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Israel moves forward with plans to remove Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip.

The rally and today's planned march to the Gaza settlements is the latest in the increasingly desperate effort to stop Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plans to start evicting all of Gaza's 8,500 settlers in two weeks if they have not left voluntarily by then.

I wonder if after the the Jewish settlers are tossed out of their homes, will they invoke a "Right to Return?"

More doublespeak? President Bush wants both the scientific theory of evolution and the tribal mythology of intelligent design taught in schools.

President George W. Bush stirred the debate on the teaching of evolution in schools when he said this week that he supported the teaching of alternative viewpoints - such as the theory of Intelligent Design - to help students "understand what the debate is about".

Now, if it were limited to that, I wouldn't have too much of an objection. If ID v. Evolution was noted in a current Events class or something like that, I'd think that would be OK. But I have a serious problem with Intelligent Design being taught in a science class.

Once again, here's the test of a scientific theory: how well does it explain observed phenomena. Note that it is not necessary for a theory to explain all observed phenomena, just that it explains more phenomena, better than any competing theory. As far as I can tell, Intelligent Design doesn't explain any observed phenomena. (Saying "A Creator Is Required" isn't scientific proof, it's religion. Correctly understood, science does not attempt to explain why the universe is here, it observes that it is here and tries to figure out how it works.)

The burden of proof is on the creationists to offer scientific arguments that Intelligent Design is superior, not the philosophical arguments which reside on various Intelligent Design web pages. Saying that Theory X is bad is not sufficient to promote Theory Y.

Apologias work in religion and in philosophy, but they are not sufficient or even appropriate scientific evidence.

Jean Schmidt defeats Marine Paul Hackett 52-48% in heavily Republican Cincinnati Congressional district special election. Hackett ran a race including an ad which featured President Bush and did not mention his party affiliation--not behavior I'd expect from a Marine, based on the Marines I know.

Still, Democrat partisans claim victory. Hm. Defeat is Victory. Seems to me I've heard something like that before. War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength. Yep.

File under Jackson County/Kansas City Governmental Incompetence (a rather fat file). The contract for excavating the hole for Kansas City's Sprint Center arena gets zero responses from contractors.

“There were 17 pre-qualification paragraphs we had to comply with, including listing all the projects we’ve been involved with in the past five years in which there have been contract changes,” (contractor project manager Chip) Zuck said.

“We’ve done 800 in the last five years. That would have taken our office two weeks to prepare for just one of the 17 requirements.”

Leon Rieke, president of Max Rieke & Brothers, said his firm declined to bid because the deal was unappealing on many levels.

“The way the plans and specifications were drawn up, it was not in my financial benefit to be at the job,” he said.

Somebody in Kansas City government needs to be fired. And I'm not talking about they guys in the engineering office trying to do their jobs. I'm talking about senior managers and the politicians above them who insist on micromanaging through the contracting process. There is no way this arena will be built for the $250 million figure they've tossed out. Mark my words--this project is headed for disaster. An arena will be built, but it will disappoint everyone involved unless something changes radically and quickly.

Shuttle repair spacewalk is successful.

Miami Herald says it's time to retire the Shuttle.

Discovery's current flight is the 114th of the shuttle program, which launched its first flight in 1981. That's an average of fewer than five flights a year for a program that, when first proposed, was said by NASA to be capable of 60 missions a year. Despite the heartbreaking Challenger and Columbia accidents, the overall record is one of undoubted success. But now that the fleet has been grounded while a shuttle is still in space, it's time to face reality.

I agree. NASA has been derelict in not developing a follow-on vehicle for the 1970's vintage Space Transportation System.

Another day, another Royals loss. Royals need to go 43-13 to finish .500, 25-31 to avoid 100 losses, 1-55 to avoid losing all of their remaining games.

The Houston Chronicle was not impressed:

Repeating segments on a cable station isn't unusual, but what is surprising is that the material isn't that current.

The hacking of Paris Hilton's Sidekick in February prompted a segment that also introduced host Justin Gunn. Most of the pods appeared as though they were produced in the spring.

I may attempt a liveblog of this thing later today. Stay tuned.

The Wildcats' men's BB schedule is out:

“As is the case every season, the Big 12 portion of our schedule will present great challenges,” said head coach Jim Wooldridge. “We will play 11 games against teams that advanced to the postseason last year, including four in our first five contests. This will be a unique opportunity for our young kids to prove themselves against the best competition in the nation.”

Thu, Nov 03, Global Sports (Exhibition), time TBA
Thu, Nov 10, Emporia State (Exhibition), time TBA
Fri, Nov 18, Georgia Southern, time TBA
Wed, Nov 23, New Mexico, time TBA
Sat, Nov 26, Stephen F. Austin, time TBA
Wed, Nov 30, Cal State Fullerton, time TBA
Sat, Dec 03, @ Washington State, time TBA
Mon, Dec 05, Longwood, time TBA
Wed, Dec 07, Colorado State, time TBA
Sat, Dec 17, Bethune-Cookman, time TBA
Tue, Dec 20, @ Northern Illinois, time TBA
Thu, Dec 29, Belmont, time TBA
Mon, Jan 02, North Dakota State, time TBA
Sat, Jan 07, @ Iowa State, 7 p.m.
Wed, Jan 11, Nebraska, time TBA
Sat, Jan 14, @ Kansas, 12:30 p.m.
Wed, Jan 18, Texas A&M, time TBA
Sat, Jan 21, Missouri, 7 p.m.
Sat, Jan 28, @ Colorado, time TBA
Wed, Feb 01, @ Baylor, time TBA
Sat, Feb 04, Oklahoma State, 3 p.m.
Wed, Feb 08, Iowa State, time TBA
Sun, Feb 12, @ Missouri, time TBA
Wed, Feb 15, @ Texas Tech, time TBA
Sat, Feb 18, Colorado, 12:30 p.m.
Wed, Feb 22, Texas, 6 p.m.
Sat, Feb 25, @ Oklahoma, 3 p.m.
Wed, Mar 01, @ Nebraska, time TBA
Sat, Mar 04, Kansas, 3 p.m.
Thu, Mar 09 - Sun, Mar 12 Phillips 66 Big 12 Conference, at Dallas, Texas

Faces from the Front journalist goes back to where the action is. Good luck to him. His site has some excellent first-hand observations of what it's really like in Iraq. Highly recommended.

Report from Yahoo indicates that eBay may have been vulnerable to a "phishing" attack which could redirect users' private information to a (presumably hostile) third party. The punchline of the story:

The moral is not to click on links in e-mails just because they look genuine, a fairly disturbing conclusion as this is one of the main criteria people use. Netcraft's toolbar, a Web browser plug-in for Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Mozilla's Firefox, is designed to protect against phishing websites, not least by analyzing the sort of characters used in this attack.

Go out and read the story, and be careful--it's a rough Internet out there.