Harold Wilson famously said that a week is a long time in politics and so it surely is.
wande quoted-
Quote:The purpose of including science in what students are taught, Fair said, is to inform students about scientific evidence and to help students develop critical thinking skills needed to become informed citizens.
And so what use is evolution theory for that purpose when the kids are seeing this argument raging all around them and the positions of each side, which are, as the senator said, political, are founded on principles way beyond the understanding of the kids supposedly being taught but actually being used as a football.
In fact evolution theory is the very last thing which might lead to what Mr Fair recommends. Proper discussion of it is self-evidently akin to two football team's supporters arguing. The scientific evidence for that is staring the kids in the face when they see this load of windbags goofing off instead of doing a proper job of work.
When you think of all the things a teacher could do in order to inculcate scientific mehodology into kids (heaven forbid!!) it's a crying shame.
The very first thing a kid indocrinated with scientific methodology would do on reaching about 30 or 40 is tell you lot, who will then be 80, to go shift for yourselves and wipe your own arses.
In fact I have heard of cases where doctors and nurses were at it in the laundry room while the drip feeds ran dry. Or words to that effect. There was a TV series about it but it was the same joke all the way through. Phuck the patients. A prophesy if you like of where you'll be if trends continue in the scientific methodology department.
Shock horror!!
But that's how you're treating these kids so when their turn comes it will be "Up your's!!" Kids are quick about things like that. Like in South Park.
They should do ballroom dancing in science lessons. It's only an evolved, hands on version of what the bird of paradise does when he lays out all the stones to get his genes selected in.
And we are kin to them aren't we?
wandeljw wrote:SOUTH CAROLINA UPDATE
Quote:Greenville Sen. Mike Fair seeks to open debate on teaching of evolution
(By Tim Smith, Greenville News, May 16, 2008)
A Greenville senator introduced legislation Thursday that would allow teachers to discuss alternative theories to evolution.
Sen. Mike Fair, a Greenville Republican, said in a statement the bill wouldn't advocate any point of view or preclude any theory.
So I thought I would check on Mike Fair just so see what his personal views happened to be, and lo and behold, Mike Fair is a biblical literalist who believes in a 6000 year old earth, who has been pushing creationism and ID for years, what a shock...
Quote:Senate Bill 1386: The Return of Senator Mike Fair
Fair, Thomas and Bryant have introduced a bill that would give teachers and administrators the open door to present creationist views to the classroom. The NCSE article can be found here and pretty much explains the history of our dealings with Sen. Mike Fair. Make no mistake, this, coming especially from Bryant and Fair, is all about Creationism and/or Intelligent Design. One can easily argue that criticism of let's say, dating methods of fossils, is completely innocent of any religious motivation. Until you uncover the motive behind the actual critique, a belief in a young earth created 6000 years ago. This is nothing more than another attempt to insert Creationism into our classrooms. It will provide the necessary cover needed to issue misleading critiques and outright false information to our students.
Here we go again.
PS: On a side note, Senator Kevin Bryant, who writes a blog about his adventures in the Senate is a professed Biblical literalist just like Mike Fair. I'm not sure who co-sponsor "Thomas" is but I'm willing to wager a hefty bet on Creationist as well. But no, this has NOTHING to do with religion. No Sir.
Full text of the bill below the jump....
Source
I guess we're still looking for a senator who pushes a bill like this who isn't motivated by religion rather than free-speech.
ros wrote-
Quote:I guess we're still looking for a senator who pushes a bill like this who isn't motivated by religion rather than free-speech.
It's all about Money ros. It has nothing to do with religion or free-speech or any other abstract notion you invent to facilitate your entertainment.
Do you not keep up with American artists?
There's The Air Conditioned Nightmare. That's donkey's years old. There's Last Exit. And Catch 22.
It's all about Money. Business. Like Veblen said. And Andy Warhol.
It has nothing to do with religion or free speech.
And Money is Sex. Do you not understand Woody Allen?
It's as if you are scared of looking at it the way American artists have done. The real artists I mean.
It makes one wonder what you think artists are for.
