Designing School Boards.

In a mixed day for the Pastafari, the Kansas School Board opens the door to intelligent design, just as the voters of Dover, PA remove all eight school board members who were pushing the issue in the Keystone State. (Nevertheless, the Pennsylvania court challenge to intelligent design will continue.)

Monkey Trials and Tribulations.

“‘What makes evolution a scientific explanation is that it makes testable predictions,’ Lander said. ‘You only believe theories when they make non-obvious predictions that are confirmed by scientific evidence…Evolution is a way of understanding the world that continues to hold up day after day to scientific tests.’‘” As a Pennsylvania court weighs anew the constitutionality of adding creationism to biology curricula, scientists (again) try to explain how evolution differs from claptrap like intelligent design — namely, that evolution produces hypotheses that are empirically verifiable (particularly in these heady days of genetic manipulation.) Well, yes…but what of the Pastafari? Why are we so eager to keep schoolchildren in the dark about the benedictory influence of His noodly appendage?