In one panel, a stick-figure Tevis greets a constituent by rattling off a stream of personal facts he's found online about her -- including her birthdate, voting pattern, divorce, paycheck, credit card balances and medical history -- to illustrate his interest in protecting individual privacy.

When she slams the door in his face, the cartoon Tevis muses, "Maybe I should rethink my approach."

"I figured I'd raise a few thousand dollars, at most," for his bid to become a state representative, said Tevis, a computer systems manager who works for an industrial manufacturing company.

In fact, before he created the comic strip, Tevis spent weeks asking cash-strapped friends and family for help and walking door-to-door in the district. He raised $1,525.

The comic strip -- at www.seantevis.com/3000 -- was first posted online July 16. Today, when he files his campaign finance forms with the Kansas secretary of state's office, Tevis will report that he has raised $95,162.76 in donations through PayPal, the online service that allows payments and money transfers via the Internet.

My name is Sean Tevis. I'm an Information Architect in Kansas running for State Representative. I've decided to "retire" my current State Representative. I'm going to win. This is my story (XKCD homage style) so far.

The National Center for Science Education has launched ExpelledExposed.com which will contain responses to Ben Stein's pro-ID crapola Expelled once the movie goes live on April 18th.

Today the Florida State Board of Education voted 4-3 to adopt science standards that call evolution "the fundamental concept underlying all of biology." While it is good that students will learn about evolution, these standards will make for bad science education because they elevate Darwin’s theory to a dogma that cannot be questioned. Even worse, some board members thought that they could rectify the dogmatic tone of the standards by calling evolution a "scientific theory." Some news articles are even calling this a "compromise." Those board members were tricked into a false compromise: inserting the word "scientific theory" before the word "evolution" is a meaningless and impotent change that will do absolutely nothing to actually inform students about the scientific problems with evolution.

What a bunch of cranks.

The teaching standards for Florida schools include the word "evolution" for the first time, under a decision Tuesday by the state school board.

The board approved the use of the term "scientific theory of evolution" in public schools science standards.

Previously, the term was couched by using phrases such as "change over time." The reaction in Tallahassee from those opposed and those for the change was fairly low key, Local 10 reported.

The Texas Acadamy of Science has come out with a statement about creationism in Texas schools science classes, called "Texas Academy of Science Position Against the Inclusion of Creationism and Design Concepts in the Science Curricula in Texas Schools".

...

Inclusion of creationist or intelligent design concepts in science curricula would seriously diminish the effectiveness of science education by distracting teachers from covering an already overwhelming body of knowledge, and would consequently dilute student's understanding of scientifically valid concepts and theories. Therefore, it is the position of the Texas Academy of Science that, through their policies and decisions, the State Board of Education, the Texas Education Agency and the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board should ensure that neither "creationism" nor "intelligent design" is added to the state's scientific curricula.

Paul Abramson of Evansville announced plans to seek the Republican nomination and challenge Democratic Congressman Brad Ellsworth.

Abramson is the founder and editor of http://www.creationism.org, which calls evolution a 'spiritual deception.'

The gang of prevaricators behind Ben Stein's Expelled movie had their own way of celebrating Darwin Day: they wrote a blog post that was a solid wall of lies and nonsense. In a way, I'm impressed; I'd have to really struggle to write something that was such a dense array of concentrated stupid, but for them, it seems to be a natural talent, allowing them to blithely and effortlessly rattle off a succession of falsehoods without blushing.

Get ready for the next Big Bang this fall! Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS) and Maxis today announced that Spore(tm), the highly anticipated game from the creators of The Sims(tm), will be available at retailers worldwide the weekend of September 7. Spore will be available for the PC, Macintosh, Nintendo DS(tm), and mobile phones.

This might actually be a game that Allie and I both like.

Now, the findings of an international team of biologists demonstrate that evolution is not a random process, but rather occurs through the natural selection of successful traits. The collaborative study by researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Israel, the U.S, France and Germany is published in the November 2007 issue of Current Biology (vol. 17, pp. 1925-1937).

To settle the question about whether evolution is deterministic or random, the researchers used various tools -- including DNA strand analysis and electronic microscopy -- to study female sexual organ development in 51 species of nematode, a type of worm commonly used to better understand evolutionary processes.

When the researchers measured changes in 40 defined characteristics of the nematodes' sexual organs (including cell division patterns and the formation of specific cells), they found that most were uniform in direction, with the main mechanism for the development favoring a natural selection of successful traits, the researchers said.