Scattershooting while wondering what happened to getting 8 hours sleep

by Cliopatria

Best quick discussion of what Democrats need to do: Richard Thompson Ford in Slate. Short version: stop acting like you’re running for student council in high school. Best line: “As spin doctors, Democrats kill vigorous patients."

Best argument this week supporting Cliopatriarch Luker’s contention that not all Republicans are double-dyed conservatives with a monolithic agenda: This Wired article on the new Senate and cloning.

Best argument against our noble patriarch’s sentiment: Arlen Spector getting the rubber hose treatment from the Republican leadership. This article will do as well as any.

Most depressing news concerning Evolution from a town very near where I live: the dumbing down of the science curriculum by including creationism

Most interesting recent research concerning Evolution, this press release on the evolution of the eye. (Thanks to Butterflies and Wheels).

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Oscar Chamberlain - 11/9/2004

Julie, I think the creationists are trying to avoid the "comparative religion" problem by requiring that the dogma be dressed up in scientific terms.

Actually, if the teacher had the time, he or she could pretty much demolish the creation/intelligent design by showing how powerfully predictive evolution has been and how these other ideas are barren in that regard.

But that would take a lot of time in a course. Most teachers don't have it.

Jonathan Dresner - 11/9/2004

Yes, it is discriminatory. Or, as others would put it, cultural literacy.

Ralph E. Luker - 11/9/2004

But, of course, the sticker doesn't mandate the teaching of any alternative theory.

Julie A Hofmann - 11/9/2004

Actually, one of the more disturbing moments in NPR's coverage of the Georgia story was a science teacher complaining about the sticker because eveolution was fact, not theory. I think that this is where Oscar's argument is most important: evolution may be a theory, but so are gravity and all kinds of other scientific stuff we use every day. The problem with evolution is that, unlike relativity or aerodynamics or entropy or whatever, the "proven" part gets dropped because it conflicts with another theory. My wuestion is this -- if schools are forced to teach 'alternate theories' like intelligent design and creationism per The Bible in a science class, shouldn't they also have to teach other creation theories? How exactly is it that people successfully argue, in a country where religious freedom is supposed to be one of our main tenets, that the Christian creation account is as valid as evolution and be taught in Science classes, but Native American, Hindu, Aboriginal, Polynesian, etc., stories of creation are only (if at all) taught in English and Social Studies classes? Science aside, isn't that religious discrimination?

Oscar Chamberlain - 11/9/2004

The Georgia action might pass constitutional muster.

Actually, one of the huge problems is that the nature of theories is rarely taught well, and the term, in common discourse, often simply means a supposition. If the Georgia textbook statement encourage teachers in the sciences to teach that aspect of science better, it might have an inadvertently positive outcome.

Jonathan Dresner - 11/9/2004

One could challenge any scientific theory on non-religious grounds: they chose to challenge evolution and they did so for explicitly religious reasons, though the disclaimers were written with the constitutional issues in mind and are, therefore, mushy.

There's also a case, I think in Texas, where "intelligent design" theory is going to be looked at by the courts to determine whether teaching the idea of a "guiding intelligence" in organismic development constitutes religious establishment.

Ralph E. Luker - 11/9/2004

Oscar, I suspect that if the Republicans had not won a reasonably comfortable majority in the Senate that the long knives would not have come out for Spector. As it is, the Republican moderates will be absolutely essential to the Republican leadership and that need may well save Spector's position.
We also have an evolution controversy in court here in Georgia. It's about a disclaimer pasted into the biology textbook which says that evolution is only a theory. The ACLU's claim that such a disclaimer is a religious teaching strikes me as pretty untenable because one could challenge the theory of evolution on non-religious grounds.