Policy and Politics
tfk | March 25, 2009I was as surprised as anyone that according to Texas Education Agency, Josh Rosenau and Eugenie Scott of NCSE Now Support “Strengths and Weaknesses” in Texas Science Standards, but John West's response is utterly hackish:
Did Rosenau and Scott misrepresent their positions in an attempt to get a better slot to speak? Or did they simply misunderstand what they were being asked? Or were TEA officials so oblivious that they somehow didn’t know that the NCSE is the leading national group opposing the teaching of strengths and weaknesses in Texas? It will be interesting to find out the truth.…
tfk | March 25, 2009President-elect of Austin Geological Society. PhD from UT, masters from Cambridge "hence my strange accent."
Reads a letter from Geol. Soc. They reiterate NAS definition of science: "The use of evidence to construct testable explanations and predictions of natural phenomena, as well as the knowledge generated through this process." Asks that amendments from January be dropped. Don't blur the boundary between science and pseudoscience.
No questions.
Ewert: Insists that his work on bacteria proves that evolution is wrong. Bacteria stay bacteria, etc. Not if you ask Richard Lenski. Anyway…
tfk | March 25, 2009White wants S&W. He insists that there are credible alternatives to evolution. Thinks that random mutation can't add mutations. Do these people not read the Index of Creationist Claims? Claims evolution is a sacrosanct icon.
Leo: What do you say to people who think these things belong only in college? He thinks its bad! Shocker!
Martha Griffin: "Keeping our science standards strong." Went to college with Cargill, teacher and museum educator. Mentors science teachers. Backs ESS and Biology TEKS without amendments and without S&W. People who respect actual knowledge and…
tfk | March 25, 2009ESS writing committee member Sharon Mosher calls for them to reverse the bogus changes. Calling for students to "assess the arguments for and against universal common descent in light of the fossil evidence" is nonsense, she says, because it requires teachers to "manufacture arguments that don't exist."
BTW, Ray Bohlin's biological research apparently includes work on questions about whether pole-dancing is OK for believers. I imagine there was a lot of field work for that. I wonder if the Biologic Institute will take up that important work.
Deborah Koeck, member of the Chemistry TEKS…
tfk | March 25, 2009Ray Bohlin, Disco. fellow and head of Probe Ministries (Motto: "Touched by a being from above!") is about to speak. On the group's front page, there is a story asking: "Is Masturbation A Sin?" Guess what he decides!
Doesn't have written testimony. "I'll be reading from a recent evolution text."
He insists there are limits to change. Which is true in some sense, but it isn't really meaningful. Those limits are vastly more expansive than what is required to explain the diversity of life.
Quotes Jerry Coyne on the difference between artificial and natural selection.
Runs out of time,…
tfk | March 25, 2009Texas oilman Kyle Lewallen is building toward something, I guess. He hasn't actually made an argument yet. Ah, he was on the writing committee, and is offering their suggested revisions for the Earth and Space Science TEKS. They don't like amendments offered last time around by the Board, who didn't consult their expert writing committee before mucking with the text.
NCSE has been pushing simply to reverse those amendments, but the committee is offering revisions which might be easier for the Board to stomach.
Dunbar and Lewallen are going back and forth over the amendments to ESS TEKS 4…
tfk | March 25, 2009Sally Wall, a teacher, insists that the TEKS are about laying a foundation for future study, and the S&W language is distracting from that. "My job is not to fight cultural wars."
Tell that to Chairman McLeroy, who urges "Enlisting in the culture war."
No questions.
Randy Linder then insists that they should drop the S&W language. He worries that that language opens the door to nonscientific ideas like ID creationism. Carries on explaining why ID doesn't belong. He does well, but the Board will deny having any interest in ID.
Cargill whines that they weren't alternating between…
tfk | March 25, 2009FYI, TFN is liveblogging, as is Steve Schafersman.
Check out the audio feed at the TEA website.
Cherry Moore, supporting S&W, claims that the Great Unconformity is a weakness in the geological explanation of the Grand Canyon. Sadly, no!
Terri Leo sez that all discoveries are made because of weaknesses. But this is silliness. First, students in high school aren't generally in the business of conducting groundbreaking research. Second, that's a strange twist on the process of science.
It took less than 45 minutes for the Board to start getting snippy.
tfk | March 25, 2009Textbook author Juli Berwald is explaining why evolution rocks. Will she get any questions?
The Board just spent 10 minutes questioning a teacher who happened to back S&W, even though she's got far fewer credentials.
Yes! Dunbar asks who she writes for. Then wonders if the new "analyze and evaluate" language would allow S&W. Berwald doesn't think there's evidence against evolution, so she wouldn't know how to insert "weaknesses." Claims there's ambiguity.
Mercer: Claims that S&W has been in the standards for 20 years in everything. Bogus.
Leo: Gimme an example of…
tfk | March 25, 2009According to Terri Leo, Genie favored the strengths and weaknesses language in November. This is false. Not only does she oppose that language now, as she did in November, she wasn't here in November.
Why must people bear false witness?
tfk | March 25, 2009I was originally scheduled to go third, but overnight I was bumped to 34th, after Disco. spinner Rob Crowther.
