“When you look at the individual steps in the development of life, Darwin’s explanation is difficult to disprove, because some selective advantage can be imagined in almost anything.  Like every other scheme designed to violate the second law [of thermodynamics], it is only when you look at the net result that it becomes obvious it won’t work.”
— Granville Sewall, professor of mathematics at Texas A&M University, Appendix D of textbook, The Numerical Solution of Ordinary and Partial Differential Equations, 2nd ed. (John Wiley & Sons, 2005)

A Whale of a SETI Tale   01/31/2006    
Disney’s Fantasia 2000 had an episode that pictured whales gliding through the air as if in outer space.  Lawrence Doyle of the SETI Institute connected whales with space in another way.  His article discussed whale language as a sign of intelligence.  Appealing to information theory and entropy, Doyle discussed how scientists deduce the syntax and entropy of whale messages, even when we can’t figure out the meaning.  By entropy, he means the “number of choices in a given communication system.”  For instance, squirrel-monkey language does not have enough entropy for Shakespeare to be translated into it. 

An important measure of entropy is the highest “entropic-order” at which the communication systems peaks.  In measuring this, we ask how dependent the signals are on each other.  In human speech we have grammar and in human writing we have spelling (or brush strokes, etc.) that depend on each other.  If you made a copy of a written page, but the toner in the copy machine was low, you would find that you could nevertheless recover some of the missing words because there are rules of spelling and grammar superimposed on our language system.  It is these rules that allow error recovery – and this works in both vocalization as well as written communication systems (as well as any others, e.g., chemical signaling units, bee dances, visual facial features, etc.)   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

And how might this apply to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence?  If there is a relationship between social complexity and vocal complexity, then the measure of one will be a measurement, to some degree, of the other.  If a SETI signal is received, and is a normal (i.e., un-coded) communication, it will have to obey the rules of information theory in order to transmit information.  Thus, a measure of the information complexity of such SETI signals could also be a first direct measurement of the social complexity of an extraterrestrial species, irrespective of the actual decipherment of the meaning of such a message itself.  Exciting prospect indeed!

Wait a minute.  We heard Seth Shostak say last month (12/03/2005) that SETI wasn’t looking for an information-bearing message, like the proponents of intelligent design claim, but only for a persistent narrowband whistle in an unusual context that they could claim was non-natural.  What’s all this talk about information theory?  Now the SETI institute is going even beyond the inference to intelligence to an inference about social complexity.  That’s a lot of inference from a persistent narrowband whistle.  Is it not more credible to infer an intelligent cause for a language with sufficient entropy to generate tens of thousands of precision protein machines, like DNA?
Next headline on: Mammals • SETI • Intelligent Design

Modern biology has arrived at two major principles that are supported by so much interlocking evidence as to rank as virtual laws of nature.  The first is that all biological elements and processes are ultimately obedient to the laws of physics and chemistry.  The second principle is that all life has evolved by random mutation and natural selection.

Many events in the history of life are thought to be singular, that is, without parallels, analogs, or homologs in time and space.  These claims imply that history is profoundly contingent in that independent origins of life in the universe will spawn radically different histories.  If, however, most innovations arose more than once on Earth, histories would be predictable and replicable at the scale of functional roles and directions of adaptive change.  Times of origin of 23 purportedly unique evolutionary innovations are significantly more ancient than the times of first instantiation of 55 innovations that evolved more than once, implying that the early phases of life’s history were less replicable than later phases or that the appearance of singularity results from information loss through time.  Indirect support for information loss comes from the distribution of sizes of clades in which the same minor, geologically recent innovation has arisen multiple times.  For three repeated molluscan innovations, 28-71% of instantiations are represented by clades of five or fewer species.  Such small clades would be undetectable in the early history of life.  Purportedly unique innovations either arose from the union and integration of previously independent components or belong to classes of functionally similar innovations.  Claims of singularity are therefore not well supported by the available evidence.  Details of initial conditions, evolutionary pathways, phenotypes, and timing are contingent, but important ecological, functional, and directional aspects of the history of life are replicable and predictable.

What this means is that to the degree Darwinian dogma relies on circular reasoning, it is like a gigantic house of cards balanced on a toothpick.  Effectively dislodge the point holding up the whole structure, and it could collapse quickly and catastrophically.
    Phillip Johnson predicted a growing body of scientists and lay people who would ask the right questions and no longer take bluffing and evasion for an answer.  Learn to look past the E. O. Wilsons and Lord Martin Reeses of the Darwin Party who stand up flaunting their science badges, spouting royal hot air about the overwhelming weight of evidence for evolution.  Remember what Schwarz said last week about that evidence? (01/26/2006).  Don’t look at the size of the house of cards or how intricately its parts are interlocked.  Look at the flimsy pillar of assumption supporting it.  Test that, and stand back.
Next headline on:  Darwinism and Evolutionary theory • Dumb Ideas

