So, is this allowable parody, political satire, in the nature of a political cartoon?
Or, is this an untoward attack on the President?
Will children be confused if they find these photos in a display of political art at the New York Public Library?
Is it not acceptable satire?
Tip of the old scrub brush to Gallery of the Absurd.
2 Comments | 
Art, Humor, Political cartoons, Politics, Public libraries | Tagged: Humor, mug shots, Politics | 
Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Did you know infamous historian with a view to the left, Howard Zinn, has a blog?
And you didn’t tell me?
Actually, it’s more of a website. Many teachers use some of Zinn’s writings, and your library really should include a copy of Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. Note the on-line collection of essays from The Progressive and ZNet. Links go to audio and video of Zinn lectures and debates, and this series of dramatic readings from A People’s History featuring James Earl Jones, Alfre Woodard, Marisa Tomei and other stars. Students will find his site entertaining.
And notice, revealed in the note about a movie coming from the book, there is a connection between Zinn and Matt Damon. Any mnemonic device will do in a rising tide . . .
4 Comments | Books, Education, History, History audio sources, History video sources, Human Rights, Politics | Tagged: Education, History, Human Rights, Media, Politics | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Texas’s creationism controversy continues, today with new articles in The San Antonio Express and The New York Times.
Melissa Ludwig’s article in the San Antonio paper gets right to the problem, that the Institute for Creation Research proposes to train educators to do what the law says they cannot do:
Science teachers are not allowed to teach creationism alongside evolution in Texas public schools, the courts have ruled. But that’s exactly what the Dallas-based Institute for Creation Research wants them to do. The institute is seeking state approval to grant online master’s degrees in science education to prepare teachers to “understand the universe within the integrating framework of Biblical creationism,” according to the school’s mission statement.
Last week, an advisory council made up of university educators voted to recommend the program for approval by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board in January, sparking an outcry among science advocates who have fended off repeated attempts by religious groups to insert creationism into Texas science classrooms.
“It’s just the latest trick,” said James Bower, a neurobiologist at the University of Texas at San Antonio who has publicly debated creationists. “They have no interest in teaching science. They are hostile to science and fundamentally have a religious objective.”
The 43-page site visit report by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) is available for download in .pdf form at the San Antonio Express site (and thanks to the Express for making this available!). This report provides details that regulators should check carefully, such as the library for ICR is in California and unavailable to students. Up-to-date science articles are unavailable to these graduate students, it appears from the report. In science, journal articles provide the most recent research, and often the most interesting work. Graduate students would be expected to rely heavily on such sources for much of their work.
In the Times, the focus is on just getting the facts out. Perhaps understandably, some officials did not want to talk to the Times:
The state’s commissioner of higher education, Raymund A. Paredes, said late Monday that he was aware of the institute’s opposition to evolution but was withholding judgment until the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board meets Jan. 24 to rule on the recommendation, made last Friday, by the board’s certification advisory council.
Henry Morris III, the chief executive of the Institute for Creation Research, said Tuesday that the proposed curriculum, taught in California, used faculty and textbooks “from all the top schools” along with, he said, the “value added” of challenges to standard teachings of evolution.
“Where the difference is, we provide both sides of the story,” Mr. Morris said. On its Web site, the institute declares, “All things in the universe were created and made by God in the six literal days of the creation week” and says it “equips believers with evidences of the Bible’s accuracy and authority through scientific research, educational programs, and media presentations, all conducted within a thoroughly biblical framework.”
Notable is the absence of consultation with the science community in Texas. Texas officials avoid meeting with scientists, as if they know what the scientists will tell them about programs to offer creationism.
The report to the THECB includes a section on legal compliance. ICR has required building occupancy permits and no obvious OSHA citations, the report says.
The legality of teaching creationism gets no mention. It’s not legal, of course. Generally, a program to train people must not train them to violate a state’s laws, or federal laws. If no one asks that question, the answer that it’s not legal won’t get made.
2 Comments | Creationism, Education, First Amendment, Government, Politics, Religion | Tagged: Creationism, Education, Government, Politics, Religion | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Texas A&M University will be home to an institute to train students for careers in nuclear power. This is a logical and welcome extension for one of Texas’s, and one of the nation’s premiere engineering schools. Nuclear power offers opportunities for the nation made more urgent by continuing, inherent problems with carbon-based fossil fuels.
