The Seventh Sense

A Power Couple

Two seniors from UNC were awarded the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University this weekend -- which only went to 32 recipients.

The cool thing is that they are boyfriend and girlfriend.

Has-Been Kirk Cameron's Latest Hijinx

The former Growing Pains star, who has gone full-blown creationist now that the plum roles are no longer coming his way, has teamed up with other anti-evolutionists in what he imagines to be a clever ploy to teach people about how bad evolutionary science is:

The 'Growing Pains' alum released a video last week announcing that on Nov. 19, he and other Creationist activists will distribute a special 'Species' [Darwin's Origin of Species] with a 50-page intro that slams evolution and paints Darwin as both racist and misogynistic and explicitly highlights "Adolph Hitler's undeniable connection to the theory."

Man, Hitler hasn't had this much airplay since the days of Hitler.  Seriously, can we STOP it with the Hitler already?!?  (By the way, Obama is in Denmark today pushing for the Olympics to come to Chicago.  And you know who else hosted the Olympics?  Hitler!!!)

But Kirk's logic is laughably fallacious.  I'm not saying Darwin was/wasn't racist and misogynistic -- I honestly have no idea -- but assuming he was, what does that mean?  It means nothing.  If the Grandwizard of the KKK said that "2+2=4", he's still correct, isn't he, regardless of his racist views?  Or do we reject math?

And sure.  Hitler believed in a "superior race" which was rather loosely based on "survival of the fittest" -- a concept coined and popularized by Darwin.  But Hitler's "undeniable connection" to evolution means that evolution is... what, exactly?  It only means that he bastardized and corrupted the work of Darwin, at worst.

By the way, Kirk, what about Hitler's "connection" to Christianity?  From Mein Kampf, here's what Hitler said about the Jewish person:

"His life is only of this world, and his spirit is inwardly as alien to true Christianity as his nature two thousand years previous was to the great founder of the new doctrine... Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord."

So maybe other people should go around on November 19 passing around Bibles on college campuses, complete with a 50-page introduction discussing the apostles' support of slavery and Hitler's undeniable connection to Christianity.

Right, Kirk?

UPDATE:  Love this...

Memo To Hollywood

The Texas State Board of Education needs to be made into a situation comedy a la The Office.  Just sayin'.

Vox Idiot

Just something random I saw:

My child is home today. She will not be forced to endure Obama's speech, given by Obama. I read it, printed it off, and I will discuss it with her. Then as we discuss it, I'll tell her the reasons I did not want Obama or the school district deciding that we HAD to hear it. I'll tell her that at first, he tried to dictate what lesson plans the teachers would use with the speech, but changed it after criticism. I'll explain the fact that Obama is a liar. That he promised to debate health care reform on C-Span, and did not, and that in fact, he had Congress craft a piece of crap with questionable motives, and tried to have it passed before it was read. I''ll explain that he's still trying to pass this bill, despite the fact that the majority do not want it, and that he and his minions would ultimately like to end the insurance that we have, and is paying very well for our health care needs, so that he can cover people who DON'T work as hard as her parents do. I'll explain that he has no credibility, and no leadership skills. That his administration is filled with the kind of people who do not inspire trust, and are very poor leaders. We'll consider the speech, and remark that he's going to give this speech to kids in kindergarten as well as older kids? How many of them are going to understand this drivel? This ultimately boring claptrap coming from a boor? Then I'll tell her that when he says "ask questions", apparently he doesn't mean it, because if you do, you're considered a nut, a terrorist, made fun of, or ostracized. That his administration is full of condescending tools who call the American people names. Then we'll laugh at him. All in all, it's going to be a good day.

One day, God willing, this child-turned-adult will leave her parents, think back on this and say to herself, "MAN, my parents were idiots!"

It's Like He's A Child Molester...

From Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia, (where Obama is delivering his indoctrination into socialism speech this morning):

Obama Scheduled To Turn All Schoolchildren Into Socialists

Less than two hours away.

The best write-up on this non-issue comes from Forbes writer Tunku Caradarajan in an article aptly titled "Too Many Kooks":

The Silly Season ceases to be "silly" when what passes for political debate in America turns not merely stupid or witless, but certifiably demented.

I write of the kooky reaction of many conservatives--politicians, citizens and commentators in the media--to the plan by President Obama to address the nation's schoolchildren tomorrow. (And I write, please note, as a nonlefty libertarian who did not support Barack Obama in the presidential election.)

Obama will, as we all know, address our kids--plenty of whom need a lesson or two on the subject, since they clearly don't get it from their parents--on the virtues of study, education and hard work. According to a White House spokesman, the aim of the speech is "to challenge students to work hard in school, to not drop out and to meet short-term goals like behaving in class, [and] doing their homework ..." If anyone thinks that's unpalatable, subversive, Commie and un-American, I'd like to meet for a duel at dawn by the skating rink at New York's Central Park. (Pick your weapon, Michelle Malkin and Glenn Beck ...)

Michelle Malkin responds:

Tunku Varadarajan is a professor at NYU’s Stern Business School, fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, and executive editor for opinions at Forbes.

He thinks I am a “kook” and “crazy” for criticizing President Obama’s education event tomorrow.

Tellingly, he does not address the actual substance of my arguments.

What are her arguments?

It’s not the speech, it’s the subtext.

What's the subtext?

It’s the radical activism of the White House Teaching Fellows who designed the education guides tied to Obama’s speech.

It’s the overzealousness of public school educators who have turned classrooms into Obama campaign offices.

It’s the influence of the left-wing social justice crusaders of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge on Team Obama.

It’s the Left’s embrace of Obama Chicago pal Bill Ayers’ pedagogical philosophy of education as the motor-force of revolution.”

It’s the activist tradition of government schools using students as junior lobbyists to pressure legislators for higher education spending, pro-illegal immigration protests, gay marriage, environmental propaganda, and anti-war causes.

Now, who are you calling “kook?”

All those links are to other Malkin screeds.  I don't if those are really the "subtext" of Obama's speech (which I've printed in full below the fold).  Maybe she means "context".

So basically, Malkin is now claiming that she doesn't have a problem with the actual speech; but it serves as a platform to go on a tangent of rants about other nonsensical things.

And that is why you should keep your kids out of school today... um.... yeah... I guess.

Malkin closes by asked "Now, who are you calling 'kook'?"

Ummm....

Thoughts Of The Day Re Obama's Indoctrination Speech

How long did it take the right to go from: "if you criticize the President you are a traitor" to "School children should not trust the President."

But seriously, what IS it with the objection to President Obama talking with school children and encouraging them to study hard and learn and do well?  I mean, it's not like he's going to be preaching partisan policy, like Reagan did two decades ago when he talked to schoolkids (via CSPAN) about tax cuts.

What could possibly happen as a result of the president and schoolchildren getting together?

Oh, shit.  We're screwed.

No, but really serously this time -- if parents are going to pull their kids out of school on Tuesday because Obama (he's black, you know) is going to give the kids a pep talk, maybe we should pick that day to teach evolution and real sex education.

* Via Digby, from MSNBC:

Monica Novotny: John, what about this controversy over opposition to Obama's speech to school children?

John Harwood: I've got to tell you Monica, I've been watching politics for a long time and this one is really over the top. What it shows you is there are a lot of cynical people who try to fan controversy and let's face it, in a country of 300 million peopl there are a lot of stupid people too because if you believe that it's somehow unhealthy for kids for the president to say "work hard and stay in school," you're stupid!

Novotny: (laughter)

Harwood: I'm worried for some of those kids of those parents who are upset. I'm not sure those parents are smart enough to raise those kids.

But really really seriously -- speaking of school indoctrination (which Obama's talk on Tuesday clearly isn't), anyone remember what I posted less than two weeks ago?

The [Texas] State Board of Education has appointed “review committees” made up largely of active and retired school teachers to draft new social studies curriculum standards as well as six “expert reviewers” to help shape the final document.

The standards, which the board will decide next spring, will influence new history, civics and geography textbooks.

The first draft for proposed standards in United States History Studies Since Reconstruction says students should be expected “to identify significant conservative advocacy organizations and individuals, such as Newt Gingrich, Phyllis Schlafly and the Moral Majority.”

The Latest Rightwing Freakout

On September 8, President Obama will speak to schoolchildren throughout the country.  He's going to convey a rather standard message.

In an August 26 letter to principals, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan described Obama's September 8 speech as being about "the importance of education" and "persisting and succeeding in school." Duncan also offered K-12 "classroom activities" to "engage students and stimulate discussion on the importance of education in their lives." From his letter:

In a recent interview with student reporter, Damon Weaver, President Obama announced that on September 8 -- the first day of school for many children across America -- he will deliver a national address directly to students on the importance of education. The President will challenge students to work hard, set educational goals, and take responsibility for their learning. He will also call for a shared responsibility and commitment on the part of students, parents and educators to ensure that every child in every school receives the best education possible so they can compete in the global economy for good jobs and live rewarding and productive lives as American citizens.

Since taking office, the President has repeatedly focused on education, even as the country faces two wars, the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and major challenges on issues like energy and health care. The President believes that education is a critical part of building a new foundation for the American economy. Educated people are more active civically and better informed on issues affecting their lives, their families and their futures.

This is the first time an American president has spoken directly to the nation's school children about persisting and succeeding in school. We encourage you to use this historic moment to help your students get focused and begin the school year strong. I encourage you, your teachers, and students to join me in watching the President deliver this address on Tuesday, September 8, 2009. It will be broadcast live on the White House website www.whitehouse.gov 12:00 noon eastern standard time.

In advance of this address, we would like to share the following resources: a menu of classroom activities for students in grades preK-6 and for students in grades 7-12. These are ideas developed by and for teachers to help engage students and stimulate discussion on the importance of education in their lives. We are also staging a student video contest on education.

But the right wing is going ballistic. 

There's Glenn Beck and Michelle Malkin -- frothing at the mouth about Obama trying to "indoctrinate the children" into his "socialist agenda".  (Staying in school is "socialist" now?) 

Here's this from Townhall:

Parents, prepare yourselves--your kids are going to be made a captive audience to this forced nonsense.  I suggest you plan your own civics lesson to teach your children when they get home from school on September 8.  Teach them that "civic duty" does not mean doing whatever the President wants you to do, but instead, being strong-minded enough to stick to your principles and formulate your own thoughts about the role government should play in our lives. 

And this from The American Thinker:

Obama has turned his team of brainwashers on the task of indoctrinating America’s youth.

And lots more.

These people are nuts.

