noteworthy wrote:
] Whereas earlier coverage simply tended toward comic
] uncordiality, the tone now has shifted from a mocking of
] harmless idiocy to a biting castigation of the curricular
] debasements in Cobb and Dover.

The most interesting thing to note is that the author of this article has bought into the memetic distortions of those he opposes, calling "intelligent design" "an alternative theory" in the second paragraph.

"Intelligent Design" is not a theory. It is a hypothesis. The word "theory" is used in common speech when one really means hypothesis, because the later word is a bit obtuse. The author seems aware of the distinction, but doesn't seem to recall the word "hypothesis" and instead reaches for phrases like "not yet a theory."

When someone says "The Theory of Evolution" they aren't using the lay meaning of the word theory, but rather the scientific meaning. The "Intelligent Design" folks distort the debate by taking advantage of the public's confusion about the definition of these two words. In falling for it this article does more to promote their cause then to fight it.

RE: The Crafty Attacks on Evolution

] The Bentley Snow Crystal Collection of the Buffalo Museum
] of Science is a digital library providing a high-quality
] collection of stunning, un-retouched images of Wilson A.
] Bentley's original glass slide photographs of snow
] crystals, and includes dynamic resources to further an
] appreciation and understanding of Bentley and his work.

The Bentley Snow Crystal Collection

Once Huygens' mother ship, Cassini, had beamed information from the probe back to radio receivers on Earth on Friday 14 January, the raw images were posted on the descent-imaging team's website, based at the University of Arizona, Tucson.

Computer enthusiasts pounced on the images immediately, and improved them using a range of free or commercially available software before swapping their pictures in Internet chatrooms.

"When we started looking at the raw images, there were marvellous things there that we wanted to share," says Anthony Liekens, a chatroom enthusiast from Borsbeek, Belgium.

When Liekens tuned into the ESA press conference on the morning of Saturday 15 January, he was disappointed by the quality of their images. So he decided to host amateur compositions on his website. The site has quickly turned into a virtual gallery.

The referenced page: http://anthony.liekens.net/huygens_static.html

Amateurs beat space agencies to Titan pictures

] When scientists wanted to explore what kind of life might
] exist on Mars, public television's "NOVA" recorded the
] building and launch of the rovers sent to the planet.
]
] Now, a year later, the "NOVA" team is back with "Welcome
] to Mars," featuring data collected by the robots as they
] searched for signs that the planet may once have harbored
] tiny forms of life. The program airs at 8 tonight on PBS.

This was fun. Hope you can catch the rerun.

'NOVA' welcomes viewers to Mars - 01/04/05

] Richard Gross, a geophysicist with NASA's Jet Propulsion
] Laboratory in California, theorized that a shift of mass
] toward the Earth's center during the quake Sunday caused
] the planet to spin 3 microseconds, or millionths of a
] second, faster and to tilt about an inch on its axis.
]
] When one huge tectonic plate beneath the Indian Ocean was
] forced below the edge of another "it had the effect of
] making the Earth more compact and spinning faster," Gross
] said.

CNN.com - Scientists: Quake may have made Earth wobble - Dec 29, 2004

Kind of a neat look at pleasure as *the* motivating factor:

"Ian Sample talks to the scientists teasing out why we strive so much for pleasurable experiences - and why, when we have it all, we risk everything for more excitement."

Guardian Unlimited | Life | The new pleasure seekers

Winter Solstice Dec 21 2004 7:42 AM EST

For those of us on the east coast, the sun will be at its closest about a half hour after it rises.

The reason for the season

The New York Times mocks you, Cobb County.

This book details how God created humans. However, some people insist we are descended from aliens. The reader is advised to keep an open mind, and to stay alert.

Nice cryptoschwa.

The Descent of Dissent

] If you don't try to hold your breath, exposure to space
] for half a minute or so is unlikely to produce permanent
] injury. Holding your breath is likely to damage your
] lungs, something scuba divers have to watch out for when
] ascending, and you'll have eardrum trouble if your
] Eustachian tubes are badly plugged up, but theory
] predicts -- and animal experiments confirm -- that
] otherwise, exposure to vacuum causes no immediate injury.
] You do not explode. Your blood does not boil. You do not
] freeze. You do not instantly lose consciousness.
]
] Various minor problems (sunburn, possibly "the bends",
] certainly some [mild, reversible, painless] swelling of
] skin and underlying tissue) start after ten seconds or
] so. At some point you lose consciousness from lack of
] oxygen. Injuries accumulate. After perhaps one or two
] minutes, you're dying. The limits are not really known.

Something interesting you'll never need to know.

Human Body in a Vacuum

] An extreme geomagnetic storm was taking place over our
] planet for the last 48 hours or so -- and that caused a
] rare wave of Northern Lights displays as far south as
] Oklahoma, Virginia, Maryland, Alabama and California in
] the USA.

How did I miss this!!

Boing Boing: Aurora Borealis light show unusually far south in USA