And the wise shaman cured all the parasitical infections... Hey you. Yeah, you. Are you one of those tight-asses who prefers indoor, hygienic plumbing and shit-free floors? Yeah, me too. Wanna join my club for the promotion of the Evil Empire of Western Parenting?
OK, I'm slow; the diaperless baby story has been all over the place, but I just saw it at Iain Murray's. As one of his commenters remarked: "Some people's ability to sanitize their images of nature are truly amazing". True, but there's something pathological in a willed ignorance of the real purpose behind sequestering human waste. It occurs to me that these people have a psychological disorder comparable to religious ascetics and penitents who've gone off the deep end in their compulsive quest to be worthier than the rest of us fallen mortals, and to make sure we know all about their sanctity. "What can I do next to mortify myself and display my purity and holiness? Live on rice and soybeans? Eat scabs? Refrain from diapering my babies?"
Ninth declines en banc review. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled against reviewing February's decision in favor of the scientist plaintiffs in the Kennewick Man case.
I assume that the tribes will now appeal to the Supreme Court.
UPDATE: The Court opinion can be found here and the plaintiffs' attorneys' statement here.
One soporific Saturday afternoon... "'It took me a long time to beat the fishmonger down to twenty drachmae'".
For explanation go to Andrea's (who has it via Emily via Norm via Anne via via via...) Yeah, I know, I'm not following the rules.
Latest. Appellants' petition to the 9th Circuit for a rehearing of the K-man case is now available online. More later.
Balancing the unbalanced. Is there a market for commercial "liberal radio"? Probably not. Is there a market for commerical liberal rant radio? From the sound of it, there just might be - not just for the insane True Believers at the far left end of the spectrum, but for people like me, who, unhappy with the available selection of music, have been known to seek out and set our car radio buttons for the most wacko stations, for the entertainment value. (And I don't mean Limbaugh, whom I don't get on any level - the few times I've listened he was rambling, disorganized and boring.)
At present these stations pile up on the right end of the spectrum. But if what Jane and Cadeusus are reporting is representative, Air America has potential, baby. If that potential is fulfilled, I can set it up to toggle with my preffered righto station, for maximum comic effect. (I toggle with NPR right now, but that doesn't quite deliver the symmetrical, harmonious effect I'm looking for.)
I knew I was going to like this blog. They've only been up for four days, but already have a Kennewick Man post up, from a "Kennewick-enabled" contributor. (Contributor Timothy Sandefur had filed an amicus curiae brief supporting the scientists in the Kennewick case, on behalf of the Pacific Legal Foundation.)
(More K-Man.)
Addendum: The same contributor, along with commenter "Nick" (fourth comment down) have some interesting and useful ruminations on the First Amendment, science, and freedom of religion. I found it helpful for clarifying and extending my own recent fuzzy ramblings on the issue.
And speaking of new blogs - Another of the Children of the Corn emerges.
New blog project. Ed Brayton of Dispatches from the Culture Wars announces a new blog baby, The Panda's Thumb:
The Panda's Thumb is a group blog that will focus primarily on explaining the theory of evolution, critiquing the claims of the anti-evolution lobby, and defending the integrity of science education in America and around the world. [...]The Panda's Thumb is a brand new project. I've spent most of today tweaking the templates and setting up the page. But keep your eye on that page over the next few weeks and I promise that you will learn a great deal about this very important issue. It is my goal to make The Panda's Thumb the most read science blog in the world, and to do for science what the Volokh Conspiracy does for law, which is bring together some of the finest minds in the field to share their expertise on an area where the public is often confused and misled.
Best of luck.
Kennewick en banc petition. The four tribes involved in the Kennewick Man case (Nez Perce, Umatilla, Yakama and Colville) have filed a petition for a rehearing:
The U.S. Justice Department, a defendant in the lawsuit filed by eight anthropologists seeking to study the skeleton, did not ask the appeals court for a rehearing. The agency still has about six weeks to decide whether to appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court."No determination has been made as to whether such an appeal will be filed," said Blain Rethmeier, a Justice Department spokesman.
