"And another thing" was the title I always gave to science-y stuff that I found interesting. So why not start with one of those. Consider it a way of easing back in to heavier stuff.
The study involved was published in the May 21 edition of Global Change Biology and related to Anna's hummingbirds (Calypte anna), a species found in California.
Simply (probably oversimply, so read the article) put, the proliferation of hummingbird feeders since World War II has provided the birds with a plentiful supply of nectar, resulting in longer, larger, beaks - the better to take advantage of the feeders - as well as enabling them to expand their range from southern California up the coast to British Columbia.
So take that, creationists: Yeah, evolution can take tens or hundreds of thousands of years, but it doesn't have to. The argument "no one has seen evolution" just won't wash. Not that it ever did.
Good News!/Not Good News!: Belief in creationism down; genuine belief in evolution still low
Good News!
A recent Gallup poll reported that belief in creationism, the idea that God created humans in their present form about 10,000 years ago, is at its lowest point since Gallup began asking the question 35 years ago.
Not Good News!
That "lowest point" still meant that 38 percent of those polled chose creationism to describe their understanding of how we got here and another 38 percent said sure, evolution, change over a long time, but change guided by God - which of course isn't evolution.
Only 19 percent were prepared to go with scientific reality.
Trying to end on a hopeful note, that 19 percent is nearly double the figure from 15 years ago and has been slowly rising over that time.
This week: Killer cop Timothy Loehmann fired https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/05/30/cleveland-policeman-who-fatally-shot-tamir-rice-is-fired/22117609/
Good News: NJ Town must pay penalty mosque for wrongful denial of permit http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/town-that-denied-mosque-permit-to-pay-islamic-group-dollar325m/ar-BBBGjOW
Good News: North Carolina voter suppression blocked by SCOTUS https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/05/11/study-voter-id-laws-may-have-blocked-200-000-voters-in-one-stat/22082266/ https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/05/15/supreme-court-rejects-bid-to-revive-north-carolina-voter-id-law/22087422/ https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/30/us/federal%2Dappeals%2Dcourt%2Dstrikes%2Ddown%2Dnorth%2Dcarolina%2Dvoter%2Did%2Dprovision.html?_r=0 https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/inside-the-republican-creation-of-the-north-carolina-voting-bill-dubbed-the-monster-law/2016/09/01/79162398-6adf-11e6-8225-fbb8a6fc65bc_story.html?tid=a_inl&utm_term=.3a108b4e3349 https://ivn.us/2017/05/29/nonpartisan-coalition-celebrates-huge-victory-voters-in-illinois/ https://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/automatic-voter-registration
Good News: Successful suit by transgender boy against school could have wider application https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/05/31/federal-appeals-court-rules-in-favor-of-transgender-students-ri/22119271/ https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/wisconsin/articles/2017-05-30/transgender-student-at-wisconsin-high-school-wins-appeal?utm_source=AOL&utm_medium=readMore&utm_campaign=partner https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/5/30/15714642/seventh-circuit-transgender-school-bathroom-ash-whitaker http://www.gallup.com/poll/210566/support-gay-marriage-edges-new-high.aspx? http://www.gallup.com/file/poll/210683/170515SameSexMarriage.pdf http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/ihowxjstz7/tabs_HP_transgender_20150220.pdf http://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/americans-oppose-bathroom-laws-limiting-transgender-rights-poll-n731826 https://www.prri.org/research/lgbt-transgender-bathroom-discrimination-religious-liberty/ http://fusion.kinja.com/alabama-is-about-to-make-it-legal-for-adoption-agencies-1794676920?utm_source=fusion_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2017-04-26
Single-payer health plans advancing on state level https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/divhts7l9t/econTabReport.pdf https://morningconsult.com/2017/04/12/plurality-voters-back-single-payer-health-care-system/ https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/04/27/time-golden-and-now-single-payer-bill-advances-california http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-single-payer-20170526-story.html https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/05/16/single-payer-success-ny-medicare-all-bill-passes-state-assembly https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/05/26/face-trumpcare-abomination-new-jersey-latest-state-join-single-payer-push https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/676
Anti-vaxxers convince Somali immigrants in Minnesota to avoid vaccines; biggest measles outbreak in decades follows http://fusion.kinja.com/minnesota-faces-worst-measles-outbreak-in-decades-after-1794959556
Good News/Not Good News: Belief in creationism down; genuine belief in evolution still low http://www.gallup.com/poll/210956/belief-creationist-view-humans-new-low.aspx
Clown Award: Rep. Tim Walberg http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/ben-carson-poverty-state-mind http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/how-trump-aides-get-him-to-read-his-national-security-briefing-materials http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/urinating-sketchy-dog-statue-appears-next-fearless-girl-n766071 http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/tim-walberg-climate-change-god
Outrage of the Week: Even undocumented immigrants who try to become legal are being deported https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/05/30/he-met-federal-agents-discuss-path-citizenship-they-arrested-him-instead/354928001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/04/19/trump-increases-deportations-former-dreamers/100609524/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/04/21/trump-wants-expand-deportations-but-report-finds-ice-already-falling-behind/100772676/
Only 36% could find North Korea on a map of Asia https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/05/14/upshot/if-americans-can-find-north-korea-on-a-map-theyre-more-likely-to-prefer-diplomacy.html?_r=2 https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/05/15/study-majority-of-americans-cant-identify-north-korea-on-a-map/22088114/ https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/05/17/seattle-prepares-nuclear-attack-north-korea/22096104/ http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2015/02/goody-goody.html
Everything You Need to Know: What Donald TheRump thinks about power in four sentences http://fusion.kinja.com/trump-congratulated-philippines-president-duterte-on-mu-1795500175 http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/white-house/article153222754.html
And Another Thing: new research suggests way life began
One of the most common misunderstandings about evolution is found in the charge - intended as a withering attack - that it can't explain how life began.
