Policy and Politics
tfk | July 20, 2011Tomorrow, I'll be speaking to the Texas Board of Education to urge them not to undermine science textbooks, and to reject any supplement that includes creationist content. The only textbook supplement I know of that was submitted containing such creationist content comes from a one-man publisher called International Databases. ID, LLC's supplement, not surprisingly, promotes IDC.
If only that were its greatest flaw. The supplement is rife with errors, probably over a thousand all told. It doesn't address all the topics required from supplements. And there's this:
I've driven from Salt Lake…
tfk | July 18, 2011This Thursday, the Texas Board of Education will vote to adopt science textbook supplements.
You'll recall that the board approved new science standards a couple years ago, and that they were a mixed bag. They dropped inaccurate language about "strengths and weaknesses" of scientific theories (language used to attack evolution in textbooks last time they did textbook adoption). But they stuck in a line about "all sides of the evidence," whatever that means, and inserted language requiring greater scrutiny for evolutionary concepts than for all others, and inserting creationist ideas about…
tfk | July 18, 2011From last Thursday through Sunday, I was in Las Vegas at The Amazing Meeting!, a gathering of skeptics hosted by James "The Amazing" Randi. Randi, for those of you unschooled in these matters, was a stage magician who got involved in debunking the claims of psychics and other flimflam artists. He orchestrated a rather famous debunking of psychic Uri Geller on the Carson show (you can find it on Youtube).
It was great to meet Randi, who urged us to give him copious hugs, and whose beard threatened to overwhelm the entire crowd of 1600 TAMmers. It was great, too, to watch magician Penn (of…
tfk | July 15, 2011Remember when I invited readers to take a survey on the Miss USA evolution answers? And I was kinda vague about why I was doing it? At last it can be told, I was working on a guest blog post at Scientific American. You should read the whole thing, but here's the bit about how I used the survey data:
Watching the video and reading the transcript, it is obvious that many contestants were conflicted in their views, and quite a few had to discover their views on the spot. Instead of mocking these women for struggling with the issue, it should be said that most Americans probably go through a…
tfk | July 15, 2011ThinkProgress's culture blogger Alyssa Rosenberg explores The Myths And Challenges Of Making Working Class Television, writing that the main challenge is:
being working poor isnât something that you solve once and itâs done.
There are plenty of movies that do this, because they can have one crisis and overcome that, and the story's over. In TV, you have to have the next episode after that. The second season of Justified did a good job with this, examining life in coal country Kentucky. But even there, it's through the lens of a US Marshal's work chasing criminals, as with the second season…
tfk | July 14, 2011I'm here in Las Vegas, and already my work is done. Genie Scott, Occidental College's Don Prothero, and I did a workshop at 9am today about Defending Evolution in Classrooms.
Planning for this was complicated, because we wanted it to be a true workshop, i.e., to have interactive aspects, and time for people to work through exercises in small groups. But we didn't know what sort of crowd to expect for the first workshop of the first day. Chatting about our plan, we joked about how embarrassing it'd be if only 3 people showed up, but we planned for about 30, and made 60 copies of the…
tfk | July 14, 2011In the course of my talk at TAM, I mentioned at one point "There's nothing so unfair as equal treatment of unequal ideas." Various people tweeted and retweeted it, so the line was clearly a hit.
That's actually a misquotation (I was working from memory) of a line I've always loved, but have had a hard time tracking down.
You often see the correct version attributed to Thomas Jefferson, but rarely with any citation accurate enough to confirm. In a 1950 Supreme Court dissent, Justice Felix Frankfurter said: "It is a wise man who said that there is no greater inequality than the equal…
tfk | July 13, 2011Science Cheerleader Darlene Cavalier reports What you donât know about Ms. Virginia:
Next week, Laura Eilers, AKA Ms. Virginia , will compete for the title of Ms. United States. The Science Cheerleadersâcurrent and former NFL and NBA cheerleaders pursuing science and engineering careersâare very fortunate to have Laura as our extremely talented choreographer and creative director.
â¦
In school, her favorite science projects included âcreating an amoeba structure out of cookie cake and icing, researching anthropologist Dian Fossey and her work with gorillas, as well as engineering a balsa wood…
tfk | July 12, 2011Long-time readers know that, last April and May, I invested a decent amount of time in tearing apart a book by conservative punditress S. E. Cupp. Cupp, a self-proclaimed atheist, had written a book defending the religious right, and she titled it Losing Our Religion: The Media's Attack on Christianity.
Why, you may be asking, would an avowed atheist describe fundamentalism as "our religion"? I don't know. But she does, consistently adopting the fringiest, least atheist-friendly forms of Christianity as if they were the only form Christianity could take. Thus, she mocked Chris Matthews's…
tfk | July 12, 2011
It was a hard job, but someone had to do it. A few days ago, I sat down and watched a 15 minute video of Miss USA pageant contestants as they pondered the question: Should evolution be taught in schools?
Then I watched it again. And again. Until my eardrums bled I had a complete and accurate transcript.
