I'm 6'2", and I found there was plenty of head room in the Prius, unless I sat in the back seat. I also found plenty of leg room in both the front and back. I ended up buying a Civic Hybrid (which has plenty of head room in the front and back) mainly because my previous car was a Civic.
I own a 2005 Honda Civic Hybrid and get about 45 mpg on the highway. I've heard several people make the claim you make, but none of them (so far) actually drives a hybrid. I think this is one of those "facts by repetition" like, well, I'll avoid starting a war on a second front.
No doubt. I don't claim that vaccines are the cause, and, in fact, think they probably aren't. However, that they might be just means that it's worth keep tabs on what happens now that (most) vaccines no longer use Thimerosal.
It's a comforting idea that the increase in autism is purely due to more liberal diagnoses. I'm certain that it explains part of it. Well, that, and increased awareness. On the other hand, if you look at a curve that describes that increase, it's really hard to accept that this is all due to a more liberal diagnoses or increased awareness. I know several kids with autism (~30 or so). Only two of them might have escaped some kind of diagnosis twenty years ago. Most of the rest of them fall into the category of barely verbal. For these kids, at least, this is not just a liberal diagnoses. (For the two that might have escaped diagnoses, I nevertheless agree with their diagnoses as being autistic. They just have a milder version. Of course, IANAP.)
Two generations ago Polio paralyzed at least 20,000 people per year, and now we are worried about a few hundrend with autism allegedly caused by the vaccine?
Sure, if by a few hundred you mean 163,773 (as of 2003). Or, in annual terms, 26,067 new cases in 2003 alone. Sure, we're talking about allegedly caused by the vaccine, but I think you should at least understand why people can be legitimately worried about this! Personally, I think it's unlikely that the vaccines are related to this explosion in autism, but still, if there's even a chance it should not be dismissed lightly. (I'm not suggesting the government has dismissed it - both the CDC and FDA have performed studies and found no connection.) The timing between when vaccines are administerd and the typical onset of autism makes the vaccines a convenient target. However, if thimerosal was the problem, we should soon see autism rates decreasing, in which case the government should expect to see a large number of related lawsuits. If, on the other hand autism rates continue to rise (as I suspect they will) we should look to other causes - such as mercury poisoning in our waters - for the culprit. Actually, we should be looking everywhere we can for the culprit.
And, #4, some parents believe that the thimerosal (a mercury-containing organic compound) that was present in most vaccines (but is now present in only a few - such as inactivated influenza) was responsible for the meteoric rise in autism rates. Thimerosal is a preservative, and the CDC and FDA do not believe it has any connection to autism. However, many parents refuse to vaccine their kids out of the fear that their might be a connection. This is even more likely to be true in families where relatives have autism - as autism (or at least some forms of it) definitely does have a genetic component. And, of course, families that have relatives with autism are more likely to have heard of the thimerosal theory. (I say theory, not myth, because I'm not 100% sure that there isn't something to it. Time should help answer those questions since the decision to drop thimerosal from most vaccines should result in a drop in autism if thimerosal was a contributing factor to it.)
Oh, and even though thimerosal is not present in vaccines such as MMR, there are still parents who refuse to vaccinate their kids on the theory that it could have been something else in the vaccines that was responsible. Timing is no doubt one culprit here, as autism does not usually surface until 2-3 years old, although I am aware of one child whose brother had autism who had it diagnosed prior to his first birthday.
You're absolutely right. Arlen Specter and all of those d*** Republicans are just trying to make Bush look bad. Time to vote in some Democrats who'll support our president.
In that hypothetical situation, you'd only need 1 warrant, not 10,000 (and not 1,000,000, either). For several situations, warrants can cover multiple locations. OTOH, IANAL.
If the Democrats retake either the Senate or the House this autumn, Mr Bush will probably become the second president in a decade to be subject to impeachment proceedings.
The Democrats would have to take the House for impeachment proceedings to occur. They would have to take the House and 2/3 of the Senate for a conviction to occur. Even then, of course, it's no guarantee. Of course, there might be a few Republicans who would impeach/convict. More likely, there are several Democrats who wouldn't. At least not yet.
Well, you'd probably want to fix this, too. Not to mention that the driver's side window wouldn't roll down more than a couple inches. (While I was in the car, talking to AAA on a borrowed cell phone, a cop approached me, and without thinking I started to roll down the window. The cop kinda laughed and said, "I wouldn't recommend doing that.")
