XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh   
   From: OFeem1987@teleworm.us   
      
   Mitchell Holman wrote this post by blinking in Morse code:   
      
   > Chris Ahlstrom  wrote in   
   > news:10mn3sv$29f5l$2@dont-email.me:   
   >   
   >> I'm often asked the question, "Do you think there is extraterrestrial   
   >> intelli- gence?"  I give the standard arguments -- there are a lot of   
   >> places out there, and use the word *billions*, and so on.  And then I   
   >> say it would be astonishing to me if there weren't extraterrestrial   
   >> intelligence, but of course there is as yet no compelling evidence for   
   >> it.  And then I'm asked, "Yeah, but what do you really think?"  I say,   
   >> "I just told you what I really think."  "Yeah, but what's your gut   
   >> feeling?"  But I try not to think with my gut.  Really, it's okay to   
   >> reserve judgment until the evidence is in.   
   >>           -- Carl Sagan   
      
          
      
   > "Ten thousand years ago, there were no dairy cows, no ferret   
   > hounds, no large ears of corn.  When we domesticated the   
   > ancestors of those plants and animals, we controlled their   
   > breeding. We made sure that certain properties, considered by us   
   > to be desireable, were preferentially reproduced. The enormous   
   > distended udders of dairy cattle are the result of human   
   > interest in milk and cheese.  Our corn has been bred for ten   
   > thousand generations to more tasty and nutritious than its   
   > scrawny natural ancestor; indeed, it is so changed that it   
   > cannot even reproduce without human intervention. If artificial   
   > selection can make such major changes in so short a period of   
   > time, what can natural selection, working over billions of   
   > years, be capable of?  The answer is all the beauty and   
   > diversity of the biological world.  Evolution is fact, not   
   > theory."   
   >   
   >    Carl Sagan, Cosmos, p 27   
      
       “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there   
       has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a   
       constant thread winding its way through our political and   
       cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy   
       means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”   
           -- Isaac Asimov   
      
   --   
   	The courtroom was pregnant (pun intended) with anxious silence as the   
   judge solemnly considered his verdict in the paternity suit before him.   
   Suddenly, he reached into the folds of his robes, drew out a cigar and   
   ceremoniously handed it to the defendant.   
   	"Congratulations!" declaimed the jurist.  "You have just become a   
   father!"   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)