You'd rather watch this than passing trains ...

A friend drew my attention to this video essay: "The animators of life", New York Times (November 15, 2010):

Building on decades of research and mountains of data, scientists and animators are now recreating in vivid and sometimes jaw-dropping detail the complex inner machinery of living cells.

Essentially, the Darwinists' problem isn't with us. It is twofold: an ever-intensifying blizzard of disconfirming evidence from nature, plus the bad fortune to be working at a time when the Internet brings that information to people who are not inoculated against it. Essentially, time and chance do not create high levels of information through ruthless competition. Darwinism is a form of magic, and has the same success rate as the others.

Here's a snippet on the new technical power for discovering the facts, courtesy Boing Boing:

A human hair is somewhere between 60,000 and 120,000 nanometers wide. The new microscope that took this image of a mouse cell can capture 3-D images at a resolution of 30 nanometers.

Other friends recently became immersed in a question of the best source of animations.

One favors this one from Mercola:

This animation was designed to take cellular biology students on a journey through the microscopic world of a cell. It illustrates the mechanisms that allow a white blood cell to sense its surroundings and respond to an external stimulus.

And here's one that covers most of the major cell processes.

And here's the oddest attack I've ever heard on the evidence that the animations show: They are animations, and the real thing looks fuzzier under a micrograph. But then this person sees no difference between animations of actual cell processes and Haeckel's misleading embryo drawings, a scandal for over a century and still defended by Darwinists because, while misleading, they front Darwin's cause to students in tax-supported, compulsory attendance schools. And what else matters?

It's interesting to reflect that if ID folk had any reason to suspect that the new cell life animations really misled in any way, they would not want anything to do with them.

Animation of life inside the cell as high art?

Here’s another great animation of life inside the body and the cell, from Hybrid Medical Animations.

They enter the realm of high art, achieving a combination of Truth and Beauty ...

- from an unidentified endorsement

The music is well suited too.

I wrote to the friend who drew it to my attention,

Medical animations are quite helpful because many people still believe the “brick theory of the cell.” = that the body is built out of cells as a wall is of bricks, with the brick being less organized than the wall. But the cell is something between a factory and a supercomputer.

The remarkable thing is that the wretched caterpillar I found on a rosebud and threw to the wolf spider was like that. As is the spider itself.

One realizes that Darwin’s explanation for how all this came to be is not even relevant.

Darwin argued that it all happened because the stronger life form survives to breed. That, of course, is doubtless true, but it is not going to give you a supercomputer! – d.

(Note: The video starts a couple of seconds after you access the page.)

Learning biology is more fun with free virtual cell animations

At the Molecular and Cell Biology Learning Center, you will find a Virtual Cell Animation Collection

In addition to Virtual Cell's online game modules, animations have been developed to introduce students to new concepts. By walking through the still images and movies included for each topic, viewers can easily choose between either studying a specific step from one of the processes or taking a more immersive look at the process in it's entirety. In order to better serve all levels of educational interest, each topic is being offered with a choice between two approaches:

A great way to learn about protein traffic, photosynthesis, and transcription of genes.

Video on the Web: Indexed list of cool animations of life inside the cell

Here is a list of cool animations of the life of a cell in alpha order , for your convenience. Useful for discussing such questions as irreducible complexity and specified complexity: Could these processes arise by Darwinian means (natural selection acting on random mutations)? Which ones? How? How plausible is that, really? Or is it just something we have to believe because we are materialists?

Hereafter, I will add this link to the sea of links below, to various resources on t he intelligent design controversy.

If you are looking for Jonathan Wells's comments, go here.

My other blog is the Mindful Hack, which keeps tabs on neuroscience and the mind.

If you like this blog, check out my book on the intelligent design controversy, By Design or by Chance?. You can read excerpts as well.

Are you looking for one of the following stories?

My review of sci-fi great Rob Sawyer’s novel, The Calculating God , which addresses the concept of intelligent design. My reviews of possibly ID-related films, etc.

My recent series on the spate of anti-God books, teen blasphemy challenge, et cetera, and the mounting anxiety of materialist atheists that lies behind it.

My review of Francis Collins’ book The Language of God , my backgrounder about peer review issues, or the evolutionary biologist’s opinion that all students friendly to intelligent design should be flunked.

