Brainiac testifies

Posted 29 September 2005 by Nick Matzke

↗ The current version of this post is on the live site: https://pandasthumb.org/archives/2005/09/brainiac-testif.html

Howdy from Harrisburg! I would like to apologize for shirking my blogging responsibilities regarding the Kitzmiller case – NCSE is consulting for the plaintiffs, talking to the media, and hopefully blogging, but doing the first two has excluded the latter until now. We did get a chance to do some podcasting, which I believe Wes has put up.

Today court is starting at 9:30 rather than 9:00 so I have a bit of time. All I wanted to say for the moment was GO READ “Have you ever really looked at intelligent design?” by Mike Argento. This is the best short summary that I’ve seen of Rob Pennock’s fantastic expert testimony on Wednesday.

For more excellent coverage, see Dover Biology at the always-on-top of things York Daily Record, particularly Lauri Lebo’s story “Witness bashes intelligent design.” See also Mike Argento’s blog commentary at http://www.yorkblog.com/.

3 Comments

DougT · 29 September 2005

Nick- The podcasts have been great. Keep 'em coming. Oh, and I loved Mike Argento's line:

And thus did intelligent design somehow join the wow-have-you-ever-looked-at-your-hand-I-mean-really-looked school of stoner intellectual epistemology.

Priceless.

PvM · 29 September 2005

Classic exchange between judge and defense lawyer Robert Muise...

And yet, that wasn't the most entertaining aspect of Wednesday's proceedings. That came when Robert Muise, the third member of the school district's legal team, rose to object when plaintiff Beth Eveland began to testify about a letter to the editor she had written. "Hearsay," he intoned. In general legal terms, hearsay is essentially a witness testifying to something they learned from a third party, and, except for some exceptions, is not permitted in court since the person repeating the words has no idea whether they are true because they were obtained third-hand. (And some people say this column has no educational content.) In this case, Muise was objecting to Eveland testifying about her own words. Judge John E. Jones III, the federal jurist hearing the case, looked at Muise, bearing an expression that he couldn't really believe what he just heard. The judge asked Muise, "Who wrote the letter?" Muise said, "She did," and sat down. As they say on the street, the judge punked him.

Henry J · 29 September 2005

Re "Who wrote the letter?"

ROFL