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The Black Widow Spider and Biomimetics

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Good science can be had by studying the work of the Master Engineer in nature, then finding ways to implement them for our own lives. The field of biomimetics is rapidly growing, with new applications being considered frequently. Some of these come from sources that may seem startling, such as the black widow spider. Credit: Pixabay / jgiammatteo This infamous arachnid causes folks to yell, "Katie, bar the door!", which can be counterproductive if the thing's inside with you. But although their venom is somewhat dangerous (less so for healthy adults), antivenom exists. Just don't be fussing with it, you savvy? You might consider calling an exterminator if they're in your home. Or maybe one of the researchers. Spiders have always been spiders, and they show no signs of having evolved from something way back when. Researchers want to know about their webbing, since it is proportionately very strong and they have some interesting ideas to implement. Like th

The Wrasse Cleaning Station

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Have you ever had some kind of parasite like a tick or something on your skin? If it is obvious, you may remove it yourself. Other times it may be in a place that is difficult to reach, so you need to get expert help. Since fish do not have hands, they need assistance with parasites, so they visit the local wrasse cleaning station. Kelp bass with streak cleaner wrasse Credit: Wikimedia Commons / Tomarin ( CC by-SA 2.1 JP ) You may have seen videos of the cleaner wrasse being helpful in the sea, getting mutual benefits by cleaning much larger fish. They get some victuals, and other fish get parasites removed. The whole thing is quite amazing, since some of the clients are much larger than wrasses but do not eat them. Customers may have to wait in line for service. The wrasse is safe while at the neutral zone, but if it goes away to get more clients for the cleaning station, it may get chomped. Darwinists are baffled because the whole thing goes against their views. Since the

Counting Craters for Deep Time

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There is prairie schooner-full of methods used to calculate the age of the earth, the solar system, and so forth. None of them are very accurate because assumptions have to be made before those calculations are made. Some, like the Milankovitch theory , as based on circular reasoning. Even so, adherents of cosmic evolution continue to use fundamentally flawed dating methods because the alternative (a recently-created universe) is rejected out of hand. One bad method that persists is crater count dating. Tycho Crater Oblique View Credit: NASA / Goddard / Arizona State University (Usage does not imply endorsement of site contents) This method has been crashing (heh!) for a long time (see this 2012 article, " Crater Count Dating Still Unreliable "). Basically, the idea is that if a surface has more craters, it is older than surfaces with fewer craters. Nobody knows the rate of objects smacking into a moon or other object. Worse, when an impact occurs, stuff gets kicked

Creation, Evolution, and Linguistic Relativity

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by Cowboy Bob Sorensen The first part of this article will be short and, I think, amusing. I wrote " Artificial Intelligence and Evolving Morality " and then followed up with " Artificial Psychotic Intelligence ". These addressed how some scientists and others want to use AI to discern morality, but AI is determined by the programmers, their biases, and the quality of the programming itself. Robots and other forms of artificial intelligence lack creativity. A couple of researchers at Google attempted to make a machine that would generate lyrics. The results were unimpressive , perhaps only suitable for the hands at the Darwin Ranch after boozing it up on payday or for 21st century pop songs. Not only do machines lack creativity, they don't properly deal with language itself. Language books, Freeimages / dog madic Now we're coming to the main part of this here article. Language evolves. Yes, you heard me right. But I used the word evolves very deli

Evolution and Occult DNA

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Adherents of Big Bang-to-banker evolution, whether cosmic or biological, often resort to hidden causes. Since the Big Bang does not work, cosmologists bring in fudge factors and occult cosmology like dark matter, dark energy, and more to make their speculations seem plausible. Other riders for the materialist brand are using related terms to prop up Darwinism. Background image furnished by Why?Outreach In biology, these "dark" things are not just made up to make evolution look good. Instead, secularists are speculating about things they do not understand. "Junk" DNA , for example, was something that scientists did not understand, so they arrogantly declared significant parts of DNA to be leftover junk from our alleged evolutionary past. It's a natural fact that their hubris is vexatious. Now they are appealing to other "dark" things in biology, including DNA: dark DNA is the driving force of evolution. Of course, these owlhoots are presenting