You probably know this, but totaling just means the cost of getting the car up to its condition prior to the accident (or at least a close facsimile) is greater than (the value of the car prior to the accident - the current value of the car). The value of the car was ~$4500 (at least that's what the insurance company gave me), so presumably their adjustor decided that fixing the car would've cost a lot more than that. Or, at least more than that once they've subtracted what they could get by selling off the car.
I'd be terrified of being smushed by a truck while driving one.
Almost a year ago, my wife and I were driving our 1995 Honda Civic at 70 MPH (the speed-limit) down I-85 in North Georgia, towards Atlanta. We were in the right lane, without a worry on our mind. All of a sudden, *WHUMP*, the car gets hit on the left-rear quarter-panel and starts spinning out of control. *WHUMP* The 18-wheeler that hit us the first time hits us a second time on the driver's side door (where I was at the time). It might have hit us a third time, but I'm not certain. Things were going pretty fast at that time and I was just trying to keep from dying. Needless to say, I survived. Amazingly, my wife and I both got out of that accident without a scratch or even a bruise. The car was totaled - in insurance terms, that is. I was still able to drive it off the exit ramp (at the cops' request).
Point is, I've often thought about what would have happened if we had been in an SUV. I suspect the situation would have ended up worse, not better, although I admit this is just a supposition. Alternatively, if we had also been driving an 18-wheeler, it could have been very, very ugly.
Here are some pictures of the car after the accident. Oh, and not that it's relevant to the subject at hand, but a witness (another truck driver) reported seeing the driving of the tractor-trailer on her cell phone at the time of the accident. Also, after she quit trying to blame the accident on us (we had two witnesses that verified our version of the story), she broke down and said that if she's found at fault for this accident she'll get fired from her job, just like she did from her last truck driving job when she hit a car.
I'm 6'2" and have never felt cramped in a Civic. The Toyota Prius, OTOH, is cramped if I sit in the back seat. Very roomy in the driver's seat, though.
I've read several. Hopefully, I'll have written one soon. Since my research is in neural networks, I figure if I can create a neural network that writes my dissertation for me, that's not really cheating. (That's not really what I'm trying to do - my actual research topic is on the cognitive effects of gamma and theta oscillations on a neural network model of the hippocampus.)
It seems like it wouldn't be too difficult to modify the MIT program to use this new anti-robot robot to write papers that this anti-robot robot would not be able to detect. Ideally, this would be done with a learning algorithm (so that it could easily be extended to other anti-robot robot programs), but reverse-engineering the anti-robot robot (by humans) should also provide a solution.
Now that Indiana U has thrown down the gauntlet, I wouldn't be surprised if MIT responds. Hopefully it will result in an even better paper-writing robot. Ideally, it will lead to dissertation-writing robots.:)
Echoing cduffy's comments, it's not about how rich or poor you are, it's about how serious you are about reducing your ecological footprint. Check out that calculator to get an idea about things you can do in this regard. Mind you, such calculators are necessarily somewhat simplistic, but it helps to get a flavor of things you can do to help.
In reality, it's the weakest link that breaks the chain. If there's more than enough food to support us, but not enough water, then it how much food there actually is doesn't really matter (to us humans, at least). Nevertheless, the simplest solution is to try to make sure there's enough of every resource (e.g., water, food, air).
In this vein, it's actually easier for rich people to acheive a smaller footprint than poor people. You could probably find a reasonably reliable car for ~$1000. Chances are, it won't be an environmentally friendly car (factoring in the cost of building a new car changes the equation quite a bit though). Heat pumps are very environmentally friendly, and eventually pay for themselves, but poor people often don't feel like they can look that far into the future (~20 years in the USA, I believe - but far less time over in Europe where energy is more expensive). Of course, the reality is that poor people have a smaller footprint than rich people. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the average footprint of all self-identified environmentalists making more than $200k/year is significantly larger than that of all poor people (environmentalists or not)! I believe this is similar to the adage about a camel passing through the eye of a needle...
In my ~20 years of driving, I've never been "stuck behind some old lady who can barely see over the steering wheel of her big boat of a Cadillac cruising down an open freeway at 40 mph". I do follow the rules of the road (i.e., I drive in the right lane because I'm driving slower than other traffic even though I'm driving the maximum speed allowable by lay), but maybe I'm just some radical right-winger who believes in law-and-order. (Doubtful, considering that I tend to vote Democrat and that I own a hybrid.)
There have been several times going uphill on the freeway (on I-64/I-81 near the AT) where I've had someone pull right in front of me and I do find that very annoying, but it seems more often that these people are younger than me and not older.
