I’d say that this is one of the most amazing photos ever taken.

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Former Gov. Fife Symington says now that those strange lights that appeared over Phoenix a decade ago were from another world and that he had a close encounter with an alien craft on March 13, 1997.

“I’m a pilot and I know just about every machine that flies. It was bigger than anything that I’ve ever seen. It remains a great mystery. Other people saw it, responsible people,” Symington said Thursday. “I don’t know why people would ridicule it.”

Symington, who was in his second term as governor of Arizona during the Phoenix Lights incident, recently told a UFO investigator making a documentary that he had kept quiet about his personal close encounter because he didn’t want to panic the populace.

Prediction: the UFO community embraces Symington as a hero for coming out against the great big UFO cover-up. Not because he lends any real credibility to the idea that alien spacecraft were behind the Phoenix Lights, but because he’s saying exactly what those in the UFO community want to hear.

Update: Here’s the CNN video.

[youtube]gg6cGCAB2Ck[/youtube]

It’s really quite something that the CNN reporter claims at the end that the Phoenix Lights are “as much a mystery today, as they were a decade ago.” Despite the fact that they have been thoroughly debunked.

Newton was also a member of the Parliament of England from 1689 to 1690 and in 1701, but his only recorded comments were to complain about a cold draft in the chamber and request that the window be closed.

In short, trying to use calculus to resolve the paradox simply reaffirms the idea that space and time are infinitely divisible, and thus still suffers from the basic question as to how one can possibly reach the end of an endless series.

• Slightly Beneath Saturn’s Ring Plane
• Enceladus Near Saturn
• Alien worlds

Sweden is to take the biggest energy step of any advanced western economy by trying to wean itself off oil completely within 15 years – without building a new generation of nuclear power stations.

The attempt by the country of 9 million people to become the world’s first practically oil-free economy is being planned by a committee of industrialists, academics, farmers, car makers, civil servants and others, who will report to parliament in several months.

Here’s what Pat
Robertson thinks of the Dover election results:

On his November 10, 2005 broadcast of The 700 Club, Robertson
told citizens of Dover, Pennsylvania that they had rejected God by
voting their school board out of office for supporting “intelligent
design” and warned them not to be surprised if disaster struck.

“I’d like to say to the good citizens of Dover: if there is a disaster
in your area, don’t turn to God, you just rejected Him from your city,”
Robertson said on his broadcast.

“And don’t wonder why He hasn’t helped you when problems begin, if they
begin. I’m not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just
voted God out of your city. And if that’s the case, don’t ask for His
help because he might not be there,” he said.

Some more deep
thoughts by Pat Robertson:

“New Orleans asked for this tragedy [Hurricane Katrina] by advertising
itself as a destination for jazz music. As every Christian knows, jazz
music is sinful and lures people into eternal damnation.”

“There is no such thing as separation of church and state in the
Constitution. It is a lie of the Left and we are not going to take it
anymore.”

“In order to make clear His anger is directed at [Ellen DeGeneres], God
will create an earthquake whose epicenter is directly below the stage
where Ms. Degenerate is hosting her show at that moment. The guests,
crew, and audience at such an event will likely perish, but since many
of those people are likely sexual deviants and the rest choose to
associate themselves with homosexuals, they are hardly innocents.”

You can catch Pat Robertson’s The 700 Club — which airs three
times a day — on ABC Family.

TOPEKA, Kansas (AP) — At the risk of re-igniting the same heated nationwide debate it sparked six years ago, the Kansas Board of Education approved new public school science standards Tuesday that cast doubt on the theory of evolution.

The 6-4 vote was a victory for “intelligent design” advocates who helped draft the standards. Intelligent design holds that the universe is so complex that it must have been created by a higher power.

…

All six of those who voted for the standards were Republicans. Two Republicans and two Democrats voted against them.

“This is a sad day. We’re becoming a laughingstock of not only the nation, but of the world, and I hate that,” said board member Janet Waugh, a Kansas City Democrat.

…

In addition, the board rewrote the definition of science, so that it is no longer limited to the search for natural explanations of phenomena.

This must be great news, not just for the ID movement, but for astrology as well!

Astrology would be considered a scientific theory if judged by the same criteria used by a well-known advocate of Intelligent Design to justify his claim that ID is science, a landmark US trial heard on Tuesday.

Under cross examination, ID proponent Michael Behe, a biochemist at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, admitted his definition of “theory” was so broad it would also include astrology.

Which is funny, because as Phil Plait explains…

Astrology is far more of a science than ID is! Astrology makes predictions, and can be falsified. In fact, astrology’s predictions always fail, and it has been falsified repeatedly. I’m not saying astrology is science (and I am saying it’s wrong), just that astrology has some characteristics of science. That’s why people call it a pseudoscience.

ID is not science at all. It is argument from incredulity and argument from ignorance, pure and simple; trying to find things that are not yet explained by evolution and saying “a designer must have done it”. That’s foolish; science tends to fill such gaps. Eventually they narrow down to nothing. ID’s toehold over such a gap is tenuous indeed.