"It was like the head of a dragon
-- just coming out of the water at just a ferocious speed, just
moving like crazy."
Jim Lynn is a Roman Catholic priest, and last month he was looking
out from his home on the shores of Great Slave Lake near
Yellowknife (Canada) when he saw an object following a small boat
across the water.
"I got the goggles because it was moving fast and I was kind
of curious as to what it was," said Lynn, 66. "It
was high, six to eight feet above the water and moving at an
incredulous speed."
Lynn said the creature appeared to be green, and he watched it as
it swam behind an island and then disappear. He immediately
dialed his local paper, the Yellowknifer, to place an
advertisement asking the person on the lake that day to call
him. Why? "I would think they would have felt the
waves (from the creature)."
Others have in times past seen the creature as well. When
Chris Woodall, a columnist for the Yellowknifer, wrote
earlier this summer about the monster of Great Slave Lake, he
received a number of phone calls from people who claimed to have
seen just such a monster.
It's name? O'l Slavey, after one of the aboriginal languages
in the Northwest Territories.
A fellow by the name of Antoine Michel had heard stories of the
lake monster while growing up, but never got to actually see it
until years later on a calm moonlit night as he and his wife
returned by boat from a caribou hunt.
"We seen a rock there. I thought it was a rock first time,
there was seagulls around it. I just turned away from it, I
didn't want to hit it, (then) it just went down. I felt the
waves, and then I just took off. I didn't take a look
back."
For the skeptics who think land sightings can be a bit
unconvincing, Arctic Divers was on a deep-water body
retrieval near Lutsel K'e a decade ago when one of its divers
actually saw the horrific beast.
"It looked much like an alligator, but with a head like a
pike," said Wayne Gzowski, the company's district manager.
Whatever it is, it's big and ugly, and something no one would like
to meet face to face.
Anti-Evolution Article Gets Ripped
by Jonathan
Drake
S: WorldNetDaily.com
(9-4-04)
It was an article questioning evolution, and it somehow made its
way into a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Oh, the horror.
The article, "The origin of biological information and the
higher taxonomic categories," was authored by Dr. Steven
Meyer of the Discovery Institute, a known proponent of Intelligent
Design (ID), and it was met with widespread criticism from members
of the society publishing the journal – the Biological Society
of Washington.
Three qualified reviewers, however, who, according to National
Center for Biotechnology Information staff scientist Richard
Sternberg, "all hold faculty positions in biological
disciplines at prominent universities and research institutions,
one at an Ivy League university, one at a major U.S. public
university, and another at a major overseas research
institute," all found the paper "meritorious, warranting
publication," he said.
Sternberg went on further to say about those who label he and
Meyer 'Creationists', "It's fascinating how the 'creationist'
label is falsely applied to anyone who raises any questions about
neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory. The reaction to the paper by
some [anti-creationist] extremists suggests that the thought
police are alive and well in the scientific community."
Robert L. Crowther, director of The Discovery Institute's
communications, explained the
difference between intelligent design and creationism.
"Dr.
Meyer is a well-known proponent of intelligent design and that is
what his paper is about," he told The Scientist.
"To try and characterize him as a creationist is just an
attempt to stigmatize him and marginalize his paper, all the while
avoiding the scientific issues that it raises."
Meyer
had words of his own.
"I have received a number of private communications from
scientists expressing their agreement or intrigue with the
arguments that I develop in my article. Public reaction to
the article, however, has been mainly characterized by hysteria,
name-calling and personal attack."
Indeed, the thought police are alive and well in the scientific
community.
New Species Of Shark Discovered
by
Jonathan Robison
S: Ananova (9-04)
It was passed from place to
place, waiting for someone, anyone, to notice its uniqueness.
"It (an Austrian pet shop) sold it (the shark) to a fitness
studio in Upper Austria that was destroyed in floods. But the
shark was rescued and taken to an animal shelter where it lived
for a short while before it was passed on to us..."
They, in turn, sent it to the Sea Star Aquarium in Coburgand.
"We did not realize it was unique."
Such were the words of Dr. Ekkehard Wolf from the Austrian zoo,
adding that it was not embarrassing that his fellow zoo experts
sold the rare specimen rather than use it for its own
collection. "We get hundreds of exotic animals every
year, it is not possible to categorize them all."
The 27-inch-long shark has inflexible eyes, large teeth and
"hair". It also "hops" through the water
and moves its fins like a whale, instead of swimming the way
sharks normally do.
Its uniqueness was only discovered when Bavarian shark experts
were called in to write an information panel for visitors, where
they couldn't classify it among the 405 known species of shark.
Now, make that 406.
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