talk about passing the buck...

NCSE Resource:

[Mississippi] Senate Bill 2427, however, is still alive. If enacted, the bill would ensure that "[n]o local school board, school superintendent or school principal shall prohibit a public school classroom teacher from discussing and answering questions from individual students on the issue of flaws or problems which may exist in Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution and the existence of other theories of evolution, including, but not limited to, the Intelligent Design explanation of the origin of life."

In other words, if a teacher is a creationist, they can teach ID Creation (proven to be religious creationism and unconstitutional) and re-enforce any doubts about evolution that kids might have because of bullshit they were told by some comic books based on Wells's Icons fiction.

However, if a teacher is an evolutionist, they can criticize ID and the creationist arguments as they should, yet potentially be abusive by criticising the kids "faith" (or at least, accused as doing so, even if they were "fair" or tried to avoid the topic of religion entirely as they should).

Finally, if the teacher doesn't have the background to handle the questions at all, they look stupid in front of the class and lose the respect necessary to get any lesson across at all.

So the teacher  gets screwed every way and everybody else is off the hook...

Why don't they just get rid of biology classes entirely?

On the Olympics and Ratings...

Olympic Idols:

NBC, the network that has over time invested billions of dollars in Olympic coverage, has taken a beating in the TV ratings on nights when these Winter Games were up against several popular shows -- most notably the amateur entertainment contest "American Idol" and the offbeat series "Desperate Housewives." ("Idol," especially, has become a national phenomenon, an un-Olympian event in which just about anyone can compete and unfortunately often does, in the manner of a new skier tumbling head over heels the whole length of the downhill course and getting a unanimous verdict from the judges at the bottom: "zero.")

WTOP also addressed this in their "talkback" question yesterday - "Why are the olympics tanking in the ratings".  And I think this hits it: sports are no longer "reality" in the face of "reality tv".  Individual sports are increasingly not something the couch potato can relate to anymore.  America is a "team" country, and individual merit is no longer worth what the "team" (with strong individuals as its backbone) means (with the oddball exception being NASCAR, but that's as much for the worship of cars in this country as anything else).

When Survivor or Idol are on TV, people can watch that and think "I could be in there", and then are able engage with the program by guessing what they would do in such a situation.  That engagement is key to return viewers, and the Olympics (*either* season) can't get that engagement anymore.  Its not something someone can just get up and do.  I can't just go "hey, I wanna do skeleton" - the equipment, the kit, the insurance, and finally the commute to some place that actually supports it (meaning they have their own insurance, too) being potentially *days* away, means its just not something someone can say "hey, I can do that!".  So the disconnect is there.

Olympic athletes are perceived as the elite at a time when America is worshipping the (worst) examples of the "common man" (well, person).  Just as they can't deal with what they see as elitism in science, they can't deal with what they see as elitism in athletics anymore.

And in both cases, the "elitism" is only in their minds.  Its less on the minds of the athletes (Bode Miller not withstanding) than it is with America's real sports heroes in baseball, basketball, and football...

Ok, I am getting sick of this excuse.

Strangers at the Door - New York Times:

Two of the 9/11 hijackers were citizens of the emirates, and some of the money for the attacks came from there.

I'll repeat what I've written before:

If that is your standard for judging the companies of a country, then condemn every single American company in the same way, because Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols along with every single dollar they spent, came from the United States of America.

Take this xenophobic crap and shove it.  There are reasons to be concerned about this deal, but 9/11 isn't one of them.