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For all my creationist readers out there, this post is for you:  I'm toying with the idea of an "open blog," where you, my friend, can post your own entries right here on GlobeLens.com.  By affirming a statement of (creationist) beliefs, you would become a member and I'd send you a login password that would allow you to access this site and post your research and opinions.  The blog would become a sort of open forum where other members and people from all over the world could read and comment on your thoughts.  I would moderate and continue to post my own blogs among yours.

I still have some unanswered questions I'm working through, such as, will the open blog be restricted to science topics, or open to such things as history and politics?  How strict should the statement of beliefs be?  Should every member be a young-earth, 6-day creationist?

If you have any thoughts to share, or if you have an interest in becoming a writing member of the "open blog," now is the time to speak.

The greatest mass extinction occurred some 245 million years ago, when an estimated 96 percent of all marine species were wiped out.
Around three-quarters of land species also went extinct.

This is from a story out several days ago that attempts to explain the cause for huge fossil layers of crustaceans and fish that are found all over the world (even on mountain tops).  Every amateur fossil hunter knows that you can easily find rocks with compacted layers of marine invertebrates, sometimes even in gravel driveways.  Fossils are only formed if they are buried relatively quickly, so fossil layers are usually explained as the result of local catastrophes (landslides, eruptions, meteors, floods). 

The story above points to that old enemy global warming, as the cause of these fossil layers.  Geologist Greg Retallack from the University of Oregon thinks that massive surges of methane and CO² killed off the millions of life forms preserved under our feet, many now extinct.  The global warming/extinction theory still leaves room for the giant meteorite that supposedly finished off the dinosaurs, but "global warming was already causing extinctions" when it struck, according to the story.

Creationists have a rather obvious solution for these widespread fossil layers:  Most were caused by a global flood that distributed marine life forms around the planet.  The dynamics of the flood, and the sediment settling that occurred during the slow receding of the floodwater, are responsible for the fossil patterns we observe today.

The latest from Crevo's Creationism and Baraminology Research blog, where Crevo is reviewing Steven Austin's book on the Grand Canyon:

I have been working through Steven Austin's Grand Canyon: Monument to Catastrophe. Geology is by far my worst subject. Perhaps programming computers makes learning about outdoors difficult :)

This is part one of a book review. I'm doing it in multiple parts for a few reasons:

• There's a whole lot of information in the book.


• It's taking me a while to go through the book, and I don't want the blog to go stale.


• It's a great book and worth the extra exposure.

I'm half-way through chapter four. So far, a few things have really stuck out that I like about the book:

• It can basically be used as an introduction to geology. It defines numerous terms, helps to read geological maps, and helps acquaint you with geological terminology. In fact, this is one of the reasons I started with this book. Geology is one of my worst subjects, but there have been a lot of geology articles in CRSQ lately.


• Austin is fair to those he disagrees with. Austin tries to give a good overview of the evidence used against the creation hypothesis, and while he provides rebuttals, he does so very respectfully, which is sometimes missing in creationist literature.


• The book is very well footnoted. Depending on what I find interesting, there are a whole lot of footnotes to research for further information. Chapter 3, for example, contains 121 footnotes, most of which are references to other work.

Since I'm supposed to be educating my readers about creationist research, I'll point out some of the experiments and research referenced in the first few chapters:

• In the Coconino sandstone, there are lots of footprints. Austin references an experiment that was performed to determine what kind of environment the footprints were laid down in. The experiment referenced observed the tracks of animals made on most sand, on dry sand, and underwater. The tracks observed in the Coconino sandstone match those made in the underwater environments.


• Austin himself has done research on nautiloid deposition in the redwall limestone. I'll probably report more on this later. He shows that the orientation of nautiloids along a northwest to southeast axis indicates water moving in a single direction with a significant current.


• Austin points to research done on investigating the relationship between water depth, water velocity, sand wave height, and depositional characteristics. He uses the work of Rubin and McColluch to show that some of the Grand Canyon sandstone was deposited at a depth of 180 feet, with a minimum velocity of three feet per second.


• Austin also points to grain-size research which indicate that Coconino sandstone was deposited under water.

