“Orthodox atheists may not like it, but the shouts of the evolutionary priesthood may signal the demise of a great secular dream. Besides, the alternative looks pretty good: There’s something appealing about holding science up without casting humanity down.” 
—Nancy Pearcey, commenting on Richard Dawkins’ recent anti-religious rants and advocacy of eugenics, on Pro-Existence 11/23/2006.

In Science and Politics, Expect the Unexpected    12/29/2006  
Two findings reported this month illustrate how science changes.  Paradigms and policies can have their scientific underpinnings yanked out from under them, causing both consternation and opportunities for new ways of thinking.

• Bring back the acid rain:  Pick your poison: acid rain or global warming.  Acid rain was the bogeyman of the 1980s, leading to severe cutbacks in sulfur emissions by law.  Now, reported EurekAlert, new studies of streams in Appalachian hardwood forests show an “unexpected result” of the reduction in acid rain: an alarming rise in dissolved carbon dioxide.  The streams are now as pristine as you could get, but that means the plants are now more efficient at respiration and are emitting more CO₂.  A Penn State researcher said, “Rising amounts of carbon dioxide in streams and soil could have implications for the forest ecosystem, and the carbon balance in general.”  And what does that imply?  “Higher amounts of carbon dioxide in the soil means more of it ultimately may be emitted back to the atmosphere as a greenhouse gas.”  Maybe the forests need to do their fair share in abiding by the Kyoto Protocol.  Or, maybe some nations will now have an excuse for not cutting back, saying they are emitting less than plants.  See also the report in LiveScience that agrees “less acid rain is not always so great.”
• Silent mutations get noisy:  “Another dogma in cell biology seems about to be toppled,” reported Science Now last week.  Certain mutations in the DNA translation process were dubbed “silent mutations,” because they didn’t affect the amino acid inserted into the protein.  If a triplet codon with a silent mutation inserts the exact same amino acid, what could possibly be different in the result?  A new discovery by researchers for the USDA hinted that these mutations are not so silent after all.  It turns out that an unexpected triplet codon can slow down the rate of translation.  When this happens, the resulting protein takes slightly longer to form.  This, in turn, can affect its folded shape.  As a result, the protein may act differently, even though it is composed of the same amino acid sequence.
      The researchers found this out when observing that some cancer cells are more effective at pumping out chemotherapy agents.  The protein pump that performed better had a silent mutation that slightly altered its shape.  The news report issued an analogy: “Like designs made with Silly String spraying out at different velocities, the folding of an amino acid chain into a 3D structure is somewhat speed-dependent, and slower production could cause the protein to take an altered final form,” Mary Beckman reported.  “The cell might be able to compensate for one silent mutation but not for multiple rarely used triplets.”  This “entirely new concept” is causing scientists to “start listening to what silent mutations have to say.”
      One possibility is that the “degeneracy” in the genetic code (i.e., the fact that some amino acids can be coded for by up to six different triplet codons) has a function, regulating the rate of protein production or the activity of the resulting protein or enzyme.  As in the case of the cancer cell, environmental pressures may trigger the dominance of one form over another to provide robustness under varying circumstances.

If we are vulnerable to this much uncertainty about present-day, observable facts of science, how can the Darwinists be so smug that they know how the universe and life began and what dinosaurs were doing 100 million years ago?  The role of assumptions in scientific knowledge cannot be overemphasized.  The only way to be certain about anything is to have an omniscient being who always existed and who made everything tell us.  But that would require faith.  Science is not about faith (see Finagle’s Creed and the rest of the Quick Guide to Evolutionary Theory).
Next headline on:  Genetics • Plants • Politics and Ethics

Cell Zippers, Linemen and Editors Put on a Show    12/28/2006  
The golden age of cell biology continues.  Scientists keep unlocking the secrets of cellular machinery with newer and better techniques.  With the curtain rising on a show we could not previously imagine, played out on a stage so small it took centuries of scientific work to even see it, biochemists are discovering amazing tricks that the little autonomous actors have been performing all along, right inside of us.

1. Zip me up, road crew:  A press release on EurekAlert pointed to a new paper in Cell¹ where researchers found a kind of monorail zipper.  The original paper by Kikkawa and Metlagel actually calls it a “molecular ‘zipper’ for microtubules.”  The EurekAlert article discusses “Roadworks on the motorways of the cell.”  Cellular highways are 3-D monorails that run in all directions and are constantly being formed and recycled.  Composed of protein units of tubulin, they first form into sheets that fold into a tube shape.  That’s where Mal3p comes in.  This little protein zips up the edges of the tube, forming a stable structure that would otherwise unravel easily.  The zipper even forms an alternate trackway for the molecular “trucks” that use the microtubules to deliver goods all over the cell (12/04/2003, 02/25/2003, 07/12/2004).
2. Mr. Goodwrench, the inchworm:  DNA is tightly compacted in the cell, but needs to be unwound frequently for translation and duplication.  A family of machines called helicases unwind the double helix as part of the process.  Scientists wondered how the machine travels up and down the helix, and have now found that one particular helicase named UvrD both twists and jumps in a two-part power-stroke.  The authors of another paper in Cell² describe this as a “wrench-and-inchworm” mechanism.  Each step, which traverses one DNA base at a time, requires two ATP fuel pellets.  See also 06/19/2003, 01/05/2006, bullet 9, and 10/27/2005, bullet 3; see 01/19/2005 about an RNA helicase.
3. Not many typos get past this editor:  Life depends on 20 specialized translators that connect the DNA code to the protein code (see 09/16/2004 for historical background, and 06/09/2003 and its embedded links for conceptual background).  The awkwardly-named “aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases” (AARS for short) are highly specialized to connect the two codes correctly and edit out mistakes before they cause serious trouble.  A paper in PNAS³ discussed one of the ways the AARS for the amino acid phenylalanine works.  For jargon lovers, the model is: “the role of the editing site is to discriminate and properly position noncognate substrate for nucleophilic attack by water.”  To test the model, they tinkered with some of the pieces of the protein machine and watched the editing precision drop dramatically.  The precision of the active site is part of the “translational quality control,” they said (see 12/20/2003, 09/09/2002).
4. Oxygen can be bad for your health:  We like to breathe in that oxygen, but in the wrong places it can be a poison.  Authors of another paper in PNAS⁴ found that “oxidized messenger RNA induces translation errors.”  They put the gene for the light-glowing protein luciferin into rabbits (imagine a glowing Bugs Bunny) in both oxidized and non-oxidized forms.  Although the oxidized translation machine stayed intact, the “translation fidelity was significantly reduced.”

Since the discovery of ribozymes and the development of the idea of life first emerging from an RNA world (Gilbert, 1986), biologists have struggled to imagine the logical progression of events that led to proteins.  At the same time, regardless of what the imagination can conjure, a connection to reality has to be made.  That, in turn, requires experiments to test specific hypotheses or to provide an opportunity for serendipitous findings.
    To go from RNA to proteins requires the genetic code—triplets of nucleotides representing single amino acids.  The modern code is an algorithm determined by aminoacylation reactions, whereby each of 20 amino acids is linked to its cognate tRNA that bears the anticodon triplet of the code.  The 20 aminoacyl tRNA synthetases (one for each amino acid) that catalyze these reactions are ancient proteins that were present in the last common ancestor of the tree of life (Carter, 1993 and Cusack, 1997).  As the eons passed, the tree split into the three great kingdoms—archaea, bacteria, and eukarya, which encompass all life forms.  Yet, the genetic code remained fixed, with the same 20 aminoacyl tRNA synthetases making the same connections between anticodon triplets and amino acids.  Thus, clues to the history of the transition from the RNA world to proteins might be imbedded in the tRNA synthetases themselves.

Thus, what is reported in this most recent work on GluRS—that a synthetase can use tRNA to direct a conformational change that perfects amino acid specificity, using in part a contact with the tRNA itself—may provide a general mechanism of tRNA-dependent amino acid specificity.  The much bigger implication is that perhaps this functional interaction is a picture or a “holdover” from an earlier era in the evolution of the genetic code.

Hope you enjoyed another peek into cellular wonders.  We had to throw in an evolutionary tale just for the sheer contrast of seeing actual scientific investigation into observable machinery operating with high fidelity and quality control juxtaposed against the speculations of certain humans forced by their worldview to imagine that it just happened by chance.  You can see what they’re up against.  Shamelessly, they dove right into fantasyland, using their captive imaginations to portray impossibilities that they believe must have happened because, after all, we’re here, and no other approach than evolution is allowed in the dictatorship of King Charles.  Those of us with liberated minds no longer forced into contradictions can enjoy the non-fiction to the fullest.  We don’t know whether to sigh or chuckle at the fiction the slaves are forced to write.  The evolutionists are right on one point: “regardless of what the imagination can conjure, a connection to reality has to be made.”  We do hope they make it some day.
Next headline on:  Cell Biology • Genetics • Amazing Facts

• Insects are fantastically diverse.
• Insects are among the most successful animals.
• There are no insect fossils earlier than the Devonian (evolutionary date: 410 million years ago).
• The earliest segmented body plans appeared in the Cambrian (511 million years ago).
• There are no marine insects, but the first segmented Cambrian animals were marine organisms.

