Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

There was a significant amount of money that was spent on both Hiroshima and Nagasaki for cleanups. And the radiation from bombs (especially plutonium) is mostly alpha, which needs to be swept up but doesnt have a deep penetration. The cleanup lessons that ere learned at Nevada Test Site have been published for nuke plants and bomb bl;asts.
A dirty bomb , with standard explosives and nuke material, can have a longer xposure time than a small nuke device, which, again, is mostly alpha radiation (With a very long half life but is identifiable down to the milimeter of depth for cleanups).
Tritium can contaminate ground and surface waters for looong times, thats why a nuke plant vent is of major concern.

Three Mile Island is hardly even a concern(except for the containerized waste ), and Chernobyl is reclaiming itself also, However, its still lightly populated by old farmers. I dont recall what the Russian Govt did to secure the area but a past colleague, Richard Wilson, had been one of the first people flown in to advise the cleanup and "no entry" zones.

I'm sure the cost for the cleanups were high, but I'm not sure they had any other choice. I'm also not educated on the long-term contamination effects of nuclear weapons - either dirty or clean.

If I remember correctly, I believe Chernobyl was a basket case from the very beginning; the Russians were very slow in exposing this disasters to the people living in the surrounding areas, and radiation leaks were not contained for the longest time - if ever, completely.

All that was in The News of the World donkey's years ago. Not on the front page though. The front page of that august publication is reserved for more important matters.

ZIT did a spoof on it in about 1998 or thereabouts.

This thread has become about self important pompous nitwits who think they have experienced the cutting edge of modern science and military gung ho male chauvinist pig-headedness ( at at least one remove) and are bursting with a desperate desire to share it all with us in order to prove that their genetic material is of the puissant order.

My advice is to avoid cocktail parties, luncheons, golf rounds, bus queues, barber's shops, meetings, and such like where they might be lurking to empty their lungs into your earhole.

If you don't your self esteem might get withered assuming you are too polite to laugh in their face.

We can forgive you for that ci. Not being educated on the long-term contamination effects of nuclear weapons - either dirty or clean is not all that abnormal. Is there any other topic you feel educationally deficient in?

"This thread has become about self important pompous nitwits who think they have experienced the cutting edge of modern science and military gung ho male chauvinist pig-headedness ( at at least one remove) and are bursting with a desperate desire to share it all with us in order to prove that their genetic material is of the puissant order.

My advice is to avoid cocktail parties, luncheons, golf rounds, bus queues, barber's shops, meetings, and such like where they might be lurking to empty their lungs into your earhole."

Pigheadedness is all one word, no hyphen, and there is no "earhole" but there is an ear hole, however coming from an asshole, it's to be expect as the self-effacing description starting with "pompous nitwit" (singular) 'cause Spend is the only one on this forum that fits the description. The "one removed from" has again demonstrated his inability to communicate.

BTW, just as an aside, I think this is where God Is Dead rumor started:

It's kind of fun to do the impossible.
- Walt Disney

The problem with "ear hole", I feel, is that there's a tendency to pronounce the aspirate of "hole" which reduces the effect.

My desktop dictionary give a hyphen in pig-headedness. I'll check my Oxford tomorrow. It's a bit heavy to be lifting at this stage of the proceedings.

Oh, many, spendi, but I feel quite at ease in "your" environment.

We did learn some things about half life of radiation, but that was so long ago in my life; like five lifetimes ago. I can't even remember much of what happened four lifetimes ago, and many things only a few days ago.

Has everybody but me already seen this story?

If you think dying can keep you out of court, look at Charles Darwin.

The celebrations of his 200th birthday coincide with an anti-evolution lawsuit that has just landed him on the doorstep of the U.S. Supreme Court.

A Christian schoolteacher from Roseville (Placer County) who takes the Bible literally says a UC Berkeley Web site about evolution is unconstitutional, like a cross in a public park.

The Web site, "Understanding Evolution," is supported by government funds and violates the constitutional separation of church and state, according to the suit by Jeanne Caldwell.

Rebuffed by lower courts, she has appealed to the nation's highest court, and UC joined the battle this week, saying in its response that the Internet is not like a park and that, in fact, Caldwell has no right even to file the suit.

The sides wait to see whether the justices will take the case and tackle the unsettled issue - not of evolution, but of whether the Internet is a public space that needs new principles to enforce the state-and-religion barrier.

At issue is one page, out of 840 on the Web site, that says Darwin's theory and religion can co-exist. The page - titled "Misconception: 'Evolution and Religion are Incompatible' " - also features a drawing of a smiling scientist holding a skull and shaking hands with a smiling cleric holding a book with a cross on it.

Caldwell says UC's government-funded assertion contradicts a religious belief that evolution and religion are incompatible and amounts to a state position on religious doctrine. This violates the establishment clause of the First Amendment barring Congress from making any law respecting the establishment or exercise of religion, she says.

She first sued in 2005. UC thwarted the suit in federal district court and the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco by successfully arguing that Caldwell's exposure to the Web page is too minimal to cause the type of injury that would make her eligible to sue. The lower courts threw the case out based on her eligibility and didn't rule on whether the Web page violates the First Amendment.

The Web page is presented as a resource for teachers, and Caldwell said she visits that section as a teacher and participant in the evolution debates and has the same right to sue as the plaintiff who was allowed to sue over a cross in the Mojave National Preserve.

Allowing the lower-court rulings to stand, Caldwell says in her Supreme Court appeal, "would make government Web sites an Establishment Clause free zone." Because the Internet is increasingly used by the government to communicate with citizens, the Supreme Court needs to address the issue, she says. She is represented by the conservative Pacific Justice Institute in Sacramento and her husband, attorney Larry Caldwell.