That's true - it can't. It's also wholly irrelevant because that's not what evolution in about. Evolution is about how life changes in response to, and in turn affects, environment. The question of how life began is an entirely different field of study called abiogenesis (or biopoiesis).
The problem for abiogenesis is that the origin of life on Earth looks like a string of conundrums. There has to be something like DNA or RNA to make proteins but modern cells can’t copy DNA and RNA without the help of those very proteins. And none of these molecules can do their jobs without fatty lipids, which provide the membranes that cells need to hold their contents inside - but the protein-based enzymes encoded by the DNA or RNA are needed to synthesize lipids.
That is, everything needed for the thing it is responsible for creating to have already existed in order for that first thing to be there to make it. It's the old chicken-and-egg question.*
Now, a team of researchers at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom have found that just two simple compounds, hydrogen cyanide (HCN) and hydrogen sulfide (H2S), each of which would have been abundant on the early Earth, plus ultraviolet light, also abundant on the early Earth, can initiate a series of chemical reactions that produce all three major types of biomolecules - nucleic acids, amino acids, and lipids.
These are separate sets of reactions; it's not one reaction producing all three at once in the same place. The important point is that these reactions provide an independent means of producing these types of molecules, breaking out of the chicken-and-egg trap by providing a point of entry into the now-existing pattern.
This work, published in the peer-reviewed journal "Nature Chemistry," does not prove this is how life started but it does provide at the very least a plausible mechanism by which it could have happened, a mechanism that is in line with current best knowledge about the chemistry and conditions of the early Earth.
The little Thing: the media’s utter lack of self-awareness
Now for an occasional feature called "The little Thing," where either some minor point in a story is the part that really annoys me or, more commonly, where something mentioned in passing in some news account is actually important and deserves far more attention than it got.
Okay. So there were some marches and rallies in Seattle for May Day. After they were over, in the evening, there were some incidents. This is how AP reported it; this is the opening paragraph of its coverage, quoting now, in full:
Police fired pepper spray and arrested a half dozen people Thursday night as anti-capitalist marchers meandered through Seattle, hours after hundreds of peaceful demonstrators took part in a May Day march in support of immigrant rights and a boost in the minimum wage.
Okay, note first that while the day's main march was mentioned, the opening, the actual lede, is the evening troubles.
The article then goes on for eight paragraphs about the evening incidents, about violence at past protests in Seattle, and about threats of violence at this one.
It then devotes a total of three sentences to the "earlier boisterous rally," two of which referred to a quote by a participant, before rounding out with reports about vandalism and a threat to kill police.
So here's the point, here's the little thing: In the middle of this article, the AP says, again quoting,
Violence has plagued May Day in Seattle during the past two years, with protesters challenging police in the streets and sometimes stealing the thunder of much larger daytime events.
And whose fault is that? Whose fault is it that a relative handful of people who fantasize that vandalism is an appropriate political tactic can "steal the thunder" from a much larger, "boisterous" but peaceful, group? Who made the decision to emphasize one over the other? Who made the decision that "this" is more important than "that?" Who decided to give most of the attention to some black-clad prima donnas rather than to those offering some substance?
It doesn't have to be this way: In it's article about the day, a local paper, the Seattle Times, focused on the large daytime events, then reported on evening clashes, and wrapped up by referring back to what the main demonstration was about - the exact opposite of what AP did.
But the Seattle Times is a local paper and the AP is a national wire service. Which means that most people around the country who read about the events will get their image - their distorted image - of what happened in Seattle from the AP, not the Seattle Times. And that image will not be about immigrant rights and raising the minimum wage, it'll be about spray-painted walls, burning trash cans, broken windows, and threats to kill police.
And whose fault is that? Whose fault is it that that will be the image many people have of May Day in Seattle?
We are, by our national media, by our corporate media, uninformed, malinformed, and misinformed. When it comes to the actual issues we as a people, as a nation, are facing, we are among the worst informed people in the entire industrialized world.
Because this is hardly the only example. Years ago, a friend told me she wasn't concerned about media monopolies because "I think what I think, not what I'm told to think." Which, I said, is true, the media can't control what you think. But for things beyond your immediate experience, the media does have a great deal of influence on what you think about, on what is and isn't regarded as important and, of greater impact, about what's important about what's important; that is, what are the features, the factors, the elements, of those stories that deserve emphasis in understanding them.
I'll talk more about this in the future because I have some specific illustrations of ways in which the media fails us, but today I'm going to mention just one of them: what you might call the myth of the never-ending debate.
Part of the reason a handful of loudmouths romanticizing vandalism as revolutionary gets the attention of the media is because the media loves drama. Closely-related to that is that fact that the media loves controversy. Members of the media would much prefer to report on "the controversy" than to report the dull settled facts. Not only does it sell better, it's simply more fun. What's more, by engaging in a journalistic version of "he-said-she-said," reporters can tell themselves that they're "independent" and "unbiased" because they "report both sides" even when by treating opposing sides as equals they are actually creating the bias that there really are two sides.
That is why, for example, the media keeps giving respectful attention to proponents of so-called Intelligent Design and other varieties of creationism rather than just saying evolution is real, the theory of evolution has overwhelming proof, the creationists' alternatives are debunked claptrap, and there is no genuine scientific controversy about it.
That failure is not the only reason, but it is a notable part of the reason why in a recent poll, only 31% of respondents said they were "extremely" or "very" confident that living things, including people, evolved through natural selection.
