Akufu

Procrastinating about my grant writing I happened upon the site of het Nederlands Dagblad (ND), a Dutch Christian newspaper, which I thought was moderate.

Up until now.

Imagine walking barefoot on a sunny beach. Yes the warm sand under your foot feels marvelous. Now imagine walking barefoot in the winter. In the average big city. Not very attractive hmm?

This is the fundamental question in biology that still hasn't been answered. The diversity of life throughout the ages is explained with the processes that constitute evolution, from that first living thing through to any extant and extinct creature. But what happened before all that?

Right. There was no discussion of Intelligent Design on Noorderlicht on December 12^th like I expected (see previous post). According to the minister of Education, Maria van der Hoeven, ID is currently under debate in the Netherlands, which is to her liking, and she wanted to focus on different matters in this radioshow.

In the beginning of this year the Dutch minister for education, Culture and Science, Maria van der Hoeven upset the Dutch scientific community by stating on her weblog (go to week 9, in Dutch) that she saw something worthwhile in the idea of intelligent design (ID).

Sometimes you read a science paper and it makes you want to curl up in a corner and suck your thumb for a while. This paper in nature (December 1st 2005) by Bryden et al. is a perfect example.