From image maker Colin Purrington: Texans' fondness for Biblical literalism indirectly ruins science education for the rest of the country. Texas is the nation's biggest consumer of textbooks, so authors will often write their books "for" the Texas State Board of Education, which usually has at least one delusional freakazoid who believes that fossils are the result of the Great Flood. On the State School Board!! I kid you not. Really amazing, and sad.
How do we know what we know department: Kris Hirst explains how we know shamanistic behavior in ancient art. This is an area much too neglected in public school curricula. When students understand how we know something, they are less likely to be suckered in by hoaxes or bad research claims.
It’s spring, and nutcase fancies turn to thoughts of slandering Rachel Carson and making unholy noises toward environmentalists.
Here’s one nutcase who engages in that peculiar nutcase practice of completely rewriting posts of commenters — claims to be Graeme Bird; is he really running for office? His claim is that lack of DDT is causing the spread of dengue in Queensland, Australia. He won’t be swayed by reason or fact (of course — his avatar is a photo of confirmed liar Joe McCarthy). He asks “how many have died,” but is unhappy with the official answer (one, but that’s not clear — an older woman in poor health). Nor does he appear to have any sense of irony that drought-stricken Australia has a plague of mosquitoes due to recent rains. Nor does he appear to understand that dengue is an imported disease in Australia, imported by a traveler, it appears.
(Bird’s blog is on WordPress, which will automatically post a link from this post to his blog. Anyone want to wager on whether he has enough cojones to let the trackback stand?)
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
One of the great attempted slams on Rachel Carson is the false and scurrilous claim that “population growth opponents” or environmentalists were overheard saying that with DDT, population growth would continue. Generally this canard is accompanied by an observation that France is now Islamic, since only Moslems have babies in France.
Where is Bob Park when you need a whiff of sanity?
4. POPULATION: ARE THEY SURE THEY HAVE THE THEORY RIGHT?
Demographic experts warn that population decline in Russia could have serious economic consequences. It’s the same growth-is-good bull shit that always comes from the Chamber of Commerce. Russia’s neighbors, Norway, Finland and Sweden, have the highest standards of living in the world and small populations. Afghanistan, on the other hand, which is not exactly a tourist Mecca, has a fertility rate above 7, the highest in the world.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
On a broad range of issues, mainline clergy affirm equality for gay and lesbian Americans. Roughly two‐thirds of mainline clergy support some legal recognition for same‐sex couples (65%), passing hate crime laws (67%) and employment nondiscrimination protections for gay and lesbian people (66%). A majority (55%) of mainline clergy support adoption rights for gay and lesbian people. Mainline Protestant clergy are strong advocates of church state separation.
A majority (65%) of mainline clergy agree that the U.S. should “maintain a strict separation of church and state.” Mainline clergy are more worried about public officials who are too close to religious leaders (59%) than about public officials who do not pay enough attention to religion (41%).
Mainline clergy are more likely to publicly address hunger and poverty and family issues than controversial social issues. More than 8‐in‐10 clergy say they publicly expressed their views about hunger and poverty often in the last year, and three‐quarters say they addressed marriage and family issues often. Only about one‐quarter (26%) say they often discussed the issues of abortion and capital punishment.
But where is the Methodist church falling down in getting clergy who understand science? If 54% of Methodist pastors don’t think evolution is the best explanation for diversity of life (the question got muddled in the questionnaire, alas), no wonder their congregations are so misinformed. You’d think they’d know better. You’d think the denomination would be truer to its roots of making the minister the best-informed guy in town.
Mainline clergy views of evolution and its place in public school curriculum are complex. On the one hand, the majority of mainline clergy (54%) do not support the teaching of creationism alongside evolution in public school biology classes. On the other hand, mainline clergy are more evenly divided in their views about the theory of evolution itself. Forty‐four percent of mainline ministers say that evolution is the best explanation for the origins of life on earth, and a similar number disagrees (43%). United Methodist clergy and American Baptist clergy are most likely to disagree. Seven‐in‐ten American Baptist clergy (70%) and a majority (53%) of United Methodist clergy say that evolution is not the best explanation for the origins of life on earth.