It's Faust. The pact with the Devil. Science. Something for nothing.
Sport isn't about running and jumping and scoring. It's about Money.
Shagging is about Money. Get real. Get scientific.
Do you not know that a mini-skirt when decoded and deconstructed is a witty way of saying "How much dough have you got sailor?"
The Mighty $ doesn't rule the world for any other reason.
Sheesh!!
I sometimes think that I'm the only American on this thread.
I'm tuned into your artists. I'll pass on your school-board goodie-goodies if you don't mind. They are born at a faster rate than artists.
You must have some umbilical resonance with your European roots.
And a fairly famous boozer once said that the more you think about it the more ridiculous it gets. I said I preferred comical to ridiculous but we didn't argue.
Here's a science question. What % of the whole is the past?
wandeljw wrote:rosborne979 wrote:I guess we're still looking for a senator who pushes a bill like this who isn't motivated by religion rather than free-speech.
It's just amazing to watch them lie so blatantly about their motivations.
Actually its about control. The Creationists had control of the US ed policy in the early decades of the last century and, especially in the south, they enjoyed a major heyday in a post-SCopes world where the textbook publishers capitulated to a "safe Creationist biology text" based upon the vaccum that existed in the pre-"modern biological synthesis" age.
Ive always wondered about the "Why now" ? of all these cases and legislative exercises that are popping up like fairy's circles all over the country?
The Supreme Court has been sufficiently clear in its 1987 ruling, and subsequent rulings by local courts have been equally straightforward. Yet the "loophole" hunting and cherrypicking of modern science continues and seems to be re-invigorated .
Phil Johnson has really started something by resurrecting a modern version of an ID "theory" , even though its a sham and without substance
You're getting nearer fm. It isn't just about control. It's about who is controlling.
The school, like the family and the church/s, are instruments of repression.
The ruling elite of the past was not scientific. It even prided itself on its lack of education at times. It was necessary to inhibit rebelliousness, critical thinking and curiosity.
Freud thought that a sine qua non of civilized life. It is difficult to imagine a takeover by the scientific elite, and that's what this is all about, which would seriously destroy the inhibition of those things. Paying lip service to such things is not the same as doing it. That's just empty talk.
A scientific elite would need a docile workforce just as much to carry out the boring and repetitive tasks required by modern society. This dulling also reduces the impact of education in general and of life itself. And the ideologies which result increase the repression.
It is possible to estimate the amount of repression, which results in various degrees of neurosis, tension and anxiety, from the consumption of those items which manage it. Or, at least, gauge the direction of the trends.
And those who supply those things have an interest in maintaining and even increasing inhibiting mechanisms.
All elites would have similar objectives.
Science, having delivered the wonders it has, feels it should have more say in Government.
It thinks its practitioners should take precendence over priesthoods and that industrial production should take precedence over warriors and aristocracies.
Unless science can eradicate nepotism it will form its own aristocracies after it has consolidated its power and it has the capacity to render the warriors "redundant" by the fearsomeness of its weaponry.
Those are risks some people think are too great to take on and they prefer to stay with the devil they know.
The science of government is a fiendish proposition and I'm afraid to say that AIDsers on here have paid it scant attention and are thus disqualified from having a say in it with their platitudes and abstractions.
((((((((((Y YYYYYYAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWNNNNNNNN)))))))))Do you ever plan to come up with anything new spendi?
Nah-- you couldn't hack it. Your need to be popular is too much for anything that smacks of newness.
The Constitution is entirely based on egoism. Is that new?
The separation of Church and State is a policy of those who refuse to bow the knee and your post above is a miniscule aspect of the result. If you keep it up you might eventually make a pile as big as a pinpoint.
In Mr Bush's speech of welcome to the Pope I heard him say "I hope he doesn't scold me too much."
The Darwinian theory is in two parts.
First is the idea that species evolve from earlier "simpler" forms in an unbroken descent from mono-cellular life forms. This idea was not new in Darwin's day. Lamarck and Erasmus Darwin had maintained it and Axiamander in Pagan days.
