Geologist radically reinterprets the geological layers.  In Geology, he argues they are not a Lyellian time sequence, but rather a fractal hierarchy.  See the 03/05/2004 entry.

Seeing Vision in a New Light   03/31/2008    
March 31, 2008 — The eye is like a camera, right?  That picture is way too simplistic.  The eye-brain visual system does image processing and gleans information from photons in diverse and remarkable ways.  Here are some recent findings by scientists:

1. Upward mobility:  A team of Harvard scientists found some retinal ganglion cells that sense upward motion.  Writing in Nature,¹ they began,

   The retina contains complex circuits of neurons that extract salient information from visual inputs.  Signals from photoreceptors are processed by retinal interneurons, integrated by retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) and sent to the brain by RGC axons.  Distinct types of RGC respond to different visual features, such as increases or decreases in light intensity (ON and OFF cells, respectively), colour or moving objects.  Thus, RGCs comprise a set of parallel pathways from the eye to the brain....
       ....Here we show, by means of a transgenic marking method, that junctional adhesion molecule B (JAM-B) marks a previously unrecognized class of OFF RGCs....  These cells have asymmetric dendritic arbors aligned in a dorsal-to-ventral direction across the retina.  Their receptive fields are also asymmetric and respond selectively to stimuli moving in a soma-to-dendrite direction; because the lens reverses the image of the world on the retina, these cells detect upward motion in the visual field.  Thus, JAM-B identifies a unique population of RGCs in which structure corresponds remarkably to function.

2. Got your number:  The retina can also respond to a quality called “numerosity” – a nonverbal, visual sense of number.  David Burr and John Ross, writing in Current Biology,² summarized this unusual ability of the eye:

   Evidence exists for a nonverbal capacity for the apprehension of number, in humans (including infants) and in other primates.  Here, we show that perceived numerosity is susceptible to adaptation, like primary visual properties of a scene, such as color, contrast, size, and speed.  Apparent numerosity was decreased by adaptation to large numbers of dots and increased by adaptation to small numbers, the effect depending entirely on the numerosity of the adaptor, not on contrast, size, orientation, or pixel density, and occurring with very low adaptor contrasts.  We suggest that the visual system has the capacity to estimate numerosity and that it is an independent primary visual property, not reducible to others like spatial frequency or density of texture.

3. Go with the flow:  Many photographs and videos are taken with the camera fixed on a tripod.  What happens to the visual scene in a movie when the camera is mounted on a galloping horse, train engine or race car?  It certainly becomes more dynamic and much more difficult to process the information.
       We saw that dragonflies are masters of optic flow, and that scientists are keen to imitate their special visual organ that processes the information from rapid forward direction (08/13/2004).  Frank Bremmer summarized some new findings in Current Biology that says human eyes also have some of this ability.³  This gives us processing powers beyond the simple interpretation of an image coming through a lens.

   Optic flow is a key signal for heading perception.  A new study has shown that the human brain can dissociate between consistent (natural) and inconsistent flow, revealing what is likely a new hierarchy in visual motion processing.

   He reported on recent “surprising findings” that showed certain areas of the visual cortex, labeled MST, VIP and CSv, appear to be processing stations for optic flow information.

   Taken together, these new results suggest that area MST may be a preprocessing stage acting like a tuned filter for visual self-motion signals.  Areas VIP and CSv, on the other hand, could be seen as downstream processing stages judging the ecological validity of the self-motion signals.  This interpretation would indicate a previously unknown hierarchy within the human visual cortical motion system.

4. Color me blue:  Brian Wandell, Stanford psychologist, wrote in Current Biology about another stimulating fact: the colors activated by the cones that react to red, green or blue when those colors come through the lens (or are transmitted from video pixels) also “see” the corresponding colors when the neurons themselves are stimulated.⁴  Commenting on a study of a patient that had electrodes implanted into the visual cortex, he said:

   Directly stimulating certain cortical neurons can produce a color sensation; a case is reported in which the color perceived by stimulation is the same as the color that most effectively excites the cortical circuitry....

   These results teach us that even the simplest stimulation is capable of stirring up a perceptually meaningful response from the cortical circuitry.  One possibility is that the complex molecular and neural circuitry that serves this portion of the brain is tolerant of a wide range of potential inputs, and that nearly any stimulation of this circuitry evokes a characteristic (resonant) response.  The resonant response of these specific circuits is the experience of color.

5. Polar opposites:  For the first time, scientists found an animal with the ability to discern circularly polarized light: the mantis shrimp.  An international team of scientists reported this in Current Biology⁵ with some obvious pride at being #1 to discover this feat:

   We describe the addition of a fourth visual modality in the animal kingdom, the perception of circular polarized light.  Animals are sensitive to various characteristics of light, such as intensity, color, and linear polarization.  This latter capability can be used for object identification, contrast enhancement, navigation, and communication through polarizing reflections.  Circularly polarized reflections from a few animal species have also been known for some time.  Although optically interesting, their signal function or use (if any) was obscure because no visual system was known to detect circularly polarized light.  Here, in stomatopod crustaceans, we describe for the first time a visual system capable of detecting and analyzing circularly polarized light.  Four lines of evidence—behavior, electrophysiology, optical anatomy, and details of signal design—are presented to describe this new visual function.  We suggest that this remarkable ability mediates sexual signaling and mate choice, although other potential functions of circular polarization vision, such as enhanced contrast in turbid environments, are also possible.  The ability to differentiate the handedness of circularly polarized light, a visual feat never expected in the animal kingdom, is demonstrated behaviorally here for the first time.

6. Super sight:  In the latest issue of Creation magazine (March-May, 2008),⁶ Jonathan Sarfati described one amazing feature of the mantis shrimp, its Guinness-level power punch: it can flick its snapper at 51 mph, generating an acceleration of 10,600 g.  But that’s not all.  In a sidebar, he talked about another Guinness-level ability: the shrimp’s “super sight.”  Would you believe this little crustacean has one of the world’s most complex color vision systems?