As for cell phones, I'll admit to being biased as I lost my last car (1995 Honda Civic) due to an accident involving an 18-wheeler who came into my lane because its driver was talking on her cell phone. (Well, that, and she was no doubt not a good driver. Later, she admitted that she had been fired from her last truck-driving job for hitting another car.) Luckily, another truck driver behind us witnessed the whole thing and was willing to tell the police what happened. Even more lucky, I suppose, my wife and I survived the accident without a scratch, even if it did total the car.
A September 2004 study from the NHTSA found that drivers using hand-free cell phones had to redial calls 40 percent of the time, compared with 18 percent for drivers using hand held sets, suggesting that hands free sets may provide drivers with a false sense of ease.
There are many other from that same site.
I think the difference is that because the person is not in the car with you, he/she won't stop talking just because things suddenly get more tense in traffic. Or, perhaps, talking to another passenger is just as dangerous and should be avoided. If you get bored while driving, I suggest you read a book or newspaper instead.
All I said was that evolutionary theory has led to advancements in computer science, whereas to the best of my knowledge intelligent design has not led to any scientific or technological insight. Evolutionary theory (and the law of natural selection) have also led to insight in many other fields, but I thought I'd draw from a discipline (and a sub-field) from which I have first-hand knowledge. I am not saying evolutionary programming being useful in computer science proves evolutionary theory must be correct.
Again, let me be clear - I'm not comparing computer programming to complex (or even simple) biological processes, although comparisons can and have been made. (Comparisons are not the same as equality. One can learn a lot about a complex situation by comparing it to a simpler, easier-to-understand problem. Such comparisons can lead to great insight, although I will readily admit that one can over generalize from such comparisons. You seem intelligent enough to understand this distinction.)
What I am comparing is the scientific worth of evolutionary theory to the scientific worth of intelligent design - since ID is being proposed as a scientific theory (in the current context) and not just a theological theory. One measure of the value of a theory (and only one measure of many) is the scientific and technological return of that theory. Evolutionary programming is one such return (out of many) to come from evolutionary theory. Have there been similar returns from intelligent design? Have there been any scientific returns from intelligent design?
So to answer your question about why I'm "skewing off into a tangent about computer programming", in case you missed it in the above discussion, is because it demonstrates one merit (of many) of evolutionary theory, and hence is a valid framework from which to analyze the evolutionary theory vs. intelligent design debate.
And, of course, I will have to agree to disagree about whether evolutionary theory can explain one species changing into another. Many other posts on this thead have aptly explained how we have observed other species being evolved into. However, you would no doubt point out that what you really meant is that we haven't seen one genus evolving into another, and if such an example came up, you'd no doubt claim we haven't seen one family evolving into another. And, as many other posts have pointed out, there's a big difference between the couple hundred years (at most) that we've been accurately recording such things and the couple billion years that evolution has had to accomplish what it has accomplished. Again, I don't expect to convince you of this, and you, no doubt, don't expect to convince me that anything is too complex for evolution.
It's hard for many of us computer scientists to think that evolution leads somewhere wrong when evolution has clearly led us (computer scientists) to the field of evolutionary programming. This is a field which is unabashedly based on evolutionary theory, and which has enjoyed tremendous success. I've personally employed many genetic algorithms (a sub-field of evolutionary programming) to help me solve problems that are difficult to solve in other ways. The idea that random mutations in the context of a "fitness terrain" can lead to useful solutions is a well tested idea in computer science.
By comparison, what scientific/technological fields has ID contributed to in a useful manner?
If a science teacher made this comment of their own volition and didn't harp on it, I doubt very many people would get upset. (Sure, there's always going to be someone who is hyper-sensitive.) The point here is that the science teachers were requiredby the Dover Board to teach this despite the fact that they disagreed with it.
You keep using the phrase "left winged 'scientist'". I do not believe the phrase means what you think it means. Having an MS in Physics/Astronomy, another Masters in CS, and working on a Ph.D. in Computer Science in a sub-field that involves a lot of neuroscience (i.e., practically being a professional student), I've been exposed to many, many people that I'd qualify as scientists. Every single one of them, to the best of my knowledge fits your definition of "left winged 'scientist'" even though many of them (but a minority) voted for Bush in the last election (don't ask me why). Of the hundreds of college students I've known, only 2 of them would not qualify as being "left winged", and I've matriculated at Georgia Tech (BS/Phys), Georgia State (MS Phys/Astr), and the University of Virginia (MCS, Ph.D. in CS in progress). (These are three colleges that are relatively conservative.)
