The Genius of Survival
Photo by Meldy Tameng (Wikimedia Commons).| Do the Math
Earlier we discussed that Angry God is a foundational harmful belief because it gives rise to other misguided, harmful beliefs. We can say the same about Inerrancy and for the same reason. In fact, the two are closely connected. Inerrancy leads … Continue reading →| Jesus Without Baggage
A mystery in human evolution may be close to being solved, thanks to a new study by the Institut de Paléontologie Humaine in France. A nearly complete cranium discovered in 1960 inside the Petralona Cave in northern Greece has defied all efforts at identification and precise dating for several decades. The new study, published in […]| Archaeology News Online Magazine
A minor genetic difference in one of the enzymes may have helped separate modern humans from Neanderthals and Denisovans, our closest extinct relatives, and may have even contributed to the fact that Homo sapiens thrived while the others became extinct. These are the findings of a new study published in the journal Proceedings of the […]| Archaeology News Online Magazine
Researchers used genomic analysis to show when cavefishes lost their eyes, which provides a method for dating cave systems.| Futurity
Researchers have identified the oldest known fossils of primates, dating them to around 65.9 million years ago. That’s just after one of Earth’s biggest mass extinction events, and it suggests that the ancestor of all primates originally lived alongside the dinosaurs.| New Atlas
A groundbreaking study has traced the 66-million-year evolutionary history of primates and overturned conventional thought that our ancestors originally inhabited warm tropical forests. Using advanced statistical and climate-modeling techniques, researchers have discovered that the earliest members…| New Atlas
Lange dachten Forschende, die frühen Säuger seien Primitivlinge gewesen, die im Schatten der Saurier durchs Unterholz huschten. Nun zeigen spektakuläre Fu...| geo.de
LLMs are not going to replace developers. Next token prediction is not the path to human intelligence. LLMs provide a convenient excuse for companies not hiring or laying off developers to say that the decision is driven by LLMs, rather than admit that their business is not doing so well| The Shape of Code
How evolution wired us to act against our own best interests.| The MIT Press Reader
Sojabohnen vererben negative Erfahrungen offenbar weiter. Was bedeutet das für die Landwirtschaft und den Selbstanbau?| geo.de
Ever since The Origin of Species appeared in 1859, Charles Darwin’s followers have co-opted him as the patron saint of materialism. In False Messiah, longtime Darwinist and agnostic Neil Thomas looks…| Discovery Institute
Feedback: Saved By Grace…And Evolution?| Biblical Authority Ministries
Is your B2C marketing strategy keeping pace? Learn why personalization, authenticity, and seamless omnichannel experiences are non-negotiable for success in the dynamic consumer landscape of today and tomorrow. Unlocking Success: The Evolution of B2C Marketing Strategies The landscape of Business-to-Consumer (B2C) marketing has undergone a phenomenal transformation, mirroring seismic shifts in technology, consumer behavior, and […]| Marketing Smartly
Music is an art without an apparent object – there are no scenes to look at, no sculptured marbles to touch, no stories to follow – and yet it can cause some of the most passionate and intense feelings possible. How does this happen – how can sounds from resonant bodies produce emotion (1) in … Continue reading "CON MOLTO SENTIMENTO: On the Evolutionary Biology and Neuropsychology of Music"| Marsha Familaro Enright
With a 13 billion year head start on evolution, why haven’t any other forms of life in the universe contacted us by now? (Arrival is a fantastic movie. Watch it, but don’t stop there – read the Story of Your Life novella it was based on| Coding Horror
Researchers in northeastern Ethiopia have made a thrilling discovery of fossilized teeth that may belong to a new branch of humanity, shedding more light on a critical period in human evolution. The remains are between 2.8 and 2.6 million years old and were found at the Ledi-Geraru archaeological site in the Afar Region—a region already […]| Archaeology News Online Magazine
