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Randy
SFN Regular
USA
1990 Posts |
Posted - 03/26/2009 : 16:19:39 [Permalink]
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| Edited 'Yee-haw' to 'WTF'! |
"We are all connected; to each other biologically, to the earth chemically, to the rest of the universe atomically."
"So you're made of detritus [from exploded stars]. Get over it. Or better yet, celebrate it. After all, what nobler thought can one cherish than that the universe lives within us all?"
-Neil DeGrasse Tyson |
| Edited by - Randy on 03/29/2009 05:50:26 |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 03/26/2009 : 19:46:11 [Permalink]
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The Creos failed on a 7-7 vote. A dangerous squeaker, and there's till the final Friday vote for the standards as a whole. But this victory for science is not something to spit at.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
| Edited by - HalfMooner on 03/26/2009 19:48:03 |
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Simon
SFN Regular
USA
1992 Posts |
Posted - 03/26/2009 : 19:46:39 [Permalink]
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Actually... The situation took a turn to the worst later in the day.
Apparently, creationists answer to their defeat was, as usual, only to pile lies even higher.
And the rest of the board mostly let them. Buying the lies? Trying to find a consensus with the creationists? I don't know but a lot of Bullshits got voted (Questioning common descent? Different estimates of the age of the universe? WTF?). |
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan - 1996 |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 03/26/2009 : 20:34:30 [Permalink]
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Edited to add a bunch.
Phil Plait at Discover celebrated too soon. From what I can see, science has mostly lost its battles in the Texas Board of Education so far.
The Texas Board of Education today passed several very damaging anti-science standards, adding them to the standards package. In some cases, they defended bad standards already put into it. Most if not all of these were sprung upon the Board by McLeroy and the other Creationists, and were rammed through without any previous discussion or notice, much less any scientific advice.
The showdown for voting on the whole package is tomorrow.
Per Schafersman's blog, these particular bad standards are still alive:Mavis Knight has now made the motion to amend the Biology standards by striking the 7B amendment made two months ago in January by Don McLeroy: "analyze and evaluate the sufficiency or insufficiency of common ancestry to explain the sudden appearance, stasis, and sequential nature of groups in the fossil record;" Dunbar and McLeroy both objected to the motion. McLeroy called it a "very excellent standard that deserves to be supported." He mentioned Dr. Genie Scott's criticism of the new 7B standard. The vote to remove McLeroy's standard failed 6-7-1, Rick Agosto abstaining.
. . .
McLeroy has a new standard to put into the Biology's evolution section: "7(G) analyze and evaluate the sufficiency or insufficiency of natural selection to explain the complexity of the cell."
. . .
Cargill's amendment to strip a very ancient number of years one that is equivocal about the age of the universe passed 11-3, with only Knight, Miller, and Nunez voting No. So the SBOE holds true to its wonderful tradition of stripping any date older than 10,000 years from science standards!
. . .
Cargill's fourth and last ESS amendment adds the words "given the complexity of living systems" to the conclusion of the origin of life standard 13F. This passed 9-5 with Agosto and one other voting with the Republicans. I guess I should be grateful that Cargill didn't just delete the entire origin of life standard. |
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
| Edited by - HalfMooner on 03/26/2009 21:39:17 |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
 Posted - 03/26/2009 : 22:01:38 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dave W.
Gee, according to the DI's John West, Agosto is public enemy number one, yet it seems that Agosto was voting in favor of all sorts of anti-science junk. Go figure.
Dumbasses, the lot of them.
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[Edited after finding I completely misunderstood Agosto's stance.]
Yeah, that guy is flipping and flopping all over the place like a new-caught Texas bass. His changeable heart may make all the difference tomorrow. He could go to the Dark Side, or vote for science -- or try to find a "compromise" between truth and lies.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
| Edited by - HalfMooner on 03/26/2009 22:32:38 |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 03/26/2009 : 22:25:25 [Permalink]
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In my opinion, PZ Myers, like Phil Plait, has made the mistake of summing up Thursday's actions of the board as a victory. PZ headlines his post as, "Good news from Texas". The "Strengths and Weaknesses" language was kept out, but all that other anti-science Creo crap I quoted is still there to be voted upon tomorrow.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
| Edited by - HalfMooner on 03/26/2009 22:36:29 |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 03/27/2009 : 16:50:28 [Permalink]
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The big day for the final vote has at last come and gone. From Steve Schafersman's Friday blog:What is the bottom line? Did we win or lose? Neither. We got rid of the worst language, but a great deal of qualifying language remains. I am not going to claim either victory or defeat. I realize that Casey Luskin of Discovery Institute will declare complete, unqualified victory, but it is not that for them. Neither is it for us. The standards adopted were generally good, but there are several that are flawed, fortunately most in minor ways that textbook authors and publishers can deal with. I think we can work around the few flawed standards. But the point is that there shouldn't be ANY flawed standards. The science standards as submitted by the science writing teams were excellent and flaw-free. All the flaws were added by politically unscrupulous SBOE members with an extreme right-wing religious agenda to support Creationism.
