A crustacean eye that rivals the best optical equipment - "Go Evolution"

Normally, such a structure should still perform poorly over the entire visible range. What makes the structure work is that the tubes are made of membranes containing molecules that also have a refractive index that differs depending on the orientation of the light field. Now, we have four different refractive indexes: two associated with the form birefringence and two associated with the membranes. All four of them vary depending on the color of the light coming down the tubes. The form birefringence changes in just the right way to compensate the changes due to the membrane, providing a quarter waveplate that works well across the entire visible spectrum.

How good is this? A simple quarter waveplate made from a piece of quartz is accurate to within about ±20 degrees over the entire visible range—this is on the bad side of absolute junk. A quarter waveplate that makes use of form birefringence for better performance clocks in at around ±9 degrees. R8 beats this by a factor of three with a variation of just ±2.7 degrees over the visible range.

All I have to say at this point is: go evolution.

Contrary to the author's statement this research is, of course, evidence of Intelligent Desgin. How could 'evolution' (random change over time) result in something so complex?

Google Wave: we came, we saw, we played D&D - Ars Technica

From the early days of the printing press to the dawn of the VHS era, it's been a cliché that the first thing humans do upon inventing a new medium is distribute pornography with it. While this cliché may hold true for most humans and most media, there is one conspicuous exception: the computer geek. From Nethack to play-by-post forums on the WWW, the first thing that computer geeks do upon inventing a new medium is play Dungeons and Dragons with it—the porn comes later, after the role-playing game itch is scratched.

Evolution: "fact" and "theory"

In the American vernacular, "theory" often means "imperfect fact"--part of a hierarchy of confidence running downhill from fact to theory to hypothesis to guess. Thus the power of the creationist argument: evolution is "only" a theory and intense debate now rages about many aspects of the theory. If evolution is worse than a fact, and scientists can't even make up their minds about the theory, then what confidence can we have in it? Indeed, President Reagan echoed this argument before an evangelical group in Dallas when he said (in what I devoutly hope was campaign rhetoric): "Well, it is a theory. It is a scientific theory only, and it has in recent years been challenged in the world of science—that is, not believed in the scientific community to be as infallible as it once was."

Well evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape-like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered.

Moreover, "fact" doesn't mean "absolute certainty"; there ain't no such animal in an exciting and complex world. The final proofs of logic and mathematics flow deductively from stated premises and achieve certainty only because they are not about the empirical world. Evolutionists make no claim for perpetual truth, though creationists often do (and then attack us falsely for a style of argument that they themselves favor). In science "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional consent." I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.

Evolutionists have been very clear about this distinction of fact and theory from the very beginning, if only because we have always acknowledged how far we are from completely understanding the mechanisms (theory) by which evolution (fact) occurred. Darwin continually emphasized the difference between his two great and separate accomplishments: establishing the fact of evolution, and proposing a theory—natural selection—to explain the mechanism of evolution.

Stephen J. Gould, " Evolution as Fact and Theory"; Discover, May 1981

Until I saw a reference on PZ Myers' pharyngula blog, I had not read this explained so clearly before. Thank you Stephen J. Gould.

The FASTForward Blog » Barriers to Intranet Use from Forrester

Forrester recently released a report on What’s Holding Back Your Intranet? They were nice to share a copy with me.  They found that 93% of employee respondents said they use an intranet or company portal (Forrester uses the terms interchangeably) at least weekly, and more than half reported daily use. However, they found that these intranets were mostly accessed for basic functions such as company directory, benefits information, and payroll. Access to collaborative tools, what some might called an enterprise 2.0 capability was ranked fourteenth.