A set of ancient stone tools found on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi has pushed back the timeline for human habitation of the region by hundreds of thousands of years, confirming that early human relatives made a major oceanic crossing to arrive on the island much earlier than previously thought. The discovery, made by researchers […]| Archaeology News Online Magazine
I'm always a little wary of popular science books that start with a personal story, but I'll make an exception for Madeleine Beekman's excellent book, which sets out a possible explanation of our ability to speak, because the approach fits in with a well-balanced combination of storytelling and scientific information. There have been a good number of books that either set out to explain some of our species' physical oddities or abilities that seem to set us apart from other animals. Twenty y...| Popular Science Books
An overview of our latest preprint on Anthrobots and what it means for evolution, biomedicine, and beyond.| Forms of life, forms of mind
The colours of human skin, eyes and hair in living people across the world are determined by variants of genes (alleles) found at the same place on a chromosome. Since chromosomes are inherited from both… More| Earth-logs
Anxiety is a mental disorder and is oftentimes treated with medication. However, there are a few ways that being anxious might just be a good thing.| Learning Mind
Identifying Life is child's play, but maybe the dividing line is not as real as we think, and Life is one of the amazing feats the universe CAN contrive when conditions permit. Continue reading →| Do the Math
There is no confirmed evidence of two-headed dinosaurs in the fossil record. While polycephaly —a rare congenital condition resulting in tw...| Geology In
To say that plants are important is a truism beyond doubt. They fill almost every ecosystem and niche on earthContinue reading| Biodiversity Revolution
Fossils from the Burgess Shale, because creationists would definitely hate the Cambrian Explosion. (Credit: Brooks Hanson) The Scopes Monkey Trial was held 100 years ago this month, but it feels like just yesterday. Actually, it feels like today; it feels terrifyingly like tomorrow. The theocrats are ascendant, friends, and their rejection of evolution is tied to all the other monstrosities they’re imposing on public life. Theodosius Dobzhansky said that nothing in biology makes sense excep...| The Last Word On Nothing
A Legacy Of Hate: 100 Years Of Mein Kampf| Biblical Authority Ministries
An extension to game theory where agents can split and merge, reveals interesting dynamics.| Forms of life, forms of mind
Join us as John Smout recounts his journey to Straniger Alm in the Austrian Alps, where alpine pastures and boggy slopes provide a backdrop for an extraordinary encounter with lizards at the edge o…| Naturally Speaking
(Courthouse photo by Robert Buckman) One hundred years ago this July, the nation’s media were riveted on a trial in the unlikely venue of the small town of Dayton, Tennessee. It wasn’t a sensational murder trial like that of Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold in Chicago the year before, but a seemingly mundane misdemeanor that captivated the country’s attention and became part of American popular culture.| Quill
Assume that clicking within any of the cells in the image below flips its color (white/green). Which cells would you click on to create an image that is symmetrical along the horizontal/vertical axis?| The Shape of Code
A rare occurrence in the wild, exclusive self-pollination is an evolutionary strategy that may lead to extinction.| Asian Scientist Magazine
The evolutionary ladder is meant to be climbed one rung at a time with an organism shedding some traits and gaining others on the way up. However, in a very surprising twist, some tomatoes on the Galapagos islands are inching back down the ladder.| New Atlas
During the paleobiological revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, the status of paleontology as an evolutionary discipline was attempted to be established by a number of paleontologists. From 16th to 19th October 1980, the Field Museum of Natural History held the Macroevolution Conference, a historic event that challenged the four-decade-long dominance of the Modern Synthesis. […]| Letters from Gondwana.
