Update: Texas: Still DOOMED

Here's part of the story. Hat Tip to PZ.

It's bad enough that we've got psuedoscientists and revisionist spin working their way into the textbooks. Texas has enough last place awards as it is.

ADDENDUM: Super-DOOMED.
ADDENDUM to the ADDENDUM: Poe's Law strikes. Of course, it wouldn't be subject to Poe's law if it didn't sound like a plausible quote. Texas is, after all, near the bottom in education.

Texas, Filed Under DOOMED!

I'm still sputtering from reading this.

Merry Chrismahanakwanzaaka to You!

Being without television, I'm spared the rambles of Fox News (especially since I need to catch up on the Daily Show lampooning them), but I'm sure they've been whining about the fictitious "War on Christmas" while I haven't been looking. It's their attitude that got me out of saying "Merry Christmas."

When a normal person says "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays," they are expressing a friendly desire for you to enjoy the celebrations going on. It's a slightly more warm and fuzzy version of "have a nice day." I'm perfectly happy with that, and both expressions work. "Happy Holidays" is a less specific version intended to avoid offending those who celebrate something else. I was quite happy with the arrangement, as were many others.

Then the fundies had to come along and overreact to some stores favoring "Happy Holidays." Because the stores chose to self-censor to minimize offense, the fundies weren't happy. The fundies want everyone to say "Merry Christmas" the way one would shout a bigoted epithet. They want the stores to proclaim that Christians get special treatment. To pretend this simple act is a form of persecution, they choose to lie: They wail as they claim that it's now illegal to say "Merry Christmas" or some such nonsense. It's the same old sad story with prayer and bibles in school: Because the government must exercise self-censorship by law, they lie and claim that now their children are unable to pray or read the bible on their own initiative.

Anyway, I got sick of the whole thing a while back, which is why I primarily refer to December 25th as Decemberween when I blog. With the various Fox Fundies spewing out the phrase "Merry Christmas" without a trace of compassion, I'd rather not facing even a tiny risk of coming off like that by saying it.

Texas is, and Ever Shall Be, DOOMED!

PZ says it all.

Something I Saw Yesterday

I figure if I've got insomnia tonight, might as well catch up on my blogging. One guy I sometimes watch on YouTube was going on about Florida license plates. You've probably seen PZ cover the issue enough. Being from Texas, I expressed sympathy in the comments, since we're dealing with all the BOE crap, lately. I got a little reciprocation. Afterward, I made a trip to the grocery store and saw something that just covers Texas's problems so well:

I was behind a blue pickup truck with a bumper sticker roughly like this:

Texas Educators
One Voice, One (garbled) (garbled) Vote
www.texasedu(garbled..............)

Something had dented the sticker right in the middle, rendering much of it illegible.

What a Wonderful Present

I didn't want to wake up in the morning to read this on my B. I will very much embrace the meme of calling her "Cynthia Dumbar," even though it's not a terribly clever way to play on her name. I may change if someone figures out a better tweak. Either way, it looks like Texas could be heading into even deeper states of doominess than McLeroy could dream of.

One thing that strikes me about theocrats like her is how unpatriotic and ungrateful they are. They have no loyalty whatsoever to the founding principles of our nation or any of the similar ideals other developed nations have embraced. Her primitive mode of thought more readily belongs in one of those unfortunate third world countries filled with Lilliputian strife over which end of an egg you crack.

One particular aspect that sickens me is that she's being groomed to head public education, and yet apparently believes children are the property of parents, who are free to deny them the equality of opportunity public education is supposed to aim for. The implied newage (rhymes with sewage) subjectivism involved in denying them access to outside ideas and scientific consensus also strikes me as rather hypocritical: Lots of fundies like to make a big show about how they believe there's an objective truth out there, but whenever science illuminates it for everyone, suddenly they want the system to cater to every superstition out there. Because their random theory of randomness can't survive even the barest bit of scrutiny, they have to remove all sources that could cast doubt on chaos.