Although hexapods--those arthropods having six legs, including insects--are the most diverse group of contemporary animals in terms of biological niches and number of species, their origin is highly debated.  A key problem is the almost complete absence of fossils that connect hexapods to the other major arthropod subphyla, namely Crustacea, Myriapoda (such as centipedes and millipedes), and Chelicerata (such as scorpions and spiders).  Over the years, hexapods (insects, springtails, proturnas, and diplurans) have been phylogenetically linked to all of these major arthropod taxa.

The successful colonization of the terrestrial environment by hexapods seems to coincide with other major groups of land pioneering animals such as the chelicerates and the myriapods in the Late Silurian and the tetrapods (amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals) in the Late Devonian.  All these events appear to have occurred through a freshwater dwelling phase in their evolutionary transition from marine to true terrestrial animals.  The Devonian is believed to have been a time of severe drought, which might have forced these animals (at least hexapods and tetrapods) onto land as their freshwater habitats vanished.

It has been a puzzle as to why hexapods--in particular insects, which possess a morphology that apparently enables them to adapt to virtually all types of terrestrial environments--have not been able to diversify successfully in the marine environment.  It is likewise remarkable that the crustaceans--fulfilling a biological role in the sea comparable to the insects on land--have not been able to invade land to a greater extent despite their considerable age.  The recent phylogenetic analyses of molecular sequence data suggest a paradigm shift concerning the phylogenetic position of hexapods--that crustaceans successfully invaded land as insects.  It is possible that when insects entered terrestrial habitats, their crustacean ancestors had already diversified in marine environments and occupied all potential niches, which could explain why insects were prevented from colonizing the sea subsequently.

Commercial: This portion of Just-So Stories for Grown-Ups has been brought to you by Darwin Party Facilitators, the research problem solvers extraordinaire.  In a tangle?  Got an enigma?  Call DPF for a quick, easy way out of any pernicious puzzle or distressing dilemma.  Why do research the old-fashioned way, with tedious observations and rigorous analysis, when you can finish your paper in no time.  Our technicians can help you escape your troubles as if by magic!  Don’t fret any longer over that missing fossil evidence.  Worry no more when the review board checks your data.  DPF experts have the inside connections needed to get you through peer review.  Drawing on their international resources, they will customize a solution to fit your needs, no matter the subject, with just the right blend of natural selection, sexual selection, kin selection, group selection, game theory, niche construction, Lamarckism, orthogenesis, gradualism, punq eq, microevolution, divergence, convergence, determinism, contingency, anthropomorphism, Gaia or whatever else the occasion calls for.  They can help you adjust the molecular or paleontological clocks to fit your uncooperative data points.  Their secret blend of jargon, speculation and personification, seasoned lightly with equivocation, is laboratory-proven to lubricate the editorial process, no matter how many contradictions you struggle with.  When all else fails, they know the magic word* to hypnotize the reviewers and get you on the fast track to publication.  After all, most reviewers are current or former members of the DPF, so it’s futile to try doing research these days alone.  Don’t let your career fall behind by focusing on accountability and scientific integrity when you can pad your resume with dozens of publications in reputable high-impact journals.  Darwin Party Facilitators, the world’s largest charlatan agency with thousands of licensed practitioners, can help you rise above your peers.  Gain tenure faster.  Publish without fear of perishing.  Earn the respect of the movers and shakers of the modern world.  All DPF work is backed by the full force and protection of the ACLU.  What are you waiting for?  Operators are standing by.  Call now: 1-800-SNOW-JOB.
    Stay tuned for the next exciting episodes, The Ghost of Kiwi Past and How Rocky Earned His Sails (12/13/2006).
Next headline on:  Darwinism • Terrestrial Zoology • Fossils

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^*Emergence.

Incredible Stasis in Evolution: What Does It Mean?    12/26/2006  
Quite often in phylogenetic research, evolutionists find examples of extreme conservation of genes or traits.  How they explain the lack of change is almost as interesting as the phenomenon itself.  Here are two recent examples.

1. Your cousin the shark:  Surprise: you have more in common with horn sharks than bony fishes do.  Craig Venter’s international team found evidence for “Ancient Noncoding Elements Conserved in the Human Genome” and reported this in Science last week.¹  They found more similarities in these noncoding regions between sharks and humans than between sharks and bony fish.  Here’s how they interpreted such an astonishing result:

   Thus, it appears that, even though cartilaginous fishes diverged from the human lineage before teleost fishes, higher proportions of regulatory elements are conserved between cartilaginous fishes and human than between teleost fishes and human.  This implies that the regulatory regions of teleost fishes have been evolving faster since their common ancestor diverged from the lineage that led to mammals.  The divergent regulatory regions in teleosts may be partly explained by the partitioning of regulatory elements between duplicate gene loci that arose from the fish-specific whole-genome duplication event in the ray-finned fish lineage.  Teleost fishes, with about 25,000 extant species, are the largest group of vertebrates and exhibit vast diversity in their morphology and adaptations.  The accelerated rate of evolution of regulatory regions may be an important factor in the rapid radiation and diversity of teleost fishes.

2. Make like a leaf:  A fossil leaf-mimicking insect said to be 47 million years old is virtually identical to modern ones, reported Mongabay.com.  What this means, according to the article, is that this insect found a “time-tested strategy” to avoid predators.  The article calls this “an outstanding example of morphological and, probably, behavioral stasis.” It means that “leaf mimicry had already evolved early in the Eocene period when insect predators would have included birds, early primates, bats, and other insects.”  See also the story on Live Science.
   Update 12/29/2006: the paper in PNAS appeared online Dec. 29.²  Portions of the abstract demonstrate the degree of stasis of this fossil:

   .... Here we report the first fossil leaf insect, Eophyllium messelensis gen.  et sp.  nov., from 47-million-year-old deposits at Messel in Germany.  The new specimen, a male, is exquisitely preserved and displays the same foliaceous appearance as extant male leaf insects.  Clearly, an advanced form of extant angiosperm leaf mimicry had already evolved early in the Eocene.  We infer that this trait was combined with a special behavior, catalepsy or “adaptive stillness,” enabling Eophyllium to deceive visually oriented predators.  Potential predators reported from the Eocene are birds, early primates, and bats.  The combination of primitive and derived characters revealed by Eophyllium allows the determination of its exact phylogenetic position and illuminates the evolution of leaf mimicry for this insect group.  It provides direct evidence that Phylliinae originated at least 47 Mya.... This fossil leaf insect bears considerable resemblance to extant individuals in size and cryptic morphology, indicating minimal change in 47 million years.  This absence of evolutionary change is an outstanding example of morphological and, probably, behavioral stasis.

   This fossil was found in Europe, while most leaf-mimic insects live today in southeast Asia.  This indicates that leaf insects were much more widespread in the past.  It’s possible that fossil hunters missed finding them before now because the mimics were so good, people mistook them for leaves.
       What traits did the authors feel were primitive?  Their paper tries to place the new fossil between the stick insects and modern leaf mimics, but admits that their origin is “poorly understood” and that “exact phylogenetic position of the Phylliinae within the phasmid phylogeny is unknown”.  It seems arbitrary, therefore, that their chart places the new insect halfway between the stick insects and the leaf insects, considering that the fossil shares many characteristics with extant leaf insects.  They only pointed to “straight fore femora and the absence of tergal thorn pads” as “primitive” traits resembling those of the stick insects; yet, clearly, this fossil was not primitive.  They restated at the end of the paper that this fossil is an example of “exceptional evolutionary stasis of a highly derived morphology, most likely coupled with very specialized cryptic behavior that lasted for [greater than or equal to] 47 million years.”
       As to how exactly this morphology and behavior evolved, they suggested that necessity was the mother of invention: “In all probability,” they speculated, “this advanced type of crypsis evolved in concert with angiosperm leaves on which the insects feed.  It must have been caused by vigorous selection pressure by visually oriented predators” such as birds, lizards, bats and primates. 

Do you see how the evolutionary mindset works?  The thought never enters any evolutionist’s brain that evolutionary theory could be at fault.  No matter how bizarre, conflicting and falsifying the evidence, Darwin’s image must be worshipped and the sacrifices* must continue.  It doesn’t matter that no evolution happens in some lineages for tens or hundreds of millions of years (think about that!) for them to keep the pieces of their story straight, while evolution is extremely, fantastically rapid in other quarters.  In the time tree-swinging monkeys supposedly became philosophers, and all kinds of dramatic other changes took place, leaf-mimicking insects changed nada.  Are we to believe that the predators were all so stupid in this time never to catch on to the trick?  “Don’t eat me; I’m a leaf!”  Right.
    Even more astonishing is the conservation of noncoding elements between sharks and humans.  Evolutionary theory is so plastic and malleable, like silly putty, (12/14/2004), it makes evolutionists downright silly, buddy.  We are asked to believe that all the radiations of fish into seahorses and angler fish and tunas showed more evolution of these elements from their cartilaginous swimming mates than 530 million years of evolution of all the other vertebrates—reptiles, birds, and every mammal from shrews to giraffes to elephants and man.  We are expected to trust the evolutionists because they are priests of Science and know the Truth of Almighty Darwin (t.o.a.d.).  Don’t be a toady.
Next headline on:  Evolutionary Theory • Genetics • Terrestrial Zoology • Fossils

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^*The sacrificial system consists of offering to the idol the live brains of human children.

