Seattle Weekly Scopes The Discovery Institute

Roger Downey and his merry band of straight-faced reporter types who just happen to write for an alternative weekly newspaper printed everything you never wanted to know about the Discovery Institute in today's paper. We say "everything you never wanted to know" because, really, who cares about Intelligent Design and the Discovery Institute? Isn't that something that Pennsylvania and Arkansas and Conservative Wackolandia have to pay attention to for a few minutes while their courts shoot down the best efforts of their "educators" to trump science with godliness?

Actually, yes. It isn't your concern, More-or-less-Rational Human Being. It isn't your concern so far as your kids probably aren't going to be coming home from school pontificating on the "disputed theory of evolution" anytime soon. It is your concern every time someone hailing from the "Seattle-based think tank" is handed a mic on Fox news, though. It says it right there in huge Fox letters on a huge Fox banner: "Seattle-based think tank." That's our most prominent nationally-recognized tank of thinkers right there - The Discovery Institute. That's our only nationally-recognized tank of thinkers. Yeah, the rest of the planet knows us as airplane building, software coding, flannel-wearing hippies so caffienated our creative facial hair and piercings vibrate while we jog a few laps around the city before sitting down to a vegetarian seafood dinner, writing a romance novel and killing a few hookers, but when Fox says "Seattle-based think tank" they're talking about the Discovery Institute.

Something's gotta be done. We can't throw them out. We're looking into it, but it appears you can't excommunicate a think tank from the city. Our usual weapon of choice, shame, won't work on the minds behind Intelligent Design because you can't shame the shameless (see the State of the Union, see also Fox News, see also the rest of the country, see also everyone but Seattlest). Simply asking them to reconsider would be like trying to reason with a monkey's eyeball. Marching around their compound with big Darwin posters on sticks and shouting stuff would be cathartic, but probably have little result other than getting them more air time on Fox, again with the Fox banner "Seattle-based think tank." Sometimes it's even "The Seattle-based think tank," like they're the only ones thinking up in here. There are plenty of other Seattle think tanks with more intelligent design in their little pinky ring than the Discovery Institute has in its whole body. There's... Well, there probably is. Maybe that's our solution. We need some other thinkers to elevate the thinking. Tank up and start thinking, Seattle, for the sake of our national image. Think so far outside the box that you wouldn't even consider saying something as lame as "think outside the box" and steer clear of any thinking that leads you to believe that there's scientific evidence for Intelligent Design.

Oh yeah, and check out the Weekly's Discovery Institute stuff:

In 1998, members of a Seattle nonprofit think tank drafted a secret five-year plan with an ambitious goal: to "defeat scientific materialism" and "replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God."

Ok, well, we've added nothing of value here and our thinking on Intelligent Design has failed to evolve in the five months since we last wrote this bit. All in a day's work at Seattlest.