Today is the day for the big protest rally in Austin against the follies of the board of education. Meet at the Texas Education Agency, 1701 Congress Ave., at 1pm. They're also asking that you register your attendance, although I'm sure no one will be turned away if they don't.
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If I were an American, I'd be REALLY embarrassed about having Texas as part of the USA right now....
As a Texan, I'm terribly embarrassed about all of the morons running everything. But Texas is a great place to visit, if you just ignore the batshit insanity.
#1
Texas gets noticed because its idiots are so loud about their stupid. Only thing is, I'd rather live here than in, oh, Utah, Oklahoma, Kansas, Louisiana. Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, the Carolinas, the Virginias, the Dakotas, big swaths of Indiana, southern Ohio or Illinois or Central Pennsylvania, and maybe Nebraska and Idaho. Hell, throw in Florida and Arizona, because their climates suck eggs, and Minnesota's 6th District. Just because.
No offense to all y'all living in those places. Just my preference.
#2
I can attest that San Antonio is lovely. To a person, everyone I met was pleasant. Never did find the basement at The Alamo, though.
I don't think I'll ever understand why it was decided that educational standards should be left up to state and local boards, made up of elected officials, with no minimal educational requirements for candidates.
It's a system that ensures that local superstition, myth and bigotry will be taught to innocent schoolchildren.
At a bare minimum, the federal government ought to license school board members. This should require at least a bachelor's degree from an accredited college plus passage of a basic skills test. If you can't explain the theory of evolution, you can't claim to know it's wrong.
It's getting harder and harder to ignore the bat-shit insanity seeping out of Texas.
However, Alabama and Arizona seem to be providing a lot of cover lately.
One thing I notice a lot around here is how whenever some geographic area is mentioned, invariably, someone comes forward to sort of "claim it" and shamefully admit that yes, there are redneck godbot types running around up there making things bad. And as PZ has noted many times, it's not just the South, it's not just small towns... this sort of crap seems to be happening everywhere.
I can't make it out to this one, though I was at the rally at the Capital Steps last Sunday.
Wait a second...Texas Education Agency? TEA? You're not trying to trick us into starting a riot at a tea party, are you PZ?
PZ, I'll be there.
#3 and #7: I agree. Ayaan Hirsi Ali was brought up to expect that heathen societies could not prosper...that civil life was impossible in a place such as Amsterdam. I think comments contain so much hyperbole about Texas that pharyngulites think there's nothing going on here besides Bible thumpin and bullets flyin. The truth is that the religious effects we despise are a bit more subtle, even in pious Texas.
Aquaria@3-
That's the nicest thing I've ever heard you say about Texas.
For some background on the Texas textbook situation, and the names and contact info for the perpetrators, see here.
I'm sure that Texas doesn't have the corner on guano brained fundies -- but, since they are a major player regarding textbooks and their, er, creation, the extremism of the ones on the TBOE give them added weight.
It is like comparing a feather to a singularity, slams the scales in one direction.
fear not, for there are still some rationally-minded freethinkers Deep in the heart of Texas. This one has to work today though. Damn.
There's little hope, in my opinion, of stopping them. They only assume that the vast quantity of contacts from their constituents about how nutty they are are initiated by Satan in an effort to stop them from exposing people to an eternity in heaven. Having gone through something similar in Alabama, I say you should do two things. 1) Vote them out as soon as possible. Put intense pressure on the new members to quickly reverse the damage. 2) Don't waste your time contacting them. Contact the governor and your representatives and suggest that your vote for them is in jeopardy if they don't do something to reign in the wingnuts.
Both of those strategies would be completely ineffective in this situation Bunkie, so lets go to plan B. Counter-brainwashing of children. Fight fire with fire. Get them when they're young. Effective methods include; bribing with candy, money, and small toys; pretending to listen to their inane stories; ridicule for those that seem skeptical of your ideas. Also, if you can write a catchy song they will sing it 23 hours a day for months.
This Texas Freedom Network, anti-SBOE-fools Texan got to work today, too, so I missed the rally. Hated to miss it, but damn, we need the money.
Aquaria and I are in Texas because we were born here. But man alive, if I hadn't been, I wouldn't be!
Of course, I'm in the People's Republic of Austin, so it's almost bearable. Other than that whole "laughingstock of the entire world" thing, of course.