More detail here, and commentary here, wherein please note:
We are frequently asked - Who's paying for all this litigation? The answer is: tax dollars pay for the defendant agencies' legal time and expenses. However, the scientists' attorneys continue to work without compensation and to pay for litgation expenses. With your generous help, Friends of America's Past has helped cover a portion of these out-of-pocket expenses. We are grateful for your help as the legal expenses escalate.
(There's a paypal button near the bottom of the Friends of America's Past main page.)
Flashy. Very nice photo of something I want to behold before I die, but probably won't.
New news or no? Anybody out there follow the Polish press or up on Poland? Just curious about the context and timing of Kwasniewski's statements re being misled about WMD, and the future status of Polish troops in Iraq. Some of the articles I googled up are slightly contradictory on the latter point - and I also wonder if Kwasniewski has been expressing these concerns all along but has only had them reported in the English-language press post-Madrid.
UPDATE: After posting the above questions I thought to ask the suave and mysterious ex-Bloggerfeller if he had any thoughts on what he might have seen in the Polish press. He very kindly tracked down and translated a couple of pertinent articles that addresed my curiosity. (Is that service, or what?). First, from Thursday's Gazeta Wyborcza:
"Poland was misled regarding the presence of WMDs in Iraq," said President Aleksander Kwasniewski on Thursday at a meeting with journalists."I recognize that Iraq today, without Saddam Hussein, is indeed better off than with Saddam Hussein, but obviously I'm also uncomfortable that we were misled by the information about WMDs," said the president.
That Iraq had WMDs ready to use was one of the arguments put forward by the United States and Great Britain for the war with Iraq. Until now Poland has not cast any doubts on these arguments. No such weapons have been found in Iraq- AFP reminds us.
However the president stated that withdrawing Polish soldiers from the Iraqi coalition would make no sense.
"We're in mid-March and I ask the question: if withdrawing troops meant the return of war, ethnic cleansing, aggression against neighbouring countries, what would be the sense in such a withdrawal?" he said.
"If we were to protest against the excessive role of the United States in world politics and at the same time we were to withdraw our soldiers knowing they would be replaced by American soldiers, what sense would that make?" continued Kwasniewski.
During a visit to Fort Campbell in Kentucky US President George W. Bush on Thursday refused to comment on President Kwasniewski's statement- reported CNN.
Meanwhile American State Department spokesman Adam Ereli stated on Thursday that Washington did not believe that Poland was starting to waver.
"We have no reason for any questions or doubts about the unstinting support of Poland for the mission in Iraq"- the State Department spokesman said. "It's not something we're worried about"- he added.
"Only a few days ago the Poles made it clearly understood that they are standing alongside us in our efforts to bring stability, prosperity and democracy to Iraq" - stated the spokesman.
Relations between Washington and Warsaw, one of the United States' closest allies, not only in Iraq, but also in Eastern Europe and NATO, are "close and strong"- added Adam Ereli.
At the same time he claimed that not finding WMDs was a "surprise" for the United States themselves and considered that Iraq nevertheless had the "intention and the ability" to produce them.
Poland is in command of a multinational division of about 9000 in the central-southern stabilisation zone in Iraq. 1300 of them are Spaniards, whose withdrawal at the end of June has been announced by the future socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. There is every indication that Spain's lead will be followed by the Latin American countries which make up the Plus Ultra brigade with her.
According to AFP, Kwasniewski said that the Spanish socialists from the PSOE party, who won the parliamentary elections on 14 March, had come out against the war in Iraq "because their success in the elections had been highly unlikely."
He added he was "very disappointed" and "disillusioned" by the announcements from the Socialist leader Zapatero about withdrawing Spaniards from Iraq.