Killer whales have joined the rare club of animals that can make and use tools, for the first time being observed crafting a kind of brush out of kelp and then using it on fellow pod members.| New Atlas
China has a space station named Tiangong that we don’t hear much about in US media, which is a shame. The station was launched in part because “Congress passed a law prohibiting NASA fr…| Pharyngula
For more than a century, many of the writings of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook remained in manuscript, hidden away from the public eye. The works of Rabbi Kook that were published in the interim had many passages removed from them. … Continue reading →| The Book of Doctrines and Opinions:
Jonathan R. Goodman— Recently, I ran my daily Google search about my upcoming book, Invisible Rivals, expecting the pages I’ve seen about it before. But this time there was something... READ MORE| Yale University Press
Archaeologists have long debated the origin of human symbolic behavior. The dominant idea was that only modern humans (Homo sapiens) were capable of complex symbolic thought and behavior; such as creating art, jewelry, or engaging in rituals. However, growing evidence suggests Neanderthals also…| New Atlas
May 3, 2010 Revised, March, 2015 Chapter One: Roots and Branches Overview: Spiritual direction as a profession has expanded and grown throughout the centuries and most spiritual lineages have directors, guides and/or soul friends to support the laity (Empereur, p. 23). As a field, it continues to grow and develop, adding the insights from other […]| 404 Not Found | Terri O'Fallon
Spanda Journal 111, 1/2012 The new parents received their newborn with eyes of wonder — a miracle of their own making. Already they had images of her walking, talking, learning to read, and eventua…| Terri O'Fallon
When our ancestors first gathered in the world's earliest cities 10,000 years ago, they weren't alone. Tiny, blood-sucking hitchhikers were already lurking in their dwellings, and new genetic research reveals these bed bugs beat every other pest to urban living by thousands of years.| Study Finds
Introduction by Janine: All right, we’ve got two more talks this evening for the next hour. I’m really excited to welcome Matt Segall. He is a transdisciplinary philosopher, associate professor in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness department at the California Institute of Integral Studies. And I first came across some of Matt’s work both online, […]| Footnotes2Plato
The connection between food and memory is one of those fundamentally human experiences we can all relate to. A compelling new study from the University of Southern California has revealed an intriguing explanation behind this phenomenon, and it illustrates how strongly the "second brain" in our gut…| New Atlas
One of the most frequently encountered objections to Christianity is that modern science has rendered belief in God intellectually untenable, along with many other central tenets of the Christian faith. This is closely related to what has been dubbed the “conflict thesis”: the idea that there is a deep and ultimately irresolvable conflict between science […]| Analogical Thoughts
Saying that "language evolves" is no enough to dismiss complaints about the misuse of words, since "language erodes" is just as valid, but without the suggestion of progress. Read more (9 min, 2300 words).| Everything Studies
Figure 1: And Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, each took his censer, put fire in it, added incense, and offered strange fire before the Lord, which He had not commanded them. Then fire went out from the Lord and devoured them, and they died before the Lord. Lev 10:1-2 Notes on committing to things, and the implications of that for cooperation. Relevant to multi-agent causality where agents make decisions, in the context of iterated games in multi-agent systems with applications to AI safe...| The Dan MacKinlay stable of variably-well-consider’d enterprises
I’m grateful to Tevin Naidu for getting Deacon and Levin together. They only had 90 minutes but still managed to cover a lot of territory, including where they overlap and where some tens…| Footnotes2Plato
Anxiety disorders are commonly associated with being a purely negative thing. But what if I told you they may actually be hiding some remarkable powers?| Learning Mind
In Schwämmen lebt ein Meereswurm mit verzweigtem Körper. Von seinen Leibesenden schnüren sich Geschlechtsorgane mit Gehirn und Augen ab| geo.de
In the spring of 2017, Hampshire College welcomed a new faculty member, one without a brain or even a nervous system. Physarum polycephalum, a species of slime mold, joined the campus not just as a scientific curiosity but as a non-human thinker. As the college put it, this organism “researches important problems from a non-human […]| NeuWrite San Diego
The Lazy Life of the Sea Cow Manatees are the gentle giants of the ocean. Reaching 13 feet long and weighing more than a ton, these mammals should give off a dominating presence, but in reality, the opposite is true [1]. Manatees tend to get along well with most aquatic species. They have no natural […]| NeuWrite San Diego
In boreal forests, many hares adopt white winter coats before the snow arrives. In a snowless landscape, these white hares lack camouflage against predators. However, their early moult from brown i…| ConservationBytes.com
artificial and natural intelligence, including politics, policy, ethics and security| joanna-bryson.blogspot.com
As user research is rebuilt into product practices, all its parts — not just the interviewing — must eventually be re-integrated.| Dave's Research Co.