P.S.  George H.W. Bush: Encouraged "America's students to strive for excellence." While president, George H.W. Bush gave a speech to schoolchildren intended "to motivate America's students to strive for excellence; to increase students' as well as parents' responsibility/accountability; and to promote students' and parents' awareness of the educational challenge we face." According to The Washington Post, the "White House sent letters to schools across the nation to encourage teachers and principals to allow students to tune in the speech, which was also carried live by the Mutual Broadcasting and NBC Radio Network. The live television and radio coverage was arranged at the request of the Education Department." [Washington Post, 10/2/91]

Texas Board of Education At It Again

These guys kill me:

The [Texas] State Board of Education has appointed “review committees” made up largely of active and retired school teachers to draft new social studies curriculum standards as well as six “expert reviewers” to help shape the final document.

The standards, which the board will decide next spring, will influence new history, civics and geography textbooks.

The first draft for proposed standards in United States History Studies Since Reconstruction says students should be expected “to identify significant conservative advocacy organizations and individuals, such as Newt Gingrich, Phyllis Schlafly and the Moral Majority.”

And liberals?  Nope.

One board member told the press that he wanted to:

add James Dobson's Focus on the Family, conservative talk show host Sean Hannity and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee to the list of conservatives. Others have proposed adding talk show host Rush Limbaugh and the National Rifle Association.

To be fair, that same board member wanted to add liberal organizations to serve as a contrast, but I don't think that's the point.

I think in some high school classes, politics will arise. Civics, current events -- that sort of thing.  I don't understand what relevance Sean Hannity would have to a history class though.

But in those rare occasions where it comes up, can one construct meaningful guidelines in the first place on the issue of political ideology?  Most people and institutions don't fall conveniently into a conservative/liberal scheme easily.  The ACLU, for example, often tarnished as a librul commie organization, takes dozens of case defending churches against government intrusion and defending religious liberty in public shools (so long as the school doesn't mandate or endorse that religion).  That's conservative.  Mike Huckabee is liberal on some of his viewpoints, yet the proposed curriculum wants to teach otherwise.

The proposed curriculum -- aside from being biased -- is simply miseducation in that it reduces complex issues and ideologies into two distinct, convenient, but ultimately not-in-the-real-world ideologies.

Texas has among the the lowest SAT scores among all the states, usually it is ranked #45 or under.  Maybe the Texas board of education should focus on, you know, that.  Just sayin'.

North Carolina Perspective On Obama

Perhaps some of my friends up north don't understand why I blog so often about the birthers.  And that might be because the birther movement truly is fringe up north.

But not here in North Carolina.

According to a Public Policy Poll released yesterday,  only 24% of self-identified Republican voters in North Carolina believe Barack Obama was born in the United States.  47% do not believe that Obama is American born, and 29% of Republicans aren’t sure.  I'll spare you the math, but that means that 900,000 Republicans in North Carolina don’t think the president of the United States is legitimate, or aren’t sure about the matter.

That's why I write about it.  Because I'm knee-deep in stupid.

Now, certainly not ALL Republicans in North Carolina are stupid.  Not really really stupid  After all, according to the same poll, 7% of those who voted for John McCain do not believe Hawaii to be a part of the United States.  A further 4% weren't sure.  That means that one out of every ten North Carolinian Republicans can't say for sure whether Hawaii is part of the United States.

I can see now why Republicans are against improving education in this state.  Because if people got smarter, then Republicans would lose more elections.

Graphing Youth Sex Habits

I pulled some interesting charts from the today-released CDC report on STDs among youth.

Apparently, there was an increase in teen pregnancies and youth STDs during the Bush years.

Here are the charts:

TABLE 22. (Continued) Estimated number of cases and cumulative rates* of persons aged 10--24 years living with acquired immune deficiency syndrome, by age group and area of residence --- HIV/AIDS Reporting System, United States, 2006
	Age group (yrs)
	10--14		15--19		20--24
Area of residence	No.	Rate	No.	Rate	No.	Rate
Region
Northeast	531	14.6	1,025	26.4	1,473	39.7
Midwest	129	2.8	205	4.3	653	13.9
South	600	8.1	1,057	13.8	2,482	32.6
West	114	2.3	199	4.0	760	15.0
SOURCE: Special tabulations for this report from CDC's HIV/AIDS reporting system. * Per 100,000 population. Rates exclude data for U.S. territories.

TABLE 23. Number of reported cases and annual rates* of chlamydia among persons aged 10--24 years, by age group and region of residence --- Nationally Notifiable Disease Surveillance System, United States, 2006
	Age group (yrs)
	10--14		15--17		18--19		20--24
Region	No.	Rate	No.	Rate	No.	Rate	No.	Rate
Northeast	2,229	61.4	25,525	1,099.8	30,197	1,933.2	57,924	1,562.5
Midwest	3,260	71.1	36,389	1,251.1	46,166	2,470.3	85,554	1,814.1
South	5,690	76.5	61,718	1,319.0	80,100	2,697.9	145,157	1,904.8
West	2,418	48.6	30,655	997.9	41,545	2,137.4	89,138	1,759.0
Total	13,597	65.9	154,287	1,188.6	198,008	2,373.2	377,773	1,789.4
SOURCE: Special tabulations from sexually transmitted disease data, Nationally Notifiable Disease Surveillance System. * Per 100,000 population.

TABLE 24. Number of reported cases and annual rates* of gonorrhea among persons aged 10--24 years, by age group and region of residence --- Nationally Notifiable Disease Surveillance System, United States, 2006
	Age group (yrs)
	10--14		15--17		18--19		20--24
Region	No.	Rate	No.	Rate	No.	Rate	No.	Rate
Northeast	416	11.5	4,677	201.5	5,438	348.1	11,761	317.3
Midwest	1,136	24.8	11,712	402.7	14,749	789.2	27,997	593.7
South	2,191	29.4	20,608	440.4	27,348	921.1	55,073	722.7
West	499	10.0	4,959	161.4	7,045	362.4	16,103	317.8
Total	4,242	20.6	41,956	323.2	54,580	654.2	110,934	525.5
SOURCE: Special tabulations from sexually transmitted disease data, Nationally Notifiable Disease Surveillance System. * Per 100,000 population.

I wanted to see if the increase in risky sexual behavior was more prevalent in the South/Bible belt, where abstinence-only and a "faith-based" approach to sexual education is more prevelant.

Using the bottom two charts, and employing this cool web graph-maker thingee, I got this:

Hmmmm.  Looks like those coastal elite liberal might know a thing or two about how to teach kids about sex.

UPDATE --  The Guardian confirms:

The CDC says that southern states, where there is often the greatest emphasis on abstinence and religion, tend to have the highest rates of teenage pregnancy and STDs.

Yeah, I know.

The article also contains this quote from Kristi Hamrick, a spokeswoman for American Values (a group advocating abstinence-only education).  She dismisses the CDC report, arguing:

"In every other area of public policy - food, drugs, alcohol - we tell children what is the best choice. It seems very bizarre that the sex education establishment rejects the idea that we should talk to kids about what is best for them. We don't take vodka to drivers education because children will drink and drive."

Ms. Hamrick, your driver's ed analogy is flawed.  We teach children (and adults) "don't drink and drive".  We don't teach them "don't drink, period."  Yet that is what you're abstinence-only education does -- it tells them the "best choice" ONLY.  Telling them to abstain from sex is fine, but it doesn't give them options or information.  It doesn't educate.  It merely mandates a course of action ("don't have sex until your married") which, while laudable, is completely unrealistic.  And in the long run, creates a health care problem.  The graph itself bears this out.

A Beauty Pageant Queen I Can ... Uh... Get Behind

What with Miss South Carolina trying to answer a question about "US Americans" lack of geographic knowledge, and Miss "I forgot I posed naked" California's getting all "gays are ungodly" in our face, I've done a fair share of beauty-pageant-winner bashing on this blog.

So I'm more than happy to read (and report) this:

After winning the Miss Georgia title Saturday night at the RiverCenter’s Bill Heard Theatre, Miss Capital City Kristina Higgins told pageant officials Sunday morning she wanted to relinquish the crown.

“She just didn’t think that she could fulfill the duties,” said Billy Kendall, secretary for the Miss Georgia Board of Trustees.

Why not?  Why couldn't Ms. Higgins be Miss Georgia?  A lucrative career on the conservative lecture circuit (like Miss California)?  Some sex scandal?

Nope.

In a statement, 24-year-old Higgins suggested her duties as a middle school teacher could interfere with the time commitment that comes with being Miss Georgia.

“Due to my current job responsibilities as a middle school teacher and the responsibilities and time commitment as Miss Georgia, I have decided to not fulfill the duties of Miss Georgia 2009. I am grateful for the opportunity to have been chosen as Miss Georgia and fully support the system and wish Emily Cook the best of luck,” Higgins said in the statement.

She's a schoolteacher and she feels responsible to the kids.

Class act.  They should let her keep the crown anyway, because that kind of commitment embodies the ideals of the ultimate woman, which -- if I'm not mistaken -- is supposedly what beauty pageants are about these days.

Scientists Go To Creation Museum: "It's Rather Scary"

Amusing story in the New York Times:

PETERSBURG, Ky. — Tamaki Sato was confused by the dinosaur exhibit. The placards described the various dinosaurs as originating from different geological periods — the stegosaurus from the Upper Jurassic, the heterodontosaurus from the Lower Jurassic, the velociraptor from the Upper Cretaceous — yet in each case, the date of demise was the same: around 2348 B.C.

“I was just curious why,” said Dr. Sato, a professor of geology from Tokyo Gakugei University in Japan.

For paleontologists like Dr. Sato, layers of bedrock represent an accumulation over hundreds of millions of years, and the Lower Jurassic is much older than the Upper Cretaceous.

But here in the Creation Museum in northern Kentucky, Earth and the universe are just over 6,000 years old, created in six days by God.

***

Near the entrance to the exhibits is an animatronic display that includes a girl feeding a carrot to a squirrel as two dinosaurs stand nearby, a stark departure from natural history museums that say the first humans lived 65 million years after the last dinosaurs.

“I’m speechless,” said Derek E.G. Briggs, director of the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale, who walked around with crossed arms and a grimace. “It’s rather scary.”

***

“I think they should rename the museum — not the Creation Museum, but the Confusion Museum,” said Lisa E. Park, a professor of paleontology at the University of Akron.

“Unfortunately, they do it knowingly,” Dr. Park said. “I was dismayed. As a Christian, I was dismayed.”

