Archives August 2005

Splitting the Conservative Creationist Wedge

This Free Republic article is just a repost of George Bush’s recent endorsement of ID. (Thanks to Fred at Pharyngula for the pointer.)

The interesting part is in the comments. It’s interesting to see two factions of Freepers emerge: those who support teaching creationism, and those who think, “It’s really hard to support the president when he starts pushing obscurantist nonsense.” It’ll be interesting to see whether creationism or anti-evolutionism becomes a wedge issue splitting the Republican party.
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Bush Endorses ID

According to several sources, including this Seattle Times article, president Bush has endorsed Intelligent Design Creationism:

WASHINGTON — President Bush waded into the debate over evolution and “intelligent design” yesterday, saying schools should teach both on the origins and complexity of life.

In a wide-ranging question-and-answer session with a small group of reporters, Bush essentially endorsed efforts by Christian conservatives to give intelligent design equal standing with evolution in the nation’s schools.

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Drunken Walks (But Not the Pubcrawl Variety)

Imagine a drunk standing in the middle of a field. Every time he tries to walk a step, he winds up staggering in a random direction: north, south, east, or west. How long will it take him to get to the edge of the field?

We can look at it intuitively, and say that he’s as likely to stagger north as south, as likely to go east as west. So after 100 steps, he will most likely have made 25 steps north and 25 steps south, which cancel out; and 25 steps east and 25 west, which also cancel out. So he’ll just keep staggering around his spot in the middle of the field until he sobers up.
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