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>> I'm waiting for the day when we can raise the speed of light so we can go faster.
> I'm not sure this technology can be pushed in that direction

Let us hope that the speed of light cannot be changed as it is vital to the operation of the universe as we know it. For example, the fine structure constant of the universe (alpha) depends on the speed of light, and if the f-s contstant changes since c changes then funny things could happen, like electron having too much energy to orbit an atom, or fusion no longer occuring in stars.

There is also talk about the speed of light changing in the past, being faster than today and it could be slowly slowing down. If this were true then life might no longer exist in the far future given the effects of the changes in constants that depend on c. The link is an article from Scientific American about the possibility that physical constants (like light) aren't constant after all.

Also, the reason why halon was discontinued is not related to people getting trapped and dying (if I understood correctly, halon should be efficient at very low concentrations). The problem was that it damages the ozone layer. (taken from the same page: "By international agreement, however, production of all types of halons ceased in 1994 because the bromine and chlorine atoms in the chemical were found to migrate over time to the stratosphere, where they react to deplete ozone in a very efficient catalytic cycle.")

Also, the reason why halon was discontinued is not related to people getting trapped and dying (if I understood correctly, halon should be efficient at very low concentrations). The problem was that it damages the ozone layer. (taken from the same page: "By international agreement, however, production of all types of halons ceased in 1994 because the bromine and chlorine atoms in the chemical were found to migrate over time to the stratosphere, where they react to deplete ozone in a very efficient catalytic cycle.")

> looking at a picture of the light that left NGC891 24 million years ago. right? wrong?

Wrong, due to the accelerating expansion of the universe. If the light of something out there 24 million light-years away hits us now, it doesn't mean that this light left the origin 24 million years before.

It would be true if the universe was static.

There was a VERY interesting article on Scientific American about common misconceptions about the big bang some months ago
(stripped-down web version http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0009F0C A-C523-1213-852383414B7F0147&pageNumber=5&catID=2)
  explaining things like that.

There was a Scientific American article about this not long ago. There's not many practical tips, but it shows that going green and efficient can be very profitable indeed.

I see how you may be correlating the issue of the appendix, but what real bearing does it have on the decision to abort or not to? An appendix is just that, an appendix. The appendix never comes out of the mother as a living and breathing being. Here is some information about the appendix and a suspected use for it. According to the article, the scientists believe that the appendix is crucial in the development of a baby in its mother's womb.
info about the appendix

I've been looking for a good magazine sci-fi fix ever since. This could be just what I've been looking for since I was a teenager, if they do it right.

Was there something wrong with Asimov's or Analog or Fantasy and Science Fiction? They've been publishing the whole time and helping to keep the short sf market alive.

Granted that of these only Analog publishes science fact articles as well, but if you subscribe to those three and add Scientific American you're covered.

Unless the content can be enlarged to tv-size (and there are very large televisions out there ;) But let's say your average sized one) with no degredation (well, no quality-loss that a human can perceive anyway), I can't see the Itunes Video Store taking off.

At some point, the content will be TV-sized with no loss of quality. Bandwidth and storage sizes are increasing at an exponential rate (see this and this). In five or ten years, I'd be surprised if cheap, extremely high-resolution TV shows and movies weren't avaliable for download, possibly even through the TV itself. Apple iTV, coming soon to a shop near you!

Global climate change will likely include both warming and cooling. It's really a Global Chaos Increase. The last Ice Age saw temperatures drop, on average, only about 8 degrees globally, which leaves lots of places that heated up compensating in the statistics for the places covered by a mile of ice. And even current research talks about the risk of collapsing the Thermohaline Current that keeps Europe temperate, a local ice age hyperbolized in the movie _The Day After Tomorrow_.

So SciAm's reporting on "Global Warming" would be inaccurate only in invoking the buzzword - IF IT EVEN MENTIONED "GLOBAL WARMING". Which it does not. In fact, it reports only on a National Academy of Sciences report by the Federal NOAA about "Climate Fluctuations" caused by human activity.

