New "no trolls" symbol

OK, you lousy trolls -- the party's over.

IMO the above symbol is more accurate than the symbol with the dwarf -- in folklore, trolls are dwarfs or giants. IMO the Internet term "troll" was derived from the fishing term -- Internet trolling is like fishing for angry responses. In fishing, "troll" can mean a lure -- or a lure and line -- used in trolling.

IMO good titles for the above symbol would be "No trolls" or "Please don't feed the trolls."

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Are Darwinists really this clueless -- or are they just playing dumb?

That reminds me of a joke --

If people changed flat tires the way they fix computers, people would change one wheel at a time until the problem goes away.

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How could these parasites' life cycles evolve?

Click on picture to enlarge

This and the following illustrations are from the website of Prof. Matthew Bolek of the Dept. of Zoology at Oklahoma State Univ.

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How could the complex life cycle of the above parasite evolve by means of a random process when it is impossible to even imagine a process for such evolution?

Other extremely complex parasitic relationships and life cycles of parasites are described in another post. Parasitologists should be among the leading Darwin doubters, but we have not heard much if any Darwin-doubting from them.

The following text accompanies the above picture:
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Trematodes have some of the most complex life cycles in the animal world and usually include three hosts. Our current studies concentrate on trying to understand the evolutionary avenues for and constraints on the transmission of these parasites to their amphibian hosts. Currently we are investigating two aspects of amphibian trematode life cycle evolution: 1) we are comparing the differences in life cycle strategies among closely related congeners and mapping those similarities and differences on current phylogenetic hypotheses, and 2) we are examining the role of anuran tadpoles in the truncation of trematode life cycles from three to two hosts.

We work on the avenues for and constraints on transmission of frog lung flukes (Haematoloechus spp.) and the role of second intermediate hosts in these life cycles. Most frog lung fluke life cycles have been shown to use odonates as second intermedite (sic) hosts. However our studies in Nebraska indicate that there is a lot of variation in the use of second intermediate hosts among congeners of frog lung flukes. See frog lung flukes.(shown and discussed below)

Click on picture to enlarge

Four representative frog lung flukes. Haematoloechus coloradensis and H. complexus are second intermediate host specialists where the cercaria can attach to any body region of aquatic arthropods. Haematoloechus parviplexus is a second intermediate host specialist and can only infect dragonfly by passively entering the rectal breathing apparatus, whereas H. longiplexus is intermediate in its host specificity and can infect dragonflies as well as damselflie.(sic)

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Sleazy PZ's book review of Ken Miller's Only a Theory

Picture is courtesy of Nature magazine

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A book review of Ken Miller's Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul in Nature magazine was written by -- of all people -- Sleazy PZ Myers. A complete copy of the review costs $32 for 7 days use, so I will just comment on the free part of the review.

Myers lavishly praises Miller:
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Science and evolution have an advocate in Kenneth Miller, one of North America's eminent knights-errant, a scientist who is active in defending evolutionary theory in the conflict between evolution and creationism . . . .

Miller is a fine writer who sharply addresses the details of the arguments about intelligent design creationism.

That praise is an about-face for PZ Myers -- he previously attacked Miller in a Pharyngula blog article titled "Ken Miller, creationist." I am unable to link to a copy of this Pharyngula article, but the article is discussed here on Fatheaded Ed Brayton's blog. BTW, Fatheaded Ed shows himself here to be the complete idiot that he is -- it is obvious that Ken Miller attacked the atheism of some biologists, Ed's denials notwithstanding.

The book review says,

Miller is sympathetic to the creationists' perspective but opposes them uncompromisingly.

Bill Dembski does not appear to take the view that Miller's book is "sympathetic to the creationists' perspective" (or the perspectives of other critics of evolution theory)-- Dembski wrote:

Theistic evolutionists hold that Darwinian evolution is God’s way of bringing about the diversity of life on earth. They used to be content to criticize ID on scientific grounds. But that’s no longer enough. They are now charging ID with undermining the very fabric of civilization and even the Christian religion itself. Ken Miller’s most recent book, just out, makes this point in the title — Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America’s Soul. From the title, you’d think that Darwin is the Messiah and that until his ideas about evolution gained acceptance, our souls were in jeopardy.

The book review says,

"Only a Theory" deals poorly with one central aspect of this battle: why this problem is so much greater in the United States than elsewhere. Miller's rationalizations are sometimes painful to read. Europe's relative freedom from the scourge of creationism is explained with a condescending anecdote: a British colleague offers that any outbreak of such nonsense is rapidly quashed by "dispatch[ing] a couple of dons from Oxford or Cambridge" to overawe the locals with their prestigious degrees, to which the populace will defer.

