In panel form.

Excerpts for download. Here. Why pay for propaganda, when you can get a whack of it free?

In “Stick insects survive one million years without sex” (BBC Nature, 19 July 2011),  Ella Davies reports. Timema genevievae is a female-only species of stick insect “All the evidence points to Timema tahoe and Timema genevievae having persisted for over one million years without sex,” Dr Schwander told BBC Nature. “Our research adds to the growing amount of evidence that asexuality does not always result in the rapid extinction of a lineage,” she said. After the shocking ant revelations, we’re all skeptics here.

UPDATE:  WE HAVE HAD SEVERAL FANTASTIC ENTRIES ALREADY.  BUT THERE IS STILL TIME TO POST AN ENTRY.  I WILL JUDGE THE CONTEST ON 7-26-11

A couple of  months ago a young university student contacted my law office seeking help in a dispute she was having with a university here in Colorado. [To protect my client’s privacy, I am using neither her name nor the name of the university. ] The previous week she had voiced opposition to Darwinism to her biology professor, who proceeded to scream at her, denigrate her religious views, and generally demean and humiliate her in front of the rest of the class.  After hearing her story I sent a demand letter to the university seeking redress.  Good news.  We resolved the matter on very favorable terms.

One of the terms we insisted on was a letter of apology from the professor. This is the full text of that letter:

Read More ›

Parents strongly cautioned: ant sex discussed

At The Scientist (July 18, 2011), Tia Ghose explains, “Asexual Ants Have Sex”, which will take some explaining, but here goes:

Some populations of ants long thought to be asexual get a dose of genetic diversity by having sex.

On paper, asexuality seems like a winning strategy. Sexless creatures pass on all their genes—as opposed to just half—and “you don’t have to spend huge amounts of energy going around and finding a mate and going through courtship and exposing yourself to disease,” Tsutsui said.

[ … ]

But the fungus-farming ant is one of the few species that appeared to adopt a purely asexual lifestyle: researchers had never seen a male in the wild, and ants in the lab produced clonal offspring.

But hang on, Read More ›

This week’s debate on Unbelievable (the radio show which regularly features exchanges and dialogues between Christians and non-Christians) features a debate between Richard Weikart and Hector Avalos. From the podcast description: Richard Weikart is a Christian and professor of History at California State University. He has drawn controversial conclusions regarding the role of Darwinism in providing a rationale for Hitler’s Nazi ideology. Hector Avalos is an atheist and Professor of Religious Studies at Iowa State University. He disagrees with Weikart, saying that Christian anti-semitism is the more likely explanation for Nazi ideology. To listen to this week’s show, go here.

From Leonard Krishtalka (July 19, 2011) at LJWORLD (Lawrence, Kansas), we hear the grim news, “Science takes a beating in early presidential campaign”: Referring to candidate Michelle Bachmann’s comments,

“I support intelligent design,” she said, reported CNN. “What I support is putting all science on the table and then letting students decide.”

Krishtalka disagrees, saying,

… knowledge of evolution is an economic necessity. It underpins U.S. and global R&D on the production of the world’s food, fiber, fuel and pharmaceuticals.

How, exactly does it do that?, a friend of Uncommon Descent writes to ask: “Do you have a paper or quote that refutes the ‘teaching more evolution increases the state’s economy” myth? Read More ›