   While humans have three different types of colour receptor (red, green and blue), the shrimp has 12.  Four of these can see in the ultraviolet, which we can’t.  Furthermore, they can tune their vision with special transparent colour filters to compensate for the way water absorbs different colours differently.

Isn’t this terrific?  What amazing things are found in nature.  The eye gave Darwin cold shudders, but now we know that it is far more complex than he knew.  And some of the most remarkable capabilities reside in the humblest of creatures.  Shrimp are crustaceans – a subphylum of arthropods, whose members extend all the way back to the Cambrian.  This means that the lowest fossil layers containing multicellular animals already display these technologies (10/04/2007).
    This circuitry and the complex processing software did not emerge by chance.  Each of these capabilities are systems involving hardware and software.  They require programmed analysis and response to sensory inputs.  Eyes are able to extract all kinds of interesting information from light, much more than you would think from the simple diagram in most textbooks of an inverted camera-like image on a retina.
    The research done to find these abilities was done in intelligently-designed labs by intelligent scientists using reverse-engineering principles.  Intelligent design is present de facto from beginning to end.  Evolution is blind, they say; well, evolutionary theory is also blind.  Take off the blinders and see the creation through created eyes.
Next headline on:  Human Body • Physics • Marine Biology • Intelligent Design • Amazing Facts

Current synthetic biomimetic materials remain primitive in comparison to their natural counterparts.  Our ability to incorporate elements of biological inspiration into the design of synthetic materials will be further enhanced through studies such as that by Miserez et al. that advance our understanding of the composition, structure, and processing of complex biological tissues.

Thank you, reporters and scientists, for sparing us any evolution talk in these reports.  Fability (01/16/2007 commentary) is not a requirement for understanding – or for science-advancing inspiration.
Next headline on:  Marine Biology • Biomimetics • Intelligent Design

Lest advocates on either side think that tossing scientific evidences at the other side will be sufficient to win the debate, it would be worthwhile to review something about the philosophy of science.  Most people (and most science reporters, and many scientists) are oblivious to the upheavals in philosophy of science that have occurred over the last two centuries.  They assume the simplistic, positivistic notion that dresses up evolutionary theory in the same robes as the science of Newton, Galileo and Maxwell.  “Science” is imagined as a uniform tradition of smart people who follow a tried-and-true “method” that is guaranteed to produce “knowledge” of “reality” – if not right away, then eventually, because the scientific method drives inquiry down the road to Truth.  Is that picture defensible?
    One of the most outspoken gadflies against the simplistic picture of science in recent memory was Paul Feyerabend (1924-1994).  While not endorsing all his ideas – some of them radical – we would like to review some of his criticisms of science as worth thinking about.  Here is the way philosophy of science professor Jeffrey Kasser (North Carolina State U) summarized some of his views in the Teaching Company lecture series, “Philosophy of Science”

Now, with his mischievous manner and his emphasis on unbridled creativity, Feyerabend is often taken to be anti-science.  And this, I think, is quite unfair.  Feyerabend’s great heroes are scientists like Galileo, and he thinks that back in Galileo’s day, science opposed dogmatism, and stood with creativity and humaneness.
    But Feyerabend believes that this is actually no longer the case.  He thinks that science these days resembles the Catholic church of Galileo’s day, not Galileo.  He thinks that it stifles the spirit and the imagination of those who are involved in it, especially Kuhnian “normal science,” and it bullies those who don’t understand it.
    We have a scientific monopoly on legitimate intellectual authority in our culture, he thinks, and he calls science a threat to democracy – because you and I don’t have a clear understanding of what research our society performs or encourages, and we shouldn’t trust the sort of Orwellian guardians of normal science who want funding for whatever they tell us is important.  We don’t understand their claims, and we’re being pushed around by these people.  So “normal science,” he thinks, supports its own continuation, not human well-being.

Does the shoe fit the Darwiniacs?  Is not Ben Stein making the same accusations?  The point here, again, is not to hold up Feyerabend as The Sage of Science, but to reveal that other notable philosophers like him have criticized the very same things portrayed in Expelled: the dogmatism and close-mindedness of a certain sector of scientists who behave like an intolerant priesthood.
    Not all sciences are created equal.  Economics and psychology should not share the prestige of physics, but even the hard sciences have serious struggles justifying their claims.  Something is unique about Darwinism.  When it comes to the “science” of evolution, all the major scientific institutions tend to go far, far beyond its evidential support (03/06/2008).  Darwinists make outrageous claims (05/09/2006), and then bully anyone who doesn’t kowtow to the consensus (recent example on World Magazine).  Feyerabend was one of the most vocal about this tendency, but there were certainly others who have said similar things.  Thomas Kuhn, ironically, called it “normal science” – to work within a paradigm without questioning it.  Other philosophers have noted the social and historical character of science.  Even the most respected 20th-century philosophers who have defended the epistemic authority of science have struggled to argue that it relates to reality, even when it appears to work.
    Science should be, if anything, a search for the truth about the world.  It should follow the evidence where it leads.  An honest solo scientist who is right is worth a thousand who follow a consensus.  Science, further, is restricted in its domain.  It can only hope to establish certain things with a degree of confidence that are observable, testable and repeatable.  Even those things are hard to establish, to say nothing of grand theories of everything.
    One should not think for a moment, therefore, that what Ben Stein and the advocates of intelligent design are complaining about is some new, fringe problem that can be ignored.  It really is a major conflict that has been building a head of steam for a long time.  It is a matter of justice.  It really is time for a scientific revolution.
    A film can only do so much.  For years we have been advocating opening the doors and windows and letting fresh air into the halls of science (02/07/2007).  Indeed, we have said, it is time to storm the Darwin Party castle and kick the rascals out (01/11/2005, 04/29/2005, 02/01/2007).  It will be up to you and me to harness the momentum of this film and keep it going, to build on it, and make the revolution happen.  Students, teachers, preachers, citizens, parents – are you content with the status quo?  Do you want to let the persecutors and dogmatists remain in power, shutting down debate, ridiculing critics, preventing honest teaching of evolution, ruining careers, and taking over all aspects of life, including the law, politics, economics, the arts, all the sciences, and even morals and religion? (see 11/05/2006 and 11/29/2006).  Then here is a golden opportunity to do something.
    This film needs to succeed at the box office.  Documentaries rarely get huge turnouts, so this one needs grass-roots support.  Buy a ticket.  Take your friends.  Take your classmates, your church, your coworkers.  Contact your local theater and make sure they show it (example: Carmike.com).  Don’t just wait for the DVD; let’s set a record at the box office.  It will send a powerful statement to the Darwin Party that their days of dogmatic control are over.
    But realize, too, that this film will fade from memory in a few months, as even the best films do.  Follow it up with discussions, letters to the editor, involvement at school board meetings, and action.  Talk about it.  Write about it.  Don’t go off half-cocked, speaking with braggadocio about more than you know.  Become informed about evidence and skilled in tactics.  Let Creation-Evolution Headlines be a key resource for news and information – specifics that can provide a wealth of support for your arguments.
Next headline on:  Darwinism • Intelligent Design • Media