This just scratches the surface of the information available in the book. Austin goes in to some detail about how interpretation of geological strata works, and many of the different types of unconformities, faults, and other structures important for interpretation, and what they point to.

 Continue reading at Creationism and Baraminology Research News.

Winter is coming on and thousands of adults and children are without shelter or medical supplies in India and Pakistan's Kashmir region, where two weeks ago a 7.6 magnitude earthquake leveled homes and lives.  At least 40,000 died and as many as 65,000 are injured.  Donations have been low and UNICEF claims there are as many as 120,000 children in remote areas that have not been reached with medical supplies, and sickness is growing as people are forced to drink from contaminated water sources.

I have donated to the relief work for the Kashmir quake and I would encourage anyone else to do so who is able.  I recommend Gospel For Asia and World Vision.

I can hardly believe what I just read at Science Blog.  If you believe the war on Iraq was a disaster, if you believe the War on Terror following 9/11 was a mistake, if you believe President Bush and his staff are taking advantage of your emotions to make power-grasping policy decisions, then you have all the ingredients you need for the study released by Carnegie Mellon University. 

Professors Jules Lobel and George Loewenstein say in their paper that human decision-making relies on "two neural systems--the deliberative and the affective, or emotional," which they also call emotive.  This emotive aspect of decision-making is "much older," say Lobel and Loewenstein, than its rational "deliberative" counterpart.  The quickly responding emotive function allowed early ape-men to react to danger rapidly.  Later, as man evolved and got smarter, he developed the neural ability to deeply consider the consequences of his choices.  Especially long-term consequences.

9/11, imply the authors, was just such a time when that primitive emote control is most susceptible--immediately following a hurtful attack.  Bush responded without considering the long-term consequences.  He just didn't think rationally.  His emotions were up.

Read the paper yourself.  There's a lot more ludicrous stuff in there that I haven't mentioned, and you're sure to get a good laugh.  (Such as how airport security measures are causing deaths)  Keep those emotions down, folks.  That's the old chimp in you coming out.

Ha, ha, ha.

A new species of dinosaur has been unearthed in South America's Patagonia region, and according to the National Science Foundation threatens to "Redraw Evolutionary Charts," no surprise since evolutionary charts have to be redrawn with just about every paleontological discovery.  The new species was named Buitreraptor gonzalezorum and is a dromaeosaur, a group of dinosaurs that includes Velociraptor.  It differs from other dinosaurs relatives in that is has an unusual skull--one with "long, slender snout and relatively small, widely spaced teeth."

Of course Buitreraptor gonzalezorum has been illustrated with a furry covering of "protofeathers," not because there was any evidence of protofeathers on the specimen, but because the latest whims of evolutionary science demand it.  Many evolutionists think the Buitreraptor find gives new insight into the origin of flight.

Do oil and Africa mix? Reading through "Oil Boon" in the September edition of National Geographic magazine, you'd think not.

First of all, let's review what we already know. What is National Geographic's opinion of oil? Answer: bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. Because oil companies suck all that crude oil out of the earth, build huge factories, disrupt wildlife, and spill oil from corroded pipelines and shipping accidents. Because emissions from the burning of gasoline and oil fill up the atmosphere with planet-warming gases. Because oil is going to kill us all.

Okay, so that's putting it a bit bluntly. But not many people accuse NG of going soft of oil companies, and this article (written by Nick Kotch) is no exception. It focuses on the oil-plagued nation of Chad, where a consortium of oil companies (ExxonMobil, Petronas, Chevron) are pumping 200,000 barrels a day from over a mile beneath the surface, down pipelines that lead into neighboring Cameroon and on to the coast, to be shipped for worldwide consumption. Don't be deceived by the big numbers, however. Chad is among the lower producers in the region, according to the map supplied in the article. At 2,400,000 barrels a day, Nigeria, another neighbor, dwarfs Chad's output thanks to the vast oil fields of the Niger River Delta. And Nigeria's known oil reserves are by far the greatest in the sub-Sahara--35 billion barrels, compared with Chad's 0.9 billion.