Darwin stacked up a mass of evidence, all much of a muchness, on the pile it high principle, from which he deduced the 2nd part of the theory. This is the idea that the mechanism driving the process can be scientifically explained, in an age dedicated to cause and effect and simplicity, in an easily understandable and thus popular manner: no other aspect of science being comprehensible to the common man, one of whom is born every minute. Or so it is said.
This allowed the common man, whose day in the sun was just dawning, to feel scientific in his own estimation and what could be more popular than that except maybe wine, women and song, as Omar had it.
This scientific explanation concerned the "struggle for existence" and the "survival of the fittest". All nature's productions multiply faster than nature can provide for them and often by a spectacular margin.
Thus, many, often very many, die before reproducing themselves. And what, besides sheer luck, allows a few to survive to reproduce is that they have inherited slight differences, of excess or defect, which give them an advantage in the "struggle for existence" in the particular environment in which they are born. In other environments other slight hereditable differences may well prosper and therefore it is the environment which is the force extruding the being stream of life into the multitudinous forms we see. And astrological events are significant in that respect.
In what Darwin called "unimaginable periods of time", whatever time is, the theory can explain, he claimed, the development from protozoa to chamber music, cathedral design, the internet and cricket.
Such a theory extended the whole of life into a neat fit with the economic theories of philosophical radicals of the 19th century industrialists and justified a world of free competition which was music to the ears of the class Darwin belonged to.
Sexual selection is also a factor in the higher animals but as AIDsers are loath to discuss that, or even glance at it, I will leave it to one side for now.
It was the pessimistic doctrines of Malthus which had suggested to Darwin that the principles of the "survival of the fittest" and the "struggle for existence" were the driving power of the process.
As the specific conditions of the various environments only exist in the natural world and are only working unimaginably slowly, and with sexual selection at work, it is impossible to study the mechanism in a laboratory where the conditions found in nature do not exist, and where publication deadlines press, although they may possibly be clumsily imitated. In view of that AIDsers might care to explain how schoolkids, the vast majority of whom are not going into scientific work, are served by telling them that knowledge in this field is necessary for them unless they will benefit from the real agenda behind this push to bring Darwin to the classroom. I have suggested a coalition of agendas all along the thread.
That the mono-cellular beginning might have been "designed" to contain inchoately the whole process of creation and capable of being moulded by environments into the multifarious forms we know of by the conditions on earth and its own environment in all its stages is a matter not amenable to human thought and therefore unless some explanation is given for the birth of mono-cellular life the whole Darwinian theory is completely circular and thus meaningless from a philosophical point of view.
Hence, if evolution theory does not refute scientifically the idea of an intelligent designer then ID is a fact in the world ready to be exploited by weavers of the winds of all shapes and complexions so long as there is a demand for such explanations. Which there is.
Now the weavers of the winds are subject to evolution theory themselves and will be successful to the extent that they please, satisfy and suit humankind in one environment or another.
Humankind chooses from the tapestries woven and thus it follows that their critics are calling into question the judgement of humankind and it follows by the simple logic of the invidious comparison that the judgement of the critics is superior and thus that they are the ones to lead these stupid, superstitious, frightened gumps to the Promised Land as such a responsible task cannot be left to humankind in the lump whose judgement is so woeful.
But their judgement is not so woeful as to allow themselves to be led to the Promised Land without some indications of its character apart from it containing no weavers of the winds because everything will be done according to the strict and determined tenets of scientific methodology.
Whether they are stupid enough to allow themselves to be led by people who have spent a few years looking at fossils, squinting into microscopes and trying to shove Darwin into the classrooms rather than those who have hundreds of years of experience and summaries of confessional records where absolutely everything there is to be known about sinning is an open book to be read by the few who earn the right, which has not been acheived according to who Mom and Pop are, and who have stage managed, with the usual human clumsiness, Western culture.
A strict critical analysis would have to say that if evolution theory is valid we cannot decide where non-human life became human life. Botticelli's Birth of Venus does not satisfy the critical thinker. When the critical thinker comes to the stage where "all men are born equal" and there is a "rights of man" and he cannot say where man starts we might have to enfranchise the rabbits and the oysters.