Slashdot Mirror
I'm 6'2", and I found there was plenty of head room in the Prius, unless I sat in the back seat. I also found plenty of leg room in both the front and back. I ended up buying a Civic Hybrid (which has plenty of head room in the front and back) mainly because my previous car was a Civic.
I own a 2005 Honda Civic Hybrid and get about 45 mpg on the highway. I've heard several people make the claim you make, but none of them (so far) actually drives a hybrid. I think this is one of those "facts by repetition" like, well, I'll avoid starting a war on a second front.
I assume we agree on this. Make sure you read the comment I was originally responding to (and the GP as well, for context).
If you're never guilty of hypocrisy, then your standards are too low.
No doubt. I don't claim that vaccines are the cause, and, in fact, think they probably aren't. However, that they might be just means that it's worth keep tabs on what happens now that (most) vaccines no longer use Thimerosal.
It's a comforting idea that the increase in autism is purely due to more liberal diagnoses. I'm certain that it explains part of it. Well, that, and increased awareness. On the other hand, if you look at a curve that describes that increase, it's really hard to accept that this is all due to a more liberal diagnoses or increased awareness. I know several kids with autism (~30 or so). Only two of them might have escaped some kind of diagnosis twenty years ago. Most of the rest of them fall into the category of barely verbal. For these kids, at least, this is not just a liberal diagnoses. (For the two that might have escaped diagnoses, I nevertheless agree with their diagnoses as being autistic. They just have a milder version. Of course, IANAP.)
Sure, if by a few hundred you mean 163,773 (as of 2003). Or, in annual terms, 26,067 new cases in 2003 alone. Sure, we're talking about allegedly caused by the vaccine, but I think you should at least understand why people can be legitimately worried about this! Personally, I think it's unlikely that the vaccines are related to this explosion in autism, but still, if there's even a chance it should not be dismissed lightly. (I'm not suggesting the government has dismissed it - both the CDC and FDA have performed studies and found no connection.) The timing between when vaccines are administerd and the typical onset of autism makes the vaccines a convenient target. However, if thimerosal was the problem, we should soon see autism rates decreasing, in which case the government should expect to see a large number of related lawsuits. If, on the other hand autism rates continue to rise (as I suspect they will) we should look to other causes - such as mercury poisoning in our waters - for the culprit. Actually, we should be looking everywhere we can for the culprit.
And, #4, some parents believe that the thimerosal (a mercury-containing organic compound) that was present in most vaccines (but is now present in only a few - such as inactivated influenza) was responsible for the meteoric rise in autism rates. Thimerosal is a preservative, and the CDC and FDA do not believe it has any connection to autism. However, many parents refuse to vaccine their kids out of the fear that their might be a connection. This is even more likely to be true in families where relatives have autism - as autism (or at least some forms of it) definitely does have a genetic component. And, of course, families that have relatives with autism are more likely to have heard of the thimerosal theory. (I say theory, not myth, because I'm not 100% sure that there isn't something to it. Time should help answer those questions since the decision to drop thimerosal from most vaccines should result in a drop in autism if thimerosal was a contributing factor to it.)
Oh, and even though thimerosal is not present in vaccines such as MMR, there are still parents who refuse to vaccinate their kids on the theory that it could have been something else in the vaccines that was responsible. Timing is no doubt one culprit here, as autism does not usually surface until 2-3 years old, although I am aware of one child whose brother had autism who had it diagnosed prior to his first birthday.
You're absolutely right. Arlen Specter and all of those d*** Republicans are just trying to make Bush look bad. Time to vote in some Democrats who'll support our president.
In that hypothetical situation, you'd only need 1 warrant, not 10,000 (and not 1,000,000, either). For several situations, warrants can cover multiple locations. OTOH, IANAL.
The Democrats would have to take the House for impeachment proceedings to occur. They would have to take the House and 2/3 of the Senate for a conviction to occur. Even then, of course, it's no guarantee. Of course, there might be a few Republicans who would impeach/convict. More likely, there are several Democrats who wouldn't. At least not yet.
Well, you'd probably want to fix this, too. Not to mention that the driver's side window wouldn't roll down more than a couple inches. (While I was in the car, talking to AAA on a borrowed cell phone, a cop approached me, and without thinking I started to roll down the window. The cop kinda laughed and said, "I wouldn't recommend doing that.")