Explaining Two Billion Years Without Evolution   03/28/2008    
March 28, 2008 — How does an evolutionist explain the perception that (within their timeline), no multicellular animals emerged for two billion years after the origin of life?  Jonathan Wells has compared this to walking down a football field and encountering nothing but single cells till the 60 yard line, then boom! – all the animal phyla with their complex body plans suddenly appear in one step.  A new plot was “discovered” by researchers at UC Riverside: the microbes were waiting for shipments of oxygen and molybdenum to arrive.
    Science Daily reported how Tim Lyons and his research buddies measured oxygen and molybdenum traces in black shales thought to correspond to the time before the Cambrian explosion.  The idea is that “Molybdenum is a key micronutrient for life and serves as a proxy for oceanic and atmospheric oxygen amounts.”
    Measuring elements in rocks is one thing, but the authors assumed that the mere presence of these two elements in greater amounts was sufficient to supercharge evolution.  Here are some examples from the press release, titled “Reason For Almost Two Billion Year Delay In Animal Evolution On Earth Discovered.”

Suspecting that deficiencies in oxygen and molybdenum might explain this evolutionary lag...

“These molybdenum depletions may have retarded the development of complex life such as animals for almost two billion years of Earth history,” Lyons said.  “The amount of molybdenum in the ocean probably played a major role in the development of early life.  As in the case of iron today, molybdenum can be thought of as a life-affirming micronutrient that regulates the biological cycling of nitrogen in the ocean.”

“These steps in oxygenation are what gave rise ultimately to the first animals almost 600 million years ago -- just the last tenth or so of Earth history.”

For animal life to commence, survive and eventually expand on Earth, a threshold amount of oxygen -- estimated to be on the order of 1 to 10 percent of present atmospheric levels of oxygen -- was needed.

“By tracking molybdenum in shales rich in organic matter, we found the deep ocean remained oxygen- and molybdenum-deficient after the first step.  This condition may have had a negative impact on the evolution of early eukaryotes, our single-celled ancestors. [Clinton Scott, grad student]

“So one question is: Did this global glaciation [Snowball Earth] play a role in the increasing abundance of oxygen which, in turn, enabled the evolution of animals?” [Scott]

The oxidation state of the Proterozoic ocean between these two steps and the timing of deep-ocean oxygenation have important implications for the evolutionary course of life on Earth but remain poorly known.

Subsequent expansion of sulphidic conditions after about 1,800 Myr ago maintained a mid-Proterozoic molybdenum reservoir below 20 per cent of the modern inventory, which in turn may have acted as a nutrient feedback limiting the spatiotemporal distribution of euxinic (sulphidic) bottom waters and perhaps the evolutionary and ecological expansion of eukaryotic organisms.

These results and our estimates for the size of the oceanic reservoir are consistent with the hypothesis that the drawdown of Mo into sulphidic environments may have worked to restrict the occurrence and the evolutionary path of eukaryotes through the bioinorganic bridge linking Mo to N bioavailability.

Our interpretation of Mo cycling in the Late Neoproterozoic suggests that modern redox and nutrient cycles were well established by 551 Myr, shortly after the initial oxidation of the deep ocean, and that the appearance of the first large animals followed not only the oxidation of the deep ocean but also the establishment of modern biogeochemical cycles.

Well, what do you know? (always a good question for a scientist).  They just found another building block of lie (03/19/2008).  Better check and see if Enceladus received its molybdenum shipment yet (03/26/2008 commentary).
    You will understand science reporting about evolution these days when you memorize the Darwin Party M.O. (and that’s not the chemical symbol for molybdenum here, but modus operandi).  A review.
• Step 1: Assume evolution.
• Step 2: Observe a fact.
• Step 3: Make up a story to show how the fact might fit in with the assumption of evolution.

Tomorrow’s entry will describe another part of the process:
• Step 4: Attack, ridicule, hate, persecute and destroy anyone who questions the Darwin Party orthodoxy.
Next headline on:  Darwin and Evolutionary Theory • Dumb Ideas

Even more incredible than the device itself, is that it is based on the world’s tiniest rotary motor: a biological engine measured on the order of molecules.
    Frasch works with the enzyme F1-adenosine triphosphatase, better known as F1-ATPase.  This enzyme, only 10 to 12 nanometers in diameter, has an axle that spins and produces torque.  This tiny wonder is part of a complex of proteins key to creating energy in all living things, including photosynthesis in plants.  F1-ATPase breaks down adenosine triphosphate (ATP) to adenosine diphospahte [sic] (ADP), releasing energy.  Previous studies of its structure and characteristics have been the source of two Nobel Prizes awarded in 1979 and 1997.
    It was through his own detailed study of the rotational mechanism of the F1-ATPase, which operates like a three-cylinder Mazda rotary motor, that Frasch conceived of a way to take this tiny biological powerhouse and couple it with science applications outside of the human body.

