Funny how all this just somehow happens even though “ There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows. Everything in nature is the result of fixed laws’. If the “fixed laws” produce all this communication, they are clearly intelligence operating under the name “laws.” This is just not what laws do.
Evolution
The real reason why zebras have stripes: To shoo away flies
Now, another question arises: Why don’t more life forms show colorful patterns to deter flies? Are there costs and drawbacks as well?
ID predictions on orphan genes and symbiosis
“We suspect that if one’s model system or species of study does something unique and interesting, TRGs [taxonomically restricted genes, aka orphans] will be at least partially responsible, and worth seeking out.” Curiously, the PNAS paper seems to show that.
Co-evolution: How does the need to sync development affect a system’s complexity?
We are told that little is known about co-evolution and symbiosis, which prompts a question: How does the requirement for synchronization affect the overall complexity of the system?
New Pew Survey creates a huge middle on evolution
Actually, it’s not surprising at all. Pure naturalist atheists are not that common once you get off campus and a safe distance from the raging Woke. Most people would rather you think they were creationists (provided you don’t push it too far), which likely accounts for the drop in the second set, when a clear alternative for theists is provided. Some of us think this change in question is long overdue.
Some thoughts on the hatchet review of Behe’s Darwin Devolves in Science
One wonders, do many biologists have independent ideas that Darwinism stifles? If so, they must be frustrated by the need to keep them under wraps or defend them from malign mediocrities for whom mere orthodoxy produces a living.
“Super-Ancient mobile organisms” push mobile life back to 2.1 billion years ago
We’ve often heard that there were billions of boring years in the history of life (the Boring Billion). Maybe not so boring.
Swamidass et al’s hit review at Science on Behe’s forthcoming Darwin Devolves “borders on fraud”
Well, somebody out there must think Behe worth hearing. At 8:00 pm EST February 11, 2019, the book was #1 in Developmental Biology. Ships on February 26.
Are there “dark” neurons in the brain left over from a “Jurassic Park” past?
Notice that the neurons aren’t being called “junk neurons,” as in the exploded concept of vast libraries of “junk DNA.” Quite the contrary, they are given the somewhat glamorous cachet of “dark” neurons, as in “dark matter.” Perhaps something has been learned from the collapse of the concept of “junk DNA.”
Taming the silver fox, taming ourselves…? Oh, please…
The idea that we humans “tamed ourselves” over the generations, on the face of it, it fails a logical test. Who decided that that was a good idea? Who created the benchmark? Why? Why didn’t the bonobos do it?
Sponges really are older than comb jellies, researchers say
Both groups of life forms are at least 500 million years old. Using a bigger data set, this group of researchers favors the sponges. But we surely haven’t heard the last of it.
Science Mag’s hit on Michael Behe’s new book Darwin Devolves avoids his main point
In American Association for the Advancement of Science’s magazine, Science, we read, In the grand scheme of evolution, mutations serve only to break structures and degrade functions, Behe argues. He allows that mutation and natural selection can explain species- and genus-level diversification, but only through the degradation of genes. Something else, he insists, is required for […]
Deaf moth has “completely new” noise-making defence against predators
Just how the moth developed such a defense is unclear. It doesn’t know about the world of sound and can’t be striving for anything one way or the other. A vast cascade of lucky accidents?
Kangaroos hopped into the planet’s history earlier than thought
Evolution doesn’t happen the way they told us in school, “daily, hourly,” “silently” “adding up” (the Darwinian claim). Things seem to come about rather suddenly and stay pretty much the same way for a long time, perhaps suddenly changing again. Is there an explanation? Probably, but it seems we don’t have it yet.
Inference Review did NOT set out to make a fool of cosmologist Adam Becker
It’s not a job that needs doing, the editors say.