Free Republic

_Thursday, September 25_ COMMUNITY DEMONSTRATION: "*I AM WOMAN!" ... SARAH PALIN RECEPTION in NEWPORT BEACH (reception for Palin hosted by the LINCOLN CLUB) * TIME: 5 pm meet (see below for more information about carpooling from TEMPLE) COST: no cost DESCRIPTION: The Director of The TEMPLE passionately invites you to join her in full sisterly support of the women organizers of an Orange County public demonstration: *"I am Woman!"* ... at a fundraising reception for Sarah Palin at the Island Hotel (formerly the Four Seasons) at Fashion Island. The event for Palin is hosted by the Lincoln Club of Orange...

<p>The poisonous Japanese pufferfish, known as fugu to gourmets who risk their lives eating it, has yielded valuable new genetic information in the quest for deeper knowledge of the basics of human heredity and disease.</p> <p>Led by gene-mappers at the Joint Genome Institute in Walnut Creek, an international team of scientists has analyzed and assembled a virtually complete draft of all the genes in the deadly fish, the researchers report.</p>

<p>The poisonous Japanese pufferfish, known as fugu to gourmets who risk their lives eating it, has yielded valuable new genetic information in the quest for deeper knowledge of the basics of human heredity and disease.</p> <p>Led by gene-mappers at the Joint Genome Institute in Walnut Creek, an international team of scientists has analyzed and assembled a virtually complete draft of all the genes in the deadly fish, the researchers report.</p>

Life's Grand Design A new breed of anti-evolutionists credits it to an unnamed intelligence By Holly J. Morris Two people come to your door with a petition to give evolution some competition in the science classroom. One is a biblical literalist who wants genetics out and Genesis in. The other is a science professor with exquisite academic credentials, championing a compelling theory called intelligent design. He speaks in painful detail about the bacterial flagellum, whatever that is. Though many may prefer old-style creationism, nowadays the scientist in the suit is getting the most signatures. These new anti-evolutionists say life's...

A theory evolves How evolution really works, and why it matters more than ever By Thomas Hayden When scientists introduced the world to humankind's earliest known ancestor two weeks ago, they showed us more than a mere museum piece. Peering at the 7 million-year-old skull is almost like seeing a reflection of our earlier selves. And yet that fossil represents only a recent chapter in a grander story, beginning with the first single-celled life that arose and began evolving some 3.8 billion years ago. Now, as the science of evolution moves beyond guesswork, we are learning something even more...

The Second Law Can be Beat One of the most important principles of physics, that disorder, or entropy, always increases, has been shown to be untrue. .... A few years ago, a tentative theoretical solution to this paradox was proposed - the so-called Fluctuation Theorem - stating that the chances of the Second Law being violated increases as the system in question gets smaller. This means that at human scales, the Second Law dominates and machines only ever run in one direction. However, when working at molecular scales and over extremely short periods of time, things can take place in...

The Scientist 16[5]:12, Mar. 4, 2002 OPINION Not-So-Intelligent Design By Neil S. Greenspan Anthony Canamucio Some members of the Ohio State Board of Education are maneuvering to have "intelligent design" (ID) taught to Ohio students as an alternative to teaching them about biological evolution.1 These board members were pursuing the inclusion of ID in the biology curriculum despite unambiguous opposition from the relevant science advisory committee. One board member apparently regards this development as a chance for Ohio "to be on the cutting edge." Unfortunately, this cutting edge will only serve to whittle away a bit more of the collective ...

Wealth spawns corruption Physicists are explaining how politics can create the super-rich. 28 January 2002 PHILIP BALL Solvent socialist economies could be more at risk from corruption than liberal ones, according to a team of physicists, mathematicians and economists. Some political systems, say the researchers, contain the seeds of 'wealth condensation'1. This is the process whereby a sizeable fraction of a society's total assets end up in the hands of one super-rich individual. The super-rich can arise only when average individual wealth exceeds a certain value. Such is the unhappy conclusion of a mathematical model developed by Zdzislaw Burda of ...

