The first cover is a picture of Carter and Dejah Thoris. The second is the Gods of Mars:
The third cover is another Dejah view.
Posted on 09/27/2005 9:10:31 AM PDT by Crackingham
Dover Area School District's federal trial began yesterday in Harrisburg with talk ranging from divine intervention and the Boston Red Sox to aliens and bacterial flagellum. After about 10 months of waiting, the court case against the district and its board opened in Middle District Judge John E. Jones III's courtroom with statements from lawyers and several hours of expert testimony from biologist and Brown University professor Kenneth Miller.
On one side of the aisle, several plaintiffs packed themselves in wooden benches behind a row of attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union, Pepper Hamilton LLC and Americans United for Separation of Church and State. On the other side of the aisle, nine school board members, only three of whom were on the board when it voted 6-3 to include a statement on intelligent design in biology classes, piled in behind lawyers from the Thomas More Law Center. Assistant superintendent Michael Baksa and superintendent Richard Nilsen shared a bench with Michael Behe, a Lehigh University professor expected to take the stand in defense of intelligent design.
SNIP
Miller, whose resume is several pages long and includes a stint as a professor at Harvard University, was the first witness called for the parents. Miller co-wrote the Prentice Hall textbook "Biology" with professor Joe Levine. The book is used by 35 percent of the high school students in the United States, Miller said. His were some of the thousands of biology books in which school officials in Cobb County, Ga., ordered stickers to be placed, warning that evolution is only a theory, "not a fact." Miller also testified in a lawsuit filed by Cobb County parents, and a judge later ordered that the stickers be removed.
Yesterday, the scientist's testimony was at times dominated by scientific terminology, though he jokingly told ACLU attorney Witold Walczak he would do his best to explain things in the layman's terms he uses with his mother.
Miller said intelligent design supporters think an intelligent designer must have been involved in the creation of life because science can't yet prove how everything evolved. He said the intelligent design idea that birds were created with beaks, feathers and wings and fish were born with fins is a creationist argument.
Intelligent design supporters often cite "irreducible complexity" in their research, he said. "Irreducible complexity" means that a living thing can't be reduced by any part or it won't work at all. So those living things could not have evolved in the way Darwin suggested; they had to be created with all of their existing parts, Miller said.
Intelligent design proponents often cite the bacterial flagellum, a bacterium with a tail that propels it, Miller said. Behe and his colleagues claim bacterial flagellum had to be created with all of its parts because it couldn't function if any of them were taken away, Miller testified. But scientists have proved that the bacterial flagellum can be reduced to a smaller being, a little organism that operates in a manner similar to a syringe, Miller said.
One of the biggest problems with the scientific viability of intelligent design is there is no way to experiment with the presence of a supernatural being because science only deals with the natural world and theories that are testable, Miller said.
Some people might suspect divine intervention last year when the Boston Red Sox came back to win the World Series after losing three games in a row to the New York Yankees in the playoffs. It may have been, but that's not science, he said. And intelligent design proponents haven't named the "intelligent being" behind their supposition, Miller said. They have suggested, among other things, that it could be aliens, he said. He said there is no evidence to prove intelligent design, so its proponents just try to poke holes in the theory of evolution.
It's when he talks to himself and then answers!
Wolf
You're right. There are many paths.
Most people don't realize how many tribes there were, and how different one was from the next.
But you know, most were able to get along.
It has a known author, the same guy who wrote the Tarzan novels. He got money for writing this stuff. That suggests it should be better than the average creation story. It's a professional job.
Still, I think Burroughs missed a bit. I was having trouble visualizing the tree. It was probably because he was speaking in the stilted voice of a particular character.
So, it isn't that much better. In fact, it's pretty much indistinguishable in clarity and scientific merit from all the various "real" creation stories.
And the loons we have nowadays just don't have the same magnificent insanity. I miss ol' f dot.
An English rock or an African rock?
Junior's "in memoriam" posts today got me missing JediGirl. She was on LP for a bit but is gone off the end of the Earth.
That's a problem in velocity, not trajectory.
Little of that goes a long way, huh? Literary style of Jack the Ripper.
Yes! JediGirl. I rather liked her. Sorry to hear she can't be reached.
Coyote is the Trickster. I think Wolf is actually more of the Coyote type.
He's just having fun.
Moved to London or thereabouts last I heard.
I sent my real email address to PatrickHenry for safekeeping (not for general broadcast) in case of any inadvertent bannings. Others may consider doing the same.
The first cover is a picture of Carter and Dejah Thoris. The second is the Gods of Mars:
The third cover is another Dejah view.
But they did labor in Wien.
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