It leaves me to wonder if her brand of homeschooler wants to do away with human nature as social animals: Only meet the opposite sex to acquire a mate, reproduce, jealously guard offspring from any outside idea competition from your fellow species until they're old enough to mate and too old and isolated to consider there's something more to life than the rat race.

I'd rather be an intelligent social animal than just another mindless insect bot. My home state is DOOMED.

Not Quite as Doomed as Usual

Well, McLeroy got shot down in his nomination for the head of the school board here. Party in the thread. Enjoy the ice cream cake.

Another Apology for my Home State's IDiocy

PZ covered this earlier, but I'll be doing some commentary on quotes from the article the hat tips lead back to. Presented, of course, by Faux News, currently operating under "balance" at the cost of fairness. So, sorry the politicians in my state are continuing to be gloriously stupid woos.

"I don’t believe I came from a salamander that crawled out of a swamp millions of years ago," Berman told FOXNews.com. "I do believe in creationism. I do believe there are gaps in evolution."

"But when you ask someone who believes in evolution, if you ask one of the elitists who believes in evolution about the gaps, they’ll tell you that the debate is over, that there is no debate, evolution is the thing, it’s the only way to go."

The only way evolution would be gap free would be if we had the DNA of every living thing that ever had offspring. Of course, some missing puzzle pieces doesn't invalidate the idea that there's an order behind the image we see. The fact that we'll never have a complete picture isn't an excuse to believe it's all random magic snapped into existence by a random stone idol that just randomly popped in.

Creationists are just engaging in a manufactroversy: They don't even know what sort of evidence to look for, much less support their witchcraft hypothesis.

Anyway, at least they got some sensible observations included:

“This would open the door to other fly-by-night organizations that come in and want to award degrees in our state, because the bill is highly generalized,” said Steven Schafersman, president of Texas Citizens for Science.

“Right now, we don’t have this problem in Texas. Texas is not a center for degree mills, because our laws allow only the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to approve the granting of graduate degrees.”

“It would certainly open the door to all kinds of chicanery,” says Eugenie Scott, Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education. “I mean, all you have to do, it looks to me from the bill, is start a non-profit organization, don’t take any federal or state money, and then offer degrees in any fool subject you want.”

We're already bad enough in just regular education. Don't want to leave opportunities open for substandard schools. Or crazy newage (rhymes with sewage) garbage.

But, back to the IDiocy:

The ICR issued a statement affirming that it is a legitimate educational institute that employs credentialed Ph.D. scientists from around the country. It insisted that the “THECB has acted discriminatorily against the ICR’s application both in process and in the substance of fact,” and it said “THECB allowed influence of evolution-biased lobbying efforts to influence process and outcome.”

So, let's compare: Evolution: Scientific. Creationism: Newage paranormal nonsense. Nope, I don't sense any sort of unethical discrimination. Of course, when you're talking about something that is quite appropriately compared to teaching alchemy, astrology, or geocentrism is science class, well, you do need to practice some form of discrimination, since I don't think you want to teach the kids that truth is a relativistic concept.

If anything, it's been the Creationists who have been attempting discrimination on the issue: They'd probably object to all those other forms of woo being taught as if they were science, but when it comes to evolution and Big Bang cosmology, suddenly for those specific topics, epistemology no longer applies because they're offended or whatever. And, of course, their witchcraft hypothesis gets special consideration over all the other religions' witchcraft hypotheses for no particular reason. Unless they want us to teach every creation myth on Earth, it's yet another level of discrimination.

And When I was Getting Slightly Less Cynical

I was getting a tiny bit of hope from the fixed science standards. Then PZ drops this on me. A teacher's gotten suspended for being accused of being an atheist and "too liberal." Texas: Back to being DOOMED, already.

One thing that really annoys me about this is that it reminds me of a bit of high school experience. When I was in high school, some students put together a little artsy/newspaper thing called Scrum. Had dueling religious letters, miscellaneous poetry, weird student surveys with silly answers, and some bits of straight school news.

