Ok, so I don't know if "lobectomy" is a word, and what I did tonight wasn't exactly brain surgery, but I did get to excise a human brain from a cadaver. Pretty cool. There was apparently a hemorrhage in the right hemisphere of the cerebrum, as it was stained red with blood. We found the vessel that had ruptured...We weren't sure if this is what killed him though, as when we went to cut out the liver, we found that it was covered with tumors that were most likely cancerous. His lungs also had tumors on them. Had a lot of bad things going for him.

I don't know if anyone else has worked on cadavers, but do you usually listen to music? It struck me as a little strange that, here I am, cutting apart some guys body, and beat-boxing along with Snoop Dogg and Pharrel on the radio. Oh well. I really enjoyed it. I was able to actually see the chiasm of the optic nerve right before it enters the brain (why we have no blind spots). I was able to locate most of the other cranial nerves. It makes it a lot easier to learn when you can actually see it instead of just looking at pictures in a book. The brain is an amazing thing. It got me thinking though, is it really possible to take a reductionist view of something as unbelievable as our conciousness? I mean, even while looking at the brain and all of it's intricacies, it's hard for me to attribute my conciousness to just some chemical reactions going on in this thing. There has to be a metaphysical aspect to it.

This just in...Curb Your Enthusiasm is the funniest show on television. Ever. Ok, I haven't been alive to see most of what's been on television. And for the part I have been alive, I haven't watched very much television. But I know enough to know that nothing else (besides Seinfeld & CSI) is even good enough to waste my time on.

Curb Your Enthusiasm is great on so many levels. It's got your slapstick type stuff, your over the top situations that are Seinfeldesque, a plot that always intertwines in an unbelievable and unpredictable way, and, oh yeah, Larry David. David is both pathetic and more of a man than any of us, all at the same time. He says the things that you always want to say. (at least the things that I want to say). He doesn't do anything he doesn't want to (unless his wife makes him...another similarity to my life). He is surrounded by a great cast that has many celebrity cameo's in individual episodes. The kicker, though, are the plots. Like I said, they are somewhat Seinfeldian (obviously, as David helped create it and Larry Charles is a writer for both), but even more over the top. I am always anticipating how every little thing he does is going to come back to haunt him in the end. A typical show starts off with at least 3-4 random things happening. The next thing you know, Larry ends up in an incest support group with his ex-girlfriend making up a story of how his uncle molested him as a child, only to run into a fellow incest supportee later that night, who happens to be the director for a play that his wife is in. To top it off, his uncle happens to be in town and shows up to the play (the director equates him with the uncle Larry told the incest group about) ("The Group"). I mean, you can't make this stuff up. Well, Ok, they do....but no one else does. I've never laughed so hard in my life. HBO has got a winner with this.

The other day, I made reference in a post to the fact that not all evolutionists are buying into the current prevailing theory of dinos + time = birds. My point of looking more into this topic isn't to try and "disprove" evolution, but rather, to take a look at how hard it can be for someone to gain a hearing for their ideas unless they fall right along with what the darwinists want everyone to believe. This happens all the time to proponents of Intelligent Design, as they are contiunually mocked and criticized, and many of their ideas are ruled out a priori.

However, this also happens to those who do believe in evolution, but whose views on it don't provide the most convenient answer. For this example, let's take a look at the case of Dr. Alan Feduccia, of the University of North Carolina. A renowned orinthologist, Dr. Feduccia is the leader in arguing that the dino's to birds theory is seriously flawed. (See here and here) Here is a quick overview of a couple of his arguments. Way back in 1997 (Ok, it wasn't that long ago, but since he has been saying it for so long, you would think that his idea would be a little more well known by now, 8 years later), Dr. Feduccia published an article that showed, from the study of embryo's of birds and reptiles, that the avian wings develop from digits 2, 3, and 4. This is in direct contrast to Dinosaur skeletons, which exhibit hands specialized from digit's 1, 2, and 3. The article includes this quote:

"Our studies of bird embryos, however, show that only digits two, three and four develop, and this creates a new problem," he said. "How do you derive a bird "hand," for example, with digits two, three and four from a dinosaur hand that has only digits one, two and three" The answer is that you can't."

Huh. Sounds pretty conclusive, don't you think? But, apparently it's not enough to overthrow the current dogma. So, in another effort to try and overturn this erroneous theory, Dr. Feduccia published another article in the Journal of Morphology. In this article, Feduccia and colleagues inspect the so-called "feathers" that are found around some new Dino finds in China (the semi-famous Liaoning Province, about which I have more than my share of doubts regarding any and all of the fossil's coming out of there). Anyways, back to my topic, Feduccia finds that the alleged "protofeathers" around the dino's actually match patterns found around other fossils that are of no relation to birds. The significance of this? It's more likely that the "protofeathers" are rather just remnants of some form of collagen from the skin. A fun quote from this article:

"Current dinosaurian dogma requires that all the intricate adaptations of birds' wings and feathers for flight evolved in a flightless dinosaur and then somehow became useful for flight only much later, Feduccia said. That is 'close to being non-Darwinian.'"

