Spider silk and diatom silica structures are just accidents. We can’t design stuff like this ourselves but when we take these two complex things found in nature and combine them then all of a sudden it’s a design! Wheeeeee! Aren’t we smart! Novel nanocomposites from spider silk–silica fusion (chimeric) proteins
This is a follow on to my earlier article urging people to write their congress persons in support of H.R. 2679, Public Expression of Religion Act of 2005.
What I want to talk about here is how the people have been stripped of their right to have a jury judge the law – commonly called jury nullification – and have a judge’s opinion substituted for that of a jury of peers as intended by the constitution. Read More ›
Scientific American Best Flame Award 2006
Update: Read More ›
First, my thanks to occasional UD commenter and blogger Larry Fafarman for bringing this to my attention. This bill, introduced in the U.S. House with 50 cosponsers, seeks to bar awarding attorney’s fees in lawsuits involving the 1st amendment establishment clause and limit the awards to injunctive relief. The multi-million dollar attorney fees collected by the ACLU have had a chilling effect on the religious freedom clause of the 1st amendment. Because of this public officials no longer ask “is this the right thing to do?” but rather “can we afford to lose a legal battle with a vast hoard of ACLU attorneys?”. Financial intimidation like this is just plain un-American and wrong. Contact your representatives in the U.S. House Read More ›
Lenny Flank and PZ Myers, both positive atheists, are going for each other’s jugular on Panda’s Thumb. Myers thinks Flank is harming the cause because Flank refuses to agree that theists need to be lined up and shot and Flank thinks Myers is an idiot because Myers is alienating people in numbers so great that political defeat is inevitable. Flank is right of course. At any rate, the exchange is largely between the two of them and is at 510 comments and counting as I write this. For a laugh – check it out.
Reprogramming Biology by Ray Kurzweil, July 2006 Scientific American Biology is now in the early stages of a historic transition to an information science, while also gaining the tools to reprogram the ancient information systems of life. Our electronic devices typically update their software every few months, yet the 23,000 software programs called genes inside our cells have not changed appreciably in thousands of years. As we begin to understand biology in terms of its information processes, however, we are developing realistic models and simulations of how disease and aging progress and ways to reprogram them. Read the rest at the link above. Biologists are becoming obsolete. This is why they whine so much. Mathematicians and computer engineers are trained Read More ›
I’ve been lax in keeping the topic here on intelligent design and away from everyone’s favorite religion (or lack thereof). I’m as guilty as anyone. To remedy this situation I’m going to be deleting any comments I see with gratuitous references to religion until further notice. I’ll make an exception for any of our authors who’ve PhDs in both theology and mathematics. 😉 Update: I’ll make one other exception. You can make gratuitous comments are about Darwinism, the Godless Religion of the Left.
Panda’s Thumb is heading downhill since Kitzmiller v. DASD but we aren’t. In May we achieved a new record number of visits at 146,084 to bring our total number of visits to over 1.25 million in the last 12 months. Thanks to everyone for helping to get our message out to a growing number of people!
Michael Shermer writes in the Skeptic column of the December 2005 Scientific American There are many ways to be spiritual, and science is one, with its awe-inspiring account about who we are and where we came from. “The cosmos is within us. We are made of star stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself,” began the late astronomer Carl Sagan in the opening scene of Cosmos, filmed just down the coast from Esalen, in referring to the stellar origins of the chemical elements of life. “We’ve begun at last to wonder about our origins, star stuff comtemplating the stars, organized collections of ten billion billion billion atoms contemplating the evolution of matter, tracing that long path Read More ›
Over on Panda’s Thumb, frequent commenter Glen Davidson in a gratuitous Coulter bashing festival, asks Where have the relativistic effects of gravity been shown in the lab? Good lord, Glen. Relativistic effects of velocity and gravity have not only been demonstrated they are used in applied science. The Global Positioning System requires clocks so accurate and synchronized that differences in velocity and local gravity amongst orbital and ground based clocks must be compensated for in order to achieve desired accuracy. Doesn’t everyone know this? It’s really old news, Glen. Anyone claiming any broad based knowledge of science should not have asked the question you did. What’s your background again, Glen?
In his Panda’s Thumb article Ann Coulter: No evidence for evolution? Paul demonstrates a classic case of projection with this statement:
I’m not interested in writing such a lengthy rebuttal, and I’m sure this is exactly what Coulter is counting on — tell enough lazy lies, and no one in the world will have time enough to correct them conscientiously. She’s a shameless fraud.
This sounds exactly like what the tireless defenders of chance and necessity have done in their doctrinal libraries of “evidence” that chance and necessity are the drivers of change that turned bacteria into baboons. Tell enough lazy lies of all this evidence, 150 years worth of it now, and no one in the world will have time enough to correct them conscientiously. These tireless defenders of Darwinian doctrine are shameless frauds. Read More ›
Over at Panda’s Thumb Ian Musgrave opens his article Random Nonsense with
Over at Uncommon Descent William Dembski is linking to the random mutation site with approval.
Hello Ian? Is anyone home?
That article was written by Gil Dodgen not William Dembski. Your attention to detail is underwhelming and not at all surprising. It’s characteristic of the quality of everything you boys write.
Ann Coulter’s ‘Godless’ Debuts at No. 1 June 14, 2006 By Kimberly Maul After lambasting the widows of Sept. 11 and spanking Matt Lauer for “getting testy,” conservative political writer Ann Coulter sold more than 48,000 copies of her book, Godless: The Church of the Liberalism, as tracked by Nielsen BookScan. This will put the book at No. 1 on The Book Standard’s Nonfiction Chart and Political Science Chart and No. 2 Overall when the charts publish tomorrow. MORE
I’m not joking when I recommend Ann Coulter for the one to do the questioning if she’ll do it. I would guess she would since she’s a lawyer and it’s perfectly in line with the values she holds. A win-win situation. Guaranteed massive public discussion and endless play on TV, cable, magazines, and the internet. Talk about a poster girl for the cause. I’m surprised she hasn’t done a weekly column on it yet. She’s gotta be thinking about it even as we speak. Science, religion, politics, conservative values, activist judges, democracy thwarted… this issue has it all. It’s ripe for prime time. Carpe diem! Comment by DaveScot — May 17, 2005 @ 3:30 pm No wonder there was no Read More ›