We can build a simple profile to predict where, and what kind, of research support our teams will need.| Dave's Research Co.
User research is evolving — inevitably, and somewhat predictably.| Dave's Research Co.
One summer when he was about six, my nephew Nate got totally traumatized by fireflies. Delighted at first sight, he skipped and jumped as they lit up our field, collecting a dozen or so in a mason jar. That night he fell asleep happy, mesmerized by the soft glow from his bedside jar. But next […]| Silent Sparks
First there was the genetic revolution—the discovery that physical structures in the cell, including DNA and RNA, shape every organism. Now, says evolutionary biologist Richard Sternberg…| Discovery Institute
| The Orbit full network feed
Content warning: Links to and discussion of edgy people with perverse opinions on hot-button topics too diverse to mention but which surely include gender, eugenics, speech and religion Notes on eccentrics, mavericks, outsider geniuses and fools. What my family called stroppy people. Lacking an identifiable label so you show up in diversity metrics? Not sure whether you are rebelling against society or conforming to a subgroup? How do you get by as a mad outsider? Will you be right twice a da...| The Dan MacKinlay stable of variably-well-consider’d enterprises
We know timing is important for learning. But time isn’t just about the duration of short-term and working memory; it’s also the spacing out of learning so that we can exploit the way we retain learned information. We call this the spacing effect. A related phenomenon concerns the order in which we present information. For […]| The Emotional Learner
Game theory and decision theory for lots of interacting agents| The Dan MacKinlay stable of variably-well-consider’d enterprises
Robin Dunbar discusses his eponymous 'Dunbar's Number', primates to people, and why size matters with social groups and evolution.| Research Outreach
What book or story has given you hope? Here's one of mine: Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky, a sci-fi tale not quite like any other.| Priscilla Stuckey
I’ve been following a wild animal sightings page for a couple years and it started with useful game cam shots and pictures of tracks, a place a wildlife biologist might pause while scrolling. Lately I see more from hunters hoisting lifeless bags of fur in their arms, which is a form of sighting, though I prefer living wildlife to not. Scientific articles and important commentary pops up and I’ve gotten a few useful leads from the site, but you have to weed through thousand comments of peo...| The Last Word On Nothing
An illustration of the Ngamugawi wirngarri coelacanth in its natural habitat.Katrina Kenny by Alice Clement, Flinders University and John Long, Flinders University Coelacanths are deep-sea fish that live off the coasts of southern Africa and Indonesia and can reach up to two metres in length. For a long time, scientists believed they were extinct. InContinue reading "Exceptional new fish fossil sparks rethink of how Earth’s geology drives evolution"| Global Ecology @ Flinders
In 2008-2009, a friend gave me a copy of John Sanford’s book, Genetic Entropy. He told me that it thoroughly disproved evolution and proved young earth creationism. He urged me to read it, and use my scientific training to advance the … Continue reading →| Letters to Creationists
The fundamental mismatch between hierarchical anthropocentric ideologies and cultures that embrace conscious collaborative niche construction beyond the human can not be over-emphasised. The former…| Jorn Bettin
Maarten Boudry and Simon Friederich argue that natural selection may not produce selfish artificial systems| Reflective altruism
Post summary: The level set method is a powerful alternative way to represent N-dimensional surfaces evolving through space. (This is a significantly extended blog-post version of three slides from my Medical Visualization lecture on image analysis.) Imagine that you would like to represent a contour in 2D or a surface in 3D, for example to delineate objects in a 2D image or in a 3D volumetric dataset. Now imagine that for some reason you would also like have this contour or surface move thro...| vxlabs
Boost authenticity and engagement with user-generated content (UGC). Discover how stories, reviews, and social media can elevate your brand.| Inkbot Design
Discover the fascinating evolution of the Burberry logo design history, from its 1901 origins to the modern minimalist design and brand identity.| Inkbot Design
John Gowlett is Professor of Archaeology and Evolutionary Anthropology, Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology, University of Liverpool. A British Archaeologist born in the Isle of Man, based in the University of Liverpool, he is collaborating with colleagues on projects in Kenya. He has worked on archaeological sites around the world for many years, and has particular interests in fire and in the evolution of form in tools. He is currently mainly involved with research on the ext...| Interalia Magazine