So that you don't have to do endure the same agony, I present the transcript below, as a service to the community, with timecodes relative to the video above. Enjoy. You can find the names and biographies of each state's contestant at the Miss USA site.
"Should evolution be taught in…
tfk | July 11, 2011Speaking, for reasons passing understanding, before the Israeli Knesset, Glenn Beck said:
I donât know a lot of Palestinians but I also donât know a lot of Jewish people either.
So, the list of things Glenn Beck can be fairly said not to "know a lot of": Palestinians, Jews, anything.
tfk | July 9, 2011Jerry Coyne has a concern. Weighing in on the elevatorgate saga (cf.):
Over the past few days Iâve become increasingly distressed at the inability of our community to discuss an issue rationally and without rancor or name-calling. This âcampaignâ, which I agree with Miranda is vile and disgusting, seems more like a popularity contest: who has the greatest influence on the internet? It is about trying to bully people into agreement through name calling (âgender traitorsâ) and humiliation. It is not about rational discourse but about self promotion (âSCOREâ) and censorship of ideas that some…
tfk | July 7, 2011About a year ago, a month before our wedding, I was walking with my wife (wife-to-be, I guess) and some friends through New York City. It was a hot, sunny summer day, so she was in a sun dress.
We walked through parks, we met various friends throughout the city, and generally had a good time.
That evening, talking with her mom, she mentioned that she needed to pin the front of her dress, because it showed too much cleavage, and people had been staring at her cleavage whispering crude things to her all day.
Folks, I was right there, arm around her waist, pretty much all day. But jackasses…
tfk | July 6, 2011Thanks to everyone for their help with the Miss USA survey. There were 713 responses, which should give me what I need. I'll post the results shortly. I closed the survey and have started crunching numbers.
There was a question raised about the question wording, so I changed how the questions were introduced about halfway through. It was a modest change in the wording, clarifying that I wanted respondents to assess the contestants' answers in terms of their objective merits, not just whether they answered the question asked. I didn't think it was a big impact, but I was curious whether…
tfk | July 5, 2011Kareem Fahim reports from a rebel checkpoint outside of Tripoli:
The people fleeing Tripoli on Thursday said that several neighborhoods filled with the sound of gunfire every night. At checkpoints throughout the capital, they said, paramilitaries from the dreaded Peopleâs Guard carried long lists of wanted men. The gas lines were five days long.
The refugees say that Tripoliâs rebels defiantly paint their flags on anything that will spread their message, including pigeons, cats and balloons.
That's an image I'd have expected more from a China Mieville novel than from war reportage, but it's…
tfk | July 5, 2011The New York Times reports: E.P.A. Chief Stands Firm as Tough Rules Loom:
In the next weeks and months, Lisa P. Jackson, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, is scheduled to establish regulations on smog, mercury, carbon dioxide, mining waste and vehicle emissions that will affect every corner of the economy.
She is working under intense pressure from opponents in Congress, from powerful industries, from impatient environmentalists and from the Supreme Court, which just affirmed the agencyâs duty to address global warming emissions, a project that carries profound economic…
tfk | June 29, 2011Last night, several folks on twitter expressed similar concerns about the wording of the survey I created and blogged about a couple days ago. Some folks taking the survey were confused about whether I wanted respondents to rate the answers by whether or not they answered the question, or by how well the ideas expressed by the contestants matched the raters' own beliefs (even if they didn't quite answer the question).
I wanted the latter, and have updated the instructions to clarify. If you took the survey before, and if this clarification changes how you would have answered, please…
tfk | June 29, 2011Because Nobel laureate Werner Arber is addressing evolution at the Landau meeting of Nobel laureates, I thought I'd repost this piece from January 21, 2009, which was first posted from the Texas Board of Education meeting room. Enjoy.
In November, the Texas Board of Education met to consider their new science standards. As I've mentioned a major point of contention is a reference in the current standards to "strengths and weaknesses" of scientific explanations, a concept only ever applied to evolution, and without any clear explanation of what it means.
In the course of 6 hours of testimony…
tfk | June 28, 2011Prompted by some questions on twitter and elsewhere, I'm working on some research based on the much-discussed Miss USA answers to a question about evolution.
I'd like your help with that research. I need to come up with a consistent rating of the contestants' answers, and I created a survey that you can use help.
Please take the survey, and share it with others. I'd prefer to have science-friendly and science literate people take the survey, but don't be shy about sharing the answers more widely.
Thanks!
tfk | June 22, 2011In Slacktivist Fred Clark's regular Left Behind blogging has reached a point in the novels where an Orthodox rabbi has gone on TV to explain that Jesus is the Messiah, and Jews should all be Jews for Jesus. One of the novels' protagonists (who found Jesus after seeing a billion or so people killed raptured) pumps his fists and cheers.
This reaction, and the rabbi's broadcast itself, grate on Clark's ears. Clark is an evangelical Christian, and knows when someone's Doing It Wrong. This scene, he writes, "illustrates another important point in our lesson on How Not to Do Evangelism. Fist-…