The line between natural technology and human technology is seamless.  Where does blind nature end and intelligent design begin?  How would an independent observer happening upon the nanostructure know where the natural ended and the artificial began?  If he were rightly to infer design for the nanoprobe and its blinking light, on what basis would he infer chance and mindless natural forces had built the Mazda-like rotary engine?  The design inference is appropriate in both cases.
    Was evolutionary theory helpful at all for this wondrous invention that may revolutionize biomedical testing and enhance national security?  The scientist was intrigued by a natural nanotech motor and found a way to use it for human good.  Would it have added anything to spin an imaginary story set in some mythical prehistory about how ATP synthase evolved?
    Come now.  Early scientists were motivated by the design and orderliness of nature that they viewed as the handiwork of an all-wise, omnipotent Creator.  Today’s story is a classic case of intelligent-design-guided science and technology, just like the old days.  Darwinism is a parasite on the process of discovering and advancing the knowledge that really matters to us.
Next headline on:  Cell Biology • Intelligent Design • Biomimetics • Amazing Facts

1. The hot spots align predominantly right along the “tiger stripe” fractures at the south pole.
2. The highest temperatures lie at certain points along the tiger stripes where plumes have been seen.
3. Temperatures are hotter than earlier measurements: -135° F. (compared to a background temperature of less than -300° F.).  This indicates a great deal of energy is being transferred from the interior.
4. Some transverse warm areas were detected, oriented perpendicular to the stripes.
5. The material jets out at over 1000 mph and was strong enough to produce a measurable torque on Cassini, 120 miles away.
6. Though most of the jets consist of ice grains 1/10,000 of an inch in diameter, simple organics were detected (methane, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, formaldehyde) and some complex organics (propane, propyne, acetylene).
7. No ammonia was found.  Scientists had hoped that ammonia might depress the melting point of water and make the plumes easier to explain.
8. The plumes appear to emerge from localized regions about half a tennis court in area, but extended along narrow strips within the tiger stripes.

Good grief, Enceladus has nothing to do with life.  This is the distracting emotional appeal like the scantily-clad woman beside the truck at the used car lot.  NASA throws in the distraction at every mention of the word water in a vain belief that it will garner public support for the space program.  As could be expected, right on cue, National Geographic News picked up on this theme as the major aspect of the story.  Dave Mosher at Space.com even said “seeds of life found near Saturn.”  Incredible.  All they found was poison gas like methane and acetylene, folks!  Go experiment with your barbecue.  Write us if anything crawls out except the spider that took up residence there over the winter.
    The scientists totally avoided the age issue today.  John Spencer has frankly admitted being completely baffled and embarrassed that the science community has no answer for where this little moon got its energy, or for how it could maintain it over billions of years.  Their plight has only gotten worse since the discovery of the plumes in 2005.  Recall that yesterday (03/25/2008, footnote to main entry) we highlighted a new paper in next month’s Icarus that struck down both tidal heating and radioactivity – the leading theoretical possibilities – as plausible sources of the heat.  That makes the scientists’ focus on exotic life even more distracting, as if the emperor, once exposed, quickly points to the sky and waxes eloquent about how the cloud shapes appear so very lifelike.  Let’s watch instead how his minions are going to robe their little embarrassment now that King Billions-of-Years has mooned the crowd.
Next headline on:  Solar System • Dating Methods • Physics • Origin of Life

Peacocks Don’t Dress for Success   03/26/2008    
March 26, 2008 — The male peacock’s fancy feather show: an icon of Darwin’s theory of sexual selection, right?  Then why did Japanese scientists tell Discovery News that the females pay them little attention?
    The article claims that the male’s appearance fails to interest, much less excite, the females, who seem to pay more attention to his singing.  “The determination throws a wrench in the long-held belief that male peacock feathers evolved in response to female mate choice,” the article says.  “It could also indicate that certain other elaborate features in galliformes, a group that includes turkeys, chickens, grouse, quails and pheasants, as well as peacocks, are not necessarily linked to fitness and mating success.”
    What’s more, the scientists, who observed peacock mating displays for six years, could not find a correlation between the attractive males and their fitness.  Females were seen to run around males they preferred and get them to shiver their feathers.  These were not the ones with the most elaborate displays.  They speculated that maybe the fancy feathers are obsolete mating signals, and that vocalizations are now more important.
    They realize this is controversial and more testing will need to be done.  A UK scientist added that the feathering display, which is a function of hormone levels, is a poor indicator of fitness, both at the gene level and in the mature bird.
    How, then, can a scientist say female dinosaur’s were attracted to a male’s frill?  MSNBC News quoted Terry Gates at the University of Utah Museum saying this: “That whole section of the head was for sexual display, it was all ornamentation.  The females liked it.”  The article proclaimed the line: “Ladies lured by dinosaur’s giant horns.”  But if we cannot be sure living birds are attracted to one of the most elaborate and beautiful examples of sexual dimorphism, how could anyone understand what an extinct dinosaur found attractive?