Dr. Bengtson noted that to explain how the few species aboard the ark could have diversified to the multitude of animals alive today in only a few thousand years, the museum said simply, “God provided organisms with special tools to change rapidly.”

“Thus in one sentence they admit that evolution is real,” Dr. Bengtson said, “and that they have to invoke magic to explain how it works.”

***

By the end of the visit, among the dinosaurs, Dr. Briggs seemed amused. “I like the fact the dinosaurs were in the ark,” he said. (About 50 kinds of dinosaurs were aboard Noah’s ark, the museum explains, but later went extinct for unknown reasons.)

The museum, he realized, probably changes few beliefs. “But you worry about the youngsters,” he said.

Dr. Sato likened the museum to an amusement park. “I enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed Disneyland,” she said.

Did she enjoy Disneyland?

“Not very much,” she said.

Pictured above, right (click to embiggen):  Eve gets some water from a nearby stream while her pet velociraptor frolics in the brush

SCOTUS Rules On Strip-Searching Case

One of the few cases I was following this year on the Supreme Court docket was Safford United School District v. Redding, a case out of Arizona where a 13 year old girl was search-stripped by school officials because of a "tip" that she had some ibuprofin. (She didn't, as it turned out).

I sketched the full details out in a post last April, including these details:

Ms. Redding, a model student, had never been in trouble with the law and never been so much as called to the principal's office.  The other student who provided the "tip" to school officials was a former friend of Ms. Redding (the two had drifted apart -- the friend had fallen in with the goth crowd, while Ms. Redding was one of the goody-two-shoes).

The strip search traumatized Ms. Redding to the point where she eventually changed schools (she is now a freshman in college).

I also covered the Court's demeanor at oral argument.  It looked like it was heavily split on the counterveiling issues of privacy, and constitutional searches.

So you can imagine my surprise when the opinion (PDF) came out this morning.  By a vote of 8-1, the Court ruled that the search was unconstitutional.    Not even close.

(The dissenting judge was Justice Thomas.  He has always taken the rather absurd opinion that the U.S. Constitution does not apply to state public schools, a rather crazy position which the 14th Amendment makes mincemeat of.  I mean, even Scalia can't swallow that one.)

(The court also ruled, 7-2, that the school officials cannot be held liable, since the Fourth Amendment ruing was not "clearly established" at the actual time of the search.  Ginsberg and Stevens dissented, arguing that controlling precedent had already established that strip-searching was unconstitutional).

The court reasoned:

Had Savana been suspected of having illegal drugs that could have posed a far greater danger to herself and other students, the strip search, too, might have been justified, the majority said, in an opinion by Justice David H. Souter.

“In sum, what was missing from the suspected facts that pointed to Savana was any indication of danger to the students from the power of the drugs or their quantity, and any reason to suppose that Savana was carrying pills in her underwear,” the court said. “We think that the combination of these deficiencies was fatal to finding the search reasonable.”

The ruling is significant because it comes at the end of a long line of SCOTUS opinions allowing student searches (locker searches, etc.).  For a while there, it began to look like there was no zone of privacy for students at all.  Well, apparently, we now have a line -- you can't search their underwear or bodily cavities.

Well, you can, but you have to have some solid suspicion -- something more than a hunch or a student tip -- to justify the strip-searching of public school students.  And the contraband has to be something more dangerous or potentially harmful than ibuprofin.

The other constitutional rule expressed in the opinion — searches of public school students’ backpacks, notebooks, other belongings, outer clothing, and pockets are generally allowed if they are based on “reasonable suspicion” — remains as it has for a quarter-century, but with a small amount of refinement, the exact scope of which is not quite clear.

NC Anti-Bullying Statute Debate [UPDATE: Passes!]

I'm listening to the feed from the NC House as they debate the School Violence Prevention Act (the so-called anti-bullying bill) -- full text here -- and some moron is up there saying that the problem with the bill is that it is centered around the victims, rather than the bullies.  According to this idiot, anyone can be victims, so rather than having a bill that singles out "special protections" for "certain" victims (he means gay kids), he thinks the bill should focus on the bullies.

It's a stupid argument on its face.  First of all, we all went to high school, and no, some kids weren't picked on.  Not everyone was a victim.  Secondly, the bill, as written, doesn't create "special protections" for gay kids -- it applies to anyone who is bulliled on account of "race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, gender, socioeconomic status, academic status, gender identity, physical appearance, sexual orientation, or mental, physical, developmental, or sensory disability, or by association with a person who has or is perceived to have one or more of these characteristics".

Now another idiot is getting up there and trying to stop the bill by complaining that it doesn't protect kids whose "sexual orientation" includes pedophilia and S&M.  That's called being a "concern troll" -- he's not actually trying to keep pedophiles and sado-masochists; he just is trying to kill the bill.  Those things are not sexual orientation, and even if they are, the bill covers ALL "sexual orientation" without limitation.

Now another concern troll is up there, complaining that the bill only requires that schools set policies and procedures to deal with bullying, but it doesn't actually punish the bully. Uh, what?  If you set up the procedure to deal with the bully, then you ARE dealing with the bully.  And now he's trying to add a corporal punishment amendment so that teachers can beat up bullies.  Now he's backtracking and saying that corporal amendment can only be allowed in constituancies that allow corporal punishment.

Well, they sure are right about laws and sausage-making.

UPDATE:  If I heard correctly, the bill passed the House by one vote!  All amendments failed.  Senate has already passed, so now the bill goes to the governor.

Kudos To Brittani McCalister

She's a Terre Haute student and she is graduating from high school this year, which is nice enough, but in addition....

Brittani McCalister has never missed a day of school in 13 years, kindergarten through grade 12.

In fact, she has not missed one minute of school in all those years. The 2009 West Vigo High School graduate has never been tardy for school or even missed a class for an appointment.

“She has come to school feeling under the weather. She has driven through snowstorms and rainstorms. Every day, she has made it to school and stayed the entire day,” Principal Tom Balitewicz said during commencement Sunday. “For those of you counting, that is 2,340 days of school without a miss.”

It started out as a bet with her brother, but he only made it part-way through elementary school when he was felled by a cold one day.  Brittani decided to keep going (even when she had colds).  Full story here.

Corporal Punishment In NC Schools: If We Can Beat Mules, Why Not Kids?

North Carolina is one of the few states that permits educators to hit students.  Although the practice has been banned by some school districts in this state, 60 of the 115 school districts think that a teacher walloping a kid is a good way to maintain discipline.

That has prompted legislation about corporal punishment in schools.  A bill is now making its way through the General Assembly this year, havind passed a House committee yesterday.  The bill would not outright abolish the practice though.  It just adds more notification and parental consent safeguards when a child is spanked at school. That's all the supporters of the bill thought they could get passed this year.  It will help a little, but striking kids in school will continue as long as parents agree.

The bill banning corporal punishment outright was brought last session, but it failed.  Hence, the watered-down version this year. Last session, officials with the North Carolina Association of Educators, the UNC School of Social Work and the North Carolina PTA all supported a corporal punishment ban. They talked about the culture created by corporal punishment administered by authority figures, the bad example it provides for kids, and the research that shows it is not an effective way to discipline children.

But opponents of the bill loved to brag, it seemed, about how much they were hit when they were young.  Rep. Ronnie Sutton, for example, told his colleagues that when he was growing up, he was "beaten like a rented mule once or twice a week at school."

What Sutton apparently didn't realize is that in today's world, it would be illegal to beat a rented mule once or twice a week.  We have animal cruelty laws.

It's not hard, therefore, to expect the same treatment and protections being given to children in schools.

This session's bill (PDF) passed the committee and now goes to the House floor.  Opponents are already objecting on the grounds that the bill requires each school district to compile stats on the number of times corporal punishment was administered, and furnish that info to the State Board of Education.  Opponents are calling this a "bookkeeping nightmare".  Yikes -- you mean it happens that often?

I Salute The Texas School Board

Dallas News:

AUSTIN – In a decision watched by science educators across the nation, the State Board of Education on Thursday narrowly turned aside a last-ditch effort by social conservatives to require that "weaknesses" in the theory of evolution be taught in science classes in Texas.

Board members deadlocked 7-7 on a motion to restore a longtime curriculum rule that "strengths and weaknesses" of all scientific theories – notably Charles Darwin's theory of evolution – be covered in science classes and textbooks for those subjects.

The tie vote upheld a preliminary decision by the board in January to delete the strengths-and-weaknesses rule in the new curriculum standards for science classes that will be in force for the next decade. That decision, if finalized in a last vote today, changes 20 years of Texas education policy.

Because the standards spell out what must be covered in textbooks, science educators and publishers have been monitoring the Texas debate closely. As one of the largest textbook purchasers in the nation, Texas influences what is sold in other states.

The science standards adopted by the board also will figure into questions used on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills.

Voting for the requirement were the seven Republican board members aligned with social conservative groups. Against the proposal were three other Republicans and four Democrats. Critics of evolution managed to add a few small caveats to the curriculum, but none as sweeping as the strengths-and-weaknesses rule.

It's a tad disconcerting that the vote was so close, but a victory for education is a victory for education.

Palin Rejects 31% Of Federal Stimulus Money

First Mark Sandford, Governor of South Carolina.  He rejected stimulus money.

Now Sarah Palin.  She's rejecting 31% of the federal stimulus money.

What do these two have in common?  They both have their eye on a 2012 presidential run.  They want to be able to get up before the crowds and say, "I said 'thanks but no thanks' when they offered my state federal stimulus money."

What is most alarming is what she is taking money for, and what she is refusing money for?

She is accepting $642 million in federal stimulus money for highways, water and sewers, medicare, and.... uh.... a boat (that's one boat) costing $116 million.

What is she REFUSING money for?  She's rejecting $288 million, most of it for education-related stimulus ($177 million) including special education, technology, "fiscal stabilization" money, emergency food assistance and school lunch programs, immunizations, infant learning and additional funding for schools with a high proportion of poor students.

Nice, Sarah.  Way to keep 'em stupid.

A lot of her constituents, and many in the Alaska legislature are none too happy.

And I Want A Masters Degree In Magic

Oy:

State Rep. Leo Berman (R-Tyler) proposed House Bill 2800 when he learned that The Institute for Creation Research (ICR), a private institution that specializes in the education and research of biblical creationism, was not able to receive a certificate of authority from Texas' Higher Education Coordinating Board to grant Master of Science degrees.

Berman's bill would allow private, non-profit educational institutions to be exempt from the board’s authority.