Slabs in the Face of Deep Time

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The dominant principle in old earth geology is uniformitarianism, which essentially means that present processes are the key to the past. Secular geologists shun catastrophic processes for the most part, but it puts burrs under their saddles when they are forced to invoke them on occasion. Of course, the global Genesis Flood is rejected out of hand. Such biases make for erroneous geological studies; some things are unexplainable from deep time conjectures. Take cold slabs and subduction, for example. Background image adapted by Why?Outreach You have probably heard of plate tectonics, where plates on the earth's surface move. Secular scientists are unable to determine how plate tectonics began . The most popular model among biblical creationists is catastrophic plate tectonics, which began with the Genesis Flood. Plates do not simply collide. Subduction happens when one plate is forced under another one. There are oceanic slabs of rock that are far too cold to be explained b

Inaccurate Age Results from Zircon Dating

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Many of those who believe in an ancient earth like to point to zircons as if they were conclusive proof of their views. Zircon dating is often trotted out by owlhoots who want to play the "Gotcha!" game, not realizing that zircon crystals have their own problems, such as the presence of carbon . Now some secular scientists are raising serious questions. Zircon in Jack Hills, Australia's Narre Gneiss Terrane Image credit: NASA / GSFC / METI/ERSDAC / JAROS, and U.S. / Japan ASTER Science Team (Usage does not imply endorsement of site contents) Detrital zircons contain traces of uranium and lead. Researches took some from a pile at the base of a slope and the results were surprising. In fact, the researchers are showing that assumptions (which always occur in radiometric dating) may be not only biased, but biases may appear that other scientists are unaware of. Kind of hard to get reliable indications of an old earth when the dating methods are fundamentally flawed.

Knot What You Might Think

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The other day I stopped at Stormie Waters' cabin, and she wanted me to get a knot out of the chain for her jade pendant. Then I commenced to pondering on knots. Cowboys use them to keep things from falling off a pack mule, sailors know all sorts of knots, neckties have special knots, and so on. I was surprised to learn that people study the things because they have mathematical properties. Möbius knot image credit: Pixabay / Reimund Bertrams There are various shapes and twists found in nature. One that fascinates me (mayhaps you as well) is the Möbius strip . You may have made those things as a kid, just cut a long strip of paper, give it half a twist, and attach the ends. It has two sides. No, one side. Wait... From there, we can have the Möbius knot and really go nuts, staring and playing with it. Mathematicians love them. Knots and other fascinating, complex shapes are found in nature. Various creatures knot themselves and then undo the knots as they see fit, and even D

Two Brief Testimonies for a Young Universe

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Folks that believe the universe is billions of years old should have been abused of that notion because of observed data. Unfortunately, the atoms-to-astronomer narrative drives the interpretation of information. Dust rings around a distant star? Must be a planet forming, right? Not at all . When a galaxy does not fit the cosmic evolutionary worldview, it's time for " substantial revision ", and they race around like snakes fleeing a brush fire. Other examples of a young solar system ? Make excuses or just ignore them. Here are two more items for secularist owlhoots to ignore. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / STScI (Usage does not imply endorsement of site contents) Blue stars are nice and hot. They are also fuel hogs, so they should not be in galaxies according to the standard mythology. Using deep time reckoning against secularists, spiral galaxies with blue stars cannot be quite so old. Also, we have neutron stars in globular clusters. They should have gotten out o

Inselbergs and the Genesis Flood

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In previous posts, we have looked at several instances of geomorphology, such as planation surfaces and the like. Today we are going to focus on inselbergs. No, Inselberg was not a musician in a German rock band (that I know of), but it the word came from German and means island mountain. We have a passel of them in the USA (such as Stone Mountain ), but there are many of them around the world, and they puzzle deep time geologists. Eningen unter Achalm, Baden-Württemberg, Germany Credit: Wikimedia Commons / Vux ( CC BY-SA 3.0 DE ) (enhanced) You could be eyeballing a plot of land and suddenly see a huge bump or series of bumps. According to uniformitarian geology, everything happens over long periods of time. Geologists cannot adequately explain how they appeared. To make matters worse, inselbergs are showing signs of erosion that do not fit deep time speculations. The global Genesis Flood provides the most logical explanation for what we observe — which means that Earth is f