A proponent of evolution theory, a scientific one I mean and not one of these half-baked solipsists on here, cannot help condemning these doctrines in the Constitution as unbiological and unscientific. He cannot say that we are a special case if we are only one aspect of the stream of being. He ought to embrace Hegel.
In Darwin's theory victory goes to those animals which most resemble successful 19th century capitalists in England or, we might say, Darwin himself. But though the successful capitalist can undercut his competitors he cannot murder him or injure his person or equipment and evolution knows no such bleeding-heart liberal wishy-washy. Hitting below the belt comes naturally in the evolution process and so much so that millions of years are taken to evolve protections of the vulnerable spots.
(Which raises interesting questions about sport. Is bullfighting the truest sport? An even match of brains and brawn. The bull is only killed when it is completely knackered. It has already lost. Sometimes the matador loses.)
Darwin is a bit "free" with the word "free". His idea of free competition is one with a set of rules designed by his class and which declares illegal the losers (the vast exploited majority) having a good old revolution or even showing signs of doing.
So politics enters the fray. Money follows.
This is the point where it gets really complex. In fact "irreducibly complex" is scarcely an exaggeration.
And as AIDsers dont believe in irreducibly complexity it is bootless to try to shake their beliefs with any critical thinking or scientific analysis of folderol of that nature
So I won't bother.
(Phew!! Ed.)
There's another difficulty boss.
If there is the idea of going from "simpler" forms to "less simple" evolved forms there is the idea of "progress" and that implies a "goal". A cosmic purpose even. And how can a mindless, unintelligent process ever be convicted of such a thing. The use of "simpler", "higher" and "progress" is undiluted anthropomorphism.
The idea of "progress" is actually a literary conceit conceived by an English snob and popular with snobs, who feel themselves to be the epitome of the whole of creation, and those who preach crude forms of evolutionary theory in rote learned cliches do it for the purpose of cosying up to the idea that they themselves partake of this epitome on the cheap. It also gets them attention.
At least the English snob in question was first in if you don't count A R Wallace. The American snob is a disciple.
I notice that nobody has attempted to discuss the intermediate form preceding the reproductive process involving the male impregnating the female. It is difficult to imagine being half way to that.
Starting with Adam and Eve solves the problem.
Obviously you just parroted something that you just read. For Erasmus Darwin, (the grandaddy not Charles Brother) , had produced ONE poem about the web of life . This scatterbrained piece of work, called the Zoonomia, was as obscure in its point that even Charles was embarrased.
Yet, you, like the Creationists, claim a postion that Charles "copied" his grandfathers work and thats just crap.
In fact, if you read the Zoonomia, youll see that its nothing more than Lamarkian mindset in verse form .
The rest of your synthesis is kind of an embarrasing spiel in which youve peeled back a layer of your onion that shows that you have not a single clue of what your speaking. Oft times in your race to sound clever, you just sound dumb .
fm wrote-
Quote:Obviously you just parroted something that you just read. For Erasmus Darwin, (the grandaddy not Charles Brother) , had produced ONE poem about the web of life . This scatterbrained piece of work, called the Zoonomia, was as obscure in its point that even Charles was embarrased.
Obviously, we are all parrots to some extent. I don't think I'm quite so parroty as those wande quotes continually and you gush over their triteness and posturings.
But
Zoonomia gets four mentions in Desmond & Moore.
Quote:Erasmus was versifying about the new French liberties and finishing his medico-evolutionary book Zoomomia ........Darwin's erotic botany was denounced as titillating trash; his 'atheism' lambasted as the sort of demoralizing philosophy which had spawned the Terror. This backlash finally put an end to the fashionable libertinism of Erasmus's day. It ushered in a period of respectability and evangelical rectitude, which was to mark the younger generations of Darwin-Wedgewoods.
I presume "erotic" is an allusion to Erasmus's atheist 'belle' Harriet Martineau. And the ID movement could easily be seen as a backlash as well.
