You can tune a piano but you can’t tunicate…

The May (2008) issue of the Institute for Creation Research‘s monthly newsletter Acts & Facts contains an article by the current President of ICR, Dr. John Morris, titled “Evolution’s Biggest Hurdles“. The article is ostensibly about enumerating unsolved questions in evolutionary theory but instead what it does is highlight a deeply rooted set of character flaws in the “creation science” movement and its leaders: intellectual laziness (and/or dishonesty) combined with a lack of basic scientific literacy and colossal hubris.

While I understand that this article is a relatively short, non-technical piece, this does not in my opinion excuse the glaring omissions of relevant evidence about its supposed subject. Nor does the fact that Dr. Morris has a background in geological engineering forgive the zoological ignorance it displays. I am not a zoologist. I don’t have any degrees, but still I was able to immediately spot some of the rather glaring zoological errors and omissions in what Dr. Morris wrote. For someone who has been involved in the creation/evolution debate as long as Dr. Morris has it is difficult to fathom how he could not be better informed on such basic issues.

Read on»

Arachnophilia

I ran across this video of some beautiful spiders, apparently from Thailand. The third one shown threw me for a second. If it’s not trying to be an ant mimic it is doing a pretty good job of it regardless. Anyway after seeing this I went looking and found a couple more interesting spider vids, check’em out.

Original video missing from YouTube.

Whatever you do, don’t piss it off…

This one is another jumping spider, this time doing a mating dance. Make sure your sound is turned on because you can hear it tapping, thumping and buzzing as it dances.

Original video missing from YouTube.