In a shocking turn of events, Rick Santorum has that he’s “not comfortable with intelligent design being taught in the science classroom.†Unfortunately, it was his response to our dear president saying that he is.
Category: science/tech
More on Dover
Sidenote: My apologies if this is incoherent. I’m exhausted. I was going to use this space to tell you about why, but I think that’ll have to wait until after the holiday. In case I forget to post on Saturday, have a very Merry Christmas if you celebrate, and a very good just-another-day if you don’t. And now back to our regularly scheduled broadcast…
According to an attorney for the Dover Area School District, a restraining order is not necessary to prevent the teaching of Intelligent Design in biology classes next month. Of course, none of the articles I’ve found seem to offer any specifics about what’s being taught instead. While I suppose it’s unlikely that Dover biology teachers are the driving force behind this law, it wouldn’t surprise me to hear that ID, in some form, was already being taught.
My sophomore 20th century US history class at Red Land High School included three days of lecture (well, argument, since I was in the class) on creationism and its merits, presented in the guise of “learning” about the Scopes Monkey Trial. The thing is, it doesn’t matter so much what the official policy is, or what’s Constitutional or not. For better or worse, teachers are going to manage to work their beliefs into the classroom.
In some ways, I think that’s good. It’s important to learn that people have different views. I also think it’s okay to point out that there are holes in Darwinism. I think, in a class about Christianity, it’d be good to point out that there are a lot of unaccounted for years in Christ’s life. I don’t think we should guard any one idea from criticism simply because we’re afraid of the current alternatives.
My tenth grade history teacher began his Scopes lecture by saying, “In order to believe in evolution, two things are necessary: you must have faith, and you must believe in the spontaneous creation of life.” My hand was in the air. “Uh, isn’t that what’s necessary to believe in creationism?” I got no satisfactory answer, of course, but that didn’t stop him from proceeding to tell us that this proved that creationism was a better model.
While there were elements of truth in his initial statement, holes in one theory are not sufficient evidence that another is true. It seems like this is the entire premise of the ID argument — there is no other science involved. In my mind, this should preclude it from being taught in a science class.
I think it would be cool to offer an Origin Theory class, examining Darwinism, ID, literal biblical creationism, and perhaps creation “theories” from other cultures and religions, too. Kind of a very focused comparative religion class. But not a science class.
As long as we have a government monopoly on education, I’d like to see a wider variety of subjects and perspectives being taught in public schools. The Supreme Court has said that the 14th Amendment gives parents the right to educate their children as they see fit. Provide opportunities for children to receive the right education for them, as they and their parents see it. Don’t force anything.
And especially not in a science class.
Mostly, I’m kicking myself for not raising a bigger stink about that 10th grade “history” teacher.
Intelligent Design?
Pennsylvania’s School of Creationism
There’s a fine line.
I’m frustrated by my recent inner turmoil about whether or not to be offended by a Menorah at a public function, and then about whether or not to be offended by my own lack of offence. I’m frustrated that we are so PC that we are automatically offended by symbols of the majority holiday, but encouraging (in a vaguely patronizing way) of symbols of minority holidays.
I’m frustrated that we are so adamant about removing anything even vaguely related to religion (especially majority religion) from any institution even vaguely related to government. I dislike our society’s current trend toward “Scientism” over any and all ideas that cannot be explained in a laboratory.
Sometimes I even believe in something that could be described as “intelligent design”, although I doubt it’s something most Christians would recognize as such.
And yet…
In a town only ten miles from mine, they are mandating the teaching of Creationism in high school biology classes. Mostly, I’m appalled.
There’s a fine line. I don’t know where to draw it.
(And as a side note, perhaps this, along with the claim that “45 per cent of Americans believe that humans were created by God in their current form within the past 10,000 years”, could be indicative of an atmosphere in which it is secularists, rather than Christians, who are most eager to loosen restrictions on private schools and vouchers. A natural shift, if “liberal” has anything to do with “liberty”.)
Rethinking roads
I thought I blogged this the last time I read about it, but if I did, I can’t find the post. But today Wired has an article about roads gone wild — an interesting new theory in traffic engineering.
The basic premise is that if there are no signs telling drivers where and how to drive, they’ll slow down and think about it themselves. In other words, “Build roads that seem dangerous, and they’ll be safer.” Wired says this is counterintuitive. I guess that depends on your mindset.
What I think is interesting are the possible implications not only for traffic patterns, but for changing societal patterns as well. Someone recently commented to me about how strange it is that we don’t look at each other as people when we’re in our cars. We’ve built huge parts of our lives around them, but they aren’t integrated, they’re separate, and they separate us.
I love my car, and, despite what the article says, it is a symbol of freedom for me. But more in a sunset-chasing, random-roadtrip-taking way, not so much in a day-to-day way. In a day-to-day way I hate traffic and how far away everything is. For that, I’d like to see communities similar to the idea apparently being encouraged in New Jersey mentioned at the end of the article.
