CREATION science is the creationists鈥� slap in the face to orthodox science. It鈥檚 their way of proving the silly old orthodox scientists have got it all wrong: life didn鈥檛 evolve over millions of years, God created it 6000 years ago. But browsing reports of a recent Creation Science Fair, Feedback was glad to see that young creationists set the same store by observation as their orthodox counterparts.
At the elementary level, for instance, young Cassidy Turnbull carried off first prize for noting the differences between her uncle Steve and a monkey. She couldn鈥檛 bring a monkey to the fair, but she brought her uncle Steve, and showed that not only was he less hairy than the monkeys in her photographs, he also didn鈥檛 like bananas.
First prize in the middle school category went to Patricia Lewis, who showed that living things could not evolve from non-living things by sealing a charcoal briquette, purified water and a multivitamin tablet in a jar and leaving it in the sun for three weeks.
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The high school projects were, predictably, more ambitious. Two girls compared the antibiotic resistance of two cultures of E. coli bacteria, and found that the one they prayed would evolve antibiotic resistance, did.
Other notable entries are mentioned at .
Exercise those powers of observation, however, and you might notice that the author is a professor at Fellowship University, which doesn鈥檛 seem to exist. Evidently the site has not evolved but was created 鈥� and not by God.
CREATIONISTS must be used to a certain amount of flak, so woe betide any innocent bystander who gets mistaken for one.
Having arranged a meeting with Australia鈥檚 science minister recently, a colleague was asked to submit a list of questions in advance to the minister鈥檚 minder, so that he could prepare his answers. The minder asked our journalist to brief him over lunch in a noisy restaurant, during which he took notes. After the usual litany of questions on science funding and policy, our colleague came to the last item on his list: creationism. Did Australia have a problem with creation scientists and, if so, did the minister intend to do anything about it?
The minder duly departed to put a call through to the minister鈥檚 office. He returned looking anxious and perplexed. Why on earth, he asked, did we want to know whether Australia had a problem with Croatian scientists?
AND those wishing to refute the arguably rock-solid geological evidence for Darwinian theories of evolution will be delighted to hear news sent to us by reader Pete Hearty.
While browsing the net for information on the geological column 鈥� the concept that fossils tend to be found in groups and those groups tend to occur in a certain vertical order 鈥� he came across the following message: 鈥淭he Geological Column has been moved.鈥�
If you don鈥檛 believe him, go to
BECAUSE we care about you, our readers, we鈥檝e been thinking of ways to improve your lives. But Mark Robinson has stolen our thunder. After reading an article about how predators approach their prey and missiles that can employ motion camouflage to approach their target, he naturally got to thinking about fly swatting (28 June, p 18).
If a fly escapes death by rolled-up newspaper because it realises it鈥檚 time to move when it senses a nearby object growing rapidly in size, Robinson reasoned the swatter might triumph if he or she approached the fly at a slower rate. He tested the following technique: bunching his hand into a loose fist, with the nail of his index finger pressed firmly against the pad of his thumb, he approached a fly on the wall very slowly before coming to rest with his fist about 3 centimetres from the fly. So far, so good: the unsuspecting fly was still there. A moment later, with one deadly flick of his nail, he snuffed it out.
With a little practice, Robinson assures us, you can attain a success rate of over 90 per cent using this method. He also says he鈥檚 filed for a patent to protect his invention鈥�
FINALLY, radio links to laptops and home computers are meant to be making networks wireless and bringing the internet to public places, such as city squares and Starbucks. But it turns out the British are rather clueless about what 鈥渨i-fi hot spots鈥� are, let alone where they might find one. In a survey of 1000 people, more than 70 per cent incorrectly guessed they were nightclubs, sunbeds or tiffs with the wife.
This must be bad news for Packard Bell, which commissioned the survey and manufactures hardware for wireless networks. But it must be worse news for coffee shops offering wireless links, whose customers think a 鈥渨i-fi hot spot鈥� is something smelly that has been left out in the sun for too long.
From the department of redundant information: The description on the back of reader David Prichard鈥檚 HP sauce bottle reads: 鈥淧roudly made in Australia from local and imported ingredients.鈥