Texas is the nation’s second largest state. The institute will provide another source for Texas kids to get career training.
The Nuclear Power Institute will help train staff needed to operate new reactors and generating plants. It will also revamp curriculum for junior high, high school and college students who are interested in pursuing careers in the field, according to officials with Texas A&M Engineering.
The institute was established in a joint effort by the Dwight Look College of Engineering and the Texas Engineering Experiment Station (TEES). The Look College is one of the largest engineering colleges in the nation, with nearly 9,000 students and 12 departments.
“The Texas A&M University System is uniquely configured with the ideal combination of education, research and service agencies and universities to lead this effort,” Vice Chancellor and Dean of Engineering Kem Bennett said in a statement released last week. “The institute will make a significant impact upon the work force and economy of the state and nation.”
The Texas A&M University System Board of Regents signed off on the formal creation of the Nuclear Power Institute earlier this month.
There is a high degree of irony in this announcement at this time. While Texas A&M looks to the future with nuclear power, the state weighs whether to allow a Dallas religious school to train teachers that management of nuclear power is based on flawed theory. A&M will train people to manage nuclear power; the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) wants to train high school teachers to teach Texas’s high school kids that nuclear power is mysterious and cannot work.
Does Texas contradict itself? Walt Whitman might have asked. Texas is large. It contains multitudes.
But should it contain a school that teaches much of basic science is just wrong?
It might be nice if a higher percentage of the multitudes had the reasoning power to see what’s wrong with this picture, and why the question is important.
This may be too subtle for people unfamiliar with atomic theory to realize the full impact. Zeno at Halfway There explains the wacky part of ICR’s misunderstanding, or wishful thinking about atomic theory. Simply put, ICR claims to have discovered that God interferes with nuclear reactions, making it difficult to predict that a nuclear reactor won’t suddenly increase its output by ten times, cooking the nuclear power plant and a couple of nearby towns in the doing.
Texas A&M is working to prepare people to live in the late 21st and 22nd centuries. ICR is fighting to take us back to the 16th or 17th century.
If ICR is successful, from what pool will A&M draw its candidates for nuclear engineering and nuclear power management? Against its will, Texas A&M could become one of the largest graduate institutions for all of India and China.
Please see the update, December 18, here: Texas’s face should be creationism red.
8 Comments | Creationism, Physics, Politics, Rampant stupidity, Science | Tagged: Nuclear power, Politics, Religion, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
I love Thomas Nast cartoons, partly for their dated look. They look like they are 100 years old from the style of the art.
For much the same reason, I love Herblock cartoons. They look like the middle of the 20th century. And Pat Oliphant cartoons look like post-Kennedy modern ideas.
Clay Bennett, winner of the 2007 Curie UN Cartoon Award
Clay Bennett cartoons look like 21st century clean to me. There’s a smoothness, a silkiness of color that lends an immediacy to them. They really look good, and they look like they’d project well in a classroom (though I’ve not tried any of Bennett’s, actually).
All four of these cartoonists had or has something to say, too. I’ve enjoyed Bennett’s work in the Christian Science Monitor for some time. His work is clean, but it has a cutting edge that can’t be missed.
So, I was happy to see that he had won a commendation from the Ranan Lurie Cartoon Competition at the UN Correspondents’ Association dinner. Other people see good stuff in his drawings — I’m not alone.
Here’s his UN Lurie award-winning cartoon:
Cartoon winner of the 2007 Curie UN Cartoon Award
More of Bennett’s cartoons can be seen here, at the Clay Bennett Archives.
Bennett’s last cartoon in the Monitor was November 17. The good news: He’s moving to the Chattanooga Times-Free Press. We can hope that means one more opening is available for a cartoonist.
One more, below the fold. Read the rest of this entry »
2 Comments | Cartoons, Climate change, climate_change, Global warming, Political cartoons, Politics | Tagged: Cartoons, Clay Bennett, Climate change, Evolution, Global warming, Intelligent Design, Political cartoons, Politics | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Here is one surefire way to tell someone is bluffing, and perhaps doing a bit of planned prevarication, about Rachel Carson and the safety of DDT: Look for a footnote like this:
31 Sweeney EM. EPA Hearing Examiner’s recommendations and findings concerning DDT hearings. 25 April 1972 (40 CFR 164.32).