So let's just take the article on its own merit, OK? It's blatantly obvious that human activity is directly influencing our weather. Let's stop making up reasons to ignore the threat staring us in the face.

But enough of dignifying your industry FUD propaganda with exposure. How about you just explain how the human workweek doesn't change the weather, in light of that Scientific American article to which I linked?

Are you trying to deduce the greenhouse effect from that article? If so, I'd really like to hear your arguments. In fact, the only conclusions one can make from the article is that the mean temperature is a tenth of a degree or so higher during the weekdays (and, mind you, only measurable at 35% of the weather stations, while some others experienced the opposite effect). A lot of other things were not measured -- for example, how this would correlate to the mean temperature if no humans were living in the affected areas. It may more than well be that the temperature is only fluctuating around the same mean temperature that would otherwise have been. It may also be that the cloud changes of which they speak may be "channeling" the heat to the mentioned coastal areas that experienced the opposite effect (since the article doesn't mention the magnitude or frequency of the opposite effect, it's hard to tell). Think about it -- it's a very plausible scenario that the mentioned cloud effects would act as energy channels to the periphery of the continent. It's only made more plausible by the fact that the warming effect happened in the inner parts of the continent, according to the picture.

Also, as for the greenhouse effect, I'm sure that you know that there are a multitude of alternative explanations to the current rise in global temperature. Just to mention a few, it is well known that we are going through a period of both heightened solar activity and a cycle in the Earth's rotational pattern that causes temperature elevations. It is also widely accepted that we are in the beginning of a polarity switch in the Earth's magnetic field. Surely, it is not impossible that the weakening of the field allows for additional energy income from the solar wind? I'm not trying to completely deny that we humans are doing our fair share by releasing greenhouse gases, but I'm questioning whether it's really such a doomsday scenario as some people try to paint.

As another aside, ever heard of the Gaia theory and the Daisyworld simulations? In particular, it is hypothesized that life acts as a self-regulating system to keep parameters such as ocean salinity, atmosphere composition and surface temperature at somewhat constant values. Of course, some latency in the system is to be expected (50-100 years isn't very much, after all), but considering how life showed no problem in bringing the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere from >>20% to less than 0.1% (as it is today) shows that there is no quantitative controversy to life being more than well up to the task of regulating our small disturbances.

Let me be the first to say that correlation is even less a denier of causation than it is a confirmer. And that, in the absence of a positable common cause, the correlation of two trends is good evidence of causation. Further, that when one trend, climate change, cannot be shown to cause another, human changes to the global environment, and there is no evidence that that other trend impedes the first, then the case for that other trend, human changes to the environment, as cause of the first, climate change, is compelling.

Then there's correlations so close that they're undeniably causation. Especially when the mechanics of the causation are understood enough to immediately recognize, like manmade pollution creating the Greenhouse. Oh, and while we're retaining our objective scientific tone, I'll add that manmade climate change is the most reliable model we have, with which we successfully make predictions about further climate change. Having discharged that responsibility, I'll also point out that invoking abstract scientific principles to create FUD about how we're destroying ourselves to satisfy the greed of aging industrialists who never suffer any consequences for anything is really stupid. QED.

Why, because an empty logical truism is all you've got as you desperately attempt to deny manmade climate change? Try arguing with the causation in Workweek Causes Climate Change". It's just correlation, right?

I tend to agree.

I'm sure the author of this piece http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0006AD3 8-D9FB-1055-973683414B7F0000 would not, however.

from Scientific American

"The year 1996 marked a milestone in the history of space transportation. According to a study led by the accounting firm KPMG Peat Marwick, that was when worldwide commercial revenues in space for the first time surpassed governments' spending on space, totaling some $77 billion."