"We cannot change our stabilisation mission in Iraq into a destabilisation mission," stressed Kwasniewski. "We'll see what the Spanish government says but passivity gets us nowhere."
Kwasniewski once more stated that Poland would like increased NATO involvement in Iraq.
Today he sent along another translation of an article from Friday's edition of the same paper, with the following comment:
I think the whole issue is cleared up in the article below (read the last few paragraphs in particular). It appears the confusion was the result of: (a) an inadequate translation (from Polish to French to English) which exaggerated Kwasniewski's statement, changing "misled" into "taken for a ride"; (b) misinterpreting Kwasniewski's statement that Polish troops might be withdrawn from Iraq in early rather than mid 2005 by omitting the condition "only if the situation was stable enough to allow this". (NB I've given Wolfowitz and Rice's in the original English, but the rest is my translation).
Translation:
Bush wants to speak to Kwasniewski but Rice isn't worried:On Friday President George W. Bush is going to have a conversation with President Aleksander Kwasniewski - said the "Washington Post", which also said that the US administration was disturbed by Thursday's statement by the Polish president that Poland was "misled" regarding Iraqi WMDs.
The chancellery of the Polish president said that on Friday at 14.00 there will be a briefing in the Presidential Palace after a telephone conversation between Kwasniewski and Bush.
In a CNN interview Bush's national security adviser Condoleeza Rice stated she had spoken with the Poles and "they think they were a bit misinterpreted here, because there's been no stronger ally in this than the Poles."
However the US viceminister of defence Paul Wolfowitz questioned President Kwasniewski's description that he was "misled by information about WMDs."
"I use the word 'misled' when somebody knows a fact and tries to persuade you of a different fact. When somebody tells you their best estimate of a situation and it turns out to be wrong, that's life. That happens often", said Wolfowitz in a television interview.
Meanwhile the chancellery of the Polish president issued an announcement around midnight on Thursday to counter the "commentaries and overinterpretations surrounding the statement of the Polish president during his meeting with the press on the 18th of this month."
The announcement stressed that the "essence of the statement and its main premise" was "a renewed presentation of the motives and a justification of the appropriateness of Polish engagement in the stabilisation process and fostering Iraqi democracy."
Kwasniewski's words were also quoted in the announcement: "Iraq today, without Saddam Hussein, is indeed a better Iraq than it was with Saddam Hussein."
The announcement adds that "the president of the Polish Republic recalls that Saddam Hussein did try to create the impression that he had WMDs and was capable of using them, which was the basic reason for undertaking the mission in Iraq."
Kwasniewski's statement on Thursday caused great commotion in the USA. It was reported in the headlines in newspapers, radio and television.
Kwasniewski's statement became the subject of an opinion piece in the "New York Times" from the pen of Paul Krugman who cited it as an example of the results of the breakdown in the USA's credibility because no WMDs had been found in Iraq.
The uproar over the Polish president's statement arose partly because it arrived after going through two translations. The Americans took it from the French press service AFP and translated Kwasniewski's words as "we were taken for a ride", which literally means "nabrano nas" [instead of "Polska byla zwodzona"="Poland was misled" - blogger's note].
It was this, stronger version of Kwasniewski's statement that Krugman quotes, as well as the American author of an e-mail to the office of PAP in Washington, who wrote: "If the Poles are saying we took them for a ride, let them take their troops out of Iraq. We don't want them alongside our brave soldiers."
On Thursday the State Department spokesman Adam Ereli, asked to comment on Kwasniewski's words, replied that the American government had "had no signals" that Poland was going to withdraw her military support for the USA in Iraq.
However some people have drawn attention to another statement by the Polish president which said that Poland might withdraw her troops from Iraq at the beginning of 2005 if the situation in the country allowed. The media recalled that previously the Polish government spoke of withdrawing troops only in the middle of next year.
