Author Archive

Among living creatures, it does not take a specialist to realize that jellyfish are not dainty delights of the deep. Although they may be beautiful in appearance, jellyfish are successful predators. Read the rest of this entry »

November 13, 2004, a beautiful fall morning, found me driving south to Red Deer to hear John McKay of Australia. He has been described as a veteran creation geology expert and a walking encyclopedia of creation knowledge. With accolades like that, I was excited about this opportunity to learn. This man’s father was a Scottish lawyer, so he joked that he learned how to argue while very young. Read the rest of this entry »

Have you ever skipped to the back of a story because you simply could not wait another minute to find out how it all ends? Planetary astronomers, in contrast, must be very patient people. Some of them have worked on a project for years, even decades before they ever begin to collect any information. The good news for curious and impatient people is that this is a particularly good time to learn new details about the planets. Read the rest of this entry »

What a glorious occasion it was. On Tuesday, November 9th, I had the opportunity to hear Dr. Vij Sodera, a surgeon from the United Kingdom, speak on “Human Fossils: the myth of evolution from apes.”

As a medical doctor, Vij Sodera compared various skeletons that have been found, and concluded there is no evidence for evolution. The artifacts represent either apes or humans, but there are no missing links or transitional forms. Of special interest to me were two aspects of the discussion: one on skulls and the other on feet. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the great strengths of the intelligent design community, is the large variety of people from diverse scientific disciplines, who contribute to the discussion. With many minds and original approaches, the arguments are honed, and honed again. Everybody wins. In similar fashion, the appearance of a new creation based book with original arguments gives us occasion not only to cheer – but also to pay attention to its contents. Read the rest of this entry »

In Nova Scotia, as elsewhere in the Maritimes, we discover that fossils are an exciting part of the landscape. Not the least of our discoveries are the dinosaurs of Parrsboro. Dinosaurs?? We thought western Canada had exclusive claim to such Canadian artifacts. Not quite. West of Truro, along the north shore of the Minas Basin, we find the touristy town of Parrsboro. The scenery is beautiful, with blueberry crops growing on local hummocky hills. Furthermore the beaches along this stretch of coast are famous for fossils, dinosaur fossils to be specific. Read the rest of this entry »

Recently American biologists tried to have a colleague fired from his job: a dual appointment to the National Institute of Health and the Smithsonian Institution. These mainstream scientists were extremely annoyed, on philosophical grounds, with Dr. Richard Sternberg. Read the rest of this entry »

This is not exactly recent news, but the one hundredth birthday of evolutionist Ernst Mayr draws renewed attention to it. Within the past thirty years, the standard view of evolution theory has been shown to be woefully inadequate. Read the rest of this entry »

Carol Tupper is an Albertan, an artist, and an author. Born and raised in southern Alberta, she loves the prairies and has also fallen in love with our forests and the Canadian Rockies. Since early childhood, Carol has enjoyed art and English. Both are gifts that she is using for the benefit of many. The town of Three Hills sports a mural done by Carol. She wrote her first book in grade nine for her nephew. Read the rest of this entry »

One might suppose, judging by this title, that the beaches in Canada’s maritime provinces are not happy places to visit. Actually they are beautiful. Nevertheless, the story of these landscapes provides remarkable food for thought. Read the rest of this entry »

Have you walked in a pasture lately, closely examining some fresh cow dung? A delightful little fungus grows there. It is so interesting you will wish to give it more than a fleeting glance. Read the rest of this entry »

In the American southwest, some particularly unique and dramatic landscapes have been preserved in the national parks. No one can fail to be impressed by the steep V-shaped gorge and the diagonal patterning (between horizontal erosion surfaces) which characterizes the rocks of Zion National Park in Utah. Similar sandstone rocks extend over a seven-state area, but they are not all called by the same name. In various parts of their range, these rocks are known either as Navajo, or Aztec, or Nugget Sandstone. Read the rest of this entry »

Of the five senses which keep us in touch with the world, most of us are particularly aware of eyesight and hearing. Of course we are very thankful for these gifts. One sense that we tend to take for granted however, is the sense of smell. This sense does not seem very complicated or amazing. Nevertheless a little research reveals that our sense of smell is not only exquisitely designed, but it is also poorly understood by biologists. Of all our senses, that of smell seems to be the most complicated. Read the rest of this entry »

The striking image on the cover of this book is a crystal of DNA. What more effective illustration could one imagine for a book which deals with the significance of biochemistry for our understanding of biology? Read the rest of this entry »

It was just a matter of time, of course, following the discovery of geckos’ amazing ability to stick to smooth surfaces by means of molecular forces (see Let’s Learn from the Best), that another such animal would be discovered. One might have expected that the next discovery would be in another reptile, similar to the gecko. Imagine our surprise, then when we heard that the second example is nothing like the first. An article published last year in the Journal of Experimental Biology reveals that such a phenomenon has been discovered in a jumping spider (Evarcha aracuata) commonly found in Europe. While many creatures such as flies use an adhesive fluid (ugh) to stick themselves to surfaces, these jumping spiders use ‘dry adhesion’ like the geckos. Read the rest of this entry »