Sleazy PZ and his "British colleague" are so full of living crap that it is coming out of their ears. Articles with my post label Evolution controversy abroad show that the evolution controversy is a big "problem" (as PZ calls it) in the UK and other foreign countries.

The hallmark of almost any creationist argument is the tireless bleating of the same points we have rebutted since the trial of teacher John Scopes in Tennessee in 1925, which tested the law on teaching Darwinian evolutionary theory; the only twists come from new creationist authorities that enter the fray.

There we go again with that tired old argument that the Darwinists refuted all possible "creationist" claims decades ago.
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The blind leading the blind

Modified from the original in Slate magazine

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There is now a big debate going on over the evolution of blind salamanders.[1] [2][3]

Darwin made important contributions to biology but I think that his followers are doing him a disservice by overrating his contributions and exposing him to a lot of criticism for his mistakes and a lot of condemnation for his negative influence on society in general. For example, I doubt that the Darwin-to-Hitler idea would be such a big thing if the Darwinists were not pushing Darwinism so hard.

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Washington Pest messes with biology texasbooks

Illustration by Doug Potter -- Austin Chronicle

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A Washington Post article titled "Evolving Towards a Compromise" says,

A proposal before the Texas Board of Education calls for including the "strengths and weaknesses" of evolution in the state's science curriculum. This initiative is understood by supporters and opponents to be a strategic effort to get around First Amendment restrictions on teaching religion in science class. The proposal is a new round in an old debate, and, if it fails, creationists will innovate once again, just as they have since the 1920s.

As Evolution News & Views has pointed out, the "strengths and weaknesses" idea is not new -- that language has been in the Texas state standards since the late 1980's. Ironically, though critics of Darwinism are not trying to add that language to the standards, the Darwinists are trying to remove it -- in testimony to the Texas House Public Education Committee, Texas Citizens for Science president Steven Schafersman said,
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We scientists are worried that the School Board wants to damage science standards during their upcoming revision. Several members of the SB, including Chairman McLeroy, have stated their intention to keep the unscientific language of "strengths and weaknesses" in the standards, so as to be able to force teachers and textbooks to include unscientific and bogus "weaknesses" of scientific information that the Board members consider to be "controversial," such as evolution, the origin of life, global warming, and the age of the Earth, rocks, and fossils.

The Washington Post article continues,

If they succeed, there could be national implications: Because of Texas's sizable school population, the state curriculum can influence national standards. Book publishers don't want to produce multiple versions of the same text for different states or regions, so ideas that work their way into Texas's curriculum often end up shaping content in classrooms elsewhere.

"Multiple versions"? Only two versions -- one for atheists and one for fundies -- would be required at most. And if we can have two different kinds of automobile emissions certifications -- federal and California -- we can certainly have two different kinds of textbooks. When biology textbooks discuss evolution in only one chapter, writing two different versions of the textbook is easy. Biology textbooks that are "laced" with Darwinism -- like the textbooks adopted by the Dover school board (former board member Bill Buckingham said that evolution was discussed in 12-15 places in the book) -- might require a lot of rewriting.

Steven Schafersman also said in his testimony,

Most states allow individual school districts to adopt textbooks and instructional materials. Few states--14 I believe--have a central adoption policy. Texas is by far the largest adoption state. All the other large states--California, New York, Illinois, etc.--allow school district choice of textbooks . . . . Christian fundamentalists and other zealots with a political or ideological agenda are attracted to the Texas SBOE like flies to a corpse, because the office gives them enormous power to promote their beliefs in the public school system of Texas and other states (primarily in the U.S. South) that adopt textbooks written for Texas.

There is no reason for other states to adopt the Texas textbooks if they don't like them. Even if other textbooks cost a little more, that's no problem because the cost differential would be a very small part of the cost of running public schools. I have nothing but contempt for tightwad taxpayers who would sell their souls to the devil to save a few pennies on their tax bills.

We presume that the Texas challenge will be found to violate the Constitution and that scientists will never accept the watering down of evolutionary concepts in the classroom.

It is not inevitable that teaching or mentioning scientific (or pseudoscientific to some) criticisms of evolution in public schools will always be struck down by the courts. There is no constitutional separation of bad science and state. The courts should rule that the evolution controversy is non-justiciable, just as the courts treated the global-warming controversy as non-justiciable in Massachusetts v. EPA. Questions are non-justiciable when there is “a lack of judicially discoverable and manageable standards,” Vieth v. Jubelirer, 541 U.S. 267, 277-78 (2004). Court rulings on scientific issues in the evolution controversy are like court rulings on how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

Intelligent design and previous creationist debates appear to center on where humans came from.

Intelligent Design is not the only scientific (or pseudoscientific to some) criticism of evolution -- there are also non-ID criticisms of evolution.

