yet more liars for jesus

Collapse of a Texas Quote Mine:

On January 22nd, 2009, the Texas State Board of Education met to consider a draft of their new science standards. At that meeting, the Board’s Chairman, Dr. Donald McLeroy, proposed a new student expectation for the Biology standards regarding evolution.

The standard concerned the fossil evidence of evolution and would require students to:

Analyze and evaluate the sufficiency or insufficiency of common ancestry to explain the sudden appearance, stasis and sequential nature of groups in the fossil record.

In support of this proposal, Dr. McLeroy read a long list of quotes into the public record. These quotes were from various scientific books and articles that Dr. McLeroy claimed to have read in preparation for his remarks.

Based on his comments, Dr. McLeroy clearly believed that this list of quotes presented a compelling case for the existence of a scientific controversy concerning evolution. Apparently, a majority of his fellow Board members agreed, and the new student expectation was added to the current draft of the Biology standards, pending a final vote in March.

The scientists at the meeting, on the other hand, did not agree. They say that Dr. McLeroy's amendment is a hopelessly muddled mess that will only serve to confuse students about the evidence of evolution in the fossil record. The sudden appearance, stasis, and sequential nature of groups in the fossil record is due to the fact that species evolve at different rates - sometimes rapidly, sometimes gradually, and sometimes barely at all. Common ancestry is the result of the various processes that have led to the formation of new species over time, but the rate at which these processes occur has nothing to do with whether existing species share common ancestors.

In other words, the new student expectation would require students to learn that common ancestry may be insufficient to explain something that common ancestry is not used explain.

The page then goes into a nicely presented detailed list of each of the quotes and shows the original context more completely to demonstrate why it doesn't imply what the creationists think it means (or want it to mean).

Generally, they're all rhetorical comments and questions, items used to lead into a discussion by presenting what the reader might be thinking at that time. The very next sentence is the great "However" that starts of the real discussion of the work, and totally contradicts the comment that was excerpted by the creationists.

The page is willing to call is sloppy reading. I won't. It is lying, plain and simple.

blurb supports blogs

For those looking at the "get your blog in a book" solution and get tired of the one pdf site always being swamped, blurb's booksmart, the product and company I used for my italy photos, supports livejournal with their latest (1.9.9) release.  you can give it your LJ user/password and it will download the entries.  you can then select the entries you want to keep, tweak them into a layout and just save it for perusal at the computer, or send to blurb for printing (at a cost, of course).

It supports your tag categories, though it looks like it only grabs the first one it sees, so if you tag something with multiples it may not show you the one you might want.

It does NOT grab comments. It's really more for those who either want their blog preserved as a diary or are the type that write long essays worth preserving.  It doesn't look at or know about your "memory" posts, so you can't have it just look those up.  You CAN, however, do as much editing to the text as you want, including plenty of deletion of any of those "nothing much to say today" posts.

You can also print to pdf using cutewriter, but it will

1. have a "for proofreading only" watermark on it
2. use up a horrible amount of cpu and memory, so start it up at the end of the night and just walk away, as your computer will be dead to you for at least an hour. (this is likely caused by adding that watermark, as it is horrible even if you're just printing text with no pictures)
   

so, something to consider, but maybe not the ideal solution for those on my f-list here.

from Pic of the Day

See? Towers of Hanoi can be implemented in ANY language!