“If you don’t take any federal funds, if you don’t take any state funds, you can do a lot more than some business that does take state funding or federal funding,” Berman says. “Why should you be regulated if you don’t take any state or federal funding?”

HB 2800 does not specifically name ICR; it would allow any institution that meets its criteria to be exempt from the board's authority. But Berman says ICR was the inspiration for the bill because he feels creationism is as scientific as evolution and should be granted equal weight in the educational community.

Offer a Masters in Theology.  Heck, offer a Masters in Creationism.  But don't call it science!

As for Berman's question as to why non-profit education institutions shouldn't be able to give out Masters of Science degrees, the answer is obvious.  What would stop Jim Bob's School of Bullshit to start handing out degrees in, well, anything?

Broad-based Sex Education Popular In North Carolina

From Public Policy Polling survey results released earlier this week, the question was asked:

A bill being considered in the Legislature would give parents the choice of having their children receive comprehensive sex education or abstinence only sex education. Would you support this proposal?

69% said "yes"; 31% said "no".

Even conservatives (58%) and Republicans (54%) supported the bill by a slight majority.  So did senior citizens (63%) and rural voters (69%).

Groups whose support exceeds 80% include liberals (88%), urban dwellers (86%), and African Americans (83%).

Full results here (PDF).

NYU Protests

Student occupations of the administration buildings, police whopping students, pepper spray... it's like the 60's, man.

Some setbacks apparently...

New York Times:

The students pushed tables and chairs against the doors, and a woman with a megaphone outlined the group’s demands.

They included a full and annual reporting of the university’s operating budget, expenditures and endowment. The students also demanded that N.Y.U. provide 13 scholarships annually to students from the Gaza Strip and give surplus supplies to the Islamic University of Gaza. On the group’s Web site, it also asked that all participants in the protest be granted amnesty from punishment.

Well, that place more emphasis on Gaza.  Here are the actual demands from the protest website:

The inclusion of an elected representative from the student body in New York University’s (NYU) Board of Trustee meetings. This representative should have rights, including voting rights, equal to that of Trustees, as well as the authorization to make public statements on the operations of the Board of Trustees without prior approval from any administration official.
1. Public release of NYU’s annual operating budget, including a full list of university expenditures, salaries for all employees compensated on a semester or annual basis, funds allocated for staff wages, contracts to non-university organizations for university construction and services, financial aid data for each college, and money allocated to each college, department, and administrative unit of the university. Furthermore, this should include a full disclosure of the amount and sources of the university’s funding.
2. Disclosure of NYU’s endowment holdings, investment strategy, projected endowment growth, and persons, corporations and firms involved in the investment of the university’s endowment funds. Additionally, we demand an endowment oversight body of students, faculty and staff who exercise shareholder proxy voting power for the university’s investments.

That's the general demand.  Then there is the "occupation demands":

1. Amnesty for all parties involved.
2. Full compensation for all employees whose jobs were disrupted during the course of the occupation.
3. Public release of NYU’s annual budget and endowment.
4. Allow student workers (including T.A.’s) to collectively bargain.
5. A fair labor contract for all NYU employees at home and abroad.
6. A Socially Responsible Finance Committee that will immediately investigate war profiteers and the lifting of the Coke ban.
7. Annual scholarships be provided for thirteen Palestinian students.
8. That the university donates all excess supplies and materials in an effort to rebuild the University of Gaza.
9. Tuition stabilization for all students, beginning with the class of 2012. Tuition rates for each successive year will not exceed the rate of inflation. The university shall meet 100% of government-calculated student financial need.
10. That student groups have priority when reserving space in the buildings owned or leased by New York University, including, and especially, the Kimmel Center.
11. That the general public have access to Bobst Library.

Not exactly "fuck the draft", but you know... it's 2009.  Wotchoo gonna do?

The protest website is here, although access to it is sporadic.  From last night:

The police pepper-sprayed the crowd earlier and a few supporters in the street were injured. There are still between 400-500 people out there and it doesn’t look like they’re going anywhere. We, the students of the occupation, remain firmly against violent action and we hope the crowd stands in non-violent solidarity with us. Negotiations are ongoing and we thank you all for your support!!

And later, at 3 a.m.:

We are writing to you from inside NYU. There are still hundreds of dancing masses swelling at the exterior of the building. Morale is high. We are sticking this out. 

The administration’s negotiation consisted of repeating the same ultimatum over and over. They proposed probation (not amnesty in the slightest) for all students involved in the occupation, a disbanding of the occupation and the ability to meet with only two administrators in order to meet to discuss the demands. So… basically they offered to blacklist us, end the occupation and we get 5 minutes in a room with Lynne Brown (Senior Vice President for University Relations and Public Affairs) and Linda Mills (Senior Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and University Life). This is not negotiation, this is mandate with no room for bargaining.

The  crowd’s energy is high. They overtook the streets several hours ago, and are maintaining their position along West 4th St. They are shouting, dancing and having a good time. At a certain point in time, the crowd began to push against police barricades in front of the Kimmel entrance. There was one confirmed arrest, who was told informally that he was charged with assaulting an officer. These claims are not fully confirmed.

We’re all busy blogging, napping noshing and chanting to the crowds. We appreciate your support, and are open to negotiation at all times. Contact your professors, contact administrators, contact your parents. All we ask is a seat at the negotiations table. We don’t need to bargain to negotiate. We don’t need to plead to talk. We will be heard.

I'm all for student activism; when I was in school (in the eighties) there was an appalling pervasiveness of apathy.  I'm not quite sure that the NYU students are going about this right (could this just be activism for activism's sake?).  [NOTE:  Case in point].  But then again, I'm woefully ignorant of the details and history of the controversy. Having been to law school at NYU, I know Dean Sexton pretty well.  He's not an eminently reasonable guy. 

UPDATE:  Not everyone is rallying behind the students. [Pictured below: a Zac Brown lookalike outside the Kimmel Center]

PreCalculus For Christians

A series of math books published by the Bob Jones University Press is virtually guaranteed to make students stupider.  Exhibit A is Precalculus For Christian Schools:

"A line can be described either by its slope (a ratio) or by its inclination (an angle). These terms describe the deviation from the horizontal, but the word inclination also has a non-mathematical meaning. Without Christ, man is inclined to sin. The Word of God should shape our attitudes (inclinations)."

"If you are given the length of two sides and the angle measure opposite one of those sides, you can use the law of sines to solve the triangle. However, this does not always determine a unique triangle. As a result, it is called the ambiguous case. Ambiguous means open to multiple interpretations. Some people say that you can interpret the Bible in any way that you want. However, there is no ambiguity in the Bible."

"The concept of limit can be used to illustrate an important truth. Suppose you lived eighty years and there was no life after death; your life on the earth would be 80/80 = 1 = 100% of your existence. Now, let's assume that your life after death was eighty years long: your earthly life would be 80/160 = 1/2 = 50% of your entire existence. If life after death were 720 years, your life here would be only 80/(80+720) = 0.1 = 10%. Now extend it to eternity: (the limit as x approaches infinity) 80/(80+x) = O. In other words, this life is very insignificant in light of eternity. It is no wonder James said that life is "vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away."

Homeschoolers away! 

Via J-Walk

Nathan Tabor On Evolution and Gays

Our locally-living nationally-syndicated columnist, Nathan Tabor, is a howl today. 

After trying to make the argument that Obama's policies will effectively result in genocide of African-Americans (yes, he really makes that argument), Tabor writes:

But blacks are not the only minority group which could suffer under the Democratic regime in Washington. Democratic leaders believe that children must be taught evolution, and they cringe at the common-sense notion of intelligent design. The evolutionary theory promoted by Charles Darwin teaches survival of the fittest. That would place homosexuals at the bottom of the chain, since they cannot procreate. Under evolution, they are destined to die out, forced out of existence by the heterosexuals who can procreate.

Ummmm.... boy.  Stuck on stupid. 

Nathan apparently believes that homosexuals are the offspring of homosexuals and therefore, that demographic is genetically destined to die out under an evolutionary theory.

And, as a corollary, apparently this can be twarted by teaching intelligent design to children.

This of course leads Nathan to his ultimate conclusion:

The idea that our nation's Democratic leaders are anti-black, anti-minority, and anti-homosexual is an inconvenient truth. It is uncomfortable to read because it is uncomfortable to write. But, as an old adage goes, the truth will make you free. Only when Democrats confront their own bigoted demons can true progress begin, can we finally heal as a nation.

I see.  By electing Obama, Democrats have revealed themselves to be bigots.  Thanks for the insight, Nathan.

One wonders if Nathan really believes anyone -- including conservatives -- would actually swallow his crap.

Stupidity Among Teachers

The full story is here, but it boils down to this:

1.  Art teacher tells students to draw a scary mask in art class.

2.  One student draws this:

(The art teacher even helped with the shading of the eyelids).

3.  Student gets in hot water for the "troubling" drawing, and isn't allowed back into school until he undergoes psychiatric evaluation.

Yup.  He completed the assignment, and they punish him.

Since When Is Ignorance A Virtue?

So here's the latest scandal rocking the Obama campaign....

Last week, Obama said this:

Instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English — they'll learn English — you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish. You should be thinking about, how can your child become bilingual? We should have every child speaking more than one language.

You know, it's embarrassing when Europeans come over here, they all speak English, they speak French, they speak German. And then we go over to Europe, and all we can say [is], "Merci beaucoup." Right?

Obama was attacked for his statements by right wing radio talk shows and conservative bloggers. But in many cases he was not quoted correctly. For example, the Americans for Legal Immigration PAC took aim by claiming that "Barack Obama has stepped on a political land mine by stating that Americans should be forced to learn Spanish."

That is not what Obama said, of course. But for the conservatives, truth doesn't matter.

Commentary from the right went something like this:

Note that Obama isn't merely saying, "learning foreign languages is swell," or, "those who speak a second language deserve a pat on the back." He's saying that monolingualism or English-only is an insufficient condition for American citizens.

This is a very dramatic change from the position of American leaders for most of our history. It used to be, if you spoke a language besides English, a thriving life outside of immigrant enclaves would require effort to speak the mother tongue. American culture as a whole said to the immigrant, "You have to get with the program." Now, Obama is pointing to Americans who speak only English and saying, "Now you have to get with the program."

And soon came the inevitable "gotcha" game where it was revealed that Obama hmself isn't fluent in a language other than English!!!  Gee, but I thought Barrack Hussein Obama was a Muslim who was reared in medrassas.