Now, whether or not you as an individual accept the reality of evolution is probably not going to have a major impact on the world at large. But another finding of that same survey could: Only 33% were "extremely" or "very" confident in the reality of human-caused global warming, while 37% were "not too" or "not at all" confident in that. That's even worse than the 25% who are, according to how a Gallup poll describes them, "solidly skeptical" about global warming - while only 39% are labeled "concerned believers."
You can, if you want, chalk up a good portion of the determined ignorance about climate change to ideological rigidity and narrow-mindedness - but if you think the media, constantly presenting global warming as "controversial," as the subject of "debate," as a "question," if you think the media doesn't bear significant responsibility for the fact that only 2/5 of Americans accept scientific reality, a reality that, if ignored, if not acted on, will have a major impact on our and the world's future, you just have not been paying attention.
Sources cited in links:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/02/seattle-may-day_n_5253707.html
http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2023508848_maydayxml.html
http://www.salon.com/2014/05/02/creationists_neil_degrasse_tyson_hysteria_reaches_fever_pitch_partner/
http://ap-gfkpoll.com/main/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/AP-GfK-March-2014-Poll-Topline-Final_SCIENCE.pdf
http://www.gallup.com/poll/168620/one-four-solidly-skeptical-global-warming.aspx
It might come as a surprise to some of you out there, but I expect it won't to some, that creationism - the notion that the Earth is only 6000-something years old and the evolution doesn't exist and that god created everything just the way it is - is being taught in science classes in schools across much of the country. There are at least hundreds of schools that are, in essence, using the Bible as a science textbook.
And I'm not referring to private fundamentalist religious schools, but to taxpayer-supported schools. Charter schools and even, in some cases, public schools.
In Texas, a publicly-funded charter school system operating 65 campuses (with plans for 20 more this year) does it - with no need to be coy about it, because the state science education standards allow teachers to present "alternatives" to evolution, with the result that the opening line of the workbook section on the topic is, quoting, “In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth.”
Recent laws in Louisiana and Tennessee allow teachers in any public school in those states to, again, teach “alternatives” to evolution. In Florida, Indiana, Ohio, Arizona, Washington, DC, and elsewhere, taxpayer money is is funding creationist private schools through tuition vouchers or scholarship programs.
And what does this kind of thinking produce? What does it lead to? It leads to this week's edition of one of our regular weekly features, the Clown Award, given for meritorious stupidity.
Susanne Atanus is one of two candidates for the GOPper nomination to challenge Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky for her seat this year. She describes herself as "a conservative Republican" who believes in "God first."
She sure does. During what the suburban Chicago Daily Herald called an "endorsement session" both candidates had with the paper's editorial board on January 20, she declared that she believes God controls the weather and has put tornadoes and diseases such as autism and dementia on Earth as punishment for gay rights and legalized abortions. "God is angry," she said.
Actually, Susie, if there was a god, I suspect most of that supreme anger would be directed at twits like you. She was bad enough that state and local GOPper officials insisted that the party has nothing to do with her.
Her opponent in the primary is no prize, a Ron Paul supporter who favors doing away with all income taxes and replacing them with a 23% national sales tax, opposes raising the minimum wage, and - oh yeah - has an outstanding domestic violence protection order against him. But it takes real skill to rise to the level that Susanne Atanus has achieved. Susanne Atanus: champion-level clown.
Left Side of the Aisle
for the week of January 30 - February 5, 2014
This week:
Good news: Some federally-contracted workers to get $10.10 minimum wage
http://www.salon.com/2014/01/28/strike_wave_spurs_obama_to_make_contractors_pay_10_10/
http://www.aol.com/article/2014/01/28/obama-to-lift-minimum-wage-for-federal-contractors-white-house/20817542/?icid=maing-grid7|htmlws-sb-bb|dl3|sec1_lnk2%26pLid%3D435684
http://goodjobsnation.org/
http://goodjobsnation.org/breaking-pentagon-workers-strike-over-poverty-pay/
RIP: Pete Seeger
http://www.mercurynews.com/music/ci_25010549/pete-seeger-folk-legends-essential-songs
http://www.salon.com/2014/01/28/legendary_folk_singer_activist_pete_seeger_dies_at_94/?source=newsletter
http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2014/01/28/pete_seeger_huac_transcript_full_text_of_anti_communist_hearing_courtesy.html?google_editors_picks=true
http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/toshi-seeger-wife-muse-and-ally-of-pete-seeger-dies-at-91/2013/07/11/440dd81e-ea48-11e2-8f22-de4bd2a2bd39_story.html
The discovery of COINTELPRO: March 8, 1971
http://www.examiner.com/article/burglary-of-fbi-office-did-not-stop-cointelpro-tampering-of-omaha-two-trial
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history/2014/01/media_pa_fbi_break_in_revelations_what_we_can_learn_from_them_about_intelligence.html
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/07/fbi-1971-burglary-hold-government-accountable
http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2014/01/08/22220561-nbc-reporter-recounts-breaking-fbi-spying-story
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/07/fbi-office-break-in-1971-come-forward-documents
http://www.theburglary.com/
http://www.swarthmore.edu/Library/peace/DG100-150/dg144davidon.htm
Global warming: It's going to get worse
http://www.bloomberg.com/video/obama-climate-change-is-a-fact-7Uwc4lz4RwefZFRXQNSTwA.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/01/28/in-the-state-of-the-union-obama-pledges-strong-action-on-climate/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/01/22/finally-a-reason-for-a-bit-of-optimism-about-climate-change/
http://www.salon.com/2013/12/29/climate_change_by_the_numbers_the_worst_is_yet_to_come/
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/noaa-world-in-2013-was-4th-hottest-on-record
http://www.salon.com/2014/01/02/earth_set_to_warm_a_catastrophic_4_degrees_by_the_end_of_the_century/
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jan/19/unchecked-global-warming-double-el-nino-weather
Outrage of the Week: how the rich think of you
http://www.msnbc.com/all/the-rich-got-richer-the-99-not-so-much
http://www.salon.com/2014/01/25/wealthy_venture_capitalist_tom_perkins_says_the_1_in_america_are_treated_like_jews_in_nazi_germany/
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304549504579316913982034286
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/27/thomas-perkins-doubles-down-holocaust_n_4674266.html
http://pando.com/2014/01/26/disingenuous-basterds-the-oligarchs-long-campaign-to-depict-their-critics-as-nazis/
Just enough time for our other regular weekly feature, the Clown Award, given for meritorious stupidity.