Why is that a sign of a bluff?
The volume and paging, “40 CFR 164.32,” is a reference to the Code of Federal Regulations. One knows that codes do not contain hearing records, and sure enough, this one does not. 40 CFR covers the rules of administrative hearings in federal agencies, but there is nothing whatsoever in that entire chapter about DDT, or birds, or chemical safety.
40 CFR is the chapter of the Code of Federal Regulations that pertains to the rules, regulations and procedures of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); it does not contain transcripts of regulatory hearings. Anyone who cites a hearing to this publication is giving you a bogus citation, probably to promote bogust history and bogus science.
If that citation shows up in a screed against environmentalists, or against Rachel Carson, or urging that we spray poison till the cows come home to die, you can be pretty sure that the person offering it has copied it wholesale from Steven Milloy’s junk science purveyor shop, and that the person has not read it at all. If the person has a law degree, or was ever a librarian or active in interscholastic debate, you can be pretty sure the person knows the citation is wrong, and is insulting you by listing it, knowing it’s unlikely you’ll ever find it in your local library.
(What is the accurate citation for the hearings? I’m not sure; but 40 CFR is not it. See the current section of CFR below the fold — it’s one page, not more than 100 pages.)
I have posted about this before. The hearings Judge Sweeney presided over were conducted early in the existence of the EPA. They were conducted under court orders requiring EPA to act. The transcripts are not in usual legal opinion publications, so far as I have been able to find. Many claims have been made about the hearings, most of the claims are false. Jim Easter at Some Are Boojums did the legwork and extracted a copy of the actual decision out of EPA’s library. He’s posted it at his blog, so you can see. Check the pages — “40 CFR” is a bogus citation, designed to keep you from learning the truth.
So the footnote is intended to make the gullible or innocent think there is a reference, where there is no reference.
But read the analysis of the hearings at Some Are Boojums. It is more than just the citation is wrong. Contrary to Internet Legend claims, Sweeney did not determine that DDT was harmless. Sweeney determined that DDT usage provided some benefits that outweighed the harms, considering the dramatically reduced use of DDT then allowed. DDT use had been severely restricted prior to the Sweeney hearings; Sweeney was not looking at all uses, nor even at historic uses. Sweeney was looking at dramatically reduced DDT use under the registrations then allowed. His conclusions of “no harm” where he actually concluded that, were based on greatly reduced use of DDT. This finding cannot be used today to urge an expansion of use — or should not be so used, by honest people.
Not to mention that at Caosblog, footnotes are not even listed in the text. The listing of the footnotes is a gratuitous error, there is no footnote 31 in the text.
1 Comment | Bogus history, History, Politics, Rachel Carson, Science, Voodoo science, War on Science | Tagged: Bogus history, bogus science, DDT, Politics, Science, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
1st place to this haunting cartoon from Turkey’s Ahmet Aykanat, a free lancer.
Hunger, war and its unfair, collateral damage got attention from the cartoonists in the past year. Same themes as the previous years, actually. There is a lot of work to do.
The Ranan Lurie competition highlights cartooning on political and economic issues from around the world. Here in the U.S. we get some great cartoons — Oliphant, Sherffius, Grondahl, Telnaes, Toles, Sargent and dozens of others — but we miss out on great cartooning in Asia, South America, the Mediterranean, Europe and Africa.
One of my favorite North American cartoonists Clay Bennett of the Christian Science Monitor won a Citation for Excellence.
Cartoons carry a powerful punch. They make great lesson openers, or great lessons all in themselves.
2 Comments | Cartoons, hunger, Peace, Political cartoons, Politics, Poverty, War | Tagged: Ahmet Aykanat, Cartoons, hunger, Peace, Political cartoons, Poverty, Ranan Lurie Competition, War | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Oh, yeah, good debates are hard to come by.
Still, wouldn’t you like to see the final presidential candidates debate science issues seriously?
Lawrence Krauss got through the muddle at the generally science-averse Wall Street Journal to make the case.
