There exists an elementary school that has a “reading time” for its third-grade students, in which they may read a book of their choosing. One child chose to read the Bible, and was told by the school that he may not.¹ Unfortunately, I cannot honestly express surprise that this series of events happened in the United States. Fortunately, the school in question backed down after receiving a letter from the Thomas More Law Center reminding them that such activity has been repeatedly protected by the United States Supreme Court.

Yesterday in science news, I read something quite exciting. Scientists have discovered “a vast water reservoir beneath eastern Asia that is at least the volume of the Arctic Ocean.”^[1] I cannot believe that this is the only such subterranean water mass. Even if it is the biggest, this marks proof that there could exist substantial amounts of water that we simply do not see. How much have they looked for bodies of water like this? What if the water were even further down, would it show up differently, be harder to detect? All sorts of questions.

One thing is certain though. An ocean’s worth of water is decidedly non-trivial. Even spread around the world, it must be the case that so much water would make at least some difference in the sea level. How much? Could this be a more rational explanation for where some of the water for the Flood came from?

Oh, and I have marked this as “plate tectonics” because that is what the article is concerned with. The idea that this sort of water could help “lubricate” the plates, making it possible for them to move and shift and so on. They could be right. I do not know. Even if they are, I persist in thinking that earthquakes must have other causes. But that is an entirely other topic.

The spread of nuclear weapons, which can never justifiably be used in war, is certainly depressing news. There is, unexpectedly, a lighter side to the news though, however slight. Even the most ardent proponents of materialism are forced to admit that here it is only common sense to look for the difference between design and chance. Can we detect the difference between a nuclear test and an earthquake? Seismologists, both those open to intelligent design and those against it, are confronted with this question.^[1]

From the BBC:^[1]

Norwegian scientists have discovered a “treasure trove” of fossils belonging to giant sea reptiles that roamed the seas at the time of the dinosaurs.^[2]

…

The researchers even found evidence of an attack on one of the creatures. An ichthyosaur tooth is embedded in a neck vertebra from one plesiosaur belonging to the genus Kimmerosaurus.

The fossil hoard comprises 21 long-necked plesiosaurs, six ichthyosaurs and one short-necked plesiosaur. The bones were unearthed in fine-grained sedimentary rock called black shale.^[3]

…

After death, the carcasses came to rest in mud at the bottom of the deep ocean, where little or no oxygen was present.

Dr Hurum said an unusual chemistry of the mud could have been responsible for the remarkable preservation of the specimens: “Something happened with the chemistry that’s really good for bone preservation. Some skeletons are pale white even though they’re in black shale – they look like roadkill.”^[4]

All this, tons of fossils, very complete fossils, just happen to come die in one area. They do so apparently in the midst of every day life, they did not just grow old and die here, but we see evidence that one was eating and/or attacking another. But absolutely no speculation on what would have caused such an event.

Think about it. What killed both the attacked and the attacker, that both would come to rest in this special mud? Might this be evidence that something, say, abnormal happened? Perhaps even cataclysmic? Something outside the bounds of the gradualism that plate tectonics (and science in general) would assert?

I am not quite sure how exactly generating piano music from sonar advances volcano erruption prediction, but it does generate some interesting audio files.^[1] Perhaps the lack of clarity is intentional in the press release, or perhaps its because I did not devote the time to reading it that I should have. Either way, the audio alone makes the site worth checking out.

What in plate tectonics explains the characteristic sulfur fumes surrounding an earthquake?^[1] This is a question I do not see being asked, much less answered.

1. Mr. Axel Bojanowski. “A Continent Splits Apart” Spiegel Online 2006-03-15. http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,405947,00.html

I need to read Deep Hot Biosphere[1] again. I no longer remember his ideas well enough to know how they would mesh with seismic evidence that the Earth’s core is rotating faster than the surface is.[2] This, and related research that shows that the mantle is also spinning faster, provides at least some proof for the plate tectonics theory that I dislike. It at very least demonstrates that there are three layers to the Earth’s structure, which is a prerequisite of plate tectonics. It does not, however, demonstrate that the crust is split into segments that move independently or semi-independently. It would, in fact, seem rather hard to make a categorical statement that the crust is rotating at any single speed, if different segments of it are in fact moving in different directions. This would, however, be dismissed as simply an average speed that averages out, necessarily, to a speed in the same direction the Earth rotates. Earthquakes and mid-plate faults remain the strongest flaw in plate tectonics.

[1] Gold, Thomas. Deep Hot Biosphere (Springer, 1998 ISBN: 038798546) Some information on this scientist can be found at the Wikipedia entry. The Web Archive fortunately preserves his home page here.
[2] Than, Ker. “Earth’s Core Rotates Faster than Surface, Study Confirms” Live Science (online). 2005-08-25 http://www.livescience.com/forcesofnature/050825_earthcore.html

I read today an article talking about the New Madrid fault.[1] Apparently they now think that there will almost certainly (seventy percent chance) be a significant earthquake there in the next fifty years or so. The interesting thing here is that while they insist that plate tectonics is behind it, there is only one plate on both sides of that fault. What other plate is the rubbing, sliding, snagging, whatever going on against? How does plate tectonics explain a mid plate fault line?

[1] http://www.livescience.com/forcesofnature/050622_new_madrid.html