On Thursday a fax arrived at the Polish embassy in Washington, the author of which, Mark I. Klein - ignoring the conditional nature of Kwasniewski's declaration- wrote: "I was very disillusioned when I read President Kwasniewski's criticism of the war in Iraq and his plans for a premature withdrawal of Polish divisions. Considering what America did for Poland and Europe during World War Two and after, it's clear that we have no real friends on this continent."
Thanks again to Mr. Cassian the erstwhile C. Bloggerfeller for his amiable translation labors.
Related commentary here.
Found wandering in Ultima Blogspotistan... Celebrity cliché death match. And other things. In case you're not up on where Mr. Bloggerfeller eventually washed up. (In several pieces, by the way.)
Damn these cloudy skies. Thanks to Jim Miller for the reminder: there's gonna be some mighty fine planet-watchin' available later this month. (On clear nights here, Jupiter and Venus have already been shining with unusual brilliance. Lovely.)
Infra dig-ging. It might, theoretically, be a wise move to attempt to peruade the American public that George W. Bush's unpopularity abroad is detrimental to U.S. interests. If so, then there must be a way to get this point across while maintaining an image of intelligence and maturity. Instead, in response to Colin Powell's call for John Kerry put up or shut up on the issue of Kerry's alleged great support among foreign leaders, Mr. Kerry has opted for the "I have a lot of supporters in email" Usenettian dweeb approach. The original assertion was foolish - utterly unnecessary to making the point I assume Mr. Kerry wanted to make. The response to what should have been foreseen as the obvious rejoinder has been sillier still.
Now I recognize that this is not a seamless analogy - the Usenet dweeb's unnamed email supporters are imaginary, while there are no doubt many world leaders who would feel relief at the election of Mr. Kerry. (Whether such leaders' approbation is likely to cut any ice with the public is of course open to question.) But the principle is the same. It is childish to boast of the existence of supporters one cannot name.
[Kerry] also wouldn't say at what level he had spoken with officials. "I'm not going to play that game," said Kerry, who said private conversations should stay that way.
Quite right that private conversations should remain private. Alluding to private conversations removes them from the realm of the private. You're already playing that game, Mr. Kerry.
My God, we have almost eight more months of this. Please please please - 14 year olds are not allowed to vote yet. There is no need to pitch Presidential campaigns to them.
"Congratulations to the terrorists." John of Iberian Notes on the results of the Spanish election.
Urban legends of science. I recently noted one commonly, confidently asserted example of such in a series of blog comments, so as a public service I will urge any of you out there who are sure that "all human embryos start out female" to please consult an embryology text. I suppose it's an honest confusion about the nature of primordial embryonic tissue and the meaning of a phrase like "default developmental path", but dude, you were never a chick.
I note this bit of misinformation not because it's a sample of egregious, snicker-worthy scientific illiteracy in itself, but because of the number of times I've seen this faux-fact used as the foundation of (often highly amusing) speculative forays into various aspects of human psychology. (It'd be interesting to see how many more of these are out there - common but erroneous notions held by reasonably scientifically literate folks. I know I've come across others - which I can't remember right now - and no doubt hold a few of my own.)
And you'd damn well better be able to come up with a better excuse than this for your protracted absence, young man.
Words and the unwise. "...advanced logic and rhetoric courses are available on most college campuses. Just sayin'."
Big Arm Woman makes, much more succintly and amusingly than I was fittin' to, a point about crappy argumentation. The post is relevant to debate over other issues du jour. (Regarding which I note that many people seem to have forgotten Lincoln's admonition about attempting to slander a man into voting for you. But that's another post.)
This is not my beautiful keyboard. This is not my beautiful blogging software. Hmm, where was I? Before I wandered off for a few weeks and forgot the way back to my blog's editing page. (And my mailbox. Apologies.) Ah yes, I was thinking about blathering on some more on the topic of anti-science, right and left. Eh, I'll clean out the drafts' file sooner or later. I do want to mull over and comment further on some of blogger-to-the-right-of-me Peter Sean Bradley's musings on the subject.