Surely someone is joking.  This story is either a spoof, or some researchers who never took a logic class have way too much time on their hands.   Other nations aren’t happy because of football victories far more recent than 14 years ago.  Lowered expectations don’t bring happiness, either; remember Murphy’s Non-Reciprocal Laws of Expectations? (see 12/14/2006 commentary).  Maybe the Danes just have a higher proportion of jolly nincompoops who just don’t know what’s going on.  If they did, they would be depressed (see this, for instance).      Happiness based on anything material or temporal can be taken away.  And happiness based on lowered expectations is not really happiness.
    There was a high expectation once that did come to pass.  It had been expected for years (Simeon, Anna) and centuries – even millennia (Peter).
Long lay the world, in sin and error pining—
“Hope deferred makes the heart sick,” said Solomon, “but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.”  Waiting for the promised Messiah must have seemed hopeless at times to the beleaguered exiles, Hasmoneans, and scattered of the remnant who still read the copies of copies of scrolls of Isaiah and the prophets.
But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah,
though you are small among the clans of Judah,
out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel,
whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.  (Micah).
Looking back more than 2000 years, we can hardly imagine the expectation tinged with doubt of those who, under Roman oppression, longed for redemption.
Till He appeared, and the soul felt its worth.
This season, you can have something better than happiness.  You can have joy.  C.S. Lewis described joy as “an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction.”  The fact that we have such a desire, Lewis argued, is proof there must be an Object for it (see Probe Ministries exposition by Michael Gleghorn).  Evolution would not produce a desire that universal experience shows is incapable of being satisfied by material things.  Christmas represents the manifestation of the Object of that deepest of universal human desires.  It was the breakthrough of heaven to earth.
A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn...
If you get a football or soccer ball under the tree, it will disintegrate into dust.  The euphoria over a sports event will fade into oblivion.  But 2000 years after the first Christmas, individuals all over the world continue to rejoice:
Joy to the world, the Lord is come!  Let earth receive her King;
Let every heart prepare Him room, and heav'n and nature sing.
There is still Joy in this dark old world.  We just need to get the word out to the people who need it most (watch this).  Merry Christmas!
Next headline on:  Dumb Ideas • Bible and Theology

Symphony: that’s intelligent design language.  Some ID thinkers have compared creation to a living symphony instead of a mechanical clock.  We hope you were paying attention.  If you were, you just got a free concert without the need for headphones.  You may now applaud the Composer (12/11/2006).
Next headline on:  Human Body • Amazing Facts

Anybody smell Darwin in these comments?  The fresh air of intelligent design “logic” in the operation of living things brings with it a renewed sense of vitality for research.
Next headline on:  Plants • Amazing Facts

1. I was a Spanish monster:  A new giant sauropod has been found in Spain, reported EurekAlert based on a paper in Science.¹  Named Turiasaurus riodevensis by the discoverers, it ranks among the largest of dinosaurs and is the first giant sauropod found in Europe, weighing 40-48 tons (equal to six or seven adult male elephants).  To help modern sports fans visualize the beast, it would have extended the length of an NBA basketball court, EurekAlert said.  National Geographic News added that it had a claw the size of a football.  Must have been quite a half-time show at the Dino Bowl.
       The Science paper described the new sauropod as “primitive” because “The proximal end of the tibia is compressed mediolaterally,” as in other assumed “basal sauropods.”  They classified it into a new clade, Turiasauria.  Most giant sauropods have been found in North and South America and Africa, and belonged to a different clade, Neosauria.  “Turiasaurus however, demonstrates that at least one of the more basal (non-neosauropod) lineages achieved gigantic size independently.”
       An artist’s rendition of the beast can be found on the Reuters story at MSNBC, along with a photograph of the excavators at work.  See also EurekAlert.
2. Go eat a rock:  You might think only pranksters would feed rocks to ostriches, but that’s what some German scientists did, reported EurekAlert.  They were trying to find out of stomach stones (gastroliths) in large birds and dinosaurs were actually used for grinding up food.  The pieces of granite, rose quartz and limestone from the dissected birds after they were slaughtered showed rough edges and wear.  This is not how alleged gastroliths from sauropod sites look.  Those smooth stones also represent a much smaller proportion of the animals’ bodies and are not found at all sauropod sites.  The scientists are at a loss to explain the stones.  Maybe the dinosaurs ingested them accidentally or absorbed minerals from them.  The scientists are also puzzled about how the behemoths digested the large quantities of vegetable mass they must have eaten each day.
3. Two mouths are better than one:  At the other end of the size scale, a tiny juvenile dinosaur with two heads was found in China.  BBC News has a picture of the unusual fossil.  Two-headed snakes and turtles are known, but the rarity of the embryonic defect makes this a highly improbable find.  Since both heads had independent long necks, the critter might have been able to hold conversations with itself – not for long, though; its tiny size indicates it died young.

The articles both mentioned evolution but only in an offhand, inconsequential manner.  To think that gigantic sauropods evolved independently is a stretch.  The description “primitive” is in the eye of the phylogenist.  Clearly these were successful, well-adapted creatures that knew more about digestion than we do.
Next headline on:  Dinosaurs • Birds

Human-Ape Gap Quadruples   12/20/2006    
Remember that old truism that humans and chimpanzees share 98.5% of their genes?  Try 94% instead.  That’s a new estimate by Matthew Hahn (Indiana U) and a team who published in a new online journal, PLoS One.¹  J.R. Minkel, writing for Scientific American, said “The 6 percent difference is considerably larger than the commonly cited figure of 1.5 percent.”
    Why such a drastic revision?  Hahn says the earlier estimate fails to take into account duplicated genes.  As Minkel explains it assuming evolution,

The new finding supports the idea that evolution may have given humans new genes with new functions that don’t exist in chimps, something researchers had not recognized until recently.  The older value of 1.5 percent is a measure of the difference between equivalent genes in humans and chimps, like a difference in the spelling of the same word in two similar languages.  Based on that figure, experts proposed that humans and chimps have essentially the same genes, but differed in when and where the genes turn on and off.
    The new research takes into account the possibility for multiple copies of genes and that the number of copies can differ between species, even though the gene itself is the same or nearly so.

There you have it: another bad case of the statistics fallacy.  Genomes are extremely complex entities that are just barely understood.  Depending on what you choose to look at, you can find all kinds of similarities and differences and come up with agenda-driven numbers.  It seems clear that the earlier estimate was motivated by an evolutionary agenda to show how similar we were to the apes.  If this new estimate becomes widely accepted, evolutionists are going to have a terrible time explaining this many genetic changes in “only” six million years.  It’s too late for them to even try, though, now that neo-Darwinism has been falsified (see 12/14/2006 entry).
    We really must help the Darwinian science reporters get over their bad habit of personifying evolution.  It’s so pre-ID.
Next headline on:  Early Man • Genetics
Related entries:  08/22/2006, 05/26/2004, 05/25/2004, 10/25/2002, 09/23/2002.

Based on these findings, we suggest that hummocky cross-stratification optimally forms above (but near) storm wave base where aggradation rates during storms are high enough to preserve hummocks but unidirectional current speeds are sufficiently low to generate low-angle, isotropic cross-stratification.  Swaley cross-stratification is also hypothesized to be deposited by an aggrading hummocky bed between fair-weather and storm wave base, but in shallower water where aggradation rates are low enough to cause preferential preservation of swales.

OK, you learned something about a peculiar geological formation, which the authors describe as “enigmatic sedimentary structures.”  So what?  Well, what is interesting is where these are found.  The Grand Canyon has lots of HCS.  You can see a prominent outcropping along the Supai Trail, for instance, up from the springs.  A creation geologist was pointing these out on a hike one day, and said, “What’s unusual about these examples is their size.  These are very large hummocks – much larger than anything that is being formed today.”  It must be remembered that these sedimentary layers exposed in the Grand Canyon extend throughout several Western states and some of them throughout a good portion of North America.  Considering not only their size, but their widespread distribution throughout the canyon, he considered these as uncontrovertible evidence of a flood catastrophe like the world has never seen.  Perhaps so; nobody was there to witness these rocks being laid down, but models can help us evaluate the plausibility of such inferences.  Think about it.  Whatever happened at this point on the Supai Trail, it was certainly not a good day for a beach picnic.
Next headline on:  Geology

“The most abundant minerals are the crystalline silicate minerals, olivine and pyroxene, along with troilite (FeS).  These are very stable phases, common in planetary materials; however, finding them here is somewhat surprising because many expected that cometary material would be similar to interstellar material, in which most silicates are believed to be amorphous.

The Stardust spacecraft collected thousands of particles from comet 81P/Wild 2 and returned them to Earth for laboratory study.  The preliminary examination of these samples shows that the nonvolatile portion of the comet is an unequilibrated assortment of materials that have both presolar and solar system origin.  The comet contains an abundance of silicate grains that are much larger than predictions of interstellar grain models, and many of these are high-temperature minerals that appear to have formed in the inner regions of the solar nebula.  Their presence in a comet proves that the formation of the solar system included mixing on the grandest scales.