One question glaringly missing: Should Christians stick to the facts about science?
Here’s a very odd news item. It’s odd because, first, the disaster at Chernobyl is widely dismissed, and certainly out of the news, so it’s unusual to see any news item that suggests it remains a big problem, or that hints at what a big problem it was (especially from a nominally communist view); and second, who would have predicted Cuba would play a role at all?
(acn) –Havana – Over 20,000 children suffering from different diseases have been seen in Cuba as part of the Cuban Medical Program for Children of Chernobyl, marking last Wednesday the 19th anniversary of its creation. The plan began in 1990, when children and their relatives began to arrive en masse from Russia, the Ukraine, Byelorussia, Moldavia and Armenia to the former Pioneer Children’s Camp in Tarará, east of this city. Dr. Julio Medina, coordinator of the Program, explained that from 700 to 800 children arrive in Cuba annually to be treated by multidisciplinary teams of Cuban specialists. So far, patients with blood diseases have been treated, especially with different variants of leukemia; bone marrow and kidney transplants have been done, as well as cardiovascular surgery due to congenital malformations.
Ukrainian Dr. Nadiezhda Guerazimenko, coordinator of the Program in that country, highlighted the professionalism of Cuban doctors. She added that the best example of this statement lies in the high figure of patients who have returned to their respective countries cured of their ailments. The Program has a significant impact in the health and recovery of children and their families. In its almost two decades of existence, it has treated more than 16,000 Ukrainians, almost 3,000 Russians, and 671 Byelorussians. Some 40,000 people died immediately and millions were contaminated as a result of the nuclear disaster on April 26, 1986, which at first hit the Ukraine, and then extended to Russia, Belarus and different parts of Europe and Asia. The event caused several types of diseases, like leukemia, tumors, heart malformations, kidney problems, psoriasis, vitiligo and alopecia. Many of the children and youngsters seen today in Cuba weren’t even born when the disaster occurred.However, their parents were affected by the radiation.
Hurry, teachers, get your workshops before the State Board of Education declares science workshops to be illegal:
FREE upcoming teacher training workshops at the Texas Natural Science Center — sign up now! Change Over Timeworkshop — 2 sessions (1 for elementary; 1 for middle school) on Saturday, May 2, 2009.
Enjoy inquiry-based, hands-on activities using the Change Over Time kit containing TEKS-based geological science instructional materials for grades K-8! This workshop is designed to help students master Earth Science concepts tested on the TAKS (Grade 5 and/or Grade 8). Conducted in conjunction with Sargent-Welch, Science Kit, and Ward’s. For information and registration, visit http://www.utexas.edu/tmm/education/profdev/cot/index.html
Texas: Past, Present and Future — 4 one-day workshops: June 30, July 14, July 22, and July 30.
Learn more about geology, paleontology and Texas biodiversity! Participating teachers will explore how animals are adapted to varying environments, investigate how paleontologists use fundamental principles to recreate what life was like in Texas’ past, and learn how to integrate these concepts into the classroom. Workshop participants will receive curriculum guides and be able to check out a Texas Fish and Mammals Loaner Kit for use in their classrooms. For information and registration, visit http://www.utexas.edu/tmm/education/profdev/txppf/index.html
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
And when you click on that last link to see the joke, be sure to scroll down to Dr. Victor Alpher’s response, in which he suggests the joke may not have been exactly as I described it earlier.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Historical Item: William Randolph Hearst’s newspaper in New York favored war with Spain in 1898 — the Spanish-American War. When the war got underway, on the top of the newspaper’s first page, in the corners (the “ears”), Hearst printed, “America! How do you like your war!”
Creationism lost on the votes that had been planned for weeks, on issues members of the State Board of Education were informed about. But creationists on the board proposed a series of amendments to several different curricula, and some really bad science was written in to standards for Texas school kids to learn. Climate change got an official “tsk-tsk, ain’t happenin'” from SBOE. And while Wilson and Penzias won a Nobel Prize for stumbling on the evidence that confirmed it, Big Bang is now theory non grata in Texas science books. Using Board Member Barbara Cargill’s claims, Texas teachers now should teach kids that the universe is a big thing who tells big lies about her age.
