Policy and Politics
tfk | January 21, 2009Ron Wetherington, a professor of anthropology at Southern Methodist University: Praises draft standards. Allows publishers to stick to facts. "Partisans are generating doubt about evolution with disingenuous phrases." People lack understanding of key concepts.
What are weaknesses? Common in preliminary hypotheses, rare in theories. Preliminary hypotheses are not well-tested. Theories are not tentative hunches, and alternatives have fallen away as evidence accumulates.
S&W is bogus. Yes, national standards talk about alternatives, but to preliminary hypotheses, not to theories.…
tfk | January 21, 2009In brief, Skoog points out that science ed. in Texas is behind other states, and that the circuitous path to critical analysis via S&W is less effective than just teaching critical analysis.
Seelke discussed his bogus research, which doesn't make sense and won't make sense to Board members, but since he claims it shows evolution to be weak, the conservatives will like it.
Mavis Knight is currently holding forth against Seelke's claim that taking out S&W would amount to indoctrination. I should emphasize, 8 hours into this process, that little if any of it holds together in any…
tfk | January 21, 2009Stephen Meyer, Disco. Inst. veep and author of Explore Evolution.
He insists that the new standards treat evolution in a special way, ignoring critical evaluation. I note in passing that the new standards more accurately reflect the practice of science, including for evolution.
Then he talks about what evolution is. He is using slides from powerpoints distributed to teachers with EE. Distinguishes common descent from the mechanism of evolution, and presents "chemical evolution" as a third branch of evolution. Again, bogus.
What is a weakness of a theory. He claims a theory is weak if it…
tfk | January 21, 2009Steve Lyons, parent, grandparent: Words mean things. Otherwise things would be nonsense. This is a coup d'etat. Theory is redefined, treated as if they were facts. S&W gives all sides. Teach good science.
Daniel Bolnick, professor at UT: 1500 members of 21st Century Coalition. Don't reintroduce S&W. JSTOR has a bajillion articles supporting evolution, none denies it.
At this point, I went to see a press conference by the Texas affiliate of Focus on the Family (Focus on your own damned family!), and then to watch Genie, Texas Freedom Network, and a coalition of scientists talk…
tfk | January 21, 2009Peter Johnston, parent, fmr. SBOE candidate, lawyer: Teach S&W. History of science shows that we aren't all objective. "Powers that be in science … resist change." Difficult to see outside the box. Maundering on Kuhn.
Dunbar: "Mrs. Scott." It's "Dr.," dammit. What's the deal with consensus? Those that are in power resist change.
John Huffner, math teacher: "What's wrong with telling the truth?" S&W sounds health to me. Education should be built on truth, not deception. "As a creationist, I don't want creationism taught in school." S&W protects teachers. S&W is…
tfk | January 21, 2009Some dude who cut in line, science prof.: Keep the language unchanged. How many conformists got patents or Nobel Prizes? Key element of college readiness is crit. thinking. Quote Nietzsche, to no clear end. Campbell and Reece disparages anything but evolution.
C&R is a college text.
Leo: Pseudoscience? Philosophy sucks. DNA analysis has assumptions.
Cory Cunningham, 17 year-old HS student. Thanks for molding our young minds. I won't push my religious beliefs, just state them. Help us reason properly. Must consider S&W. Evolutionists play politician, "violating rights of…
tfk | January 21, 2009You can listen along with me at: http://at1.tea.state.tx.us/sboeaudio
As before, board comments are in blue.
Rose Banzhas, speaking for herself but also an environmental educator: Environmental education matters. As an outdoor educator, I know this matters.
McLeroy keeps asking people if they're here on their own dime or on business. Dunno why.
Loresa Loftin, Science Teachers Association of Texas: More space science. "Man has walked on the sun"?
Various chatter, nothing very exciting, mostly with Cargill. McLeroy is trying to keep things moving.
Helen Holdsworth, Texas Wildlife…
tfk | January 21, 2009I'm here in Austin, watching people speak out about the science Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS). Board questions are in red. Bored comments will be interspersed. As always, as a blogger I don't speak for NCSE, and have been known to work blue.
8:33: First up, Sharon Sparlin, a science playwright, who tells the Board that the folks who wrote the TEKS did a good job, and that they should listen to the good advice they were given. "They made me want to be a student again."
8:34: Kevin Fisher, a member of the science standards writing committee and veteran educator, makes it clear…
tfk | January 20, 2009Martin Cothran, who never met a logical error he didn't like, has a question about the inauguration:
If this isn't a Christian nation, then why are presidents (including this one) sworn in using a Bible, rather than, say, the Koran or Bagavad-Gita?
For the same reason it wasn't a White nation just because the first 43 presidents were all white, and neither is it a male nation just because all 44 so far have been men.
