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.

I’ve been following the recent news over at the official richard dawkins website on the upcoming Pro-Intelligent Design (ID) film “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed”. Describing this film as controversial would probably be an understatement, and I assume thats the effect the producers are after. I’ve got to say I haven’t had the ‘pleasure’ of seeing it myself… but really, I could imagine it would be similar to seeing something like cup chicks. You would only see it because:

1. You’re told, forced, or feel like you need to, even though you think its going to be bad, and;
2. You’re uninformed/out of the loop if you don’t.

Ultimately, i assume both probably have similar reactions.

Following the numerous controversies the film has attracted, the most recent one grabbed my attention. The film has supposedly ripped off (or, recreated very closely) a Harvard video on the inner life of the cell. If you haven’t seen it before, its really quite fascinating. Its available in two versions, one with music and one narrated (most of this goes over my head, but the complex words at least make me feel smarter). Check out the you tube version below (with music) for a taste. But be sure to grab the high def versions of the music and narrated versions though. Definitely worth the download.

All this goes on inside one white blood cell. Worth checking out molecular motors also if theres any disbelief… I know at first i thought that ‘vesicle’ at 1:16 was pretty nuts. Guess what, you have about 100, 000 of those inside each of your 100 trillion cells (if you’re really interested, check out the presentation one of the creators does).

Update: Looks as though Harvard got the video pulled off youtube. Try doing a search if you’re after it still.