Of course, responding to the (ridiculous) criticism, Obama answered smartly:

While the Obama campaign says that Obama speaks a little bit of Indonesian, Obama himself admits that he isn’t bilingual.

“I know because I don’t speak a foreign language. It’s embarrassing!” he said.

Indeed.  That's the kind of candidate he is.  He recognizes the flaws in him that come about from an inadequate education system.

What the hell is going on?  Is being uneducated supposed to be a virtue for this culture all of a sudden?  What Digby said:

There was a time when Obama's comment was considered completely mainstream. It's true that Americans have never learned new languages easily, but they respected the idea that kids should learn as much as possible so they could better themselves. Clearly Obama didn't get the memo that we have embraced cretinism and that all knowledge is suspect.

Ironically, this mini-brouhaha happened just as the military was complaining:

Every service member needs some minimum foreign language skills before deploying — but that capability could require an extensive change in language and cultural training that would have to start long before they enter the military, a House subcommittee was told Wednesday.

The House Armed Services oversight and investigations subcommittee, which has been looking at military programs for current and future operations, is now focused on language and cultural awareness training.

The Defense Department has been working for years to expand language capabilities, both by training people already in the service and recruiting people who are proficient in another language.

Bilingualism also helps American businesses compete in a global market.

It makes perfect sense, to anyone with a brain.  But no...... xenophobia rules some segments of society.  If it's fer-in, it ain't no good.

I'll leave you with the sentiments expressed at Sadly No:

Not to get all elitist or nothing, but our culture is fucking stupid. The fact that presidential campaigns gain advantage from attacking their opponents for sounding too smart is one of the most astounding traits of modern American politics. Maybe the Democrats should just nominate Larry the Cable Guy next time to avoid these sorts of controversies in the future.

Indeed.

More Name Games From The ID Crowd

"Creationism" didn't work.

"Creation science" didn't work.

"Intelligent design" didn't work.

So how do the creationists intend to get biblical teachings into our public schools now?  Another name for the same thing:

The words are “strengths and weaknesses.”

Starting this summer, the state education board will determine the curriculum for the next decade and decide whether the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution should be taught. The benign-sounding phrase, some argue, is a reasonable effort at balance. But critics say it is a new strategy taking shape across the nation to undermine the teaching of evolution, a way for students to hear religious objections under the heading of scientific discourse.

Already, legislators in a half-dozen states — Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri and South Carolina — have tried to require that classrooms be open to “views about the scientific strengths and weaknesses of Darwinian theory,” according to a petition from the Discovery Institute, the Seattle-based strategic center of the intelligent design movement.

“Very often over the last 10 years, we’ve seen antievolution policies in sheep’s clothing,” said Glenn Branch of the National Center for Science Education, a group based in Oakland, Calif., that is against teaching creationism.

The “strengths and weaknesses” language was slipped into the curriculum standards in Texas to appease creationists when the State Board of Education first mandated the teaching of evolution in the late 1980s. It has had little effect because evolution skeptics have not had enough power on the education board to win the argument that textbooks do not adequately cover the weaknesses of evolution.

Yet even as courts steadily prohibited the outright teaching of creationism and intelligent design, creationists on the Texas board grew to a near majority. Seven of 15 members subscribe to the notion of intelligent design, and they have the blessings of Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican.

What happens in Texas does not stay in Texas: the state is one of the country’s biggest buyers of textbooks, and publishers are loath to produce different versions of the same material. The ideas that work their way into education here will surface in classrooms throughout the country.

“ ‘Strengths and weaknesses’ are regular words that have now been drafted into the rhetorical arsenal of creationists,” said Kathy Miller, director of the Texas Freedom Network, a group that promotes religious freedom.

The chairman of the state education board, Dr. Don McLeroy, a dentist in Central Texas, denies that the phrase “is subterfuge for bringing in creationism.”

“Why in the world would anybody not want to include weaknesses?” Dr. McLeroy said.

The word itself is open to broad interpretation. If the teaching of weaknesses is mandated, a textbook might be forced to say that evolution has an “inability to explain the Cambrian Explosion,” according to the group Texans for Better Science Education, which questions evolution.

The Cambrian Explosion was a period of rapid diversification that evidence suggests began around 550 million years ago and gave rise to most groups of complex organisms and animal forms. Scientists are studying how it unfolded.

Evolution as a principle is not disputed in the scientific mainstream, where the term “theory” does not mean a hunch, but an explanation backed by abundant observation, and where gaps in knowledge are not seen as grounds for doubt but points for future understanding. Over time, research has strengthened the basic tenets of evolution, especially as advances in molecular genetics have allowed biologists to read the history recorded in the DNA of animals and plants.

Yet playing to the American sense of fairness, lawmakers across the country have tried to require that classrooms be open to all views.

And here we go again...

The End Of The Banana

Will the banana cease to be?

The banana we eat today is not the one your grandparents ate. That one - known as the Gros Michel - was, by all accounts, bigger, tastier, and hardier than the variety we know and love, which is called the Cavendish. The unavailability of the Gros Michel is easily explained: it is virtually extinct.

Introduced to our hemisphere in the late 19th century, the Gros Michel was almost immediately hit by a blight that wiped it out by 1960. The Cavendish was adopted at the last minute by the big banana companies - Chiquita and Dole - because it was resistant to that blight, a fungus known as Panama disease. For the past fifty years, all has been quiet in the banana world. Until now.

Most people don't realize that the banana (as we know and recognize) is, and always has been, a man-made fruit -- the result of many, many generations of careful selective breeding.  A real natural banana looks like this:

Don't tell that to Kirk Cameron and friend, though, who think the banana (as we know it) was created by God:

The Skittles Caper

At least it's not drugs:

NEW HAVEN, Connecticut (AP) -- School officials have decided to go light on an eighth-grader caught with contraband candy in New Haven, Connecticut.

Michael Sheridan, an eighth-grade honors student who was suspended for a day, barred from attending an honors dinner and stripped of his title as class vice president after he was caught with a bag of Skittles candy in school will get his student council post back, school officials said.

Superintendent Reginald Mayo said in a statement late Wednesday that he and principal Eleanor Turner met with student Michael's parents and that Turner decided to clear the boy's record and restore him to his student council post.

Michael was disciplined after he was caught buying a bag of Skittles from a classmate. The classmate's suspension also will be expunged, school officials said.

The New Haven school system banned candy sales in 2003 as part of a districtwide school wellness policy, school spokeswoman Catherine Sullivan-DeCarlo said.

"I am sorry this has happened," Turner said in a statement. "My hope is that we can get back to the normal school routine, especially since we are in the middle of taking the Connecticut mastery test."

Turner said she should have reinforced in writing the verbal warnings against candy transactions.

Michael had said that he didn't realize his candy purchase was against the rules, but he did notice that the student selling the Skittles on February 26 was being secretive.

Education: A Local Matter?

Can someone justify to me why a child growing up in Tennessee should get half as much public money going toward his education than a child growing up in Massachusetts?

P.S.  I would love to see this map placed side-by-side with other multi-color maps showing, oh the teenage birth rate, believe in evolution, etc.

Dennis Campbell On Evolution

I don't know Dennis Campbell -- I've never read him before -- but I like him.

Another loony theory from the wonderland of evolution

Proponents of evolution remind me of the slightly dumb class clown who thinks people are laughing with him, while all the time they are snickering as he makes a goofy spectacle of himself.

Largely beside the point, but I think the class clown knows he's making a goofy spectacle of himself.  And is laughing along.

Since they hold a materialist view of the world, evolutionists must have a materialist answer for everything from lust to love. It quickly reaches absurdity.

For example, why are men — at least some men — attracted to women with slim waists and flaring hips? Well, because it indicates the ability to pop out babies. Preservation of the species, you know. Of course, that fails to explain why some prefer the emaciated runway model look.

Well, sure, Dennis.  There are always outliers.  In fact, that's part and parcel of evolutionary theory.

Examples of this foolishness are endless. But recently, a theory to explain why the majority of the public rejects the theory of evolution exceeds any previous preposterousness by an order of magnitude.

Foolishness?  Presposterousness?  I think Dennis had his copy of Roget's open when he wrote this.

Writing for TCS Daily (http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=122607B), Lee Harris comes to this conclusion: The unenlightened masses that find evolution an impossible pill to swallow reject it because apes and gorillas are loathsome to most people.

Yes, we just cannot abide the thought that our forebears were ugly, grunting, grub-eating hominids pooping in public and picking lice off one another.

No, you can't.  Going back to the Scopes trial, this has been one clear point of anti-evolutionsists.

Harris says the rejection of Darwinian babbling has nothing to do with the Bible and its story of creation. He writes: "The stumbling block to an acceptance of Darwin, I would like to submit, has little to do with Christian fundamentalism, but a whole lot to do with our intense visceral revulsion at monkeys and apes. This revulsion, while certainly not universal, is widely shared, and it is a psychological phenomenon that is completely independent of our ideas about the literal truth of the Bible."

Furthermore, says Harris, "This visceral revulsion against monkeys explains why so many people prefer to hold on to the far more flattering mythology of man's creation as it was presented in Genesis. It is not Genesis that turns them against Darwin; it is Darwin that makes them turn to Genesis."

Is that so? Well, here is an alternative theory: People reject evolution because it fundamentally is an illogical — make that irrational — concept.

Okay, now the fun begins:

We are to believe that billions of years ago in the great nothingness the Big Bang spewed out an incomprehensibly large volume of matter. Somehow, the laws of nature just happened. Some matter became stars. Some, planets.

No, you're right.  Instead we are to believe that billions of years ago, an invisible magic person spewed out incomprehensibly large volumes of matter.  Billions of galaxies, each containing billions of stars, and hundreds of billions of planets.  And then, this magic invisible person concentrated on one single planet orbiting around a rather obscure star located on a rather obscure corner of a rather obscure galaxy.

Yeah, that's far more logical and rational.

Frankly, I am more inclined to believe in the Tooth Fairy.

Yes, we know.

I would rather sandpaper a bobcat's butt in a phone booth than completely jettison rational thinking....

You would -- what?  Well, ain't that some downhome spun homily thar.

...which is what the cosmic leap of faith necessary to believe this fairy tale requires.

Right.  Evolution, which is supported by things like fossils, and -- oh, yeah, -- human observation requires a "leap of faith".  Religion on the other hand?  Apparently not.

But it gets more absurd. After the requisite billions of years passed, a truly remarkable thing happened: A microscopic cell popped into existence. What caused it? Oh, just the random interplay of electricity and various chemicals, akin to the first microchip sprouting under a mushroom in Silicon Valley.