We love planetary scientists, but sometimes they deserve to get rattled for thinking inside the box.  There’s a creation scientist who thought outside the box and predicted things that have now been confirmed from Stardust and Deep Impact.  Read Walt Brown’s theory at CreationScience.com.  It includes a detailed explanation of why the other theories don’t work.  Dr. Brown has a PhD from MIT and taught mathematics and physics at the college level.  His ideas will be too radical for some, but isn’t science supposed to be about making predictions that can be falsified?  Look at the scoreboard and watch the secularists scratching their heads on this one before ruling out the mavericks.  His article is also beneficial for its review of physics and celestial mechanics, and shares many interesting little-known facts about comets often glossed over in the textbooks.
    For millennia, comets were seen as bad omens, striking fear and worry into observers.  It’s amazing how history repeats itself in unusual ways.
Next headline on:  Solar System • Geology • Physics

The incorrigible Big Science pragmatists see only riches and fame for themselves in the promise of ES gold.  It matters little to them that adult stem cells are working medical marvels right now.  It matters less to them how immoral it is to create a human life only to harvest its parts.  Moral absolutes?  Bosh; those are forgotten notions from Christian days when people believed Truth and Morals didn’t evolve like everything else.
    Moral barriers are falling fast in the stampede to be first.  The relativists add insult to injury by turning the blame onto those with ethical concerns.  They accuse them of using “harsh words” when bringing up the E word eugenics.  The criticism assumes a moral standard of harshness.  Such hypocrisy warns us that the pro-ES crowd has abandoned all consistency and morality in the rush for ES research.  They laugh all the way to the bank that only a small minority in France follow the Church on moral issues these days.  Ten thousand amoral Frenchmen, of course, could never be wrong.
Next headline on:  Health • Politics and Ethics

1. Underwater jet propulsion lab  Squid know how to maneuver in ways that are the envy of submarine operators.  That’s why researchers at U of Colorado are trying to imitate the “vortex ring” method of propulsion, according to Live Science.  “Vortex rings are formed when a burst of fluid shoots out of an opening, moving in one direction and spreading out as it curls back.”  If mastered, this technology might not only help underwater exploration subs, but permit the designing of microscopic craft that “guide tiny capsules with jet thrusters through the human digestive tract, enabling [doctors] to diagnose disease and dispense medications, the researchers said.”
2. Skin so shiny:  The octopus and its relatives, cuttlefish and squid, have an unusual skin that is perfect for camouflage, reports News@Nature.  A group at Woods Hole, Massachusetts found a protein with “remarkable properties” that is responsible: it reflects light almost perfectly.  Roger Hanlon found that the bottom layer of octopus skin is made up of cells called leucophores “composed of a translucent, colourless, reflecting protein” that has such perfect broadband reflection, “they reflect all wavelengths of light that hit at any angle.”
       Cuttlefish have an additional trick.  Their leucophores are covered by flat platelets called iridophores that enhance “the brightness of the whiteness,” Hanlon said, adding, “These are very complex 3-D cells.”  The protein involved is appropriately named reflectin.
       Reporter Katherine Sanderson explained how this knowledge can help humans.  “The molecules that make octopus skin so successful as a dynamic camouflage could provide materials scientists with a new way to make super-reflective materials.”  Such knowledge would be of interest to law enforcement and the military.  Not only would this protect those working at night; some day, a Halloween costume made of cuttlefish skin could look pretty scary.
3. Too cool watercraft  Jet skis are going to seem like kid stuff when “Dolphin watercraft” become popular.  Look at the picture on CNet News.  The high-performance, submersible Dolphin can leap above the waves and do barrel rolls, just like a dolphin.  Are these for real?  Believe it or not; Innespace Productions has a website and picture gallery.
       The boats really do look like dolphins and come in one-person and two-person versions.  Designers Dan Innes and Rob Piazza explain the principle: “These positively buoyant vessels use their forward momentum and the downward lift of their wings to literally fly below the water’s surface.  This radical departure from the typical method of sinking below the surface allows the Dolphins to achieve an unparalleled level of freestyle performance.”
       As a result of their mimicry wizardry, their “fully functional show ready watercraft” is able to “perform sustained dives, huge jumps, barrel rolls, and many other amazing acrobatic tricks.”  After their upcoming 2007 Dolphin demonstration tour, everybody will want one.  Will this be the next competitive sport?  Maybe someday Sea World will have live dolphins and their trainers in Dolphin watercraft competing side by side for audience applause.  (If the inventors can get theirs to eat fish and reproduce, then they’ll really be onto something.)
4. Bug in a fix:  Microbes may not be animals per se, but they also have technical secrets to teach us big animals.  A deep-sea microbe at a scorching hot vent figured out how to fix nitrogen at a record temperature, 92°C, reported Science Daily and News@Nature.  Though both articles speculated on how this new form of nitrogen fixation might have evolved, the feat has chemists interested in learning “to better mimic the process for industrial use.”  Current artificial methods of fixing nitrogen to produce fertilizer are costly and inefficient compared to the way microbes do it.  News@Nature quoted a French scientist saying, “Given the importance of nitrogen fixation in global agriculture and the creative exploitation of novel organisms by the biotechnology industry, a heat-stable nitrogenase is likely to find a useful industrial application.”
5. Robo-flagellum:  Live Science reported that somebody is already trying to mimic the bacterial flagellum.  An Australian inventor has achieved higher rpm with less twisting force by imitating the way bacteria swim.  Some day, his tiny inventions may be able to swim through your blood vessels, hopefully for beneficial ends: “Ultimately, tiny microrobots would give surgeons the ability to avoid traumatic and risky procedures in some cases,” Bill Christensen reported.  “A remotely-controlled microrobot would extend a physician’s ability to diagnose and treat patients in a minimally invasive way.”  Imagine surgery without scalpels and anesthesia.  Could we see a day where you get surgery at an outpatient clinic, and watch a microbot in real time on a monitor screen as it swims on command inside you to the problem area with a load of medicine?  It tickles just thinking about it.

If so, fire him for incompetence.  Even a real dolphin could tell that a high-performance watercraft had to be intelligently designed.  Don’t even ask the inventors unless you want to get slugged.  The Dolphin boat didn’t just “emerge” by chance in their machine shop.  They made it on porpoise.
    There’s a revolution going on that is positive, exciting, stimulating, promising, and beneficial to all: the imitation of nature’s designs.  The projects listed above have no use for evolutionary theory.  They were stimulated by good old-fashioned curiosity and careful observation.  It’s time for the Darwinists to step aside with their useless speculations and distasteful arrogance, and let science get back to its roots: understanding how things work and using them for the benefit of mankind.  The researchers and inventors mentioned above are not going to work better or harder by being told Tinker Bell fairy tales about how these things ”evolved” or “emerged” without a design or plan.
    If the Darwin cultists want to preach their dogma, we have freedom of religion in this country.  Let them build their own temples and offer sacrifices to their Charlie idols and see if anybody cares. 
Next headline on:  Biomimetics • Marine Life • Genetics • Cell Biology • Intelligent Design • Amazing Facts

Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week:  Comets as Life’s Lego Jumper Cables    12/15/2006  
Results of the Stardust mission made the cover of Science this week.¹  The Jet Propulsion Laboratory put out a press release that condensed the abstruse papers into a simplistic story built around the L word life.  Publicist David Agle wrote for the Lego generation:

Just as kits of little plastic bricks can be used to make everything from models of the space shuttle to the statue of liberty, comets are looking more and more like one of nature’s toolkits for creating life.  These chunks of ice and dust wandering our solar system appear to be filled with organic molecules that are the building blocks of life.

Scientists writing for the journals should learn to be more careful about uttering the L word in their writings.  It tends to trigger a knee-jerk reaction in publicists and actors, causing an uncontrollable reflex ending with insertion of foot in mouth.  Sometimes the foot misses the mouth and hits the eye or forehead.
Next headline on:  Solar System • Origin of Life • Dumb Ideas

Subjecting TEM-1 to random mutational drift and purifying selection (to purge deleterious mutations) produced changes in its fitness landscape indicative of negative epistasis; that is, the combined deleterious effects of mutations were, on average, larger than expected from the multiplication of their individual effects.  As observed in computational systems, negative epistasis was tightly associated with higher tolerance to mutations (robustness).  Thus, under a low selection pressure, a large fraction of mutations was initially tolerated (high robustness), but as mutations accumulated, their fitness toll increased, resulting in the observed negative epistasis.  These findings, supported by FoldX stability computations of the mutational effects, prompt a new model in which the mutational robustness (or neutrality) observed in proteins, and other biological systems, is due primarily to a stability margin, or threshold, that buffers the deleterious physico-chemical effects of mutations on fitness.  Threshold robustness is inherently epistatic—once the stability threshold is exhausted, the deleterious effects of mutations become fully pronounced, thereby making proteins far less robust than generally assumed.

Thus, theory and simulations have predicted a tight correlation between robustness and epistasis.  Our work provides an experimental verification of this correlation and proposes a mechanism that accounts for it.  Our model implies that any biological system that exhibits threshold robustness, or redundancy robustness, is inevitably epistatic.  In such systems, mechanisms that purge potentially deleterious mutations, such as recombination (through sexual reproduction and other mechanisms) are of crucial importance, as they help to maintain this threshold.  In this way, recombination, threshold robustness and negative epistasis may be interlinked—each being an inevitable by-product of the other.