Most carcasses that harden into fossils, including those of birds, were deposited in a body of water and then buried by sediment, says David A. Krauss, a paleobiologist at City University of New York.  However, the irksome fact that dead birds float conflicts with this observation.  In fact, bird carcasses float for quite a while, according to the results of experiments conducted by Krauss and his colleagues.  The researchers reported their findings last October at a meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology in Mesa, Ariz.
    In their tests, conducted outdoors during the summer, Krauss and his colleagues placed carcasses of doves, swallows, and blackbirds in tanks filled with water.  Every one of the dozen birds floated.  By the end of the third day, a thick film of bacteria had formed on the carcasses.  Soon thereafter, the birds’ remains became infested with bugs and maggots.  Over the next 3 to 4 weeks, the carcasses decayed, lost some feathers, and began to fall apart—but they still floated.
    Only after decomposition breached the birds’ internal air sacs and permitted water to flow into those cavities did the body parts finally sink, says Krauss.  At that point, the remains certainly wouldn’t have made informative fossils.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

No, we are NOT going to say “billions of dead things buried in rock layers laid down by water all over the earth,” but think about this; it must require unusual conditions to get an Archaeopteryx and all the fine detail of preservation of feathers and soft tissues seen in many famous museum pieces, especially those coming out of the Liaoning Province of China.  Think of the dramatic fossil graveyards around the world where large mammals, dinosaurs or whales are buried in huge expanses of strata.
    Perkins speaks glibly about this 570-million-year-old embryo, or that 150 million year old Archaeopteryx, and such, but how can he know?  All this research is relatively new, and shows rapid decay within less than 20 years.  How is it possible to claim what a fossil will look like in millions of years?  Think of how little remains when coroners exhume famous remains like Jesse James to look for clues in some historical mystery, and yet fossil embryos and jellyfish have been found, and things as ephemeral as footprints, raindrops and even dinosaur vomit.
    This is a good area of research for a budding young scientist who has some decades of useful career ahead to work.  Since so many claims are made based on assumptions of long ages, it would be useful to know the requirements for fossilization with actual field testing, and get some numbers on how long various features can be expected to last even if completely mineralized.  We wonder if Harry Truman has fossilized at Mt. St. Helens under the ash at Spirit Lake.  Probably so; he was a pretty hard cuss already.
Next headline on: Fossils • Dating Methods

One point made clear was that this was an opportunity for people to learn about ID and to open the door for rational discussion on this issue in a pleasant, non-confrontational manner.  The pastor who acted as MC did not lead in prayer or create any religious pressure, but broke the ice by thanking them all for coming, humorously congratulating them for getting their small town in the national spotlight, and inviting them to share their questions.  Panel members stayed on topic about what ID is.  Though religious or philosophical implications are important on both sides of the debate, the panelists were careful to stick to the issue of whether design from intelligent causes can be approached scientifically.  Church volunteers brought tables of refreshments and a bookseller had a table full of ID books and videos for sale; another table contained handouts on ID topics found on the Discovery Institute website.
    This could be a great idea for your home town.  Organize a town hall on intelligent design and show one of the Illustra Media films.  These quality productions say most of what needs to be said.  Have handouts, serve some food, make some books and videos available for sale, and get some knowledgeable teachers or scientists to take a few questions.  You could well get a big crowd of interested people, like the little town of Frazier Park did.
    The Darwinists may have felt outnumbered on this occasion, but if so, they were overpowered only by friendly and gracious people.  Another producer was overheard to say that in his experience Christians and pro-ID people tended to be likeable, compared to pro-Darwinists who tend to be “loud, aggressive, insecure and unlikable, or just hopelessly naive.”  Every effort was made to give opponents a sympathetic hearing.  The emphasis of the meeting was to define what intelligent design is, and to learn more about it, without pressure or confrontation.  The film was extremely effective.  Afterwards, you could almost sense that any antagonists would have felt sheepish trying to contradict the arguments made so effectively.  They seemed to have been caught off guard.  The ID they learned about was apparently much more scholarly, well-reasoned and attractive than what they may have read in the newspapers.
    This is what needs to be done from the grass roots up.  One of Phillip Johnson’s books is entitled, Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds.  Let’s open some minds, shall we?
Next headline on: Intelligent Design

It’s worthwhile to measure things, and it’s fun to speculate, but without recreating Jurassic Park, we are not going to be able to know for sure.  Maybe they were back scratchers, or used for some unknown dino sporting event.  Maybe they were just cute.  One reader wrote in suggesting they were handles for the moms to carry their little darlings; one for each hand (claw?) and two for the mouth.  But then, doesn’t that give T. rex a handle, too?  Wait: T. rex has no hands to speak of.  Maybe the crest was like a steering column or joystick for the wild Lambeosaurus-back ride.
Next headline on: Dinosaurs

When, at the beginning of The Iliad – and Western literature – King Agamemnon steals Achilles’ slave-girl, Briseis, the king tells the world’s greatest warrior that he is doing so “to let you know that I am more powerful than you, and to teach others not to bandy words with me and openly defy their king”.  But literary scholar Jonathan Gottschall believes that the true focus of Homer’s epic is not royal authority, but royal genes.
    Gottschall is one of a group of researchers, calling themselves literary darwinists, devoted to studying literature using the concepts of evolutionary biology and the empirical, quantitative methods of the sciences.  “Women in Homer are not a proxy for status and honour,” says Gottschall.  “At bottom, the men in the stories are motivated by reproductive concerns.  Every homeric raid involves killing the men and abducting the women.”  The violent world of the epics, he says, reflects a society where men fought for scarce mates and chieftains had access to as many women as slaves and concubines.  And he thinks that everything written since Homer is open to similar analysis.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

Those influenced by freudianism, for example, might read a novel looking for hints of a child’s sexual desire for its parent.  A marxist would seek out economic and class conflicts.  [Joseph] Carroll [U of Missouri, St. Louis] has no truck with this: “The theories up to this point have all had a little bit of the truth, but have also all been fundamentally flawed,” he says.  “None comes to terms with the fundamental facts of human evolution.”