There _is_ an economy in space-and its growing. Have a cheap source of materials to orbit would be a major infrastructure item. The US government isn't really relevant here. Hell, what happens if the Chinese yank Uncle Sam's credit card?

A recent Scientific American article does mention the formation of waves in galaxies. It's worth reading!

So if implemented, Kyoto could kill us, apparently. Take your pick: reverse global warming and freeze to death; or let it go and get even bigger hurricanes. Don't even think you can tweak it to make it "just right." I vote for the heat. Just stay away from the coast.

So if implemented, Kyoto could kill us, apparently. Take your pick: reverse global warming and freeze to death; or let it go and get even bigger hurricanes. Don't even think you can tweak it to make it "just right." I vote for the heat. Just stay away from the coast.

Apparently this isn't the first time international competition has resulted in dubious claims of "discovery". The most interesting part, IMHO, is:

Whatever the case, Adams utterly failed to communicate his results forcefully to his colleagues and to the world. A discovery does not consist merely of launching a tentative exploration of an interesting problem and producing some calculations; it also involves realizing that one has made a discovery and conveying it effectively to the scientific world

Emphasis mine. Interesting words in the era of "intellectual property".

Find it here. That way you don't have to click through to 6(!) pages just to read one article. And it's advertising free, in plain text.

cyanobacteria.

Evolution is nothing but a theory.

And again....

I hate crap like that. Scientific America had a great article a while back that explains this just as well as I ever could. Here, I found a copy of the article (Scientific America wants you to reg to read the original on their site):

"1. Evolution is only a theory. It is not a fact or a scientific law.

Many people learned in elementary school that a theory falls in the middle of a hierarchy of certainty--above a mere hypothesis but below a law. Scientists do not use the terms that way, however. According to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), a scientific theory is "a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses." No amount of validation changes a theory into a law, which is a descriptive generalization about nature. So when scientists talk about the theory of evolution--or the atomic theory or the theory of relativity, for that matter--they are not expressing reservations about its truth."

PDF version: http://www.swarthmore.edu/NatSci/cpurrin1/textbook disclaimers/wackononsense.pdf

Original: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000D4FE C-7D5B-1D07-8E49809EC588EEDF&sc=I100322

You might have been thinking of this article that describes an experiment that might be able to test this. This article refers to experiments that haven't been done yet (maybe by 2007 it says).

Some historical background - "everyone" knew the hurricane with New Orleans written on it was coming:

October 2004 National Geographic Article about New Orleans getting whacked ... btw this site has been Drudged as opposed to Slashdot'd

October 2001 Scientific American article about New Orleans getting whacked

Informed discussion over at Belmont Club Blog

An obscure blog describes the hurricane's impact on YOU in Anywhere USA before the hurrican ever made landfall:

Most people have never heard of Port Fourchon, but it is the nation's premiere oil and gas support services facility--and right now it lies within 12 miles of Hurricane Katrina's CAT-3 or CAT-4 bullseye. Over 600 platforms and 75% of the Gulf's deepwater projects lie within a 40-mile radius of Port Fourchon. Unfortunately, Port Fourchon is a Louisiana island. An island that is connected to the mainland by a single two lane bridge...an old, single two lane bridge. This bridge is the only means of getting cargo and supplies to the Port. More than 1,000 cargo trucks go across this bridge each day, delivering materials to the Port for Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) drilling rigs. If there's no bridge, there're no drilling parts and supplies.

"I find it very ironic to be flamed by anyone who thinks I'm an idiot for not believing in a theory that's never been proven by scientific process."


I hate crap like that. Scientific America had a great article a while back that explains this just as well as I ever could. Here, I found a copy of the article (Scientific America wants you to reg to read the original on their site):

"1. Evolution is only a theory. It is not a fact or a scientific law.

Many people learned in elementary school that a theory falls in the middle of a hierarchy of certainty--above a mere hypothesis but below a law. Scientists do not use the terms that way, however. According to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), a scientific theory is "a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses." No amount of validation changes a theory into a law, which is a descriptive generalization about nature. So when scientists talk about the theory of evolution--or the atomic theory or the theory of relativity, for that matter--they are not expressing reservations about its truth."

