We can honor Jefferson better than this

April 14, 2007

Jefferson, Paul Jennewein bas relief in U.S. House chamber

Jefferson, Paul Jennewein bas relief in U.S. House chamber

Jefferson’s birthday sneaked up on me this year. There is the constant tension between doing the Things that Keep the Wolf from the Door and following all the things we should follow; wolves have been on my mind more lately (notice the drop off in posts).

So all I had was a warning post last week, and the post yesterday wishing Tom a happy natal anniversary day. Hey it’s not my job.

But what about the rest of you? What about the president, Congress, public officials, educators and others everywhere?

Here is what I found of celebrations of Jefferson’s birthday:

Architectural Record reported that the Thomas Jefferson Medal in Architecture was won by Zaha Hadid.

The Daily Progress of Charlottesville, Virginia, Jefferson’s home town, reported that Alan Greenspan won the first Thomas Jefferson Medal in Citizen Leadership.

In the last paragraph of the story about Greenspan, The Daily Progress also noted that the Thomas Jefferson Medal in Law was awarded to Anne-Marie Slaughter.

The Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression issued 16 “Jefferson Muzzle” awards to people who damaged free expression. The story I found was from the UPI wire, UPI now being owned by the Unification Church and probably sort of a muzzle itself. The story listed only one of 16 awardees.

In Washington, D.C., Secretary of Commerce Carlos M. Gutierrez noted the 200th anniversary of the science agencies that became the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), in a speech at the Jefferson Memorial. Jefferson had created the first science agency, the Survey of the Coast, during his presidency, in 1807.

President Bush declared April 13 “Thomas Jefferson Day,” on April 11. If any news agency picked up that press release, I’ve not been able to find it.

That’s about it for celebration. That’s not a lot. It’s not enough.

We can and should do better than that. In The Philadelphia Inquirer, education scholar Peter Gibbon of Boston University suggests we can and should honor Jefferson more overtly, despite Jefferson’s own refusal of letting the citizens of Boston make his birthday a holiday:

Jefferson was more than an eloquent espouser of democratic ideology, more than a patient and realistic secretary of state, and more than a president who doubled the size of America with the Louisiana Purchase. He was a scientist who analyzed climate change, studied mastodon bones, and championed small-pox inoculation; a farmer who invented a moldboard plough and brought fruit trees and upland rice to America; a lawyer who helped make Virginia laws more humane; and an architect who designed Monticello and the University of Virginia.

Only education, Jefferson believed, could end tyranny and preserve democratic values. Thus, he advocated universal primary education, colleges open to merit, and curriculum separate from theology. His thousands of books eventually became the beginning of the Library of Congress. Devoted to reason, he loved beauty, playing his violin, and marveling at the flowers and fruits of the Virginia countryside. In love with knowledge, he placed a higher priority on virtue.

Jefferson cultivated friends, treasured his wife (who died after only 10 years of marriage), and watched after his children. In 1804, Maria, his 26-year-old daughter, died. Against a background of war, political combat, and personal suffering, Jefferson struggled to retain his optimism.

Our celebration of Jefferson’s birthday today is more complicated than the adoration of Boston citizens in 1803. Now, we acknowledge a guilty, conflicted slaveholder who did not transcend his time, a tough politician who orchestrated attacks on his opponents and carefully shaped his reputation for posterity. We see a second presidential term marred by a misconceived embargo that backfired and caused an economic crisis. Still, we might also see a sweet-tempered, affectionate human being – a diplomat, architect, and idealist who believed in religious tolerance, rebuked tyrants, promoted civil rights, and wrote the words that justify the creation of America.

Some Americans are unhappy with Jefferson’s legacy. As with all real humans who achieve some level of hero-worship, some people are unhappy to discover that others who do heroic things are not heroic in all aspects of their lives. They need to get over it.

We should do more to celebrate Thomas Jefferson and his legacy. April 13 is a good day for such celebrations.

This is not a call for a hero cult, nor especially a religious-style cult. Honoring Jefferson honors his better nature, his calls for freedom for everyone, his calls for ending slavery (even if he did not free his own slaves), his call for universal education in order to make a republic work well and righteously, his calls for intellectual freedom, his celebration of the Common Man as an ideal, his work for libraries and learning, his work for good and beautiful architecture, his love of science, etc., etc., etc.

Honoring Jefferson honors America, and calls us to do better ourselves in working for a higher good. We should do that.