It is extremely important that followers of the creation-evolution debate understand this story and the earlier one (10/14/2004), because they cut to the heart of Darwinist claims that mutations and natural selection can create brains out of atoms given millions of years.  This is where the rubber meets the road: can mutations and recombination under selection act in concert to produce evolutionary progress, including wings and eyes and sonar and powered flight?  Complex systems need an explanation at the genetic level.  The modern synthesis of evolutionary theory (neo-Darwinism) maintains that mutations are the source of evolutionary novelty, and that natural selection preserves the rare beneficial mutations in a cumulative way.  This is the machine room from which “endless forms most beautiful” (06/29/2005) emerge without a Designer.  Two scientific papers reported here, that would likely be little noticed otherwise, have essentially falsified neo-Darwinism in the lab.  Theory and experiment both show it does not work.
    In the previous entry (10/14/2004) we likened the situation to a victim held up by robbers but protected by guardian angels.  The bad news was that the robbers either shoot each other or shoot the victim simultaneously, and the guardian angels fight each other instead of helping the victim.  It’s like a Murphy’s “Non-Reciprocal Laws of Expectations” that state, (1) Positive expectations produce negative results, and (2) Negative expectations produce negative results.  The neo-Darwinists have put all their hope in positive expectations, but real-world experiments show that mutations do not and cannot add up for good.  They conspire for bad!  Only the built-in safety mechanisms in the cell hold off mutational catastrophe.  This same lesson should have been learned from the important 03/17/2003 entry almost four years ago; presumed benefits actually cause “slippage on the treadmill” to keep the organism, at best, just running in place.
    Another analogy may illuminate what this new outwardly dry, boring, technical paper said.  Picture a large, well-run factory with numerous modern systems for safety, backup and security.  Along comes a motley gang with no plan other than to wreak havoc at random.  Some are blocked by the entrance controls.  Those that get inside start overturning tables, knocking out factory workers, setting off alarms and creating general mayhem.  The security systems each come into play as planned, trying to isolate the damage, restore backups, and start the redundant processes.  Workers scramble to copy off the important data to other sections of the factory where the work can continue.  Security guards manage to neutralize some of the attackers, but more keep coming in.  Some gangsters plug the real workers then steal their lab coats and badges, wandering around to do their harm by stealth.  To an outsider, it may not be apparent that anything is wrong – for awhile – because the factory continues to function; supplies come in, goods go out.  In time, however, the best-prepared factory may not be able to carry on.  Fires are set at random.  Automatic sprinklers respond as designed, but now they have damaged the computers.  Gangsters pull fire alarms here and there, confusing workers who don’t know whether to ignore them or run outside.  Security forces are eventually overwhelmed.  Backup systems are damaged as soon as they are brought online.  It’s too much; the factory implodes in a catastrophe, and everything shuts down.
    If this is really the way mutations work in a cell, it should be obvious to everyone that trusting any random mechanism to produce order is a vain hope and supreme folly.  This, of course, is what anti-Darwinists have been maintaining since 1859.  That it would take two research teams with no ties to creationist organizations or the intelligent design movement, published in two of the most adamantly anticreationist scientific journals in the world (PNAS and Nature) to finally figure this out should be of great interest to historians and sociologists.  What is it about Darwinian faith that generates negative epistasis against common sense?
    Evolutionary theory is coasting downhill on a dead-end track with no fuel in the engine, while the passengers are being served cheese and wine, not knowing anything is wrong.  Creation-Evolution Headlines is like the tattler running down the aisles warning everybody about bad news only the engine crew is aware of, despite the pleasant announcements on the intercom.  We think the customers who paid for the trip deserve to be told the truth: despite how smoothly things appear to be running, they just got sold a dead-end trip to destruction.
Next headline on:  Cell Biology • Darwinism • Genetics

1. Kiwi ghost:  New Zealand wasn’t supposed to have any native mammals, but bones of a small rodent near Otago on the South Island were reported in PNAS this week.¹  The discoverers said this points to a “ghost lineage” of one or more mammals that must have inhabited the isolated archipelago.  Since they dated the mammal in the Miocene (19-16 million years ago), they are puzzled that it seems to represent an early rodent that pre-dates the split of marsupials and placentals assumed to have occurred in the early Cretaceous 125 million years ago.  That means that mammals must have existed in New Zealand for over 100 million years, but as yet, no other traces of them have been found.
2. Your soul-mate, the whale:  EurekAlert reported that a specialized kind of brain cells found in humans, called spindle cells, has been found in whale brains.  This is odd, since whales are thought to have split off the mammal line prior to 30 million years ago.  They speculate that these cells first appeared in the hominid line 15 million years ago.  Finding spindle cells in such widely separated groups represents an evolutionary puzzle.  The article speculates, “It may also be that they evolved several times independently in the two cetacean suborders; part of this process may have taken place at the same time as they appeared in the ancestor of great apes, which would be a rare case of parallel evolution.”
3. Get your nitrogen fix:  Bacteria were thought to possess the secrets of nitrogen fixation, but now this ability has been found in Archaea, a separate kingdom of single-celled organisms, reports EurekAlert.  The article also states that Archaea are far more widespread than earlier believed, not just denizens of hot springs and other extreme environments.
4. Shrimp special:  A “Jurassic shrimp” was discovered in a marine census, reported New Scientist Environment.  Thought to have gone extinct 50 million years ago, this species was found alive and well 5000 meters below the Sargasso Sea.
5. What’s my line?  An australopithecine thought to be on the human family tree must be relegated to a separate branch, reports National Geographic News and University of Liverpool.  “Little Foot,” a member of the Australopithecus africanus family, can’t be our ancestor, because new radiometric experiments on the soil surrounding the bones in a South African cave yield a date of “only” 2.2 million years old.  “This is because the team found that ‘Little Foot’ lived after the arrival of the stone tool makers, Homo habilis, raising the possibility that this family was more of a side branch of the human evolutionary tree.”
6. Amber alert:  Germs have been identified in amber said to be 220 million years old, reported National Geographic News.  “Surprisingly, these microscopic organisms look quite familiar to today’s scientists.”  What does this do to the concept of index fossils?²   “Most fossils of microorganisms have been found in marine sediments, not terrestrial environments,” the article explains.  “And such marine fossils typically reveal patterns of great change over Earth’s many epochs, unlike the new Triassic amber find.”  The authors of the paper in Nature³ ended by noting this remarkable stasis:

   Our findings show that different genera, and even species, of microbial taxa have been able to survive geological epochs.  Higher levels in food webs, on the other hand, have been shaped by environmental changes, such as those that caused the mass extinction at the Cretaceous-Palaeogene boundary.  Unchanged since the Lower Mesozoic, protozoans survived the entire era of the dinosaurs, as well as the diversification of angiosperms, birds and mammals.

7. Rocky’s rival:  A gliding squirrel-like mammal has been found in Mongolia clocking a shocking evolutionary date of 125 million years and reported in Nature.⁴  The New York Times had a story about the find.  A paleontologist who reviewed the discovery said this “wholly unexpected diversity of something adapted for gliding at this early time is absolutely astonishing.”  Only recently, he said, scientists thought mammals of the time were small, shrew-like animals living under the shadow of the dinosaurs.  “This was just totally out of nowhere,” said one of the team members, referring to the time gap this creates between this mammal’s time period and the earliest appearance of mammal flight that had been assumed before:

   Until now, the earliest identified gliding mammal was a 30-million-year-old extinct rodent.  The first known modern bat, which is capable of powered flight, dates to 51 million years ago, but it is assumed that proto-bats were probably gliding much earlier....
   In the journal report, Dr. [Jin] Meng and colleagues wrote, “This discovery extends the earliest record of gliding flight for mammals at least 70 million years earlier in the geological history and demonstrates that mammals were diverse in their locomotor strategies and life styles”.....
   “We have very little fossil record of mammalian flight, and suddenly this one comes along at such an early time,” Dr. Meng said.  “Now the question is, what happened to this group between then and now?”

   Between then and now, in fact, something big happened: the dinosaurs went extinct in some global catastrophe.  A corollary of Meng’s question is why the big dinosaurs went extinct, when fragile furriers lacking the body armor of thick-skinned giants like Ankylosaurus survived.  It wasn’t simply a matter of habitat.  Now we know that some Cretaceous mammals lived in the water, some burrowed underground, and this one lived in the trees.

The stretch-and-squish theory of evolution (12/14/2004) is the biggest con job in the history of science.  Data are props to the trick.  The spotlight is on the Darwin Party street comedian’s ability to spin an entertaining story out of anything that happens along, while surreptitiously filching funds from the public pocket.
Next headline on:  Darwinism and Evolution • Fossils • Dating Methods • Mammals

In December of 2005, critics of the theory of intelligent design (ID) hailed federal judge John E. Jones’ ruling in Kitzmiller v.  Dover, which declared unconstitutional the reading of a statement about intelligent design in public school science classrooms in Dover, Pennsylvania.  Since the decision was issued, Jones’ 139-page judicial opinion has been lavished with praise as a “masterful decision” based on careful and independent analysis of the evidence.  However, a new analysis of the text of the Kitzmiller decision reveals that nearly all of Judge Jones’ lengthy examination of “whether ID is science” came not from his own efforts or analysis but from wording supplied by ACLU attorneys.  In fact, 90.9% (or 5,458 words) of Judge Jones’ 6,004-word section on intelligent design as science was taken virtually verbatim¹ from the ACLU’s proposed “Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law” submitted to Judge Jones nearly a month before his ruling.  Judge Jones even copied several clearly erroneous factual claims made by the ACLU.  The finding that most of Judge Jones’ analysis of intelligent design was apparently not the product of his own original deliberative activity seriously undercuts the credibility of Judge Jones’ examination of the scientific validity of intelligent design.

