Did you know that:

• 96% of the universe consists of unknown components. 23% is thought to consist of so-called “dark matter” which nobody understands. 73% is “dark energy” that is thought to have something to do with the universe expanding. So-called “ordinary matter” accounts for just 4% of the cosmos.
• There are 12,500 genes in the human genome, whose function remains completely unknown. Genes make up only 2% of the human genome. The rest of the material in the human gene remains a mystery.
• There are 85 billion cells in the human brain that are not neurons. Neurons make up less than half of all brain cells. The remaining cells, known as “glia” are now just beginning to be cataloged and researched.

Source: Discover, October 2010, pg. 15.

I have enjoyed following the Intelligence Design movement, which has secularist/atheistic evolutionary theory on the run, to say the least. I bumped into this video and thought you would enjoy it. When you see how irreducibly complex even something as “simple” as a human cell is, it boggles the mind to try to imagine this being a massive “accident” of nature. What do you think? I recommend Signature in the Cell for further reading.

As per the usual, the mass media picked up and ran with a story recently declaring that “the missing link has been found!” thus “proving” Darwin’s theories that man descended from the apes. And, as per the usual, the mass media is wrong. Answers in Genesis has a nice page of quotations from prominent scientists worldwide poo-pooing the media hype. For example, and this is typical of the reaction of reputable scientists:

“On the whole I think the evidence is less than convincing,” said Chris Gilbert, a paleoanthropologist at Yale University. “They make an intriguing argument but I would definitely say that the consensus is not in favor of the hypothesis they’re proposing.” . . .

“The PR campaign on this fossil is I think more of a story than the fossil itself,” said anthropologist Matt Cartmill of Duke University in North Carolina. “It’s a very beautiful fossil, but I didn’t see anything in this paper that told me anything decisive that was new.”

Most experts agree that the find is significant, if only for its impressive degree of completeness, but some were put off by the bells and whistles that went along with the publicity campaign around Ida. . . .

“It’s not a missing link, it’s not even a terribly close relative to monkeys, apes and humans, which is the point they’re trying to make,” [Carnegie Museum of Natural History curator of vertebrate paleontology Chris] Beard said.

And then I stumbled across this bit of fun today. HT: Sacred Sandwich

You are going to be hearing in the media reports about a team of Christian explorers and archeologists who have travelled to Iran and have ascended a mountain to try to identify what has been known about for years: a long boat-like structure on the mountain. Here is the official news and information site on the expedition, with photos. I do not know what to think about it at this point. It clearly looks like wood and apparently tests have confirmed it is petrified wood, with marine creatures attached to it in places that could only have come from the ocean. Interesting?

Link: Noah’s Ark? For Real – CWN.

Link: Independent Online Edition > Environment.

An astonishing mist-shrouded "lost world" of previously unknown and rare animals and plants high in the mountain rainforests of New Guinea has been uncovered by an international team of scientists.

Among the new species of birds, frogs, butterflies and palms discovered in the expedition through this pristine environment, untouched by man, was the spectacular Berlepsch’s six-wired bird of paradise. The scientists are the first outsiders to see it. They could only reach the remote mountainous area by helicopter, which they described it as akin to finding a "Garden of Eden".