cues, and the resulting phenotypic responses, does not require ocular vision. Caterpillars with completely obscured ocelli remained capable of enhancing Read More ›
Did some prominent Darwinists retire recently?
How scientists slowly convert to the idea that the universe itself is alive
World population trends modelled 10,000 BC – 2100 AD
Here is a model of the top 15 “countries” across the span from the Agricultural Revolution onwards: Food for thought on trends and implications. Notice, the principle that trends (like pie-crusts) are made to be broken. To truly predict, we need dynamics and some reasonable idea of contingencies. Don’t forget to take reconstructions of the deep unrecorded past and future projections with a grain of salt. END