• Poetry:  One literary darwinist “uses ideas from cognitive science in her analysis of the mother-child bond in William Wordsworth’s Prelude.”
• Novels:  “A darwinian analysis of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, he [Carroll] says, goes beyond the simple idea that women look for fortune in men, to show how such animal concerns are filtered through the vast flexibility of human behaviour, cultural conditions and individual variation.

  “I don’t look at Pride and Prejudice and try to sort out what is biological and what is cultural,” says Carroll.  “I look at it and examine the way underlying biological dispositions are organized in a specific cultural ecology.  Nobody in the novel escapes the problems of mate selection, status and forming alliances.  But the characters also integrate these concerns with human qualities, such as intelligence, character, morals and cultivation.”  The noble, romantic characters, such as Elizabeth Bennett and Darcy, integrate successfully, hiding their reproductive issues beneath their social graces.  The more comic characters, such as Elizabeth Bennett’s mother, do not (although in marrying off her daughters, she is quite the evolutionary success).

• Comedy:  “Romantic comedies play upon the audience’s pleasure at seeing reproductive strategies rewarded.”
• Tragedy:  Tragedies, like when Medea kills her children, “appeal by invoking recoil from maladaptive acts.”
• Folk literature:  Gottschall found that “the majority of folk tales feature brave heroes marrying beautiful heroines, with the two living happily ever after.”

Friends, Romans, first Corinthians, lend me your ears.  I come to bury Darwin, not to praise him.  The evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones.  So let it be with Darwin.  The noble Gottschall hath told you Homer was ambitious: if it were so, it were a grievous fault, and grievously hath Darwin answered it.... O judgement!  thou art fled to brutish beasts, and men have lost their reason.  Bear with me; my heart is in the coffin there with Wordsworth, and I must pause till it come back to me.
    If you have had enough of Darwin’s acerbic dregs, if you shudder at the destruction left in his wake, if this reduction of all that is noble and praiseworthy into sexual actions of mindless selfish genes leaves you horrified (realizing that no land is exempt, not even Narnia nor Jerusalem), if you have woken up to realize this is a crusade of titanic proportions, if you understand that Dennett’s universal acid has congealed into The Blob that is on the move, swallowing whole universities and institutions (12/21/2005), then rise to the occasion.  The darwinists have a vulnerability that neutralizes their acid and turns it into harmless vapor.  If you were perceptive, you caught it in their very words.  Joseph Carroll spoke of “the truth.”  Say those three little words that make the orcs freeze in their tracks and stab their own chests: What is Truth?
Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory • Politics and Ethics • Dumb Ideas

• Fossils:  The missing links Darwin expected to find “have not been found because they don’t exist,” he claims.  The gradualistic theory “glosses over gaps in the fossil record,” he accuses.
• Gradualism:  Gradual change does not occur: “evolution is not necessarily gradual but often sudden, dramatic expressions of change.”
• Resistance to change:  “Why don’t cells subtly and constantly change in small ways over time, as Darwin suggests?  Cell biologists know the answer: Cells don’t like to change and don’t do so easily.”
• Quality Control:  “Cells in their ordinary states have suites of molecules—various kinds of proteins—whose jobs are to eliminate error that might get introduced and derail the functioning of their cell.  For instance, some proteins work to keep the cell membrane intact.  Other proteins act as chaperones, bringing molecules to their proper locations in the cell, and so on.  In short, with that kind of protection from change, it is very difficult for mutations, of whatever kind, to gain a foothold.”
• Improbability:  Mutations “may be significant and beneficial (like teeth or limbs) or, more likely, kill the organism.”
• Disequilibrium:  “This revelation has enormous implications for the notion that organisms routinely change to adapt to the environment.  Actually, Schwartz argues, it is the environment that knocks them off their equilibrium and as likely ultimately kills them as changes them.  And so they are being rocked by the environment, not adapting to it.”

The mechanism, the authors explain, is this: Environmental upheaval causes genes to mutate, and those altered genes remain in a recessive state, spreading silently through the population until offspring appear with two copies of the new mutation and change suddenly, seemingly appearing out of thin air.

So he ends with a flourish, giving a little politically correct environmentalist spin to help legitimize his rhetoric and distract attention from his crazy idea.  This is rich.  Schwartz and Tattersall have just corroborated all the criticisms creationists bring against neo-Darwinism: mutations are generally harmful, cells are intricately designed to resist change, and the fossil record, riddled with real gaps, debunks gradualism.  Thank you, Dr. Schwarz, for helping shovel standard evolutionary theory into the dustbin of history.
    But is his replacement any better?  All he has done is transfer the creative power of evolution from one undirected, natural cause (gradual natural selection) to another undirected, natural cause (the environment and sudden natural selection).  Has he shown that the pool of recessive mutated genes has any more creative power to generate wings and eyes than the old gradualism?  Has he explained how fully-formed, functioning complex organs, like teeth or limbs, could burst on the scene, as if from nowhere?  This is not science, this is magic.  The new evolutionists have become illusionists, producing rabbits out of thin air.
    With friends like these, Charlie doesn’t need enemies.  This press release announces open season for creationists and intelligent design people and all the critics of evolutionary theory to brush past the fluff of “Sudden Origins” evolution and to say, “We told you so!”
Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory

For a country steeped in Darwinian dogma for over a century, with only a small minority attending church where religion is nearly moribund, this is quite a surprising statistic.  If Darwin gave the world the best idea anyone ever had, and is the figurehead of modern biology, why is his claim not so obvious to all the people?    Lord Martin Rees was glad there is no movement to oppose evolution like in the US, but then why can’t Darwin’s disciples win more converts when they have complete control of the science curricula and a near monopoly on the definition of science and truth?  Can’t the people see the weight of evidence?  Maybe they see through it.
Next headline on:  Darwinism • Intelligent Design

There are some things you should know in interpreting this story.