Uh, not quite.  In fact, before the first cell, there were billions of years of chemicals combining to form compounds and isotopes amd molecules.  Surely you believe in chemical reactions, don't you, Dennis?

Not only did this cell survive, but it also managed to thrive. Somehow, it got nourishment from its soupy, primordial environment....

Somehow it got nourishment from its soupy primordial environment?  That's because it evolved from the soupy primordial environment.  It's kind of like wondering how it is that fish "somehow" became able to swim.  They became that way because they evolved in watery environments.  If a species of aniial evolved in water that wasn't able to swim, then it would die off.  This is what natural selection means.

...and then it "learned" how to multiply. How long did that take? A second? An hour? A million years? The latter seems improbable, because even the longest-lived creatures on Planet Earth live a few hundred years, at best.

Well, now we're into serious nutjob logic here.  Basically, Dennis is arguing that each advance in evolution cannot take place longer than the span of a generic creature's lifetime. 

I think I've identified the problem here.  Apparently Dennis thinks that ONE cell was created from the primordial soup, which led to ONE fish, which led to ONE salamander, which led to ONE monkey which led to ONE man.  Because he's seen all those charts showing evolution, and there's only one type of each species in the chain.

So, it must have been that this brand-new life almost immediately learned to multiply. Then, it "adapted" to its surroundings.

Kind of easy to reject evolution when you clearly have no idea what you're talking about.

Then...well, the story just gets loonier and loonier. To believe it one must function at a high order of gullibility.

Indeed.  Unlike buying into Genesis?

Here are the facts: Human DNA is enormously complex, with 20,000 to 25,000 genes and three billion chemical base pairs. A cell is a veritable factory, with individual components performing myriad complex tasks.

DNA is computer code far more complex than anything mankind has developed. A computer program requires a programmer, and to conclude that what we see in life and the cosmos was designed, and thus requires a designer, is perfectly logical. This is what Intelligent Design postulates. ID is not creationism, that is, literally interpreting the Genesis creation account, as is dishonestly maintained by evolutionists.

It's not logic; it's giving in to ignorance.  It's scratching your idea and saying, "You know, this stuff is complex.  Therefore, someone smarter than us must have been responsible for it.  Therefore, ID."

The problem of course is that mankind has fallen for this before.  Our pre-Christian ancestors did not understand the complexity of astronomy, so the stars were -- to them -- actual Gods riding chariots across the sky.  Diseases were attributed to demons and other supernatural things, rather than viruses.  Science led us to discover facts about these things -- facts that even people like Dennis take for granted as true. 

ID, however, is a conscious rejection of science in favor of ignorance.

As the human past has shown, just because something is complex and beyond our (or should I say, Dennis's) understanding does not mean that there is a designer behind all creation.

What is not logical is to say that perfect order came unaided from utter chaos.

Ah, but where is the perfect order?  Are trees perfectly symmetrical?  (No.)  Is the earth a perfect sphere?  (No.)  Where exactly is the "order" to ALL of creation?

There is order, I suppose, if you want to argue that creatures "fit" with their environment.  The giraffe, one could argue, was "designed" by a "designer" to have a long neck because he eats the leaves from the tall trees.  But evolution explains the giraffe's long neck as well, and -- more importantly -- has scientific evidence to back it up, (i.e. fossils indicating giraffe-like creatures with shorter necks, okapis, etc.)

What is clear is that evolution is little more than a poor attempt to justify the rejection of God.

Even that is wrong.  Evolution doesn't reject God.  It rejects a literal interpretation of Genesis.  In fact, evolution might explain the process through which God created all (and if it does, then by rejecting evolution, you may be rejecting God, Dennis).

My rejection of evolution has everything to do with rational thinking and nothing to do with my supposed revulsion for apes and monkeys. In fact, I find chimpanzees and their cousins immensely amusing — almost as amusing as people like Lee Harris and his sublimely preposterous theory.

Yes, Dennis, I believe you.  I think you do have a special fondness for monkeys...

Pictured above: Dennis Campbell

Pictured above: Dr. Zaius

Just sayin.....

Sign Of The Times

High schools students in Denver are demaning maternity leave.

Pregnant students in a Denver high school are asking for at least four weeks of maternity leave so they can heal, bond with their newborns and not be penalized with unexcused absences.

The request is unusual in Colorado's public schools, where districts tend to deal with pregnant students or new moms with specialized programs or individualized education plans.

Denver Public Schools has no districtwide policy, leaving it up to schools to work out plans for students to continue their education.

Well, sad that this is an issue, but that's a separate topic.

It seems to me they should get it -- they certainly shouldn't be penalized academically for being an unwed teen mom (as if that's not "penalty" enough).  That said, how exactly would that work?  If you miss four weeks of school for maternity leave, how do you come back in to class and pick up what you've missed?

Creation Museum Documentary

A few months old, but I missed it:

Not a bad YouTube mini-documentary for a trio of high-schoolers....

Only My Mom Cares About This Post

USA Today:

It turns out that Montpelier High School is not one of the Top 10 public schools in the USA.

U.S. News & World Report had listed it as No. 5 in its rankings of the nation's secondary schools, but the magazine now acknowledges the school really ranked in the nation's Top 500 public schools. (That still places it in the top 3% of secondary schools.)

"We feel terrible about having gotten it wrong in the first instance," editor Brian Kelly says, according to the Associated Press. "We're in the business of getting these numbers right. It's particularly embarrassing that we're in the business of judging people based on their math scores, and we got our math wrong."

Interestingly enough, the Times Argus says it was Montpelier High School Principal Peter Evans who noticed the mistake and notified the magazine.

Abstinence-Only Education

Here's the video:

...which serves as the launching point for this great comment by Amanda Marcotte:

Watching videos of representatives of organizations like the Abstinence Clearinghouse, the CWA, and the IWF always makes me tense, and I finally realized that it’s the women themselves (and women are the official faces of all these misogynist groups) that make me nervous. The permanent grins affixed to their faces from a youth misspent in drill team practice and the tension radiating from them that indicates they’re about to crap a diamond if they could relax their sphincter muscles enough to release it is a winning combination for making people uneasy. All that lying must do a number on your stress levels. I didn’t even realize a person could grin and grind her teeth at the same time.

It's remarkable to me how some people can claim that abstinence-only (and I stress "only") works in light of very obvious countervailing evidence.  Just look at the graph.

Now what if I told you that Bush started abstinence only program funding in 2003?  The money got allocated in 2004, and the programs started going into effect.  And looked what happened, starting in 2005, after 14 years of decline.

Up. Tick.

Abstinence-only education "works" in the sense that it is -- truly is -- the safest policy for teen sex.  But it fails miserably in terms of actually preventing teen pregnancy and sexual disease transmission, which is, at the end of the day, all that matters.  It's the sexual equivalent of Nancy Reagan's gloriously naive "Just Say No" drug policy.  It's not really an effective policy if nobody follow it, you know?

Some background on Valarie Huber, the pro-abstinence woman in the segment above.  She was once the State Abstinence Coordinator at the Ohio Department of Health.  Result?  65 girls in one single Ohio high school became pregnant.

The Creation Museum

A review:

Imagine, if you will, a load of horseshit. And we’re not talking just your average load of horseshit; no, we’re talking colossal load of horsehit. An epic load of horseshit. The kind of load of horseshit that has accreted over decades and has developed its own sort of ecosystem, from the flyblown chunks at the perimeter, down into the heated and decomposing center, generating explosive levels of methane as bacteria feast merrily on vintage, liquified crap. This is a Herculean load of horseshit, friends, the likes of which has not been seen since the days of Augeas.

And you look at it and you say, “Wow, what a load of horseshit.”

But then there’s this guy. And this guy loves this load of horseshit. Why? Well, really, who knows? What possesses someone to love a load of horseshit? It’s beyond your understanding and possibly you don’t actually want to know, even if you could know; maybe it’s one of those “on that path lies madness” things. But love it he does, and he’s not the only one; the admiration for this particular load of horseshit exists, unaccountably, far and wide. There are advocates for this load of horseshit.

And so this guy who loves this load of horseshit decides that he’s going to do something; he’s going to give it a home. And not just any home, because as this is no ordinary load of horseshit, so must its home be no ordinary repository for horseshit. And so the fellow builds a temple for his load of horseshit. The finest architects scope this temple’s dimensions; the most excellent builders hoist columns around the load of horseshit and cap them with a cunning and elegant dome; and every surface of the temple is clad in fine-grained Italian marble by the most competent masons in a three-state radius. The load of horseshit is surrounded by comfortable seats, the better for people to gaze upon it; docents are hired to expertly describe its history and features; multimedia events are designed to explain its superior nature, relative not only to other loads of horseshit which may compete in loadosity or horseshittery, but to other, completely unrelated things which may or may not be loads of anything, much less loads of horseshit.

The guy who built the temple, satisfied that it truly represents his beloved load of horseshit in the best possible light, then opens the temple to the public, to attract not only the already-established horseshit enthusiasts, but possibly to entice new people to come and gaze on the horseshit, and to, well, who knows, admire its moundyness, or the way it piles just so, to nod in appreciation of the rationalizations for its excellence or to clap in delight and take pictures when an escaping swell of methane causes the load of horseshit to sigh a moist and pungent sigh.

When all of this is done, the fellow turns to you and asks you what you think of it all now, now that this gorgeous edifice has been raised in glory and the masses cluster in celebration.

And you say, “Well, that’s all very nice. But it’s still just an enormous load of horseshit.”

And this is, in sum, the Creation Museum.

Believe it or not, the reviewer is only just getting started....

Hugs Can Get You Detention

A little too PC if you ask me:

Two hugs equals two days of detention for 13-year-old Megan Coulter. The eighth-grader was punished for violating a school policy banning public displays of affection when she hugged two friends Friday.

"I feel it is crazy," said Megan, who was to serve her second detention Tuesday after classes at Mascoutah Middle School.

"I was just giving them a hug goodbye for the weekend," she said.

Megan's mother, Melissa Coulter, said the embraces weren't even real hugs — just an arm around the shoulder and slight squeeze.

"It's hilarious to the point of ridicule," Coulter said. "I'm still dumbfounded that she's having to do this."

District Superintendent Sam McGowen said that he thinks the penalty is fair and that administrators in the school east of St. Louis were following policy in the student handbook.

It states: "Displays of affection should not occur on the school campus at any time. It is in poor taste, reflects poor judgment, and brings discredit to the school and to the persons involved."