This week, because time is short, I'm going after an easy target: Glenn Blech.
Now there obviously could be any number of reasons for this, but this is the one I've chosen because it's recent.
You know of Bill Nye the Science Guy. What you may not know is that he of late has become a leading voice in the scientific fight against creationism and in favor of the scientific principle of evolution. He has been using his celebrity and his ability to explain scientific topics in terms that non-scientists can understand to battle the ignorance that creationism represents.
This is where Blech comes in. He played a clip of Nye telling creationists that it’s “fine” if they want to live in an alternate reality, but “Don’t make your kids do it.”
This, Blech insisted, put Nye on the wrong side of history and asked if in the future Nye "is going to look like the people who threw Galileo out."
That's right: Glenn Blech says that history will declare that Bill Nye, in standing against those who want to deny the reality of evolution, was just the same as those people who "threw out" Galileo in order to deny the reality that the Earth goes around the Sun rather than the other way around.
One thing I think we can be confident will be said in the future - because it's already being said now - is "Glenn Blech? Oh yeah - that clown."
You know I sometimes have a feature I call "And Another Thing" where I deal in something not or at least not expressly political. Usually it's some science thing or another that I found particularly cool.
Sometimes I wonder why I bother.
According to a poll released on December 30 done by the Religion and Public Life Project of the Pew Research Center, fully one-third of Americans reject the idea of evolution, insisting that, in the words of the poll question, "humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time."
It actually, to my mind, gets worse. While sixty percent of Americans say that "humans and other living things have evolved over time," when you break that figure down, it's not even as good as that tepid figure sounds. Only 32% of the American public accepts the fact that human evolution is "due to natural processes such as natural selection" while 24% say that "a supreme being guided the evolution of living things for the purpose of creating humans and other life in the form it exists today."
In the Center's report on the poll, that same question was broken out by religious group. Note this: Of the six groupings they broke out, in only one case, the religiously unaffiliated (which would also include agnostics and atheists), does a majority of that group hold that evolution is a natural process not directed by some supreme being. That is the only breakdown in this whole poll where it can be clearly said that a majority - and even there not an overwhelming majority - actually accepts the science.
The harsh, blunt truth is that we as a people, as a culture, as a society, we do not believe in science. We'll use all its benefits, we'll accept all the advantages we get, pick up on all the conveniences it produces through technology, but we refuse to believe in the process. We refuse to believe what science tell us. If it makes us at all uncomfortable, we resort to flat out denialism. It is just so frustrating.
No wonder we still get so many nanny-nanny naysayers about global climate change. We are so screwed.
And Another Thing #1: inheriting acquired characteristics
To wrap up this week's show, three quick examples of another occasional feature, this one called And Another Thing, where we go into something non-political, usually some cool science stuff.
To start off, here's something interesting: It's long been held that physical characteristics - as opposed to socialization - are transferred from one generation to the next through genes. An old alternative idea commonly called Lamarckism after Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, which held that the life experiences of parents - their "acquired characteristics" - could be passed on to their offspring is known to be wrong.
Mostly.
It now develops that learned experiences can be transferred to offspring. Not by a different mechanism than genes, which remain the only way characteristics are transmitted, but by potentially affecting how genes are “marked” by other molecules.
Such “markings” are called epigenetic changes and they can affect which genes are turned off or on, that is, how the genes are expressed. It develops that some of these changes - not all, but some - are maintained across generations.
In a new study, researchers say they have found that specific learned information can be transmitted through epigenetic changes in sperm, at least in cases involving traumatic experiences and at least in mice.
The researchers trained mice to fear a cherry blossom-like smell and then let these mice mate and have offspring. These offspring showed more fearful responses to the cherry blossom scent than to a neutral scent despite never having encountered either of the smells before.
Moreover, they added, the next generation of offspring, the grandchildren of the original group, showed the same behavior. The researchers were able to relate the behavior to changes in brain regions used to detect the feared scent and to epigenetic marks in the sperm on the gene responsible for detecting the smell.
So, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, you were still wrong, but not as wrong as we thought. And the more we learn about biology and evolution, the more amazing the whole process becomes.
Since I just mentioned last week's Clown Award, let's do this week's - the award given, as always, for meritorious stupidity.
This week the big red nose is a group award, given to some Kentucky citizens who opposed new science standards for the state, awarded in recognition of their striking demonstration of the truly appalling ignorance of right-wingers.
Kentucky is one of the states considering what are called Next Generation Science Standards. The Kentucky state Board of Education adopted the standards in June and held hearings last week to to get public feedback before the program is presented to the state legislature for official approval.
The standards were developed with input from officials in 26 states - including Kentucky - and are intended to make science curricula more uniform across the country.
And of course the know-nothings were out in force to express their utter shock that their dear children were to be exposed to - gasp - science! The standards in the program cover a wide swath of science and involve hundreds of points, but there were just two that were the main target of the mouth-breathers: You got it, evolution and climate change.