Deciphering Protein Evolution Actin shares a common ancestor with a bacterial protein By Barry A. Palevitz One of the enduring questions in biology is how eukaryotic cells arose from prokaryotic ancestors at least 2 billion years ago. Besides differences in genome organization, eukaryotic animals, plants, and fungi possess a much higher degree of cellular compartmentation in the form of membrane bound organelles than their distant bacterial and Archaean cousins. But how did such a plethora of cellular domains, each with a discrete role in metabolism, evolve? To the extent that science proves anything, it answered the question for two eukaryotic ...

Deciphering Protein Evolution Actin shares a common ancestor with a bacterial protein By Barry A. Palevitz One of the enduring questions in biology is how eukaryotic cells arose from prokaryotic ancestors at least 2 billion years ago. Besides differences in genome organization, eukaryotic animals, plants, and fungi possess a much higher degree of cellular compartmentation in the form of membrane bound organelles than their distant bacterial and Archaean cousins. But how did such a plethora of cellular domains, each with a discrete role in metabolism, evolve? To the extent that science proves anything, it answered the question for two eukaryotic ...

The Scientist 16[1]:16, Jan. 7, 2002 NEWS SNPs as Windows on Evolution Recent studies reveal that the human species is young and genetically uniform By Ricki Lewis Single nucleotide polymorphisms--variants in DNA sequences better known as SNPs and pronounced snips--provide a shortcut to comparing genes and genomes within and among species. The need to study SNPs has spawned a number of companies aimed at matching SNP patterns to disease risks. A few other organizations, however, are taking a broader view: mining SNPs for clues to human diversity and evolution. Association studies that correlate SNP patterns to disease risks are straightforward. ...

Sacred Ground Starhawk What Would the Goddess Do? Here are some suggestions of how to embody the energy of the Goddess in these troubled times. The world has changed since Tuesday, September 11, 2001. All of us have come face to face with death on a massive scale, with the immense power of the forces of destruction, with our fragility, and with fear. The loudest voices around us in the U.S. are calling out for retaliation and revenge, led by the president and most of our public officials. In such a situation, what would the Goddess do? In the ...

The Evolution Debate is About Honesty by James Haught [James A Haught, editor of the Charleston (West Virginia) Gazette, was awarded a Clarion Award by the Association of Women in Communications in the category of editorial opinion in US newspapers under 100 000 circulation. Haught's editorials and columns defended the separation of church and state in a variety of ways, including outspoken opposition to recent attempts of creationists to have the Kanawha County school board advise teachers to teach the supposed evidence against evolution (see Karl D Fezer, "Juicy Fruit or Spearmint in West Virginia", RNCSE 2000; 20 [1-2]: ...

Question for all:

This morning, Hugh Hewitt, host of the morning show out of KIEV radio in Glendale, CA, asked people to call in if they changed their vote, or decided not to vote, or ceased work on getting Bush elected, after the networks called Florida for Gore. He got a number of calls, and he's forwarding the callers' names and phone numbers to the Bush campaign if they need to fight calls for a re-count in selected counties in Florida. As he explained this morning, if "confusion" is enough of a factor to call for redoing an election in any one county, ...

Stop the Presses! Jesus didn't really die on the cross by Ibrahim Naeem (Pasadena Weekly &ndash; 4/27/00) Easter commemorates the crucifixion, death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ and provides the foundation upon which Christianity rests. Everybody knows that. Then why do my many thorough and critical readings of the gospels fail to support the conclusion drawn from these writings? In fact, just the opposite conclusion can be drawn. And the first evidence comes from Jesus himself. He foretold his escape from death on the cross when he likened his fate to that of Jonas (Matthew 12:40) who entered the ...

THE REAGAN INFORMATION INTERCHANGE Welcome to the 6 Billioneth Baby Happy Birthday, Adnan Nevik! Editor's Note: The following delightful, thoughtful article was sent as a commentary on the analysis on the World Congress of Families talks. Thanks Karl Lembke by Karl Lembke Two minutes after midnight, on October 12, 1999, you emerged into the world and brought its population up to an even six billion. Welcome! You have your whole life ahead of you, however long that may be. On your birthday, I wish you a long and healthy life. You are the child who has been chosen to roll ...