It’s impossible to get into the mind of a peahen or dinosaur and see what is affecting her choice of mate.  Still, this is a big blow to a major speculation that made Darwin famous.  Charlie has had orders of magnitude more fame than the usual fifteen minutes, and most of his ideas have been defrocked like a plucked turkey.  Can we move on?
Next headline on:  Birds • Evolutionary Theory • Dinosaurs

Since this new special-delivery mechanism can, in principle, apply to Uranus, Mars and other bodies, the crater-count dating conundrum just got worse.  How many of the thousands of craters on pockmarked moons resulted from “planetocentric” material within the system?  If ejected material can be recycled, what is the potential crater count from one sufficiently large impact?  How long would it take for an average moon to become saturated with craters?  They may look old, but crater-covered moons might have gotten their scarred faces in far less time than previously imagined.
Next headline on:  Solar System • Dating Methods • Physics

1. Io, Io, It’s Off to Work I Go:  “The results are surprising because no theory predicted upstream spots.”  Belgian researcher Bertrand Bonford was commenting on a press release from American Geophysical Union (AGU) about the volcanic moon Io, and how its eruptions create auroral spots on Jupiter.  “The finding of the leading spot puts all the previous models of the Io footprint into question,” the article said.
2. Tethys Ocean:  The “surprisingly ordinary” moon Tethys at Saturn may have, or may have had, an underground ocean, according to National Geographic News.  The energy required to create the monstrous rift called Ithaca Chasma must have melted the ice below.  Where did the heat come from?  Since Tethys is largely ice, there would not have been radioactive elements sufficient to produce internal heat.  This leaves tidal flexing to create the rift – but only if there was liquid underneath.
       The thought of water quickly led to thoughts of life.  A Cassini scientist told NGN, “This makes the exploration of icy satellites and their interiors even more important to understanding possible habitats for life in our solar system” and for how common life is in the universe.
3. Do you want your Mars with salt?  Sodium chloride – good old table salt – may be common on Mars, said the BBC News and EurekAlert.  Because the salt may have become deposited in channels and lakes, some scientists immediately visualized the salt as a preservative for life.  Salt is a double-edged sword, however: “Water is the first sign that an environment might have been habitable, but waters that precipitate table salt on Mars would have been much saltier than any waters known to support microbial populations on Earth,” said Andrew Knoll of Harvard.  Salt is also a poison to organic soup (09/17/2002).
4. Titan clash:  Titan isn’t rotating like scientists expected.  When they went to focus on a spot identified from a previous orbit, it was 19 miles off.  The only way they can explain it is by modeling an ocean under the ice, according to a paper in Science.¹  If the crust is decoupled from the interior by floating on an ocean, it also means that Titan’s zonal winds can alter the rotation of the whole moon.  See explanation by The Planetary Society and press release from JPL.
       The ocean-and-wind hypothesis is only a partial answer.  Christophe Sotin and Gabriel Tobie, writing in the same issue of Science,² said, “However, the observations and model predictions do not correlate very well.”  Some are proposing a periodic wobble in the spin, or a large impact that might have sped up the rotation.  No impact basin large enough to record such an event has been found.  “There’s a fundamental difficulty with Titan global circulation models right now -- all of them,” said lead author Ralph Lorenz, “--which is that they predict that the predominant winds at low latitudes near the surface would be easterly, from east to west.  Yet all the sand dunes point in exactly the opposite direction.  There’s something we do not understand about Titan’s circulation.”

Science marches on – sometimes in disciplined ranks, sometimes in scatter formation.  The latter occurs when observation bombs drop in on theory playgrounds.
    Remember, the consensus theories that have been blown away by new discoveries were textbook orthodoxy a few years ago.  Only a devout logical positivist would think this could not happen to today’s accepted ideas.  Just wait.
    Evidence does not exist in isolation.  To make sense, it must be incorporated into one’s web of belief by a number of auxiliary hypotheses and assumptions.  Planetary scientists interpret what Ithaca Chasma, Titan’s rotation and Earth’s oxygen-16 ratios mean through the filter of assumptions and auxiliary hypotheses that are rarely considered or questioned independently.
    One of their most sacred assumptions is the A.S.S. (age of the solar system).  The accepted value of 4.5 billion years is written in their genes.  All evidence is viewed within this major structural component of their web of belief.  The web itself stretches and distorts as new evidence bombards it, but it would take a mighty big impact to break it.
    Too much is at stake for secular planetologists, bent on finding life and evolution at every water hole, to allow that to happen.  Like predatory spiders, they snag the evidence, wrap it in theories spun out of their own selves, and suck the juice out of it to feed themselves and their young.  The dried up hulk that once contained structure, organs and connective tissue is discarded to blow away in the wind.
    If you love and respect science, make like a bee instead.  Get busy and gather nature’s nectar far and wide.  Digest it carefully.  Transform it into something sweet to benefit others – something that will nourish the heart and bring delight to the eyes.  (Thanks to Francis Bacon for the metaphor.)
Next headline on:  Solar System • Dating Methods • Geology

Tuatara Genes Are Running in Place   03/24/2008    
March 24, 2008 — One would expect a living fossil to show extreme stasis at the genetic level.  Not so for the tuatara, a New Zealand reptile, reported EurekAlert: researchers found that “although tuatara have remained largely physically unchanged over very long periods of evolution, they are evolving – at a DNA level – faster than any other animal yet examined.”
    The tuatara is said to be the lone survivor of a class of beak-headed reptiles that co-existed with the dinosaurs 200 million years ago (see Live Science for picture).  The rate of molecular evolution of this lizard-like animal, the researchers said, is much faster than that of cave bears, lions, oxen and horses, which supposedly evolved from primitive mammals in far less time.
    Based on this study, the authors are claiming that molecular evolution and morphological evolution have nothing to do with each other: “Many scientists have thought that molecular evolution would be fastest in animals whose physical form, or morphology, also evolved swiftly,” the article says.  “The tuatara finding suggests otherwise, that there is no relationship between the two rates.”  But if evolution does not cause fitness changes at the genetic level that translate into body changes, where did elephants and giraffes come from?
    See also the discussion of this paper by David Tyler on Access Research Network, and the 03/31/2002 entry about tuatara resilience to climate change.