PDF version: http://www.swarthmore.edu/NatSci/cpurrin1/textbook disclaimers/wackononsense.pdf

Original: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000D4FE C-7D5B-1D07-8E49809EC588EEDF

Enjoy! (flame on)

Although it also has the property of being able to share four electrons with adjacent molecules,
I believe (not entirely sure) it's the size of a silicon atom that prevents
structures entirely similar to those possible with carbon.

Carbon seems to be truly unique this way, making it difficult to imagine
that harder materials could be found that are not carbon based.

Now that you mentioned SCIAM.
There is an article in the august issue of Scientific American about magnetologic gates. This mentions that instead of making transistors smaller so you can put more of them in the same space. You could also try achieve the same functions using less elements.

magnetologic gates are based on the MRAM technology. With some modifications the designs for MRAM can be used to create logic gates that are much more efficient and powerfull then CMOS based transistors.
With only 1 magnetologic gate you could create a AND, OR, NOR or NAND function. with 2 gates you can create a XOR function with would require 8 to 14 CMOS transistors. The 'full adder', the most used unit in a processor used to add two binary inputs, can be created with only 3 gates instead of 16 CMOS transistors.
So using magnetologic gates you can achieve the same kind of processing power improvement without using smaller units.

These magnetologic gates have some other advantages. They are non-volatile so they remember/store the result of the last calculation performed and reading out this value does not delete the information. This means that the overall calculation can be performed faster and it also enables parallel or clockless execution of operations.

Magnetologic gates can be reprogrammed like FPGA's. But unlike FPGA's switching between different functionalities takes just billions of a second. This ability to morph (which is the main focus of this article) radically reduces the amount of transistors needed in a processor. Since all function are hardwired in a normal CMOS processor, at any given time only a few percent of the transistors are actually used. If you could change the function of your elements with every operation, you could perform the same scala of different funtions with just a few elements.

If this technology will progress it could bypass the miniaturization efforts.

There was an article in Sientific American about making chips much smaller by letting water flow between the imprinting laser lens and the silicon wafer. The water changes the refractive index, so the lens can be better utilized, as I understand it, and apparently it's not particularly difficult either, since existing 193nm lithography can be used, and even surpass the planned 157nm lithography tech. Here's another article with some links.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=00080AA 2-BA32-1C73-9B81809EC588EF21

Another good article about the CSI Effect. It talks about how jurors in cases expect the forensics in a case to be exactly like a CSI episode.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?colID=15&articleI D=00022DE1-0C15-11E6-B75283414B7F0000

I like that article from SciAm about new stickers for books. Some of my favorites:

Sticker in Introduction to Cosmology: "Astronomers estimate the age of the universe to be approximately 13 billion years. If evolution ticks you off because you believe that the earth is only 6,000 years old, cosmology should really make smoke come out of your ears. There's a fire extinguisher next to the telescope."

Sticker in Earth Science: "You are free to exercise your First Amendment rights in this class and to identify all stratigraphic layers as being 6,000 years old. We are free to flunk you."

Sticker in Our Solar System: "Remember they said in chemistry class that electrons fly around the nucleus like planets orbit the sun? Some people think the sun and other planets go around the earth. You'll have a much easier time with the math if you just let everybody go around the sun, trust me."

Sticker in Creationism for Dummies: "Religious belief rests on a foundation of faith. Seeking empirical evidence for support of one's faith-based beliefs therefore could be considered pointless. Or even blasphemous."

There is little evidence that pot has any negative effects...

Uh, wrong. There is good and mounting evidence.

Mental Illness

Cannabis link to mental illness strenghtened

The link between regular cannabis use and later depression and schizophrenia has been significantly strengthened by three new studies.