We'll elect a woman one day, and some day a Jew will place his or her hand on a copy of Tanakh and take the oath. One day someone will take the oath of office with a copy of the…
tfk | January 20, 2009I'm in Austin, preparing to watch the Texas Board of Education consider new science standards.
The old standards got an F from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative-leaning education think tank which reviewed the science standards in all 50 states in 2005. The reviewers found the standards confusing, often insultingly in their condescension toward students, and poorly drafted.
The reviewers did not object to the handling of evolution, writing:
Texas, a state which, like others, has recently had trouble with creationist attempts to delegitimize evolution, has, at the time of this…
tfk | January 20, 2009Dr. President Obama,
Let me start by saying that there are few things I've done in my life that I'm prouder of than helping to get you elected. The community of people I met here in California, in Nevada, and spoke with on the phone across the nation, was astonishing and a source of constant inspiration.
Wherever I go, people have had an extra zip in their step when they remembered that you'd be taking office soon. If polls are to be believed, your cabinet appointments and handling of affairs in the transition has won over quite a few people who voted against you, and even a good chunk of…
tfk | January 20, 2009From the President's Inaugural Address:
For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act -- not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform…
tfk | January 19, 2009For once I tried to think ahead about a major anniversary, and I'm still casting about for original thoughts on what would have been Martin Luther King Jr.'s 80th birthday.
Obviously, there's the significance of MLK Day being followed by President Obama's inauguration. That's a connection so obvious that it needs to commentary. King had a dream, and while little white boys and little black girls aren't playing hand in hand as often as we'd like, we've made progress. We elected a black president, and in no small part, that's a result of the voting reforms Dr. King demanded.
It's significant…
tfk | January 14, 2009ThinkProgress points out how torture doesn't just hurt the victim, and doesn't just destroy our national soul. It also keeps terrorists from being prosecuted:
Susan Crawford, the “top Bush administration official in charge of deciding whether to bring Guantanamo Bay detainees to trial,” tells Bob Woodward in today’s Washington Post that the United States military tortured Mohammed al-Qahtani, one of the planners of the 9/11 attacks. As a result, Crawford decided the U.S. could not prosecute Qahtani.
Crawford, the convening authority for the military commissions trying detainees at Guantanamo…
tfk | January 13, 2009PZ Myers and a Canadian denialist blog are locked in a tight race for this year's best science blog. Go vote for the tentacled one.
tfk | January 5, 2009Ned Ryun, baby boy of the discredited and disreputable former Congressman Jim Ryun, wonders "do we really need 600,000 new govt. employees?":
Appears that Obama is promising 600,000 new government employees. That is just slightly troubling.
Ryun is currently employed at a conservative group that trains people to run for public office, so if he's really troubled by all that government out there, he might reconsider his current profession. And I will mention only in passing that George W. Bush, for whom Ned used to work as a writer, is the first president since World War II to see government…
tfk | January 5, 2009Science's policy blog reports:
[T]he House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee has invited not only noted economists Martin Feldstein, Mark Zandi, and Robert Reich [to discuss the economic recovery bill] but also Maria Zuber, a professor of geophysics of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and principal investigator on GRAIL, a NASA mission to measure variations in the moon's gravitational field.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who will kick off the discussion, has made it clear that "investing in technology and innovation should be part of any economic recovery plan," says a…
tfk | January 1, 2009I am aghast. Due to an asinine and ill-considered proposition limiting property tax increases, California is having trouble balancing its budget. The Democratic legislature had an elaborate scheme to keep the state running, but Governor Ahnold Schwarzenegger shot it down.
The plan he's proposed would slash education:
California schools could eliminate a week of instruction and increase class sizes next year under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's new plan for solving the state's budget crisis. … the proposal unveiled Wednesday also would allow districts to eliminate one of two science courses…
tfk | December 31, 2008Martin Cothran, the perpetually benighted Disco. Inst. blogger, considers the tussle over Blagojevich's Senate appointment and sees it as a fight, The Democrats vs. the states:
Whether Burris serves as Senator from Illinois is a matter for the people of Illinois to decide, not the U. S. Senate. Reid and the rest of the Senate need to keep their greedy hands off of Illinois's Senate seat.
Sadly, no. A quick check of the owner's manual reveals:
Section 5. Each House shall be the judge of the elections, returns and qualifications of its own members,
No state involvement.
Now, there happen to be…
tfk | December 31, 2008TPMMuckraker highlights this quote from former AG Alberto Gonzales' interview with the WSJ:
[F]or some reason, I am portrayed as the one who is evil in formulating policies that people disagree with. I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror.
We could, of course, spend all day pondering the fact that the guy who was theoretically responsible for prosecuting actual terrorists would compare himself to a victim of terrorism. He resigned his job in disgrace. A 100+ story building didn't fall on top of him. He wasn't hospitalized to treat anthrax from a…