Quote:Pressured by his father, Charles kept reading. He browsed through his grandfather's medical magnum opus on the laws of life and health Zoonomia. The Doctor doted on it, praising the book for its insights into inheritable disease; although the tome dwelt on much more, the connection of mind and body, and the perpetual transformations of life. Charles read sympathetically and was full of admiration--for what he wasn't sure, perhaps because it was written by his grandfather.
"Mind and body" eh? The psychosomatic problem which AIDsers are afeared of it seems. And the nepotism rears its head again.
With regard to Darwin's friendship with R.E. Grant at Edinburgh-
Quote:Grant probably also mentioned his love of old Erasmus's Zoonomia. He had cited the book in his doctoral thesis, and admitted that it opened his 'mind to some of "the laws of organic life".' Now here he was, walking with Erasmus's grandson ; the opportunity was surely not lost. With Charles equally fond of the Zoonomia, their talk must have turned to those 'perpetual transformations' of nature which had so delighted its author.
The effect of the champagne Erasmus plied Harriet with possibly inspiring some of his ideas.
Quote:However unwittingly, Darwin was involved in research that was designed to reveal nature's innermost secrets. He had been offered a Lamarckian solution to one of the most profound problems of biology. Later he was to rejoin the path Grant had started him on; for the present, he gave no hint that he appreciated its direction. But his teachers had shown him that naturalists could attempt to lift the 'veil that hangs over the origin and progress of the organic world.' The trouble was that those tearing aside the veil, men like Knox and Grant, were so savagely anti-Christian. If Darwin knew that transmutation was not forbidden, he could see that it was far from respectable.
Obviously the last veil eh?
Quote: Others in Scotland were reinforcing the point, inexorably connecting politics and science. A timber merchant, Patrick Matthew, announced that inherited privilege ran counter to nature's law of progress through competition. An aristocracy was debilitating, it bucked evolution. If society did not change, he warned, Nature would 'avenge' herself; she would plunge the British race into decrepitude, push it into a bywater of history. Commercial struggle in a meritocracy, and that alone, could make the political leaders--degenerate aristocrats had no place in an evolving world. It was a rationale for unfettered capitalism, and Darwin was to take this science to its logical extreme.
Today one should read "any nepotism" for "aristocratic".
And it's quite obvious that most of the people quoted on this thread are talentless and have arrived where they are by nepotism. Which puts them into a bit of a fix when promoting Darwin into the classroom.
Quote:In MID-JULY (sic) 1837 Darwin took the plunge and opened a clandestine transmutation notebook (called his 'B' Notebook). He was entering an intense and lonely new world of monologues and musings. The brown-covered pad was small, and on the title page he inscribed in bold letters the word Zoonomia, to signal that he was treading the same path as his grandfather.
That fm is to prevent viewers on here taking too much notice of your assertion that Darwin was "embarrassed" at
Zoonomia.
Your other remarks are pointless so I needn't bother with them except to say that they are a lot easier to cobble up than this post, and my previous post to which they purport to respond, have been, and that they amply demonstrate your usual disrespect for viewers on here.
The mere transcription of the title "zoonomia" was such a bit of trite fun for Charles progress. His second notebook is what youve highlighted.
If you doubt me , read some of Darwins letters to Gould and Hooker. WHile cognizant of his dilletante grandfathers renown, he was in no way beholden and was separating hiself by constructing a scientific synthesis, not a mere allusion in some poetry.
D&M's contribution to DArwins biographic pile is good scholarly work. There are others since D&M whove analyzed the man a bit farther down.
DArwin was influenced by people who were convinced about evolution, and Grant was one of the first of the "modern professional scientists" (s opposed to clergy or physicians witn spare time). Grant had impressed Darwin with enough from Erasmus , and , it must be nored that Grant was equally impressed with Lamarck, with whom Erasmus shared so much in principle.
Darwin ws unique among them all. in that he accomplished what none of the others could
1He gathered all the relevant evidence and conducted experiments in husbandry and selective breeding.
2He came up with a mechanism for transmutation.
In Eldredges book is a humorous albeit trite discussion of DArwins various notebooks on transmutation.
