305 Educational

I wish I knew a highschool kid. I'm going to have to try this one out.

NOw this is an intelligent design :)

Evidently the subject of Intelligent Design is not very provoking, so moving right along, thanks Woozie; I caught George Washington on The Tome and could not resist this one about Jesus Christ.

Is Intelligent design taught in school - an intelligent idea?

A friend of mine and I were talking about THIS bill which was just introduced in to the Louisiana State Legislature. In a nut shell it is mandating that intelligent design be taught as part of the science curriculum in public schools.

To be very honest, I am not sure what type of materials the school board would use to teach intelligent design, nor exactly what basis they would place the teaching on, given that I would assume THE BIBLE should not be used as a reference book.

To this end I sent an email to my friend Stephen who is a Physics teacher in a charter School here in New Orleans and asked him for his opinion. I wanted to know how he would feel, if forced to teach intelligent design. I assume once again that intelligent design might be taught by the biology teacher under the topic of Human Genome using Sanford’s book. The premise of his book states:

" The conclusion is that we were created perfect, have been headed downhill ever since and the human race cannot be a thousand generation old yet. Solutions are not in better technology but a relationship with God who will take us out of this decaying creation at the proper time."


Well Stephen took a very proactive approach and wrote the following letter to Governor Jindal:

Governor Jindal-
I write to you today in reference to SB 733, a misguided attempt to suggest specific alterations to the teaching of Science in Louisiana schools. Legislation of this type is an inappropriate tool for improving education, if that were indeed its true intention. Since that is how it has been presented, it is worthy of being confronted on just such a level. I believe that my position on the subject is an informed one, and I hope that you have the time to consider it fully.

I am a Physics teacher at Lusher Charter School here in New Orleans, though I have taught at Catholic schools in the 12 preceding years. During that time, I have been awarded two national teaching awards, and spoken to groups on the subject of science teaching. Like all good teachers of science, I labor to demonstrate to my students how a theory is constructed from evidence, and the principle that any theory may be discarded if contradictory evidence is discovered. As most well educated individuals understand, these principles are foundational to science.

History has no shortage of scientific theories which have been discarded. New facts sometimes come to light, and a new, more comprehensive theory must be developed to incorporate all available evidence. The study of this process in science classes reveals the true strength of the scientific method and encourages students to be critical thinkers. For that reason, it is an intrinsic part of a well-rounded science education. On its surface, SB 733 may appear to promote teaching about this process, but the specific topics named represent inappropriate choices.
For example, SB 733 suggests critical analysis of evolution. One can only assume that additional materials to provide for critical discussion of evolution would rely heavily on the recent challenges to the theory of evolution posed by William Dembski and others. These challenges involved computational methods that are complex enough to be debated among experts – hence, a genuine scientific debate that has been dubbed “Intelligent Design” by the popular media. However, the evidence that was used to support Dembski’s conjecture is beyond the mathematical abilities of secondary students, as is the evidence that refutes his claim. Primary and secondary students do not have the capacity to think critically about different experts’ evaluation of the statistical probability of the random assembly of amino acids. As a result, the debate is inaccessible as a topic for a secondary science class. This fact points directly to the inappropriate nature of this type of legislation.

Despite language that clearly shows an understanding of good scientific education pedagogy, SB 733 suggests a course of action that is pedagogically suspect. This is not surprising, as Senators Nevers, Crowe, Riser, and Thompson are not and never have been science educators. Decisions about the proper context within which to teach inquiry content standards are best left to the professionals that have successfully taught them, not those elected by popular majority. For this reason, as an educator, I urge you to veto this bill should it reach your desk.

Stephen Collins

P.S.
I have been led to believe that you are a man of faith, and may be one of the many who are sometimes troubled by the ideas of science. If this is indeed the case, consider the words of Guy Consulmagno, who has this to say about the official position of the Catholic church on matters of science: "[the Vatican] wants to make a strong statement that truth doesn't contradict truth; that if you have faith, you're never going to be afraid of what science comes up with.", (Quoted in issue 2624 of New Scientist magazine, 06 October 2007, page 12).

I would be interested in people’s comments or thoughts about intelligent design as part of a public school curriculum.

weird wednesday

Just seeing how many of my Republican friends I can offend today!

WTF?

http://www.wdsu.com/news/16634012/detail.html

I would like to know what The Army Corps of Engineers has been doing for the past 3 years?

Hello even before Katrina the corps was saying that the levees would hold in a Cat 3-4 storm. So where has the Federal money been spent?

I have to believe that the people who rebuilt their homes after flooding during Katrina felt that they were being assured that the levees would withstand at least a category 2 hurricane. If New Orleans floods again, you can kiss this city goodbye. Folks are not going to go through it twice. I feel like once again I have been lied to by the Federal Government (who is in charge of the Corps of Engineers), the Mayor and the State.

Dream Interpretation please?