Attorneys for UC say the lower-court rulings did not make the Internet immune to such claims but that existing legal principles are sufficient to dismiss Jeanne Caldwell's eligibility to sue. They also say deciding a new standard for the Internet would violate the role of the Supreme Court, which is not to open new legal frontiers but to resolve issues that arise from a body of lower-court rulings.

Roy Caldwell, director of Cal's Museum of Paleontology, the site's sponsor, said some UC officials worry that the high court may want to clarify standards on "standing," or eligibility to sue. (He's not related to Jeanne Caldwell.)

On the eve of Darwin's birthday last Thursday, a new Gallup Poll was released showing that 39 percent of Americans believe in evolution, with 25 percent not believing in it and 36 percent holding no opinion. Among weekly churchgoers, 24 percent believe in evolution and 41 percent do not.

Center of dispute
To view the UC Berkeley Web page, "Misconception: 'Evolution and Religion are Incompatible,' " go to links.sfgate.com/ZGDS.
Charles Burress

My Oxford Dictionary is in volumes and I have to trudge upstairs and search through my bookshelves (mostly behind doors -- it's about as organized as my CD's and DVD's) but now I just check online for Merriam Webster or Oxford.

There's no hyphen in pigheadedness and ear hole is two words, sometimes hyphenated, and refers to an orifice through something worn over or in the ear. Football helmets have ear-holes, ear bud headphones have ear-holes, unless they are "over the ear" headphones and the transducer is behind a fabric cover. Ear canal refers to the anatomical orifice in your head. However, asshole does refer to the bodily orifice rather than something worn over one's bum. It would depend on if you're kinky or not and what's hanging in your closet. No, not the one you're hiding in. I shall try ass hole in the future to see if it gets more of a rise, even if it isn't in the dictionary. Sphincter is very acceptable, buy that sounds so tight.

That's pretty high for church-goers believing in evolution, but I have a feeling that most of them are Discovery IDers, otherwise they would not be attending church. New Age churches, like several in the Orange Country area, have a good count of members who believe evolution as the mechanism, including natural selection, the geological time frame the scientists have figured out, but that all of it was a creation of a designer (they'd more likely say "divine designer") who zapped the ocean with lighting, churned it up with underwater volcanic heat, and planted the seeds of life. So Adam and Eve are affection names of two one-celled animals, the tree is made of seaweed, the forbidden fruit is round and probably not sweet, and the serpent is the mythological sea serpent. He had to refrain from eating Adam and Eve, or perhaps, Adam and Steve. Primordial life in the sea began without sexual counterparts. That seemed to develop as a species of fish and then that fish or fishes evolved to be able to breath air and walk on land, some of them eventually becoming frogs, while their legs eventually ended up on a gourmet's plate. Hard to tell if any primate discovered they taste like chicken.

After such a fantastic exhibition of virtuoso pedanticism I think it incumbent upon you, LW, a duty to yourself, to step up a gear and try your expertise with the English language on the Acronym game and a few other of the Trivia tests.

The current word on Acronyms is INDIVIDUALS which lends itself neatly to a witticism ending in, say, " Ursula's attractive little sphincter".

You just might have it enough to compete on there and become an accepted and valued member of the elite band of wackaloons which inhabits that esoteric section of A2K.

Oh, damn, I pulled your leg just once too often (and I'm not getting fresh -- you not my type). I'm not really interest in acronym games (did you ever figure out the one I ended the post about the transgression re my Mom?) I don't often use acronyms unless there's some humorous purpose to them or I'm being just plain cryptic. SETI, for instance, is a rather boring acronym that reads like some Egyptian god but stands for an extremely important human endeavor. Since Einstein
left a hole in his theory of not being able to go faster than the speed-of-light, we are likely being visited by alien life from civilizations over a million years ahead of us, traveling through wormholes. I'm sure they have a lot to tell us about ID, Creationism and God, but consider us in the same way we would consider primates if we were able to go back in time, or discover one frozen and revive it. Just what would astonishingly advanced aliens tell us if they finally thought it was safe? This wasn't really though of at the time of Pascal, so wouldn't his wager word on whether their are billions of other worlds out in space with life on a good percentage of them and we are being visited through worm hole travel technology?

Since "virtuoso pedanticism" is an oxymoron, maybe you meant didactcism, which would be more appropriate as far as entertainment.

Excuse the typo -- it's didacticism but some dictionaries hyphenate that! Also, you're not my type.

Go blow Steven Pinker...it will give you something worthwhile to do.

You just don't get it!

Pathetic.

Go hunt your rabbits. Nobody had to talk me in. Learn to read...when you can understand stuff as easy as this...you move on to the harder stuff I was silly enough to think you could handle.

Frank has a very firm grasp of his wacko notions.

Agnostics don't need any leverage. They are light years ahead of theist or atheists...who are just pretenders.

It's to talk someone down, not talk someone in. Besides, we aren't talking here -- if you're hearing voices, you have the TV on in the background. I have the BBC news on in the background but will have to fast search backwards to pick out the good parts I heard. There I go multitasking again -- playing on the forum, drinking coffee (yesterday is was Mimosas), subliminally watching TV and playing with myself. Hey, it's the day after Valentine's, so now I have to do everything myself.

Spendius...Fresco is incapable of a thought outside his silly belief system.

Your attempts here to speak sense to him are admirable...but the thought it evoked in me was "Pearls before swine."