Here's one for the WTF File

Obama's Christmas tree is adorned with an ornament of Mao. Are you serious? The Dood responsible for the deaths of 50 to 80 million of his countrymen? Sheesh. There is also an autographed ornament of legendary transvestite Hedda Lettuce. And, what tree wouldn't be complete without Obama's mug superimposed onto Mt. Rushmore.

GADS...unbelievable.

Still one of my favorite Christmas tunes....

It's a Climategate Christmas

Bahahahahahahahaha...!!!!111!!!1!



HT: Evolution News and Views

Sarah Palin weighs in on Global Warming

Palin's article on Copenhagen's political science is spot on.

Read it.

Also, here is an article that portrays the impact that Palin is having on Americans...even her advesaries.

More on Climate Gate

Michael Egnor at Evolution News and Views has been covering the climate warming circus. His posts have been very informative and his touch of sarcasm quite entertaining considering the inanity of the situation...

Houston, They Have a Problem

U.N. Population Fund: Genocide Helps Prevent Global Warming

Note to Sheril Kirshenbaum: "Scientists staying on message" is the problem, not the solution

New Zealand Climate Scientists Faked Data, Too

John Holdren and ClimateGate: a Perfect Storm of Eco-Science Fraud

Climategate: Follow the Money

The Decline They Hid: the Deleted Portion of the Briffa Reconstruction

Atlantic Monthly on Climate Science: "The Stink of Intellectual Corruption is Overpowering"

Global Warming Will "Wipe Out Billions"

Oops. They Dumped the Original Data. You'll Just Have to Take Their Word for It.

You can find further articles at Evolution News and Views.

Global Warming's latest....Climategate

A *must see* documentary about the global warming controversy...



Find relevant articles below:

Hal Lewis Resignation from the APS

Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of 'Anthropogenic Global Warming'?

The Great British Climate Fraud

Global Warming with the Lid Off

Obama's Science Czar John Holdren involved in
unwinding "Climategate" scandal

Scientist in climate change 'cover-up' storm told to quit

Hiding Evidence on Global Warming

Viscount Monckton on Climategate: ‘They Are Criminals’ (PJM Exclusive)

Emails Damning To CRU Head, Phil Jones

Climate change: this is the worst scientific scandal of our generation

Climate Change Data Dumped

Green Totalitarianism

Taking the Private Jet to Copenhagen

Mark Steyn: Cooking the books on climate

UK climate scientist (Phil Jones) to temporarily step down

Penn State will investigate 'Climategate'

CLIMATE CHANGE 'FRAUD'

Climategate: Science Is Dying

Do Smoking Guns Cause Global Warming, Too?

The Climate Science Isn't Settled

Global warming controversy reaches NASA climate data

Denmark Rife with CO2 Fraud

How Climategate killed faith in the media

Mann now turns on Jones

THIS is a link to a site that has all of the emails uncovered in climategate.

World misled over Himalayan glacier meltdown

UN wrongly linked global warming to natural disasters

Glacier scientist: I knew data hadn't been verified

Scientists in stolen e-mail scandal hid climate data

Strange case of moving weather posts and a scientist under siege

Dutch Point Out New Mistakes in U.N. Climate Report

Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995

World may not be warming, say scientists

PRUDEN: The red-hot scam unravels

Warming meltdown

The continuing climate meltdown

What to say to a global warming alarmist

A View from Alaska

A wonderful review of Sarah Palin's accomplishments as Governor of Alaska can be found in an email that was written and circulated by Dewey Whetsell. It can be read in two parts below:

Part I

Part II

And the People's Cube has a hilarious fact check of Palin's book. Enjoy...

Going Rogue

I broke down and bought the book today, and I'm already thoroughly enjoying it.

UPDATE: Once I started reading, I was unable to put the book down...simply riveting. I had it finished in two days. Sarah has put together a marvelous, inspirational, upbeat biography that also shows her endearing sense of humor and tenacity to stay the path of integrity when so many other politicians cave to political corruption.


About half way through, ever the skeptic, I started surfing the net for fact checkers on the publication, but found that relatively very little has been challenged. Some of the issues with the book can be written off after actually reading it, others would require Sarah to address particular issues. But, honestly, after reading this book, her accomplishments so strongly overpower the few questionable issues that have been released about her bio.

