Intelligent Design is like the Three Stooges in labcoats. (figurative labcoats of course. They never actually do experiments)

Both groups recognised the large shapes more quickly than small, embedded ones, but the Calvinists picked out the smaller shapes 30 milliseconds faster than atheists, on average – a small, but significant, difference.

This could reflect a greater focus on self than external distractions for Calvinists, says Hommel.

He suggests it may even be a cognitive consequence of their religion and speculates that Calvinists might be more inward looking than atheists because they have lived their whole lives with an emphasis on minding their own business.

Damn. Dutch atheists are even more stupid than their Calvinist countrymen. I wonder if it outweighs my genetic background:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi#Intelligence

UD has degenerated long ago into a device to clean out the dumb rubes

I can see why you’d think that. After all it’s a scientific fact that your Atheism has hindered your ability to quickly see the world as it is. I guess us Christians will have to make allowances.

After all, making allowances for the handicapped is the Christian thing to do.

Peace

Barry has organized UD as a non-profit corporation and plans to take UD in some new directions that will increase its readership, sense of community, and impact. Take it away Barry!

Non-profit, eh? I guess that's why they installed a new Donate option (all major credit cards accepted). Let's be honest here: UD has degenerated long ago into a device to clean out the dumb rubes, what with the constant advertisement of the "learned" creationist, sorry ID, books of WAD and O'Leary et al., and the banning of all contrary voices lest the rubes don't get confused.

If our blogging is pointless why are you spending your time reading it?

I don't presume to speak for Steve, but I find the unintentional humour quite amusing. Also Joy (when not talking about ID) makes some interesting points. TP does a good job in keeping some of your more fanciful contributors in line. Zachriel and Raevmo are on hand to correct the most egregious scientific errors and strawmen. The political, religious and psychological elements are also fascinating.

I guess I do have to accept your assessment that it is a waste of time though, but there are less harmless ways of wasting it!

This second time Dembski's giving it up comes a week after the GOP was run out of Washington, meaning no chance of a creationism-friendly supreme court for years. What a coincidence. Yeah, Dembski's leaving to "spend more time with his research." Do you also believe them when people who've been whipped resign to "spend more time with their family"? I guess you take them at their word too. But people who've been around a little more don't.

PS I don't know what piddly little search function paper he and Marks are working on, but if you think it'll spell out a theory of ID, you're gonna be disappointed. The YEC guys still blog and it's now 20 years after their legal defeat. We're only 3 years away from Dover, so enjoy the next 17 years of pointless blogging.

* (the Young Earth Creationists, on the other hand, do a much better job pretending to do science. Their 'technical journal' comes out several times a year, every year. The ID journal published around 8 anemic issues and then folded several years ago. Meaning that the ID people have performed distinctly worse than the YECs, which is really hard to imagine. But very funny to people who know a bit about science.)

There's news over at Uncommon Descent. William Dembski is following in Mike Gene's footsteps and abandoning his blog to a right-winger with no understanding of science.

Like most closet wedgies steve has no problem with left wingers who have no understanding of science. This from Dembski's blog:

Barry has organized UD as a non-profit corporation and plans to take UD in some new directions that will increase its readership, sense of community, and impact. Take it away Barry!

I believe Barry is an attorney and would be qualified to make the necessary legal arrangements conferring non-profit status. In addition he'll have managerial responsibilities which do not require technical expertise. It is common to appoint CEOs not familiar with many technical details of the corporations they head. Obama knows nothing about commanding armies but will have commander-in-chief responsibilities. Working associates fill in the technical knowledge gap. That's no secret to anyone but the willfully ignorant steve. This also from Dembski:

As of tomorrow (Friday, November 14th), Barry Arrington assumes the leadership of UD. After more than three years at the helm, I’m finally stepping down. I expect I’ll still be posting here occasionally, but my energies will go more and more into technical ID research. Robert Marks and I continue to crank away at papers and have finally cracked the peer-review barrier in the information sciences with a paper on conservation of information (stay tuned at http://www.EvoInfo.org for a formal announcement).

So Dembski is prioritizing his time and spending it working with Marks on research. Dembski was criticized for not doing research. Don't wait for applause from the swamp.

Along with the abandonment of ISCID, PCID, Brainstorms, OverwhelmingEvidence, and the Discovery Institute's latest book not mentioning Intelligent Design even once, I'd say the writing is on the wall.

A series of preliminary steps are leading in just this direction, and with an incoming administration that promises to enforce the law (as opposed to subverting it with EOs and "signing statements"), just might prosecute the culprits. The bankers, speculators, bubble-inflaters and insurance frauds who have brought the entire world's economy down are turning on each other because they can no longer trust each other. We can reclaim the wealth they've looted, including the wealth they're currently wheeling out of the U.S. Treasury in wheelbarrows.

You do remember what finally undid notorious gangster Al Capone, don't you? To whit…

Swiss banker charged in huge U.S. tax evasion scheme

A top executive of Swiss bank UBS AG has been charged with conspiring to help wealthy American clients hide $20 billion of assets from U.S. tax authorities.

An indictment unsealed on Wednesday said Raoul Weil, who oversaw UBS' cross-border private banking business, had been charged with concealing the assets of about 17,000 U.S. clients from the Internal Revenue Service.