A less public yet similarly powerful motive of activists is their belief that the materialist underpinnings of evolutionary theory harm children's values.

That is not a less public motive -- that is an important part of the debate. Of course, the influence of Darwinism on morality has nothing to do with the scientific merits of Darwinism and is not a good reason to not teach Darwinism.

For example, the defender of fundamentalism in the 1925 Scopes "monkey trial," Williams Jennings Bryan, was motivated by his conclusion that Darwinism taught "the law of the jungle" and had led to World War I by subverting the morality of the Germans.

I have seen no evidence that Bryan blamed Germany for the start of WW I, but he did believe that Darwinism undermines morality.

More recently, "the Wedge," an infamous leaked strategy document of intelligent design proponents, suggests that advocates are not as concerned about the truth of evolution as they are about the underlying values they think it teaches.

"The Wedge" issue is just a conspiracy theory and guilt-by-association.

To assuage the type of concern articulated by William Jennings Bryan, teachers could tell students that even though evolutionary science talks about the survival of the fittest organism, it is not a model for how humans should treat each other. . . . . they could explicitly note that just because mutations in organisms are random, it does not follow that human morality is random.

But would Darwinists find such teaching in the public schools to be acceptable? The Darwinists are already in a state of denial -- despite overwhelming evidence -- of Darwinism's influence on Nazism. For example, the Anti-Defamation League denounced the Darwin-to-Hitler themes of the "Expelled" movie and Coral Ridge Ministries' "Darwin's Deadly Legacy" TV program, saying that Hitler did not "need" Darwin.

In the final analysis, this so-called "compromise" is not a compromise at all -- it does not teach or even inform students about the scientific (pseudoscientific to some) criticisms of Darwinism.
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Shameless ballyhoo about Darwin

Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier, the founder of the analysis of heat conduction in solids. Also a great mathematician.



In a NY Times opinion piece titled "Darwinmania," Olivia Judson exults,

The party is about to begin.

In a week or so, the trumpets will sound, heralding the start of 18 months of non-stop festivities in honor of Charles Darwin. July 1, 2008, is the 150th anniversary of the first announcement of his discovery of natural selection, the main driving force of evolution. Since 2009 is the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth (Feb. 12), as well as being the 150th anniversary of the publication of his masterpiece, “On the Origin of Species” (Nov. 24), the extravaganza is set to continue until the end of next year. Get ready for Darwin hats, t-shirts, action figures, naturally selected fireworks and evolving chocolates. Oh, and lots of books and speeches.

How can Darwinists object to being called "Darwinists" when so many Darwinists worship Darwin. Sheeesh.
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I'm jealous. My own field of mechanical engineering -- even most of its specialties and many of its subspecialties -- has no central unifying principle and no single founding individual. My own specialty, heat transfer analysis, has the heat transfer modes of conduction, convection, and radiation, but only conduction has a single unifying principle, Fourier's Law, and a single founder, Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier. So maybe I should celebrate "Fourier Day" and get some "I love Fourier" items -- maybe a T-shirt, a coffee mug, and a bumper sticker.

Biologists have an inferiority complex as a result of the kind of attitude expressed by Lord Rutherford: "All science is either physics or stamp collecting." As a result of this inferiority complex, biologists are waging a prestige war against other branches of science by boasting that biology has something that the other branches don't have, a grand central supreme overarching underlying unifying theory of everything, Darwinism.

The article continues,

By 1858, Darwin had spent more than 20 years studying plants and animals and thinking about evolution. . . . But he had published nothing. (He had, however, published books on several other subjects, including an exhaustive study of barnacles, both living and extinct.) Then, in June of that year, Darwin received a package from a young man named Alfred Russel Wallace; in the package, Wallace enclosed a brief manuscript in which he outlined the principle of evolution by natural selection.

On July 1, 1858, Wallace’s manuscript, as well as a couple of short statements on natural selection by Darwin . . . . were read at a meeting of the Linnean Society in London. . . .

Of the material presented that night, the manuscript by Wallace is, in some respects, the more impressive: it is clearer and more accessible. Yet it is Darwin we celebrate; it is Darwin who, like a god in a temple, sits in white marble and presides over the main hall at the Natural History Museum in London. Why?