Truth be told, this past year has been a struggle both financially and mentally for our family due to the recession. Sarah has me fired up again...I'm not content to cry in my soup anymore. Time to stand up, brush off, and get it in gear. The economic collapse isn't the fault of one particular political group, but something that both liberals and conservatives have contributed to. It's due, in large part, to corruption within our government as well as a government that has becoming increasingly toooo involved in our lives. It's also our duty to become more involved and aware of governmental issues rather than sit back and let the powers that be run our lives while believing we can't make a difference. We CAN.

I had my doubts about Sarah due to the intense negative media coverage about her, but, in the book, she has systematically ruled out every one of the bogus claims that were made about her, and she does it with a smile. Gotta appreciate that.

The book is a *must* read for everyone...

Dawkins chooses Christian cuties for his Ad

The two children chosen to front Richard Dawkins’s latest assault on God could not look more free of the misery he associates with religious baggage. With the slogan “Please don’t label me. Let me grow up and choose for myself”, the youngsters with broad grins seem to be the perfect advertisement for the new atheism being promoted by Professor Dawkins and the British Humanist Association.

Except that they are about as far from atheism as it is possible to be. The Times can reveal that Charlotte, 8, and Ollie, 7, are from one of the country’s most devout Christian families.

Their father, Brad Mason, is something of a celebrity within evangelical circles as the drummer for the popular Christian musician Noel Richards. Now a web designer and photographer, Mr Mason has been supplementing his income for years by providing photographs to agencies who sell them on to newspapers and advertising campaigns.

He said: “It is quite funny, because obviously they were searching for images of children that looked happy and free. They happened to choose children who are Christian. It is ironic. The humanists obviously did not know the background of these children.”

He said that the children’s Christianity had shone through. “Obviously there is something in their faces which is different. So they judged that they were happy and free without knowing that they are Christians. That is quite a compliment. I reckon it shows we have brought up our children in a good way and that they are happy.”

Gerald Coates, the leader of the Pioneer network of churches, which Mr Mason and his family used to attend before they moved to Dorset, said: “I think it is hilarious that the happy and liberated children on the atheist poster are in fact Christian.”

The British Humanist Association said that it did not matter whether the children were Christians. “That’s one of the points of our campaign,” said Andrew Copson, the association’s education director. “People who criticise us for saying that children raised in religious families won’t be happy, or that no child should have any contact with religion, should take the time to read the adverts.

More HERE.

Amazingly, SNL nails it...

The Wilding of Sarah Palin

Is it true that the left is the way to lean when one is anxious to further women's rights? We've seen that is not the case when it comes to the left's actions toward Sarah Palin. Their true colors have come out in spades.

Here is an article for thought written by a women who has broken away from the Democrats...

Like most feminists, it was a no brainer to become a Democrat. Liberal men, not conservatives, were the ones devoted to women's issues. They marched at my side in support of abortion rights. They were enthusiastic about women succeeding in the workplace.

As time went on, I had many experiences that should have made me rethink my certainty. But I remained nestled in cognitive dissonance -- therapy jargon for not wanting to see what I didn't want to see.

One clue: the miscreants who were brutalizing me didn't exactly look Reagan-esque. In middle and high schools, they were minority kids enraged about forced busing. On the streets of New York City and Berkeley, they were derelicts and hoodlums.

Another red flag: while liberal men did indeed hold up those picket signs, they didn't do anything else to protect me. In fact, their social programs enabled bad behavior and bred chaos in urban America. And when I was accosted by thugs, those leftist men were missing in action.

What else should have tipped me off? Perhaps the fact that so many men in ultra left Berkeley are sleaze bags. Rarely a week goes by that I don't hear stories from my young female clients about middle aged men preying on them. With the rationale of moral relativism, these creeps feel they can do anything they please.

...

Then along came Sarah, and the attacks became particularly heinous. And I realized something even more chilling about the Left. Leftists not only sacrifice and disrespect women.

It's far worse than that: many are perpetuators.

The Left's behavior towards Palin is not politics as usual. By their laser focus on her body and her sexuality, leftists are defiling her.

They are wilding her. And they do this with the full knowledge and complicity of the White House.

The Left has declared war on Palin because she threatens their existence. Democrats need women dependent and scared so that women, like blacks, will vote for liberals.

A strong, self sufficient woman, Palin eschews their protection. Drop her off in the Alaskan bush, and she'll survive just fine, thank you very much. Palin doesn't need or want anything from liberals, not hate crimes legislation that coddles her, not abortion, which she abhors.

Palin is a woman of deep and abiding faith. She takes no marching orders from messiah like wannabes, like Obama.

