Ecuador’s Highest Court Grants Rights to Wild Animals

animal rights, animals, bacteria, Climate News, Congress, courts, Culture & Ethics, deer, ecosystems, Ecuador, elephant, fish, forests, geological features, germs, habeas corpus, human exceptionalism, individual animals, insects, Laws, Life Sciences, nature right, New York State, plants, rivers, Switzerland, viruses, water
Nature rights apply to individual animals. And, one would assume, to be consistent, to individual plants, insects, water, and (what the hell) germs too. Source
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Redwoods, Grasshoppers: New Designs in Well-Studied Species

Alana Chin, axial leaf, biology, Christopher Stockey, coastal redwoods, Darwinism, design reasoning, Evolution, grasshoppers, Intelligent Design, Joel, leaf types, Life Sciences, lions, mammals, Methods in Ecology and Evolution, narrative gloss, Northern California, Old Testament, Orthoptera, peripheral leaf, photosynthesis, Sequoia sempervirens, teeth, trees, UC Davis
If redwoods are a byword for great stature, grasshoppers represent the opposite. And what insect could be more common or familiar? Source
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Evolutionary Theory as Magical Thinking

ancient Greeks, Argument from Pique, Aristotelian tradition, atomists, automatism, Baruch Spinoza, bio-logic, Charles Darwin, Christian de Duve, Christianity, Darwin and the Victorian Crisis of Faith (series), Darwin’s Unfinished Business, Erasmus Darwin, Evolution, Faith & Science, freethinking, Life Sciences, logos, magical thinking, moral sensibility, nous, philosophers, Simon Powell, supernatural, Thomas Malthus
Charles Darwin himself exemplified the Argument from Pique, alluded to in past entries in this series, to a tee. Source
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No “Hopeful Monster,” Flower Demonstrates Evolution by Subtraction

APETALA3-3, Aquilegia coerulea, biology, Biston betularia, Chaetodipus intermedius, Charles Darwin, Colorado, Colorado blue columbine, Current Biology, Darwin Devolves, Evolution, evolutionary biologists, genetic information, Harrison Tasoff, hopeful monster, Intelligent Design, Jonathan Wells, Life Sciences, Michael Behe, petals, positive selection, saltation, Scott Hodges, sepals, spurs, Stephen Meyer, UC Santa Barbara, Zachary Cabin, Zombie Science
Evolutionary biologists at the University of California, Santa Barbara, noticed something peculiar about the columbines in a region of Colorado. Source
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Will Earth BioGenome Project Vindicate Darwin?

agriculture, Big Data, bioindustry, biology, Canis familiaris, chihuahua, China, conservation, Darwin's Dilemma, Darwinism, Earth BioGenome Project, ecology, eukaryotes, Evolution, genomes, Intelligent Design, Life Sciences, Mark Blaxter, mastiff, Medicine, Paul Chien, phylogenetics, PNAS, sequencing, species, Sweden, United States
Compare the latest project to sequence everything to other megaprojects that may or may not answer evolutionary questions. Source
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New Study in Nature Showing “Non-Random” Mutation Spells Trouble for Neo-Darwinism

Arabidopsis thaliana, biology, cabbage, Darwin-skeptics, DNA, Evolution, gene-coding DNA, genome, Intelligent Design, Journal of Theoretical Biology, Life Sciences, mustard, mutation, mutation rate, Nature (journal), non-random mutation, proteins, random mutations, Research, thale cress, waiting-time problem
The study was able to directly measure mutations after they occurred in the plant but before mutations could have been affected by natural selection. Source
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Top Scientific Problems with Evolution: Natural Selection

Artificial Selection, Bernard Kettlewell, biology, Charles Darwin, Darwin's Finches, Evolution, Galápagos Islands, Hugo de Vries, industrial melanism, Life Sciences, Macroevolution, Microevolution, mutations, natural selection, On the Origin of Species, peppered moths, Peter and Rosemary Grant, Theodosius Dobzhansky
When the drought ended and the rains returned, however, food was plentiful, and the average beak size returned to normal. Source
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Khan Academy Misleads with Human-Chimp Genetic Similarity Argument for Common Ancestry

biology, cats, chimps, common design, DNA, DNA polymerases, DNAPs, embryos, Emily Reeves, Evolution, evolutionary transitions, fossil record, genes, genomes, homology, horses, humans, Icons of Evolution, Jonathan Wells, Khan Academy, Life Sciences, orphan genes, Paul Nelson, phylogenetic trees, proteins, Richard Dawkins, students, teachers, Theodosius Dobzhansky, Tree of Life, Zombie Science
The video compares humans and chimps, saying the latter’s behaviors and facial expressions are “eerily human.” I could say the same thing about my cat. Source
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For Darwin Day, Topoisomerase Webinar With Biochemist Joe Deweese

amino acid sequences, animation, biology, Casey Luskin, cell duplication, Center for Science & Culture, Charles Darwin, chromosomes, complex and specified information, Darwin Day, DNA, enzymes, Events, Freed-Hardeman University, Intelligent Design, Joe Deweese, Life Sciences, molecular machines, replication, topoisomerase II, transcription, YouTube videos
This webinar will premiere a new molecular machine animation on the topoisomerase enzyme. Source
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