The day before the most recent Democratic presidential debate, the media reported a new study demonstrating that U.S. middle-school students, even in poorly performing states, do better on math and science tests than many of their peers in Europe. The bad news is that students in Asian countries, who are likely to be our chief economic competitors in the 21st century, significantly outperform all U.S. students, even those in the highest-achieving states.
While these figures were not raised in recent Democratic or Republican debates, they reflect a major challenge for the next president: the need to guide both the public and Congress to address the problems that have produced this “science gap,” as well as the serious consequences that may result from it.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Almost all of the major challenges we will face as a nation in this new century, from the environment, national security and economic competitiveness to energy strategies, have a scientific or technological basis. Can a president who is not comfortable thinking about science hope to lead instead of follow? Earlier Republican debates underscored this problem. In May, when candidates were asked if they believed in the theory of evolution, three candidates said no. In the next debate Mike Huckabee explained that he was running for president of the U.S., not writing the curriculum for an eighth-grade science book, and therefore the issue was unimportant.
Apparently many Americans agreed with him, according to polls taken shortly after the debate. But lack of interest in the scientific literacy of our next president does not mean that the issue is irrelevant. Popular ambivalence may rather reflect the fact that most Americans are scientifically illiterate. A 2006 National Science Foundation survey found that 25% of Americans did not know the earth goes around the sun.
Our president will thus have to act in part as an “educator in chief” as well as commander in chief. Someone who is not scientifically literate will find it difficult to fill this role.
Chris Mooney makes the case in Seed Magazine.
Science is too important, too big a player in too many issues, to not have a major focus of its own in the final debates. Failing to have such a discussion is tantamount to failing to ask whether the candidates are capitalist or communist in economic policy (as if such a question could be unanswered by a wealth of other campaign material).
Science Debate 2008 argues for a science debate, lists supporters of the idea (it’s an impressive list, really), and offers advice on how you can help the campaign for science discussion at the presidential level. You can track the issue at the Intersection, or at Bora’s place, A Blog Around the Clock.
If nothing else, a science debate might make it clear to the candidates that we need to revive the Office of Technology Assessment, in addition to making the candidates aware that the president needs to have a strong, independent science advisor to whom the president actually pays attention.
Science literacy is to important to leave it up to chance, or partisans alone — in the case of our kids in school, and in the case of the person we elect president.
3 Comments | Education, Elections, Politics, Presidents, Science | Tagged: Education, Elections, Politics, president, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Leading biologists at several of Texas’s leading universities sent a letter to the Texas State Board of Education trying to scold the agency back onto the path of good science, in the wake of the firing scandal at the agency late last month. Laura Heinauer wrote in Homeroom, an education blog of the Austin American-Statesman:
More than 100 biology faculty from universities across Texas signed a letter sent Monday to Education Commissioner Robert Scott saying Texas Education Agency employees should not have to remain neutral on evolution.The letter is in response to the departure of former science curriculum director Chris Comer, who says she was forced to resign days after forwarding an e-mail her superiors said made the agency appear biased against the idea that life is a result of intelligent design.“I’m an evolutionary biologist, and I and many others simply feel that good evolution education is key to understanding biology as a whole,” said University of Texas professor Daniel Bolnick, who has been collecting signatures since last week.
More biologists from more Texas universities would have signed, probably, with more time allowed to gather signatures. Word I have is that the author and organizers wanted to get the letter delivered quickly.The letter was forceful, and stern in emphasizing the strength of scientific support for evolution theory, a rebuke to Commissioner Robert Scott’s political assistant, Lizzette Gonzales Reynolds:
It is inappropriate to expect the TEA’s director of science curriculum to “remain neutral” on this subject, any more than astronomy teachers should “remain neutral” about whether the Earth goes around the sun. In the world of science, evolution is equally well-supported and accepted as heliocentrism. Far from remaining neutral, it is the clear duty of the science staff at TEA and all other Texas educators to speak out unequivocally: evolution is a central pillar in any modern science education, while “intelligent design” is a religious idea that deserves no place in the science classroom at all.