And so the Left must try to destroy her. And they are doing this in the most malicious of ways:

By symbolically raping her.

Just like a perpetuator, they dehumanize her by objectifying her body. They undress her with their eyes.

They turn her into a piece of ass.

Liberals do this by calling her a c___t, ogling her legs, demeaning her with names like "sexy flight attendant," and "Trailer Park Barbie," and exposing her flesh on the cover of Newsweek.

And from The Atlantic Magazine's Andrew Sullivan: "Sarah Palin's vagina is the font of all evil in the galaxy."

Nothing is off limits, not actress Sandra Bernhard's wish that Palin be gang raped or the sexualizing of Palin's daughters.

Read more....

Sarah Palin book signing

I guess she has more than a few fans...




...and her her poll numbers aren't looking too shabby either.

Stephen Meyer on the Dennis Miller Show

Listen to it HERE.

Climate change belief given same legal status as religion

This is priceless...

An executive has won the right to sue his employer on the basis that he was unfairly dismissed for his green views after a judge ruled that environmentalism had the same weight in law as religious and philosophical beliefs.

In a landmark ruling, Mr Justice Michael Burton said that "a belief in man-made climate change ... is capable, if genuinely held, of being a philosophical belief for the purpose of the 2003 Religion and Belief Regulations".

The ruling could open the door for employees to sue their companies for failing to account for their green lifestyles, such as providing recycling facilities or offering low-carbon travel.

Eh...the global warming hysteria is going down just like Darwin's materialistic just so stories about origins. I've talked to several hard core liberals who are *quickly* backing away from their previous support for Al Gore's money making endeavor.

John McWhorter vs Michael Behe on Bloggingheads

Health Care fiasco

Looks like our former governor, Kathleen Sebilius, is having a bit of a hard time selling Obamacare...



Yikes

Ron Numbers / Paul Nelson on Bloggingheads

Signature in the Cell

The latest in the recent onslaught of books attacking bold, purely materialistic philosophy and science is a book titled Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design, written by Stephen Meyer.







Be sure to order your copy of Signature in the Cell ASAP!

Another Documentary Questioning Evolution

Expelled laid the ground work, and now it looks like there will be more of these type of documentaries to follow.

The Voyage that Shook the World will be coming to the cinema in the near future. Be sure to check out the website for further information.

HT: Uncommon Descent

Evolution would take a Miracle

HT: bornagain77 @ UD

The Creation Museum

All of my nieces and nephews attend private schools (we're the black sheep in the family with our two boys going the public school route). Four of them attend a Latin school where they do fairly extensive travel throughout the school year...some outstanding historical field trips. On their way to Virginia a few weeks ago, they stopped at the Creation Museum in Kentucky. I just found out about this stop the other day, and I've been promised pictures of the museum, so hopefully, I'll print some of them at some point in time.

Bill Maher a little out of character

Seems he's not thrilled with the Obama reality television the current administration has goin' on...



PS: More reality TV from the White House. After reading that, it's pretty obvious that Rush Limbaugh isn't the only instigator of divisiveness in this country. Obama seems to be taking the lead in that department. Not allowing opposing views in regard to sharing his health care plans during their TV coverage is going to cause turmoil.

No more Letterman

I'll be thrilled to death when the guy retires.

What the media has done to Sarah Palin and her family over the past 10 months is disgusting, and Letterman is pathetic beyond belief.

The Dinosaur / Bird Connection

...and the walls keep a tumblin' down....

Discovery Raises New Doubts About Dinosaur-bird Links

ScienceDaily (June 9, 2009) — Researchers at Oregon State University have made a fundamental new discovery about how birds breathe and have a lung capacity that allows for flight – and the finding means it's unlikely that birds descended from any known theropod dinosaurs.

The conclusions add to other evolving evidence that may finally force many paleontologists to reconsider their long-held belief that modern birds are the direct descendants of ancient, meat-eating dinosaurs, OSU researchers say.

"It's really kind of amazing that after centuries of studying birds and flight we still didn't understand a basic aspect of bird biology," said John Ruben, an OSU professor of zoology. "This discovery probably means that birds evolved on a parallel path alongside dinosaurs, starting that process before most dinosaur species even existed."

...

The implication, the researchers said, is that birds almost certainly did not descend from theropod dinosaurs, such as tyrannosaurus or allosaurus. The findings add to a growing body of evidence in the past two decades that challenge some of the most widely-held beliefs about animal evolution.