After a brief discussion of the winter snows, the 3GTers welcome an Aussie who had never seen it until coming to America. Ken Ham, Founder and CEO of Answers in Genesis, the Creation Museum, and the Ark Encounter, joins the guys for this episode to discuss his newest book, Ken Ham Daily: 365 Musings, Inspirations, …| Three Guys Theologizing
Body language experts take our unconscious movements and decode them to understand what we are really saying. But the cool thing is that you can do it too.| Learning Mind
Abstract| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
A faithful catechist in Fr. Martin Hilbert’s parish came to see him. “Father Martin,” she said, “I have been teaching children about Adam and Eve, just as the Catechism tells us. But we can’t be expected to believe that, can we? What is the real story?” Source| Books – Discovery Institute
Darwinian evolution predicts the gradual emergence of new life forms in the history of life. But the fossil record tells a different story. Journey with Professor Paul K. Chien to Chengjiang, China, and the world’s most extraordinary Cambrian fossil site. As he shows, this fossil site (along with many others around the world) points not to gradual evolution but to Read More ›Source| Books – Discovery Institute
Join professor of biology Robert Waltzer as he shows how some evolutionists play a bait-and-switch game. They give examples of microevolution, such as changes in the average beak size of Galapagos finches, and then act as if this proves macroevolution—that is, the evolution of entirely new body plans in the history of life. Not so fast, Waltzer says. An insurmountable Read More ›Source| Books – Discovery Institute
Evolutionists acknowledge that without a self-replicating entity, the Darwinian process has nothing to work with. So how could mindless chemicals have built the first self-replicating entity to kickstart Darwinian evolution? As design theorist Eric Anderson explains, evolutionists suggest that something simple—like a self-replicating molecule—kickstarted the origin of life on Earth. But is that idea realistic? As it turns out, engineers Read More ›Source| Books – Discovery Institute
The realization in the twentieth century that even the simplest cells are packed with software tells us something profound about the origin of life. Design theorist and computer programmer Eric Anderson relates the exciting history of the discovery of DNA and shows how the dance of this digital information in each of our cells points insistently away from blind evolution. Read More ›Source| Books – Discovery Institute
Investigating Evolution is a DVD resource for general biology courses. These short (3-11 minute) videos explore standard topics relating to evolution covered in many biology textbooks. The purpose of each module is to raise thought-provoking scientific questions and facilitate inquiry-based learning. (Note: These modules were adapted from the Icons of Evolution documentary for classroom use and contain additional clips and narration.) Source| Books – Discovery Institute
We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary. The world — indeed, the universe — is charged with grandeur. Everything speaks of its beauty, power, and purpose — of its exquisite and Read More ›Source| Books – Discovery Institute
According to Michael Denton, the cosmos is stunningly fit not just for cellular life, not just for carbon-based animal life, and not even just for air-breathing animals, but especially for bipedal, land-roving, technology-pursuing creatures of our general physiological design. Source| Books – Discovery Institute
To hear some tell it, Adolf Hitler was a Christian creationist who rejected Darwinian evolution. Award-winning historian Richard Weikart shows otherwise. According to Weikart, Darwinian evolution crucially influenced Hitler and the Nazis, and the Nazis zealously propagated evolutionary theory during the Third Reich. Inspired by arguments from both Darwin and early Darwinists, the Nazis viewed the “Nordic race” as superior Read More ›Source| Books – Discovery Institute
How do some birds, turtles, and insects possess navigational abilities that rival the best manmade navigational technologies? Who or what taught the honey bee its dance, or its hive mates how to read the complex message of the dance? In Animal Algorithms, Eric Cassell surveys recent evidence and concludes that the difficulty remains, and indeed, is a far more potent challenge to evolutionary theory than Darwin imagined. Source| Books – Discovery Institute