Marijuana Use Increases Risk of psychiatric illness Cannabis link to depression

This study suggests that girls who use cannabis as teenagers are more likely to develop anxiety or depressive disorders.

Psychotic symptoms more likely with cannabis

Marijuana in adolescence and early adulthood increases the likelihood of psychotic symptoms in later life.

Study suggests marijuana abuse increses risk of depression

Subjects diagnosed with cannabis abuse at the start of the study were four times more likely to experience depressive symptoms.

Marijuana makes blood rush to the head

Smoking marijuana can affect blood flow in the brain so much that it takes over a month to return to normal. And for heavy smokers, the effects could last much longer, a new study suggests.

Child Development

Marijuana use in pregnancy damages kids learning

Children born to mothers who use marijuana during pregnancy may suffer a host of lasting mental defects.

Dope-smoking dads double risk of cot death (SIDS)

Dope-smoking dads double the risk of cot death, a survey in California has revealed.

Maternal marijuana use during lactation and infant development at ...

THC concentrates in the mother's milk and is absorbed and metabolized by the nursing infant.

Reproductive effects

The Effects of Marijuana on the Endocrine System

Marijuana directly effects the endocrine system causing:

reduced sperm counts, sperm deformations, shrunken testes size, degenerates the seminiferous tubules, halves testosterone levels, decreases libido, causes the accumulation of breast tissue in men, causes anovulation, causes an acute reduction in prolactin, reduces adrenocortical reserve causing reduced ability to respond to stress, inhibits growth hormone, and depresses thyroid activity.

Cannabis, cannabinoids and reproduction

Marijuana inhibits implantation and increases miscarriage rates. Marijuana use during or after birth may impair reproductive behavior of children when they reach adulthood.

Study finds marijuana use in rats stops reporduction Research Survey: Common Ancestors

Marijuana suppresses the production of luteinizing hormone in rats by stimulating the production of stress hormones. "It turns out that marijuana is a stressor, which might explain a lot of its effects on the brain and on people"

Marijuana firmly linked to infertility

Scientific American Tue, 12 Dec 2000

General Heal

have shitloads of self-esteem

Now this is one issue that probably is worth picking on. There is much effort in modern education not to damage the self esteem of young people. The problem is the belief that self esteem is actually important for achievement is actually rather poorly founded. There was a very good article in Scientific American at the beginning of the year that did some analysis of how self esteem actually correlates with the things low self esteem is claimed to case - the results were that the correlation was relatively poor, and certainly other factors were much more highly correlated. The study is, of course, far from comprehensive, and the results don't suggest that self esteem is meaningless. They do, however, suggest it is time to consider how seriously we take self esteem. Exactly how damaging is it to young children that they never learn what it is to fail? IS that oughweighed by the benefits of increased self esteem? The answers have been taken for granted, but perhaps we should consier this a little more carefully.

Jedidiah.

"The question is can those batteries be charged efficiently enough to have lower overall pollution than the common internal-combustion engine method?"

" I can't say for sure what would pollute less"

Scientific American has an article this month about burying carbon dioxide. You can do that with a stationary hydrogen production facility, but you can't do it with vehicles that roam all over the place. I think the production facility will pollute less.

I have always been wondering what "lightning" is.

Many people are still wondering what "lightning" is.

You are correct, I found this on sciam.com:

"Further assume that a GPS receiver on the ground can measure the distance between a receiver and a satellite for at least three satellites at the same time. By defining the receiver location with three coordinates, such as latitude, longitude and height, one can readily write three equations that relate the three distance observations to the known coordinates of the satellites and the unknown coordinates of the receiver."

But since distance measurement needs to time how long the signal travels to earth, we need an accurate time measurement...

"The complete position determination of the receiver consequently requires four unknowns: the receiver clock error and the three receiver coordinates. Measuring distances to at least four satellites allows one to set up four equations that can be solved for these four unknowns"

How do GPS devices work?

