Keith du Cros.com

NewScientist has covered a survey/study on how evolution is taught in the classroom (or, sometimes, how its not). Of the 2000 teachers polled, 16% followed creationism, believing that the earth had been created by god within the past 10,000 years. Whats probably more significant is the effects…

[..] about 12.5% of the total survey – said they taught it as a “valid, scientific alternative to Darwinian explanations for the origin of species”

[..] Teachers who subscribed to these young-Earth creationist views, perhaps not surprisingly, spent 35% fewer hours teaching evolution than other teachers

Not entirely suprising how America gets statistics like this, now, is it.

Picked this up from a NewScientist article.

Ground-living vertebrates have declined by 25%, with most of the slump occurring since 1980. Marine species held fairly steady until the late 1990s before falling sharply to give an overall drop of 28%. Freshwater species have decreased by 25%, primarily since the late 1980s.

Loh says the most dramatic declines have been observed in the tropics. Tropical ground-living species have seen an average population drop of 46%, while their temperate cousins have shown no overall change.

They don’t seem to be 100% sure on the numbers, but they could possibly even be conservative.

Bad astronomy has a good write-up on the supposed link (or lack thereof) between autism and vaccinations.

I just can’t make this any clearer. Vaccines do not cause autism. Study after study has shown this, in multiple ways. The removal of the MMR (mumps-measles-rubella) vaccine in Japan did not lead to a decline in the number of cases of autisms diagnosed; instead the number of children falling in the autism spectrum increased.

I looked into this alot when my daughter was going through some of her vaccinations and came to similar conclusions. I’m all for research into the cause of autism and studies done on vaccinations and their safety, but this has been done. Its been looked into time and time again, and the results are conclusive. Sadly, there has already been damage done by the one highly questionable study that sparked alot of this as well as general claims of “toxins and evils” in vaccines…

And there is a chilling side to this. Vaccines are among the greatest achievements in human history. This is not hyperbole. Millions upon millions of lives have been saved by vaccines. Smallpox is gone. Polio is gone. A vaccine has been developed to prevent HPV, saving millions of women from the horrors of cervical cancer.

If vaccinations decline, then we will see an increase in mumps, measles, rubella, whooping cough (pertussis), and many more terrible afflictions… problems that are ultimately completely curable. This is stone, cold fact. Worse, these problems are far more severe in children.

Update: Respectful insolence has provided their own summary of the ‘autism epidemic’:

[...] the apparent increase in prevalence observed over the last two decades can be explained largely by increased awareness and diagnostic substitution. There is no autism epidemic.

I picked this up from a pharyngula article this morning on “Attempted interspecies rape”… Yes thats right. But don’t jump to conclusions, there were no humans involved here. Actually just a young Fur Seal getting desperate. The BBC article is… well… something else.

De Bruyn and a colleague were on Trypot beach at Marion Island to study elephant seals when they noticed a young, adult male Antarctic fur seal, in good condition, attempting to copulate with an adult king penguin of unknown sex.

The 100kg seal first subdued the 15kg penguin by lying on it. The penguin flapped its flippers and attempted to stand and escape - but to no avail.

The seal then alternated between resting on the penguin, and thrusting its pelvis, trying to insert itself, unsuccessfully.

After 45 minutes the seal gave up, swam into the water and then completely ignored the bird it had just assaulted, the scientists report.

Oh, and there are pictures of the scene. Poor little penguin. Sexual coercion and harassment in animals is supposedly pretty common. The seal took it to new extremes though…

[ ... ] this is thought to be the first recorded example of a mammal trying to have sex with a member of another class of vertebrate, such as a bird, fish, reptile, or amphibian.

Quickie. Was just reading up about the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and its supposed safety concerns. If you haven’t read about it before - its definitely worth a look. First thing I thought of was fry holes.

Has anyone ever discovered a hole in nothing with monsters in it? Cause if I’m the first I want them to call it “a Fry Hole”. - Phillip J Fry