In passing I'll note that, unlike Peter Sean, who's more disturbed by left-wing irrationalism, I'm not sure which brand of anti-science is more pernicious on the whole. I tend, as I think most people do, to get riled up by what gets closest to topics nearest and dearest to me. I do not, however, hold that a view is more, or uniquely, dangerous merely by virtue of its arising from religious conviction. I get the impression listening to some people that they believe, for example, that creationists/intelligent designers are bad news not because they've got their biology all wrong and are confused about the nature and purview of science, and can therefore reasonably be accused of attempting to foist personal religious beliefs on other citizens. Rather, they are wrong and uniquely dangerous merely by virtue of their beliefs and actions being religiously grounded or motivated. (Please note the distinction.) Now, I happen to believe that promoters of ID are disingenuous about their religious agenda, and I see nothing wrong with calling them on it. But an equally insidious secular anti-science agenda would smell just as bad.
Meanwhile I'll also point you to a topically-related post of blogger-to-the-left-of-me (I think) Charles Murtaugh. As an aside, I note that Charles demonstrates an admirable trait - the ability to be passionate in views yet dispassionate in view. In exasperated response to "the Bush administration's ongoing, unprecedented assault on science", he writes: "Once upon a time I would have tried to point out some exculpatory counterarguments on behalf of the Bush administration -- and believe me, there are some pretty feeble entries in the report that Kevin [Drum] cites -- but I'm not really interested in being 'fair and balanced' anymore." Alas for intent, the man can't help himself - even in the throes of honest outrage, his statement rejecting fairness and balance is...pretty damned fair-minded. And his very next post is a report on anti-science from the left. (I'll say the same for Peter Sean. Tsk. Where's purblind partisan hackery when you need it?)
Drive-by quickie rant: Poring over the K-man decision and related news articles this splendid winter morning, I came across a howler in a tossed-off comment in an editorial that I just can't let slide (emphasis mine):
Now the scientists have won again.It may be beside the point, but all three judges were appointed by Democrats. They are Ronald M. Gould of Seattle; Susan P. Graber of Portland, both appointed by President Clinton; and Ruggero Aldisert, a senior judge from Pittsburgh now in his mid-80s and originally appointed to the Third Court of Appeals by President Clinton.
These three had no trouble coming to a sensible decision in this case. The decision shows they read the statute and applied its plain language to the case at hand.
And a fine sensible decision it was, too. But yes, the riff on the source of the judges' appointments is beyond "beside the point". The writer, Mr. Hasso Hering, is described as having followed the case from the beginning, and does mention the word "Babbitt", so he must be aware that Interior's nose-thumbing at science, law, and common-sense, and the Corps of Engineers over-reach, took place squarely under the auspices of a Democratic administration. Legislation to clarify NAGPRA in the interests of science, and, more specifically, to preserve the Kennewick site from burial by the Corps, was introduced by Republicans and opposed by the Clinton administration. In the case of site-preservation, Congressional intent was ignored and the site buried. The present administration is culpable in that Interior and Justice have carried over the policies of the previous administration. (The poor quality of their efforts in defending Babbitt's decision suggests a certain indifference. Let's see if and how they plan to appeal.) Here are a few pertinent links: 1, 2, 3, 4. (Sorry - free registration required.)
Folks, there's plenty of nonsense on both right and left to poke sticks at, plenty for everybody, so there's no need to pretend that those who take up the case against the scientists, on this and related issues, don't come predominately from the left. They do. (This fact, note, says nothing about the affiliation of the defenders of the scientists.) I'd say the decision could properly be described as a victory for liberalism (not Liberalism USA c. 2003) over obscurantism. To try to spin it, however off-handedly, as a victory for Democratic enlightenment over an implied conservative obstructionism is just preposterous.
Time-lines of events and news items can be found here and here.
