bjoern.brembs.net - a neuroscientist's blog: News / Comments / Discovery Institute investigates designer in God Lab

Main Menu

Home
Publications
Downloads
Citations
Resume
Interests
Contact
Links
Cars
Gallery
Metalworking

Chatbox

bjoern
on 24 Apr : 02:06

IIRC, the front of the car is to the right in this diagram, I'm not quite sure anymore. But yes, the numbers coincide with the cylinders, so there is a way in which you can align the diagram with your engine.

Anonymous
on 23 Apr : 21:10

Hey Bjoern. I have a question about your wiring diagram on the MAF conversion. Is the diagram of the injector wiring from the top view of the engine? Because I'm guessing the injector numbers don't coinside with the cylinder numbers? Thanks

bjoern
on 13 Apr : 08:44

Awesome, thanks. Just left a comment at the article and will write a short blog post, too.

Anonymous
on 13 Apr : 07:47

They have a feature to suggest interesting stuff, though it might fit in nicely with the other stories they run.

bjoern
on 13 Apr : 07:05

Sweet! How'd you get that there?

Matthias W.
on 12 Apr : 07:08

You should be getting some traffic right now: [link]

Anonymous
on 31 Jan : 13:07

temperture location

bjoern
on 09 Nov : 10:44

Shoot me an email if there's anything specific I can do for you!

bjoern
on 09 Nov : 10:43

The auto tranny is a problem, because you have a very limited choice of computers. Unfortunately, I have no idea about auto trannies and can't help you there. Conversion to standard is a big deal and not for the faint of heart.
I bought a book on Ford EFI which I found to be very helpful and I learned a lot from it. I think it was this one:
[link]

lightning_msd
on 07 Nov : 02:56

hey bjoern, ive had your maf conversion in my favorites forever... i finally rebuilt the engine, but put in a lumpier cam, along with some other minor mods, so now basically, it runs, but with the old map sensor, not so good. thats alot of technical words, and all ive worked on up to this point is oldies with carbs and no EFI, but im learning alot and im loving it. i have one difference, but i dont think it bothers anything, i have an automatic transmission, so if i install the maf system out of a newer pickup it may want to read the e40d when i just have an aod... unless maybe i can find one with a standard transmission?? i dunno, im getting so confused with all this technology, i would like to do it step by step just as you did. can you help me somehow?

View all posts (232)

I support PLoS

Discovery Institute investigates designer in God Lab

news |

The Seattle-based Discovery Institute, which is not a university or research institution, now sponsors a research lab called the "Biologic Institute" in Redmont, Washington, according to a New Scientist article.
Despite the usual satire and fun-poking on these pages, I seriously applaud this effort! The usual progression of science is roughly as follows: first there are scientific primary publications ("papers"). They are peer-reviewed and vary in their impact on the community. The scientific community discusses new findings and designs new experiments. The secondary and tertiary literature bundles the results of many of such papers. Eventually, they find their way into univrsity-level textbooks. Once the substance of the research has sufficiently solidified to be considered "basic" enough, it trickles down into (high-)school textbooks.
For the last decades, creationists/proponents of intelligent design have given away their unscientific, political agenda by trying to take the shortcut directly to school children. This was a very obvious move and has rightfully been smacked down by virtually every court before which ID has been dragged.
I mean, did Einstein go to the schools and ask them to put a disclaimer on their Newtonian Physics textbooks before he published his theory of relativity? Did Heisenberg go to the schools and ask them to teach children that the universe is not the predictable clockwork they believed until then before he published his uncertainty principle?
Now, however, they start on the right track: do experiments, discuss the results and if you can repeat it and draw firm conclusions from it, it'll go down into the textbooks the same way of all science.
It is important to do the right experiments, however. The New Scientist article implies that the idea behind at least some of the research at the Biologic Institute follows somewhat quaint logic. The article mentions that the researchers were unable to generate proteins which flold in a particular way by using molecular evolution. They concluded that the existing proteins must have been designed. This amounts to saying: "I couldn't do it, so it must be impossible, so it must have been God". This of course in such nonsense, that will never make it into textbooks, they need to revise that method substantially.
What they should investigate is, of course, the mechanisms of design: how do you build DNA? How do you rearrange genes or just basepairs to drive evolution? What's the predictive force by which genes get mutated to lead to "macro- evolution"? This is the sort of research that should be performed there. These are also processes one could teach kids at school if they ask: "where do we come from". If these experiments fail, however, all they can answer is "we've been designed, kiddo", which is not very satisfactory, because it doesn't answer how the designer was designed.
A propos: another thing they should do is the "Jesus genome project". If they want to know about the designer, Jesus' DNA would have some of the answers, wouldn't it? Isn't half of it supposed to be divine?
Another thing they should try is to reconcle the differences between the path that design takes vs. that of evolution.
Also, have a listen to the Guardian Unlimited special issue podcast: Science Weekly for December 11: Creationism special, on how the Discovery Institute is expanding its agenda to the UK.

Friday 15 December 2006 - 08:27:02 -----