Encarta encylopedia article:
(Excerpt)
II Early Life
Print Preview of Section
James Earl Carter, Jr., was born on October 1, 1924, in Plains, Georgia, a tiny farming community of 600 people. He was the oldest of four children. His father was a peanut farmer and storekeeper. Jimmy Carter worked on the farm, but he had an uncle in the United States Navy who sent him postcards from exotic ports, so as a boy he dreamed of attending the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. He was the first member of his family ever to go to college, starting at Georgia Southwestern College in 1941 for a year, followed by a year at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He then went to the Naval Academy in Annapolis, graduating in 1946, ranked 60th in a class of 820.
After his graduation, Carter married Rosalynn Smith, his high school sweetheart, also from Plains. She became an essential partner in all phases of his life, from the peanut farming business to politics. The Carters had three sons, John William, James Earl III, and Donnel Jeffrey, and a daughter, Amy Lynn.
Encarta re Jimmy Carter
Despite that Mr Carter still rates high on my list of good guys.Not quite so high as he was after I read an earlier short biography but still high.
I think of you like that spendius, you are high but sometimes not as high as other times.
Thanks you grumpy old codger.
Compliments are always welcome even when they are delivered with a swipe of a dishcloth at the end.
Actually,due to the inspiration of this thread,I've just arrived back in England after a 5 yr trip in The Beagle.When I got back to The Mount I went to bed without disturbing my loved ones and walked in on their startled but delighted faces sat round the breakfast table.I hadn't told them at that point that they were all monkeys as I didn't want to upset Caroline who looked so pretty and demure.
It seems that five years and a world separated me from my old flustered,directionless,insecure self.There was a new confidence about me,a new earnestness; I had survived on my wits in inhospitable climes,encountered wars and savages,(who hasn't eh?),and trekked across the Andes.I was pleased just to be alive.
That's what my biographers said anyway and the last bit I'll vouch for.
Don't get me started.......
I simply share what I thought was a nicely put summation of a reasoned view on the ID debate, and several people take that as an opportunity to drag out their decrepit old beefs about Carter's presidency. Good grief.
I'm sorry snood.I simply used Mr Carter,or rather his peanuts,to suggest that the case was possibly being exploited in like manner to how farmers exploit these,and by extension other,edible plants.This tiny incident,which I'm afraid I thought an appropriate if not very original comparison, caused what Mr Mailer once referred to as a "pop-out" to which I felt an impulse to have a bite at.For my part in the fiasco I unreservedly apologise and I would like to congratulate you for what I agree was a "nicely put summation" of our previous efforts.
Perhaps you will be good enough to give us your view on the matter in hand at the point where your reference to Mr Carter caused this hiccup and will hopefully serve to both allow us to get back on track and to have the benefit of your obvious wisdom and presentational skills.
Lola's beautifully crafted expostulation said
Quote:Don't get me started.......
Why my little chicken?Ought we to fear you getting started?Speaking for myself,and possibly one or two others,I think I would rather enjoy the prospect.
well, the Dover case is in the judges hands and he know will begin his deliberation. The election is tomorrow and its mostly local issues at stake, so the school board makeup should command all the press interest around here in S and Central Pa. Central PA is clearly a "red state" center lying within a blue state crust
Crust!!
That's lower than animals in nice clothes.
farmerman,
Please keep us informed on the vote results for the Dover school board. The science curriculum is only one issue out of many. However, it would be interesting to see whether incumbents (who introduced the change in science curriculum) will be re-elected.
wande.
How many voters are expected to bother and what % are they of total voters?The last similar election figures will suffice.
spendius,
An Associated Press item has the following about voter turnout tomorrow in Pennsylvania:
Quote:Across the state Tuesday, voters will be electing local judges, mayors, prosecutors, township supervisors and school board members, but there are no statewide contests. With incumbents either denied re-election bids or bowing out, seats for mayor in Pittsburgh, Erie and Allentown are all open.
Statewide turnout is expected to track other off-year elections, between 20 percent and 25 percent of the roughly 9.5 million Pennsylvanians who are 18 or older, said G. Terry Madonna, a professor and pollster at Franklin & Marshall College.
The battle over eight school board seats in Dover, 20 miles south of Harrisburg, was lifted into the national spotlight by the ongoing federal trial over the legality of a policy approved by the incumbent board. It requires ninth-grade biology teachers to read a statement about "intelligent design" -- a philosophy critics say is really creationism -- before they teach the theory of evolution.