Leave a Comment » | 1803, History, Leadership, Libraries, Patriotism, Politics, Presidents, Public education, Public libraries, Science, Science and faith, Thomas Jefferson | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Quote of the Moment: Johannes Kepler

April 6, 2007

Johannes KeplerSo long as the mother, Ignorance, lives, it is not safe for Science, the offspring, to divulge the hidden causes of things.

Johannes Kepler, Somnium, 1634

Image from Northern Astronomical Review, Winter ’05.

Leave a Comment » | Education, Science, Science and faith | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Have you spoken against intelligent design, or other dangerous superstition, today?

April 6, 2007

Imagine you live in Dallas, Texas, where it is generally assumed that one is Christian and that one attends church on Sunday, and Wednesday (so much so that school activities are not scheduled Wednesdays, because everyone is expected to be at church). Imagine that you teach science at a major Christian-affiliated institution in Dallas.

Now imagine that your institution is the site of a major conference extolling the virtues of superstition, specifically against a scientific theory that is the foundation and main supports for much of your work. Do you hunker down and hope no one notices, or do you speak up for science? Blog against theocracy logo, Statute of Liberty

20 professors at Southern Methodist University (SMU) signed an article on the opposite-editorial page of the Dallas Morning News, yesterday, calling out intelligent design and its advocates. (I mentioned it in this post, here.) They will most likely take a stand that there is no reason to “debate” intelligent design advocates, since the debate venue is stacked, the debate audience is stacked, and that intelligent design has not paid its dues to be admitted to the college of the sciences.

But I wish they would take a further stand: I wish the Christians among them would call on the advocates of intelligent design to repent, to stop asking people to turn away from science, to stop spreading false stories about science, to stop making false claims. Read the rest of this entry »

9 Comments | Blog Against Theocracy, Education, First Amendment, Freedom - Political, Religious Freedom, Science, Science and faith, U.S. Constitution | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Duty to speak out against intelligent design

April 5, 2007

[Note to SMU Physics students:  Glad to have you here!  While you’re here, stick around for a moment.  Check the blog’s list of articles on “intelligent design” or “evolution,” and you’ll see that the issue has moved a good deal since the flap at SMU.  Feel free to leave comments, too.  E.D.]

When sanity strikes public figures and public institutions, sometimes all one can do is sit back in wonder at how the universe runs.

Intelligent design advocates might begin to think that God (or the gods, or the little green men, as the Discovery Institute allows) has stacked the universe against them, at least in Texas. First, in 2003, with the Texas State Board of Education pregnant with 8 creationists among the 15 members, scientists in Texas applied quiet, gentle pressure and got some of the creationists to vote against requiring creationism in biology texts. Last week Lee Cullum, doyon of conservative commentators in Dallas society, alumnus of the late Dallas Herald and occasional opinion writer for the Dallas Morning News wrote a piece questioning whether intelligent design advocates had not overstepped propriety in their use of Southern Methodist University’s good neighborly intentions — a reversal of position for Cullum, and perhaps a bellwether for others with influence in the state. Plus, several of the faculty at SMU protested the pending intelligent design conference scheduled for the campus, though without endorsement from the university.

Discovery Institute spokesmen gave their usual demurrers, claiming that intelligent design advocates have First Amendment rights and accusing critics of being unfair and unholy, but never defending intelligent design itself.

So, I can imagine there were a lot of coffee-burned laps in Seattle (and at least one in Fort Worth) this morning when the Dallas Morning News‘ opinion section unfurled a hard stand against intelligent design, signed by a score of well-respected scientists of various faiths, from the SMU faculty.

They minced no words:

The organization behind the event, the Discovery Institute, is clear in its agenda: It states that what the SMU science faculty believes to be so useful (science) is a danger to conservative Christianity and should be replaced by its mystical world view.

We do not argue against the basic right to believe, worship and express oneself as one desires. [More, including the full text, below the fold.] Read the rest of this entry »

4 Comments | Darwin, Ethics, First Amendment, Free speech, Intelligent Design, Natural history, Politics, Science, Science and faith, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Chief victim of global warming today: The U.S.

April 3, 2007

The Earth Policy Institute looks at numbers of people running from the effects of global warming and concludes that the U.S. has more global warming refugees than any other nation today, ironically. The U.S. is also the largest emitter of greenhouse gases blamed for the human component of global warming.

EPI estimates at least 250,000 people fled New Orleans and surrounding areas after Hurricane Katrina, in the single largest migration prompted by the effects of global warming.