One parent, Valerie O’Rear, said the standards promote an “atheistic world view” and a political agenda that pushes government control.
Meanwhile, Dena Stewart-Gore claimed that the standards will ostracize religious students and that the standards are "socialism," which, she said, "takes anybody that doesn’t fit the mold and discards them. We are even talking genocide and murder here, folks.”
So in their minds, science, knowledge, is "fascist" "atheistic" "socialism" that leads to political and social oppression, drug abuse, suicide, murder, and genocide.
You know what? I take it back. These people aren't clowns. They are sick. Sick with fear of a world they can't control bringing changes they can't comprehend. And I feel sorry for them.
Someone who is a clown, however, is state Sen. Mike Wilson, who chairs the state’s Senate Education Committee, one that has to approve the new curriculum. And he has made it clear that he thinks that climate change is a lot of hooey.
By the way, there is some news on the climate change front, which I'll get to next week.
Now for the Clown Award, given regularly for acts of meritorious stupidity. This week, the big red nose goes to the school board of Springboro, Ohio, a suburb about midway between Cincinnati and Dayton.
In 2011, the board considered a proposal to allow teaching of creationism as "supplemental instruction" in the schools. That plan was scrapped due to public opposition.
But far be it from clowns to give up in the face of reason, so they're at it again. The board is currently considering a proposal that would allow the district to teach creationism as part of a larger proposal about controversial issues in the classroom.
Parents who spoke at the school board meeting about it are against it. The ACLU of Ohio has pointed out that creationism has repeatedly been found by the courts to be inherently religious and so teaching it in public schools is an unconstitutional violation of church-state separation. The board doesn't appear to care and three members of the five-member board are in favor of it.
One, who is also head of the local Tea Party, called creationism "a significant part of the history of this country" and "an absolutely valid theory." Another said “we’re pointing out evolution is a controversial issue.”
Evolution, of course, is not controversial among scientists but only among the yahoos and know-nothings who can't stop thumping their Bibles long enough to gain some clue as to what the hell it is they're talking about. Ohio, unfortunately, seems to have an overabundance of them - at least among the clowns on the Springboro, Ohio, school board.
Oh, by the way, there's a footnote to this: The 2012 platform of the Texas GOP, in discussing education, says the party is opposed to "critical thinking skills and similar programs." Now, leaving aside the observation that it's easy to understand why right-wingers are opposed to critical thinking, I wonder what that means for all those various dodos who use a claim of "advancing critical thinking skills" as a means to attempt to lever creationism into the schools? It's apparently a case of the right hand not knowing what the other right hand is doing.
And by the way, there actually is some good news on this front: As reported by the National Center for Science Education, two antievolution bills died in the Missouri House of Representatives on May 17, when the legislature adjourned. One of those bills referred to, yes, helping students "develop critical thinking skills" by discussing creationism. In all, eight antievolution bills were introduced in six states in 2013: Arizona, Colorado, Indiana, Missouri, Montana, and Oklahoma. None passed.
Left Side of the Aisle
for the week of May 30 - June 5, 2013
This week:
Good news: BSA, Joe Arpaio, A&F, Pope Francis, strikes
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/23/boy-scouts-gay-ban-ruling_n_3328541.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/22/pope-francis-good-atheists_n_3320757.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/24/arpaio-racial-profiling_n_3333907.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/24/abercrombie-sales-ceo-controversy_n_3332601.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular
http://www.salon.com/2006/01/24/jeffries/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/16/abercrombie-fitch-ceo-controversy_n_3286502.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/14/abercrombie-and-fitch-homeless-brand-readjustment_n_3272498.html
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/05/21/1210638/-Obama-could-give-these-striking-low-wage-workers-the-raise-they-need#
http://www.demos.org/publication/underwriting-bad-jobs-how-our-tax-dollars-are-funding-low-wage-work-and-fueling-inequali
http://www.thenation.com/blog/174448/hundreds-non-union-workers-taxpayer-supported-jobs-plan-strike-today#
Outrage of the Week: corporate-defined health
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/20/cvs-workers-insurance_n_2915006.html
http://www.care2.com/causes/fat-michelin-will-cut-your-pay-and-others-might-follow-suit.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/06/employers-adopt-stricter-health-care-policies_n_3029720.html
http://ehbs.kff.org/pdf/2012/8346.pdf
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/25/workplace-wellness-programs_n_3333974.html
Clown #1: Missouri state representative Rick Brattin
The Clown Award, given weekly for acts of meritorious stupidity. This week we have a tie! I couldn't decide which of these was more clownish.
The first big red nose goes to Missouri state representative Rick Brattin, a self-proclaimed "huge science buff," who recently introduced a bill to require that the bogus notion of "intelligent design" and what the bill calls "destiny" get the same educational treatment and textbook space in Missouri schools as does the theory of evolution.
Now, that's not enough for the Clown Award; lots of bozos - or, in this case, Bozo-wanna-bes - have done much the same thing. Indeed, there is another bill in the Missouri House which tries to do the now-standard end run around the Constitutional ban on introducing religion into public school classrooms by requiring "exploration of strengths and weaknesses of various theories." And there's one in Oklahoma that even says teachers would not be allowed to penalize students who turn in work insisting that some other explanation - that is, other than evolution - is the true one.
No, Brattin's claim to the big red nose rests on two points: The first is that he argues that there are "numerous college professors within biology, school science teachers" who are "banned from the science community" because they want to teach creationism instead of evolution. To which I say, good.
That, however, is a single. This is a home run:
First, you have to understand that in science, a hypothesis is a proposed explanation for an effect or process which is based on observation and can be tested by further observation and experiment. It can be thought of as an educated, or better yet well-informed, guess.
