Free Republic

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has offered a striking explanation for why the United States attacked Iran: Washington, he said, “knew that there was going to be an Israeli action,” anticipated that Iran would retaliate against U.S. forces, and therefore hit first to reduce American casualties. The formulation is not only politically convenient; it is conceptually confused. It implies that the United States acted because Israel was going to act—yet also insists that the operation “needed to happen,” as Rubio put it, regardless. That is, the argument simultaneously portrays America as reluctantly reacting to an ally and decisively pursuing...

Compared to other animals, humans have very little genetic diversity, e.g. http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/genetics/skin-color/modern-human-diversity-genetics People today look remarkably diverse on the outside. But how much of this diversity is genetically encoded? How deep are these differences between human groups? First, compared with many other mammalian species, humans are genetically far less diverse – a counterintuitive finding, given our large population and worldwide distribution. For example, the subspecies of the chimpanzee that lives just in central Africa, Pan troglodytes troglodytes, has higher levels of diversity than do humans globally, and the genetic differentiation between the western (P. t. verus) and central (P. t....

Breakthrough: Second Genetic Code Revealed 05/06/2010 May 06, 2010 — It’s sometimes difficult to assess the impact of a scientific paper when it is first published, but one that came out on the cover of Nature today has potential to equal the discovery of the genetic code. The leading science journal reported the discovery of a second genetic code – the “code within the code” – that has just been cracked by molecular biologists and computer scientists. Moreover, they used information technology – not evolutionary theory – to figure it out. The new code is called the Splicing Code....

<p>Fossil hunters say they have found the strongest evidence yet that mankind's direct ancestors were members of a single unique species of skilled tool-using creatures who thrived a million years ago across much of the world from China and Java to Africa and Europe.</p>

...Due to the principles of gravity, mass, and the limitations of muscular anatomy in any life form, it would not be possible for any animal weighing more than 20,803 pounds to be able to lift its own weight (Holden, 1994). However, the Brontosaurus is supposed to weigh over 70,000 pounds, and other so-called sauropods are supposed to be many times larger than that. Then there is the issue of neck size - a long necked animal of that size would not even be able to lift its neck. Additionally, their blood pressure would be way too high to be able...