I had a rather off putting dream last night. It kind of made me question what I would do in reality if this situation arose. Of course as it was a dream, well I doubt that reality will ever have anything to do with it.

I was in my friend Melissa’s playroom. Mind you Melissa was my childhood best friend and I have not been in her play room for over 25 years. Evidently she was supplying the venue as she never showed up in the dream. Sitting on her sofa is a person, who I’m not going to name as I don’t want to freak them out. So I shall just call “the person” “Max” as that can go for a man or a woman. The person is someone I know well.

So Max is sitting on the sofa and all of a sudden turns pale. I ask what is wrong and Max replies that Max does not feel well. Max of clutches his/her chest then dies.

Okay, I am once again sitting in the playroom, this time I am in there with Max and my friends Leah and Eric. The difference is that this time around it is the day before Max dies. Leah and Eric and I know that Max is going to die the next day, but we don’t want to tell Max.

When Max has a shortness of breath we all look at each other expectantly, knowingly and I ask Eric if I should give Max one of my clonazepam pills to calm Max down. Eric looks at me like duhhh Raspootin give Max a pill; ya know Max is going to die anyway.

So Max leaves the room and Leah says, we have to tell Max that Max is going to die. I’m like no way, if Max is going to die anyway we should just give Max the best last day of Max’s life. Eric interjects that perhaps Max has a second chance, and if we tell Max he/she is going to die that maybe Max could do something about it. We all looked at each other for a while and I said, but what if there is nothing that Max can do about dying? Instead of having the best last day ever, all Max will be doing is worrying about dying.

Max, Eric, Leah and I are then all on a merry go round. It is spinning and spinning really fast and we are all hysterically laughing.

Then I woke up.

I realize that this was just a dream, but what would you do if you knew that someone had only one day to live; or maybe not… my dream did not tell me what I would do. I don’t believe in predestination, but I do believe in free will, so would telling the person change the outcome, or just make their last day the worst in their life.

Here I go again

I know that most of the United States thinks that Katrina is like a dead horse that we all keep kicking. I am over Katrina, forgive, forget no, but move on yes.

However, when I see videos like this, the anger with FEMA and the Louisiana State Government all comes back.

WTF do bureaucrats all live in a bubble? Do they even bother checking out what a situation is before making stupid decisions? And, most importantly why were all these donated items sitting in a warehouse for 2-3 years after the event that they were specifically earmarked for.

I still, have yet to understand what happened to the Millions of dollars that people gave to help New Orleans and The Gulf Coast? Well, at least now I understand what happened to some of it.

I’ll just plug as an ending comment that Kathleen Blanco saw fit to give a $700 million contract ( road home money) to a VA based company to administer the Federal dollars that were suppose to go to homeowners that were under insured. I think the State got around $1.5 billion, I’m no super wiz, but even I can see that with 200,000 homes destroyed that the contract amount was going to leave a short fall for most folks.

I will stop, because I can go on and on and on at nausea on the miss- management subject.

Any way this is the CNN report that got me pissed off:

The second video is the one, that really upset me.

Video

YoU Go Girl

Hopefully he was doing this for private amusement and never thought it would become public.

I have no idea why I found this so funny, I must need different medication.

Happy frickin Monday, and if you ever feel depressed on Mondays just think about this guy and your depression will be put in perspective.

Christian soldiers?

Whenever I watch this clip I end up absolutely appalled. What makes it even worse is that when I tell my friends about Jesus Camp, they all think it’s not true. Get a grip! It is true and it is scary! That lady is a crazy bitch and no one seems to care that she is indoctrinating these children. If she is the “teacher” imagine what the parents are like?



Jesus Camp always makes me think of this song. In fact, truth be told, I was trying to find a youtube spoof of it when I can across the Jesus Camp clip. Needless to say, I could not find anyone that dared to make fun of it.

Spanked: Hillary & Obama play nice!

Goodness, “goodness” sounds like something my grandmother would have said, but I really am astounded after hearing Hillary’s non- and Obama’s yea.

This is to say, Hillary did not give it up, but gave the best speech of her campaign.

This is to say Obama gave a great speech that did not doctorate as being the Democratic Nomination winner.

This is to say Obama is going to announce his win when he announces Ms. Clinton as his running mate.

I never imagined that this would happen. I never thought Hillary would be afforded the chance to address her constituents with such an amazing speech.

I think the Democratic Party has told them both: YOU will get along and you will run as the super ticket. “ or you will be spanked ya bad children: play nice”

Like I said, I am surprised. Perhaps, according to the people that I watched both speeches with, I am wrong.

I feel very confident that I am correct. I will be glad to have the Super Ticket to vote for.

And as my other thoughts about McCain go, if this Obama / Clinton ticket is introduced, McCain will give the nod to Bobby Jindal.

Hell what do I know: just stating an educated guess?

2 guys for Tuesday

This gave me a laugh, so I'm sharing the too politically incorrect, correct giggle factor.