"For one thing, birds are found earlier in the fossil record than the dinosaurs they are supposed to have descended from," Ruben said. "That's a pretty serious problem, and there are other inconsistencies with the bird-from-dinosaur theories.

"But one of the primary reasons many scientists kept pointing to birds as having descended from dinosaurs was similarities in their lungs," Ruben said. "However, theropod dinosaurs had a moving femur and therefore could not have had a lung that worked like that in birds. Their abdominal air sac, if they had one, would have collapsed. That undercuts a critical piece of supporting evidence for the dinosaur-bird link.

"A velociraptor did not just sprout feathers at some point and fly off into the sunset," Ruben said.

The newest findings, the researchers said, are more consistent with birds having evolved separately from dinosaurs and developing their own unique characteristics, including feathers, wings and a unique lung and locomotion system.

OH, BUT WAIT...GOTTA GET THIS IN SO WE DON'T CREATE A STIR!!!!!

"We aren't suggesting that dinosaurs and birds may not have had a common ancestor somewhere in the distant past," Quick said. "That's quite possible and is routinely found in evolution. It just seems pretty clear now that birds were evolving all along on their own and did not descend directly from the theropod dinosaurs, which lived many millions of years later."

*eyes rolling*

Of course, as we all know...

"Frankly, there's a lot of museum politics involved in this, a lot of careers committed to a particular point of view even if new scientific evidence raises questions," Ruben said.

We'll just have to be paitent...one day things will definently take a turn in the right direction.

HT: Voxy

Related posts:

More Bird to Dino BS
Another Strike against Dino to Bird Evolution
Early History of Birds more Diverse than Once Thought
Another Interesting Dino Find

George Tiller

Some freaking idiot just shot and killed George Tiller this morning....in church no less.

Simply unbelievable....

Yes, what Tiller has done over the years is horrifically wrong. Deep down, even liberal minded pro abortion folks know that. You don't rip babies in their 6th month of gestation from their mother's womb. But, the moronic fool who took Tiller's life just made the worst possible move ever for pro lifers.

*Shakes head in complete disbelief*

PS: According to this link, it appears that Tiller performed 1,436 abortions after 22 weeks from 1998 to 2001 alone. Here's a picture of an aborted fetus at 24 weeks. If that isn't considered hard core murder, I don't know what is.

He's been in practice since the early 70's. I can't imagine and don't want to know the number of babies he killed during his career. It boggles the mind that our former Governor, Kathleen Sebelius, and other far left Kansans vilified Phil Kline for taking Tiller to task for the murders he committed.

Guy Walks Into a Bar and Thinks He's a Chimpanzee: The Unbearable Lightness of Chimp-Human Genome Similarity

This post at Evolution News and Views, written by the infamous Richard Sternberg, is just too enjoyable not to pass on...:)

TEXAS ROCKS!!!

Huge win in Texas for scientific integrity!!!

Happy Birthday Darwin

ALL HAIL CHARLES DARWIN!!!

Some sciency types will be offering their worship and praise to the Almighty Darwin today.

I, OTOH, agree with David Warren of the Ottawa Citizen....

But "Darwinism" survives, especially in the English-speaking world, not as a quaint historical theory, but rather as a cosmological doctrine. The hard-core Darwinist is a "religious atheist," whose faith in the non-existence of God is anchored in the unshakable conviction that everything in this world that looks designed and purposeful will eventually be explained by random, gradual, purely "natural" (as opposed to supernatural) processes. And he defends himself by the method of the hedgehog: for when attacked he rolls up into an impregnably tautological ball.

Oh, and btw...

ID is winning big time in the public square. Screw the hardcore Darwin lover scientists...it won't always be the case that we continue to teach an ideology in the science classroom. Hopefully, at some point in time, much of Darwin's legacy will be shoved over into the philosophy classroom.

The latest Zogby poll (January), linked to above, shows that 78% of US voters favor teaching both strengths and weaknesses of evolution.

FAR OUT!

For regular readers...if you're still out there, let me assure you that I haven't given up the fight! My laptop has been revived, and I'm still at it...stronger than ever, but I've found an alternate venue. Hopefully, I'll get back to blogging at some point, though I can't say I haven't enjoyed the break. I still keep up with all the pertinent blogs and forums.

Keep up the fight! Looks like the numbers are leaning our way!!!!!!

PS: Casey Luskin from the Discovery Institute had a great opinion piece in the US News & World Report.

Be sure to read Uncommon Descent and Evolution News and Views to keep up to date with what is happening in the ID/Evo debates.

