Straight from my dad...and the department of "well, duh"....

Jindal's creationist folly

Louisiana's governor - and potential VP candidate - signed a bill that opens the door to intelligent design creationism in its schools

When the press refer to Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, they inevitably mention that he is the youngest current governor (at 37), and the first Indian-American to serve the post. By all accounts the former Rhodes Scholar with a BS in biology from Brown University is an extraordinary individual. So, it was not surprising that his name appeared on John McCain's short list for potential Vice Presidential running mates. However, on June 27, he signed a bill that will turn Louisiana into an educational laughing stock for allowing the intelligent design brand of creationism to worm its way into science classes under the guise of academic freedom.

The Louisiana Science Education Act is yet another attempt to place creationism into science classes, orchestrated by the marketing geniuses behind the intelligent design movement. The bill, which easily passed both the state House and Senate, at first glance seems benign or even progressive: It allows teachers to use "supplemental textbooks and other instructional materials" to "create and foster an environment...that promotes critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of scientific theories being studied." Other than the false notion that the lack of supplemental materials in classrooms is hindering the state education system, what could be wrong with that?

The bill is derived from a model bill put forward by the Discovery Institute (yes, those guys again), and encourages examination of, you guessed it, "evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning." Louisiana is now the first state to pass the new generation creationist bill under the guise of academic freedom. Five other states have similar bills pending, including Alabama, Florida, Michigan, Missouri, and South Carolina.

Unfortunately, Louisiana is no stranger to urine in the education pool. The legal case that forced creationists to rethink their strategy of ramming religion into science classes, Edwards v. Aguillard, started in the Bayou State. That case ended with the Supreme Court ruling in 1987 that Louisiana's Creationism Act was unconstitutional because it specifically forbade the teaching of evolution in public schools unless "creation science" was also taught. In other words, it openly pushed religion into science classrooms. As a direct result of that case, the intelligent design movement was born to manufacture support for the phony science of intelligent design creationism.

Jindal's signing the bill will forever label him an extremist in the eyes of many liberal and moderate voters. But perhaps that label is deserved? As he has come under the microscope, there has been more talk of a paper he wrote in 1994 for the Catholic journal The New Oxford Review entitled Beating a Demon: Physical Dimensions of Spiritual Warfare. In it, Jindal describes his participation in an exorcism and suggests that it cured a young woman named Susan of cancer. He makes it clear that this was more than a little hocus pocus amongst Catholic coeds. "Susan chose the perfect opportunity to attempt an escape. She suddenly leapt up and ran for the door, despite the many hands holding her down. This burst of action served to revive the tired group of students and they soon had her restrained once again, this time half kneeling and half standing." And then there is the kicker, "When the operation occurred, the surgeons found no traces of cancerous cells."

It is hard to tell what is driving Jindal to folly now; playing to his base, true delusion, or blinding self-confidence that inhibits the self-doubt required of great leadership. In a recent interview on Face the Nation, he showed his science education cards, "I'd certainly want my kids to be exposed to the very best science. I don't want them to be--I don't want any facts or theories or explanations to be withheld from them because of political correctness." But with a degree in biology from an Ivy League University, Governor Jindal knows very well that the opposition to the Louisiana Science Education Act was not about political correctness or manufactured controversy around evolution. He is also smart enough to know that intelligent design creationism is not science, and not naive enough to believe that this bill is about academic freedom - or that it was even needed to repair Louisiana's school system.

There's a twist: Few took notice of a provision in the bill that gives the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education unprecedented power to prohibit materials approved by local school boards. This is a politically appointed board and the bill provides no guidelines for making such Draconian decisions. This runs completely counter to the conservative principles Jindal cited in supporting the bill. In the same Face the Nation interview, he stated his philosophy, "I don't think that this [teaching evolution in schools] is something that federal or state governments should be imposing its views on local districts. You know, as a conservative, I think that government that is closest to the people governs best. I think local school boards should be in the position of deciding their curricula and also deciding what students should be learning." He has now signed a law that gives unprecedented powers to the state over local school boards - hypocritical on most days.