• None of the plaintiffs had students in the class.
• The class was an elective between semesters.  No one was required to take it.  The students all chose to be there, when they could have been out snowboarding, playing sports or hanging out with their friends.
• The parents all signed permission slips for their teens to take the class.
• The class had the full support of the principal, the superintendent, and a majority of the board of directors.
• While the final syllabus did contain a number of intelligent design videos and books on the list of suggested resources, it also included all eight hours of the PBS Evolution series, a video interview with paleontologist James W. Valentine, a presentation from the University of California Museum of Paleontology, and the textbook Evolution vs. Creation by Eugenie Scott (as recommended by Ken Hurst).
• The syllabus listed no resources promoting young-earth creationism, but only asked one question: “How does Intelligent Design differ from Creationism? and how is it similar?”  (Lest this item beg the question that young-earth creationism is somehow evil or unconstitutional, see what ID leader Phillip Johnson said about it on Touchstone, May 2004).
• Almost all the students are Christians, and none are staunch evolutionists, so they were not being subjected to unwelcome or forced instruction about creationism or ID.  If anything, their beliefs were subject to challenge by the pro-evolutionary material.
• The final syllabus used in the class states, “This class is not meant to guide you into a certain belief, but to allow you to search, become aware of the differences, and gain a better understanding of world views on origins.”  It also specified that “Equal and balanced instruction will be given on all philosophies.”
• The students appear unanimously upset at the reaction by those opposed to the class.  One is taking it upon herself to write newspapers around the country expressing her displeasure with the censorship imposed by evolutionists on this class. She wants to set the record straight on what was taught.
• The teacher invited a pro-evolution biology PhD from UCLA to teach for a day.  He spent a lot of time talking about the Miller experiment (see 05/02/2003 story).  Several of the students said that he dodged their questions.
• Lemburg explained her intentions in a letter published in the local paper.  After explaining what she meant by her statement “this is the class that the Lord wanted me to teach,” she wrote on January 8,

  My motives were honest and sincere, in that all I desired was to present an educational experience to give the students an opportunity to hear and study about the philosophers of design, to be able to critically analyze them and to learn to examine the opinions or philosophies and to weigh them...to ask who made the statement, what is their bias, what is their philosophy, what evidence do they bring?
      Each student in my class will have the opportunity to hear and study philosophies concerning the origin of life.  These ideas represent atheistic, agnostic, liberal and Christian views. We are looking at the ways these views have shaped and changed our world views, and I am challenging these students to know what they think and what those thoughts are based on.  To know it because they believe it, not because someone else says ‘it is so,’ but to become critical thinkers who can express their own beliefs.

Does this sound like a rabid Christian fundamentalist with an agenda, out to force her narrow religious beliefs down the throats of unsuspecting high school students?  Good grief.  The Darwin Party hypocrites have been telling us for years that ID was OK in philosophy, social studies, history or religion – just not in biology class, but look at what they do when someone takes them up on it.  This innocent little class in a minor rural town with 13 students and a mild-mannered teacher wanted to talk about “Philosophy of Design” and develop critical thinking skills, and the Darwin dogmatists went paranoid.  When will they realize this smells like the Inquisition?  The very people who preach against dogmatism are the most intolerant of all, worrying about the “hidden agenda” and the “camel’s nose under the tent,” as if high school students are so stupid, so incapable of reasoning, that they cannot handle the thought that Darwinism is not the infallible idol its priests say it is.  Teaching ID as philosophy should be completely non-threatening to evolutionists.  The action of this school made perfect sense to William Dembski, who called this a step in the right direction.
    One other thing.  The class was not ordered to end immediately.  It was allowed to complete its five-week run.  As part of the out-of-court settlement, the school agreed never again to offer a course that promotes creationism, creation science or intelligent design.  Sounds like an utter defeat for ID and a complete victory for the Darwinists, but Lemburg explains that she never intended to “promote” ID or creationism in the first place.  For all their gloating, the Darwin-Only-Darwin-Only DODOs won a hollow victory here, and earned a reputation as Inquisitors out to hunt down heretics, as hypocrites saying one thing then doing another, as dogmatists fearful of exposing their pet theory to scrutiny.
    School boards interested in getting this important debate a hearing on their campuses should not be alarmed by what happened in Frazier Park or Dover, because “teaching the controversy” is backed by the full force of the United States Congress and the President.  It is the law of the land.  For vital information on why teaching the controversy is legal and constitutional, get this must-see video by Phillip Johnson that explains it all: “One Nation Under Darwin,” available from Access Research Network.
Next headline on: Intelligent Design • Evolution • Education

