Fish Muscles

DpSUs made a temporary return on Tuesday for a short article by “Research Associate, Senior Lecturer and Science Writer” Frank Sherwin called Fish Sound-Making Muscles Show No Evolution.

Speedy Speciation

The DpSU for Wednesday (as I said, I’m doing it a little out of order) was called Study Shows Bird Species Change Fast.

Competition – Day 11

The question for the penultimate day of the competition, day 11, was: Which That’s a Fact video is the favorite of your students?

Atheists Going To Church

I’ll get to Wednesday’s bird speciation DpSU tomorrow, but the one for today – Some Atheists Go to Church for Kids by Christine Dao – can be commented on quickly.

Competition – Days 9 & 10

The question for day 9 was: What is your favorite Christmas memory?

Competition – Day 8

I’m a little late, but the question for day 8 was: If you could only pick one creation verse as your all-time favorite, which one would it be?

Beached Whales

The title of the DpSU for the 20th of December is Whales in the Desert? The topic is interesting in that I’ve already heard of this find in the context of creationism – it was discussed twice on TWIGO:CP, in TerryH fails geology forever and more briefly in Terry vs The Whale, and inspired a post on We Couldn’t Make This Up.

Now, Mr Hurlbut made a slightly different claim than Mr Thomas does now. To quote the latter blog post:

His argument boils down to the fact that “How did eighty whales wash ashore, half a mile inland, and at an elevation greater even than the height of the Empire State Building?“

Much of the criticism directed at TerryH on the RationalWiki page can be summarised by the following quote from Whoover in the first discussion link:

Here’s a site, not too far from the “coastal highway” expansion that uncovered the site. Its elevation is 151 feet. “Whale Hill” must be hella steep. OTOH, if the site were at 13,000 that wouldn’t hurt “evolutionists'” feelings.

(Terry claimed that the Atacama desert is 13,000 feet high, and argued that the fossils were found at a similar height. They almost certainly weren’t, but even if they were they had 7 million years to get there.)

Some Biomimetics

And you thought we were finished with Chitin… Today’s DpSU is called Shrimp Shells Inspire New Biodegradable Material.

Divine Inheritance

The That’s a Fact video for the last week before Christmas is completely unrelated to creationism, and is called Baby Zygote:

We’ll go through it anyway, however:

Competition – Day 7

The question for day 7, the final day of the first full week of the competition, was: How does your family relax during the busy holiday season?