Molecular changes is not evolution in the sense of creating new organs and functions.  That is clear from the fact that the tuatara is unchanged from its fossil counterparts.  The tuatara was already a complete embarrassment for the Darwinists – as are all living fossils.  This counter-intuitive result should make them consider the possibility that something is completely wrong with their assumptions.  The first one that should go on the chopping block is the assumption of millions of years.
Next headline on:  Terrestrial Zoology • Genetics • Evolutionary Theory

1. Punishing Darwin with faint praise:  “Winners don’t punish” is the title of an unusual paper in Nature.¹  An interdisciplinary team from Harvard and Stockholm School of Economics, composed of specialists in evolutionary dynamics, economics, mathematics and systems biology studied the phenomenon of “costly punishment,” looking for its evolutionary origin.  Costly punishment means “paying a costly punishment to incur a cost” – e.g., revenge.  How is this human behavior to be explained?
       The team could not find adequate explanations in group selection or individual selection.  It seems maladaptive in all cases.  Kin selection, direct and indirect reciprocity, and all the other Darwinian buzz-phrases seemed inadequate.  They ran game experiments giving subjects opportunities to cooperate, defect, or impose punishment on others (something like Survivor?).  The control group was denied the option of costly punishment.  What happened?

   Here we show that the option of costly punishment increases the amount of cooperation but not the average payoff of the group.  Furthermore, there is a strong negative correlation between total payoff and use of costly punishment.  Those people who gain the highest total payoff tend not to use costly punishment: winners don’t punish.  This suggests that costly punishment behaviour is maladaptive in cooperation games and might have evolved for other reasons.

   That last line shows they left the door open for some unknown evolutionary explanation, but they could only suggest options.  Maybe it gives a way for an individual to enforce submission or rise to dominance.  Even so, their conclusion sounded distinctly un-Darwinian:

   People engage in conflicts and know that conflicts can carry costs.  Costly punishment serves to escalate conflicts, not to moderate them.  Costly punishment might force people to submit, but not to cooperate.  It could be that costly punishment is beneficial in these other games, but the use of costly punishment in games of cooperation seems to be maladaptive.  We have shown that in the framework of direct reciprocity, winners do not use costly punishment, whereas losers punish and perish.

   In the same issue of Nature,² two German reviewers almost seemed forlorn that no evolutionary explanation was found.  Milinski and Rockenbach said, “The tendency of humans to punish perceived free-loaders, even at a cost to themselves, is an evolutionary puzzle: punishers perish, and those who benefit the most are those who have never punished at all.”  Costly punishment can enforce cooperation, they said, but “it can’t have evolved for inducing cooperation.”  The reason?  Punishment is “fundamentally counterproductive, because it pays off neither for the punisher nor for the group.”  It is intuitively obvious that natural selection would not retain a counterproductive or maladaptive trait.
       Ethical questions aside about their methodology and conclusions, the significant aspect of this paper is that they could not find a Darwinian explanation for the trait.  The team and the reviewers – six evolutionary specialists – had to leave this conundrum unanswered: “costly punishment remains one of the most thorny puzzles in human social dilemmas.  Dreber and colleagues’ results make it plain that we are still a long way from understanding the dark side of human sociality.”

2. Give, and you shall receive:  The next day, a paper in Science did not even attempt to find Darwin in the data.³  Three researchers from University of British Columbia and Harvard reported, “Spending Money on Others Promotes Happiness.”  (We need scientific papers to explain the obvious sometimes.)  They did experiments cross-sectionally and longitudinally on subjects.  They even checked anonymous giving: “participants who were randomly assigned to spend money on others experienced greater happiness than those assigned to spend money on themselves.”
       They didn’t exactly quote Jesus, “it is more blessed to give than to receive,” but they did rhetorically pose Mom and Dad’s truism, “Money can’t buy happiness” as a question expecting a negative answer:

   Can money buy happiness?  A large body of cross-sectional survey research has demonstrated that income has a reliable, but surprisingly weak, effect on happiness within nations, particularly once basic needs are met.  Indeed, although real incomes have surged dramatically in recent decades, happiness levels have remained largely flat within developed countries across time.  One of the most intriguing explanations for this counterintuitive finding is that people often pour their increased wealth into pursuits that provide little in the way of lasting happiness, such as purchasing costly consumer goods.  An emerging challenge, then, is to identify whether and how disposable income might be used to increase happiness.
       Ironically, the potential for money to increase happiness may be subverted by the kinds of choices that thinking about money promotes; the mere thought of having money makes people less likely to help acquaintances, to donate to charity, or to choose to spend time with others, precisely the kinds of behaviors that are strongly associated with happiness.  At the same time, although thinking about money may drive people away from prosocial behavior, money can also provide a powerful vehicle for accomplishing such prosocial goals.  We suggest that using money in this fashion—investing income in others rather than oneself—may have measurable benefits for one’s own happiness.

   Again, it’s not that they quoted the Bible, “the love of money is the root of all evil,” but that this paper lacked any reference to evolutionary theory.
       Incidentally, how does a scientist devise a happy-meter?  They didn’t.  They asked the survey respondents to rate their happiness under various situations, such as after receiving a windfall profit-sharing bonus, and they categorized and did mathematical analysis on the results.
       They found it alarming that so few invest money in prosocial spending when happiness seems clearly to be an outcome.  By the end of the paper, their advice sounded almost moral:

   Given that people appear to overlook the benefits of prosocial spending, policy interventions that promote prosocial spending—encouraging people to invest income in others rather than in themselves—may be worthwhile in the service of translating increased national wealth into increased national happiness.

   The paper was summarized in a Science Now article.  Elsa Youngstedt remarked about the counter-intuitive result that shows giving the lottery might be more fun than getting it.  “Overturning classic economic wisdom,” she said, “new research shows that it’s not how much you have that matters, it’s how you spend it.  People who donate their dollars to charities or splurge on gifts for others are more content than those who squander all the dough on themselves.”  Her write-up also said nothing about evolution, nor did the report by Brendan Borrell on Nature News.