The reason is the “Origin” . . . .the “Origin” changed everything. Before the “Origin,” the diversity of life could only be catalogued and described; afterwards, it could be explained and understood. Before the “Origin,” species were generally seen as fixed entities, the special creations of a deity; afterwards, they became connected together on a great family tree that stretches back, across billions of years, to the dawn of life. Perhaps most importantly, the “Origin” changed our view of ourselves. It made us as much a part of nature as hummingbirds and bumblebees (or humble-bees, as Darwin called them); we, too, acquired a family tree with a host of remarkable and distinguished ancestors.(emphasis added)

So the article says that the "Origin" (which as everyone knows is the book "On the Origin of Species") "changed our view of ourselves" -- i.e., Darwinism is not just a scientific idea but represents a worldview, a philosophy of life, and even a religion. And I don't know why Judson calls our putative ancestors "remarkable and distinguished"; while I don't think that the idea of being descended from monkeys -- or worse -- is anything to be ashamed of, I don't consider it anything to be proud of, either.

Darwinists seem to regard the idea of natural selection as a stroke of genius, but it is really just a mickey mouse idea -- all it says is that fitter organisms are more likely to survive and reproduce than less fit organisms. Duh. Natural selection does not compare to the genius and elegance of many of the ideas I have seen in engineering, science, and mathematics, e.g., (1) using complex-plane vectors to analyze AC circuits and (2) the Joukowski transformation of conformal mapping, where the aerodynamics of rotating cylinders is used to analyze the aerodynamics of fixed-wing airfoils.

Also, why is Wallace largely forgotten today? He made a lot of independent contributions to evolution theory and it was he who induced Darwin to finally write and publish "On the Origin of Species" after years of procrastination. Maybe the reason why Wallace is ignored is that it was his misfortune to not have the same official birthdate as Abraham Lincoln. LOL Well, at least he has not been forgotten by the Linnean Society of London -- a medal conferred by the society is named for both Darwin and Wallace.

The article "Darwinmania" is one of a series by Olivia Judson. Other articles in the series so far are listed below. I have already posted an article about "Let's Get Rid of Darwinism":

An Original Confession

Let's Get Rid of Darwinism

A Natural Selection
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The Station for Experimental Evolution

Historical note: The Station for Experimental Evolution merged with the Eugenics Record Office in 1920 to form the Carnegie Institution's Dept. of Genetics.

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Holocaust revisionism favors Darwinism

* "Evolution is the fundamental concept underlying all of biology"
-- the new Florida state science standards

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The charge that Darwinism was a major cause of the holocaust is diminished to the extent that the holocaust itself is diminished, so logically it seems that Darwinists should support holocaust revisionism, but they don't. My holocaust revisionism is shunned by Darwinists as well as critics of Darwinism. The spreading Darwin-to-Hitler idea has finally given the Darwinists a very good reason to support holocaust revisionism. Even though the Darwin-to-Hitler link has nothing to do with the scientific merits of Darwinism, this link might be used as an excuse to avoid or minimize the teaching of Darwinism in the public schools.

One of the fundamental principles of my holocaust revisionism is that a "systematic" Jewish holocaust was impossible because the Nazis had no objective and reliable ways of identifying Jews and non-Jews. Even today we don't know what a Jew is, and even if we knew, we could not possibly find them all or even find most of them and in an attempted holocaust we could not avoid a lot of inadvertent "collateral damage" to non-Jews. If there had been a real attempt by the Nazis to have a "systematic" holocaust, we would have heard a lot of complaints from holocaust survivors who believed that they were mistakenly identified as Jews and I am not aware of any such complaints.

In an article about the holocaust on Evolution News & Views, historian Richard Weikart portrays Darwinists as unethical, amoral "mad" scientists and philosophers:
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Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor who endured the horrors of Auschwitz, astutely commented on the way that modern European thought had helped prepare the way for Nazi atrocities (and his own misery). He stated, "If we present a man with a concept of man which is not true, we may well corrupt him. When we present man as an automaton of reflexes, as a mind-machine, as a bundle of instincts, as a pawn of drives and reactions, as a mere product of instinct, heredity and environment, we feed the nihilism to which modern man is, in any case, prone. I became acquainted," Frankl continued, "with the last stage of that corruption in my second concentration camp, Auschwitz. The gas chambers of Auschwitz were the ultimate consequence of the theory that man is nothing but the product of heredity and environment--or, as the Nazi liked to say, of 'Blood and Soil.' I am absolutely convinced that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Maidanek were ultimately prepared not in some Ministry or other in Berlin, but rather at the desks and in the lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers."

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More Darwinist bigotry

Cartoon is courtesy(?) of New Humanist magazine.