So why focus on Chad? The answer is that Chad's oil project is a bit of an experiment, a chance to see if oil can be an asset, not a curse. The oil companies, the Chadian government, and the World Bank have teamed up in an effort to "extract oil profitably, to share the proceeds in a transparent and equitable way, to protect the environment, and to spend most of the government's share on reducing poverty." The oil venture in Chad is an attempt to, in Nick Kotch's words, "ensure that--for once--the discovery of oil doesn't have to be a curse for ordinary folk."

Why would oil be a curse?  Because oil is liquid gold.  It's like the classic plot line of John Steinbeck's short novel, "The Pearl," in which the hero finds a priceless pearl that could be the answer to all his problems, but instead greed within and around him turns the pearl into a curse, eventually taking from him what he loved the most.  In this case the pearl is oil.  Greed has turned the oil into a curse for the African people.  Greed is the problem, not resources, not oil.

What sort of curses are the Africans suffering?  Lack of electricity and gasoline among themselves, widespread poverty, corrupt governments, civilian resentment of both government and oil companies, oil spills--the list could go on.  Shouldn't the big money gained from oil resources curb many of these problems?  Apparently not in Africa.  Many Africans are so poor they cannot afford electricity and gas, despite its abundance.  African governments are accused of hoarding or stealing the tax share of oil profits, as opposed to using it toward the improvement of their citizens' lives (The effort in Chad is aimed at stopping such government corruption through multiple levels of accountability.  But even in Chad, as in the other nearby oil-producing nations, the theme continues to ring:  "Where does the money go?")  African citizenry are resentful toward big oil because they feel the "rich" oil companies haven't compensated them adequately, and they're resentful toward their government because, well, they've just never trusted their government, or had a reason to.  And about oil spills?  Most are caused by local sabotage and theft.

It seems as clear as day to me that most of these problems are the direct fruit of selfish greed, not oil.

 Let's stop and talk about the benefits of oil.  It fuels jets that take food to starving African people groups.  It fuels ships and trucks that promote international trade and economic growth.  It creates jobs.  It powers generators and cell phone towers in Africa's remote regions.  The oil companies working in Chad have compensated over 14,000 individuals in Chad and Cameroon for use of land, building new homes, wells, schools, and even marketplaces if the people so demanded.  But many African locals don't think it was enough.  Are they justified in their accusation?  Are the interests of African peasants being downtrodden by big oil?  Or are Africans asking for a blank check, each hoping for his own pearl?  While National Geographic would like to point at oil, I think Nick Kotch's conversation with a Chadian peasant best epitomizes the situation of African oil:

"They said the majority of us would get rich, but we have just got poorer.  Nothing good has come from the oil," mutters Mbangtoloum Ngarambe, a lanky peasant farmer who grows cotton, rice, and millet in the fields around his village, Kayrati.  We stand in the shade of a mango tree, watching women and children filling their enamel basins at the new water pump, which seems to me to be working pretty efficiently.

"Isn't that something good?"  I ask, interrupting the flow of Ngarambe's displeasure and pointing at the contraption.

"Yes, that's good."

"And the new classrooms over there?"

"Yes, they are good."

Cleaning his teeth with a little stick, Ngarambe studies me out of the corner of his eye as we run through all the things that are lacking around here: a modern economy with jobs, a hospital close by, paved roads, security.  We talk in French, a legacy of Chad's period as a colony of France until 1960.

Playing devil's advocate, I ask him why he expects so much to be provided by foreign oil companies and so little by his own government.

"You know very well that our government isn't going to do those things," Ngarambe replies. 

Next time, we'll talk about Africa and AIDS.

Welcome to the city. You're a citizen in Nairobi, the burgeoning capital of Kenya, eastern Africa. In the last 42 years you've seen the population soar from a meager 350,000 to 2.8 million today. You're lucky. You have a job, while many of your relatives do not, at least never for more than a few hours at a time. You're also lucky to be 55 years old. The AIDS epidemic has lowered life expectancy in your country to 47. That's why there are more than 15,000 orphans and homeless children sleeping in the streets.

And you're surprised because you haven't bumped into a theft or mugging situation in over four weeks now.

