Pauls musings and tidbits

Creation Museum - Religion - New York Times: “PETERSBURG, Ky. The entrance gates here are topped with metallic Stegosauruses. The grounds include a giant tyrannosaur standing amid the trees, and a stone-lined lobby sports varied sauropods. It could be like any other natural history museum, luring families with the promise of immense fossils and dinosaur adventures.

But step a little farther into the entrance hall, and you come upon a pastoral scene undreamt of by any natural history museum. Two prehistoric children play near a burbling waterfall, thoroughly at home in the natural world. Dinosaurs cavort nearby, their animatronic mechanisms turning them into alluring companions, their gaping mouths seeming not threatening, but almost welcoming, as an Apatosaurus munches on leaves a few yards away. What is this, then? A reproduction of a childhood fantasy in which dinosaurs are friends of inquisitive youngsters? The kind of fantasy that doesn%u2019t care that human beings and these prefossilized thunder-lizards are usually thought to have been separated by millions of years? No, this really is meant to be more like one of those literal dioramas of the traditional natural history museum, an imagining of a real habitat, with plant life and landscape reproduced in meticulous detail. For here at the $27 million Creation Museum, which opens on May 28 (just a short drive from the Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky International Airport), this pastoral scene is a glimpse of the world just after the expulsion from the Garden of Eden, in which dinosaurs are still apparently as herbivorous as humans, and all are enjoying a little calm in the days after the fall.It also serves as a vivid introduction to the sheer weirdness and daring of this museum created by the Answers in Genesis ministry that combines displays of extraordinary nautilus shell fossils and biblical tableaus, celebrations of natural wonders and allusions to human sin. Evolution gets its continual comeuppance, while biblical revelations are treated as gospel.”

(Read Original Article - Via New York Times .)

Victorian Gardens at Wollman Rink in Central Park | Amusement Park: “Victorian Gardens first opened its gates to the general public in the summer of 2003. The idea to house an amusement park on Wollman ice skating rink was inspired by a small group of industry veterans, who saw an incredible opportunity to utilize the 50,000 square foot facility not only in the winter, but all year long. After negotiations with the Conservancy, Parks Department and the Trump Organization, these private investors established Central Amusement International (CAI), and plans to design Victorian Gardens commenced. CAI executives turned to Zamperla, the industry leader in ride manufacturing, to help make their vision a reality. “

(Read Original Article - Via .)

Teachers drop the Holocaust to avoid offending Muslims | the Daily Mail: “Schools are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim pupils, a Governmentbacked study has revealed.

It found some teachers are reluctant to cover the atrocity for fear of upsetting students whose beliefs include Holocaust denial.

There is also resistance to tackling the 11th century Crusades - where Christians fought Muslim armies for control of Jerusalem - because lessons often contradict what is taught in local mosques.

The findings have prompted claims that some schools are using history ‘as a vehicle for promoting political correctness’.

The study, funded by the Department for Education and Skills, looked into ‘emotive and controversial’ history teaching in primary and secondary schools.

It found some teachers are dropping courses covering the Holocaust at the earliest opportunity over fears Muslim pupils might express anti-Semitic and anti-Israel reactions in class.

The researchers gave the example of a secondary school in an unnamed northern city, which dropped the Holocaust as a subject for GCSE coursework.

The report said teachers feared confronting ‘anti-Semitic sentiment and Holocaust denial among some Muslim pupils’.

It added: ‘In another department, the Holocaust was taught despite anti-Semitic sentiment among some pupils.

‘But the same department deliberately avoided teaching the Crusades at Key Stage 3 (11- to 14-year-olds) because their balanced treatment of the topic would have challenged what was taught in some local mosques.’

A third school found itself ’strongly challenged by some Christian parents for their treatment of the Arab-Israeli conflict-and the history of the state of Israel that did not accord with the teachings of their denomination’.

The report concluded: ‘In particular settings, teachers of history are unwilling to challenge highly contentious or charged versions of history in which pupils are steeped at home, in their community or in a place of worship.’”

(Read Original Article - Via the Daily Mail .)

Female Sharks Can Reproduce Alone, Researchers Find - washingtonpost.com: “Mahmood Shivji — Nova Southeastern’s Guy Harvey Research Institute director and one of the paper’s authors — said that he and his colleagues determined that a byproduct formed when sharks produce eggs, known as a sister polar body, had fused with an unfertilized egg to produce the baby shark, whose DNA had only half as much genetic variability as the mother.

‘Yes, indeed this is a virgin birth,’ Shivji said in an interview, adding that this could help explain why other sharks have suddenly been born in captivity, like a bamboo shark that appeared in Detroit’s Belle Isle Aquarium in 2002.

‘We have now demonstrated that sharks are actually able to use an alternative, previously unknown reproductive pathway, which is parthenogenesis. The problem here is that this alternative reproductive pathway results in offspring that have much lower genetic diversity,’ he said.

The paper’s lead author, Demian Chapman, who did the genetic analysis while pursuing his doctorate at Nova Southeastern and now directs the shark program at the Pew Institute for Ocean Science, said the reduced genetic variability might pose a problem over time if males become scarce under intense fishing pressure and females resort to asexual reproduction. This, in turn, would result in ‘genetically disadvantaged offspring,’ he said.

Still, Chapman added, the virgin birth does serve as a testament to sharks’ resourcefulness. Mammals cannot reproduce asexually.

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(Read Original Article - Via washingtonpost.com.)

