Flat-earthers still at it in Kansas

Eight of the 26 committee members assigned to rewrite Kansas's state science standards favor creationism.

On a related note, check out this nice obituary of Ernst Mayr, the man responsible for explaining how the process of natural selection leads to speciation. The short answer: physical separation of members of a single species into separated environments, each with distinct environmental pressures, in conjunction with the biological processes of random mutation and natural selection, plus enough time....

To appreciate that even something as amazingly functional as the eye (not to mention consciousness itself) can result from such a random process, the only thing left to understand is just how long geological time really lasts. Stephen J. Gould once observed that geological time can probably only be comprehended metaphorically. For example, if the entire history of life on earth were a mile long, then recorded human history would be 1/3 of an inch. The other 63359.65 inches leave plenty of room for a lot of other amazing stuff to develop randomly....

Then again, if you believe that the earth is only about 6000 years old, then evolution would indeed seem impossible. (Along the same lines, this useful little Web site shows that a literal interpretation of the Bible strongly suggests that the earth must be flat.)