• Stretchy Clocks:  A famous painting by Salvador Dali portrayed clocks draped over objects as if made of wet clay.  A new paper in PNAS¹ announced that scientists have figured out why human beings developed much longer generation times (length of childhood) than the apes: our molecular clocks are stretchy.  “Humans have a slow molecular clock,” explained Michael Balter for News@Nature.  By comparing gene differences between humans, gorillas and chimpanzees, the team decided all three clocks ticked at different rates.  Balter summarized, “Because the large difference in generation times between humans and chimps does not match the small difference between their molecular clocks, modern human generation times must have evolved recently—perhaps as early as 1 million years ago, the team calculates.”  And lo and behold, the teeth of Homo erectus seem to fit the picture of a shorter childhood.  They must be onto something.  Not everyone is convinced; Blair Hedges (U of Pennsylvania) believes that “generation time might only be one factor among many that control the molecular clock,” Balter wrote.
• Neanderthal Nimrod:  Forget the beetle-brained, stoop-shouldered Alley Oop image of Neanderthal Man.  Now we’re told by EurekAlert that they were ahead of the game: Neanderthals were just as good at hunting as modern man (probably better, since hunting is a lost art except in the frozen foods section).  Since the superior skill of modern man was part of the story of the disappearance of Neanderthals, “This study has important implications for debates surrounding behavioral evolution and the practices that eventually allowed modern humans like ourselves to displace other closely-related species.”  Maybe the moderns did better in Social Studies, the article suggests.
• Neo-Neanderthal:  Speaking of Neanderthal Man, a paper in Nature last November argued that Neanderthals apparently coexisted with moderns in the same cave.²  They used radiocarbon and stratigraphic analysis in a French cave to conclude, “These data strongly support the chronological coexistence—and therefore potential demographic and cultural interactions—between the last Neanderthal and the earliest anatomically and behaviourally modern human populations in western Europe.”  See also a related article on MSNBC.
• Face the Facts:  Last month in PNAS,³ a team of anthropologists kicked out another prop holding up the standard story of where Europeans came from.  A study of 24 facial features of human fossils around Europe found only “a questionable contribution of the Neolithic and the Bronze Age to European craniofacial form.” 

  The surprise is that the Neolithic peoples of Europe and their Bronze Age successors are not closely related to the modern inhabitants, although the prehistoric/modern ties are somewhat more apparent in southern Europe.  It is a further surprise that the Epipalaeolithic Natufian of Israel from whom the Neolithic realm was assumed to arise has a clear link to Sub-Saharan Africa.  Basques and Canary Islanders are clearly associated with modern Europeans.  When canonical variates are plotted, neither sample ties in with Cro-Magnon as was once suggested.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

  So what’s my new line?  “The data treated here support the idea that the Neolithic moved out of the Near East into the circum-Mediterranean areas and Europe by a process of demic diffusion but that subsequently the in situ residents of those areas, derived from the Late Pleistocene inhabitants [sic], absorbed both the agricultural life way and the people who had brought it.”  Any questions?
• Cannibal Animal:  Mike Balter explored a recent claim on the human evolution story in ScienceNow: are we descended from cannibals?  Apparently not; an earlier study appears flawed.  Thank God (see our cannibal parable).
• Ethiopia: The Place to Be:  Rex Dalton ventured out with paleoanthropologists to get the view from Afar (Ethiopia, that is), where rival teams of researchers with “hominid fever” dodge bullets of political rivals, avoid lions, endure oppressive heat, protect their secret spots and bounce around on rattletrap trucks to search for their precious quarry: hominid bones.  In his Indiana-Jones style account in Nature,⁴ Dalton gave more an impression of a gold rush than a reliable scientific enterprise, complete with claim jumpers and inflated announcements.  “This is where it all began,” they are convinced, as Dalton “gets on the trail with a team of devoted experts who just live for the next find.”  A few, like Tim White, are trying to be careful.  “White dislikes what he calls ‘hominid treasure hunts’, where researchers move in for short field visits to grab hominids and then headlines,” Dalton wrote.  As for White’s most recent find, it was a surprise: “hominids – then the earliest known – lived in a wooded environment, not a savannah as previously thought”  (see also 09/01/2005 story).  Any consensus theory seems Afar way off.
• Egypt U:  Science,⁵ however, announced last October that Egypt is the place to be.  A find in Egypt by Seiffert et al.⁶ was described by Jaeger and Marivaux as “Shaking the Earliest Branches of Anthropoid Primate Evolution.”  The paper began, “Early anthropoid evolution in Afro-Arabia is poorly documented, with only a few isolated teeth known from before ~35 million years ago....”
• Spanish-American War:  Believers in the 40,000-year-old Mexican footprints are not giving up without a fight, reported BBC News (see 11/30/2005 story).  Dr. Silvia Gonzalez seems to have a ready answer for every skeptical criticism.  That makes some of her critics even more skeptical.
• Intercontinental Ballistics:  National Geographic News last month entertained the novel suggestion that the favored “Out of Africa” theory might be wrong.  Maybe they evolved from Asia.  Interesting; provocative; possibly persuasive; not convinced – those represent some reactions so far.  Nature studied the suggestion also⁷:  “We show here that it is time to develop alternatives to one of palaeoanthropology’s most basic paradigms: ‘Out of Africa 1’,” wrote Robin Dennell and Wil Roebroeks.  The more basic paradigm, of course, is that mankind did evolve from somewhere.  That paradigm is not on trial.

