Welcome to 1925

Ah, 1925. It was an interesting year (not that I was actually there, smart-ass!):

• John Logie Baird, Scottish inventor, transmits human features by television.
• Adolf Hitler publishes Volume I of Mein Kampf.
• Al Capone takes over the Chicago bootlegging racket.
• University of Alabama Crimson Tide NCAA Football Champs (which is as it should be).
• Federal spending = $2.92 billion
• Unemployment = 3.2%
• Cost of a first-class stamp = 2 cents
• And last but not least: Tennessee schoolteacher John Scopes arrested and tried for teaching the theory of evolution.

Fast-forward to 2005:

• Television: BIG.
• Hitler: Dead. (Whew!)
• Al Capone: Dead.
• 'Bama: Ranked #15 as of 9/26/05
• Federal spending = outta control
• Unemployment = 4.9 (August 2005)
• Cost of a first-class stamp = 37 cents

Um. About that evolution thing. Still fighting over that one. US District Court Judge John E. Jones III will hear Kitzmiller et al v. Dover (PA) Area School District starting today. According to the New York Times article:

The legal battle came to a head on Oct. 18 last year when the Dover school board voted 6 to 3 to require ninth-grade biology students to listen to a brief statement saying that there was a controversy over evolution, that intelligent design is a competing theory and that if they wanted to learn more the school library had the textbook "Of Pandas and People: the Central Question of Biological Origins." The book is published by an intelligent design advocacy group, the Foundation for Thought and Ethics, based in Texas.

This case is in the spotlight in most major newspapers today. The Guardian here. Los Angeles Times here. And a Washington Post article about new analyses that support the theory of evolution.

Thinking is so hard!