Nature's 15 "Evolutionary Gems"

From here:

Jan 2, 2009 — Like a showcase of pearl-handled revolvers, an armory of evidences Nature calls “Darwin’s Gems” have been exhibited to warn creationists that Darwin Day will be defended next month with a show of force. The authors, Henry Gee (former editor of Nature), Rory Howlett and Philip Campbell have made their 15 Evolutionary Gems freely available “and encourage its free dissemination.” Why? “Given that the concepts and realities of Darwinian evolution are still challenged, albeit rarely by biologists, a succinct briefing on why evolution by natural selection is an empirically validated principle is useful for people to have to hand.” This collected ammunition, they feel, demonstrates the “breadth, depth and power of evolutionary thinking.”

Their list includes 5 evidences from paleontology, 6 from ecology, and 4 from genetics and molecular biology (see Commentary for items on the list). The outline is followed by summary arguments for each “gem” of evidence for Darwinian evolution.

What matters on a pistol is not how pretty the handle looks but what it’s loaded with, and whether it will work without backfiring. To shoot down the creationist challengers riding into town, this trio of self-appointed sheriffs needs to stop polishing the handles and demonstrate their marksmanship. Better a slingshot that can hit its mark than a pearl-handled hunk of dead iron.

The trio, unfortunately, loaded their chambers with blanks. Nobody cares about microevolution. That is accepted by even young-earth creationists. They’ve got to demonstrate that Charlie’s silver bullet, natural selection, can get out of the chamber with sufficient wallop to do more than tickle the creationists and make them laugh. His takeover of the town rested on the ability of his newfangled ideas to create new genetic information, structure and function. Charlie’s imagined ancestor of all life had no wings, teeth, legs, or brains. Can his mechanism of random mutation and natural selection, with no purpose or designing intelligence, get from slimy sea to Henry Gee? Let’s see.

The bad sheriffs best beware of backfires, or circular reasoning (i.e., using “evolutionary thinking” to argue for evolution as fact). They wanted to demonstrate the “breadth, depth and power of evolutionary thinking,” they said. Well, guess what. There’s something with even more breadth, depth and power than that: imagination. Take that up in the saloon, guys; it doesn’t belong in a scientific showdown. Show us your firepower.

1. Whale evolution: See our entries from 12/20/2007 and 05/28/2002 as an antidote to their bluffing and exaggeration about Thewissen’s alleged “great transformation.” Even they admitted at the end that his study “demonstrates the existence of potential transition forms in the fossil record,” not actual transitional forms, like the 50,000 David Berlinski estimated would be required to turn a cow into a whale. Then they bluffed that “many other examples could have been highlighted,” and distracted the reader’s attention to futureware: “there is every reason to think that many others await discovery,” they said. This was a major problem in Darwin’s time. How many more centuries do we have to wait?

2. Tetrapod evolution: They rehashed Tiktaalik as if it is problem-free. Find a dozen refutations by searching on the word Tiktaalik in the search bar above. How convinced should we be when they say that it represents “the stage before tetrapods evolved, and shows how the fossil record throws up surprises, albeit ones that are entirely compatible with evolutionary thinking”? This only makes sense if you already believe in evolution. If you are wowed by circular reasoning, wave your tetrapods.

3. Evolution of feathers: They argue from Archaeopteryx (with a historical plaudit to Thomas Huxley for his speculation about bird evolution), Sinosauropteryx (search on this word for 5 entries), and Epidexipteryx (10/22/2008) that feathers preceded flight. Again, this only makes sense if you already worship Darwin. Their closing statement is so bizarre, it wins Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week and a new cartoon by Brett Miller (click on the Tweety Bird). Watch for the glorification of Darwinian speculation, the big lie about feathered dinosaurs being “discovered,” and the miracle-working power of evolution personified:

Palaeontologists are now beginning to think that their speculations weren’t nearly wild enough, and that feathers were indeed quite common in dinosaurs.

The discovery of feathered dinosaurs not only vindicated the idea of transitional forms, but also showed that evolution has a way of coming up with a dazzling variety of solutions when we had no idea that there were even problems. Flight could have been no more than an additional opportunity that presented itself to creatures already clothed in feathers.

The leap of faith in that sentence is breathtaking. There are so many adaptations required for flight, to glibly say that an opportunity presents itself and it happens exceeds the faith of a creationist by orders of magnitude. Want to try out their explanation? Stand at the top of a skyscraper. Put on a Big Bird costume. An opportunity for flight presents itself....