Anyone who has worked around scientists enough knows that a community of specialists in a given subject takes on the character of a club.  Scientific conferences have a certain social structure and networking protocol similar to a small town.  Everyone knows everyone else, and gossip is a favorite pastime.  While exciting finds and new twists on the plot are welcome (though usually greeted somewhat more dispassionately than at a healing service), there is a certain code that guards against anyone straying too far out of bounds.  You can wear a cowboy hat, but act like a maverick and you are likely to be shunned more than overtly criticized.  For many, that is too much a price to pay.  The respect of one’s peers is vital for a scientific career.
    So here we have the paleoanthropology crowd, roaming around the globe or wading through rivers of genes for their nuggets, trying to fit them into a huge crown for Charlie.  The crown is much bigger than the specks found so far, so it will take a long time to complete.  To finance these expeditions, the participants need to convince their home institutions, usually funded with government grants, that it is all worthwhile because we are getting warmer looking for just the little piece that fits into the niche we have selected to work on.  (The shape and style of the crown, of course, has already been decided, along with the wearer; only the details of gem placement provide some artistic license.)
    Is this really a search for truth?  Could it be a massive case of self-deception that relishes the process more than certainty?  Might it be that Big Science is in a rut, entrenching a social protocol guaranteed to keep mavericks in line and preserve paradigmatic presuppositions?  You can see why any outsider looking at this game and deciding that it is all bunk, all unsupported and contradictory nonsense that does nothing to disprove the belief of the majority of people on this planet that humans were created, would not receive a very friendly reception.  It’s too late to turn back now.  Too much is riding on it.  The show must go on.  (And keep those funds flowing.)
Next headline on: Early Man • Genetics • Fossils • Dumb Ideas

While high school freshmen sometimes struggle with parallelograms and the Pythagorean Theorem, people deep in the Amazon quickly grasp some basic concepts of geometry.
    Although these indigenous tribes had never seen a protractor, compass, or even a ruler, a new study found they understood parallelism and right angles and can use distance, angles, and other relationships in maps to locate hidden objects.
    The finding suggests all humans, regardless of language or schooling, possess a core set of geometrical intuitions.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

Our experiments, in contrast [to Socrates], provide evidence that geometrical knowledge arises in humans independently of instruction, experience with maps or measurement devices, or mastery of a sophisticated geometrical language.  This conclusion is consistent with paleoanthropological evidence and with previous demonstrations of a right-hemisphere competence for nonverbal tests of geometry in split-brain patients.  Further research is needed to establish to what extent this core knowledge is shared with other animal species and whether it is available even in infancy or is acquired progressively during the first years of life.  There is little doubt that geometrical knowledge can be substantially enriched by cultural inventions such as maps, mathematical tools, or the geometrical terms of language.  Beneath this fringe of cultural variability, however, the spontaneous understanding of geometrical concepts and maps by this remote human community provides evidence that core geometrical knowledge, like basic arithmetic, is a universal constituent of the human mind. Constance Holden in Science³ also wrote up this story about possible “cognitive universals” but mentioned a couple of skeptics who think interpretation of the results is difficult.  Even so, they seem to point to at least a “general reasoning ability” that has only been demonstrated in humans.  Cognitive neuropsychologists are very interested in the study.

Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, the Stoics and many other great thinkers in the classical world – probably the majority of the famous philosophers (Democritus and Lucretius being exceptions) – believed in intelligent design.  They were non-evangelical, pagan philosophers to whom the intrinsic order and design of the universe and life was self-evident.  Their concepts of the Designer differed, but they all pointed to design as coming from an intelligent source.
    Most of the classical philosophers were also absolutists.  They believed that outside of the mind of man there existed an unchanging truth beyond the mere objects accessible to the senses.  Evolutionists will find little support for relativism and materialism among the ancients.  History does not support their contention that intelligent design is a conspiracy by evangelical Christians.  The burden of proof should be upon the modern sophists who claim geometry is an artifact of the mindless, materialistic process of natural selection.
    So the stone-age indigenous peoples of the rain forest comprehend geometry.  Fascinating.  Tell us, Darwinists, how did this evolve?  Be sure to include your axioms.
Next headline on: Early Man • Human Body • Amazing Stories

If altruism and spite are unique to humans and are not present in chimpanzees, then it is likely [sic] that these characteristics have arisen in the last 6 million years [sic] since humans and chimpanzees shared a common ancestor [sic].  Humans’ intense regard for each other, either positive or negative, may have made an important contribution to our ability to cooperate, our sense of fairness, and the morality that defines today’s society.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

Only an evolutionist can take negative evidence and give it a positive spin.  Only an evolutionist can take moral evil and turn it into brain chemistry.  Only an evolutionist can speak of morality and altruism while denying the definitions of the words.  Should evolutionists be able to get away with presenting these ideas as the only permissible scientific explanations in public schools?
Next headline on: Mammals • Human Body and Society • Politics and Ethics • Dumb Ideas

In the history of science, practitioners sometimes invoked “imponderable substances” in their theories.  These included phlogiston, caloric, wound salve, ether, electricity, magnetism, and animal magnetism.  Some of these substances went the way of the dodo, others became staples of science.  So far, it appears that cosmologists are in the dark about dark matter (put "dark matter" in the search box above and see).  It will be interesting to see how future astronomers look back on this period.  Till established, theories built on dark matter should be treated like phlogiston theory or The Force.  Duct tape is like The Force.  It has a dark side, a light side, and it holds the universe together – at least as well as dark matter.
Next headline on: Cosmology • Physics

