wande quoted-
Quote:As if to provide comic relief between budgetary sessions of brutalizing poor kids and the elderly, our Tallahassee primates continue their assault on evolution.
Well ditto Mr Thomas. One might imagine he had something better to do with his time too if Florida kids and oldies are being brutalized.
Quote:What makes this latest return to the 19th century interesting is that the Senate and House have swapped their traditional roles.
It's normal for teams to change end at half-time.
Quote:Usually it is the House that goes on crusades to create a Theocratic State of Florida, while the more moderate Senate tends to drag its heels and whine about the Constitution.
There's been plenty of whining about the Constitution on here. Although I suppose if the right side is doing it it will be courageously upholding the constitution. Which goes to show how far into the dark art of the magical spells of word charms Mr Thomas has sunk.
Quote:But on the issue of evolution, it is the Senate going out on a limb, or at least refusing to concede that our ancestors once did.
What does that mean? Who exactly are "our ancestors"? What limb is he talking about?
Quote:The controversy stems from a Department of Education decision to publicly acknowledge the existence of Darwin by mandating schools teach evolution. Unable to stop this bit of heresy, religious conservatives now seek to overturn the decision in the Legislature.
Which they are entitled to do. We would be in trouble if they weren't.
Quote: But they have to be careful.
I feel sure they will be.
Quote:They obviously can't promote creationism in the classroom.
If it's so obvious why is creationism erected on here as an Aunt Sally. If it's even obvious to Floridians, assuming Mr Thomas's own tone, it is obviously completely stupid mentioning it, especially on a science thread.
Quote:They tried replacing that with a super-secret-code term: intelligent design. But a judge tossed that, too.
What has a judge up in a sleepy backwater like Dover got to do with Florida. Mr Thomas will clutch at any straw. No doubt he will simply assume, like any propagandist, that Judge Jones's official reasons were the only ones in play. Which is a bit naive not to say insulting. And there's no super-secret-code term involved. Mr Thomas is simply conjuring up bogeymen creeping under your beds.
Quote:So now, after much pondering, they have come up with academic freedom.
What? Now?? After thousands of years of pondering on academic freedom
and Mr Thomas has only just found out? Socrates was executed for "corrupting the youth".
Quote:They're not asking that teachers be allowed to teach intelligent design, just given the academic freedom to pooh-pooh evolution.
Which is something AIDS-ers do implicitly when they hide their tender eyes from any of the "controversial issues". One can understand Mr Thomas being upset at anybody pooh-poohing evolution as he understands it in those simple, non-controversial and personally beneficial forms he obviously does. And his close female relatives.
Quote:To make this all very scientific, the teachers would need "germane current facts, data and peer-reviewed scientific information."
Base flattery of the self-improving, don't like narcissitic impulses inhibited, wannabee scientism brigade.
Quote:That sounds good and un-Godly until you try to define terms such as peer-reviewed scientific information. Beyond that, good luck deciding who would have the final say in determining that something met that criteria.
That sounds like Mr Thomas, or his puppet masters at the Chicago Tribune, are in the race to do the deciding and after approving "un-Godly" ( why daren't he use "un-godly"? ) so strongly too.
Quote:I spent an hour on Google, digging for "scientific information" that claimed to be "peer reviewed," arguing that Earth is 7,000 years old and that T. rexes ate plants until Adam and Eve ate the apple. Then they got dressed, and the T. rexes switched to the Atkins Diet.
He spent an hour on Google. Gee! He deserves a medal.
Sat on his arse no doubt whilst kids and fogies are being brutalized in the streets outside. Seemingly he found nothing and had to invent his sitting ducks for himself out of the usual cliches.
Quote: Imagine a teacher introducing such material as a critique of Darwin, with administrators and parents unable to infringe on his academic freedom to do so.
He introduced it. Previous paragraph explained.
Quote:If you don't think this would happen, you haven't spent enough time in the Panhandle.
Crabbing his own circulation area now.
Quote:An analysis by more level-headed members of the House staff noted teachers don't have such academic freedom in other subjects.
That's because the other subjects are not so controversial. One presumes "level-headed" is a state approved by Mr Thomas.
Quote:"This fact raises issues concerning the underlying intent of the bill," noted the analysis.
What fact is that? A note by "more level-headed" members. See last sentence for definition of "level-headed". What is "more level-headed" anyway. More level-headed than what. He's already accused his readership of being dumbasses from whom anything might be expected.
Quote:Underlying intent is super-secret code for unconstitutional religious intent.
The bogeymen are coming to eat you all up again.
Quote:Critics fear critical analysis will become a slippery slope to academic freedom and from there, off we go to intelligent design.
Tell them to lock their doors at night. What critics do fear is ending up on the losing side.
Quote:In the Senate, Sen. Ronda Storms, R-Valrico, claims there is a Science Inquisition going on in schools, with anti-evolution teachers given bathroom and bus duty.
She couldn't produce any victims. Like her science, her legislation seems to be faith-based.
As does a fair slice of Mr Thomas's creativity. Such as-
Quote:If it is the current Senate version, we soon will replay the Scopes Monkey Trial on Fox News, starring Sean Hannity as a dumbed-down William Jennings Bryan and the state of Florida as his dumbed-down baboon.
Quote:All this hardly meshes with House Speaker Marco Rubio's plan to make Florida a world-class education center in math and science.
Plenty of people harbour plans of that nature. If Mr Thomas's piece is anything to go by, and his assessment of his fellow Floridians, Mr Rubio has a tough task on his hands and anyway it's part of his role to speak like that as a matter of course.
Quote:The jobs and careers that our children are going to aspire to fill haven't even been invented yet," he says.
In which case nobody knows what to teach them except maybe adaptability and one thing scientific facts are not is adaptable. Intelligent design can adapt to anything.
Quote:"Their competition is not Mississippi or Alabama; it's China and India and emerging markets."
Rubbish! One vote and you could have siege America. Perhaps Mr Thomas has never heard of tariffs or import regulations. The serious competition is from other US states. Competition in what anyway? Lap dancing. Micky Mouse museums. Rocket launching.
Quote:Why, then, are legislators considering laws that would teach science at a Mississippi and Alabama level?
That's what they were elected to do. I don't think Mr Thomas has been elected. Appointed with approval from the Chicago Tribune maybe.
Quote:Because in China, India and every advanced country looking to pass us by, they teach evolution.
Is that a fact?? The evil empires are coming to gobble us all down again.
What a complete load of bullshit that off topic interruption was wande. I wouldn't want to be caught batting for that team myself. I bet Mr Thomas's mouth turns down at the corners. Have you any connections to the Tribune up in the cold and windy north?