At Creation-Evolution headlines, Dave Coppedge asks, “If This Is Evolution, What Is Trivia?” (June 24, 2011): New Scientist printed a dramatic headline, “Lab yeast make evolutionary leap to multicellularity.” A leap of the imagination, as it happens. This challenge to Darwinian evolution turned out to be a cinch, it went on to claim: “In just Read More…
Media
Environment follies: Suppose an asteroid had extinguished the trilobite instead of the dinosaur?
Few or no documentaries. Okay, that doesn’t matter. But this does: In unbylined “An Environmentalist’s Lament” (Breakthrough Journal, June 2011), we learn, once again, about the high costs of hype when it does matter: Take last summer’s BP oil spill in Louisiana. Covering the spill was the Super Bowl of environmental journalism. You couldn’t have Read More…
“Gay Muslim blogger” hoax reveals current mainstream media’s fatal self-obsession
In “Why liberals fell for ‘Muslim lesbian blogger’ hoax” (OC Register, June 17, 2011), Mark Steyn tells a story that shows why current Big Media won’t likely recover from their current tailspin: On Sunday, Amina Arraf, the young vivacious Syrian lesbian activist whose inspiring blog “A Gay Girl In Damascus” had captured hearts around the Read More…
She said it: Nancy Pearcey’s thoughtful article on how “Christianity is a Science-starter, not a Science-stopper”
One of the most common objections to design thought is the idea that it is about the improper injection of the alien supernatural into the world of science. (That is itself based on a strawman misrepresentation of design thought, as was addressed here a few days ago.) However, there is an underlying root, a common Read More…
What scientists can’t tell us …
Well, they would, but … Once you’re thick in Science, you can question the paradigm. But if you want to get grants, if you want to be elected to high positions, if you want to get awards as a promoter of public education of Science, you can’t question the paradigm. ~ 45.09 I interviewed dozens Read More…
You know Big Media are tanking when their readers must do their investigative journalism …
Here’s an interesting reflection on the accelerating collapse of legacy mainstream media: A curious fact emerged from the frenzied search through U.S. politician Sarah Palin’s e-mails (which turned up nothing much), that the Big Media had enlisted their readers’ help in goingthrough the boxes of administrivia. In which case: One embarrassing aspect of this episode, Read More…
Watch this spoof of the Darwinists at YouTube soon
Before it’s deleted: A riff on the publicly funded, court-enforced Darwin lobby. Stars long-ago scientist Richard Dawkins and Darwin’s broomstick Eugenie Scott*: Lines like “He’s smarter than you, he’s got a science degree!” and “You don’t know me, you don’t know Dick!” Stuff that People Who Count complain about tends to disappear so, if interested, Read More…
Why news coverage is so darn bad … and why it is a mirror of the soul
A guy who has been a hack, a flack, and a prof tells us what we suspected … Journalists, on the other hand, usually treat anything as true if someone in a position of ostensible authority is willing to say it, even anonymously (and if no one is going to sue over it). The accuracy Read More…
Overlapping genetic code is … stories embedded in stories, using the exact same words?
And not even just a different story read backwards, like I thought? Liberty University biology prof David A. DeWitt, author of Unraveling the Origins Controversy, commented on my characterization of the overlapping codes of the genome. Seeing that Christianity Today is actually taking BioLogos and yesterday’s science seriously, I had written, A friend, a faithful Read More…
Seems like yesterday: British TV presenter disowned Darwinism
… in the last year of his life. Not anyone’s idea of a fundamentalist Christian, Gordon Rattray Taylor (1911-1981) was the author of a well-known anti-population-growth work and other trendy stuff as well. In the last year of his life (1983) Taylor wrote The Great Evolution Mystery, disowning Darwinism. Some excerpts here. He talked about Read More…
Legacy media: What, if anything, is in it for them to be so useless?
An interesting column by one, Howard Rich, the moral of which is not to rely on legacy media for news you actually need: In the immediate aftermath of the tragic Tucson shooting earlier this year, the legacy press took it a step further — essentially implying that the new media was complicit in the attack Read More…
Notes on changing media: In the wake of Katie Couric’s stepdown …
Here Brent Bozell notes, On NPR, evening anchor Michele Norris mourned that “when you reach back to the era of Rather and Jennings and Brokaw, it seemed like getting an anchor job in the past was much like a lifetime appointment, much like a Supreme Court justice.” Media reporter David Folkenflik answered that “holding one Read More…
Media: It isn’t bias as such that is the problem today, it is “shaping perceptions”, journalist says
David Warren comes to some interesting conclusions on the decay of current legacy media, conclusions that you can mull over for yourself. But these are the observations I chiefly wish to note: Nothing is new under the sun, not even decay, but the slide of mainstream journalism — not merely into partisanship, but into the Read More…
Here’s what you’re currently paying for on PBS Nova …
NOVA scienceNOW: Where Did We Come From? Airing Wednesday, February 16 at 8pm on PBS In this episode of NOVA scienceNOW, journey back in time to the birth of our solar system to examine whether the key to our planet’s existence might have been the explosive shockwave of an ancient supernova. Meet a chemist who Read More…
Do atheists know enough about the concept of God to reject it on rational grounds?
Sometimes I think atheists are simply having arguments with themselves – or, more precisely, with phantoms bred by their own ignorance. It’s easy to see why atheism does not make more headway, even in modern secular society: Once atheists begin to spell out the sort of deity they are rejecting, it becomes clear that they Read More…