In a press release, EPI’s president Lester R. Brown said:

Those of us who track the effects of global warming had assumed that the first large flow of climate refugees would likely be in the South Pacific with the abandonment of Tuvalu or other low-lying islands. We were wrong. The first massive movement of climate refugees has been that of people away from the Gulf Coast of the United States.

Hurricane Katrina, which made landfall in late August 2005, forced a million people from New Orleans and the small towns on the Mississippi and Louisiana coasts to move inland either within state or to neighboring states, such as Texas and Arkansas. Although nearly all planned to return, many have not.

Financial markets act as if global warming is a fact, even with a few deniers still hanging on and the Bush administration’s not moving very fast as if it were concerned: Insurance companies refuse to issue new policies for homes for people living in certain hurricane-prone areas.

The market has spoken: Global warming is a problem we need to act against.

Tip of the old scrub brush to Stolen Moments: A green digest.

2 Comments | Current History, Disasters, Environmental protection, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, Immigration, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Quote stumbled upon: Clarence Day, on descendants of apes

March 24, 2007

Clarence Day, from NNDB

What fairy story, what tale from the Arabian Nights of the jinns, is a hundredth part as wonderful as this true fairy story of simians! It is so much more heartening, too, than the tales we invent. A universe capable of giving birth to many such accidents is — blind or not — a good world to live in, a promising universe. . . . We once thought we lived on God’s footstool; it may be a throne.

Clarence Day (1874-1935), This Simian World (1920), XIX

More from that chapter, below the fold

Read the rest of this entry »

Leave a Comment » | Evolution, History, Natural history, Quotes, Science | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Textbook wars: APA resolution against intelligent design as science

March 12, 2007

Psychology rests out on the end of the science spectrum, closer to “social sciences” than other branches of hard, research science, and sometimes affiliated with the pseudo-scientific, even while debunking false claims, such as the studies of parapsychology. Were there scientific merit in claims of evidence for supernatural design, psychology would be a natural home for most of the claims and much of the research. If any branch of science were to endorse intelligent design as science, psychology would be a likely first branch.

But not even psychology accepts intelligent design as science.

The American Psychology Association’s (APA) Council of Representatives adopted a resolution earlier this month which says intelligent design is not science, and that teaching it as science undermines the quality of science education and science literacy. The entire press release, and the resolution are below the fold.

This should be a serious blow to advocates of intelligent design who had hoped to make some recovery after the devastating loss in federal court in Pennsylvania in 2005, in the next round of textbook approvals in large states like California, Florida and Texas. There is no comment yet from the Discovery Institute, the leading organization in the assault on teaching evolution in public schools.

Read the rest of this entry »

Leave a Comment » | Accuracy, Charles Darwin, Creationism, Education, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Science, Science and faith, TAKS, TEKS, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Leroy Lee, exposer of “phantom forests” hoax

February 21, 2007

For a decade of my life I was deeply involved in the fight to get compensation for downwind victims (most from Utah) of the fallout from U.S. atomic bomb tests at the Nevada Test Site. In the course of that time I saw a variety of amazing fibs told by the government — hoaxes that injured and killed people. I grew to respect those whistleblowers who had the guts and patriotism to cry foul on the hoaxes.

Leroy Lee died about a month ago in Santa, Idaho. He was a seasonal government worker, a timber stand examiner — a tree counter. As low guy on the totem pole, it was not his job to take the global view. Still, he noted that there were fewer growing trees in the forests than the U.S. Forest Service claimed, and much more cleared land, too, clearcut.

The Forest Service was lying to Congress about millions of dollars of harvests on public lands. Lee blew the whistle. Officials had hoaxed up on paper, forests that didn’t exist, in 15 of the west’s National Forests.

It wasn’t a big scandal as scandals go, but the Kootenai National Forest still works to straighten things out, mostly in litigation. Most hoaxes are exposed by honest, hard-working people like Leroy Lee. They are heroes of our republic. Many of them remain unsung, like Lee.

In his “day job,” Lee taught physics, chemistry and biology at St. Maries High School, St. Maries, Idaho.

More information:

Leave a Comment » | Business Ethics, Environmental protection, Ethics, Freedom - Political, Hoaxes, Natural history, Patriotism, Science, Teaching | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Pseudo-science and skepticism: How do we know what’s true and accurate?

February 18, 2007

Working to figure out history, one constantly asks how we can know what happened in the distant past. In our justice system, we use some of the same tools to learn what happened in the near past, or immediate past, to help dispense justice in criminal trials or establish liability in civil trials. Strong skepticism helps in discarding bad theories, and in assembling data into a cohesive story that reveals what we often call “truth.”

