Steven Newton, Programs and Policy Director for the National Center for Science Education:
… Why is “neutrality” toward evolution such a disaster for college-bound kids?
Evolution is the foundation of biology. Just as geologists cannot decipher the earth’s features without plate tectonics, and physicists cannot understand the interaction of light and matter without quantum electrodynamics, biologists cannot explain the diversity of life on earth without evolution. Trying to teach biology without evolution is like teaching auto mechanics without discussing engines. Teachers should not be neutral toward evolution because scientists are not neutral about evolution. …
The Biggest Loser is a TV reality show on which people who really do weigh a lot more than is healthy compete to lose weight. They do this on teams. There are various challenges. There are charismatic trainers. And, of course, because it is a TV reality show, individuals can get tossed off the show either because of poor performance (not losing enough weight) or by getting voted off.
And other matters, including a summary of what happened in Texas.
The Tennessee Senate has introduced a second anti- evolution bill and the debate over teaching intelligent design in schools continues. Dr. Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education updates us on the debate.
More on Tennessee here, regarding the seventh anti-Evolution bill filed somewhere in the US this year, the second in Tennessee. Yes folks, we are under attack more than ever.
Two Decades of Christian Nationalist Education Paved Way for Today’s War on Labor
While some religious leaders have come together to voice support for public employees in Wisconsin, others view the attack on the public sector and unions as a holy war. Fundamentalist textbooks and other media have been used for indoctrination into a worldview in which unregulated free markets are divinely mandated. In this sacralized model of capitalism, those who interfere with the invisible hand of the market are choosing “the state as provider rather than God.” The Koch brothers may have helped finance the current war on workers, but the narratives repeated by the Tea Partiers and their candidates echo those taught from Christian nationalist textbooks for more than two decades.
One of the canards that has been prevalent throughout both the federal budget debate and the battle in Wisconsin is the idea that government workers are overpaid. The Economic Policy Institute points out the problem with this argument.
In Wisconsin, which has become a focal point in this debate, public servants already take a pretty hefty pay cut just for the opportunity to serve their communities …
Or do people just say that this happens with insufficient evidence? In one study it was shown that local governments were using inadequate data to “justify marginalizing sex-related businesses…” a position they felt worthy of supporting even if it could be supported only by twisting the evidence.
A 6.3 earthquake has just struck the city of Christchurch, New Zealand, killing dozens and leaving dozens more buried in rubble with rescue workers trying to dig them out. On the TV this morning, the mayor of Christchurch told his story: Having just left a series of meetings, he was sitting on a balcony outside the city offices in a tall building with his executive assistant planning their next activities when the quake struck. They tried to re-enter the building but were repeatedly thrown back away from the entrance way. When the powerful earthquake stopped, he picked himself up off the floor of the balcony and gazed across his city to see absolute devastation including numerous collapsed buildings and destroyed infrastructure.
Is your car stuck in the snow? There are two ways to get it out. The wrong way and the right way. Here’s the wrong way:
Ignore the snarky comment at the beginning of the video. According to sources with the SPFD and the News, this car caught on fire for the same reason about two or three dozen other cars caught fire over the last several weeks in the Twin Cities. The driver was under the impression that the best way to unstick your stuck-in-the-snow car is to go back and forth between reverse and forward as fast as possible. This is incorrect. Doing anything as fast as possible in the snow does not work. One needs to be gentle with a stuck in the snow car. Treat the gas pedal like a treasured butterfly, apply no more pressure to the pedal than you would apply in patting dry the forehead of a febrile infant, coax the wheels to move no more forcibly than you would coax an unsure lover to accept your gentlest affection.
After digging out as much of the snow and slush as you can, of course.
If you jam the transmission into forward and reverse and rev the engine up like it was a Formula One race car in second place 10 feet behind the first place car in the last six seconds at Daytona, then you risk overheating the transmission. This can cause the transmission fluid to overflow onto the engine that you’ve also made hot (and not in a good way), and the next thing you know your car is doing the Bon Fire Boogie.
Also, when you are trying to drive a car out of deep snow or mud, keep the wheels as straight as possible. Adding weight to increase traction is good. If someone is pushing you, have them down on the car while they push forward, and don’t try the back and forth thing because you will run them over.
Best thing to do, of course, is stay home during the blizzard. I’m not sure why that is so hard to understand.
As Libya and Gaddafi move to a more prominent place in the news, I thought I’d point to a few posts on the topic. As an Africanist Archaeologist, I’ve got a special interest in Libya (though I’ve never worked there or visited). Haua Fteah is there. Haua Fteah is a cave facing north and overlooking the Mediterranean. It has sediments in it dating to over 120,000 years ago, which thus transcend the entire recent ice age, going all the way back to the last full interglacial. It was excavated by the guy who trained, at that site, two of the three archaeologists whom I had as advisors, Ofer Bar-Yosef and Glynn Isaac, along with a bunch of other people. Another interesting connection: A friend of mine who has helped fund some of the research I’ve been involved in (especially this work) was serving as a volunteer amateur archaeologist in Libya some years back, working on classic era sites. While doing so, she found herself hanging out with the King of Libya (or Sultan or whatever) on the day that the Royal Palace was overrun by the rebels, and only barely escaped with the help of some CIA guys who were also hanging around there. That was some years ago.
Dinosaurs aren’t the only source of fascination for paleontologists. Paleontology is a descriptive science that uses a variety of sources for information on how evolution has shaped life to what it currently currently consists of, and paleontologists look to the past through fossilized bones, mineralized records of the tracks and trails of botany, genetic records in modern DNA and geological records of the life that once populated the environments of the past.
A Sequence of Lines Consecutively Traced by Five Hundred Individuals is an online drawing tool that lets users do just one thing – trace a line. Each new user only sees the latest line drawn, and can therefore only trace this latest imperfect copy. As the line is reproduced over and over, it changes and evolves – kinks, trembling motions and errors are exaggerated through the process.*
Are you? If not, you can click here and be my Facebook friend. I don’t need you to do that but it would be better if you did, just in case. It’s good for you, it’s good for me, really, you should do it. You need to do it. I don’t really need it but maybe you do. You should, don’t you think? Just click here.
Birders in every hemisphere spend this time of year preparing for the Great Migrations. It does not matter where you live, several species of birds are going arrive at your location, pass through, or simply come out of or flee to the woods or marshes as Spring or Fall approaches. This means it is time to brush up on your birdsong and vocalization knowledge because when the birds are en route or newly arrived they tend to hide and your best bet at identifying them is with the sounds they can’t stop themselves from making.
So, for this edition of the I and the Bird blog carnival, you will be asked to practice your vocalizations as you read through the submissions. For each submission I’ve indicated a bird call. The bird call is the link to the submission. So, when you go to visit the submission, make the bird call at the same time that you click on the link. If you do it correctly, there will be a special dinging sound. If you do it incorrectly, there will be no dinging sound. Keep clicking going through the links until you are able to produce a proper call, indicated by the dinging sound, for each one.