Life and Honour. Of the man behind Voltaire's "pour encourager les autres", only the vaguest notion slumped somewhere in my swampier cerebral regions. Solent's Historical Reclamation and Rehabilitation Services to the rescue once again.
Fortitude, or masochism? British Spin gamely endures primary coverage to discover the awful truth - CNN is entirely devoid of content. Wonder if they broke away to give him the latest on the Laci Peterson case? Re the Dean-stomping he noted: "This might have been purely ideological- but it didn't feel like it. It felt like Heathers." Sounds like our CNN. (via Harry's Place.)
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Decides in Favor of Scientists in Kennewick Man Case. Just got the alert and downloaded the decision; haven't had a chance to read it yet.
But you know I'm a happy blogger.
You also know this is probably going to be appealed to the Supreme Court.
More later.
Addendum: Also yet unread, a link to the pdf download of a West Virginia Law Review article: "Time for a Change? The Kennewick Man Case and its Implications for the Future of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act".
The morning snicker. This is too...hmmm...funny not to pass around. Credit for the last two links in the chain that got me there goes here and here:
Mr Lieberman, the grandson of immigrants, arrived from a state school, probably a beneficiary of an unofficial 10 per cent quota of places for Jews that Yale then operated.
(It occurs to me that if you're not American you might not get why that's snicker-genic. Just follow the link.)
Knowing your place. Lots of interesting and informative posts, as usual, over at Medpundit, including one that might intrigue you if you are, or live with, a migraineur.
In reference to other types of headaches, there is this amusing exchange:
And it ended with a new patient whose husband has taken control of her medical management. I know this, because he told me up front that he has. He credits himself with saving her life twice from incompetent doctors. (I'm just the latest in a long line.) At any rate he was explaining to me what tests I should do to investigate a recent episode of medial rectus palsy. He's convinced that it was caused by the same condition he has.Husband: Surely, you've heard of PTO.
Me: Ummm. No, I haven't.
Husband: Unbelievable. It's very common medical terminology. (Then, very slowly, as if talking to a person of limited intelligence or limited English) It. Stands. For. Patent. Foramen. Ovale.
Me: Isn't that PFO?
He didn't miss a beat, but launched into a condescending explanation of the physiology of patent foramen ovale. Who does he think he is? I'm the doctor. I'm supposed to play the role of the arrogant ass who doesn't listen.
UPDATE: Needless to say, permalinks don't work. Go to main page and scroll down to "Undervalued Headaches" (2/2/2004 04:53:51 AM) and "Job Satisfaction" (1/30/2004 06:03:25 PM).
i, curmudgeon. Insufferable affectation #53: eschewing the use of upper-case letters. Impresses the reader in the same way that dotting an i or j with a heart or a smiley face does. The former, oddly, is widely practiced by male-type persons, while the latter, as we know, is generally restricted to perky teenage girls. People, why do you do this? It's really grating.
I'll let it slide if you can persuade me that it's the result, say, of your having taught yourself how to type on a keyboard with a broken shift-key, and that now your habits are too ingrained to change, or you are just too old to learn new tricks.
#54: psychotic restriction of use of punctuation symbols to ellipses. Less common than, but significantly correlated with, the above transgressions.
Montaigne Midwest. Over at Jane and Mindles's, a Mr. Camembert left a comment containing a sentence that I'm sorely tempted to snitch as a motto to incorporate into a new blog-design: "But then again, what would a sheep-humpin' Midwesterner like me know?"
OK, it's a tad crude, and I try to keep this blog PG-13, but I would like some theme to reflect my status as a new Midwesterner. On the other hand, it occurred to me, nicely though the phrase works (poetically speaking), it's not terribly accurate. The Midwest isn't big on sheep. More of a Western thing, really. It would have to be pigs. Or dairy cows. But wait - Fleck's more finely tuned alliterative sensibility has lit upon "hog". He's right, of course. "Hog" it should be.