Female Sharks Can Reproduce Alone: “mikesd81 writes ‘The Washington Post has an article about a team of American and Irish researchers that have discovered that some female sharks can reproduce without having sex, the first time that scientists have found the unusual capacity in such an ancient vertebrate species. Their report concludes that sharks can reproduce asexually through the process known as parthenogenesis (the growth and development of an embryo or seed without fertilization by a male). Scientists started investigating after a female hammerhead shark was mysteriously born at Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo in a tank that housed 3 female sharks. It was originally thought one had stored sperm from a male shark before fertilizing an egg. However, baby shark’s genetic makeup perfectly matched one of the females in the tank, with no sign of a male parent.’

(Read Original Article - Via Slashdot.)

Web Video: A PoliticsTV Retrospective: “

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(Read Original Article - Via Threat Level.)

Are mobile phones wiping out our bees? - Independent Online Edition > Wildlife: “It seems like the plot of a particularly far-fetched horror film. But some scientists suggest that our love of the mobile phone could cause massive food shortages, as the world’s harvests fail.

They are putting forward the theory that radiation given off by mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets is a possible answer to one of the more bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the natural world - the abrupt disappearance of the bees that pollinate crops. Late last week, some bee-keepers claimed that the phenomenon - which started in the US, then spread to continental Europe - was beginning to hit Britain as well.

The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees’ navigation systems, preventing the famously homeloving species from finding their way back to their hives. Improbable as it may seem, there is now evidence to back this up.

Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) occurs when a hive’s inhabitants suddenly disappear, leaving only queens, eggs and a few immature workers, like so many apian Mary Celestes. The vanished bees are never found, but thought to die singly far from home. The parasites, wildlife and other bees that normally raid the honey and pollen left behind when a colony dies, refuse to go anywhere near the abandoned hives.

The alarm was first sounded last autumn, but has now hit half of all American states. The West Coast is thought to have lost 60 per cent of its commercial bee population, with 70 per cent missing on the East Coast.

CCD has since spread to Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece. And last week John Chapple, one of London’s biggest bee-keepers, announced that 23 of his 40 hives have been abruptly abandoned.

Other apiarists have recorded losses in Scotland, Wales and north-west England, but the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs insisted: ‘There is absolutely no evidence of CCD in the UK.’

The implications of the spread are alarming. Most of the world’s crops depend on pollination by bees. Albert Einstein once said that if the bees disappeared, ‘man would have only four years of life left’.”

(Read Original Article - Via Independent Online Edition > Wildlife .)

AppleInsider | News Flash: Apple iPhone receives FCC approval: “Apple Inc. on Thursday received the official go-ahead on its first ever mobile handset, as regulators for the Federal Communications Commission gave the iPod maker the green light to commence sales of the device in the United States.

According to FCC documents obtained by AppleInsider, the ‘GSM Cellular Telephone with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi’ carries model number A1203 and FCC ID: BCGA1203.”

(Read Original Article - Via AppleInsider.)

AppleInsider | News Flash: Apple iPhone receives FCC approval: “Apple Inc. on Thursday received the official go-ahead on its first ever mobile handset, as regulators for the Federal Communications Commission gave the iPod maker the green light to commence sales of the device in the United States.

According to FCC documents obtained by AppleInsider, the ‘GSM Cellular Telephone with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi’ carries model number A1203 and FCC ID: BCGA1203.”

(Read Original Article - Via AppleInsider.)

The Curious Cook: The Five-Second Rule Explored, or How Dirty Is That Bologna?: A COUPLE of weeks ago I saw a new scientific paper from Clemson University that struck me as both pioneering and hilarious.

Accompanied by six graphs, two tables and equations whose terms include “bologna” and “carpet,” it’s a thorough microbiological study of the five-second rule: the idea that if you pick up a dropped piece of food before you can count to five, it’s O.K. to eat it.

I first heard about the rule from my then-young children and thought it was just a way of having fun at snack time and lunch. My daughter now tells me that fun was part of it, but they knew they were playing with “germs.”

We’re reminded about germs on food whenever there’s an outbreak of E. coli or salmonella, and whenever we read the labels on packages of uncooked meat. But we don’t have much occasion to think about the everyday practice of retrieving and eating dropped pieces of food.

Microbes are everywhere around us, not just on floors. They thrive in wet kitchen sponges and end up on freshly wiped countertops.

As I write this column, on an airplane, I realize that I have removed a chicken sandwich from its protective plastic sleeve and put it down repeatedly on the sleeve’s outer surface, which was meant to protect the sandwich by blocking microbes. What’s on the outer surface? Without the five-second rule on my mind I wouldn’t have thought to wonder.

I learned from the Clemson study that the true pioneer of five-second research was Jillian Clarke, a high-school intern at the University of Illinois in 2003. Ms. Clarke conducted a survey and found that slightly more than half of the men and 70 percent of the women knew of the five-second rule, and many said they followed it.

She did an experiment by contaminating ceramic tiles with E. coli, placing gummy bears and cookies on the tiles for the statutory five seconds, and then analyzing the foods. They had become contaminated with bacteria.

For performing this first test of the five-second rule, Ms. Clarke was recognized by the Annals of Improbable Research with the 2004 Ig Nobel Prize in public health.

It’s not surprising that food dropped onto bacteria would collect some bacteria. But how many? Does it collect more as the seconds tick by? Enough to make you sick?

(Read Original Article - Via NYT > Most E-mailed Articles.)