Eggs and Green Ham. Scientists from National Taiwanese University's Department of Animal Science and Technology say that they are the first to produce pigs that are through and through green-fluorescent.

They spliced genes from jellyfish into normal pig embryos. The 265 embryos were planted in 8 surrogates, 4 of whom got pregnant and 3 male piglets were born. In daylight, the pigs have a slight green hue, and at night, shining a blue light at the pigs will make them glow in the dark.

Alternative Scouting. The MetroTimes has an article on Spiral Scouts International, a alternative-religion-friendly version to the Boy/Girl Scouts. The participations seems to be co-ed, with three levels: Fireflies (age<8), SpiralScouts (8-14), PathFinders (14 and on). From their website:

Each group is led by both a male and a female adult, to achieve and teach the balance that is so central to Earth-centered beliefs. While SpiralScouts was developed on Pagan beliefs and practices, it is designed to be adaptable by other minority faiths as well. In addition to traditional woodland lore, camping and the outdoor living skills, the program includes teaching the many mythologies of the ancient world. Uniquely, it includes a component new to youth group programming - life strategies and skills for teens, to help them learn early how to have good relationships with their peers and adults, and interpersonal skills that will serve them throughout their adult lives.

It doesn't actually sound too bad. Even though the program was started by the Aquarian Tabernacle Church (first Wiccan Church to be legally recognized as such), it claims to be accessible to children of different faiths. And since parents are actually encouraged to participate (or look on), I doubt it would violate the principles laid out on its website.

Intelligently Designed Course on ID. The LA Times has a story on the recent lawsuit in Lebec, CA on the teaching of ID in a public school. On first look, I thought that plaintiffs were zealots: the school had allegedly looked at the Dover case and designed a course in the social sciences titled "Philosophy of Design". I thought: if ID is taught as an elective course in religion or philosophy, what harm can there be? Well, take a look at the course description and see why I changed my mind:

An initial course description, which was distributed to students and their families last month, said "the class will take a close look at evolution as a theory and will discuss the scientific, biological and biblical aspects that suggest why Darwin's philosophy is not rock solid. The class will discuss intelligent design as an alternative response to evolution. Physical and chemical evidence will be presented suggesting the earth is thousands of years old, not billions."

Pay attention to that last sentence. That is young-earth creationism right there. I was under the impression that ID was religion-independent. Now, Hinduism also has a creation myth telling the formation of the various qualities and castes from the purusa, but on the other hand, the religion also posits a cycle of formation and destruction with a rather long cycle (let's see, here's a link that sort of explains the whole deal. Basically the cycle of destruction occurs every 120,000 divine years, which equals to about 4 million human years; on a side note, Hinduism is one of the few religions that actually has a calculable time-of-existence for our universe that is longer than the one claimed by big-bang theory--the claim is that the current universe has been in existence for something like 150 trillion years), and I don't see it being accommodated in that course.

This is a public school, and by the doctrine of separation of church and state, if they are teaching a class on religion, they need to give at least all major religions equal representation. So now they try to sneak in a class on Christianity under the banner of philosophy to directly attach science? Hum, how did those people think this idea would fly unnoticed and unprotested?