University professor Neil Thomas was a committed Darwinist and agnostic — until an investigation of evolutionary theory led him to a startling conclusion: “I had been conned!” As he studied the work of Darwin’s defenders, he found himself encountering tactics eerily similar to the methods of political brainwashing he had studied as a scholar. Thomas felt impelled to write a Read More ›Source| Books – Discovery Institute
Darwin’s Black Box thrust Michael Behe to the forefront of the intelligent design movement. The Lehigh University biochemist has haunted the dreams of Darwinists ever since. Each of his three books sparked a firestorm of criticism, in everything from the New York Times and the journal Science to the private blogs of professional atheists. Over the years, Behe has had a delightful time rebutting each attack, and Read More ›Source| Books – Discovery Institute
Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913), co-discoverer of natural selection, was second only to Charles Darwin as the 19th century’s most noted English naturalist. Yet his belief in spiritualism caused him to be ridiculed and dismissed by many, leaving him a comparatively obscure and misunderstood figure. In this volume Wallace is finally allowed to speak in his own defense through his grand Read More ›Source| Books – Discovery Institute
Are life and the universe a mindless accident — the blind outworking of laws governing cosmic, chemical, and biological evolution? That’s the official story many of us were taught somewhere along the way. But what does the science actually say? Drawing on recent discoveries in astronomy, cosmology, chemistry, biology, and paleontology, Evolution and Intelligent Design in a Nutshell shows how the latest Read More ›Source| Books – Discovery Institute
The origin of life from non-life remains one of the most enduring mysteries of modern science. The Mystery of Life’s Origin: The Continuing Controversy investigates how close scientists are to solving that mystery and explores what we are learning about the origin of life from current research in chemistry, physics, astrobiology, biochemistry, and more. The book includes an updated version of the Read More ›Source| Books – Discovery Institute
In Foresight: How the Chemistry of Life Reveals Planning and Purpose, learn about jumping insects with real gears, and the ingenious technology behind a power-punching shrimp. Enter the strange world of carnivorous plants. And check out a microscopic protein machine in a bird’s eye that may work as a GPS device by harnessing quantum entanglement. Join renowned Brazilian scientist Marcos Eberlin as Read More ›Source| Books – Discovery Institute
The scientist who has been dubbed the “Father of Intelligent Design” and author of the groundbreaking book Darwin’s Black Box contends that recent scientific discoveries further disprove Darwinism and strengthen the case for an intelligent creator. In his controversial bestseller Darwin’s Black Box, biochemist Michael Behe challenged Darwin’s theory of evolution, arguing that science itself has proven that intelligent design is a better Read More ›Source| Books – Discovery Institute
Alfred Russel Wallace and His Evolution from Natural Selection to Natural Theology Source| Books – Discovery Institute
Are We an Accident…or Not? The question of cosmic origins and our place in the grand scheme of things has been debated for millennia. Why do we exist? Why does anything exist at all? Today’s popular narrative, based on advancements in science, is that it all happened by natural, random processes. Melissa Cain Travis points to powerful evidence that the Read More ›Source| Books – Discovery Institute
What happens when an up-and-coming European bioscientist flips from Darwin disciple to Darwin defector? Sparks fly. Just ask biotechnologist Matti Leisola. It all started when a student loaned the Finnish scientist a book criticizing evolutionary theory. Leisola reacted angrily, and set out to defend evolution, but found his efforts raised more questions than they answered. He soon morphed into a full-on Darwin skeptic, Read More ›Source| Books – Discovery Institute
Tom Wolfe, whose legend began in journalism, takes us on an eye-opening journey that is sure to arouse widespread debate. The Kingdom of Speech is a captivating, paradigm-shifting argument that speech — not evolution — is responsible for humanity’s complex societies and achievements. From Alfred Russel Wallace, the Englishman who beat Darwin to the theory of natural selection but later renounced Read More ›Source| Books – Discovery Institute
Four Views on Creation, Evolution, and Intelligent Design presents the current “state of the conversation” about origins among evangelicals representing four key positions: The contributors offer their best defense of their position addressing questions such as: What is your position on origins – understood broadly to include the physical universe, life, and human beings in particular? What do you take to be Read More ›Source| Books – Discovery Institute
