Microsoft Funds Intelligent Design? (No word on when they'll apply it to software)

Salon.com is reporting today that The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, local philanthropy extrodinaire, has pledged ten million smackaroos to the Discovery Institute since 2000. Wait, you say, the same Discovery Institute tank of thinkers that promotes Intelligent Design? Yes, we tell you, that same Discovery Institute. Say it ain't so, Bill.

The money was specifically given to the Cascadia Project to research transportation issues in the area. Seattlest is anxiously awaiting a report from the Cascadia Project that determines that it's time to give up on addressing our traffic problems. We've done a lot of studying, they'll say, but where we're at now seems to indicate that we can't go any further - God just built Seattle with a lot of traffic.

Similarly, we hope not to hear anything out of the Redmond camp alluding to the divine inevitablity of virii and trojans in our software.

From Salon:

Even if the Gates money doesn't directly fund Discovery's I.D. work, the grant has created an image problem for the foundation. "Its support of the Discovery Institute is not commendable because of the murky situation created," wrote Francisco Ayala, a biologist at the University of California at Irvine, in an e-mail. "Many people will not notice that Gates' support is restricted to one particular project ... I am reminded of the saying, 'The wife of Caesar not only should be chaste, but also appear to be so.'" Ayala raises an intriguing question: As the Discovery Institute becomes increasingly associated with intelligent design, does the Gates foundation worry that its own good name might get tied up in the political storm? "It's a good question," Shaw says. "When a grantee's work is so much associated with something not related to the work you are funding, how does that affect your grant? I don't know the answer to that. It's something we are going to have to look at."