That's daily life in Nairobi, a "very slippery city," in the words of Binyavanga Wainaina, who wrote the story spotlighting this city in September's National Geographic. A native of Nairobi, Wainaina returned home after spending 10 years or so in South Africa--an affluent country compared with Kenya. He found it difficult to adapt. Wainaina describes his hometown as a place where "the police are the enemy," where "people have learned to have dual personalities. We move from one language to another, from one identity to another, navigating different worlds, some of which never meet." Some men have two families, one for day and another for night, each oblivious to the other's existence. That's life in Nairobi. Hit and miss. You try different things.

To be Western, that's the dream. To be Western, but still distinctly African, is an aspiration that so many are dying to achieve.  Why should it be so difficult?

The Nairobi scene isn't an anomaly in Africa, it's typical of the struggles weighing upon African peoples today.  Unemployment, poverty, theft, AIDS.  Just look at Johannesburg several thousand miles to the south, the New York of the continent, South Africa's "City of Gold."  While the Johannesburg vicinity's eight million residents generate nearly one-tenth of Africa's entire economic productivity, the murder rate downtown is three times higher than Chicago's, and street shops usually hire guards to protect their merchandise from theft.  A story on this trembling metropolis ran in National Geographic's April 2004 issue, describing a "quintessentially Johannesburg state of mind, one of euphoric despair."

But Johannesburg is where the money is.  In southern Africa, if you can't get to America, you set your sites on Jo'burg.  But in doing so you may risk a one in three chance of being robbed each year.  You might wind up living in Soweto, a lower-class side of town where 40 percent are unemployed.  There's work to do, yes, but finding it before your neighbor does is the tricky part.  Unless you're educated you'll probably never get paid really well.  Unless you join a carjacking ring.  You hear they have it pretty steady.

Despite these bleak statistics, the government has made strong efforts to crack down on crime and general lawlessness.  More police officers are on the streets than before and cameras now monitor the inner-city.  Apartheid is mostly a thing of the past, unless you count the class division between mainly wealthy whites and often poorer blacks.  But many blacks are upper-class now.  They've taken the reigns of the city in a large part: Where whites once accounted for over half the population, they are now a one-to-four minority.

National Geographic asks, what's the future for Johannesburg?  For Africa in whole?

Can this city help save Africa, uplifting the lives of millions--or will Johannesburg simply be overwhelmed by the needy and the desperate, a woeful harbinger of the chaos to come?  It is a weighty responsibility to hang on one city, but then Jo'burg probably has the sheer ambition and energy to make good on it.

 How can you look at photos like these, where orphans live on the streets, where victims of violence turn hospitals into "slaughterhouses," where buses line up at cemeteries on the weekend, bringing the families and coffins of AIDS victims, and say, "Don't worry.  You've got energy, you've got ambition.  We think everything's going to turn out fine."

That's easy to say when it isn't your family who's dying of HIV.  The rate of sickness, murder, theft, poverty, and lawlessness that has saturated Nairobi, Johannesburg, and many other parts of Africa is runaway.  Many Africans have known nothing but despair and death their whole lives.  Let's not smile and lie to them.

What I believe the people of Africa need is a change of heart.  When so many thousands are willing to mug and murder their brothers, take advantage of and infect their sisters, and choose a life of violence rather than of love to their family and neighbors, there is deep heart problem, tangled with iron sin.  Africa needs to hear the Gospel again.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ has been proven to change lives from the inside out, making workers out of thieves, making families from orphans, and turning murderers into the tender-hearted.  The Gospel shoots its branches throughout a culture, affecting both personal behavior and national laws.  The West is an historic testimony to this, an example that other peoples strive to emulate, but too often without the Christianity part.  Without it, their efforts in the long run will be futile.

Jesus Christ--His life, His death, His resurrection--has the power to change lives.  He can give hope to the sick and comfort to the lonely.  He also condemns sin, all the forms of hatred that so readily manifest themselves on city streets.  Africans can turn to God through Christ because He offers hope.  Africans can turn to God through Christ because he'll change them, just like He's changed and is now changing so many in America, in India, in China.  And Christ, through Africans, will make a greater Africa.

What they have to do is step into the operation room.