This will become apparent in 2011 when the Biology textbooks come up for adoption. Rule 3A and several other poor amendments in Biology--all the contribution of SBOE members who know nothing about science but a lot about pseudoscience--will be used to attack Biology textbooks. Cynthia Dunbar said so: "All we need is Rule 3A as now written and we have everything we want" (I am paraphrasing, but she said this in so many words). Gentle Readers, this is not the way to develop educational policy in one of the most wealthy and powerful state in the most wealthy and powerful country in the world in the 21st century. The process you just experienced, by reading my live blog columns, was deplorable and should be deeply embarrassing to every Texas citizen. |
This was all very good reading. My impression is that the day was won largely because some of the Creationists on the Board had an attack of the stupids, and ended up supporting "compromises" that ruined their most destructive efforts.
Personally, I think science had an important, but very much qualified, victory on Texas today. Future battles will continue on the interpretation of the standards, the contents of textbooks, and how science teachers actually present their subjects. But those would be battlegrounds regardless of the outcome of today's vote.
Today, when the chips were down, the Texas Board of Education threw out most of the Creationist guideline they were considering. The remaining items supported by the Creos are ambiguous at worst, and can be worked around.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
| Edited by - HalfMooner on 03/27/2009 18:12:44 |
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Randy
SFN Regular
USA
1990 Posts |
Posted - 03/29/2009 : 05:55:13 [Permalink]
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From the recent Phil Plait/the Bad Astronomer's blog.
"Do I sound unhappy? Yeah, damn straight I am. These creationists are trying
to destroy science in Texas. And they're succeeding. They are imposing their
narrow religious and ideological views on reality, and it's the
schoolchildren in the state who will suffer.
And they're not alone. Think you're safe from creationist nonsense because
you live in Vermont, or Illinois, or Oregon? Think again. Texas is so big
and has so many students in it that they have a huge amount of leverage on
the textbook industry. This means that the creationists will put their
weaselly language into the textbooks, and those will get sold all over the
country." |
"We are all connected; to each other biologically, to the earth chemically, to the rest of the universe atomically."
"So you're made of detritus [from exploded stars]. Get over it. Or better yet, celebrate it. After all, what nobler thought can one cherish than that the universe lives within us all?"
-Neil DeGrasse Tyson |
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Randy
SFN Regular
USA
1990 Posts |
Posted - 03/31/2009 : 17:20:26 [Permalink]
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More mouth-breathing cretin drama today in Texas....
"A federal judge dismissed today a lawsuit filed in July 2008 by a former
Texas Education Agency science director who claimed that the agency's
neutral position on the teaching of creationism was unconstitutional."
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Did a quick Google on the judge's ass -- yep...he's a Bush appointed judge.
If you recall a couple of years ago, the cretin-stacked Texas Board of Education fired the state's head of Science curriculum for sending a email forward about a up coming lecture on the I.D.'s wedge strategy.
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"We are all connected; to each other biologically, to the earth chemically, to the rest of the universe atomically."
"So you're made of detritus [from exploded stars]. Get over it. Or better yet, celebrate it. After all, what nobler thought can one cherish than that the universe lives within us all?"
-Neil DeGrasse Tyson |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 03/31/2009 : 19:57:47 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Randy
More mouth-breathing cretin drama today in Texas....
"A federal judge dismissed today a lawsuit filed in July 2008 by a former
Texas Education Agency science director who claimed that the agency's
neutral position on the teaching of creationism was unconstitutional."
===========
Did a quick Google on the judge's ass -- yep...he's a Bush appointed judge.
If you recall a couple of years ago, the cretin-stacked Texas Board of Education fired the state's head of Science curriculum for sending a email forward about a up coming lecture on the I.D.'s wedge strategy.
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I feel sorry for Ms. Comer, who has been done a grave injustice for simply doing her job.
The judge, Lee Yeakel, was a George W. Bush appointee, naturally. This highlights the importance of the appointment of decent judges in the future by President Obama.
I hope Ms. Comers' case is appealed.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
| Edited by - HalfMooner on 03/31/2009 19:58:43 |
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Randy
SFN Regular
USA
1990 Posts |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 04/05/2009 : 00:34:48 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by HalfMooner
The judge, Lee Yeakel, was a George W. Bush appointee, naturally. |
Judges Jones, of Dover fame, was also a Bush appointee. They're not all bad. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 04/05/2009 : 01:52:48 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dave W.
Originally posted by HalfMooner
The judge, Lee Yeakel, was a George W. Bush appointee, naturally. |
Judges Jones, of Dover fame, was also a Bush appointee. They're not all bad.
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Indeed, sometimes, as with Judge Jones, the unexpected good in judicial appointees comes out, despite the intention of the appointer.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
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Creationist bullshit lives on in TX