There are also serious problems regarding the timeline regarding the evolution of of birds from dino's, and both of the previous articles mention this.

So what's the point? The point is that the evolutionary story makes more sense to mainstream darwinists if birds evolved from dino's. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to be the case. The evidence points against it, in my opinion. But, in order that they more easily convince a public that has waning belief in evolution as it is, they lean for the more convenient explanation. (See the recent cover of Nature, with full color artist's rendering of Dino w/ feathers). I hope that Dr. Feduccia succeed's in popularizing his theory. It is only fair that all theories get a hearing. Let the best evidence win, not the best criticizers/stiflers. (and no I'm not talking about Creationists)

So, my KC Chiefs finally won another game...it's been 3 weeks if you count the bye week since the taste of victory. We sit at 3-2 now, and we'll probably miss the playoffs. Forever average. That's how I like to think of the Chiefs. I was dead set that this was going to be the year that they made it to the Super Bowl. Well, watching them now, they just look old and a step slower. I highly doubt that we will even make the playoffs.....Also of note regarding the Chiefs....Since moving to Oklahoma, I've found that if there is a Cowboys game on, it trumps the Chiefs game as the regional telecast. I've missed 2 of the games because of it...and I'm not real happy about it. Stupid Oklahoma. Where I am at, it is closer to KC than it is to Dallas. Oh well.

My Kansas State Wildcats lost again....they were throttled by Texas Tech, the team who has never heard of running out the clock. They are improving every week though, I'll give Coach Snyder that. I think they still have a legitimate chance at winning the Big 12 North. We'll see.

One of my goals of having this blog is to be able to hash out my views on various things. One such topic is the biogenesis, the origin of life, on our planet. I know pretty much where I stand in general, just not the details of it. Do I believe that we are the result of blind, undirected processes? No. Do I believe that the Earth is 6,000-10,000 years old? Also No. So there's where I'm at. I believe that our universe and existence is a created and telic one, and that at some point had a beginning.

I am able to reconcile this much with the Bible through the reading of Genesis chapter 1 with an understanding of the type of literature that it is. It is a narrative, in the same style that Revelation is written. (Do we take the things described in Revelation, such as the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse, etc., as literal?...well, I guess some do.) So with this in mind, I do not expect the Bible to read as we would expect a modern-day science textbook to read. I also truly believe that an old Earth can be in tune with a Biblical inerrancy belief because of the multiple meanings of the Hebrew word yom, which we translate day. There are 3 common uses for the word yom, with the first being a 24 hour period. The next common use of the word is to describe an age, a period of time. The third is to describe the time from sun-up to sun-down. So to believe that the days of creation were actually periods of unspecified time is not such a stretch.

So, back to why I wanted to post right now anyways....There is just a lot of good ol' fashioned storytelling going on right now on both sides of the debate. I just read an article, with drawings, of a species of raptor (think Jurassic Park, only smaller) covered in feathers. Did they find any remnants of feathers on the bones? Well, none are mentioned. But, since it is popular theory right now that dinosaurs became birds, they go ahead and fill in the gaps for us, allowing anyone who views the article uncritically to go on thinking that there is a definite link between the dino's and the birds. (Obviously, Creationist's disagree with this theory, some IDer's would, AND some evolutionists. So why insist on the storytelling....just give us the facts!!

Unfortunately, the same can be said for the Creationist side. As I said before, I am a Christian who believes in creation and the Bible, yet I can't agree with what some Christian, Old-Earth Creationist's are saying as facts, when really they are speculating as much as the Evolutionists. Here, Hugh Ross, a published and respected (well, at least formerly respected) Astronomer lays out what he calls a "Testable Creation Model." He then goes through to list what God did and in what order. I think it is quite an over-extraction of what the Bible says. But hey, it makes a great story.

Really,neither of these aforementioned groups give me much satisfaction in being a part of them. I don't feel like all facts are being taken into consideration. Honestly, that's why I lean towards Intelligent Design (ID) more. It doesn't try to explain the who or why, but really just the what (hey, it's designed, let's use this to our advantage through our knowledge of design, and leave the speculation of the Designer up to the religious leaders and philosophers). I like to think of myself as an IDist that thinks that all provable evolution occurs because it was designed to occur, hard-wired into our cells so that we might adapt and change to an adapting and changing environment.