recent legislative and legal victories for science

lets see, now...

1. Florida's "Freedom of Education" act, whereby students could sue college professors that they felt were discriminating against their religious beliefs by grading against the students if their religious belief was incorporated into their work (as in, describing an "intelligent design" solution in a biology class) died in committee.
2. Alabama's teach the alternatives bills (*3* of them) all died without vote.
3. The appeals court for the Cobb County, GA case denied the injunction against removing the "just a theory" stickers.  The stickers must be removed during the remainder of the county's appeal.
4. Anti-evolutionist Kansas School Board member Kathy Martin shot her own cause in the foot when during the kangaroo court trial she revealed on the stand that she hadn't actually read the science standards document written by the science committee of the state that she insisted was inferior to the one she supports.  This won't stop that school board from adopting the bogus standards document (which was the main reason why the science community boycotted the event).  The "trial" really has shown that one decent, intelligent, skeptical lawyer can easily show that the ID community doesn't have a legal leg to stand on, no matter whether their view is philosophically true or not.
   
   In the same case, it turned out *none* of the so-called expert witnesses who insisted that the alternative theory was superior than the one written by the science committee had actually read the committee's document.  You know, it didn't take a revelation of mass witness stupidity much beyond this to end the McCarthy hearings...
   

however...

1. New York has become the first "blue state" to have someone propose a "equal time" bill, specifically mentioning "both theories, intelligent design and evolution".  We fully expect that to die a rather sudden death, but it just goes to show that the problem is country-wide, not just a "red state" phenomena where fundementalist christians are trying to ride the momentum of the november election victory.

Meanwhile, in Russia where post-soviet-collapse "freedom" (without the training of science and proper education) has led to an explosion of popularity of pseudo-scientific belief in UFOs, Abductions, ESP, Astrology, and so forth, a court has permitted an astrologer to sue NASA, claiming that their upcoming project to examine the core of a small comet would "disrupt the natural balance of the universe".

oh, and Cyd?  Welcome home:

Chester, New Jersey, Observer Tribune

"Members of the Chester Republican Club say area students should be 
taught about creationist and related theories about the origins of 
the universe because Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution is flawed 
and unproven." 

gee, happy anniversary. maybe THAT will be the last straw that'll get your parents to move out...

on time travel...

Yes, I'm a time traveler.  Unfortunately, I'm rather unidirectional in that I only progress forward in time, at a rediculously slow rate of 1 second per second.  Its not so bad though, in that I always seem to get to where I'm going by the time I get there.