In Brattin's bill, a hypothesis is defined as something that reflects a "minority of scientific opinion and is philosophically unpopular."
A scientific theory, on the other hand, is an explanation for scientific data that has been well-established through repeated observation and experiment and which usually unites different effects or processes under a single explanation.
But in Brattin's bill, a scientific theory is "an inferred explanation...whose components are data, logic and faith-based philosophy."
Finally, the bill refers to what it calls "the events and processes that define the future of the universe, galaxies, stars, our solar system, earth, plant life, animal life, and the human race." You know, all those things that scientists would call chemical, biological, and physical processes. Oh no, according to our "huge science buff"'s bill. No, all that, it says, is "destiny."
Left Side of the Aisle
for the week of March 7-13, 2013
This week:
Good news #1: VAWA renewed
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_Against_Women_Act
http://www.takepart.com/article/2013/03/01/op-ed-vawa-refresh-one-step-right-direction-native-american-women
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/01/us/politics/congress-passes-reauthorization-of-violence-against-women-act.html
http://www.salon.com/2013/02/28/house_passes_violence_against_women_act/
Good news #2: Infant cured of HIV
http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/05/health/hiv-cure-global-hope/index.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/03/baby-cured-of-hiv_n_2803041.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/mar/04/hiv-cure-is-breakthrough-seems
Clown #1: Missouri state representative Rick Brattin
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/02/intelligent-design-missouri-evolution
Clown #2: Brian Camenker of MassResistance
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/01/bill-oreilly-on-transgender-equality-guidelines-madness_n_2783809.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/28/brian-camenker-lgbt-advocates-schools-nazi-camp-guards_n_2776172.html
Outrage of the Week: SCOTUS expected to strike down Voting Rights Act
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/government-elections-politics/supreme-court-may-put-voting-rights-act-on-trial/
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/14059113/#.UTZL2FdWCsZ
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/01/rachel-maddow-scalia-jon-stewart_n_2789126.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/27/voting-rights-act-supreme-court_n_2768942.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/02/john-roberts-voting-rights-act_n_2797127.html
http://www.salon.com/2013/02/27/supreme_court_racism_deniers/
http://www.salon.com/2013/02/28/scalia%e2%80%99s_ugly_racial_cynicism/
Outrage of the Week: sneaking anti-science into Tennessee schools
Tennessee strikes again.
On March 18, the Tennessee state Senate passed a bill which would allow teachers to "help" students "understand, analyze, critique and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories" like "biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming and human cloning."
The main sponsor of the bill said that the idea behind it is that "students should be encouraged to challenge current scientific thought and theory." That is, they should be encouraged on a topic like evolution to substitute their own judgement or that of their pastor for the consensus arrived at after 150 years of research and discovery. And encouraged to insist that global warming is a hoax because, well, Sean Hannity says so.
Still, face facts: Evolution is not the only target here, but it is the primary one. The go-back-to-1900 crowd can't teach creationism; it's religion. They lost that one. They can't outright teach the nonsense called "intelligent design," because when they have tried, they have lost there, too, as soon as it got into a forum where they actually had to try to defend it logically. But they don't give up and this is just one more attempt to create wiggle room to get intelligent design into schools.
The Tennessee House had already passed a version of the bill last April, so now it's just a matter of ironing out the details.
Indiana has a related bill moving through its legislature; Oklahoma, New Hampshire, and Missouri have considered similar bills.
At a time when the federal National Assessment of Educational Progress says that less than half of US students are proficient in science, Tennessee's "close your eyes and it will go away" approach to science surely is the Outrage of the Week.
The ongoing war on women's choices http://www.necn.com/03/19/12/Idaho-Senate-approves-abortion-ultrasoun/landing.html?&apID=34a7eea35281417f8d150a241a1a2469 http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/idaho-sponsor-of-abortion-ultrasound-mandate-criticized-for-comments-about-rape-victims/2012/03/20/gIQAeRtPQS_story.html http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/02/27/brownback-go-work-somewhere-else-if-you-want-contraception/ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/19/tennessee-abortion-bill_n_1363410.html http://www.change.org/petitions/protect-pregnant-women-free-bei-bei http://www.thenation.com/article/166664/protect-pregnant-women-free-bei-bei-shuai
Everything You Need to Know: The right-wing knows it's on the wrong side of history in just three sentences. http://pamshouseblend.firedoglake.com/2012/03/19/nom-and-new-hampshires-catholic-bishops-suddenly-support-civil-unions/
Outrage of the Week: sneaking anti-science into Tennessee schools http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/20/tennessee-science-bill-al_n_1368261.html
Homophobia and racism are not "yesterday's news." http://www.indystar.com/article/20120320/NEWS05/120320022/-1/NLETTER07 http://www.indystar.com/article/20120321/LOCAL/203210313/Fallout-over-gay-youth-group-s-license-plate-continues http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/groups/american-family-association http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/don-t-nig-purveyor-paula-smith-says-bumper-185405237.html http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/racist-don-t-nig-anti-obama-bumper-sticker-162917634.html http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/21/us-usa-florida-shooting-idUSBRE82I17520120321 http://news.yahoo.com/dont-nig-2012-maker-racist-anti-obama-sticker-212447811--abc-news.html
As I said in the previous post about the space program, Barack Obama doesn’t want to end the program, just redirect it along his preferred lines. He doesn’t deny knowledge, he just wants to decide what knowledge is most important for NASA to pursue. But there are too many people today who do deny knowledge, who do deny science, sometimes for the sake of profit and sometimes for the sake of ideology - but in either case it amounts to a celebration of ignorance.
