This is the first part of a series of posts on evolution (what it is, what evidence there is for it and so on)
This first post will be about what evolution is and is not..

What it is not.

• All of science
• Other sciences
  • Cosmology
    • The Big Bang Theory
    • Star formation
    • Planet formation
  • Geology
  • Chemistry
    • Abiogenesis (origin of life)
• Origen of the universe
• Survival of the fittest
• Atheistic (it has nothing to do with the existence or non existence of a god or gods)
• A lie

What it is

It dawned on me today on the way to lunch that public schools in this area, namely those dealing with adolescent and pre-adolescent children, are built with an innate hypocrisy. We funnel information and knowledge at the kids at, sometimes, an alarming rate, hoping they will go into the world and use that information. There are two realms where we don't do this: drug and sex education.

Apparently loneliness makes you physically cold.

Feeling cold? Maybe you're lonely.

Social isolation makes people feel physically cold, find University of Toronto psychologists Chen-Bo Zhong, PhD, and Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, PhD.

Moreover, they find that making people feel left out makes them more likely to choose hot soup or coffee over warm or room-temperature foods and beverages.

"It's striking that people preferred hot coffee and soup more when socially excluded," Leonardelli says in a news release. "Our research suggests that warm chicken soup may be a literal coping mechanism for social isolation."

The article goes on to explain the experiment scientists used to determine this. This definitely explains some things.

Fascinating:

"Creationism should be discussed in school science lessons, rather than excluded, says the director of education at the Royal Society."

Professor Michael Reiss is or was the director of education at the royal society. He is also a biologist and Church of England minister. I was going to write about this today, but events changed somewhat by the fact that Prof Reiss quit the post today following the controversy over his recent comments on creationism.

Part of these comments were that Creationism should be discussed in Science classes along side Evolution. Prof Reiss said:

"When young people ask questions about creationism in science classes, teachers need to be able to explain to them why evolution and the Big Bang are scientific theories but they should also take the time to explain how science works and why creationism has no scientific basis."

I don't know how many of you get Mike Adams' newsletter "NaturalNews" but I do, and I just received his latest on the state of Finances in the US. This is scary stuff. You can read the whole article here, but I'm going to touch/quote {on} some basics, below.

Mike Adams writes:

"Less than 40 days ago, the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history became public as federal regulators seized IndyMac Bancorp Inc. following a run by depositors. Meanwhile, astonished investors looked on while Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac cratered into financial insolvency and were taken over by the United States government, instantly doubling the U.S. national debt and absolutely guaranteeing the eventual financial burn out of the U.S. government. (President Bush is scrambling right now to keep it off the government's accounting books... just more smoke and mirrors, huh?)

The Church of England is apologising to Charles Darwin. Given that Mr Darwin is dead, this seems rather pointless. But then the Anglicans have never been put off by pointlessness. It rather typifies much of the Church of England. According to The Daily Telegraph:

"The statement will read: Charles Darwin: 200 years from your birth, the Church of England owes you an apology for misunderstanding you and, by getting our first reaction wrong, encouraging others to misunderstand you still. We try to practise the old virtues of 'faith seeking understanding' and hope that makes some amends."

Not only are they apologising to him, they are trying to make it up to him. Part of the way they are doing that is by creating (if I can use that term) a section dedicated to him on their website. Or perhaps the website just evolved that way.

 Here is  a fun game to help with review.

http://sunshine.chpc.utah.edu/labs/scientific_method/sci_method_main.html 

 Here is what we have done since school started:

Scientific Method

Well, its been a few day's since the hardon collider in Switzerland has come on-line, and well... were still here. I'll admit i would be the first to come clean, but i thought something might happen. Let's be honest, 17 mile underground compound, speed of light travel, lots of people in glasses? Has all the of makings for an end of the world Esq destruction sequence. You have law suites,  protesters and politicians all yelling with pitchforks and fire, Stop the collider! Burn the collider! Gimme some pie! well that's enough for a non science guy like me to say; Ya know what? black holes and pole shifts do not sound like a good time, at all. But then the people in-charge of the HC say, "don't worry, if a black hole spawns it will take it at LEAST 15 months before it devours earth". Oh boy! at least we get 15 months to enjoy, can you imagine what the last 15 months of earth would be like?

I was already happy to see here in Switzerland pharmacies selling baby bottles "not containing BPA". With this new article discussed on Nature I am even more satisfied to see that BPA possible danger is coming into fashion also for the big public.

A preliminary study possibly links diabetes and heart attack to BPA presence in human blood. BPA comes from food packages made of plastic, so virtually everybody can have high percentage of it in his/her body.