Download and read the PDF file.  This revelation is sure to create a large ripple around the web.  The Darwin Party will do its best to do damage control, claiming that such quotation of documentation is common practice for judges (i.e., judges are allowed to plagiarize with reckless abandon).  But this judge has personally taken credit and received adulation for his ruling as if it were his own material.  When the public learns that he borrowed most of it word-for-word from the ACLU, a leftist-secularist-liberal organization despised by many Americans, they may return his little Christmas present with a strong “no, thanks.”
    Even those who have no particular feelings about the ACLU should be shocked at how biased Jones was to quote so much from one side – even repeating known inaccuracies – and not give due consideration to material provided by the other side.  He brazenly stated that his court was not an activist court – but now look at how he liberally used material from one of the most liberal activist organizations in the country.  Then, he went around the country speaking, getting a standing O at the Geological Society of America, accepting all this gushing praise for his intellect and originality (Access Research Network contains a list of his 2006 speaking engagements; see also an ad for his upcoming appearance at the Botany and Plant Biology 2007 Conference).  Is this how impartial judges are supposed to behave?  It doesn’t take much intellect to cut and paste.  This gives us an idea of what to do with the Dover decision: drag and drop.
    Hopefully this expose will kick the Dover crutch out from under the opponents of intelligent design and make people realize the highly-touted opinion last year came from a very biased source and cannot be trusted.  The time has come for school boards to stop fearing the Dover case and reconsider the issues about intelligent design in education fairly.  Jones’s opinion was not the last word, but the first laugh.  Everyone knows who laughs best.  For example, watch this spoof at Overwhelming Evidence.
Next headline on:  Politics and Ethics • Intelligent Design • Education

Do this experiment: invite a hard-core Darwinist to a quality Christmas concert at a good old-fashioned, Bible-believing church in town – you know, the kind that actually believes Jesus was born in Bethlehem as the Son of God, with angels singing and all the rest.  We realize this is somewhat risky to your friend’s health, at least at first.  The shock of seeing such joy may be too much to endure.  He or she will undoubtedly become very conflicted, trying to Darwinize the overwhelming display of artistry, factual content, confident hope and love as manifestations of sexual selection and selfish genes.
    A Christmas Concert with instruments, choir, soloists, a short sermon and the involvement of a happy audience with talented and committed Christian musicians carries a message with a wallop that will be hard to explain away.  In only 90 minutes, a Christmas Concert intertwines elements of history, music, light and color, theology, emotion, intellect, reasonable faith and love in ways that a scientific paper and website cannot possibly convey.  It will be hard for your poor Darwinist friend to rationalize the lovely lilting voice of the soprano as glorified ape grunts, or the incomparable blend of rich male voices with female voices in the choir, each with their characteristic sonorities combined with human language expressing intelligent communications, artfully woven into rich aesthetic harmonies, as manifestations of sexual selection.  Then a good preacher can wrap this all around a solid message based on the real events that occurred in Bethlehem and Jerusalem in recorded history (you know, about Herod, Caesar Augustus and the rest of those mythical characters in the Christmas story), showing that this is not just some social ritual a few steps up from the jungle.  Any Darwinist with a piece of soul left will have to ponder, Have I been missing something?
O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie,
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by.
Yet in thy dark streets shineth the Everlasting Light;
The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.
For unto us a child is born; unto us a son is given;
And the government shall be upon His shoulder,
And His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.
    The spiritual dimension that makes humans unique in all creation will be displayed in a loving, thought-provoking, uplifting atmosphere where everyone can breathe easier.  Darwinism doesn’t have a song that can compare with such a spectacle.  Music plunges into a soul where argument cannot reach.
    You won’t need to say anything afterwards except, “Thank you for joining me!  I’m so glad you could come.  Merry Christmas!”  If your Darwinist friend can manage to endure the initial pain of withdrawal that night alone at home, then he or she, too, might be drawn to take their first, real, invigorating, breath of fresh air.
PS: Be sure to follow up with an invitation to the Easter Concert.
Next headline on:  Bible and Theology • Health

Modern living organisms are organized into cells.  Fundamentally, a cell consists of a genome, which carries information, and a membrane, which separates the genome from the external environment.  By segregating individual genomes from one another, cellular organization is thought to be critical to the evolution of replicating systems.  Some of the oldest known rocks on Earth (~3.5 billion years old) contain biochemical signatures of life and also contain tantalizing suggestions of cellular fossils.  But how did early self-replicating chemicals give rise to the “cell” as a unified entity?  The combination of a genome and membrane does not constitute a unified cell unless interactions between the components result in mutual benefit.  Was it a lucky accident that genomes and membranes began to cooperate with each other (e.g., evolution of an enzyme to synthesize membrane lipids)?  Or are there simple physicochemical mechanisms that promote interactions between any genome and membrane, leading to the emergence of cellular behaviors?  We explored such mechanisms experimentally, using model protocells.

We suggest that a similar process took place during early evolution--vesicles encapsulating highly active genomic replicators would generate osmotic pressure, causing them to “steal” membrane from other vesicles containing less active sequences.  Genomic fitness (i.e., replicative ability) would be translated into cellular fitness as the genome and membrane increased together, moving the evolutionary unit from the replicating molecule to the whole cell.  As soon as replicators became encapsulated, a primitive form of competition could emerge between cells (see the figure).  Remarkably, this process does not require a chance increase in complexity (e.g., addition of a new enzyme), but instead relies only on the physical properties of a semipermeable membrane encapsulating solute.

Well, Irene has the vocabulary down: emergence, tantalizing suggestions (12/22/2003), simple physicochemical mechanisms that lead to emergence of complexity, and on and on anon.  The only “snowball effect” was her snow job on the judges.  We’ve dealt with the problems of the fatbubble theory (09/03/2004) and the RNA world (07/11/2002) and other leading scenarios at length elsewhere so many times (follow the Chain Links on Origin of Life), it would be superfluous to repeat them here (sample, 02/15/2004).  This young lady did a pretty good job of disgracing her mind without our help.
    Why did other contestants lose out?  Simple; they wrote about nanomachines and networks and photosynthesis – things that sound like intelligent design.  With the Visigoths at the gates (05/06/2006), the Darwin Priests needed to reassure the peasants by showcasing another inductee into the Temple Prostitutes, to show that the cult of Tinker Bell under King Charlie continues unthreatened.  Sad to see another promising young scientist fall under the spell (see next commentary). 
Next headline on:  Origin of Life • Darwinism • Dumb Ideas

1. News@Nature:  “A sharp increase in the amount of oxygen in the air may have sparked the evolution of complex animal life.”
2. Queen’s University:  “Finding an answer to Darwin’s Dilemma: Oxygen may be the clue to first appearance of large animals, says Queen’s prof.”
3. Science Daily:  “The close connection between the first appearance of oxygenated conditions in the world’s oceans and the first appearance of large animal fossils confirms the importance of oxygen as a trigger for the early evolution of animals, the researchers say.”

Animals have an absolute requirement for oxygen, and an increase in late Neoproterozoic oxygen concentrations has been forwarded as a stimulus for their evolution.  The iron content of deep-sea sediments show that the deep ocean was anoxic and ferruginous before and during the Gaskiers glaciation 580 million years ago, becoming oxic afterward.  The first known members of the Ediacara biota are found shortly after the Gaskiers glaciation, suggesting a causal link between their evolution and this oxygenation event.  A prolonged stable oxic environment may have permitted the emergence of bilateral motile animals some 25 million years later.

There it is: the dead giveaway that the Darwinists are conjuring up miracles again: the word emergence.  This is how they dazzle the world with their wizardry and dupe the press.  The mere utterance of the word sends reporters into a trance, where dreams of evolution come true.  In their mythical lands of Ediacara and Gaskiers in the long-lost kingdom of Muddle Earth, the trolls and orcs forge monsters under the sea, their fires stoked with the miracle-working ether of oxygen, under the direction of Sauron’s minion, Tinker Bell.
    Anything is possible in fiction.  Here, the only things required to make complex life emerge are requirements themselves.  “Animals have an absolute requirement for oxygen,” the wizards pronounce, so they add the magic ingredient to their potion, and presto!*  Complex animals with eyes, jointed articulating limbs, fins, molecular machines and coded languages simply emerge from the mix.  In the second article, a well-known chemical evolutionist (aka alchemist), in charmèd spirit, rejoices at the discovery of another putative philosopher’s stone that may bring us “a lot closer to understanding the chemical origins of life.”  Aren’t you fortunate to be living in the Age of Enchantment, where all you have to do is believe.
    The pesky creationists spoil this phantasmagoric vision.  They’re shaking the bed of the dreaming scientists, shouting “Wake up!  Wake up!  You’re late for work!”  No wonder they are so despised.
Next headline on:  Darwinism • Origin of Life • Dumb Ideas

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*Aha, you say, but the article says the emergence took 25 million years.  Watch the new film The Case for a Creator, in which Jonathan Wells describes the brevity of the Cambrian Explosion.  Assuming the evolutionary timeline of Earth history, it would represent just two minutes of a 24-hour day after 21 hours of nothing but unicellular life.  In that two minutes, all the complex animal phyla appeared and remained with their essential body plans from then on.  That’s not just presto, it is prestissimo (04/23/2006 commentary).