Their conclusion is controversial, as it amounts to a radical reinterpretation of how the ear developed in land-based animals.  If it withstands scientific scrutiny, the fossil will be a rare example of an organ glimpsed partway along its evolutionary path, at a point when its function was very different from that of its final form.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

Let us pause for a moment to think like a consistent evolutionist.  This is very hard to do and is rarely accomplished.  It requires purging our minds of certain persistent myths and misconceptions promulgated by textbooks and TV animators.  First, we must disavow orthogenesis.  The concept of “straight-line evolution” is out; we cannot arrange Eusthenopteron, Panderichthys and Acanthostega on a straight line and imagine one form evolving in a direct fashion to the other.  No – we must picture evolution branching out in a tree or bush-like pattern, and, therefore, place all these fossils at different points on different branches.  Next, we must disavow Lamarckianism.  There is no inheritance of acquired characteristics.  If an early Panderichthys acquired a spiracle by accident or striving, such a structure would not be inherited unless the mutation affected the germ line.  Third, we must disavow teleology.  None of these creatures were “trying” to evolve an ear, or even a spiracle.  There was no purpose or goal of achieving a fully functioning tetrapod ear.  Evolution cannot see into the future.  Natural selection acts only on present survival requirements.  Finally, we must disavow vitalism.  None of these creatures had any kind of world-soul or vital energy driving them upward by some inexorable path toward higher degrees of complexity and organization.  The fitness landscape is not a mountain, but a chaos of undulating, dynamic hills and valleys.  Ready?  Good, let us proceed.
    Now, we consistent evolutionists are ready to give an honest look at the challenges of those pesky creationists.  They say that it is not just the bones of fossils, but the missing soft parts, that are key to understanding the impossibility of getting irreducibly-complex organs via natural selection.  The mammalian ear, they say, has a cochlea, an organ of Corti with molecular springs and motors, a tympanic membrane, some finely-tuned bones that act like levers, and a complex brain to interpret the electrical signals transduced mechanically from air or liquid to nerve impulses.  They say that there should not be one questionable transition, but thousands of them.  They also say that these alleged transitions must have complete functionality at each stage, such that they outcompete those lacking the function to the point of remaining the only survivors in a vast battlefield of death (the cost of selection).  They point to “living fossils” like Coelacanth that were long thought to represent transitional forms, only to be found alive and well in the present day (and not using their lobed fins for anything resembling walking).  They embarrass us with the shortness of time in our scheme for coming up with major new body plans and organs, and they cast doubt on the dating and timing of the few existing fossils.  They tease us by saying that these branches would have had to be “evolutionary dead ends” that went extinct and therefore did not go on to develop functional ears.  And they pester us with reminders that new function requires new genetic information.  They criticize this paper as representing little more than a just-so story unless a detailed series of steps can be elucidated to show how new information for a spiracle or ear was embedded into the genes and then translated into proteins and developmental programs.  In short, they are not quivering at this announcement, and have delivered us all these counter challenges.  So now, let us consistent evolutionists, having cleansed our minds of misconceptions, rise to the occasion and answer them.  Who will be first?  Isn’t there someone?  Isn’t there anyone?  Goliath, how about you?  Pretty please?  No fair hiding in that coffin we built for the creationists.
    The ancient biosphere was more diverse and ecologically rich than our modern world.  Many extinct species are found in the record.  Undoubtedly these can be arranged and rearranged into all kinds of imaginary ancestral relationships.  Evolutionists have a bad habit of arranging only the similarities that fit their preconceived imaginary trees into homologous groupings, and calling other similarities analogous.  Why shouldn’t a school kid look at a proboscis monkey, a tapir and an elephant and use similar reasoning to think this is a transition from nose to trunk?  Or a jellyfish to sea slug to a jelly sandwich?  Maybe mudskippers and walking catfish are evolving into lizards or salamanders, or butterflies into birds, or penguins and seals into whales.  Sea stars have five fingers like a human hand.  Octopi have eight tentacles and spiders have eight legs.  Similarities are everywhere; why get worked up about a select few?  Could it be because they reinforce a favorite story?
    For more on problems with the fish-to-tetrapod transition in evolutionary theory, see the review of the evidence by Paul Garner from the Creation Technical Journal.
Next headline on:  Marine/Aquatic Life • Fossils • Evolutionary Theory

This study provides an analysis of the antibiotic resistance potential of soil microorganisms.  The frequency of high-level resistance seen in the study to antibiotics that have for decades served as gold-standard treatments, as well as those only recently approved for human use, is remarkable.  No class of antibiotic was spared with respect to bacterial target or natural or synthetic origin.  Although this study does not provide evidence for the direct transfer of resistance elements from the soil resistome to pathogenic bacteria, it identifies a previously underappreciated density and concentration of environmental antibiotic resistance.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

The superiority of such acquired mechanisms is illustrated by the contrast between Staphylococcus aureus strains that have decreased susceptibility to vancomycin through mutations (so-called VISA strains) as compared to VRSA strains, S. aureus that acquired a complete vancomycin-resistance gene complex via the transposon Tn1546.  The VISA strains have low-level resistance (the minimal inhibitory concentration of vancomycin is 6 to 12 g/ml), are often associated with reduced oxacillin resistance, and show abnormal cell wall synthesis; the multiple transcriptional changes documented by DNA microarray analysis reflect the complexity of this mechanism.  In contrast, in VRSA strains, the Tn1546-based mechanism produces high-level vancomycin resistance (with a minimal inhibitory concentration of more than 500 g/ml) that does not interfere with oxacillin resistance, and cell wall synthesis proceeds with a depsipeptide cell wall precursor specific to these strains.