American skepticism runs too shallow.

Recent surveys and reports provide a wealth of data for discussion.

First, out of a conference a meeting of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in San Francisco on February 15, we get a report that only 40 percent of Americans put stock in the biology theory of evolution. In contrast, in European nations there is 80 percent acceptance of the theory. The report is by Michigan State University Science and Mathematics Education Prof. Jon Miller, based on a study he published in 2006. Miller worries about implications for public policy in a republic:

“The number of public policy controversies that require some scientific or technical knowledge for effective participation has been increasing. Any number of issues… point to the need for an informed citizenry in the formulation of public policy.”

Miller ran a clinic at the meeting, urging scientists to improve their school boards by running for election.

On the whole, scientific literacy in the U.S. is improved over a decade ago. Massive pockets of ignorance still plague science and public policy, however.

Two, socialists argue that the U.S. and Britain are tough places for kids to grow up. No kidding. One key thing to watch: Can critics of the report find real information to rebut, or will the response be solely to try to brand the socialists as socialists, and therefore, somehow, inexplicably, evil.

But, as if to suggest an answer, the 54th Skeptics’ Circle is up, over at Action Skeptics.

Update, February 20, 2007:  Oh, yes, I had meant to mention this, too — see Larry Moran’s discussion on a fellow who went through the motions to get a Ph.D. in geology, but doesn’t believe in it (scrub brush tip to P. Z. Myers at Pharyngula).  In this fellow’s case, it’s not how he knows what’s true, it’s whether he knows anything at all, perhaps.

Among the more common errors I run into are errors of evidence — people who grant credence to reports that do not merit credence, people who fail to give weight to reports that should be given weight. I see this almost every time I get into a courtroom, where one lawyer team or both get into amazing discussions over minor points, elevating them to serious issues that lead justice astray (cf., the trial of O. J. Simpson and the DNA evidence derailment); I see this in public testimony before government bodies, where people confuse opinion with fact, and when they fail to adequately weight hard, conclusive data.

How do we know Abraham Lincoln lived at all? I asked one class of middle schoolers. We would know for certain if only he were mentioned in the Bible, one kid quickly said, with agreement from several others. Cecil Adams is right, the fight against ignorance is taking longer than we thought.

4 Comments | Dissent, Education, Elections, Evolution, Freedom - Political, Public education, Science, State school boards | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

The Sternberg/Discovery Institute/Intelligent Design hoax on the Smithsonian

February 17, 2007

The hoax is that Richard von Sternberg is an innocent who is unfairly maligned, to the point he fears for his job as Jack Cashill writes at right-wing fluff WorldNet Daily. Ed Brayton is at his best (“WorldNut Daily Flogs Dead Sternberg Horse), and there’s very little I could add — but it’s a good read, and important to know in the world of hoax-busting and pseudo-science bashing.

Read the full Brayton piece at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.

Sidenote 1: Sternberg as Galileo? Dembski as Newton? IDists are nothing if not full of themselves, and hubris.

Sidenote 2: A very funny novel by Robert Klane carries the title, The Horse is Dead. For some unfathomable reason, it is out of print. I have not found a copy in the past year for less than $150 (which suggests the TrashFiction site’s opinion of the book may be incorrect). Couldn’t some enterprising publisher bring it back, to more fully, and fictionally, fill in the details for what “beating a dead horse” means?

Leave a Comment » | Accuracy, Creationism, Ethics, Hoaxes, Intelligent Design, Science, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Text of the “Fixed Earth” memorandum

February 16, 2007

Fixed Earth? I didn’t know it was broken.

Steve Schafersman, the dogged scientist at the root of Texas Citizens for Science (TCS), snagged a copy of the “evolution is religion” memorandum from Texas Rep. Warren Chisum, R-Pampa, and posted it to the TCS website.  Also available from the Houston Chronicle’s SciGuy blog (transmission memorandum, the offending memorandum).

Holy mother of pearl! Voodoo science — you couldn’t make this stuff up.

4 Comments | Charles Darwin, Creationism, Darwin, Education, Ethics, Evolution, Politics, Religious Freedom, Science, Science and faith, Texas Freedom Network, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Greater lunacy: Georgia legislator denies writing or sending creationism support letter

February 15, 2007

First they deny science, then all of reality, then they deny that they denied. Or something like that.