Lists of theoretical and applied scientists who doubt Darwin and of academic ID publications.

My U of Toronto talk on why there is an intelligent design controversy, or my talk on media coverage of the controversy at the University of Minnesota.

A summary of tech guru George Gilder's arguments for ID and against Darwinism

A critical look at why March of the Penguins was thought to be an ID film.

A summary of recent opinion columns on the ID controversy

A summary of recent polls of US public opinion on the ID controversy

A summary of the Catholic Church's entry into the controversy, essentially on the side of ID.

O'Leary's intro to non-Darwinian agnostic philosopher David Stove’s critique of Darwinism.

An ID Timeline: The ID folk seem always to win when they lose.

Why origin of life is such a difficult problem.

Blog policy note:Comments are permitted on this blog, but they are moderated. Fully anonymous posts and URLs posted without comment will be accepted if I think they contribute to a discussion. For best results, give your name or some idea who you are and why we should care. To Mr. Anonymous: I'm not psychic, so if you won't tell me who you are, I can't guess and don't care. To Mr. Nude World (URL): If you can't be bothered telling site visitors why they should go on to your fave site next, why should I post your comment? They're all busy people, like you. To Mr. Rudesby International and Mr. Pottymouth: I also have a tendency to delete comments that are merely offensive. Go be offensive to someone who can smack you a good one upside the head. That may provide you with a needed incentive to stop and think about what you are trying to accomplish. To Mr. Righteous but Wrong: I don't publish comments that contain known or probable factual errors. There's already enough widely repeated misinformation out there, and if you don't have the time to do your homework, I don't either. To those who write to announce that at death I will either 1) disintegrate into nothingness or 2) go to Hell by a fast post, please pester someone else. I am a Catholic in communion with the Church and haven't the time for either village atheism or aimless Jesus-hollering.

My other blog is the Mindful Hack, which keeps tabs on neuroscience and the mind.

If you like this blog, check out my book on the intelligent design controversy, By Design or by Chance?. You can read excerpts as well.

Are you looking for one of the following stories?

My recent series on the spate of anti-God books, teen blasphemy challenge, et cetera, and the mounting anxiety of materialist atheists that lies behind it.

My review of Francis Collins’ book The Language of God , my backgrounder about peer review issues, or the evolutionary biologist’s opinion that all students friendly to intelligent design should be flunked.

Lists of theoretical and applied scientists who doubt Darwin and of academic ID publications.

My U of Toronto talk on why there is an intelligent design controversy, or my talk on media coverage of the controversy at the University of Minnesota.

A summary of tech guru George Gilder's arguments for ID and against Darwinism

A critical look at why March of the Penguins was thought to be an ID film.

A summary of recent opinion columns on the ID controversy

A summary of recent polls of US public opinion on the ID controversy

A summary of the Catholic Church's entry into the controversy, essentially on the side of ID.

O'Leary's intro to non-Darwinian agnostic philosopher David Stove’s critique of Darwinism.

An ID Timeline: The ID folk seem always to win when they lose.

Why origin of life is such a difficult problem.

Blog policy note:Comments are permitted on this blog, but they are moderated. Fully anonymous posts and URLs posted without comment will be accepted if I think they contribute to a discussion. For best results, give your name or some idea who you are and why we should care. To Mr. Anonymous: I'm not psychic, so if you won't tell me who you are, I can't guess and don't care. To Mr. Nude World (URL): If you can't be bothered telling site visitors why they should go on to your fave site next, why should I post your comment? They're all busy people, like you. To Mr. Rudesby International and Mr. Pottymouth: I also have a tendency to delete comments that are merely offensive. Go be offensive to someone who can smack you a good one upside the head. That may provide you with a needed incentive to stop and think about what you are trying to accomplish. To Mr. Righteous but Wrong: I don't publish comments that contain known or probable factual errors. There's already enough widely repeated misinformation out there, and if you don't have the time to do your homework, I don't either. To those who write to announce that at death I will either 1) disintegrate into nothingness or 2) go to Hell by a fast post, please pester someone else. I am a Catholic in communion with the Church and haven't the time for either village atheism or aimless Jesus-hollering.