A surefire way to tell that the changes were bad: The Discovery Institute’s lead chickens crow victory over secularism, science and “smart people.” Well, no, they aren’t quite that bold. See here, here, here and here. Disco Tute even slammed the so-conservative-Ronald-Reagan-found-it-dull Dallas Morning News for covering the news nearly accurately. Even more snark here. Discovery Institute’s multi-million-dollar budget to buy good public relations for anti-science appears to have dropped a bundle in Austin; while it might appear that DI had more people in Austin than there are members of the Texas SBOE . . . no, wait, maybe they did.
SBOE rejected the advice of America’s best and greatest scientists. If it was good science backed by good scientists and urged by the nation’s best educators, SBOE rejected it. If it was a crank science idea designed to frustrate teaching science, it passed. As the Texas Freedom Network so aptly put it, while SBOE closed the door on “strengths and weaknesses” language that favors creationism, they then opened every window in the house.
Read ’em, and tell us in comments if you find any reason for hope, or any reason the state legislature shouldn’t abolish this board altogether. (What others should we add to the list?)
A television station in College Station-Bryan, Texas, KBTX (Channel 3, a CBS affiliate) ran a poll on what Texas schools should be doing about evolution in biology classes. After hearing for days from the creationists on the State Board of Education that most people think creationism should be taught, the results are a little astounding:
Results: How do you think science should be taught in Texas schools?
Science — cold fusion has it, and creationism doesn’t.
One of my favorite comebacks to creationism advocates is pointing out that creationism is biology what cold fusion is to physics, except for the deep experimental results supporting cold fusion. It usually makes creationists bluster, because they hate to be compared to something they think is pseudo-science.
To be sure, cold fusion’s corpse remain’s pretty cold. It’s not a science that will soon spring to life to deliver safe, cheap energy to your refrigerator.
4. COLD FUSION: TWENTY YEARS LATER, IT’S STILL COLD.
Monday was the 20th anniversary of the infamous press conference called by the University of Utah in Salt Lake City to announce the discovery of Cold Fusion. The sun warmed the Earth that day as it had for 5 billion years, by the high temperature fusion of hydrogen nuclei. Incredibly, the American chemical Society was meeting in Salt Lake City this week and there were many papers on cold fusion, or as their authors prefer LENR (low-energy nuclear reactions). These people, at least some of them, look in ever greater detail where others have not bothered to look. They say they find great mysteries, and perhaps they do. Is it important? I doubt it. But I think it’s science.
The Texas State Board of Education failed to require that Texas kids learn about cold fusion in their high school science classes. But had they done so, they’d have been on better, more truthful, more accurate and better researched ground than their rants against Big Bang, DNA and common descent.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Or, until that account is unsuspended by the forces supporting Donald Trump: Follow @FillmoreWhite, the account of the Millard Fillmore White House Library
We've been soaking in the Bathtub for several months, long enough that some of the links we've used have gone to the Great Internet in the Sky.
If you find a dead link, please leave a comment to that post, and tell us what link has expired.
Thanks!
Retired teacher of law, economics, history, AP government, psychology and science. Former speechwriter, press guy and legislative aide in U.S. Senate. Former Department of Education. Former airline real estate, telecom towers, Big 6 (that old!) consultant. Lab and field research in air pollution control.
My blog, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, is a continuing experiment to test how to use blogs to improve and speed up learning processes for students, perhaps by making some of the courses actually interesting. It is a blog for teachers, to see if we can use blogs. It is for people interested in social studies and social studies education, to see if we can learn to get it right. It's a blog for science fans, to promote good science and good science policy. It's a blog for people interested in good government and how to achieve it.
BS in Mass Communication, University of Utah
Graduate study in Rhetoric and Speech Communication, University of Arizona
JD from the National Law Center, George Washington University
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 