So you're saying that going into the meeting with a machete and saying, "See, not a drop of blood on it!" wouldn't be the right approach?

I'm guessing no.

It's rather distressing.

Maybe I'll have a coughing fit!

Snow has started in DC. Doesn't look like it's sticking yet, but I'm on the 8th floor.

Intelligent Design on the wane? [link]

Behind the headlines, however, intelligent design as a field of inquiry is failing to gain the traction its supporters had hoped for. It has gained little support among the academics who should have been its natural allies. And if the intelligent design proponents lose the case in Dover, there could be serious consequences for the movement's credibility.

On college campuses, the movement's theorists are academic pariahs, publicly denounced by their own colleagues. Design proponents have published few papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

The Templeton Foundation, a major supporter of projects seeking to reconcile science and religion, says that after providing a few grants for conferences and courses to debate intelligent design, they asked proponents to submit proposals for actual research.

"They never came in," said Charles L. Harper Jr., senior vice president at the Templeton Foundation, who said that while he was skeptical from the beginning, other foundation officials were initially intrigued and later grew disillusioned.

"From the point of view of rigor and intellectual seriousness, the intelligent design people don't come out very well in our world of scientific review," he said.

While intelligent design has hit obstacles among scientists, it has also failed to find a warm embrace at many evangelical Christian colleges. Even at conservative schools, scholars and theologians who were initially excited about intelligent design say they have come to find its arguments unconvincing. They, too, have been greatly swayed by the scientists at their own institutions and elsewhere who have examined intelligent design and found it insufficiently substantiated in comparison to evolution.

Neck still hurts like whoa. Work horrible. Being nitpicked and guilted on all fronts, including fannish. Want to crawl under bed with heating pad and manga.

I've decided that since "creationism" has changed it's name to "intelligent design", I'ma give "evolution" a new name.

From henceforth, "Evolution" is to be called "gradual development".

t stamps foot

I was gonna try to get an earlier flight out, but I swear the weather forecasts sound really wimpy and I don't feel like rushing. An earlier flight would mean leaving for the airport RIGHT NOW! Bah, not gonna. If I get delayed or re-directed, then so be it. Be warned Buffistas, if I get redirected to any of your towns I will be calling.

If a doctor visit leaves me feeling humiliated and like I never want to see a doctor again, I should write a letter to my HMO, correct?

Abso-fuckin-lutely, Allyson.

Shrift, I'm sorry about the neck and general duck pecking.