A massive body of scientific evidence supports evolution. All working scientists agree that publication in top peer-reviewed journals is the scoreboard of modern science. A quick database search of scientific publications since 1975 shows 29,639 peer-reviewed scientific papers on evolution in twelve leading journals alone2. To put this in perspective, if you read 5 papers a day, every day, it would take you 16 years to read this body of original research. These tens of thousands of research papers on evolution provide overwhelming support for the common ancestry of living organisms and for the mechanisms of evolution including natural selection. In contrast, a search of the same database for “Intelligent Design” finds a mere 24 articles, every one of which is critical of intelligent design3. Given that evolution currently has a score of 29,639– while “intelligent design” has a score of exactly zero– it is absurd to expect the TEA’s director of science curriculum to “remain neutral” on this subject. In recognition of the overwhelming scientific support for evolution, evolution is taught without qualification– and intelligent design is omitted– at every secular and most sectarian universities in this country, including Baylor (Baptist), Notre Dame (Catholic), Texas Christian (Disciples of Christ) and Brigham Young (Mormon).
This last sentence is weaker than it needs to be. Evolution is taught at every major sectarian university in the U.S., including Southern Methodist University, Vanderbilt, Wake Forest, all the Jesuit colleges and all other Catholic institutions, in addition to those named. It is only the rare, odd Bible college that may not teach evolution. Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, which does not emphasize science, and the strictly fundamentalist, 19th century Bob Jones University are the only two I have been able to confirm who do not teach evolution in biology courses.
Be sure to check out the footnotes in the letter, too.
There is no serious college textbook available which uses a non-evolution model to explain biology.In 2003, when the Discovery Institute presented a letter to the Texas SBOE urging skepticism of evolution theory, and then misrepresented the letter as support for intelligent design, more than 100 professors at the University of Texas at Austin and more than 100 professors at Rice University wrote to support evolution. Texas’s four Nobel winners in Medicine or Physiology also called on TEA and the SBOE to emphasize evolution in textbooks. Physics Nobelist Steven Weinberg personally appeared at the citizen hearings on textbooks to stress the point.Texas’s top science scholars and researchers have been clear, consistently over the past decade.
It takes a particular form of political chutzpah and political hubris to ignore this unity of opinion among Texas’s leading researchers and teachers of biology. But Gov. Rick Perry’s recent appointment of arch-creationist Donald McLeroy to chair the SBOE, and the firing of science curriculum expert Chris Comer over her FYI e-mail alerting people to a speech by science philosopher Prof. Barbara Forrest, seem to have made most scientists nervous that the Texas SBOE is gearing up to get stupid again.
No comments from any State Board member, nor from the commissioner yet.
The story has been playing on Texas radio stations most of the day. It was picked up by major Texas newspapers, generally from the Associated Press wire:
See also:
One commenter at the American-Statesman site was happy to hear the news. “Big Fat Phil” wrote, “Hello, sanity. I missed you.”
The full text of the letter, and the full list of signers, is below the fold.
4 Comments | Biology, Creationism, Education quality, Evolution, Politics, Science, State school boards, Texas, Textbook Selection, Textbooks | Tagged: Education, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Politics, Religion, Science, Texas | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Reaction to the political resignation/firing of the science curriculum director at the Texas Education Agency (TEA) has been almost universally negative. If there are any approving reactions, they are hidden well.
Dr. Barbara Forrest, whose speech in Austin produced the “FYI” memo Chris Comer sent to a dozen people, posted her reaction at the website of the National Center for Science Education; you can get a .pdf download from NCSE, or read the piece with a lot of reaction at Dr. P. Z. Myers’ blog, Pharyngula.
The incident now involving Ms. Comer exemplifies perfectly the reason my co-author Paul R. Gross and I felt that our book, Creationism’s Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design, had to be written. (http://www.creationismstrojanhorse.com) By forcing Ms. Comer to resign, the TEA seems to have confirmed our contention that the ID creationist movement — a religious movement with absolutely no standing in the scientific world — is being advanced by means of power politics.
This morning, TEA director Robert Scott’s responses to questions from the Dallas Morning News opinion editors gave the first official reaction from TEA of any substance.
I don’t think the impression was that we were taking a position in favor of evolution. We teach evolution in public schools. It’s part of our curriculum. But you can be in favor of a science without bashing people’s faith, too. I don’t know all the facts, but I think that may be the real issue here. I can’t speak to motivation but … we have standards of conduct and expect those standards of conduct to be followed.
For reading convenience, both statements are below the fold.