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Creationists take gloves off and come out swinging

Fed up after years of being pushed around by hardline Darwinist roaders and their running dogs, John E. "Jackass" Jones III and other federal judges, creationists have finally taken the gloves off and come out of their corner swinging. These creationists are mad as hell and they are not going to take it anymore! In an article titled "Should evolutionists be allowed to vote?", Tom Willis said in the newsletter of The Creation Science Association for mid-America,

Claim #3: At least a million new biological structures have formed in the last 500 million years. The only "proof" of this claim takes the form of the Petri dishes above. Bacteria are subjected to some chemical, or other treatment. The change in environment is designed to kill, and many die, but some develop resistance to the new environment. Evolutionists shout, "Evolution is just change, change is everywhere, evolution is a fact!" This is a bit like noticing dents in your child's wagon, and deciding that rocks change wagons, therefore more rocks might turn it into a car. Pause and consider that evolution is sold as a process capable of producing Man from bacteria, but what is demonstrated is bacterial resistance to some chemical. Of the million or so biological structures that evolutionists need, not one has ever been observed, much less demonstrated! It is a simple fact that, in the entire history of man, not one new biological structure has ever been observed. Thus, their theory is an absurd religious insanity. But it gets worse.

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ADL finally comes out against "Expelled"

"O, Reason not the need!"
-- King Lear in Shakespeare's play "King Lear"

"Hitler did not need Darwin to devise his heinous plan to exterminate the Jewish people and Darwin and evolutionary theory cannot explain Hitler's genocidal madness."
-- Anti-Defamation League's denunciation of "Expelled"

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The Darwin-to-Hitler message of the "Expelled" movie was a real dilemma for the Anti-Defamation League. The ADL had previously denounced the Darwin-to-Hitler "Darwin's Deadly Legacy" TV show of the Christian fundy Coral Ridge Ministries, and the ADL has a long history of opposing criticism of Darwinism in general. But the star of "Expelled," Ben Stein, is Jewish and one of his supporters in the movie wears a yarmulke. For a brief time, ADL tried to solve the problem by erasing the article condemning "Darwin's Deadly Legacy." The ADL finally decided to bite the bullet and denounce "Expelled." IMO the reason why ADL finally came out against "Expelled" was to avoid the appearance of a double-standard in regard of the denunciation of "Darwin's Deadly Legacy." The ADL's denunciation of "Expelled" says:
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Anti-Evolution Film Misappropriates the Holocaust

New York, NY, April 29, 2008 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today issued the following statement regarding the controversial film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.

The film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed misappropriates the Holocaust and its imagery as a part of its political effort to discredit the scientific community which rejects so-called intelligent design theory.

Hitler did not need Darwin to devise his heinous plan to exterminate the Jewish people and Darwin and evolutionary theory cannot explain Hitler's genocidal madness.

Using the Holocaust in order to tarnish those who promote the theory of evolution is outrageous and trivializes the complex factors that led to the mass extermination of European Jewry.(emphasis added)

The statement "Hitler did not need Darwin to devise his heinous plan to exterminate the Jewish people" also appears in the ADL's denunciation of "Darwin's Deadly Legacy" as a statement by the ADL's national director Abraham Foxman. Foxman and the ADL can't show that Darwin did not influence Nazism anti-semitism at all, so they say that Hitler did not "need" Darwin to devise his plan to exterminate the Jews of Europe.

Also, the "complex factors" in the ADL's clause "trivializes the complex factors that led to the mass extermination of European Jewry" is probably a reference to the ADL's probable belief that "Christian antisemitic ideology" is to blame for the holocaust:

The motivation was ideological. The racist-antisemitic ideology was the rational outcome of an irrational approach, an approach that was a cancer like mutation of the Christian antisemitic ideology that had sullied Christian-Jewish relations all through their two millennia of coexistence. (from a speech by Yehuda Bauer, posted on the ADL website)

Also, as I have pointed out numerous times before, a "systematic" Jewish holocaust was impossible because the Nazis had no objective and reliable ways of identifying Jews and non-Jews. It's like trying to, say, "systematically" exterminate all of the Methodists or Presbyterians in the USA -- it can't be done. It is very doubtful that the Nazis ever had a real "plan" to exterminate the Jews of Europe. The Nazis may have been insane but they weren't stupid.
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Will birds be reclassified as reptiles?

Scientists say that Barney T. Rex and the San Diego Chicken are close relatives.

(I couldn't find a picture of the San Diego Chicken beating up that stupid dinosaur Mr. Rex)

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An AOL news article said,

WASHINGTON (April 24) - Scientists are fleshing out the proof that today's chicken is descended from the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex dinosaur.

Fossil studies have long suggested modern birds were descended from T. rex, based in similarities in their skeletons.

Sheeesh, how could the similarity of the skeletons be maintained over such a drastic shrinkage in size?

The article said,
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Now, bits of protein obtained from connective tissues in a T. rex fossil shows a relationship to birds including chickens and ostriches, according to a report in Friday's edition of the journal Science.

