wande quoted-
Quote:The evolution debate in Florida grows tiresome, and not only because Ben Stein - he of unfailing monotone-is now involved, but because it keeps rehashing the same, tired points albeit in different ways.
Oh good--something interesting at last is on the way.
But when we arrive at "trotted", which is a slight if unoriginal version of "slunk" we need read no further.
We already know what these newspapers are after. Sensational stories is what. Written by police departments. Sells papers and saves thinking and facilitates any old niece or nephew being on the payroll.
What a scientific mind would consider requires some thinking about, not to say a little backbone, is the idea that the minor officials and spokespersons, of either side, have discovered wonderful opportunities provided by this dispute for magnifying themselves in the eyes of the world and are not likely to allow it to run into the sands because the absurd simplicities involved are much easier to manage than winning a gold medal, in anything.
That is a psychosomatic manifestation. They are addicted.
Think of how thrilling it must have been for Donna to see herself quoted in a newspaper as saying that she, a member of the state Board of Education, voted against the new standards, telling a Baptist newspaper that evolution "should not be taught to the exclusion of other theories."
It sounds so wise and responsible. I bet she read the sentence over and over and looked for others where her name is up in lights.
And I daresay Diane was fair thrumming with self importance as she read and re-read herself saying-- "But why stop with Darwin? How about including theories of gravity other than Newton's? Should decent, God-fearing people allow their children to be exposed to algebra (that's an Arabic word, by the way) without presenting other points of view? How about pitting Copernicus' heliocentric model against Ptolemy's version of the universe, the one where Earth's in the center?"
One hopes no-one tells her what a bloody silly statement it actually is because gravity, algebra, an Arabic word by the way, (Gee!), and astronomical observations are not intimately connected with what Stendhal called "her machine" which is located approximately halfway between her knees and her belly-button and always well hidden from view. One presumes so anyway but one never knows.