NewsWatch

Yes, “Zombie Studies” Is a Thing

TheCollegeFix.com, 2/1/23, “Yes, ‘Zombie Studies’ is a thing” [Excerpts]: When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in June 2022 signed a new higher education reform law, he cited the need to ensure colleges and universities are worth the cost.

“I’m a big believer in higher education but I’m not a believer in plunging people $150,000 into debt with a degree in ‘zombie studies,’” he said at the time. “That is not a pathway to success.”

Zombie studies, as it turns out, is not some tongue-in-cheek dig at higher education—it’s an actual topic scholars at some campuses take quite seriously and tackle for various pedagogical purposes.

Last fall, East Tennessee State University...approved a new course called “Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse.” The University of Southern California offered a similar seminar in 2021. “You must work out what you are going to do to survive. The philosophical wisdom of the ages might help. Or it might not,” the syllabus stated.

While some find this topic of study “silly or inappropriate,” University of Tampa Professor Sarah Juliet Lauro argues “it’s a deeply important mythology....”

http://bit.ly/3EmN55p

Dubious Views on Octopus Evolution

ICR.org, 2/2/23, “Dubious Views on Octopus Evolution” [Excerpts]: The octopus is one of the most amazing animals in God’s creation. Now, “A new paper in Genome Biology and Evolution indicates that a type of octopus appears to have evolved independently to develop something resembling a shell, despite having lost the genetic code that produced actual shells in its ancestors and relatives.” (Emphasis added.)

 A number of questions could be asked: How do evolutionists know this creature lost the genetic code that produced actual shells, or how can they say that it evolved independently? Could it be that the octopus was designed to have this “shell-like egg case” in the beginning?

More importantly, did the octopus have evolutionary ancestors? “Cephalopods without shells or with internal shells (such as octopuses and squids) apparently evolved from some early straightshelled ancestor” (emphasis added). Do the zoologists really know the origin of the fascinating octopus?

Evolutionists maintain the egg case of the species of octopus called Argonauta argo is like the hard shell of the pearly nautilus (a cephalopod mollusc that appeared in the Cambrian from an unknown ancestor). Although the nautilus’s shell and argonaut’s egg case look alike, the similarity ends there. They “look dissimilar at the microscopic level,” and they are formed differently...the fact that they look similar is just a coincidence.

Evolutionists say, “We anticipate that our findings will further the research of metazoan, mollusk, and cephalopod genome evolution, which has remained largely unexplored thus far.” Creationists predict—on the basis of the creation model—that research into these fascinating genomes will not reveal the evolutionary origins of these groups.

http://bit.ly/3xBppGn

Paul Ehrlich and Groundhog Day

IntellectualTakeout.org, 1/31/23, “What Paul Ehrlich and Groundhog Day Have in Common” [Excerpts]: Out he pops every Feb. 2 to the music, shouts, and fanfare...Punxsutawney Phil of Pennsylvania, the most celebrated prognosticator of weather in the United States.

The various beloved groundhogs designated as Phil have only a so-so track record in their weather predictions, with a 39 percent accuracy rate. Still, Phil performs better than some of his human counterparts.

In 1968, Paul Ehrlich along with his wife, Anne, wrote The Population Bomb, in which they predicted that in the 1970s hundreds of millions of people on our overpopulated planet would die from starvation. That famine never took place, in part because of a green revolution in agriculture. Two years later, Ehrlich...prophesied that by 1980 the world’s oceans would be dead. “Large areas of coastline,” he said, “will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish.” Wrong again.

Despite these gutter balls...Ehrlich continues to deliver his doomsday warnings about overpopulation and climate change...for example, on 60 Minutes. Meanwhile, these Chicken Littles with their “sky is falling” message have propagandized generations of Americans. Millennials and the Gen Z crowd are more concerned about climate change than their predecessors.

http://bit.ly/3XL9Gzl