"These results match predictions made from skeletal anatomy, providing the first molecular evidence for the evolutionary relationships of a non-avian dinosaur," Chris Organ, a postdoctoral researcher in biology at Harvard University said in a statement.

Co-author John M. Asara of Harvard University reported last year that his team had been able to extract collagen from a T. rex and that it most closely resembled the collagen of chickens . . .

. . . While the researchers were able to obtain just a few proteins from T. rex, they have now been able to show the relationships with birds.

With more data, Organ said, they would probably be able to place T. rex on the evolutionary tree between alligators and chickens and ostriches.

"We also show that it groups better with birds than modern reptiles, such as alligators and green anole lizards," Asara added. (emphasis added)

Well, that's just great. In cladistic taxonomy, which is based on evolutionary relationships, birds may now need to be reclassified as reptiles. Those stupid biologists have really painted themselves into a corner with that "evolution is the fundamental concept underlying all of biology" crap.
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Illustration of "The Descent of Man"

Or maybe the picture could be titled, "Monkey See, Monkey Do."

It has been said that the Darwinian mechanisms of random mutation and natural selection actually destroy information rather than create it and that natural selection throws out the good with the bad.

Fruit flies and cockroaches are considered to be likely survivors of a nuclear war because of their high resistance to radiation. So if those insects are the sole survivors of a nuclear war, they will then be -- by definition -- the "fittest."

Picture is courtesy of The Gradebook: Tampabay.com

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Newspaperman slams BVD-clad amateur journalists

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To "inane," "rambling," and "rarely updated" may be added unethical, dishonest, unreliable, bigoted, and censorial.

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A newspaperman wrote,

And when you look at the internet business, what’s dangerous about it is that people who are clearly unqualified get to disseminate their piece to the masses. I respect the journalism industry, and the fact of the matter is ...someone with no training should not be allowed to have any kind of format whatsoever to disseminate to the masses to the level which they can. They are not trained. Not experts. More important are the level of ethics and integrity that comes along with the quote-unqoute profession hasn’t been firmly established and entrenched in the minds of those who’ve been given that license. (emphasis added)

"Therefore, there’s a total disregard, a level of wrecklessness (sic) that ends up being a domino effect. And the people who suffer are the common viewers out there and, more importantly, those in the industry who haven’t been fortunate to get a radio or television deal and only rely on the written word. And now they’ve been sabotaged. Not because of me. Or like me. But because of the industry or the world has allowed the average joe to resemble a professional without any credentials whatsoever.

Good examples of these BVD-clad amateur journalists who pretend to resemble professional journalists are Fatheaded Ed Brayton (Dispatches from the Culture Wars), Sleazy PZ Myers (Pharyngula), and Wesley "Ding" Elsberry (Austringer). All three also blog on Panda's Thumb.

One of blogs' few potential advantages is that readers' comments can help make them "self-correcting." But this potential advantage doesn't work when bloggers arbitrarily censor comments.

Fortunately, blogs are not the only sources of news on the Internet -- professional news organizations also publish news on the Internet.

This post has more comments about BVD-clad amateur journalists.
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"I'm from Missouri" do-it-yourself cartoon contest

WHAT? NOT NEUTRAL? WHO? ME?












Here is another version of my last cartoon, and this one is no exaggeration -- the sign actually states the theme of the Forrest lecture that Comer announced.

The contest is to suggest words for the sign and the cartoon caption. Example:

Sign: DARWIN INSPIRED HITLER

Caption: I'm just showing my even-handedness.

The reward for the winner will be a guest post opportunity.

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PS: I just added the initials "FYI". That is a big improvement.

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Florida education official abuses position to oppose Darwinism

WHAT? NOT NEUTRAL? WHO? ME?













An ousted Darwinist education official in Texas has an anti-Darwinist counterpart in Florida. A news article said,

The debate over evolution, creation and Florida's science standards has grown increasingly heated as a decision nears, and a state Department of Education manager who has waded into it now finds herself in hot water.

Selena "Charlie" Carraway, program manager for the department's Office of Instructional Materials, recently used her personal e-mail on personal time to send a missive urging fellow Christians to fight the proposal to include evolution as a "key idea" in the science curriculum.

But she invoked her position as a way to, in her words, "give this e-mail credibility." And that, it turns out, is a no-no.

"It is inappropriate for any department employee to use their public position to advocate their personal positions," department spokesman Tom Butler said Friday. "Ms. Carraway has been counseled."

That means human resources personnel met with Carraway and warned her not to do this again, but she remains on the job.

That's quite a different result than the one that befell the Texas Education Agency's director of science for a similar situation.

Last month, Christine Comer was forced to resign from her job in Texas after forwarding an e-mail announcement of a speech by an author who favored teaching evolution. In several articles, Comer blamed evolution politics for her fate in Texas, which also is reviewing its science standards.

