Now It’s “Whale Rights”

animal standing, anti-Western ideology, conservation, courts, Culture & Ethics, emotionalism, indigenous wisdom, industrialization, Legal Cheek, legal person, legal standing, London, Michelle Bender, national defense, nature rights, Neuroscience & Mind, Ocean Vision Legal, Pacific Whale Fund, rights, River Thames, shipping, Simmons and Simmons, whale rights, whales, windmills
As often is the case in nature rights activism, “indigenous wisdom” is invoked as somehow superior to modern conservation. Source
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From Bears to Whales: A Difficult Transition

bears, blowhole, body temperature, calf (whale), cetaceans, Charles Darwin, Darwinian theory, diving, dolphin, Everhard Slijper, Evolution, floating ribs, fluke, Indohyus, Intelligent Design, James Butler, lungs, mammals, milk, nipple, nitrogen, porpoise, reproduction, Richard Brown, sea lion, sperm whale, submersion, surfactants, testes, the bends, whales
Critics laughed at this, and Darwin removed it from later editions of his book, though he continued privately to believe it. Source
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Battle Butterflies

biologists, Department of Defense, engineers, giant squids, GPS, helicopter, humanity, Illustra Media, Intelligent Design, internal clock, Life Sciences, magnetic field, Metamorphosis, Metamorphosis: The Beauty and Design of Butterflies, Mexico, military, monarch butterfly, Philip Daniel, sharks, solar compass, submarine, whales
Every year, around a billion monarchs travel from across North America to gather overwinter in a few specific locations in Mexico. Source
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Dreaming Animals and Human Exceptionalism

abstractions, American Kennel Club, animals, bird song, birds, cats, cuttlefish, David M. Peña-Guzmán, dolphins, dreaming, horses, human exceptionalism, information, jumping spiders, learning, Life Sciences, memory, Neuroscience & Mind, rapid eye movement, sleep, Smithsonian Magazine, spiders, symbols, Teresa Iglesias, thought, whales
Researchers have detected something like REM (rapid eye movement) sleep — which is associated with dreaming in humans — in jumping spiders. Source
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Jonathan Wells Evaluates Darwinian Evolution in New Online Course

antibiotic resistance, biology, cell biology, Darwin's Finches, Darwinian theory, developmental biology, DiscoveryU, Evolution, fossils, genetics, Icons of Evolution, ID The Future, Intelligent Design, Jonathan Wells, Junk DNA, materialism, molecular biology, natural selection, online course, peppered moths, Podcast, textbooks, whales
How strong is the evidence for Darwinian evolution? What are the limits of the Darwinian mechanism? Source
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New Scientist: Ichthyosaurs Evolved “Astonishingly Rapidly”

Cartorhynchus, cetaceans, Current Biology, Cymbospondylus youngorum, Darwinian gradualism, dolphins, Early Eocene, Evolution, Fossil Hill, fossil record, Frontiers in Earth Science, Günter Bechly, ichthyosaur, land mammals, Mesozoic, Neo-Darwinism, Nevada, New Scientist, Pakicetus, paleontology, Permian-Triassic extinction, porpoises, Science (journal), Sclerocormus, Tethys Sea, whales
This is a case of evolutionary biology trying to explain away the data that otherwise was not directly expected under their model. Source
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Fossil Friday: Fossil Sea Cows and the Abrupt Origin of Sirenia and Desmostylia

Afrotheria, Calvert Marine Museum, common descent, Darwinism, Desmostylia, dugongids, dugongs, elephants, Embrithopoda, Eocene, Evolution, Fossil Friday, fossil record, Ishatherium subathuensis, Jamaica, Lincoln Creek Formation, mammals, manatees, Paleocene, PaleoDB, paleontology, Pezosiren, Proboscidea, protosirenids, science, sea cows, Sirenia, sirenians, Steller’s sea cow, synapomorphies, Tethytheria, Washington State, whales
So, is every thing OK with Darwinism after all? No so fast. Actually, there are some problems that do not square well with a Darwinian scenario. Source
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MicroRNAs: A New Clue About Octopus Intelligence?

apes, biology, brain, central brain, cognitive abilities, Cris Niell, crows, cuttlefish, Dogs, dolphins, elephants, Grygoriy Zolotarov, intelligence, MicroRNAs, miRNAs, nervous system, neuroscience, Neuroscience & Mind, neurotransmitters, Nikolaus Rajewsky, octopus, Oregon, RNA, science, squid, vertebrates, whales, William Rainey Harper
While octopus brains are very different from vertebrate brains, they share with vertebrates, a huge number of microRNAs. Source
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Why Systems Biologists Now Assume Life Is Optimally Designed

"poor design", bioinformatics, biological structures, biologists, biosphere, Dan Graur, ENCODE, engineers, Eva Balsa-Canto, Evolution, fitness landscape, human body, Human Errors, human genome, Intelligent Design, Julio R. Banga, Junk DNA, knee, Living with Darwin, Nathan Lents, Nikolaos Tsiantis, optimality, pelvis, Philip Kitcher, scientific materialism, teleology, whales, Wikipedia
Purported examples of poor design usually represent opinions resulting from armchair critics’ limited understanding of the technical literature. Source
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