No, I’m not reserving judgment, but I am reserving comment for the moment. I am hopeful Scott will recognize the error and take steps to square his agency with education standards, state law, good employment practices, and reason.
1 Comment | Creationism, History, Intelligent Design, Law, Politics, State school boards, Voodoo science | Tagged: Education, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Law, Politics | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
The United Nations Correspondents Association was scheduled to announce awards, including the Ranan Lurie Cartoon Awards for 2007, at a dinner on December 7.
I find nothing about the awards anywhere — does somebody have, or has somebody found, a list of the 2007 winners, preferably with a gallery of the cartoons?
(C’mon, New York Times, Washington Post, International Herald Tribune, CNN, NBC, CBS and ABC — where is the news on this? Cagle?)
2 Comments | Cartoons, Human Rights, Peace, Political cartoons, Politics | Tagged: Cartoons, Political cartoons, Politics, Ranan Lurie Awards, United Nations | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
It’s a long passage, but worth the read. Go to the Audubon site for the full essay; it’s longer, and worth more. (Photo: Bald eagle, from the US Fish and Wildlife Service)
This is from an essay the great conservation curmudgeon Ted Williams published in Audubon in December 2004.
I envy young environmentalists of the 21st century, but I feel bad for them, too. They don’t know what it feels like to win big against seemingly impossible odds. When I started out, America and the world were environmentally lawless. There was no Endangered Species Act, no Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, no Clean Water Act, no Clean Air Act, no National Environmental Policy Act, no National Forest Management Act. In 1970 I remember standing on the steps of the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife field headquarters and arguing with a colleague, Joe, about the banning of DDT. “It will never happen,” he told me. When DDT was banned two years later, he said, “It won’t make any difference.”
For a while it didn’t. The March 1976 Audubon reported “considerable gloomy speculation” about the plight of endangered bald eagles in the Lower 48—more birds dying than hatching, fewer than a thousand nesting pairs. Today there are an estimated 7,000 nesting pairs. The September 1975 Audubon reported that 300 brown pelicans transplanted from Florida to Louisiana—”the Pelican State”—had died from lethal doses of DDT and other chlorinated hydrocarbons. Today Louisiana has more than 13,000 nesting pairs. In 1972 I was assigned by the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife to write an article on the peregrine falcon in the East—a history piece, because the species had been extirpated from the region. By 1999 peregrines had fully recovered, and they were removed from the Endangered Species List.
The hopelessness I felt about DDT in 1970 was nothing compared with what Rachel Carson felt when she started her campaign against this World War II hero. Writing a book about DDT seemed impossible; she was a nature writer, not an investigative reporter. Barely had she taken pen to paper when she was assailed by arthritis, flu, intestinal virus, sinus infections, staph infections, ulcers, phlebitis, and breast cancer. She didn’t get discouraged; she got mad. Her ulcers, she told her editor, “might have waited till the book was done.” Radiation treatments were “a serious diversion of time.” She found the phlebitis that prevented her from walking “quite trying””not for herself but for “poor Roger,” her adopted son.
When Silent Spring appeared in 1962, Chemical World News condemned it as “science fiction.” Time magazine dismissed it as an “emotional and inaccurate outburst.” Reader’s Digest canceled a contract for a 20,000-word condensation and ran the Time piece instead. But only seven years later Time used a photo of Carson to illustrate its new Environment section. Silent Spring was not a prediction, as anti-environmentalists profess; it was a warning, full of hope. “No,” Carson wrote her friend Lois Crisler, “I myself never thought the ugly facts would dominate. . . . The beauty of the living world I was trying to save has always been uppermost in my mind.” If Rachel Carson could find hope in the face of what and who were closing in on her, no environmentalist has the right to feel discouraged in 2004.
Leave a Comment » | Environmental protection, History, History and art, Politics, Quotes, Rachel Carson, Science, Science and faith | Tagged: environment, hope, Politics, Quotes, Rachel Carson, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
The whole world should be watching.
Today’s New York Times editorial, “Evolution and Texas”:
It was especially disturbing that the agency accused Ms. Comer — by forwarding the e-mail message — of taking a position on “a subject on which the agency must remain neutral.” Surely the agency should not remain neutral on the central struggle between science and religion in the public schools. It should take a stand in favor of evolution as a central theory in modern biology. Texas’s own education standards require the teaching of evolution.
