Science
Tropical Storm Epsilon and Storm Naming
The amazing hurricane season just won't end. Tropical storm Epsilon was named today, just 24 hours before the official end to the Atlantic hurricane season. Having once been in a fraternity, the use of greek letters was a welcome change from some of the goofy storm names of past years. This got us thinking - why not just switch to the greek alphabet permamently? It would be much easier and eliminate the whole sexist naming issue. So we propose the following system of storm names:
Begin with Alpha, end with Omega (24 storms)Repeat if more than 24 storms, prefixing with Alpha and beginning with Beta
Using this convention, this past hurricane season would have seen Katrina be Mu (storm 12), Rita be Sigma (storm 18) and Wilma be Omega (storm 24). The recently named Epsilon would have been named Alpha Zeta (storm 29). Of course, none of this would be as interesting (or litigous) as using car names. Imagine the fun TV anchors would have with 'Hurricane Pinto slams into the Keys!'
Vatican Weighs In On Evolution
Late Friday came word that the Vatican appears not to have any major qualms with Darwin's theory of evolution and is not comfortable with the concept of intelligent design. Unfortunately, the only wire report is via AP - all others have copied the same article. The salient quotes are
Cardinal Paul Poupard, who heads the Pontifical Council for Culture, made the comments at a news conference on a Vatican project to help end the "mutual prejudice" between religion and science that has long bedeviled the Roman Catholic Church and is part of the evolution debate.
"But we also know the dangers of a religion that severs its links with reason and becomes prey to fundamentalism," he said. "The faithful have the obligation to listen to that which secular modern science has to offer, just as we ask that knowledge of the faith be taken in consideration as an expert voice in humanity."
Monsignor Gianfranco Basti, director of the Vatican project, Science, Theology and Ontological Quest, reaffirmed John Paul's 1996 statement that evolution was "more than just a hypothesis. "A hypothesis asks whether something is true or false," he said. Evolution "is more than a hypothesis because there is proof."
Basti concurred that John Paul's letter "is not a very clear expression from a definition point of view," but he said evolution was assuming ever more authority as scientific proof develops.
Poupard stressed that what was important was that "the universe wasn't made by itself, but has a creator." But he added, "It's important for the faithful to know how science views things to understand better." Source: AP Newswire
Wish there was a complete transcript to see the exact comments in context, but it appears
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