Groundhog Goes to Work

Photograph by Brandon T. Bisceglia.

There is a fenced-in gulley where I work that runs parallel to the parking spaces. This morning, I heard a shuffling noise on one side of my car. I turned the corner and came face-to-face with a groundhog who gave me a curious look and scurried down the embankment.

While the groundhog attempted to bury itself in the brush, I retrieved my camera and crouched to take a picture from afar. By the time I had adjusted the zoom, however, the furry interloper apparently changed its mind about hanging around. Instead, it began heading along the bottom of the gully back toward me.

I thought I was going to lose the shot entirely. Then, just as the groundhog got to the area in front of my car, it rose up on its hind legs and stared me directly in the lens – just long enough for this portrait.

I did not have the chance to ask the groundhog if it was there to apply for a job.

Intelligent Kinetics: God of the Gases

This is a satirical description of an “alternative” to the Kinetic Molecular Theory of gases based on the definition of Intelligent Design given by the anti-evolution group The Discovery Institute. It's meant to demonstrate how a patina of scientific-sounding words can make the most ridiculous idea seem (almost) plausible.

Unlike evolutionary theory, Kinetic Molecular Theory and other well-established theories do not have active campaigns fighting to discredit their validity. Yet from a scientific standpoint, there is no difference: all theories are founded on mountains of evidence and serve as a framework for other discoveries. So, if Intelligent Design is a viable alternative to evolutionary theory, why not apply the same concept elsewhere?

Secular Bernoullians beware: your flimsy materialistic worldview is about to collapse under the weight of the evidence that an intelligent being is actually moving all those particles around!

What is Intelligent Kinetics?

"Intelligent kinetics (IK) refers to a scientific research program as well as a community of scientists, philosophers and other scholars who seek evidence of design in the behavior of molecules in a gas. The theory of intelligent kinetics holds that certain features of the containers and of gases are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as Brownian motion.

"Through the study and analysis of a container’s components, an IK theorist is able to determine whether various gaseous arrangements are the product of chance, natural law, intelligent kinetics, or some combination thereof. Such research is conducted by observing the properties of gases produced when intelligent agents act. IK scientists then seek to find containers which have those same types of gaseous properties which we commonly know come from intelligence.

"Intelligent kinetics has applied these scientific methods to detect design in the velocities of molecules in a container, the complex and specified information content of gaseous particles, the perfectly elastic and perfectly spherical physical architecture of molecular collisions, and the rapid origin of kinetic activity in a container of gas when changes in pressure, volume, or temperature occur."

Q.E.D.