The e-word, cont'd. Apropos of the subject of the immediately preceding post, I dropped into the comments section a neighborly response to a statement in this post, which I thought would be an opening onto the interesting topic of anti-science and ideology, right and left. Unfortunately the couple of responses garnered contained vocabularly infallibly diagnostic of bumperstickerism as political philosophy, so I gave a bronx cheer and moved along. But as I think the issue is interesting, so I'll reproduce the statement and my response:
Why does being a Republican party member have such a strong correlation with this kind of nonsense? I know that there are reasonable Republicans out there: why aren't you loudly shouting down the lunatic wing of your party?
To which I responded:
Hey, I'm shouting! OK, I am not technically a Pach, being registered as an Independent, but I am a conservative. Fair cop, though. As far as I can see, pols who are, or who pander to, Christian fundies are invariably Republicans. And while it is true that chunks of the left are as lousy with their own brand of anti-science obscurantism as the right, a good many (if not most) of the critics of the anti-science left are lefties themselves. Good topic - think I'll bring it up on my site. (All the righties I personally know shout about this, but I can only think of a few examples of public criticism by righties with a wider reading audience.)
I have come up with a few more exceptions I'm aware of, but I think in general that what I said is true, at least regarding the issues I obsess about. (Or it could be my assumptions about political affiliation are completely mistaken.) Perhaps one or two of my six readers has some thoughts?
Mr. Bradley of Lex Communis approaches from another angle, and has a fair point that, exasperating though creationists are, they're hardly the only, or the worst, players in the your children/my values free-for-all of public education. I do have an obligation to alert my readers to the fact that Peter Sean is a Catholic and a lawyer, ergo a doubly evil man and likely a closet Taliban. (Scroll down to ""Evolution in the News - Neanderthals and Georgia" if the permalink fails.)
Fair point, as I said, but I have to disagree on the level of specifics and practicalities. I'm not averse to some "social control" via funding, as a matter of not pouring public monies into fourth-rate science education. I'm all for rigorous standards, which would translate into valuable class time being given over to the study of photosynthesis, not to the "alternative hypotheses" of an ID guest-lecturer. The real issue here, to me, is not about evolution or world views but about letting people who don't know what they're talking about determine curricula in school subjects. Thinking about it simply in "culture wars" terms is not quite on the mark. Elementary and high school biology classes - even advanced classes in good schools - are not going to be at a level where that parent-angering insinuation of metaphysical materialism should be anywhere in sight. (Unless Teach is given to bloviating ahead of grade-level.) Letting people like Superintendent Cox have a say-so in teaching biology is less urgently a First Amendment problem (though it is that, too), and more urgently a problem comparable to, say, letting fuzzy theorists wreck design childrens' reading programs.
A teacher, for example, haranguing and bullying students over "incorrect" opinion, in the guise of a history class, is a real problem - and should be addressed and corrected for what it is. But a more serious issue is that of students who are not really being taught any history at all. That the two problems may be correlated doesn't mean that fixing the former will in itself have any effect on the latter. While it should go without saying that science classes should be strictly science classes, it is also true that completely and finally settling the hash of importuning creationists isn't going to magically make mickey-mouse biology classes rigorous, or address the more fundamental problem that Johnny can't make change, let alone handle basic algebra. And the general dumbing-down of curricula is not a development that can be laid at the feet of those awful fundies, even if they are answerable in part for the dumbing down of biology. (I note in passing that the reason I got a decent grounding in biology and proper exposure to evolutionary theory was precisely because, not in spite of, the fact that my parents sent me to a religiously-affiliated schools and not the local secular public school. Can't say they were successful in getting me to pay any attention to the theology, but the biology did sink in.)
Addenda: Dudes, it's Darwinism that's the root cause of terror. In case you were wondering.
Kimberly Swygert posts on the debate over science education in California. Do read the first comment - well said. (Only one there so far as of this posting.)