Scientific American had an article in Feb, 2004 about Microelectricalmechanical systems (MEMS) that talked about an innovation of cell phone speakers using technology to make things not quite so small as nanotech but still way better than the current technology. It sounded like the technology would make better cell phone speakers in a year or so, but I haven't heard anything about it since.

Here's the link. article If that link doesn't work (it has some session stuff in it that might break outside of my browser) just search Scientific American for cell phone speakers. It is the highest relevant link from the search.

Scientific American had an article in Feb, 2004 about Microelectricalmechanical systems (MEMS) that talked about an innovation of cell phone speakers using technology to make things not quite so small as nanotech but still way better than the current technology. It sounded like the technology would make better cell phone speakers in a year or so, but I haven't heard anything about it since.

Here's the link. article If that link doesn't work (it has some session stuff in it that might break outside of my browser) just search Scientific American for cell phone speakers. It is the highest relevant link from the search.

All definitions of body mass index I have seen are BMI equals mass (in kg) over (height (in m) squared). So technically, I agree here ;-)

A person's BMI can go down while he gain weight

Not unless he also increases in height. (Or is in a higher gravity field, since mass is the key element here. ;-) There are other measures to look at for body fat/overweight/so on. BMI is a fairly simplistic measure.

The real topic of this post: My take on this study was that people are so stressed from spam that they stop eating and lose weight.

My apologies to the original poster, if this seems somewhat insensitive. Underweight is a health problem. See last month's SciAm as an example.

saw their mean body mass index (BMI) go down, meaning it improved

Or possibly that the previously healthy subjects turned anorexic.

More seriously, there was an interesting article in the June issue of Scientific American questioning whether the alleged health hazards of being overweight have been severely exaggerated. They certainly don't appear to be as great as the risks associated with being underweight (not that that's a worry for me).

Eat, drink and be merry ... it'll take your mind off all the depressing news.

Here is an aritcle about a worm the uses a copper compound in it's teeth. They actually look metallic.

You might interested in this recent article I just came across.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000EEC0 A-7032-1E6E-A98A809EC5880105
Their future doesn't look too bright.

lack of polar warming

Apparently you're unaware that, for example, there have been the biggest glacial calving events in recorded history in Antarctica, the greenland ice sheets are retreating at speeds several times normal, and for the first time in recorded history (after a century of visits), the North Pole is open ocean during the summer.

Here's an article describing the latest report from the Arctic Council and the International Arctic Science Committee about how extreme the polar warming trend is; it is going *faster* than the rest of the world - 5 to 7 degrees in the past century. In short, what you claimed was completely false. I'll provide as many references as you want.

long wave radiation

Once again, a completely incorrect claim. from Scientific American, citing a study published in Nature.

We could go on for a while

Go on for a while with false information? Come back when you're willing to put up true claims backed by scientific evidence (provide links), as opposed to what you heard a caller on Rush say this morning. There's a reason that, by far, the vast majority of climatologists accept global warming due to human action as fact.

Scientific American: Obesity: An Overblown Epidemic? [ NUTRITION AND HEALTH ]

A growing number of dissenting researchers accuse government and medical authorities--as well as the media--of misleading the public about the health consequences of rising body weights

addictiveness has nothing to do with the physical effects of withdrawl.

Classically, addiction is defined by withdrawl, tolerance, continued use in the face of health problems, and repeated failed attempted to quit.

When the drug warriors noticed that the usage of some of the drugs they wanted to demonize (especially cannabis) didn't fit this pattern, they invented "psychological addiction", which means nothing more than "I like doing this so much it's hard to stop".

So that we now have the ridiculous situation of people using the same word to describe having trouble turning off the TV as to describe a (potentially fatal, in some cases) neurological dependancy that can result from the long-term use of certain drugs.

People might get into unhealthy relationships with TV, or with non-physicially-addicting drugs, or with sex, or gambling, or whatever. Using the term "addiction" to describe all these relationships is not just non-informative but actively misleading, and has more to do with politics than anything else.