Evolutionary theory is without form and void, but lacking an intelligent spirit to hover over its dark waters, it will never emerge into a garden of scientific understanding.  When they try to find Darwin’s tree in their mindless void, they fail; when they don’t, they do just as well and, like the proverbial broken clock, are occasionally right.  Being right by chance is no reason to follow their advice.
    We don’t need Science to tell us how to behave.  We don’t need their mythical edens in the savannah to explain our dark side.  Their explanations leave puzzles, conundrums, and emptiness.  While policies that promote prosocial spending (e.g., tax breaks for charitable donations) make sense, who believes for a minute that a government or oligarchy of scientists will change people’s hearts?
    Science encroaches here on foreign territory.  There is an institution with a much better track record on helping people avoid costly punishment and enjoy the happiness of giving: a church that teaches the operating manual of the Manufacturer without adding or taking away from it.  Why does the USA have the best success rate in the pursuit of happiness?  Because its founders believed that humans were not just evolved animals.  They held them as truths that people are endowed by their Creator with life and liberty and self-determination.  In light of the two papers above, it seems obvious now.  You might almost say it is self-evident.
Next headline on:  Human Body • Politics and Ethics • Evolutionary Theory • Bible and Theology

The prospect of finding macroevolutionary trends and rules in the history of life is tremendously appealing, but very few pervasive trends have been found.  Here, we demonstrate a parallel increase in the morphological complexity of most of the deep lineages within a major clade.  We focus on the Crustacea, measuring the morphological differentiation of limbs.  First, we show a clear trend of increasing complexity among 66 free-living, ordinal-level taxa from the Phanerozoic fossil record.  We next demonstrate that this trend is pervasive, occurring in 10 or 11 of 12 matched-pair comparisons (across five morphological diversity indices) between extinct Paleozoic and related Recent taxa.  This clearly differentiates the pattern from the effects of lineage sorting.  Furthermore, newly appearing taxa tend to have had more types of limbs and a higher degree of limb differentiation than the contemporaneous average, whereas those going extinct showed higher-than-average limb redundancy.  Patterns of contemporary species diversity partially reflect the paleontological trend.  These results provide a rare demonstration of a large-scale and probably driven trend occurring across multiple independent lineages and influencing both the form and number of species through deep time and in the present day.

Most of the natural sciences operate by documenting patterns and trends and thereby formulating general rules.  Evolution, however, is an essentially contingent process, meaning that evolutionary trajectories can rarely be predicted.  Proposed evolutionary trends, such as Cope’s rule for evolutionary size increase within lineages, have generally turned out to be only weakly predictive, either resulting from passive diffusion away from some barrier or applying only at local temporal and taxonomic scales.  Here, we demonstrate a remarkable and pervasive trend for increasing morphological complexity in multiple parallel lineages of the Crustacea [the major arthropod group with the longest and most disparate fossil record throughout the Phanerozoic.]

Our results apply to a group of animals with bodies made of repeated units.  We must not forget that bacteria – very simple organisms – are among the most successful living things.  Therefore, the trend towards complexity is compelling but does not describe the history of all life.”

Do you understand how evolutionary dogma perpetuates itself?  Here is the formula: assume evolution, assume the evolutionary timeline, juggle a few data points to look like a scientist, then announce that evolution is a law of nature.  This whole charade is humbug.
    Look at this cheap magic trick buried in the paper: “Unfortunately, the fossil record is rarely complete enough to identify ancestors with any confidence.  However, our phylogenetically independent comparisons of early fossils with their closest extant relatives are useful proxies.”  Hold your horses!  Useful to whom?  Are you telling us you can only get to the evolutionary conclusions you want by assuming evolution (phylogenetic comparisons) in the absence of fossil evidence?  Try that trick in a courtroom.  “Your honor, we don’t have any blood or fingerprints or weapons, but since we know the defendant is guilty, we have put together a timeline based on that knowledge showing how he committed the crime.”  Where is the defense attorney screaming “Objection!”  Why is the judge silent?  You know why – he is in on the scam.
    Here’s another glaring flaw the scientists (we shudder to use the term) waltzed right by, hoping nobody would notice: they started after the Cambrian.  Do you remember that a modern-looking crustacean was found fully-formed in Cambrian strata last fall? (10/04/2007; see also 07/20/2001)  Suppose we took a pair of living dogs from different breeds, bred several generations, and cataloged a variety of dog descendants possessing different patterns, hair styles, leg lengths, and dispositions.  Then suppose we triumphantly announced we had discovered a new law of nature – The First Rule of Dog Evolution – “Dogs evolve from simple to complex.”  The little boy in the audience with the quizzical look is the hero again: “Where did the first dogs come from?”
    How convenient for all the jointed appendages, complex eyes and organs, segments, Hox genes and molecular machinery to be already present before they began their analysis.  If they got a slap for every time they assumed evolution instead of proving it, it would be a “useful proxy” for the blushing they should have been doing.  Maybe it would generate some tears, too, for sins like this: “Perhaps greater intraindividual limb diversity could contribute to the further ‘evolvability’ or ‘versatility’ of a lineage, allowing new and different functions to arise more readily and promoting niche diversification.”  What?  This is circularity wrapped in circumlocution.  They just said, in plain English, “Maybe evolution evolves into more evolvability.”  Good grief.  After a few more paragraphs of hand-waving, these three “scientists” vanished in a smokescreen of maybes, vaporware and futureware.  Halt in the name of the law!  This is supposed to be a science paper, not a magic show.
    The charlatans pulled a complete snow job on the reporters.  In their original paper (which nobody reads) they included all the disclaimers, caveats, limitations, and obligatory scientific restraint, hidden in incomprehensible and irrelevant jargon and decorated with a few distracting equations and conjured-up visuals, tables and graphs that (for whatever they are worth) do nothing to establish their main claim.  Afterwards, they ran to the gullible press with its gutless reporters (all of them incapable of asking a logical question) and spouted their vainglorious glittering generalities, extrapolating their highly restricted data domain to the whole history of biological life – except when they deflated the whole circus tent at the end.  They got away with it.  Bold print, up front (which everybody reads): “First ‘rule’ of evolution suggests that life is destined to become more complex.  Scientists have revealed what may well be the first pervasive ‘rule’ of evolution.  In a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences researchers have found evidence which suggests that evolution drives animals to become increasingly more complex.”
    They don’t have to get away with it.  We just exposed them – right here.
    Today is the first day of spring.  The time is long overdue to melt the snow jobs in this land where it is always winter and never Christmas.  Do your part to bring in a rebirth and flowering of responsible science.
Next headline on:  Evolutionary Theory • Marine Biology • Terrestrial Zoology • Fossils • Dumb Ideas

