Now the NY Times has an editorial deploring the politicization of the Texas Education Agency. This one is going to burn the creationists, I think; it's an opportunity to turn their slogans about fairness right around and skewer them.
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We've got a couple of appalling examples of awful journalism to scowl at today. The first is this credulous piece by Gordy Slack in The Scientist. I've been unhappy with Slack before — he sometimes seems to want to let creationist absurdity slide — and I got yelled at by some readers for my…
Yesterday, I ripped into Gordy Slack and the NY Times for bad articles on creationism. Now Slack has responded, and in the interest of fairness, I urge you to look at that comment and browse down to several others he has also made.
He's still wrong, and I still find his article incredibly bad.…
So those who oppose global warming are using the same strategy as the creationists: teach the 'controversy.'
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After a…
Virginia Heffernan did us all a favor: it's easy now to tell who the ignoramuses are by looking for favorable reactions to her ill-informed screed. And of course, if you want to find a real ignoramus, we wouldn't even need that much: we could just look to Rod Dreher, apologist and apparatchik of…
You'd think those morons would have enough intelligence (since it doesn't require much) and communication skills to expel Comer only after their tendentious whine-fest of Expelled.
Maybe one of the titles of a PT blog is true, that there really is no bottom to dumb. For, if there were, they should have found it by now.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
PZ, once again you've forgotten that they don't READ the NYT. Its just a bunch of ultra-liberal, ivory-tower propaganda.
...
At least thats what my grandfather told me.
But a great many other people do read it, Brian. It's not really about those who are so firmly entrenched that their minds won't be changed no matter what, but rather, it's about everyone else.
Glend D You'd think those morons would have enough intelligence (since it doesn't require much) and communication skills to expel Comer only after their tendentious whine-fest of Expelled.
Unless Expelled is really talking about what the Creationist want to do reality based scientists. Makes a tidy little package; a guide on how to suppress people and justification for doing it. Just an update of Jesus' parables.
The death cult fundies control Texas. The governor is one. They own the theocratic party in Texas. He appointed McLeroy chairman of the State Board of Education knowing full well he was a creo.
What is the point in being a theocrat in power if your thought police can't purge the state bureaucracy and persecute other sects and infidels? While of course looting the treasury for yourselves and constructing plush Men's rooms everywhere for social activities.
The dumbing down of the school system is just a start. They will run with their theocracy as far as they can until someone stops them. If anyone does. Bush is one too.
A court case is inevitable.
We may have a flood of refugees applying for political asylum in the USA and have to set up resettlement camps. What normal people call overreaching, the fundies would call a good start.
Brian. That's completely true. As Colbert says, "Reality has a well know liberal bias."
The closing line is a keeper:
Read the Times or not, that one's got to sting.
It would have been nice of them to mention that McLeroy has on occasions too numerous to mention, violated his own "sacred oath" of neutrality. I wonder if he'll hold himself to the same standard as Ms, Comer? I think I know that answer.
The Times are too kind to these horse's posteriors;
They may be her bosses; they're not her superiors.
John Pieret wrote: "Read the Times or not, that one's got to sting."
As a former resident of Oklahoma, I'm guessing the chief effect the Times editorial will have in Texas is to be held up as evidence that the state is doing exactly the right thing. In other words, if it pisses off the pointy-headed elite liberal establishment, it's gotta be good.
As my brother jokes, we should let the South secede and then invade them.
Seriously, we should shut off the cell phone towers and the Internet routers and close the hospitals in the state of Texas and see how the anti-science crowd likes it.
God, if she exists, is not an idiot. These people are.
Yeah, the nut-balls will say that, but there are good people in Texas and they will be none too proud. I don't think the general reaction will be to circle the wagons. The trends lines point toward some movement toward sanity in the general population and you will never reach the nut-balls anyway.
The "fairness" and Equal Time tropes are designed to appeal to the more liberal. I know several religious moderates who accept evolution, but have fallen for the idea that all sides should be free to make their case in science class, and let the kids make up their own minds for themselves. Shedding light on these kinds of shenanigans will hurt IDist credibility on this front.
It's hard living in this state sometimes. Rest assured that there are pockets of sanity in the major universities (Even Texas A&M). It'll be interesting to see what comes of all this.