There are good points? Like what? Defending inventor's rights? Ummm no.. quite the contrary the fact they will grant a patent to most non novel ideas with or without priror art simply makes for an easier legal challenge. More lawyers, time money wins... Patents are becoming worthless (or worth 10 hours of a lawyers time) under the current review process. Letting ideas eventually reach the public domain? And what about when a couple of companies gang up to extend a patent well beyond it's expiration date ( see http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000AF01 8-31CA-1FFB-B1CA83414B7F0000 ) So please tell me what the USPTO is doing that is worthwhile. Seriously.

It is really sad when scientists are so blind as to consider the possibility of a creator.

And it's a shame those who believe in ID or creation are blind to science. I'll say I used to believe but I lost my belief after I survived an accident it would of been better if I had died from. The docs told my family it'd be a miracle if I lived. NOT!!! For years and years I prayed all too naught so now I say that IF there is some "Supreme Diety", "GOD", it must be sadistic. I've been living in a living hell since. That's reality for me. As for science, here's some answers:

15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense
Opponents of evolution want to make a place for creationism by tearing down real science, but their arguments don't hold up
By John Rennie

Since I'm a pensive person, I've wondered what the human race will evolve into a few times.

A few years ago a science magazine, I'm thinking it was Sciam, had an article about how the male human is headed towards extinction because of the SRY gene on the X chromosome which is the master switch for determining maleness. This gene is "falling apart". There is speculation intersexuals, those who are born neither male nor female, may be the key to the survival of the human species.

Maybe a thinner CRT will do the trick?

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colI D=9&articleID=000A533B-74AC-1264-B1DB83414B7F0000

Oh, wait. It's not shipping yet.

"Hobbits"? Very tiny people, that's all, assuming the fossils are real (see below). Look at the basketball players of today. Is it unreasonable to think that very small people came to exist? In our time, we have the pygmies in Africa. The Bible, incidentally, mentions a race of 9-foot-tall people in the city of Gath in ancient Philistia. And our good friend Gul Mohammed was measured to be 22.5 inches in 1990. The human species has an incredible amount of diversity capability preloaded into our own DNA. So finding a bunch of little people in a cave does not a 'missing link' make.

the theory of evolution cannot explain alone why we are here, today. It can, however, explain...

This is why many people on both sides of the debate make a distinction between microevolution and macroevolution. They are two different things. The variety of different breeds of dog is an excellent example of microevolution. Macroevolution is tantamount to saying you can breed a dog into a cat or an ape or a snake or a bug or a plant if you try hard enough. Unfortunately, most (if not all) evolutionists like to equate the two, when in reality macroevolution has yet to be proven in a single case. A lot of the fundamentalists don't want to acknowledge that microevolution exists. And thus the flamewar continues...

Using mutation to survive even explains sudden explosions of wildly variating plants and animals

Well, no, it doesn't, because mutations can only result in a variation of a preexisting trait. It provides variety, but never anything new. A quote from The World Book Encyclopedia gives an example of a beneficial mutation: "A plant in a dry area might have a mutant gene that causes it to grow larger and stronger roots. The plant would have a better chance of survival than others of its species because its roots could absorb more water." But do we have anything new here? No, it's still the same plant. It's not evolving into something else; humans with mutant genes making them 7 feet tall are humans just as are humans with mutant genes making them 4 feet tall or 2 feet tall. And even the 'punctuated equilibrium' ideas posit at the very least many thousands of years of gradual changes, which must be documented in the fossil record if it happened, and it has not been seen, even with all the thousands of diggers, digging in tens of thousands of places, spending millions of hours and billions of dollars. Where is the evidence?

Don't even get me started on the fake fossils and the incredible amount of money being put into them. Suffice it to say that there's enough of a demand for them that there is at least one factory in China churning them out daily.