Observers familiar with both situations said it looked like Carraway, more than Comer, had done something deserving of reprimand. They praised the Florida Education Department for acting with restraint.

"They behaved with much more proportionality," said Eugenie Scott, executive director of the pro-evolution National Center for Science Education. "Indeed, Ms. Carraway should not use her public position to promote her religious position. ... Now she has a second chance, and hopefully she'll behave more responsibly."

Joe Wolf, president of the pro-evolution Florida Citizens for Science, agreed.

"I think she's allowing her religious beliefs to interfere with her public duty," Wolf said. "I wish she hadn't done it. But I think it's an internal matter."

Scott and Wolf both observed that such restraint can be difficult in this charged atmosphere.

Carraway did not respond to several requests for an interview. Butler said he confirmed that the e-mail in question, which has been widely distributed across Florida, came from her.

Here's how she introduced herself:

"My name is Charlie Carraway, and I'm a member of Sopchoppy Southern Baptist Church, Sopchoppy, Florida, but I also work for the Florida Department of Education as the Director of the Office of Instructional Materials," Carraway wrote. "That means I oversee the adoption process of books and materials in the state, and I work in close proximity to the folks in the Office of Mathematics and Science, who have been in charge of the revision of the science standards. I say all of this, obviously, to give this e-mail credibility."

Carraway detailed the proposed standards, which have won accolades from scientists, and provided ways to contact the State Board of Education.

"Once these become adopted standards and benchmarks, FCAT assessment will be based on them," she wrote. "Districts will not have a choice in teaching evolution as a theory, but will be expected to teach it as stated in these standards, big ideas, and benchmarks. ... Whose agenda is this and will the Christians in Florida care enough to do something about it?"

She ended by urging recipients to lobby against the standards, ending, "The least we can do is make sure evolution is presented to our children and grandchildren as a theory as it has been in the past. Hopefully, though, we can do better than that." Carraway was not part of the committee that recommended the science standards.

Carraway's statement "The least we can do is make sure evolution is presented to our children and grandchildren as a theory as it has been in the past" is alarming. It implies that the proposed new science standards are attempting to present evolution as more than just a theory.

And Comer is certainly not innocent. The Forrest lecture that Comer announced was not about science but was a false ad hominem attack on all critics of Darwinism, vilifying them as allegedly being part of a fundy conspiracy to take over the USA. Forrest is a bigot who is trying to shut down discussion of the scientific issues. Forrest cannot stand discussion of the scientific issues because if Intelligent Design or other criticisms of Darwinism have scientific merit, then her conspiracy theory is irrelevant. What Comer did was like a government AIDS agency sending out an "FYI" announcement of a Fred Phelps demonstration. A "Darwin-to-Hitler" lecture might be more neutral, as it would not necessarily be an attempt to shut down discussion of the scientific issues. And I have seen no claim that Comer was even-handed about the "FYI" public-event announcements that she sent out. Finally, Comer violated the Texas Education Agency policy of neutrality on upcoming science standard reviews. Right or wrong, that was the policy.

IMO it would have been better if Comer had also received just a slap on the wrist. Ousting her has backfired, as she has become a martyr in the minds of a lot of Darwinists.
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New documentary film about "the controversy"

The above cartoon is a rerun. It was very popular.

A Lawrence Journal-World article about a documentary film titled "Kansas v. Darwin" says,

In the beginning, God created controversy.

And filmmaker Jeff Tamblyn was there to cover it.

To clarify, this particular “beginning” took place in 2005 when three members of the Kansas State Board of Education — Steve Abrams, Kathy Martin and Connie Morris — conducted controversial hearings to debate where God belonged in the classroom. Specifically, in what ratio should evolution and intelligent design be implemented into the state’s school science standards?

That's pretty biased reporting. The question was not "where God belonged in the classroom," but was where criticism of Darwinism belonged in the classroom.

The article said,

. . . .“When we started the project and began to talk about it, the reception we got was chilly,” says Tamblyn, who directed, produced and co-wrote the enterprise.

“One of the first things that everybody asked us was, ‘Which side are you on?’ In fact, that may eventually become a tagline for the movie.”. . .

. . . . .More than 135 hours of footage later, Tamblyn started assembling the film with the help of co-writer/editor Mark von Schlemmer . . . .

. . . .“We thought we were done with the film a little over a year ago,” Tamblyn says. “We sent it out to some festivals like Toronto and Telluride, and it didn’t get in. But this prompted me to take another look at the story. I felt like we could make a better movie.”

The first editing revision turned out to be a metaphor for what sparked the initial controversy.

“We took out a lot of the science,” Tamblyn explains.