Adulterers: Evolution Made Us That Way   03/19/2008    
March 19, 2008 — Two articles that appeared the same day on Live Science are a study in contrasts.  One was titled, “Surviving Infidelity: What Wives Do When Men Cheat.”  The other was titled, “Are Humans Meant to Be Monogamous?”  The thread that tied them together was evolution.
    The first article admitted the distress, shame, and sense of betrayal wives feel when their husbands cheat, and the sense of anger and dishonor husbands feel at a wife’s unfaithfulness.  “Many spouses never fully recover from their feelings of betrayal and anger, even if they stay together,” one marriage counselor said.  Women and men differ in their general reactions, but “Typical reactions from both sexes include becoming enraged, sad, humiliated, and depressed.”  The article could not offer any explanation or counsel more than stoic methods of coping, because it suggested that evolution made people this way. 

These differences may have deep evolutionary roots.  “From a man’s perspective, sexual infidelity historically jeopardized his paternity certainty -- ‘mama’s baby, papa’s maybe,’”  Buss said [David Buss is a professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin.]  “Male sexual jealousy is, among other things, an adaptation designed to solve the problem of genetic cuckoldry.

Evolutionary psychologists have suggested that men are more likely to have extramarital sex, partially due to the male urge to “spread genes” by broadcasting sperm.  Both males and females, these scientists say, try to up their evolutionary progress by seeking out high-quality mates, albeit in different ways.
    The committed partnership between a man and a woman evolved, some say, for the well-being of children.
    “The human species has evolved to make commitments between males and females in regards to raising their offspring, so this is a bond,” said Jane Lancaster, an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of New Mexico.  “However that bond can fit into all kinds of marriage patterns – polygyny, single parenthood, monogamy.”

You don’t counsel someone who has an evolutionary adaptation.  You counsel those whose sense of moral rectitude, integrity, faithfulness, honesty, and trust has been violated.  Live Science cannot have it both ways.
    We have already seen what happened when the Darwinists rationalized genocide (11/30/2005, 02/17/2008).  Just wait till you see what kind of world we inherit now that they have rationalized infidelity.  Can you imagine that some day they might even justify rape or murder?
    My, my, you poor fool.  Where have you been? (07/18/2003, 02/03/2008). 
Next headline on:  Politics and Ethics • Evolution

1. Oxygen:  The oxygen atom, though necessary for most living things, can also be a deadly poison – that’s why we take antioxidants.  In the cell, it is handled very delicately by complex enzymes that combine it with byproducts of respiration to form water and carbon dioxide, which can be safely removed.  Oxygen’s mere presence, however, suggested to EurekAlert that life was ready to explode in a plethora of wondrous complexity.  The title reads, “2 oxygenation events in ancient oceans sparked spread of complex life.”  Would the same thing be said of silicon sparking the spread of computers?
2. Carbon:  Carbon is essential to most living molecules.  It is basic to fats, sugars, proteins and nucleic acids.  Raw carbon, or simple hydrocarbons, however, are useless to life unless incorporated by enzymes into structural molecules according to coded instructions.
       Why, then, are the news media all using the L-word Life in their reports about the discovery of methane around a nearby star?  Methane is the simplest “organic” (carbon-based) molecule: one carbon joined to four hydrogens.  Because of its fourfold valence, carbon easily joins with other atoms – especially the most abundant element in the universe, hydrogen.  Methane is abundant on Titan, the gas giants, some comets and probably Mars, though not associated with life there.  Humans use methane for their cooking but not for their biology; it is emitted as a waste product by the bacteria in cow stomachs and by the decay of biomass, but is not a nutrient for life.
       Nevertheless, most reports from a paper in Nature¹ emphasized the L-word when methane was detected around a star, even though the authors said nothing about life.  “Under certain circumstances, methane can play a key role in prebiotic chemistry – the chemical reactions considered necessary to form life,” said the BBC News.  Ditto for Science Daily.  A NASA scientist called this “a dress rehearsal for future searches for life on more hospitable planets,” according to Space.com.  National Geographic was slightly more tentative, but ended with a focus on methane’s potential as a biomarker for life on other planets.
3. Amino acids:  Proteins are composed of long chains of one-handed amino acids.  These carbon-based molecules have two simple parts, an amino group and a carboxyl group, and a side chain (R-group) that can be as simple as one hydrogen (glycine) or much more complex with cyclic domains and other things.  Of the almost endless varieties of possible amino acids, life as we know it is restricted primarily to 20 kinds.  It is not just the amino acids alone that make them “lively” but their specific combinations into long chains, held together by peptide bonds.
       Finding a few amino acids, however, got EurekAlert all excited with two pronouncements on the same day: Meteorites are rich in the building blocks of life and Meteorites a rich source for primordial soup.  Both articles insinuated that a steady rain of amino acids on the primitive earth would have been sufficient to kickstart life in the ocean – even though amino acids avoid joining into polypeptides in the presence of water.  Notice the confidence mixed with suggestion in a statement by a scientist from Imperial College, London: “We know that approximately 3.8 to 4.5 billion years ago the Earth underwent heavy bombardment from meteorites which brought molecules to our planet, just before life emerged on Earth.”
4. Water:  It goes without saying that water is another simple molecule often associated with the L-word.  A press release from Jet Propulsion Lab referred to life twice in the story about dust disks around stars (see the other 03