California Researchin’
The New York Times published an interesting article about California’s new stem cell initiative. I’ve been really excited to see a state doing something like this as a result of federal inaction, but this article draws attention to the potential problems that arise when any government body does anything. Well, the scope of the article isn’t that broad, but it’s what it’s got me thinking about.
I would like to see stem cell research being conducted. My first reaction to anything, though, is that I don’t want to see government spending money, especially on things a large number of people object to on moral grounds (I know, I know, this is not a robust argument). This kind of research apparently doesn’t happen with private funds, though, so it does seem like it’s going to take government dollars. A state ballot initiative is, I think, a great way to address the issue. States can decide whether or not they want to spend money on it, those who do have the opportunity to attract scientists and companies to work on it; those who don’t can pay less taxes.
But it also seems like the further the decision making process is removed from those funding the program (IE, the taxpayers), the less responsible the spending will be. The NYT article makes it sound like the initiative includes safeguards to prevent abuse of the funds, but, of course, only time will tell.
Anyway, I always hear fiscal conservatives and libertarians (including myself) argue that less government intervention leads to more innovation. It doesn’t seem to be true in this case, though — perhaps partly because the drug industry is so well established and profitable. The possibilities seem great enough that this is the kind of thing that should be pursued *somehow*, and it’s frustrating to me that there is no easy answer as to how.
Republicans are sick
This is an interesting article about a researcher who set out to determine if genetics influence people’s political beliefs. The article is disdainful, and, really, it seems like a silly way to do it, but some of the correllations deserve a closer look. Why are “fear and aggression, dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity, [and] uncertainty avoidance” more evident in conservatives?
Here’s a view of that question that I think might be a little more relevant.
Get ’em Hooked
Microsoft to emerging markets: We’ve got a deal for you
This strikes me as a “The first one’s free” strategy, but a good example of how capitalism can have some synergistic results. And blah blah, it’s not capitalism because it’s a deal with a foreign government, but Microsoft’s motivations are purely capitalistic. But that doesn’t mean it won’t help both Microsoft and the consumers in the long run.
Mostly, I like the idea of the citizens all these developing countries getting computers for dirt cheap. Up to this point, the evolution from an agricultural society has, in most cases, been slow and painful. While most of the countries mentioned in the article have their share of sweatshops, etc., I’m hopeful that proliferation of information and access to that information will allow them to evolve more quickly. Even if it costs us a few jobs.
Gmail
Gmail under attack in California
Well, I guess this is as good a time as any for my Gmail post. They offered beta accounts to Blogger members, so I got one, and am currently having my regular mail forwarded to my new Gmail address. I did this fully aware of the privacy concerns surrounding the service.
To be honest, the privacy concerns seem minimal to me. My father always said that nothing should ever be sent via email that wouldn’t be written on the back of a postcard. While I don’t follow this guideline, I believe in its truth, and I know that I can’t complain if sensitive information that I have emailed is compromised. With any email service, if privacy is what you’re looking for, you should be using PGP or another encryption service.
The article above raises excellent points about the services for which we are willing to compromise our privacy in nearly identical ways, and the things that we may inadvertantly be giving up if we pass legislation like what’s been proposed in California. That said, even if we weren’t giving up services that might be useful, it’s still our job as consumers to decide on an individual basis whether or not our privacy is worth it, and this isn’t the kind of thing for which there is a universal answer that can be mandated by the government.
Anyway, if Gmail is a concern for you, but you’d like to send me email, here’s my PGP key. Actually, if Gmail is a concern for you, I suggest just getting over it. But you can send me email anyway.
Kevinus is the best
A few months ago, I started noticing that a lot of the spam I received contained seemingly random words at the bottom, in wonderful combinations like, “feverish interruption symphonic assyria headway argentina whom bragging rendezvous effusion peking bernardo california ellison”. I got excited — these were free words being sent to me every day.
Inspired by Jonathan Schwanbeck, I asked Kevin Gaughen if he would be able to help me at some point create a perl script that could take these spam words, insert random prepositions, conjunctions, etc., and random line breaks to create “poetry”. He said he could and told me what I could do to get started on it, but I kept pushing it off until I have more free time. A few days ago, he surprised me with the page I’ve linked above. Below is an example of poetry it created, based on the sample words in this post.
she
headway
effusion rendezvous
bragging
butpeking. or
interruption
symphonic california bernardo in front of
whom; argentina
US firms to trade greenhouse gases
US firms to trade greenhouse gases
This is something I’ve long heard proposed as a libertarian solution to environmental problems, but I had no idea anyone was actually attempting it. It looks, though, like these kinds of things have been around for a long time, at least in some form. The only piece I don’t understand is that the article states that this is a way to cut emissions without government intervention, but who decides what the total number of permitted emissions is? The CCX?