Fish Species in African Lake Diversified Rapidly   12/09/2006    
Two related articles in the Public Library of Science (PLoS) show that a large number of species can branch out of a small population in a short time.  Hobbyists familiar with tropical fish appreciate how wide is the variety found within Cichlids.  In the first article,¹ the author alleged that in the last 15,000 years, the number of cichlid species living in the lake grew from a handful to hundreds.  Nearby Lake Malawi, which is supposedly much older, boasts no better variety of cichlids.
    Just as dog breeders select for a desired trait, the environment that each group of fish finds itself in selects for genes that cause the fish to survive well in that environment.  Isolation of the new “breed” of fish causes the combination of genes to be preserved.  The surprise to scientists was the speed at which this happened, compared to their expectations:

Though Lake Victoria cichlids appear millions of years younger than their counterparts in nearby Lake Malawi, both groups display an enormous range of physical and behavioral traits.  This staggering diversity in such young species provides compelling evidence for adaptive radiation, which occurs when divergent selection operates on ecological traits that favor different gene variants, or alleles, in different environments.  When divergent selection on an ecological trait also affects mate choice—promoting reproductive isolation of diverging populations—ecological diversity and speciation may proceed in tandem and quickly generate numerous new species.

Despite substantial theoretical and some experimental support for such “by-product speciation,” few studies have shown that selection has “fixed” alleles (that is, driven its frequency in a population to 100%) with different effects on an adaptive trait in closely related populations.  But now, Yohey Terai, Norihiro Okada, and their colleagues have bridged that gap by demonstrating divergent selection on a visual system gene that influences both ecological adaptation and mate choice in cichlids.

Divergent natural selection acting on ecological traits, which also affect mate choice, is a key element of ecological speciation theory, but has not previously been demonstrated at the molecular gene level to our knowledge.  Here we demonstrate parallel evolution in two cichlid genera under strong divergent selection in a gene that affects both.  Strong divergent natural selection fixed opsin proteins with different predicted light absorbance properties at opposite ends of an environmental gradient.  By expressing them and measuring absorbance, we show that the reciprocal fixation adapts populations to divergent light environments.  The divergent evolution of the visual system coincides with divergence in male breeding coloration, consistent with incipient ecological by-product speciation.

This is exactly what creationists have been saying all along: it doesn’t take long for genetic variation and the environment to produce the variety of species we see.  All species of canines could have descended from one pair on an Ark a few thousand years ago.  From wolves to Chihuahuas, all dogs are of the “dog” kind, and it didn’t take millions of years for their “adaptive radiation.”  In fact, it could have taken only hundreds of years in some cases.  The environment they found themselves in selected for the traits best suited to that environment.  For an evolutionist accustomed to speaking in millions of years, a mere fifteen thousand years for Lake Victoria to get its variety of cichlids is just a blink of time.  Yet they acknowledge that all these species appeared in this amazingly brief period.  Human skin color could have been selected in a similar short time: light skinned people who could make Vitamin D with less sunlight were selected for in northern latitudes, while dark skinned people who resisted the effects of intense sun were selected for in equatorial regions.
    Notice the sleight of mind with terminology in the last quote: “Divergent natural selection”, “parallel evolution”, “divergent selection”, “divergent natural selection”, and “divergent evolution” are used interchangeably to mean the same thing.  We are regularly being conditioned to confuse natural selection with evolution, or, to put it in other terms: micro-evolution with macro-evolution.  Evolution requires new information to be created.  There is no creation of new information here, as the articles admit.  In fact, one of the points the author makes is that the natural selection of the environmental factors often drove the frequency of a particular gene in a fish population to 100%.  All other genes affecting the characteristic had been eliminated.  This is loss of information, not gain – the opposite of what macro-evolution requires.  Surely, the scientists who wrote these papers must know this.  Once again, commitment to evolution is faith in spite of the evidence.
—DK
Next headline on:  Marine Life • Darwinism

1. An Inconvenient Gift:  Should an advocate be allowed to Gore the teacher’s oxygen?  Laurie David, producer of Al Gore’s popular documentary about global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, thought it would be a charitable idea to supply 50,000 DVDs of the movie to the National Science Teacher’s Association, presumably to leverage them as a distributor to its members.  After all, Ms David (the wife of comedian Larry David) probably thought in all seriousness that global warming is a hot topic for science education classes.  She undoubtedly expected that science teachers would be eager to share some of the material from this popular film in class.  When she got a chilly reception to her offer, she accused the NSTA of being in cahoots with ExxonMobil and other oil interests, remarking that she found it shocking that the NSTA would have ties to a company “that has spent millions misinforming the public about global warming.”
       The NSTA has received $6 million from oil and gas interests over the last decade to support science education, but this represents only 3.7% of their budget and came with no strings attached, reported Jeffrey Mervis for Science Now.  Gore himself “threw gasoline on the fire by telling [Jay] Leno, incorrectly, that ExxonMobil has a seat on NSTA’s board.”  The NSTA’s executive director responded that they don’t do mass distributions for anybody or send unsolicited material.  Laurie David was not interested in buying the NSTA’s mailing list and doing the distribution on their own.  “David says NSTA’s imprimatur was essential” to the plan, the article states.  On her website, she has posted letters from teachers angry over the NSTA’s position.
2. Gift Horse or Trojan Horse:  Whether you find this next gift idea a blessing or a curse depends on which side of the evolution debate you’re on.  In September, a group calling itself Truth in Science sent free “resource packs” to all the secondary schools in Britain with DVDs of the intelligent design documentary Unlocking the Mystery of Life, and its adaptation for schools Where Does the Evidence Lead?, along with a teacher’s manual.  Though about 59 schools have decided to incorporate the material in their lessons, this free gift was unwelcome in some quarters.  The Guardian reported that the matter was debated in Parliament, and the government may be telling schools it is “inappropriate” material for the classroom; indeed, reporter James Randerson termed it a “ban” on use of this “creationist” material.  Truth in Science quickly tried to counter the claim that the ministers’ action constitutes a ban.  On Friday, however, Truth in Science reported growing political pressure “as Members of Parliament and Government ministers seek to discourage science teachers from using our resource packs,” some calling for a “restriction” and others a “directive” against their use.  The front page of this organization has links to news on this developing story.  Evolution News, Post-Darwinist and Uncommon Descent have posted reactions.

What should schools do in such situations?  A computer technician from Michigan wrote in with his response:

It actually is a pretty simple solution... only teach provable, observable fact in schools, not opinion.  For instance, you can study all the details about an organism... what it does, its habitat, its gestation period, its predators and its prey.  But you can leave out the atheist opinion that it evolved from inanimate matter.  Since evolution has absolutely nothing to do with any scientific advancement or discovery that has ever taken place, and is really just the origins theory for atheism, what is the benefit of teaching it in schools?  Let students form their own opinions based on the actual, observable facts.

Good thoughts.  Principals, administrators, parents and teachers: try freedom.  We get so paranoid about things teachers are supposed to say or not say, about guidelines and political correctness.  We worry so much about what high school students might hear.  What is needed is honesty and the ability to think.  High school students can be pretty savvy at figuring out what is sensible and what isn’t when they are allowed to hear two sides of a dispute.  They get bored when being spoon-fed official textbook dogma without an opportunity for the teacher to engage the students in lively discussions about evidence and truthfulness.  And teachers should be allowed to think for themselves when getting materials like the Truth in Science videos.  They can judge whether such materials are appropriate without Parliament telling them.
    Nobody wants schools to become pulpits for cults and weird beliefs, but guess what: they already are.  Political correctness, tolerance, relativism, diversity and gay rights are the norm, while the old-fashioned values of patriotism, hard work and responsibility are mocked.  Are the Darwin-only-Darwin-only DODOs making things better?  In many schools it could hardly get worse.
    A return to the basic 3 Rs and a well-rounded, liberal-arts education, combined with emphasis on discernment and understanding instead of rote retention will screen out much of the harmful or useless material that goes around.  Teachers receiving unsolicited material shouldn’t be on the job if they can’t tell what has value and what doesn’t.  Students know when teachers are really helping them think and which are just pushing their own opinions.  Most of us as students had good teachers and bad teachers.  The bad teachers often served as examples and stimulated further examination of our beliefs and assumptions.  Parents need to be involved, knowing what is being taught and voicing support or opposition as needed.  There need to be standards and limits, to be sure, on acceptable behavior and use of the classroom for legitimate purposes.  In general, though, let the free marketplace of ideas do its work.  The only mind at risk is an empty one.
Next headline on:  Media • Politics and Ethics • Education • Darwinism • Intelligent Design

Another example of scientific research that seeks to help people, and owes nothing to evolutionary theory.  The assumption that the healthy body is well-designed produces the best science.
Next headline on:  Human Body • Amazing Facts

The ‘nature versus nurture’ debate is a hot topic in human psychology.  But astronomers too face similar conundrums, in particular when trying to solve a problem that goes to the very heart of cosmological theories: are the galaxies we see today simply the product of the primordial conditions in which they formed, or did experiences in the past change the path of their evolution?

This new census reveals a surprising result.  The colour-density relation, that describes the relationship between the properties of a galaxy and its environment, was markedly different 7 billion years ago.  The astronomers thus found that the galaxies’ luminosity, their initial genetic properties, and the environments they reside in have a profound impact on their evolution.