You probably know this, but totaling just means the cost of getting the car up to its condition prior to the accident (or at least a close facsimile) is greater than (the value of the car prior to the accident - the current value of the car). The value of the car was ~$4500 (at least that's what the insurance company gave me), so presumably their adjustor decided that fixing the car would've cost a lot more than that. Or, at least more than that once they've subtracted what they could get by selling off the car.
Almost a year ago, my wife and I were driving our 1995 Honda Civic at 70 MPH (the speed-limit) down I-85 in North Georgia, towards Atlanta. We were in the right lane, without a worry on our mind. All of a sudden, *WHUMP*, the car gets hit on the left-rear quarter-panel and starts spinning out of control. *WHUMP* The 18-wheeler that hit us the first time hits us a second time on the driver's side door (where I was at the time). It might have hit us a third time, but I'm not certain. Things were going pretty fast at that time and I was just trying to keep from dying. Needless to say, I survived. Amazingly, my wife and I both got out of that accident without a scratch or even a bruise. The car was totaled - in insurance terms, that is. I was still able to drive it off the exit ramp (at the cops' request).
Point is, I've often thought about what would have happened if we had been in an SUV. I suspect the situation would have ended up worse, not better, although I admit this is just a supposition. Alternatively, if we had also been driving an 18-wheeler, it could have been very, very ugly.
Here are some pictures of the car after the accident. Oh, and not that it's relevant to the subject at hand, but a witness (another truck driver) reported seeing the driving of the tractor-trailer on her cell phone at the time of the accident. Also, after she quit trying to blame the accident on us (we had two witnesses that verified our version of the story), she broke down and said that if she's found at fault for this accident she'll get fired from her job, just like she did from her last truck driving job when she hit a car.
I'm 6'2" and have never felt cramped in a Civic. The Toyota Prius, OTOH, is cramped if I sit in the back seat. Very roomy in the driver's seat, though.
I've read several. Hopefully, I'll have written one soon. Since my research is in neural networks, I figure if I can create a neural network that writes my dissertation for me, that's not really cheating. (That's not really what I'm trying to do - my actual research topic is on the cognitive effects of gamma and theta oscillations on a neural network model of the hippocampus.)
It seems like it wouldn't be too difficult to modify the MIT program to use this new anti-robot robot to write papers that this anti-robot robot would not be able to detect. Ideally, this would be done with a learning algorithm (so that it could easily be extended to other anti-robot robot programs), but reverse-engineering the anti-robot robot (by humans) should also provide a solution.
Now that Indiana U has thrown down the gauntlet, I wouldn't be surprised if MIT responds. Hopefully it will result in an even better paper-writing robot. Ideally, it will lead to dissertation-writing robots. :)
Echoing cduffy's comments, it's not about how rich or poor you are, it's about how serious you are about reducing your ecological footprint. Check out that calculator to get an idea about things you can do in this regard. Mind you, such calculators are necessarily somewhat simplistic, but it helps to get a flavor of things you can do to help.
In reality, it's the weakest link that breaks the chain. If there's more than enough food to support us, but not enough water, then it how much food there actually is doesn't really matter (to us humans, at least). Nevertheless, the simplest solution is to try to make sure there's enough of every resource (e.g., water, food, air).
In this vein, it's actually easier for rich people to acheive a smaller footprint than poor people. You could probably find a reasonably reliable car for ~$1000. Chances are, it won't be an environmentally friendly car (factoring in the cost of building a new car changes the equation quite a bit though). Heat pumps are very environmentally friendly, and eventually pay for themselves, but poor people often don't feel like they can look that far into the future (~20 years in the USA, I believe - but far less time over in Europe where energy is more expensive). Of course, the reality is that poor people have a smaller footprint than rich people. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the average footprint of all self-identified environmentalists making more than $200k/year is significantly larger than that of all poor people (environmentalists or not)! I believe this is similar to the adage about a camel passing through the eye of a needle...
In my ~20 years of driving, I've never been "stuck behind some old lady who can barely see over the steering wheel of her big boat of a Cadillac cruising down an open freeway at 40 mph". I do follow the rules of the road (i.e., I drive in the right lane because I'm driving slower than other traffic even though I'm driving the maximum speed allowable by lay), but maybe I'm just some radical right-winger who believes in law-and-order. (Doubtful, considering that I tend to vote Democrat and that I own a hybrid.)
There have been several times going uphill on the freeway (on I-64/I-81 near the AT) where I've had someone pull right in front of me and I do find that very annoying, but it seems more often that these people are younger than me and not older.
