For the past decade, every student in Alabama has been greeted by the same paragraphs-long disclaimer in the front of their bio textbooks claiming that evolution is a “controversial theory” that has “not been directly observed.” And after putting it to a vote last week, the state Board of Education decided that that disclaimer isn’t going anywhere.

Animal legs! Weather extremes! Planet surfaces! Astronaut man! Dark things! Bee teams! Bio touch! And liquids that may or may not be of benefit to one and all! It’s your periodic Science Watch, where we watch science—without ever touching the ground!

At a speech in Nashville on Sunday, Dr. Ben Carson, an adorably ambitious antique bread machine, articulated again his rejection of evolution, with all the easy eloquence we’ve come to expect.

“Dear Sir, I am sorry to have to inform you that I do not believe in the Bible as a divine revelation & therefore not in Jesus Christ as the son of God. Yours faithfully. Ch. Darwin”

Peanut butter and jelly—on a wrap.

Cool Pope Francis, Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Jesus Christ, Successor of the Prince of the Apostles, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, possessor of truly Jadenesque follower count, acknowledged today that evolution and the Big Bang thoery are real, and that God is not "a magician with a magic wand."

Sally Atwater is the widow of the Republican Party's most ferocious, hated political fixer. She's running to be in charge of South Carolina's education policy. If votes were awkward right-wing radio interviews on sex ed that turned adversarial, this woman would win in a landslide.

You know what America has too much of? Godless socialist hippie brainwashing of our youth, who are the future. You know what America needs? Some Marine Todds to crack hippie skulls. You know who Aaron Miller is? He's the evolution-hatin' Marine Todd our Congress needs!

An Oklahoma City Fox station ran a teaser for its nightly newscast during the premiere of Neil DeGrasse Tyson's reboot of Cosmos. No big deal, except that it interrupted Tyson's only mention of evolution in the entire episode.

Recent DNA analysis by anthropologists, archaeologists, and geneticists shows that Europeans of 5,000 years ago were "more darkly pigmented" than today's Europeans. Who can say for sure? [Photo: AP]

Last night, Bill "The Science Guy" Nye debated Ken Ham, a noted creationist, over the question: "How did we get here?" The debate, which took place at Ham's Creation Museum in Kentucky, lasted nearly two and a half hours and went about exactly as you'd expect.

Hark; the time hath come for "Hey, Science," our intelligence-boosting feature in which we enlist real live scientific experts to answer humanity's most interesting/ idiotic scientific questions. Today: Is there an evolutionary or biological reason for preferring to have sex with people of a certain race?

A new Pew Research study finds that 48 percent of Republicans continue to believe that "humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time," while 27 percent of Democrats continue to deny that species change and adapt.

A species of frog named after Charles Darwin didn't fare so well in the evolutionary sense — scientists believe that the frogs — discovered by Darwin himself in 1834 — have all died off.

The fox is a clever beast, famously outsmarting human and animal rivals in ancient fables, recent movies and a current Top 10 song. Humanity's relationship with the fox has long been balanced between bemused tolerance and "let's shoot them for fun and raise them in cages, for fur." But there are abundant signs that the foxes have had quite enough of people, and are making coordinated global moves to take over civilization.

Last time in sinister evolutionary leaps: catfish eating pigeons. This time, it's two different spider species working together for mysterious purposes.

As it turns out, this whole "evolution" thing isn't just a phase. And now Louisiana has to figure out whether we should be teaching it in our schools.

When employees at Spain's Seville Zoo installed a TV inside the chimpanzee enclosure, they thought they were providing its inhabitants with mental stimulation.

Anyone who has ever read Stephen Jay Gould or sat through an X-Men voiceover narration is familiar with the concept of punctuated equilibrium - the idea that evolutionary development happens not incrementally but in random, periodic bursts.

Florida Senator Marco Rubio has clearly learned a thing or two from Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock when it comes to qualifying public statements. Reminding us that a comprehensive understanding of the earth's history is reserved for only the most seasoned of sages and alchemists, with many glowing astrolabes, he told GQ that the true age of the planet is "one of the great mysteries" of our time. It seems fairly clear, however, that in suggesting parents teach their children about the formation and development of the planet using either "what science says" or "what their faith says" where he lands on science.