I just posted the following comment on this article in MinnPost:

Thanks for covering this. As Randy says, this has been known for decades, but for some reason every time it hits the news (because of a new study that shows the same thing again) everyone seems to have just heard it for the first time.

I promise you: Creationist students (there are many) and/ore creationist parents of students (and no, parents and students are not always on the same page as each other) DO make themselves known the the teachers who are teaching evolution, sometimes quite aggressively. I have yet to hear of a parent (other than me) actively seeking out a biology student and explaining that the parent/child are interesting in an excellent science education, and in fact insisting on it.

Here is a good template for parents to use when meeting the life science teacher.

Parent: “Hi. I’m Mary Joe’s parent. I just want you to know that I fully support science education and I recognize that things like creationism, or so-called ‘teaching the controversy’ are never, ever appropriate in the science classroom.”

Teacher: “Oh … ah … nice to meet you …”

Parent: “Also, I want you to know that if you ever have any difficulties in this regard, you should let me know. I’m a member of the National Center for Science Education, a member of the Minnesota Citizens for Science Education, a widely read blogger and an activist in this area. If you ever get any trouble from anyone, including school administrators, call me or send me an email and I will directly support you and find others who will do so as well.”

Teacher: “Oh, … well, … ah … ”

Parent: “And one other thing. I just want you to know that if you do happen to be one of those biology teachers who does not teach evolution in the classroom, or who actually teaches creationism … I’ll be your worst nightmare.”

Teacher: “Oh, …. ah … um…”

Parent: “And, you should know, my child, who will be in your class, is totally on board with this and will be paying close attention.”

… or words to that effect.

The annual Gallup Poll on how dumb Americans are has come out, and they got less dumb.

A new Gallup poll on public opinion about evolution hints at a slightly higher rate of acceptance of evolution in the United States over the years. Asked in December 2010 “[w]hich of the following statements comes closest to your views on the origin and development of human beings,” 38% of the respondents accepted “Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process,” 16% accepted “Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in this process,” and 40% accepted “God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so.”

Details here.
Continue reading A whole pile of Evolution Education news →

… for the truly ungodly time of 9:00 AM Central Time to listen to Air America’s “The Voice of Minnesota” Atheist Talk Radio Show on KTNF AM 950.

aDNA (that’s “art-DNA”) artist and sciJournalist Lynn Fellman and I will have a conversation with Ira Flatow of Talk of the Nation’s Science Friday about science communication, media, and the role of media.

The idea for having this conversation originated with the recent news of changes in the support available for Ira Flatow’s show. To get the latest information about this (and to learn how we all overreacted to the scary news that important funding was vaporizing!) have a look at Ira’s blog post on the topic.

You may not be able to listen live to this station station from where you are. I don’t even get it from where I am and I’m in the same metro area. But you can listen to it live on the KTNF web site, although I believe for reasons of FCC regulation ([snark] they do such a great job, don’t they? protecting our civic interests and stuff all the time, the FCC?[/snark]) you have to live near the station to listen to it on line. The special super dooper security system to check this is you enter “your” Minnesota zip code (like, for instance, 55433 or whatever) into the box and then the web page knows you live near but not too near the station.

In any event, Minnesota Atheists web site will have the podcast a few days after the show is over. Here. Check my blog every few minutes for more information on that.

Please use the social networking buttons below to spread the word about this show to all your friends and family. Thank you very much.

It is hard to imagine a world without science Friday.

But it is easy to image a world in which our collective respect for the National Science Foundation, who is pulling their funding for the program, is seriously compromised. Also, it is easy to imagine a world in which we do NOT renew our memberships to NPR because they are ALSO pulling funding.

UPDATE: Ira Flatow, host of Science Friday, has added a comment below which you should read.

Also, since NSF funding is set by the congress, a letter to your members of congress would be helpful.

Here’s the word from Ira Flatow:
Continue reading UPDATED: Major Funding for Science Friday Ends; What will happen next? →

I always assumed that “The Mouse that Roared” was a not too subtle reference to Sputnik I, which was launched on this date in 1957. The satellite was the first human made machine to orbit the planet, and it was launched by the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. In some ways, Sputnik’s tiny “beep beep beep” sound heard radiometrically (but mostly metaphorically) in the west, from a Soviet-launched device flying over whatever countries the Soviets decided to launch it over … was the most frightening sound ever heard in the Situation Room (or the 1957 equivalent thereof) at the White House.

There is a direct relationship between Sputnik’s launch and the subsequent building of hundreds of college campus buildings, expansions of science departments, expansion of science education, and funding for science research in the United States.

It is a shame that today this intentional, self-reflexive effort to dominate the world via knowledge (albeit knowledge of weapons and rockets) has been converted today into the exact opposite; The fear mongering right wing militants have decided that it is better to NOT have excellent science research and science education. Why? Because it hurts their cause. Having a population schooled in rational thinking and the scientific method, and related thinking methodologies, is antithetical to the right wing’s policy agenda. For the most part, policy-making based on rational thinking about good data will lead to different approaches than policy-making based on business oriented special interests. It is very much in the interest of the right wing to keep science educators busy defending public education from creationism than it is to have a well informed, rational, skeptical population.

We truly have drifted close to rocky shores. I don’t think it is possible to stop the stupidity. We ignored it for too long.

Oh, I should clarify my obscure reference: The Mouse that Roared was a movie. At the least, check out the description of it, but better yet, get some popcorn and watch it some time.

We haz ’em (9 megabyte PDF download from the National Academies of Science)

The latest issue of Evolution: Education and Outreach — the new journal aspiring to promote accurate understanding and comprehensive teaching of evolutionary theory for a wide audience — is now published. Devoted to human evolution and edited by William E. H. Harcourt Smith, the issue (volume 3, number 3) features Tom Gundling on “Human Origins Studies: A Historical Perspective”; Kieran P. McNulty on “Apes and Tricksters: The Evolution of Diversification of Humans’ Closest Relatives”; Harcourt-Smith on “The First Hominins and the Origins of Bipedalism”; David S. Strait on “The Evolutionary History of the Australopiths”; Holly M. Dunsworth on “Origin of the Genus Homo”; Katerina Harvati on “Neanderthals”; Jason A. Hodgson and Todd R. Disotell on “Anthropological Genetics: Inferring the History of Our Species Through the Analysis of DNA”; Ian Tattersall on “The Rise of Modern Humans”; Monique Scott on “The Pleasures and Pitfalls of Teaching Human Evolution in the Museum” — and much more besides!