The eight incumbents, who are defending the policy in court, are running as the Republican slate. All the candidates on the Democratic slate, some of whom are actually Republicans, have vowed to remove intelligent design from the curriculum.
Six weeks of testimony in the case ended Friday. U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III said he hopes to rule by January.
wande-
Thanks.I predict an ID victory in the Board election.
What I don't understand is why the judge needs until January when all the IDers are stupid loonies.Is he not as clever as those SDers who have categorised the IDers in that way,and worse.
spendius,
There are many reasons why the judge would spend considerable time in writing his decision. Although the Dover trial involves a constitutional question where there are many precedents, intelligent design theory itself has had no previous judicial treatment.
No matter what decision the judge makes, he is aware that his decision may be appealed to a higher court. He would take time to make sure his written opinion contains no errors in the application of U.S. laws.
His final opinion can be a broad one that would affect all education in the United States, or it may be worded in a narrow way so that it would only affect the Dover Area School District.
add to that, we have 6 weeks of testimony, summaries, and motions that must be reviewed and acknowledged.The judge doesnt just "decide". He will write an opinion that acknowledges the data and the reasons for his decision, bearing in mind the concept of stare decisis, wherein he acknowledges the value and weight of precedent, Im amazed that its only taking three months.
An Evolutionist's Evolution
November 7, 2005
An Evolutionist's Evolution
By GLENN COLLINS
New York Times
It may seem that the American Museum of Natural History is cruising for controversy in presenting "Darwin," the most comprehensive exhibition any museum has offered on the naturalist's life and theories. It is a time, after all, when the theory of evolution by natural selection seems as newsworthy as it was back in the days of the Scopes trial 80 years ago.
According to a CBS News poll last month, 51 percent of Americans reject the theory of evolution, saying that God created humans in their present form. And reflecting a longstanding sentiment, 38 percent of Americans believe that creationism should be taught instead of evolution, according to an August poll by the Pew Research Center in Washington.
An ongoing federal trial in Harrisburg, Pa., may determine whether a local school board can compel teachers to inform students about the theory of intelligent design - the idea that life on earth is too complex to have arisen through evolution alone. And though there is no credible scientific support for this position, President Bush, when asked in August about evolution and intelligent design, said that "both sides ought to be properly taught."
However, said Ellen V. Futter, president of the museum, the $3 million exhibition, which opens to the public on Nov. 19, was conceived three years ago and "is not a riposte, but a celebration of Darwin's life and his ideas, which are the cornerstone of modern biology." The exhibition illustrates the way in which evolution became the basis for modern biology, ranking its importance with the theories of relativity in physics, and plate tectonics in geology.
"Since Darwin's life is an adventure story that reflects the scientific process," Dr. Futter added, "the show is a cerebral and physical exploration, an attempt to humanize science through an understanding of Darwin's life."
The exhibition will consist of more than 400 artifacts, specimens and documents, including at least 100 lent manuscripts and other objects, 159 models fabricated by the museum's workshops, 74 specimens from the museum's collections and nine live animals. Though created and designed at the museum, the show received conceptual advice and financial assistance from four institutions that will present the exhibition after it closes in New York on May 29: the Museum of Science in Boston, the Field Museum in Chicago, the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto and the Natural History Museum in London.
"We see the exhibition as an important part of our Darwin bicentennial," said Robert M. Bloomfield, head of special projects at the Natural History Museum in London. The show will arrive there in late 2008, "a harbinger of our celebrations," Dr. Bloomfield said, referring to elaborate plans to mark the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth in 2009, which is also the 150th anniversary of the publication of his groundbreaking book "On the Origin of Species."
Michael J. Novacek, senior vice president and provost of the American Museum of Natural History, said that "our hope is to make it emphatically clear just how important Darwin's work is to modern science, and to what we and other scientists do in everyday life."
Referring to the museum's curatorial, research and academic faculty of 200 scientists, "the work of most of them is essentially based on Darwin's work," Dr. Novacek said. None of the staffers believe in intelligent design "or at least they haven't declared it," he said. "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution."
He added, "Some of the current reactions to Darwin's work are the same as they were when 'Origin' was first published."
The exhibition mentions intelligent design not as science, or as a theory to be debated, but as a form of creationism, which offers the biblical view that God created the earth and its creatures fully formed within the last 10,000 years. In 1987 the Supreme Court ruled that creationism is a religious belief that cannot be taught in public schools.