Coulter said she and her husband told their daughter to go ahead and serve her detentions because the only other option was a day of suspension for each skipped detention.

"We don't agree with it, but I certainly don't want her to get in more trouble," Coulter said.

The couple plan to attend the next school board meeting to ask board members to consider rewording the policy or be more specific in what is considered a display of affection.

"I'm just hoping the school board will open their eyes and just realize that maybe they shouldn't be punishing us for hugs," Megan said.

Naughty Crissy

Ah, such a bright future ahead.  From a local Utah newspaper, dated September 1, 2004:

Crissy Morris is just starting her career as a teacher at HHS and will be teaching geography, sociology and PE.  She hopes to make learning enjoyable for the students and make an impact in their lives. 

Crissy was born to John and Carol Thorpe and raised in Santa Maria, Calif., where she lived until her family moved to St. George when she was age 14 and at the beginning of her freshman year.

***

“I have a wonderful husband who works with at-risk youth [Triumph Youth Expeditions of Toquerville] and loves it,” Morris said.  She is married to Rusty Morris and they have one 4-year-old son, Andrew, “going on 20,” and another son on the way.

    Morris loves the outdoors, not only track and soccer, but other sports have been a major draw to her, whether fishing or water sports.  She is looking forward to coaching HHS girls’ soccer and track teams.

“I am very excited to start my career in a place where the community gets very involved and everyone seems to care about the youth,” said Morris.

(Emphasis mine).  Look how exciting and happy Crissy is to be starting her new career as a teacher and get involved with the youth.

But Crissy apparently took getting "involved" with the "youth" to extremes.

A teacher at Hurricane High School was arrested today, charged with five counts of rape.

Cris Morris, a 29-year-old female teacher from Washington City, is accused of having sexual intercourse with a juvenile male student. Under Utah law, a juvenile student is incapable of consenting to sexual relations with a teacher, which constitutes the act as rape.

Morris was booked into the Washington County Jail and has been placed on administrative leave while the Washington County School District investigates.

Not so happy anymore.

A Nice Ad For Literacy

glumbert - Literacy is cute

Well, I'M Convinced

Creationist arguments:

The really cute part is that they keep saying that evolution is "obviously" a "fairy tale" (because if you say it several times, it MUST be true).  Then they debunk evolution by mis-stating its founding principles.  While energy may have played a role in the origins of life, the first life created was microscopic in size.  And THEN, having mistated the role of energy in the origins of life, they ignore it altogether in their peanut butter experiment.

I did a little research on the guy in that video, Chuck Missler.  He's not a scientist.  He's (surprise, surprise) a preacher with his own ministry.  He's also a UFO nut, thinking (from scripture and his research) that aliens have already invaded us.

But here's my favorite part of one of the bios I read:

Chuck Missler is an extremely intelligent man who loves the Lord and has a heart to serve God and others. The only possible negative thing that can be said about Chuck is that he tends to speak slightly above the comprehension of most people. One woman was overheard commenting, "I have no idea what Chuck is talking about, but he must be right."

I worry about the people who think that Chuck is speaking above them.

Another popular evolution-debunking video stars Kirk Cameron (who doesn't say much) and this guy (ray Comfort).  Rather than debunk science, they simply say that God must have created everything because the banana is so utilitarian.  They call the banana (no, I'm not making this up) "The Atheist's Nightmare".

My question is this: If the banana is so perfect in design that only God could have created it, then why aren't all fruits and vegetables shaped like a banana?  Are they less than perfect?  And if so, why did God design them?

But there's an even greater flaw with this video -- bananas like the one he is holding are domesticated fruits.  In other words, they were designed -- agriculturally engineered -- by man over the course of many centuries:

The War On Reality In Our Schools

From the DesMoinesRegister.com:

A community college instructor in Red Oak claims he was fired after he told his students that the biblical story of Adam and Eve should not be literally interpreted.

Steve Bitterman, 60, said officials at Southwestern Community College sided with a handful of students who threatened legal action over his remarks in a western civilization class Tuesday. He said he was fired Thursday.

“I’m just a little bit shocked myself that a college in good standing would back up students who insist that people who have been through college and have a master’s degree, a couple actually, have to teach that there were such things as talking snakes or lose their job,” Bitterman said.

Sarah Smith, director of the school’s Red Oak campus, declined to comment Friday on Bitterman’s employment status. The school’s president, Barbara Crittenden, said Bitterman taught one course at Southwest. She would not comment, however, on his claim that he was fired over the Bible reference, saying it was a personnel issue.

“I can assure you that the college understands our employees’ free-speech rights,” she said. “There was no action taken that violated the First Amendment.”

Well, of course it's a violation of the First Amendment.  If a teacher is fired from a public institution because he suggested that the Bible is not the literal truth, then that is a textbook 1st Amendment violation.

It gets worse though.  Not only are teachers being ousted for suggesting that the Bible is not the literal scientific truth, but tax dollars are being earmarked to go toward the promotion of religion -- to the detriment of science -- at public colleges and institutions:

Louisiana Republican Sen. David Vitter earmarked $100,000 for a group, headed by former political associates, that opposes teaching evolution in schools.

The money is set aside for the Louisiana Family Forum in the labor, health and education financing bill for fiscal 2008, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported Sunday. The group is being paid “to develop a plan to promote better science education.”

The forum is slated to use the funds to write a report on ways to improve science education in Louisiana, but critics say support for the group -- which once produced a “battle plan” to fight the idea of evolution -- is really support for religious teaching in public schools.

Two of the group’s leaders were also paid as consultants to Vitter’s 2005 Senate campaign, the newspaper said, and the group has been one of the senator’s strongest proponents in Louisiana, supporting him even when he admitted recently he was the customer of a call-girl service.

Vitter defended the move, saying it will help teachers offer students a variety of views on “controversial topics” like life science and global warming.

The bill is still pending in the Senate.

And yes, that's the same pro-life, pro-family Senator Vitter who frequented hookers.

How To Deal With Autistic And Retarded Kids? Tase Them

I wish I was this was a joke:

Every time [Rob] woke from this dream, it took him a few moments to remember that he was in his own bed, that there weren't electrodes locked to his skin, that he wasn't about to be shocked. It was no mystery where this recurring nightmare came from—not A Clockwork Orange or 1984, but the years he spent confined in America's most controversial "behavior modification" facility.

In 1999, when Rob was 13, his parents sent him to the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center, located in Canton, Massachusetts, 20 miles outside Boston. The facility, which calls itself a "special needs school," takes in all kinds of troubled kids—severely autistic, mentally retarded, schizophrenic, bipolar, emotionally disturbed—and attempts to change their behavior with a complex system of rewards and punishments, including painful electric shocks to the torso and limbs. Of the 234 current residents, about half are wired to receive shocks, including some as young as nine or ten.

Read the full expose at Mother Jones.

Sex Education For Kindergarteners

Our national media is so bad.  I mean, it is atrociously bad.

Check out this ABC News headline: Sex Ed for Kindergarteners 'Right Thing to Do,' Says Obama

The story begins:

ABC News' Teddy Davis and Lindsey Ellerson Report: Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., told Planned Parenthood Tuesday that sex education for kindergarteners, as long as it is "age-appropriate," is "the right thing to do."

Now, if you look at that, you would think that Obama is thinking we should talk about erections and fallopian tubes and zygotes and, you know, intercourse -- to five year olds.

Naturally, headlines like that serve as red meat for the right wing.  For example, Matt Margolis of GOP Bloggers writes:

This is absurd. There is no reason why we need the schools to teach kids that are five years old about something that should be left to the parents. What's even scarier is that he told Planned Parenthood that sex education for kindergartners is "the right thing to do" as long as it is "age-appropriate." Oh yeah? And who gets to decide what is "age-appropriate?"

Gateway Pundit adds:

Of course, Barak has no idea how insulting his remarks are as he goes on about how six-year-olds can benefit from sex education.

Then there's Right Wing News: "Obama Is A Radical Liberal Who Wants To Expose Kindergartners To Sex And Force You To Pay For Abortions"

UPDATE:  Now, Mitt Romney is lating into Obama about this:

You get the idea.

But, as is usually the case, you have to go deep into the story to realize that there is far LESS to the story than it appears:

When Obama's campaign was asked by ABC News to explain what kind of sex education Obama considers "age appropriate" for kindergarteners, the Obama campaign pointed to an Oct. 6, 2004 story from the Daily Herald in which Obama had "moved to clarify" in his Senate campaign that he "does not support teaching explicit sex education to children in kindergarten. . . The legislation in question was a state Senate measure last year that aimed to update Illinois' sex education standards with 'medically accurate' information . . . 'Nobody's suggesting that kindergartners are going to be getting information about sex in the way that we think about it,' Obama said. 'If they ask a teacher 'where do babies come from,' that providing information that the fact is that it's not a stork is probably not an unhealthy thing. Although again, that's going to be determined on a case by case basis by local communities and local school boards.'"

In addition to local schools informing kindergarteners that babies do not come from the stork, the state legislation Obama supported in Illinois, which contained an "opt out" provision for parents, also envisioned teaching kindergarteners about "inappropriate touching," according to Obama's presidential campaign. Despite Obama's support, the legislation was not enacted.

I acknowledge that there is room for reasonable disagreement about the level of "sex education" you give to children (and who gives it), but Barack Obama’s "sex education" suggestion merely amounts to:

1. Warning kids about what constitutes a “bad touch”
2. Telling kids that babies grow inside mommies, and are made by mommies and daddies — but not explaining exactly how they’re made, since that’s not really relevant
3. Allowing parents to determine whether or not their kids should think the stork brings children

Where is the objection in any of that?

So what is the purpose of that headline -- "Sex Ed for Kindergarteners 'Right Thing to Do,' Says Obama" -- other than to enflame a controversy where virtually little exists?

UPDATE:  Kudos to Pat Robertson's people for, you know, actually getting what Obama was saying.  From the CBN website:

So, at this point at least, what Obama is referring to is teaching five year olds about inappropriate touching. The Obama campaign also tells The Brody File that parents would be able to opt out. As for further details, the touching aspect seems to be the main idea here. Obama doesn't want to hand out condoms to five year olds. He doesn't want cucumber demonstrations as part of show and tell. The legitimate reasonable discussion here is whether the federal government and/or local school boards should get involved in providing these five year olds information about inappropriate touching or should it be left up to families only.