Today is an appropriate time to take a look at one source of ideologically-driven celebration of ignorance that has persisted for a long, long time. Today, July 21, is the 86th anniversary of the end of the Scopes "monkey trial" - which means, of course, that the subject is evolution. Some people thought the debate ended with the ignominious conclusion of that trial, but it didn't - not by a long shot. So herewith, in note of the date, a post that sort of compiles and expands on some of my previous posts on the subject.
In the first three months of 2011 there were nine creationism-related bills introduced in seven states, more than in any year in recent memory. Those states were Florida, Kentucky, Missouri, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. Happily, most of those bills died either in committee or on the floor - but not all: The Tennessee state Assembly passed a bill designed to get creationism into the public schools. The state Senate is not expected to act on the bill before next year, though.
Even though most of the bills failed, the events of this year still make clear that this is by no means a dead issue.
There have been battles in other states, as well. Both Kansas and Ohio, to cite two, have seen seesaw battles with attacks on evolution education in public schools followed by (for the moment, anyway, successful) counter-attacks in favor of science that have restored evolution to the public school curriculum.
On the other hand, in 2008 Louisiana passed a bill allowing for "nonstandard materials" to be used in science classrooms, opening up a gap for creationist materials to slide through. Last month, an attempt to repeal that law fell short.
And despite the failures of most of the bills introduced this year, two members of New Hampshire legislature - New Hampshire, the state that continues to embarrass the rest of New England - have filed plans to introduce creationism bills in the next session of the legislature. One bill would require teaching of evolution in public schools as "just a theory." The other would mandate the teaching so-called "intelligent design" in public schools.
"Intelligent design," what I call "creationism in its Sunday best," is the fall-back attempt to undermine the theory of evolution used by those who persist in considering the Bible to be a science textbook but know that their real belief - creationism - will not succeed. "Intelligent design" argues, at bottom, that life is so complicated that a "higher power" must have had a hand in its development - while at the same time disingenuously claiming it's not in any way religious because the nature of that "higher power" remains undefined. (Of course, by failing to address the question of the nature of the very driving force it identifies, it's also not in any way scientific, but leave that aside for now.)
Anywhere "intelligent design" has been introduced and subjected to legal challenge, courts recognized its religious foundations and struck it down as a violation of separation of church and state. So in a fall-back from the fall-back, the trick has becomes to hide its introduction inside "modern critiques of evolution," which are to be "debated" as an exercise in "critical analysis." Evolution - surprise! - is most commonly the only area to get this "critical thinking" treatment. The Tennessee bill, for example, would require state and local authorities to help teachers develop programs to encourage “critical thinking” about the “strengths and weaknesses” of "controversial" scientific theories. The only "controversial" ideas the bill mentions as needing this treatment are evolution, global warming, and human cloning.
The net effect and of course intent of this program, especially in any sort of "debate" format, is to set such "critiques" on an equal footing with the actual theory, whereby the theory of evolution becomes just one idea among many. As a supporter of the Louisiana creationism bill said “both sides, creationism side and evolution side, should be presented, and let the students decide what they believe." That is, scientific fact becomes a matter of personal opinion, kind of like who was the greatest left-hander of all time. (Sandy Koufax! Well, ya gotta admit he at least has a good claim.)
But note that when I say "theory" there, I'm using the term in the scientific sense. When someone says "evolution is merely a theory," the proper answer is "you're right, except there is nothing 'mere' about a theory." Observations obtain data. Take that data, use it to make an educated guess about the nature of what was observed, a guess that includes a prediction of future data, and you have a hypothesis. A hypothesis repeatedly and successfully tested by verifiable predictions can become a theory.
Put another way, in science, a theory is a hypothesis confirmed by observation and/or experiment to the point where it does not require further demonstration to be accepted as valid and the burden of proof is on those who would reject it. In the case of evolution it is no longer enough - and hasn't been for a century or more - to say evolution can be doubted because we don't know every detail of the process and we haven't found every transitional fossil. Both of those are true - but the basic principle of evolution, the principle of change over time in interaction with environment driven by natural selection stands unchallenged by anything but pure assumption. Saying evolution should be doubted or questioned because questions remain is exactly - exactly - like saying the existence of gravity should be questioned because scientists who are looking to unite gravity with quantum mechanics believe that the force of gravity should be carried ("mediated") by particles called gravitons, which no one has ever found.
Evolution is a theory. It is not a guess, it is not "just an idea," it is not a hypothesis. It is a theory. Not one easily tested in a laboratory, obviously, but one whose agreement with an enormous number of observations from biology, geology, and paleontology is overwhelming.
Yes, there are arguments about the details, about the exact nature of the process, was it incremental change or punctuated equilibrium for example, how much of a feedback loop is involved (that is, as organisms change, how much do they affect their environment, thereby creating additional pressure for more change); there is good healthy (and even sometimes acrimonious) debate about all that and more. But those, again, are the details, not the structure.
What's more, it's true that strict, classic, narrowly-defined Darwinism is no longer generally accepted - but that's because we’ve learned stuff in the last 150+ years. Among things we've learned about is genetics, which provides the thing that Darwin didn’t have, the lack of which troubled him: a physical mechanism through which natural selection can work to produce change. That knowledge didn’t exist in Darwin's time, but now it does - which means the stuff we have learned since Darwin has not denied or questioned the theory of evolution, it has strengthened it. The basic principle of evolution remains and has withstood every scientific assault on it, every scientific challenge to it.
And the more we learn about self-organizing systems - the tendency of any sufficiently complex system to spontaneously organize itself into patterns - and therefore the less evolution involves the "random change" and "random chance" on which its critics charge it depends, the stronger it becomes. Bluntly, while the details are still argued, evolution itself simply is no longer a matter of scientific debate and hasn't been for some time.