The nice folksy story that Darwin worked from the place that his grandfather started is as incorrect as the assertion that Darwin was the "naturalist" on the BEagle.
LOUISIANA UPDATE
Below are opposing views posted by two Louisiana citizens on a local tv news website:
Quote:Letter: Bills would allow healthy discussion
All citizens concerned about science education should contact the Louisiana House Education Committee and their Senate and House legislators to indicate their support of Senate Bill 733, the Louisiana Science Education Act, and House Bill 1168, the Louisiana Academic Freedom Act, to become law.
The recent letter to the editor titled "Bills about religion, not science" would lead one to believe that all scientists are opposed to the bills and are concerned that they would promote religious doctrine in the science class.
As a Ph.D. chemist for more than 35 years, I have read the bills, and they clearly state the opposite: "This section shall not be construed to promote any religious doctrine, promote discrimination for or against a particular set of beliefs, or promote discrimination for or against religion or non-religion." The bills further state that their purpose is to allow students the ability to understand, analyze, critique and objectively review scientific theories.
Opposition to these bills would cause school administrators the unpleasant task of restricting the teaching of certain scientific theories in the classroom. For example, it is OK to teach Darwinism and evolution, but not OK to discuss intelligent design.
The bottom line is that the elitists in the scientific community wish to outlaw, in purely fascist style, any mention of the possibility that there may be an intelligence behind the formation of the universe. It would seem that they wish to promote the "religion" of Darwinism with Darwin as their god.
A true scientist should not be afraid of discussing any theory and proving it right or wrong.
Please support the above bills as they would allow for the healthy discussion of all points of view.
Quote:Letter: Louisiana Senate votes to undercut science
How wonderful that the brave, intelligent members of the Louisiana Senate have decided to unanimously pass Senate Bill 733.
Through this bill, the Senate has finally managed to reduce the scientific method to what they actually think it is: free speech and popular opinion.
At long last Louisiana high school science teachers will now be able to teach the highly regarded science of astrology right alongside of astronomy, and certainly many LSU chemistry professors will be relieved to know our students will now be well-versed in the science of alchemy, for far too long our state has lagged behind Mississippi and Alabama in its ability to change lead into gold.
If this bill becomes law, we can look forward to many high-tech companies, with high-paying jobs, relocating to Louisiana.
What company wouldn't jump at the chance to come to a state where evolution is dismissed and biblical creationism is promoted as science?
Thank you, senators, and thank you, Louisiana Family Forum, for still believing Earth is the center of the universe.
I take it then that you acknowledge that "embarrassed" was a bit too far.
I don't know so much about Darwin I'll admit. I've read D&M and Origins. Possibly over-read them since this thread began and a lot of stuff I've come across in other people's books. So I'm grateful for the thread for shoving me into the subject.
Both those books have a lot of stuff in them and most of it I have to look up before I put it on here. I see the "bloke" first. I think, only think, that he took himself seriously. There are flashes of self-denigration in his works but they are easily faked. If I'm right it explains my general attitude to him. If I'm wrong he's fooled me.
The main thing I'm aiming at is that viewers here can be abled to know that most of the dross in wande's interminable quotes comes out of heads that probably know next to nothing about him or any of the matters I mentioned in my post yesterday which you favoured with a sliver of your attention.
Oh--and if they read the authors I rub their noses in they will all the better for it. IMHAHO, of course.
The people they read now have no other objective than to pick their pockets of large numbers of small fractions of a cent, one at a time if necessary but bunches for preference.
And they could be reading guys who didn't give a flying fornication for anything other than amusing themselves as much as possible through this weary world of woe, as Bob Dylan, and others, call it when he does his Job imitation in Ain't Talking, and hope, possibly vainly, that they might amuse those of their fellow men who come, somehow, across their scribblings which are not done for money. It may be it is due to some psychological quirk about refining critical thinking inspired by acute observation, which is much too acute for a microscope to match, and by a large stretch, the human brain I mean, a racer. No limits. They observe the constant patterns in life and see, sort of anthropologically, the play of those patterns in the range of social settings they have experienced all the way in between the stews down the docks and the fashionable salons. It amuses them. No end.