Georgia State Rep. Ben Bridges denies having written or sent the memorandum that was circulated in his name to Texas state legislators earlier this week. The Atlanta Constitution provides the incredible details in this morning’s edition:

“I did not put it out nor did I know it was going out,” Bridges said. “I’m not defending it or taking up for it.”

The memo directs supporters to call Marshall Hall, president of the Fair Education Foundation Inc., a Cornelia, Ga.-based organization that seeks to show evolution is a myth. Hall said he showed Bridges the text of the memo and got his permission to distribute it.

“I gave him a copy of it months ago,” said Hall, a retired high school teacher. “I had already written this up as an idea to present to him so he could see what it was and what we were thinking.”

Hall said his wife Bonnie has served as Bridges’ campaign manager since 1996.

Bridges acknowledged that he talked to Hall about filing legislation this year that would end the teaching of evolution in Georgia’s public schools. Bridges said the views in the memo belong to Hall, though Bridges said he doesn’t necessarily disagree with them.

It’s getting so creationists no only can’t do science straight, can’t do religion straight — they can’t even tell whoppers straight. Read the rest of this entry »

1 Comment | Accuracy, Charles Darwin, Creationism, Darwin, Education, Evolution, Freedom - Political, Hoaxes, Public education, Religious Freedom, Science, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Georgia legislator tries end run around evolution — in Texas legislature

February 14, 2007

Be sure to see update here, next post.  Worse, even more, here.

Don’t you just love the Texas lege?

And could you make this stuff up if you were writing a novel? Nobody would believe it.

Warren Chisum is a good ol’ boy from Pampa, Texas, and the second most powerful man in the Texas House of Representatives. So when his friend, Georgia State Rep. Ben Bridges, asked him to — well, what was it he asked? — Chisum agreed to circulate a petition that calls evolution a plot of the Pharisees, Albert Einstein and Carl Sagan members of a Kabbalistic plot, and Big Bang ancient religion.

The Associated Press report in this morning’s Dallas Morning News (free subscription required eventually):

The memo assails what it calls “the evolution monopoly in the schools.”

Mr. Bridges’ memo claims that teaching evolution amounts to indoctrinating students in an ancient Jewish sect’s beliefs.

“Indisputable evidence – long hidden but now available to everyone – demonstrates conclusively that so-called ‘secular evolution science’ is the Big Bang, 15-billion-year, alternate ‘creation scenario’ of the Pharisee Religion,” writes Mr. Bridges, a Republican from Cleveland, Ga. He has argued against teaching of evolution in Georgia schools for several years. Read the rest of this entry »

5 Comments | Accuracy, Charles Darwin, Creationism, Education, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Science, Science and faith, State school boards, TEKS, Texas Lege, Textbook Selection, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Crank science makes crank politics

February 14, 2007

I’ve never seen a pro-breast cancer post before. That post is easily as crazy as the kid I had in class who said he’d never let his “baby mama” breast feed his son, because he didn’t want his son to be “homo.” That was from a kid steaming to be a high school dropout.

Nuts. Why don’t people just stick to the facts?

1 Comment | Accuracy, Freedom - Political, Hoaxes, Politics, Public health, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Carnival of . . . Mathematics?

February 11, 2007

Divest yourself of that tired and false notion that you’re bad at math. That’s hooey, though it probably sets your self-expectations low enough that it damages your math performance. Don’t make it a self-fulfilling prophecy.

New Carnival on the block: Carnival of Mathematics at Alon Levy’s Abstract Nonsense. It’s got some good stuff there for math teachers, and I suspect people with other interests will find something of interest, too. For me, for example, there is the link to the post that Fisks arguments of some of the more unsuspecting intelligent design fogmeisters. More pure historians may like the history of algebra post. There’s a lot more history and controversy in a post about why students should study math at all:

Biographical history, as taught in our public schools, is still largely a history of boneheads: ridiculous kings and queens, paranoid political leaders, compulsive voyagers, ignorant generals—the flotsam and jetsam of historical currents. The men who radically altered history, the great scientists and mathematicians, are seldom mentioned, if at all.

—Martin Gardner
quoted by G. Simmons, Calculus Gems

(Take THAT you creators of state history standards!)

Hmmm. I’m teaching algebra and geometry this week (“go figure!”). I may use some of that stuff.

Tip of the old scrub brush to JD2718.

2 Comments | Accuracy, Brain learning, Creationism, Creativity, Education, Education blogs, History, Intelligent Design, Lesson plans, Public education, Science, TEKS, Weblogs | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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