Dave S.

The sharp spike in hits and files (green and dark blue) are mostly due to the new layout. The key statistic is daily average number of visits. Total visits are shown in yellow but that varies by number of days in the month so the daily average is the better metric. The daily average number of visits was 5828 for January 2007 compared to the previous record of 5311 for December 2006 representing a gain of 10% month over month. For those who haven’t been following UD very long the decline between August and October was was the result of being delisted from Google in the middle of September.

Cheap, safe drug kills most cancers

New Scientist has received an unprecedented amount of interest in this story from readers. If you would like up-to-date information on any plans for clinical trials of DCA in patients with cancer, or would like to donate towards a fund for such trials, please visit the site set up by the University of Alberta and the Alberta Cancer Board. We will also follow events closely and will report any progress as it happens.

It sounds almost too good to be true: a cheap and simple drug that kills almost all cancers by switching off their “immortality”. The drug, dichloroacetate (DCA), has already been used for years to treat rare metabolic disorders and so is known to be relatively safe.

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Irreducible Complicity: Disappointing Darwin by Roddy Bullock

Question: What do you call a person who hypothesizes an unseen intelligent being and searches outer space for confirming material evidence?

Answer: A scientist.

Question: What do you call a person who hypothesizes an unseen intelligent being and searches inner space for confirming material evidence?

Answer: A religious nut.

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Evolution Pundit Glenn Davidson’s Website

Biology’s next revolution
by Nigel Goldenfeld and Carl Woese
Nature 445, 369 (25 January 2007)

For those without access to Nature click here for a copy of the article. This link added on 5/11/2007.

The emerging picture of microbes as gene-swapping collectives demands a revision of such concepts as organism, species and evolution itself.

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On a listserve which shall remain nameless a botanist yesterday was casting about for a good representative of a colonial protozoan. Having read up on the model organism Dictyostelium discoideum (common name “social amoeba”) a couple years ago and blogging on it then I immediately suggested it and described why it is a model for protozoan to metazoan evolution and also described its interesting display of altruism:

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An article in the February 2007 Scientific American titled Molecular Lego talks about bis-amino acids and bis-peptides. These are synthetic amino acids and peptide chains formed from them.
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As I was watching the Democratic response to President Bush’s State Of The Union speech tonight Senator Jim Webb played the United States Marine card three times (for himself, his brother, and his son all Marines). I take it personally when someone does that.

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Intelligent design to feature in school RE lessons

Alexandra Smith
Tuesday January 23, 2007
EducationGuardian.co.uk

Teenagers will be asked to debate intelligent design (ID) in their religious education classes and read texts by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins under new government guidelines.

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Wikipedia suppresses Haldane’s Dilemma by Walter J. Remine The key figure — a limit of 1,667 beneficial mutations to explain human evolution — was brushed aside (by falsely blaming it on creationists, instead of acknowledging that it arises solely from evolutionary theory, evolutionary genetics, and J.B.S. Haldane). This key figure was repeatedly expunged from the article, leaving readers with no idea about the severity of Haldane’s Dilemma. Evolutionists suppressed this key figure. They also suppressed their history — the fact that they never revealed any such figure to the general public. Much more at the link. Without looking I bet I can guess the names of the wiki-editor POV warriors who won’t allow balance in the article. See here. Update: Read More ›

Civic Scientific Literacy: A Necessity in the 21st Century

I read this Huffington post which notes that the U.S. leads Europe by quite a margin in those who reject orthodox evolution as scientific fact. They go on to an unsupported conclusion that this means the U.S. must be trailing in scientific and engineering accomplishments. Au contraire, mon ami, au contraire! Read More ›

Over at Respectful Insolence, Dr. David H. Gorski (a.k.a. Orac), goes off on a rant about how medical doctors, in this case Uncommon Descent contributor and surgeon Dr. David A. Cook, aren’t qualified to evaluate claims made by evolutionary biologists. Yet Dr. Gorski, also a surgeon, somehow believes himself qualified to evaluate evolutionary claims made by other medical doctors. Spare me. Practice what you preach, Dr. Gorski. If medical doctors aren’t qualifed to evaluate evolution claims then YOU should STFU too. Got that? Write that down. 🙄

Over at ATBC one of our brightest detractors Altabin (banned here, natch, because he’s just too smart for us) suggested an experiment. He misquoted the bible of course. It’s wolf and lamb or lion and calf. But we get his drift.

Quote
53. Were all the animals friendly to man before the Flood? Idea: raise several baby animals like snake and mouse together to see if they remain friends as they are older.

That one may not have such a happy ending. Next time try it with a lion and a lamb.

As it just so happens…

Truth in advertising would have random mutation and natural selection renamed to reflect what’s really happening. Read More ›