4. Teeth: Microevolution; irrelevant. This gem is only a short, sweet anecdote about a lady scientist inspired by Darwin. It ends with a plaudit for evo-devo.

5. Vertebrate skeleton: This is a bizarre concoction of recapitulation theory, speculation, circular reasoning and imposing Darwin on the data in the absence of evidence. They pretend this helps doctors understand “several developmental disorders in humans,” as if evolution had anything to do with it. Creationists believe that we have skeletal similarities to our fellow vertebrates; so what? Circular argument; irrelevant.

6. Speciation: More stickleback fish propaganda (search on stickleback in the search bar above). Microevolution; irrelevant.

7. Lizards: Microevolution; irrelevant.

8. Co-evolution: A so-called evolutionary arms race between water fleas and parasites that infect them. Both species remain what they were; no new organs or new genetic information. Microevolution; irrelevant.

9. Bird dispersal: This is about gene flow in one species of bird. Microevolution; irrelevant.

10. Guppies: An argument for “frequency-dependent survival” in genetic polymorphisms of one species of guppy. Microevolution; irrelevant.

11. Evolutionary history matters: This entry assumes evolution to prove evolution. Circular reasoning; irrelevant. The authors talk about “evolution’s breathtaking solution” to a feeding problem in moray eels. No transitional forms mentioned, nor any mechanism for producing this “innovation” – just the assumption that Darwin did it somehow. They opened, “Evolution is often thought to be about finding optimal solutions to the problems that life throws up. But natural selection can only work with the materials at hand – materials that are themselves the results of many millions of years of evolutionary history.” Is restating their belief with sufficient chutzpah supposed to convince a doubter?

12. Galapagos Finches: Good grief. For them to keep tossing up this discredited story and thinking that an admitted case of microevolution that oscillates beak size with climate by a few millimeters is going to convince the rest of us that humans have bacteria ancestors, it’s no showdown at all. “The study shows how biologists are going beyond the mere documentation of evolutionary change to identify the underlying molecular mechanisms,” they said. Well, fine. The history of alchemy motivated many new techniques that later helped chemists.

13. Microevolution meets macroevolution: All right, folks, here it is: the rubber meets the road. This must be a good one. Ready? “We can infer from the fossil record that larger species-to-species changes, or macroevolution, also occur,” they said, ignoring the Cambrian explosion, “but they are naturally harder to observe in action.” Enter Sean Carroll (the one at Howard Hughes Medical Institute) demonstrating spots on the wings of one species of fruit fly. Whoa, that’s rich. It gets worse. The story revolves around considering some genes and transcription factors evolutionarily “ancient” and “ancestral.” They just can’t quit their drunken-sailor walk of circular reasoning. “This shows that a gene involved in one process can be co-opted for another, in principle driving macroevolutionary change.”

14. Toxin resistance: A mutation breaks the gate that would otherwise allow a toxin to enter, in two different kinds of animals. So evolution breaks things. And your point is?

15. Variation vs stability: Let’s see if they saved their best for last. Nope; foul. They have just inserted teleology back into evolution, committing the very infraction Darwin declared a mortal sin.

Species can remain mostly unchanged for millions of years, long enough for us to pick up their traces in the fossil record. But they change, too, and often very suddenly. This has led some to wonder whether species – usually those developing along specific tracks – store the potential for sudden change under the hood, unleashing a flood of otherwise hidden variation at times of environmental stress – variation on which selection can act.

They call this phenomenon of stored variation “evolutionary capacitance”. Giving something a name is not an argument. Need we remind the gunslinger trio that capacitors are built by intelligent engineers? This argument does not rule out a Creator planning in some adaptability and robustness to his intelligently-designed creations – organisms that must survive a dynamic environment. The creationists demand their gems back.

Notice the reliance of this argument on punctuated equilibria, Stephen Jay Gould’s pet theory on why the evidence for evolution is missing. You would think they would not entertain such anti-gradualist heresies for Darwin Day (read what one Darwinist thinks about Gould in the 12/19/2008 entry, bullet 2). You would think also that this trio would not be handing their ammunition to the creationists to use against them.

Creationists really don’t mind the arsenal. They will let the Darwinists shoot a thousand pearl-handled hunks of dead iron loaded with blanks all they want. They’re still comin’ to save the town from the crooked sheriffs holding the citizens hostage.

Exercise: Explain why “evolutionary thinking” is an oxymoron.