The Daily Bluster

Many people have been told that evolution is just a theory, and that it is, at most, a hypothesis, or even a guess. A scientific theory, however, is different from the theory the general public is familiar with. Many of us equates theory with hypothesis, which is erroneous. To a scientist, a theory is an explanation of a phenomenon. A scientific law , on the other hand, is a description of a phenomenon, and can be proven by a mathematical equation. To illustrate: Newton’s law of gravity describes how gravity works, which basically means that things fall down if you let go of them. His theory of gravity , on the other hand, is an attempt to explain why this happens (although modern scientists accept Einstein’s Theory of Relativity as a better explanation of gravity). Newton’s and Einstein’s theories will always remain theories, because they are explanations , and different from a law , which describes  things.  A scientific theory therefore does not g...

This question is a favourite among creationists; they often ask this to dismiss the Theory of Evolution. Although this probably dates back from the time of Charles Darwin, many creationists, when engaged in a discussion ( especially in an online discussion), act as if they had just discovered this particular zinger. They believe this is irrefutable, an argument that would surely reduce those smug, know-it-all evolutionists into blubbering idiots trapped in an existentialist despair. If you see this question in an Internet discussion board, this is usually followed by “HAHAHA,” which tends to make the impression that creationists are raving lunatics. This caricature of Charles Darwin with the body of an ape was used since the late 1800s to ridicule him and his ideas about evolution To be fair though, there are people out there who ask this question out of genuine curiosity, maybe because they were told (and taught) all sorts of misinformation and fed lies, deliberately or inad...

(Continuation) It turns out that these “rice farmers” weren't actually what they say they were ; they were actually misguided activists who moronically believe that food crops that carry the tag “GM” (genetically modified) are automatically bad. The rice plants that were destroyed were “endowed with a gene from cornand another from a bacterium, making it the only variety in existence toproduce beta carotene, the source of vitamin A. Its developers call it “Golden Rice. ” If made available to people, a cup of this rice variety would provide half an adult’s daily recommended intake of Vitamin A. Vitamin A deficiency causes the death of millions of people around the world, and could also cause blindness among children. The vandals were members of the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP), AnakPawis Party list, and MASIPAG, organizations that ironically style themselves as pro-farmer and pro-poor. They were there to stage a protest versus GMOs, a protest that quickly tu...

We are so used to the idea of giants that we take it for granted that they exist, or must have existed at one point in our history.  You know, those very large and very tall human-like creatures, carrying a humongous club, and being very nasty. Like this: And if you are a typical, god-fearing Catholic Pinoy, you would swear that not only are they true, you even saw one beside that big-ass, scary-looking tree not far from your home, one night when you were going home after an evening of binge-drinking with your buddies. And the bastard’s smoking a cigar as long and as big as your leg! Or you know someone who saw one of those cigar-smoking monsters. This creature is called a kapre —a cigar-smoking giant wearing a loincloth. Or maybe a tikbalang —a half-man, half-horse creature about as tall as a kapre. Unlike a centaur, however, a tikbalang is a giant with the torso and arms of a man, and the head and legs of a horse.  Scary creatures, these—and...

Since ancient times, people had been digging up bones and other mineralized remains of creatures that lived and died a long, long time ago. When dinosaur bones were unearthed in China about a thousand years ago, people wondered about the kinds of animals that had these bones. This was probably the start of dragon legends. All over  the world, there are places that if one digs deep enough, one may find some ancient shells, bone fragments, a piece of petrified wood, or even a leaf print. These relics are called fossils. They are usually found through digging. In fact, the term "fossil" comes from a Latin word that means, "to dig." Fossils are remains of ancient life; they give us clues about the distant past. Countless animals and plants that lived a long time ago were preserved in different ways. In hot and dry places, actual bones or teeth of an extinct creature are sometimes preserved; in moist places, the relic may be replaced by a rock-like copy of ...