Those standards are scheduled to be reviewed next year. Ms. Comer’s dismissal and comments in favor of intelligent design by the chairman of the state board of education do not augur well for that review. We can only hope that adherents of a sound science education can save Texas from a retreat into the darker ages.
It remains a mystery how an education agency official could take such a public stand against the state’s education standards and still keep the job in these days, but no one is seriously talking about even investigating the odd events at TEA under the new highly-political director Robert Scott, or the Republican Party operative Lizzette Reynolds.
Texas is a particularly ironic location for these events, being the home of George Bush, who staked his reputation on education reforms that require higher standards, not lower ones; Texas being a state whose money and history rest on oil and natural gas, two fossil fuels found with the geology the TEA now repudiates; Texas being a state trying to get rid of the cotton boll weevil and the imported fire ant, both of which have nationally-coordinated eradication programs based on thorough knowledge of evolution to prevent the insects from evolving resistance or immunity to pesticides. Texas A&M University is one of the nation’s leaders in creating new food crops, using the evolution principles Ms. Comer was fired for noting.
Talk in Austin Rick Perry’s mind ponders whether Gov. Rick Perry has a chance at a vice president nomination. Perry is a typically-weak-by-state constitution Southern governor. He still has clout with agencies, if and when he chooses to use it. Perhaps Perry will read the New York Times today while sitting in an Iowa coffee shop, and wonder what’s up in Texas.
What passes for leadership these days.
Also see:
6 Comments | Accuracy, Evolution, Politics, Public education, Religion, Science, State school boards, Texas | Tagged: Education, Evolution, Religion, Science, Texas | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
We’ve got the thunderclouds of a recession heading our way. We’re in the midst of a housing foreclosure crisis that is tragic in its dimensions. We’ve got forty-some-million people without health coverage. And the city of New Orleans is still on its knees.
So you tune in to the G.O.P. debate on CNN to see what’s what, and they’re talking about — guns.
To solve the problem, we have to admit we have a problem. Talk about guns doesn’t even get close to what the problems are.
Herbert has more to say.
1 Comment | Leadership, Politics, Presidents | Tagged: GOP debates, Leadership, Politics | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Rosa Parks: “Why do you push us around?”
Officer: “I don’t know but the law is the law and you’re under arrest.”
From Rosa Parks with Gregory J. Reed, Quiet Strength
(Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Pub. House, 1994), page 23.Photo: Mrs. Parks being fingerprinted in Montgomery, Alabama; photo from New York World-Telegram & Sun Collection, Library of Congress
Today in History at the Library of Congress states the simple facts:
On the evening of December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, an African American, was arrested for disobeying an Alabama law requiring black passengers to relinquish seats to white passengers when the bus was full. Blacks were also required to sit at the back of the bus. Her arrest sparked a 381-day boycott of the Montgomery bus system and led to a 1956 Supreme Court decision banning segregation on public transportation.
Rosa Parks made a nearly perfect subject for a protest on racism. College-educated, trained in peaceful protest at the famous Highlander Folk School, Parks was known as a peaceful and respected person. The sight of such a proper woman being arrested and jailed would provide a schocking image to most Americans. Americans jolted awake.
Often lost in the retelling of the story are the threads that tie together the events of the civil rights movement through the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. As noted, Parks was a trained civil rights activist. Such training in peaceful and nonviolent protest provided a moral power to the movement probably unattainable any other way. Parks’ arrest was not planned, however. Parks wrote that as she sat on the bus, she was thinking of the tragedy of Emmet Till, the young African American man from Chicago, brutally murdered in Mississippi early in 1955. She was thinking that someone had to take a stand for civil rights, at about the time the bus driver told her to move to allow a white man to take her seat. To take a stand, she remained seated. [More below the fold] Read the rest of this entry »
10 Comments | Civil Rights, Dissent, Famous quotes, Heroes, History, Human Rights, Politics, Quotes | Tagged: Civil Rights, Famous quotes, History, Human Rights, Politics, Quotes, Rosa Parks | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
You are currently browsing the archives for the Politics category.
Ed Darrell on Texas's Colorado River
Come on in, the water's fine. Come often: Cleanliness is next to godliness.
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 