As for cell phones, I'll admit to being biased as I lost my last car (1995 Honda Civic) due to an accident involving an 18-wheeler who came into my lane because its driver was talking on her cell phone. (Well, that, and she was no doubt not a good driver. Later, she admitted that she had been fired from her last truck-driving job for hitting another car.) Luckily, another truck driver behind us witnessed the whole thing and was willing to tell the police what happened. Even more lucky, I suppose, my wife and I survived the accident without a scratch, even if it did total the car.
Here's one interesting quote:
There are many other from that same site.I think the difference is that because the person is not in the car with you, he/she won't stop talking just because things suddenly get more tense in traffic. Or, perhaps, talking to another passenger is just as dangerous and should be avoided. If you get bored while driving, I suggest you read a book or newspaper instead.
G(lobal) W(arming) Bush has admitted that global warming is real and that humans contribute to it.
All I said was that evolutionary theory has led to advancements in computer science, whereas to the best of my knowledge intelligent design has not led to any scientific or technological insight. Evolutionary theory (and the law of natural selection) have also led to insight in many other fields, but I thought I'd draw from a discipline (and a sub-field) from which I have first-hand knowledge. I am not saying evolutionary programming being useful in computer science proves evolutionary theory must be correct.
Again, let me be clear - I'm not comparing computer programming to complex (or even simple) biological processes, although comparisons can and have been made. (Comparisons are not the same as equality. One can learn a lot about a complex situation by comparing it to a simpler, easier-to-understand problem. Such comparisons can lead to great insight, although I will readily admit that one can over generalize from such comparisons. You seem intelligent enough to understand this distinction.)
What I am comparing is the scientific worth of evolutionary theory to the scientific worth of intelligent design - since ID is being proposed as a scientific theory (in the current context) and not just a theological theory. One measure of the value of a theory (and only one measure of many) is the scientific and technological return of that theory. Evolutionary programming is one such return (out of many) to come from evolutionary theory. Have there been similar returns from intelligent design? Have there been any scientific returns from intelligent design?
So to answer your question about why I'm "skewing off into a tangent about computer programming", in case you missed it in the above discussion, is because it demonstrates one merit (of many) of evolutionary theory, and hence is a valid framework from which to analyze the evolutionary theory vs. intelligent design debate.
And, of course, I will have to agree to disagree about whether evolutionary theory can explain one species changing into another. Many other posts on this thead have aptly explained how we have observed other species being evolved into. However, you would no doubt point out that what you really meant is that we haven't seen one genus evolving into another, and if such an example came up, you'd no doubt claim we haven't seen one family evolving into another. And, as many other posts have pointed out, there's a big difference between the couple hundred years (at most) that we've been accurately recording such things and the couple billion years that evolution has had to accomplish what it has accomplished. Again, I don't expect to convince you of this, and you, no doubt, don't expect to convince me that anything is too complex for evolution.
It's hard for many of us computer scientists to think that evolution leads somewhere wrong when evolution has clearly led us (computer scientists) to the field of evolutionary programming. This is a field which is unabashedly based on evolutionary theory, and which has enjoyed tremendous success. I've personally employed many genetic algorithms (a sub-field of evolutionary programming) to help me solve problems that are difficult to solve in other ways. The idea that random mutations in the context of a "fitness terrain" can lead to useful solutions is a well tested idea in computer science.
By comparison, what scientific/technological fields has ID contributed to in a useful manner?
If a science teacher made this comment of their own volition and didn't harp on it, I doubt very many people would get upset. (Sure, there's always going to be someone who is hyper-sensitive.) The point here is that the science teachers were required by the Dover Board to teach this despite the fact that they disagreed with it.
You keep using the phrase "left winged 'scientist'". I do not believe the phrase means what you think it means. Having an MS in Physics/Astronomy, another Masters in CS, and working on a Ph.D. in Computer Science in a sub-field that involves a lot of neuroscience (i.e., practically being a professional student), I've been exposed to many, many people that I'd qualify as scientists. Every single one of them, to the best of my knowledge fits your definition of "left winged 'scientist'" even though many of them (but a minority) voted for Bush in the last election (don't ask me why). Of the hundreds of college students I've known, only 2 of them would not qualify as being "left winged", and I've matriculated at Georgia Tech (BS/Phys), Georgia State (MS Phys/Astr), and the University of Virginia (MCS, Ph.D. in CS in progress). (These are three colleges that are relatively conservative.)
Evolution is a theory, but the law of natural selection is a law. Of course, Newton's laws are also laws. Doesn't make them *exactly* right, though.