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New Theory on Water Strider Propulsion
capt.Hij writes "There is an interesting
article at the Christian Science Monitor about how water skimmers are able to move the way they do. This new theory debunks the previously accepted theory and answers why smaller, younger water skimmers are also able to move the same way as their elders: 'As he looked into the question, he adds, he learned that the reigning explanation leaves an unsolved puzzle: If these tiny insects propel themselves in the way many researchers think they do, then baby water striders should go nowhere fast.'" There's also a BBC story with pictures.
Row Row Row your bug, rowing down the stream...
But really though, if all it does is rowing, don't we already have tons of models that uses rowing? I mean, it's not electronic, but rowing's been around for centuries!
I'm not the devil.. just his advocate.
I think it's an interesting reflection on humanity when evolution can throw up designs that we can't properly understand even with all of our apparent science and technology (bees, water striders, the thought process). It just goes to show that for every fact or theory we think we know there are far more that we don't, which gives me great confidence in the progress of human science and technology over the next few thousand years.
Ummm. CSM is about as good as a balanced source as you will find and, despite the name, they don't do ridiculous things like you are talking about. My local rag will probably run this on the Religion section this week rather than the Science page. You should know better. Kind of like Brit "Goebbels" Hume, questioning the source of an eyewitness account of American soldiers abusing Iraqi citizens, by saying, "What do we know about this paper The Manchester Guardian?" rather than saying, "Secondary sources have yet to confirm or deny the report from the Guardian.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
I would say that unlike parent post, the CSM is actually quite objective.
No, faith is believe in the absence of complete proof; it can still have supporting evidence. Blind faith has no proof. Science itself requires a modicum of faith.
> The CSM may be one of the most objective news sources in the
> US, but that says more about the inadequacy of US journalism
> than the stellar achievements of the CSM.
I'll second that.
A lot of people are confused about the purpose of newspapers. The
purpose of newspapers has nothing to do with discovering truth, and
as a general rule journalists have at best a passing interest in
truth or accuracy. The primary concern of journalists is to sell
newspapers. In order to do that, they want to be perceived as
accurate (or likely accurate) for one day. Whether last week's
paper is still perceived as accurate will never matter, as long as
people have enough interest to suspend their disbelief long enough
to buy _today's_ paper.
A philosphy professor once told me I'm to young to be so cynical...
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
If you can have miracles, that doesn't mean that you can't apply science the rest of the time. The two aren't incompatible.