Good grief, stars have nothing to do with Darwinism.  No, they don’t have genes, and no, they don’t have nurturing parents.  The pure Darwinists are going to get mad for applying natural selection here, to say nothing of confusing it with the controversial notion of niche construction (06/09/2004).
      It’s an equivocation fallacy to associate a galaxy’s physical change over time to the kind of evolutionary story Darwin was promoting.  What is this, some fawning attempt at name-dropping to score political points by granting further honors to Charles Augustus?
Next headline on:  Astronomy • Dumb Ideas

Geckos can run rapidly on walls and ceilings, requiring high friction forces (on walls) and adhesion forces (on ceilings), with typical step intervals of {approx} 20 ms.  The rapid switching between gecko foot attachment and detachment is analyzed theoretically based on a tape model that incorporates the adhesion and friction forces originating from the van der Waals forces between the submicron-sized spatulae and the substrate, which are controlled by the (macroscopic) actions of the gecko toes.  The pulling force of a spatula along its shaft with an angle {theta} between 0 and 90° to the substrate, has a “normal adhesion force” contribution, produced at the spatula-substrate bifurcation zone, and a “lateral friction force” contribution from the part of spatula still in contact with the substrate.  High net friction and adhesion forces on the whole gecko are obtained by rolling down and gripping the toes inward to realize small pulling angles {theta} between the large number of spatulae in contact with the substrate.  To detach, the high adhesion/friction is rapidly reduced to a very low value by rolling the toes upward and backward, which, mediated by the lever function of the setal shaft, peels the spatulae off perpendicularly from the substrates.  By these mechanisms, both the adhesion and friction forces of geckos can be changed over three orders of magnitude, allowing for the swift attachment and detachment during gecko motion.

You probably didn’t realize that geckos were such good physicists.  What’s really cool is thinking about the day we will have gecko boots and can play like Spiderman.
Next headline on:  Biomimetics • Terrestrial Zoology • Amazing Facts

The usual NASA fluff about life on Mars, with its instant recipe “just add water,” can be ignored as an oblique appeal for funding (08/06/2006, 01/07/2005).  What’s interesting is the cratering rate.  The press release did not mention any figures, but said that “If you were living on Mars, chances are that within 10 or 20 years, an impact would occur close enough to where you live that you’d notice it – perhaps you’d hear the impact and it would startle you out of your seat.”
    That represents a pretty remarkable change in thinking about a planet smaller than the Earth.  We don’t get impacts that large that often (thank goodness).  Our atmosphere can only burn up particles smaller than a certain threshold in size relative to entry speed.  Mars has less gravity to attract impacting bodies (but also a thinner atmosphere to resist them).  If impacts large enough to hear or feel in any given place on Mars occur within one or two decades, the planet-wide crater count adds up quickly.  In addition, a single impact can generate multiple secondary craters (see 06/08/2006).  This was corroborated further by one of the photos.  The caption said, “In either case, the impactor came in at a somewhat oblique angle, and broke up just before hitting the ground, because it formed multiple small craters.”  This fresh impact, which occurred sometime after 2001, was as big as a football field.
    Someone without long-age bias should do the math and find out what would be expected if impactors were punching holes at this rate for 4.5 billion years.  Quick mental math (4.5 billion / 10) suggests hundreds of millions of craters in that time – even assuming today’s impact rate held constant, which is probably vastly conservative – and overlooks the larger number of secondaries that would be expected.  If the assumed age were a fact, it would seem the surface should have been pulverized beyond recognition many times over by now.
Next headline on:  Solar System • Dating Methods • Origin of Life

Darwin Missed the Beetle Can Opener Trick    12/05/2006  
You know those big horns on rhinoceros beetles?  They’re not just for showing off.  Scientists at Indiana University found a “surprising function” for them.  It turns out “horned beetles use their young horns as a sort of can opener, helping them bust out of thick larval shells.” 

The function of horned beetles’ wild protrusions has been a matter of some consternation for biologists.  Digging seemed plausible; combat and mate selection, more likely.  Even Charles Darwin once weighed in on the matter, suggesting -- one imagines with some frustration -- the horns were merely ornamental.

Despite the growing presence of developmental biology in evolutionary studies, “Even today, evolutionary theory is very much a theory of adults,” Moczek said.  “But evolution doesn’t morph one adult shape into another.  Instead there’s an entire lifetime of development that we can’t afford to ignore.”

“I think these findings illustrate quite clearly the importance of development to evolutionary biology,” Moczek said.  “By including studies of your organism’s development, at the very least you stand to gain fundamental insights into its biology.  More often than not, however, you may prevent yourself from making big mistakes when drawing up evolutionary histories.  In this case, I think we did both.”  See the related story on EurekAlert.

Lest the proponents of evo-devo think they have scored a point, the authors did not explain where horn-making genes and protein machines came from.  As far as the evidence goes, the ability to make horns and remove them was always present.  How the traits got sorted out in the descendants of horn beetles are due to loss-of-information mutations and natural selection.  Nothing new has been gained. “The hornlessness of some adult beetles is therefore not the result of an inability to make horns....,” the press release mentions, “but the reshaping or reabsorption of horn tissue before the beetles become adults.”
    Evolutionists also cannot explain the sequence of events.  Moczek said that they can’t tell if the horn was needed because the carapace got bigger, or the bigger carapace allowed the formation of horns.  “We are left with the commonly asked question in evolutionary developmental biology, ‘Which came first?’”  Generalizing that question shows that evolutionists know very little at all.  Picture poor Charlie wondering in consternation what tall tale to tell about the big male horns and the hornless females.  He only pondered the adults; he didn’t even think to watch the larvae pop their cans with their clever tool.  Darwin disciples continue to make the same mistake and miss out on a lot of the fun.
    This story is also a lesson about so-called vestigial organs and secondary sexual characteristics (e.g., see entry about male nipples, 11/28/2006).  Something is not vestigial if it had a function in the embryo.  Just because an organ like a tonsil or appendix looks shriveled up compared to its counterpart in other animals, and just because it can be removed without harm, does not mean it is a relic of some mythical evolutionary past.  The right approach should be to look for a function when none is apparent.  A little humility would have saved biologists from getting squirted when this new information popped out of the can.
Next headline on:  Terrestrial Zoology • Darwin and Evolutionary Theory • Amazing Facts

I often tell my students that they do not have to invent anything; in biology everything has already been invented.  What they have to do is find out the solution chosen by evolution.

Current Biology is a leading source of candidates for the SEQOTW prize.  Each issue, the journal interviews a biologist who usually spills the refried Darwin beans out the wrong end, but the editor takes in the methane aroma like a perfume (11/08/2006, 04/08/2002).  This is where Lynn Cassimeris last July called Darwin her Daddy (see 07/18/2006) and where the obligatory answer to “Who is your scientific hero?” is “Charles Darwin, of course.”  They just luv the bearded buddha who introduced Tinker Bell into science and bankrolled the Starving Storytellers.
    It seems to escape Morata’s attention that he just asserted several absurd beliefs without a twinge of conscience or sense of fairness that some debate about these assertions might be in order: viz, that materialistic philosophy (chance and necessity) is a fact, that mindlessness produces minds, and that aimlessness produces inventions worthy of human emulation.  He is also apparently unaware that the concept of junk DNA is on the way out (05/04/2006).  A thankless soul, he dismisses the designs that allow him to breathe, eat, see and think as “inelegant”.  And he commits the fallacy of personification by presenting evolution as an inventor and problem solver who makes choices.  This is the kind of scholarship that allows one to rise to a professorship in biology these days.  One can only hope his students have more sense.
Next headline on:  Biomimetics • Darwinism • Dumb Ideas

Watch the new film The Case for a Creator.  It will tell you what you need to know about the fine-tuning problem.  If the cosmological constant were the only cosmic conundrum, it would be bad enough to explain away.  Try twenty other parameters that are also fine-tuned for our existence.
    “Anthropic” is a pretty self-centered term for evidence that points to God.  Trying to explain away the obvious (intelligent design) by endless appeals to naturalistic improbabilities demonstrates being out of touch with reality.
Next headline on:  Cosmology

This is a huge and glaring ethical omission in reporting.  Not all stem cells are created equal.  The culturing and use of embryonic stem cells has enormous ethical problems, while adult stem cells have none.  Adult stem cells also have an impressive track record of actual health benefits, whereas embryonic stem cells have nothing but hope and hype.
    Christians, conservatives and most anti-Darwinists have serious concerns about the use of embryonic stem cells.  The Darwinists know this and harp on how “people of faith” are standing in their way of doing whatever they want with human life.  They want America and Europe to be like China and Korea where there are fewer concerns about human rights, lest we fall behind in the golden dream of riches and rewards for unknown benefits that might arise from the use of human embryos.  Part of the propaganda war is seen right here – a fallacy of equivocation between two very different concepts that happen to share two words out of three, “stem cells.”  As in the case of American foreign policy vs Iranian foreign policy, the leading word adult vs embryonic makes all the difference.
Next headline on:  Politics and Ethics • Health

Who would have imagined a bird being a champion deep-sea diver?  The diversity and talents of birds should turn us all into bird admirers and bird watchers.  Watch for a sparrow or hummingbird and consider how different it is to an emperor penguin, or an ostrich, or a peregrine falcon.  Yet the sparrow is no less intelligently designed and amazing in its own ways, too.  Watch for the birds in your vicinity and learn something about them on WhatBird.com.
Next headline on:  Birds • Biomimetics • Amazing Facts