Author: hoascience

By now, you have probably heard about Attorney General Merrick Garland's memo, wherein he called on the FBI to address violence against schools and teachers. The context of this memo is that many parents have attended school board meetings across the country to voice their displeasure about current issues facing schools, topics such as mask… Continue reading Facing School Dictates

Last weekend (October 1 and October 2), my wife and I did a science camp at New Hope Bible Church in Wichita, Kansas. It was a lot of fun: we did some hands-on activities with the kids and with families, had specimens to show, and most of all, talk about geology from a Biblical perspective.… Continue reading Science Camp Videos

A pair of Hawaiian Cleaner Wrasses. Fish like these caused a controversy among psychologists. Have you ever heard of the mirror test? It is used by biologists to determine whether an animal is self-aware. The test goes like this: a mirror is placed in an animal's enclosure. It is left there so that the animal… Continue reading A Self-Aware Fish?

Clockwise, from the top left, we have a solenodon, a naked mole rat, and a Portuguese man o' war. What do all of these animals have in common? None of these are known from the fossil record. "The fossil record is incomplete." You occasionally hear this retort when evolutionists are challenged with the absence of… Continue reading The Fossil Record is Incomplete

What is this image? A fancy pinwheel? A pie cut into eight pieces? Actually, it is used to derive the value of pi (the number, not the pastry) I wrote an article about deriving the value of the number pi. Unfortunately, the format I used cannot be easily copied and pasted, so the article is… Continue reading Making Pi

The cast of a skull of the extinct platypus Obdurodon. The two arrows are pointing at molars, which help distinguish this platypus from the living genus. Picture modified from a picture by Skye M, obtained from Wikimedia Commons. In this last post, I want to put the platypus in another context. We have seen how… Continue reading The Platypus, Part 4

A platypus underwater. Note the slits behind the base of the bill. These are not eyes that are closed shut, these are closed grooves that house both the eyes and the ears. Image from Griffiths, Mervyn (1988) "The Platypus" Scientific American 258(5):84-91. In the last post, it was pointed out that the platypus has a… Continue reading The Platypus, Part 3

Skeleton of a platypus as seen from the underside. It is not mentioned in the text, but note how the rib cage is separate from the hips. That shows that the platypus has a diaphragm, a structure that is unique to mammals. Image modified from Griffiths, Mervyn (1988) "The Platypus" Scientific American 258(5): 84-91. To… Continue reading The Platypus, Part 2

A platypus. Photograph modified from an image found on Wikimedia Commons. Photograph by Maria Grist. Several posts ago, I wrote about placozoans, a unique type of simple animal. I began wondering, what is one of the more unusual animals? Something that when people learn about it, they think, "That thing is weird"? I also wanted… Continue reading The Platypus, Part 1

The mummy of Ramesses I as it on display in the Luxor Museum in Egypt. Photograph by Alyssa Bivins, obtained from Wikimedia Commons. The following is a quote from Wikipedia regarding Ramesses I: A mummy currently believed to be that of Ramesses I was stolen from Egypt and displayed in a private Canadian museum for… Continue reading On the Theft of a Mummy