“There was a lot of stuff in there about cells and molecular biology. It was over people’s heads, and they were going to sleep. Instead, we really zeroed in on the politics and the politics of faith.”

Nearly a year and a half since the first festival edit floundered, “Kansas vs. Darwin” is making its official premiere Monday at the Kansas International Film Festival.

Well, when you "took out a lot of the science," you took out a lot of the core of the debate over whether weaknesses of Darwinism should be taught in the public schools. IMO that answers the question, "which side are you on"?

Although the religious side was in full force during the hearings, the Kansas Citizens for Science decided to stage a boycott. Their reasoning was that science is not something that can be determined in the courtroom.

This was not a "courtroom" -- it was a hearing of the Kansas Board of Education. And the purpose of the hearing was not to decide whether Darwinism is true or false, but was to determine whether weaknesses of Darwinism should be taught in public schools.

BTW, the "kangaroo court" excuse for the Darwinists' boycott of the Kansas BOE hearings just does not hold water. Why didn't the Darwinists boycott the Dover trial after learning that the judge was a conservative church-going Bush-appointed Republican?

There have been a number of other recent movie or TV productions about the controversy:

(1) "Flock of Dodos: The Evolution-Intelligent Design Circus," a 2006 movie

(2) "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed," a movie scheduled for release in 2008

(3) "Darwin's Deadly Legacy", a Darwin-to-Hitler TV production

(4) A PBS TV NOVA series reenactment of the Dover trial
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Wickedpedian thugs fine-tune attacks on Yecke

One Wickedpedian thug appropriately named "Odd nature" wrote on the discussion page of the Wickedpedia bio of Cheri Yecke,

The article is looking better. My only concern is that in the recent change to "hired the Internet accuracy-watchdog service ReputationDefender to help clarify the record" implies that the record was indeed inaccurate, something that has subsequently been shown not to be the case. I think "hired the Internet accuracy-watchdog service ReputationDefender to change the record to reflect her views" or simply "hired the Internet accuracy-watchdog service ReputationDefender" are more accurate. Odd nature 21:49, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, we can't suggest that maybe the record could use some clarification, now can we? And how could ReputationDefender possibly "change the record" to reflect Cheri Yecke's views?

Another Wickedpedian thug inserted the following in the section titled "Allegations of Nepotism":
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. . . Yecke's husband was hired as the deputy secretary of professional regulations by the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation amid allegations that his qualifications do not significantly distinguish him from the rest of the qualified candidate pool available in Florida.

No one claimed -- or could claim -- that "his qualifications . . . significantly distinguish him from the rest of the qualified candidate pool available in Florida." He is not a rocket scientist. His Florida state position is just one of general administration and requires no specialized knowledge. According to a news report, his background is undistinguished --

While she [Cheri Yecke] was education commissioner in Minnesota, her husband was appointed to an $84,000-a-year position as a deputy commissioner with the state's economic development agency.

Dennis Yecke held a number of executive positions with the U.S. Marine Corps. He has a bachelor's degree in business administration from University of Wisconsin-River Falls, according to his resume.

In addition to his two-year stint in Minnesota, he was also a budget analyst for the Virginia Department of Planning and Budget for 10 years.

Anyway, how did the hiring of Dennis Yecke for his positions in Florida and Minnesota suggest "nepotism"? What authority or influence might Cheri Yecke have had in selecting him for those positions?

Anyway, I am digressing. It is not my purpose here to just defend Cheri Yecke -- my purpose here is to stop Wickedpedia censorship. Truth is a defense against charges of libel but is not a defense against charges of arbitrary censorship. And Wikipedia is run by a 501(c)(3) nonprofit outfit and Cheri Yecke is a candidate in a public election and the IRS says that her Wikipedia bio must therefore be presented as a "public forum" that is "conducted in a non-partisan manner."
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Alice in Wickedpedialand

I am appreciating Alice in Wonderland more and more. The Wickedpedian control freaks who have been claiming that violating the Wikipedia rule against using personal blogs as sources is OK so long as the personal blogs are "notable" remind me of the March Hare who put the "best" butter in the Mad Hatter's watch. Here is my retelling of that scene in the Mad Hatter's Tea Party:

"I told you personal blogs wouldn't suit a biography!" the Mad Hatter said, looking angrily at the March Hare.

"They were the most notable personal blogs," the March Hare meekly replied.

"Yes, but some crumbs -- BVD-clad bloggers Ding Elsberry and Sleazy PZ Myers -- got in as well," the Hatter grumbled'

The March Hare took the biography and looked at it gloomily: then he dipped it into his cup of tea, and looked at it again: but he could think of nothing better to say than his first remark, "They were the most notable personal blogs, you know."

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