The drive to change the physical reality evolution represents, or, more accurately, to change our understanding of it, comes from a collection of scientific know-nothings backed by a handful of "scientists" - almost none from relevant fields - who have, sadly, allowed their personal ideologies to trump their science training.
Evolution is a fact. It's a physical reality. In fact, evolution is the basic bottom-line principle of modern biology. And anyone who tells you different is either lying to you or has no idea what the hell they are talking about.
Despite that simple fact and unhappily, Gallup polls since 1982 have consistently shown that somewhere around 45% of the US population believes God created humans in their present form sometime within the past 10,000 years. Believes, that is, in creationism.
This is really, really sad and disturbing. You don't have to be an evolutionary biologist, you don't have to have read the research papers yourself, to know if evolution (or, in fact, any principle in science) has evidence to support it. All you have to do is know if there is a general consensus on the matter. You simply have to pay some minimal attention, especially on a question that keeps coming up, like evolution. And on evolution, that general consensus is overwhelming. But still so many refuse to see.
Certainly the carefully-crafted PR strategies of the creationists, who claim that they are only striving for "fairness" or "balance" and who in some cases claim it's really a matter of "academic freedom," are part of the reason for this sorry state of affairs. Those are the strategies which they use because deception about the science and bluster about non-existent "oppression" are the only weapons they have, since any time they get into a forum where they have to defend their argument with facts and logic instead of sermonizing and bumper stickers, they lose.
Another reason is the corporate media, instinctively choosing conflict over resolution: The "controversy" of "intelligent design" versus "Darwin" is more attractive to, is just much more fun for, editors, publishers, reporters than the dull straightforward fact that "intelligent design" is trash, an anti-science pursuit that, whenever comes up against a question to which it does not already know the answer, throws up its hands, declares "God - excuse me, some intelligent and supremely powerful but (wink, wink) unnamed force - did it," and stops trying to learn. But even that doesn't change the underlying fact that scams like "intelligent design" succeed because people want to believe them.
Which raises something else: I've often wondered why the fact of evolution is so hard for right-wingers to accept. It can't really be just the bizarre notion of Biblical inerrancy, not when the number of such true believers is far outstripped by the number of those who deny the scientific facts. One reason, it seems to me, is that a lot of it is just an old-fashioned "ick" factor: Some people are so tied to the idea of a unique specialness in being human, so emotionally invested in the concept of our own completely separate and superior station, that they just can't abide the notion we are in any way connected to other animals, even if any direct link exists in pre-history. You could say it's a matter of "Take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!"
On the other hand, it could be that they just can't help it, the poor dears. A study at University College, London, reported on in April, compared the brains of people who self-identified as liberals with those of people who self-identified as conservatives. The liberal brains, they found, tended to be bigger in an area that deals with processing conflicting information while the conservative brains tended to be bigger in an area that processes fear and recognizes threats. So all the rejection of evolution might be kind of like a grown-up - well, make that "older" - version of being afraid of the dark.
I've argued before that when people feel stressed, when they feel their personal world (i.e., the society around them) doesn't make sense or is changing in ways they don't understand, they tend to reach back for the seeming safety of old, familiar ideas, to try to recreate an imagined time when things were in what seemed to be their proper order. That is, they become conservative. And the more stressed, the more uncomfortable with the changes, they become, the more conservative they become, unwilling to face what I have previously called "the terrifying prospect of change."
Which means, sadly but not surprisingly, almost half of our population lives not only in a state of ignorance but in a state of willful ignorance, a deliberate rejection of science and knowledge. It's not often mentioned, but should be, that to embrace creationism is not only to reject evolution. It's not even to reject all of biology. It's to reject astronomy, which also posits an ancient Earth and an even older universe and depends for its findings on the accuracy of that fact. It's to reject archaeology, which uses dating methods which depend on radioactive decay, our understanding of which, again, depends on an old Earth. It's to reject chemistry and physics, which underlie the methods used by astronomy and archaeology to reach their conclusions. It is, that is, to reject the entire enterprise of science. To reject knowledge per se, to reject learning per se, to reject trying to understand the world.
So am I saying that half of my fellow citizens have been scared and confused into turning their backs on knowledge? Yes - that's exactly what I'm saying. And if you’re going to ask me what to do about that, the truth is I don’t know.
Footnote: They do try so hard to hide their real intent but it just keeps slipping out. The sponsor of one of the bills to be introduced in the next session of the New Hampshire legislature said his bill would include a “study of the proponents' [of evolution] ideology and position on atheism.” The sponsor of other said he opposed evolution because it was “a theory that we are here by accident, that there is no purpose” and having a "purpose" was necessary. That is, believing in evolution strips away your reason to live.
"He writes with sensitivity, passion, intelligence and with an eye to the common good."
"[He is] clearly one of those silly people who believes in 'civilization,' probably along with the Tooth Fairy and justice."
"He lives in a magical fantasy world."
"Powerfully spoken."
"A balanced and sensible view concerning the crazy ideas that often prevail regarding war and freedom."
"You do good work."
"Our political differences are vast and irreconcilable but he earnestly believes what he wants is best for the country; he’s firmly committed to it, makes no apologies for it and won’t settle for less."
"God bless you!"
"SHUT THE FUCK UP."
About Lotus
Lotus has been at various times the newsletter of a local peace group, a column in a different group's newsletter, a stand-alone monthly, and now a blog. Posts appear bi-weekly; posts are drawn from my weekly cable-TV show "The Erickson Report," which can be found here.
Comments either here or by email are encouraged. Comments here must be reasonably relevant and reasonably civil. Spam, trolls, and comments that are merely personal slams on me or another commenter will be deleted without hesitation, warning, or regret.
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Our lives are not our own, we are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future. - author David Mitchell
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