After I graduated and when my brother was attending, the new principal canceled it for being "too liberal," about the same time he instituted a dress code that didn't seem to apply to white students. If I recall, my brother went around in non-compliant flip-flops, leaving them exposed, daring them to enforce the code equally. I don't think he got anything beyond looks.

What's happening to this teacher's obviously worse, but it still strikes close to home for me. So, that's why I'm foamy right now.

Bloggin' From Bed, Once More (Minus Gusto)

Since I'm not at 100%, here's Blake Stacy covering something in my state.

Texas is DOOMED, Unless...

We get out and vote for the right people.

I'm Not Surprised: Bible Courses

Board of Education pushed it through. Seems they're trying to minimize their liability by letting the local level set the curriculum.

Ugh, Bibble Studies Again

I remember as far back as High School there was talk of stuff like this rearing its ugly head. I was a fuzzy agnostic back then, and even a Southern Baptist friend of mine knew it was a bad thing. Well, looks like things have gone there again.

Yes, I can understand including some mentions of the Bible in a literature course. Reading it has convinced me it's a rather crappy book, full of morally dissonant tales, but for better or worse, it's a major influence on Western literature. The first big problem, though, is that most teachers who handle these courses are fundies who use it as an excuse to proselytize, a business that has no place in a government institution. Given what I've seen of stuff like this, I simply can't find the trust to think the teachers could work honestly, or that the system would bother to punish the dishonest ones.

And there's this wallbanger

"It can't go off into other religious philosophies because then it would be teaching religion, when the course is meant to teach literature..."

Ow. He expects us to buy the argument for his religion, but not any others, even if they're influential enough on literature?

Texas is DOOMED! Yet Again

Phil Plait started that meme, and since I live in this wretched hive of scum and villainy, I should post more often about it. The latest item that's come to my attention is a state-approved exorcism.

Since PZ's post has the appropriate information and links, I'll spend some time foaming.

A kid gets mistreated, and all of the sudden it's legal because their religion teaches that it's okay to do such things. Wonder if they'll reverse it when some pro-sacrificial sect kills someone for ritual purposes. Probably cut it down to a wrist-slap, instead. Of course, if some non-Christian cult does it, I imagine they'll invent some excuse to claim that this ruling isn't relevant.

You know it's bad if you can't tell you're being a realist or maximally cynical. Whenever I read some theist troll claiming the moral high ground, it's crap like this that comes to mind first and foremost. The few times I do manage to see theists behaving themselves, it's the secular ones. The fire and brimstone theists are busy condoning torture, murder, inequality, deception, and greed. Every time I get into an argument with a persistent fundie about morality, it always, always descends into that. Non-interactive ones on the TV fall into the same trap if we give them enough rope.

This whole thing is just one more reason why I consider there to be little or no distinction between the wacko religious fundies and the wacko newagers. The two camps just argue over minutiae. Wonder if I'm going to end up having to move to Rhode Island in a reversal of a certain Family Guy episode.

Still in Business + Wild Thread

Well, my brother's got a lot to be angry over, since he's been following the news on Texas education. First new post. Second new post. Feel free to vent your frustrations here. This thread is hereby WILD!

Texas: Doomie-DOOMED!!!

A while back, my dad and I went to visit my brother and see Barbara Forrest lecture about the research that went into utterly humiliating the cdesign proponentests (including the original discovery of that snippet), and had a good time. Even met Martin Wagner of the Atheist Experience, who I probably should have plugged much earlier. Anyway, it seems someone in Texas got fired for bringing her up.

PZ has some quotes there, and I think he's got it right: This is about a philosopher of science talking about science education. Seems my home state can't wait for me to move out in disgust or something. They're giving me plenty of reasons.

Anyway, as Phil Plait is fond of saying, with one of my favorite lolanimal pics:

Texas: