Piltdown Superman

Lassoing a runaway steer takes muscle control and nervous system precision, but not a great deal of force over a long period of time. Compare that to a baseball pitcher that is firing that ball into a precise area at high speed, repeatedly, for several hours. Of the many engineered traits we have, humans are also designed to throw. Credit: Freeimages / Justin Taylor Then there's the batter who has to hit the pellet. Well, it looks like one at that speed, it may take a half a second for the ball to be released until it hits the catcher's mitt or the batter gives it a smack. Don't be telling me that you could do better, either. via GIPHY A study was done on the mechanics of pitching. If it was just up to muscle doing the work, there would not be anywhere near as much velocity. That whole wind-up and pitching motion involves the shifting of balance, extension of the arms and wrists, hip rotation, and much more.  The study also paid homage to Darwin, spoiling a g

Seems like when studying Darwinism, we hear quite a bit about "Darwin's finches". He did not know what kind of birds they were, by the way, and they were identified by ornithologist John Gould somewhere around 1837. Did you know that Charles Darwin took a fancy to pigeons for a spell? This is in the first chapter of his tedious, infamous book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. I wonder if he ate any ? Photo by Hybrid on Unsplash He took to studying pigeons to get some firsthand observations for evolution through artificial selection. Some owlhoots consider this research to be strong evidence for his speculations, but what did he get? Pigeons. If he had paid attention to work of Gregor Mendel (peas be upon him), he would have learned a thing or two about genetics and variations. via GIPHY At any rate, like Lenski's research on bacteria yielded bacteria , Darwin's

Seems like most people are familiar with squirrels in one form or another, since there is a huge variety of the furry varmints. Many people consider them pests, especially since they get relentless when trying to get food. Credit: US Fish and Wildlife Service / Debra Turner (Usage does not imply endorsement of site contents) Even when I'm chasing them off the patio, they keep on a-coming. Some turn on the charm and get up on their hind legs and give me the "I'm so cute, don't you want to feed me?" look. Then others come up and they commence to fighting over the food. These bushy-tailed rodents are smart, too. They learn how to solve problems, and then use that knowledge to apply in other situations. We've found that "squirrel-proof bird feeders" are seldom effective, and they find various ways to get up to there (as can be seen in a video in the linked article, below). They get onto our second-floor patio and go after the bird feeders or th

Both creationary and secular geologists have proposed ideas about how much of the continents were covered by water. Of course, biblical creationists want to answer questions about what went on during the Genesis Flood, and their counterparts have worked up the sea level curve model. Creationists generally believe that the Sauk Megasequence shows early stages of Flood coverage. Credit: Pixabay / James Alexander Some owlhoots claim that creationists do not conduct research. That is false, but why let the facts stand in the way of prejudicial conjecture? Anyway, in this case, the folks at the Institute for Creation Research wanted to map the extent of the sedimentary rocks and test the sea level curve model. They learned that North America had minimal coverage during the Flood. Anti-creationists detest evidence for the Flood because it refutes their deep time mythology. Numerous authors have speculated on the extent of the early floodwaters and on when the Flood peaked. Many quest

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen This article is going to take a somewhat different approach, but I think you will find the information interesting. It is about that asteroid that could have originated outside of our solar system homestead. That chuck of rock is called ‘Oumuamua (specifically, 1I/2017 U1, which is rather boring). ‘Oumuamua is Hawaiian for “a messenger from afar arriving first”. Really? Kind of presumptuous, don't you think? The word sounds like high society air kisses: "Oh, it's so good to see you, oh, mua, mua [makes smacking noises]! Here, have a cigar." Or maybe not. Artist’s concept of asteroid `Oumuamua Credit: European Southern Observatory ( CC BY 4.0 ) (Usage does not imply endorsement of site contents) ‘Oumuamua is not well understood by astronomers as creationary astronomer Dr. Danny Faulkner points out . One rancorous owlhoot is so passionate about evolutionism that he made the gelastic claim that this one chunk of rock negates all of b

Proponents of atoms-to-entomologist evolution include natural selection as a means of evolution, although that has been largely abandoned. Except when it is convenient to equate natural selection with evolution. It is often included with mutation as a means of upward changes. Evolution itself is not operational (observable) science, but is historical science instead. Also, science needs to make predictions, which is something that evolution fails more often than not. Walking stick image credit:  Aurea Moragón , US Department of Agriculture (Usage does not imply endorsement of site contents) A study of those stick insects ("walking sticks") was undertaken to see if random chance could be predictable. Yes, it doesn't make sense to me either: random doesn't lend itself to predictability. What did researchers find? Disagreement. via GIPHY David Coppedge, the author of the article linked just below, shows how the concepts of Darwin and his successors fit the

Researchers studying South American tree iguanas were a mite stumped because they were not doing what they are supposed to do. Namely, adapt and evolve. Instead, males and females of some species were taking ecological niches that could have been filled by variations. A recent study of these iguanas does not support universal common ancestor evolution. Credit: Wikimedia Commons / Ryan Kaldari The Master Engineer designed critters and other organisms to adapt and fill various niches. This is part of how they were designed to keep from going extinct, especially after the changes on Earth after the Genesis Flood. Darwin's disciples falsely call these variations "evolution", but nothing is changing into something completely different. In a recent study of South American lizards of the Liolaemus genus (commonly called tree iguanas), native to Chile and Argentina, researchers discovered that interspecies sexual size dimorphism (hereafter called SSD according to the jour

Horses have been popular with people for a mighty long time as pack animals, to do the work, scouting, in battle, pleasure riding, cowboy work, and much more. (A bit of trivia: the American  Plains Indians had no word for horses at first, since they were unknown on this side of the Atlantic until the Spanish brought them over.) Darwin's disciples have insisted that the evolution of the horse has a strong evidence. Prospecting for Cattle Range , Frederic Remington, 1889 If you study on the displays a spell, you'll realize that this evidence is flimsy and inconsistent; it only exists in textbooks and museum displays, not in reality. The critter presented as the earliest horse,  Hyracotherium , was discovered by Richard Owen. He called it that because of its strong resemblance to the rock badger. It was later called the "dawn horse" because: evolution. via GIPHY The number of toes and ribs changes with each specimen, and loss of features is falsely called e

A planarian is a flatworm, and there are quite a few variations . They tend to be on the small side and can be found in all sorts of watery environments, including moving water such as streams. A few of these are parasitic. Yes, the tapeworm that gets into some people's digestive tracts is a flatworm, but you are not going to get it by wading. Planaria are hermaphrodites (both male and female sex organs). They are not likely to be kept as pets, being rather unattractive among other things. Schmidtea mediterranea image credit: Wikimedia Commons / Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado The version for our purpose is the Schmidtea mediterranea , a freshwater palanerian that is not a parasite. What has caused fascination among zoologists is the way planerians can be sliced and diced, and then the parts can grow into full-fledged planeria. Their ability to regenerate is not to be confused with that of Time Lords , which are one at a time and tend to have quirky personalities. But I digres

The word headbanger  is associated with heavy metal music, supposedly because fans became so excited at concerts, they would literally bang their heads on the stage. These jaspers were known to hurt themselves, too. (Some with a grain of sense would go through the motions and make their long hair fly around, so they had to settle for hearing loss from loud music.) You aren't built to do that, old son. However, there's a critter that is  built to bang its head. The Great Black Woodpecker , Akseli Gallen-Kallela, 1893 Ever heard a woodpecker pecking wood? They may be drumming to communicate, but they use their engineered bird parts to get food. The beak is extra strong, so is the skull, and it has a special sticky tongue to snag the snack that is trying to escape. Before the term irreducible complexity  was termed, I was presenting the concept years ago when I discussed the woodpecker in creation science lectures. Just thought I'd throw that in there. So, why don