Scientists are worried about Planet of the Apes in real life

There's a simple solution: set the bar at which humanized apes can sue, or have suits brought on their behalf, in the courts very low. I guarantee you that will dissuade teaching people from teaching apes to talk.

Anti-evolution proposal makes mockery of science

It is only one guy's submission, so maybe it's not time to get too excited (yet), but this is still stunning:

One submission has come from a company called International Databases, LLC. It's a one-man operation run by Stephen Sample, who says he has a degree in evolutionary biology and taught at the high school and junior college levels for 15 years.

The material he submitted consists of eight modules dealing with current issues in biology and ecology. Most are well within the mainstream scientific consensus. But there are two that deal with the origin of life. Those sections say the "null hypothesis" is that there had to be some intelligent agency behind the appearance of living things. It is up to the scientists proposing a naturalistic explanation to prove their case.

That makes a mockery of the scientific method (and half-way decent theology too). The null hypothesis is not "a wizard did it" (I'm not mocking religion here: he said the intelligence is not necessarily God). If that had been the baseline, modern western civilization would not have come into being (and you wouldn't have a computer or electronic device to read this on). The null hypothesis is simply that that theory is not true.

Is the pen inherently better than the keyboard?

Lifehacker seems to think so. Intuitively this makes sense to me. I'd probably write with a pen most of the time if getting handwriting into the computer were painless and hyper-accurate. On the other hand, intellectually it isn't convincing. Of course you learn symbols and shapes better by drawing them yourself than by finding them on a keyboard. As for the study at the University of Washington, does it prove that the pen is a tool more suited for the human brain or does it merely prove that the keyboard is a more difficult tool to learn? After all, the children may have performed more poorly simply because they were more adept at their age with a pen than with a keyboard. If they had already become touch-typists, would the results still have given the advantage to the pen?

The Disappearing Bees Solved

Apparently Davros had nothing to do with it. Drat.

New Study Says No Water on Moon

Wired has the story.