What is the first thing that pops into your head when I say 'Intelligent Design'?

Answer 1

The latest in a series of futile attempts to give Genesis creation pseudo-scientific trappings, so that it can be taught in schools and evade the First Amendment prohibition on a state religion. Like its predecessors, it shall collapse, the sooner the better.

Answer 2

There are actually several "first things," if I may.

1) That the general public has completely misunderstood the use of the term "theory" in science compared to the use of "theory" outside of science.

2) That the general public does not understand that there is a difference between evolution and the proposed mechanism by which evolution occurs, natural selection.

3) That the combination of 1) and 2) leads to the ridiculous, unfounded conclusion that because we do not have all pieces to the puzzle known as evolution, that evolution is not real.

That is like saying: I have a male friend. I am certain he is a male, even though I have never seen his penis. He has many characteristic habits of a male and looks like a male.

And then someone says to me: so, you are not 100% certain he is a male, because you haven't seen his penis. As you are therefore NOT 100% certain he is a male, he MUST be female.

The proponents of intelligent design do just that with regards to evolution and natural selection.

Answer 3

You may have heard that humans are 99.9% the same as each other. Well, not anymore.
New research is showing that we are less alike than this. There isn’t an exact number yet but the new number is probably somewhere between 99.0 and 99.9%.

What happened? What have scientists been finding that makes us all less alike?
They’ve been discovering that we don’t just have differences within our genes. We also have differences in the number of copies of our genes as well.

This forces us to rethink how genetics works, how we do genetic testing, what makes us different from a chimpanzee, why some of us are more prone to illness and some of us more resistant, etc. This new research is changing how we think about how our DNA works and why we are who we are. This is huge.
The idea that we are all 99.9% the same came from looking for differences in our DNA letter by letter. We see the newly discovered differences by looking at big chunks of our DNA all at once. Let’s use a cookbook analogy to show you what I am talking about here. Our DNA has 6 billion letters cut up into 46 different strings of “text” (called chromosomes). Imagine that this DNA is a library of 46 cookbooks.
Just like cookbooks, our chromosomes have recipes too. The recipes are made of sets of instructions called genes. And the genes are written in three letter words called codons.
For example:
Get a glass. Fill the glass with milk. Add 2 tbsp of chocolate powder. Stir.
Here are a couple of single letter differences that completely change the meaning of this recipe:
Get a glass. Fill the glass with silk. Add 2 tbsp of chocolate powder. Stir.
Get a glass. Fill the glass with milk. Add 2 tsp of chocolate powder. Stir.
Now instead of a glass of chocolate milk, you get a glass of chocolate silk. Or in the second case, a very weak glass of chocolate milk.
This is how DNA works too. A change in a letter can cause a change in how a gene gets used. Or whether it gets used at all.
The newly discovered changes, called copy number variants (CNVs), are different than this. They are more like repeats of the same instructions. For example, imagine the recipe now says:
Get a glass. Fill the glass with milk. Add 2 tbsp of chocolate powder. Add 2 tbsp of chocolate powder. Stir.

Now you’re going to get a stronger chocolate milk. Or imagine the whole recipe just repeats.
Now youget twice as much chocolate milk.

Until a few years ago, scientists thought that most of our differences came from small changes in our DNA. The idea was that every 1000 letters or so, you and I have a different letter.
These 6 million differences made me distinct from you.

But over the past few years, scientists have started to notice changes where big chunks of DNA
are repeated. Or missing.

As they looked harder, more and more of these changes became apparent. As of November 2006, more than 600 of these CNVs had been identified that covered 104 million DNA letters (called bases). That’s 4% of our DNA!

Now a new paper in the journal Nature shows there are even more than this. The researchers found 1447 of these big changes that spanned 360 million letters. Now we’re up to 12% of all of our DNA.

And because of how they did the work, this is probably an underestimate. In other words, even more of our DNA probably has changes like these.

A lot of this repeated DNA includes genes. Which means people not only have differences within
heir genes, but also in the number of their genes. We are definitely not as alike as we oncebelieved.
Researchers have already sequenced mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from 12 Neanderthals. This is DNA from the cell's powerhouses, and which is passed down from mother to child.
While mtDNA has confirmed that Neanderthals were indeed different from us, the information gleaned from it is limited.

Answer 4

Computer Architecture. Yeah.

Answer 5

The wheel. Yeah, Im so boring. But nothing can be constructed without having a wheel / circular component.

Answer 6

a load of bull that will never be resolved because there will always be people who place more credit in their religion (whatever it may be), the foundation for which is solely books and stories, than in practicalities such as science and reason.

Answer 7

Marketing shmooze for worthless piece of junk.

Answer 8

a reconsideration of existing technology addressing a need.
....an advertising campaign for an overpriced sedan.

Answer 9

Here we go again! -.-

Answer 10

BIKINI.