Still, The Romney campaign is already ripping Barack Obama. The campaign is sending out this You Tube video where Mitt Romney spoke about this last night in a Colorado Springs speech....

I must say that Romney's comments suggesting that Obama wants to teach sex education to kindergarteners is a little misleading. Because he didn't put in the proper context, many in the audience probably left thinking that Obama is ok with the condoms and cucumber approach.

Also, Misty at Shakesville adds:

I think certain adults get all freaked about it because sex = “naughty” or “dirty” fun. Hubba-hubba and all that. But kids don’t think of it that way and won’t associate all the “adultness” or “naughty fun” with it just by the simple explanation of how sex and the body work to “make a baby”. The truth of the matter is, it’s as non-sexy and non-a big deal as explaining digestion or breathing. It just simply IS.

Sounds right to me.

Sex Scandal (And Other Silliness) At Creation Museum

Geez.  It's only been open a couple of weeks....

The man who plays Adam in a video aired at a Bible-based creationist museum has led a different life outside the Garden of Eden, flaunting his sexual exploits online and modeling for a clothing line that promotes free love.

After learning about his activities Thursday, the Creation Museum in Kentucky pulled the 40-second video in which he appears.

"We are currently investigating the veracity of these serious claims of his participation in projects that don't align with the biblical standards and moral code upon which the ministry was founded," Answers for Genesis spokesman Mark Looy said in a written statement.

The actor, Eric Linden, owns a graphic Web site called Bedroom Acrobat, where he has been pictured, smiling alongside a drag queen, in a T-shirt brandishing the site's sexually suggestive logo. The Web site, which has a network of members, allows users to post explicit stories and photos.

He also sells clothing for SFX International, whose initials appear on clothing to spell "SEX" from afar. It promotes "free love,""pleasure" and "thrillz."

God has a sense of humor.

By the way, here's a nice review of the Creation Museum.  Some snippets:

To begin with, the museum presents real science alongside its version; an aviary containing finches is the first thing to greet you as you began your tour. The finches were a profound influence on Darwin and his theory of natural selection and are still studied by evolutionary biologists today. Another display contained poison frogs. This was of particular interest to me, since they claim the reason poison frogs aren't poisonous in captivity is due to the Almighty. I'm fairly sure it's due to the lack of poisonous mites in their diet, but there you go.

The reviewer here is mistakenly applying things like facts, those pesky things designed by atheists to confuse people.

Surprisingly, I didn't get much of a Flintstones vibe. I was expecting many more displays with Adam and Eve and T. Rex, whom we learn was a vegetarian in the days of yore, but with a couple of exceptions, dinosaurs and humans were separated by at least a few feet.

Well, of course.  Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs to church every Sunday, didn't you know that?  And to subtlly prove that point (or some point anyways), the Creation Museum has this:

By the way, did you know that all dinosaurs -- ALL of them -- were vegetarians?  It's true!

 

See?  Dinosaurs were all vegetarians because this plaque says that the Bible says so!  Take that, Darwin!

That's why Eve could hangout with this deadly cuddly velociraptor, whom she probably named "Dino":

Faith is no excuse for ignorance.  (Gotta love Eve's modest Victorian-era clothes, by the way.)

Where Kangaroos Came From

How did kangaroos, indiginous to Australia only, survive the Great Flood depicted in the Bible?  Were they on Noah's Ark?

Fortunately, Conservapedia (the conservative alternative to wikipedia) has the answer:

Their entry on kangaroos, for instance, says that, "like all modern animals . . . kangaroos are the descendants of the two founding members of the modern kangaroo baramin that were taken aboard Noah's Ark prior to the Great Flood."

You may not recognize the word "baramin." It's a 20th-century creationist neologism that refers to the species God placed on earth during Creation Week.

***

"After the Flood, these kangaroos bred from the Ark passengers migrated to Australia. There is debate whether this migration happened over land with lower sea levels during the post-flood ice age, or before the supercontinent of Pangea broke apart, or if they rafted on mats of vegetation torn up by the receding flood waters."

Who knew?

Who knew indeed.  Somehow, I love the image of an armada of kangaroos traveling on grass mats from Mount Ararat (in Turkey) to Australia, a sea journey of over 8,000 miles.  It must have taken a lot of discipline for those kangaroos not to eat their rafts.

RELATED:  The newly-opened Creation Museum is looking for a geologist.  To get the job, you have to, among other things, adhere to their Statement of Faith:

No apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the Scriptural record.

Apparently, an actual degree in geology is only "preferred".

80th Annual (Not Putnam County) Spelling Bee

Starts today.  Semifinals air on ESPN tomorrow from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm.  Final round airs on primetime ABC -- 8:00 to 10:00 pm -- tomorrow night.  If you get a chance to see it -- even if it's for ten minutes -- do so.  These kids are amazing, and the competition is nail-biting. 

Here's some stats from the Scripps National Spelling Bee website:

Spellers:
286
This is the greatest number of spellers in the history of the event.

Gender:
139 boys (48.6%) and 147 girls (51.4%)
This year's gender statistics are typical of previous years' gender statistics.

Age:
11 ten-year-olds (3.84%)
28 eleven-year-olds (9.79%)
66 twelve-year-olds (23.1%)
105 thirteen-year-olds (36.71%)
75 fourteen-year-olds (26.22%)
1 fifteen-year-old (.34%)
This year's age statistics are typical of previous years' age statistics.

Grade:
2 fourth graders (.7%)
23 fifth graders (8.04%)
36 sixth graders (12.6%)
88 seventh graders (30.76%)
137 eighth graders (47.9%)
This year's grade statistics are typical of previous years' grade statistics.

School Type:
192 public (67.13%)
38 private (13.29%)
36 home (12.59%)
14 parochial (4.9%)
5 charter (1.75%)
1 virtual (.34%)
Of last year's 274 spellers, 195 were public-schooled, 37 were home-schooled, 26 were private-schooled, 13 were parochial-schooled, and 3 were charter-schooled.

Siblings:
Forty (40) spellers are only children. The remaining 246 spellers have 243 sisters and 254 brothers among them. Spellers 64 and 273 are fraternal twins, and Speller 4 is an identical twin.
This year's siblings statistics are typical of previous years' siblings statistics.

Family Ties:
19 spellers have at least one relative (mother, brother, sister, uncle, or cousin) who has competed in previous national finals. They are spellers 7, 17, 84, 87, 90, 96, 121, 122, 126, 134, 145, 153, 197, 199, 206, 225, 226, 240, and 254.
This year's family ties statistics are typical of previous years' family ties statistics.

Dumb

Very very dumb:

During the last night of the trip, staff members convinced the 69 students that there was a gunman on the loose. They were told to lie on the floor or hide underneath tables and stay quiet. A teacher, disguised in a hooded sweat shirt, even pulled on a locked door.

After the lights went out, about 20 kids started to cry, 11-year-old Shay Naylor said.

"I was like, 'Oh My God,' " she said. "At first I thought I was going to die. We flipped out."

Kirk Cameron Should Return To Acting

Bad as he was, at least he was a better actor than he is a logician.

Here's Kirk's powerful scientific argument to prove the existence of God:

“Darwin said in order to prove evolution, which is the #1 alternative to God, you’ve gotta be able to prove transitional forms. One animal transitioning into another. And all through the fossil record and life, we don’t find one of these…a croco-duck.”

Hey, Kirk... why don't you hold up an actual photograph of God?  What?  You don't have one?

You see, Kirk is displaying his own ignorance of what evolution is, in order to strike it down as an untenable theory.  No scientist -- ever -- has suggested that transitional forms involve the melding of two present-day animals from entirely different species. 

There are, however, many fossil records of animals that have features of both reptiles and birds -- the Archaeopteryx, for example, was a bird, which had many features of reptiles, including fused trunk vertebrae, teeth instead of a bill, pneumatic bones, and so on.  Furthermore, on a molecular level, today's crocodile has more in common with a chicken than it does a viper.

Sorry, Kirk, but the facts are more convincing than your Photoshop skills and amateurish logic.

Kirk's other argument boiled down to this: "Hey, I see a painting, so I know there must be a painter.  I see how complex the human body is, I know there must be a designer."

It's one of those mindless circular arguments built on the foundation of one's own ignorance -- i.e. -- "since everything I know has a designer, then man must have a designer".  In other words, I'm ignorant about what I know, so I'll extrapolate that ignorance to everything else."

Well, Kirk.  Here's a relatively simple explanation (in two parts) of not only how it could happen -- but how it actually did happen -- without a designer (or, if you prefer, with a designer who pulled the strings of evolution):

Now go away, Kirk.

A Hopeful Sign

Evolution Sunday:

Flocks of the Christian faithful in the US will this Sunday hold special services celebrating Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. The idea is to stand up to creationism, which claims the biblical account of creation is literally true, and which is increasingly being promoted under the guise of "intelligent design". Proponents of ID say the universe is so complex it must have been created by some unnamed designer.

Support for "Evolution Sunday" has grown 13 per cent to 530 congregations this year, from the 467 that celebrated the inaugural event last year. Organisers see it as increasing proof that Christians are comfortable with evolution.

For far too long, strident voices, in the name of Christianity, have been claiming that people must choose between religion and modern science," says Michael Zimmerman, founder of Evolution Sunday and dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Butler University in Indianapolis. "We're saying you can have your faith, and you can also have science."

Zimmerman and his backers believe the biblical account of creation is allegorical. "Creationists fear that if you believe evolution, you're an atheist," he says. But for Zimmerman, attempts to try and "ratify God's existence" through intelligent design signify lack of faith. "If you have enough faith, you don't need science to prove God exists, and science can't prove this anyway," he says.

The event was actually yesterday.  Here's another good article.

Oops

UNC messed up:

CHAPEL HILL, North Carolina (AP) -- An admissions department e-mail sent from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill congratulated 2,700 prospective freshmen this week on their acceptance to the school.

The problem is that none of the applicants have been admitted. They won't start finding out until March whether they've made the cut.

"We deeply regret this disappointment, which we know is compounded by the stress and anxiety that students experience as a result of the admissions process," Stephen Farmer, the school's director of undergraduate admissions, said in a news release.

Farmer said two employees accidentally sent the e-mail Tuesday. It began, "Congratulations again on your admission to the University."

The e-mail was intended to request midyear grades from high school students who already have been accepted to the school.

Admissions officials have sent follow-up e-mails apologizing for the error. They have also e-mailed admissions counselors around the nation to explain the mistake.

About 20,000 people apply each year to UNC Chapel Hill, and the school enrolls about 3,800 new freshmen.