They could even be recording it for themselves in case something happened, such as stopping smoking and drinking beer, and they could no longer achieve the flights of fancy as in their prime. In fact there's a scene in Hearts of Fire where Dylan is in this barn lounging on some bales listening to When the Night Comes Fallin' From the Sky which is pounding out of the latest hi-tech kit. A lot can happen to stop Dylan singing like he does. He doesn't do it for money either. Never has. That the passed hat was filled to overflowing has nothing to do with Bob.
It would be interesting to speculate on the effect of coming into money had on him. Or on his lyrics and other things. The purists say he lost the plot. They never had the plot in the first place. Bob had it from way back. A Rocker in a dump like Hibbing, and all that pent up emotion trying on their first 3 inch heel shoes and trip-tropping down the sidewalk, couldn't miss. Had a fast bike too. Girlfriend called Echo.
Very much the Arthur Rimbaud I should think. Piss off Dad, so to speak. Flaubert had to stage epilectic fits to get his Dad off his case. And Proust makes his Dad sound like the world record holder in advanced twittery.
And bat fossils occasionally come into the visual field of acute observers and they are seen in the context of all the other acute observations and not in isolation. In isolation they look like some burnt turkey bones raked out of the back of the stove. Some of them probably are.
Lingerie shops as well. Gas prices. School-board members and journalists cruddling over their words whilst worrying about a couple of hundred other things and whose influence I strive to minimise.
Damn school. Damn and blast schoolteachers. Double damn school boards. Locking kids up all day so that their parents can have a rest from the little monsters they have brought forth from their loins is a great pity in my book. Parents should be made to suffer.
You need vouchers for freedom. Divi up the education budget and give every kid its share. To be spent where they want. Down the beach even. That would be freedom.
Education can be sold. It can offer temptations. "BE A BRAIN SURGEON and EEAARRNN!!! a "MILLION"" a month. Steady hand essential. Ring 0101-0101-0101" signs on billboards. Or Typists Wanted. $39,500. Speed essential.
As it is education is a drag. Kids hate being made to do things. You have to outfox them. Imagine trying to promote instruction in Darwinism. Even 20 minute courses for $10.
wandeljw wrote:LOUISIANA UPDATE
Below are opposing views posted by two Louisiana citizens on a local tv news website:
Quote:Letter: Bills would allow healthy discussion
As a Ph.D. chemist for more than 35 years, I have read the bills, and they clearly state the opposite: "This section shall not be construed to promote any religious doctrine, promote discrimination for or against a particular set of beliefs, or promote discrimination for or against religion or non-religion." The bills further state that their purpose is to allow students the ability to understand, analyze, critique and objectively review scientific theories.
Just goes to show ya that some PHD chemists don't know what the hell they are talking about.
Unfortunately we don't know who this person is, but how much do you want to bet his personal motivations are strongly religious.
spendiQuote:I take it then that you acknowledge that "embarrassed" was a bit too far.
Not in the least. I had asked you to look at some of the correspondence that Hooker, Gould and Darwin had had . In these letters DArwin admits to a bit of embarrassment over his Grandfathers unique stand presented in verse.
Id scan my copy of Eldredge , in whcih are photos of a few of Darwins Transmutation notebooks including the aforementioned "B". The zoonomia was as much a little joke as anything.
Darwin was a Walter Mitty type, he suffered from, IMHO, ADHD. His symptomology included always , a sort of half assed way to complete many tasks. Like when he collected birds, he never itemized their locations beyond itemizing the packing crates that he placed them in all represented specific dates of collection. SO when John Gould told DArwin that all his different GAlapogos birds were all finches he could have said "D' Oh!" because he failed to list the specific islands of their capture. Much of his work was leaning toward the sloppy , and he later learned to take better care in his husbandry and barnacle studies.
Janet Brownes 2 vol set on DArwin is probably the most complete and least subjective work. It , of course , had all the shouders of the previous biography incuding D&M, and DArwins own grandson.
