Texas School Board Demonstrates "Idiocracy" Theory of Evolution

[mick e]

kanesa wrote:
I live in Wisconsin and we are labeled obese, cheese eating, beer drinkers. Some of us are. :-)

mick e has yet to meet anyone up here who isn't at least TWO of those three things.

The thing is - even if the school board up here in Cheeseland put down five kegs at their next meeting (three kegs more than their normal intake), they would never even consider such horseshit.

[Dennis S]

I was in Little Rock in the early 80's when Arkansas had one of its periodic monkey trials. I worked a couple of blocks from the courthouse and would sit in at the trial on my lunch hours and early days off. Very interesting.

[Lux Interior]

Don't be so sure about this "It'll never happen here" stuff.

There seems to be a pattern in these cases. Creationists have an agenda to get creationism taught as scientific fact. This is very important to them. The rational people who realize this is BS aren't typically the people who want to serve on these boards and the creationists slowly replace them. Then, after they reach critical mass, they vote in the BS. People become outraged, vote them off the boards and overturn the BS.

Repeat process.

[mattkime]

mick e wrote: [quote=kanesa]I live in Wisconsin and we are labeled obese, cheese eating, beer drinkers. Some of us are. :-)

mick e has yet to meet anyone up here who isn't at least TWO of those three things.

The thing is - even if the school board up here in Cheeseland put down five kegs at their next meeting (three kegs more than their normal intake), they would never even consider such horseshit.
wow, thats my new favorite description of wisconsin

[DharmaDog]

I'm getting pretty sick of the Texas bashing that is so en vogue - all the cool kids are doing it...

Most of the time it's from people that have never been here, or feel their layover at IAH qualifies them to speak on all things Texas. Or maybe they saw the show Dallas once.

But the right wing has taken over the school boards here. This used to be a job that not many people wanted, but determining the direction of education wields significant influence. The right wing saw an opportunity and has organized to take this over and are using it to push a political and religious agenda. I can't express my contempt for the people that are doing this to our children.

My wife is a professor at Texas A&M specializing in nano-toxicology. I asked her why science professors don't get involved and voice their objection and outrage. The public school system feeds into universities and professors will have to undo the damage done by these wing-nuts.

Honestly, it sounds like most professors are afraid to get involved. Afraid of reprisal for speaking out, especially those without tenure. It's a real shame.

The obvious suggestion is for moderates to organize and take back the school boards, but the right is better organized, better at sensationalizing the subject and scaring the sheeple into believing that any moderate or science-based education platform will lead to the warping of their children, the unraveling of society, the devaluing of human life and would be offensive to their invisible friend.

And it's perfectly legitimate to compare these people to the mullahs, but most of Texas is not this way and it is not justifiable to characterize 24 million people as backwards, knuckle-dragging, religious zealots.

And as far as "giving Texas back to Mexico" goes, the US never took Texas from anyone, so I don't see how you can give it back. Texas declared its independence from Mexico, was its own country for 10 years, and then joined the US voluntarily. Its just an idiotic statement.

[mattkime]

>>Honestly, it sounds like most professors are afraid to get involved

Are you sure its fear? There's a saying about wrestling with a pig that i think applies.

Its a political problem.

[JoeH]

mattkime wrote:
>>Honestly, it sounds like most professors are afraid to get involved

Are you sure its fear? There's a saying about wrestling with a pig that i think applies.

Its a political problem.

And it goes way back. There is a reason my sister's faculty adviser packed up his research group, and its equipment, and took them all to another university 30 years ago from Texas A&M. Part of it was early examples of the same attitude towards science in parts of the Texas governing structures. The A&M administration was not pleased when they found out under NSF research grants the million plus in equipment belonged to the research group, not the university.

[mjgkramer]

DharmaDog wrote:
And as far as "giving Texas back to Mexico" goes, the US never took Texas from anyone, so I don't see how you can give it back. Texas declared its independence from Mexico, was its own country for 10 years, and then joined the US voluntarily. Its just an idiotic statement.

I'm also a Texan, am a moderate conservative, believe in evolution and consider myself (a Rice grad) to be reasonably intelligent. I heard one of the idiots on the Texas Board of Education, possibly the one referred to in the original post on this thread, say that evolution should not be taught because there is no evidence that it happened. On the contrary, IMHO there is no evidence that creation happened other than what is said in the Bible, written by many people over a long period of time and translated from many archaic languages. Anyone who has studied foreign languages knows that how something is translated depends very much on the translator. I personally reconcile creation and evolution by believing that a day of the creation could have been a million years, during which time there could have much evolution.

As for "giving Texas back to Mexico", we would be more likely to secede, a right that was reserved when we joined the Union.

[Rolando]

You should take a real Texas history class. The Republic of Texas was like Haiti!

Sure Texas declared independence, claimed the Rio Grande as its border to Santa Fe, etc, but Mexico "reoccuppied" San Antonio at least twice.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Fe_Expedition

The annexation resolution has been the topic of some historical myths—one that remains is that the resolution granted Texas the explicit right to secede from the Union. This was a right argued by some to be implicitly held by all states at the time, up until the conclusion of the Civil War. The resolution did include two unique provisions: first, it said that up to four additional states could be created from Texas' territory, with the consent of the State of Texas. The resolution did not include any special exceptions to the provisions of the US Constitution regarding statehood. The right to create these possible new states was not "reserved" for Texas, as is sometimes stated
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Texas

[DharmaDog]

Not sure what relevance that has. Most countries are unstable at their founding. The US had a rather tenuous hold on its independence initially as well, losing several cities to the British after declaring independence.

In any case, this is a better source for Texas history info than wikipedia:
http://www.tshaonline.org/