Neither of these papers ruled out that the resistance mechanisms have always been present in the gene pool.  If so, then the claim that bacteria “evolve” resistance to antibiotics is negated.  Bacteria may simply find access to an existing library of information, a “resistome” that, coupled with a packaging and delivery mechanism (plasmids and transposons), confers the resistance that previously appeared to evolve out of thin air.
    Notice that the resistance conferred by mutations harms the organism.  The case cited by Tomasz reduced the fitness of the organism by weakening its cell wall.  Mutationally-gained resistance is like the illustration Lee Spetner gave: cutting off a man’s arms makes him resistant to handcuffs.  In a population of prisoners being handcuffed, this person would be the fittest, but only in a specific environment and at the cost of overall fitness.  In the wild, he would be at a disadvantage.  Scott Minnich also illustrated this type of bacterial resistance in the film Icons of Evolution with cultures of bacteria exposed to antibiotics.  The kind of resistance conferred by specialized enzymes able to disable the agent, however, require specific genetic information that appears designed.
    Too little is known at this point, but these articles uncover the possibility that genetic information that confers antibiotic resistance is already present in the environmental resistome.  If so, this undermines a commonly-used evidence for evolution.
Next headline on: Cell Biology • Genetics • Darwinian Evolution

Any commentary would be superfluous.  Click on the image for the full size, and just look.
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Speleothem records may be influenced by kinetic isotope effects such that temperature-controlled equilibrium fractionation models alone cannot adequately explain the significance of the records.  Proper interpretation of these records may require that the non-equilibrium isotope effects ... be calibrated to physical conditions in the cave, such as temperature, cave P_CO2, drip rates, calcite precipitation rates, stalactite geometry, and drip water chemistry.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

This study points out some important principles of interpretation in scientific studies, especially those used to infer conditions in the unobservable past.  There are usually more factors influencing a measurement than many simplistic models assume.  Consider, for instance, how the experimental apparatus itself can alter a measurement.  The authors noted that even the shape of their glass plates differed from the natural situation: “Our experiment uses flat glass plates, which may affect the stable isotope composition of calcite along the growth layer by forcing the drip water to flow across a flat surface, unlike a natural convex stalagmite,” they said.  “This likely prolongs the residence time of drip water, relative to a natural stalagmite, allowing more time for CO₂ degassing and calcite precipitation.”  Though they discounted the effect of this particular influence, there could well be other influences they did not consider.  After all, previous studies working on this subject apparently did not take speleothem geometry into account.
    Even putting a human being in a cave next to a stalagmite alters its environment.  A body gives off over 100 watts of heat, and alters the moisture of the atmosphere with his or her breath.  When making sensitive measurements of delicate isotopic ratios on a glass plate, how can they be sure all such influences have been calibrated, or even considered?  In addition, as they mentioned, the measurements are sensitive even to the geometry of the drip source.  Perhaps you can think of other influences that would be difficult to calibrate and easy to ignore: microbiology in the soil between the atmosphere and the cave, changes in the source of the water, the complex arrangement of cracks and channels in the cave roof, the presence of cave biota, or much more.  Consider how in recent decades a major paradigm shift in cave geology occurred when geologists began to consider the effect of bacteria on cave formation (05/10/2004).  Prior to that, they were not even thinking about it.  They were looking at geological forces alone, and had overlooked factors that turned out to have a huge effect on cave excavation processes and speleothem formation rates, leading to whole new ways of thinking about underground geology.  Meanwhile, summer-hire cave tour leaders were still regurgitating the old paradigm to the tourists.
    Regardless of how comfortable these scientists feel in their conclusion that isotopic ratios can reflect climate history with some degree of reliability, they admitted that the correlation of oxygen and carbon isotopic covariations was only about 55%.  Some studies showed no correlation, or even a negative correlation.  How can they know that the anomalous studies were not the more significant for true understanding?  Does the majority rule in science?  None of these questions should suggest that field studies and careful measurement are not profitable, but before swallowing a simplistic statement in a popular-level book or TV program about how we “know” something about prehistory, remember that even the best estimates are subject to drastic revision by subsequent findings.  Even if scientists could garner accurate measurements of every “known” parameter in the present, they cannot, in principle, know the unknowns.  In addition, the further that present processes are extrapolated into the past or future, the more uncertain they become – the more subject to assumptions that cannot be tested.  This is an inherent limitation of the scientific method.  Process is not the same as certainty.  When that is admitted, it is a good thing.  More often than not, interpretations are touted as facts, and the assumptions underlying the interpretations are not disclosed.
    For an interesting analysis of factors that call into question consensus views about cave formation and speleothem dating, order this DVD by Dr. Emil Silvestru, a specialist in karst geology with years of field experience: Geology and Cave Formation.  It also contains stunning photographs of some incredible crystalline wonders hidden in the darkness of these underground cathedrals (photo).
Next headline on:  Geology • Dating Methods • Physics