Dr. Novacek said that "we are welcoming everyone to the show," adding that "we will be prepared to respond to questions." The museum's docents and public-education staff are being trained on how to respond to challenges to the exhibition.
Niles Eldredge, the exhibition's curator, said, "We might change some minds." But Dr. Novacek added: "We respect people's beliefs, and conversion is not necessarily our goal. We hope that every visitor will have a clearer idea of what Darwin did and, for that matter, what science means."
The show was envisioned as the next in the museum's series on thinkers, explorers and scientists, following its exhibitions on Leonardo da Vinci, Ernest Shackleton and Albert Einstein. The 6,000-square-foot Darwin exhibition has been assembled not only from the museum's collections but also from those of Cambridge University, the Darwin family and Down House, where the naturalist spent the last 40 years of his life.
The exhibition is presented as a chronological journey to South America and the Galápagos Islands and as an internal journey that changed the way Darwin viewed the world and himself. "We'd like visitors to follow Darwin's life, to see what he saw, and understand how he came to his ideas," Dr. Eldredge said.
The exhibition "has the crown jewels," Dr. Novacek said, referring to Darwin's original specimens, manuscripts and notes. "Many of these haven't been together since they were on the H.M.S. Beagle," he said, referring to the 90-foot ship that carried Darwin on a voyage from 1831 to 1836 to South America and the Galápagos, an isolated chain of volcanic islands off the west coast of South America.
Visitors who approach the exhibition through the Hall of Reptiles and Amphibians will come across two live 13-year-old, 50-pound specimens of Geochelone nigra, the Galápagos tortoise that offered Darwin clues for his evolutionary theory. Later in the gallery, they will discover a five-foot-long live green iguana and a terrarium housing six live Ceratophrys ornata, horned toads.
Inside, the very first exhibit is the magnifying glass that Darwin used to examine his specimens.
The show will offer an overview of human evolution through the rich fossil record. It will also demonstrate how Darwin's work gave rise to modern biology with cutting-edge displays on genomic research, DNA research and evidence of the latest scientific update of the taxonomic tree of life.
Dr. Eldredge has been an important participant in this work. In the 1970's he and Stephen Jay Gould, the Harvard University paleontologist who died in 2002, developed the theory of punctuated equilibria in evolution: the notion that transitions in species take place periodically - during intense periods of activity - and not necessarily as part of a steady, gradual process.
On display will be a rare manuscript page from "Origin," one of just a few known to exist. (Fun fact: Darwin never used the word "evolution" in the first edition, though the book's last word is "evolved.")
Also on view will be some of Darwin's most famous notebooks, written from 1837 to 1839, especially Page 36 in Notebook B, where he sketched the world's first evolutionary tree of life. "That's the equivalent of seeing E=mc2 in Einstein's papers," Dr. Eldredge said.
Also on display is the original text from Notebook D that shows the eureka moment when Darwin first described natural selection.
From the Beagle voyage, the exhibition offers Darwin's original pistol, his telescope and his Bible. There are also 33 of the beetles, butterflies, moths and flies Darwin collected, and his rock hammer, used on geological excursions.
In one exhibition, area visitors will see a five-foot-tall reproduction of a famous geological outcrop, the Hutton Unconformity in Scotland, which has an 80-million-year gap in its rock record. This helped demonstrate to Darwin that the earth was much older than the 6,000 years posited by many creationists.
The museum also offers a meticulous recreation of the room at Down House where he wrote "Origin," presenting Darwin's original cane, work table and specimen boxes.
The significance of Darwin's ideas "has grown," Dr. Bloomfield said. "For example, at this moment we're looking at Asian bird flu and where it's going. If not for Darwinism, we would be ignorant of the mechanism of that flu, and how it changes over time."
Polls in Pennsylvania are open today from 7:00 a.m. until 8:00 p.m. for local elections. Today's issue of the Philadelphia Inquirer mentions the eight school board seats at stake in Dover. Eight incumbents are running against eight challengers. Views of the challengers and incumbents about the future of the intelligent design policy:
Quote:The newly elected board is to meet for the first time Dec. 5 and potentially could take action on the intelligent-design policy at that time. But the opposition candidates, who call themselves Dover C.A.R.E.S., say they will seek the recommendation of Dover science teachers before acting on the matter.
Quote:Incumbent board member Alan Bonsell, who led the effort to introduce intelligent design, said the board, if it remains intact, will seek to preserve the policy through a legal appeal.
It's a scarey business all around . . .