Last time I did this, you got all my cursing and swearing, but I'll try to restrict myself to commentary a bit more.
Right now, a teacher named Lee Wagstaff is holding forth in favor of the creationist "strengths and weaknesses," and getting lots of questions, including questions referring to an earlier speaker who got no questions. These are questions that the expert chosen to help actually write the science TEKS would have had great insights into, but they asked her nothing.…
tfk | March 24, 2009It's the Discovery Institute's Rob Crowther, of course!
I'm in Texas right now, gearing up for the second round of science standards hearings. I'll be testifying 2nd tomorrow, right after what looks to be a very impressive news conference.
Anyway, Crowther, Disco. DJ, is upset that people oppose amendments made in the January meeting. Unfortunately, his complaints simply reveal that Crowther doesn't have any place in debates about education.
First, he claims that the Wall Street Journal is wrong to claim that "The proposed curriculum change would prompt teachers to raise doubts that all…
tfk | March 18, 2009
It was a tremendous honor to be the first speaker at a session on evolution education last February. The session included such luminaries as Ken Miller, Olivia Judson, Neil Shubin, and David Deamer, who each presented a marvelous overview of how evolution illuminates our understanding of biology, from the origins of life to the behavior of beetles, from the workings of the cell to peculiarities of the human body.
While I could not hope to speak with authority matching those great scientists on those particular fields, my opening talk set the stage by showing that, 150 years after the Origin…
tfk | March 18, 2009Ned Ryun, the wingnutty twin son of thankfully-disgraced former Congressman (and former middle distance runner) Jim Ryun, is worried:
ACORN is going to be helping with the 2010 census. I think that’s a sign of the apocalpyse [sic] for the week; kind of like letting the fox guard the hen house. It should make us all a little nervous that a group which has come under suspicion for widespread fraud in over 12 states would somehow be involved with the census. So my thought is: why don’t the big conservative grassroots organizations like Americans for Tax Reform, Americans for Prosperity, American…
tfk | March 17, 2009Via ObWi, we learn that the Pope took time out of his busy schedule to extend the AIDS crisis in Africa:
While medical workers advocate the use of condoms to help prevent the spread of AIDS, the Church insists on fidelity within heterosexual marriage, chastity and abstinence.
"The problem cannot be overcome by distributing condoms. It only increases the problem," the pontiff told reporters on board the plane headed for Africa.
While in Cameroon, he will visit charities, meet Muslim leaders and attend a gathering of bishops trying to chart the Church's role in bettering Africans' lives.
If…
tfk | March 16, 2009Shorter Paul Nelson:
The tiny biochemist I drew in my notebook totally disagrees with the actual biochemist I heard speaking. I draw brilliant, brilliant biochemists.
Normally when I accuse creationists of creating a strawman, I'm speaking quite metaphorically. Here, he even has blueprints for the scarecrow. It's surprising, though, that it took Paul over a month to write this, and didn't even construct an actual artificial being to stand in for him. Could he have been delayed in his construction efforts by work on his incredibly imminent monograph in Evolutionary Monographs?
Bonus good…
tfk | March 15, 2009Over at IDolator Bill Dembski's blog, Denyse "Buy My Book" O'Leary has been on a tear lately, blogging about the supposed racism inherent in evolution. Fellow blog contributor DaveScot responded with a long post observing that the leadership of racist groups today and in the past are often vehement antievolutionists. DaveScot fails to observe that the Klan was prominent at the Scopes trial, firmly opposing the teaching of evolution.
In any event, one might have expected this contrary voice to suddenly disappear from the blog, since Dembski and his sycophants have a long history of censoring…
tfk | March 13, 2009Ned Ryun is concocting a 30+ episode podcast series to explain the Constitution. "My hope is that by listening to the series, people might actually become interested enough to actually read the Constitution. It’s not a long document." No, it isn't. People who haven't got the patience to read that brief document will surely not have time to listen to 30+ episodes of Ned Ryun, scourge of the KS-2, attempt to dramatize the Constitutional Convention.
That the enterprise doesn't make sense is kinda irrelevant. It isn't necessarily a bad idea, even if it is sure not to achieve the goal. But it…
tfk | March 9, 2009Watchmen is great. Dana's review is basically right, so consider this a "me too" and an expansion on certain themes.
As all nerds now know, the movie changes key events from the end of the graphic novels. I think that the major change was the right decision: giant psychic squid are awesome, but pretty random. What director Zach Snyder did is better, but he should have worked through the consequences of those changes better. For instance, did the scientists in Antarctica still have to die? Leaving that needless death makes Adrian Veidt more of a monster than he is in the comic, a change…
tfk | March 9, 2009In what was widely seen as a needless politicization of science, President George W. Bush announced early in his presidency that he was forbidding federal funding for research on human embryonic stem cells (with certain exceptions). This episode, and the way he sold his decision to the public, is the prime example in Chris Mooney's excellent The Republican War on Science. In particular, he oversold the exceptions, claiming that up to 60 lines of usable stem cells existed, when only 21 were viable, and when those were contaminated in various ways, and could not be used to research certain…