There is little question that this law is going to be challenged in the courts and that the battle will cost Louisiana millions of dollars in legal fees. While the bill expressly forbids religious material from being used, intelligent design is being falsely pushed as a legitimate science and therefore the state is likely to lose the case. In the end, signing the bill was strategically senseless, an embarrassment to his state and financially irresponsible. It is also not entirely Jindal's doing. He had accomplices in both the state House and Senate, but their names aren't the ones being bandied about as potential Vice Presidential nominees, and it is unlikely that they will pay as big a price. In the end, it was Jindal's choice and chips will fall.

from The Scientist

I don't know about you, but this thing had me at "urine in the education pool".

Also, Doc DeBakey passes away. Dammit, I thought he'd reach the triple digits for certain. My sympathies to his family, friends, and colleagues. If there is a higher power, another man like DeBakey will emerge that will help us in the department of scientific inquiry and innovation despite all of these attempts at kicking science aside in our public education system....because, after all, we are only truly helped when we help ourselves.

From the "urine in the education pool" department...

...and, here in Louisiana, there's more than one way to make the education pool a cesspool...

...I give you G-Bitch's and Coozan Pat's reactions to an article in today's Times-Pic on new teachers vs. experienced teachers.

D-I-S-R-E-S-P-E-C-T:

It’s not the first, last or worst thing Paul Vallas has said about teachers but it’s just as telling:

“I think experience can be overrated,” Vallas said. “You like to have experienced people, but that’s no substitute for energy, innovation and ability.”

So experienced teachers are a homogeneous group of lazy, boring, inept people and good riddance to them all? Or educating children just isn’t that hard and/or important for Vallas to worry himself with? It also reflects part of the charterization/privatization movement which believes that the best way to improve public schools is to privatize them. Or to run them “like businesses”–that should be a dead argument post-credit-meltdown. And to get rid of experienced teachers who are seen as failures, probably rigid, and prone to being in unions and striking and making demands and wanting procedures for dismissal. In the conservative ideology behind much of the charterization movement here in NO, teachers are more delivery systems than anything else, whose success is gauged in test scores that adults look at from afar and congratulate themselves over. Teachers are interchangeable and it’s probably even preferred to have them keep cycling through every 3 or so years. Young, relatively inexperienced teachers do what you tell them. By the time they see a need for collective bargaining or reform, they’re gone, replaced by a new set of fresh, excited faces.

The Tired Old Argument:

At least the "charter schools vs. 'regular' schools" argument had further reaching policy ramifications. The "experienced teachers vs new teachers" debate is simply the most ludicrous red-herring involving student achievement there is. It smacks of politics over effectiveness, and ignores systematic issues that affect all classrooms. That local newsmakers continue to return to this 'issue' suggests either a misunderstanding of who actually runs schools or a decided lack of access (or interest) to investigating more pressing matters.

Riots, brawls, student-on-student and student-on-teacher assaults are terribly underreported. So are the reasons these things happen. But it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out it ain't the teacher's fault when a student commits what would be a felony - and they are back in class the next day. No, that ain't on the teacher. That's on the principal and on the superintendent. And if you have a principal or superintendent that cannot create an atmosphere of safety for students and teachers (experienced or new), student acheivement is going to suffer.

Fires, theft, vandalism fall into the same "school is a safe place" boat. That it took 6 fires in a week to be reported in the Times-Pic regarding one historic, local high school, and nothing was mentioned about the school being opened without adequate fire safety mechanisms (fire alarms, extinguishers, locked exit doors) is flat out unbelievable. Experienced teachers can die from smoke inhalation just as quickly as new teachers. But the decisions to put students in that school, the responsibility for installing adequate safety measures, and the security of school hallways during class-time is again not a teacher issue.

Oh, and we can't forget the creationism-in-the-schools chickens coming home to roost:

The first tangible results of the Louisiana legislature's passage and Gov. Bobby Jindal's signing of the 2008 Louisiana Science Education Act have materialized, and these results are negative both for the state's economy and national reputation. The Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, a national scientific society with more than 2300 members, has put Gov. Bobby Jindal on notice that the society will not hold its annual meetings in Louisiana as long as the LA Science Education Act is on the books. In a February 5, 2009,letter to the governor that is posted on the SICB website under the headline, "No Thanks, New Orleans," SICB Executive Committee President Richard Satterlie tells Jindal that "The SICB executive committee voted to hold its 2011 meeting in Salt Lake City because of legislation SB 561, which you signed into law in June 2008. It is the firm opinion of SICB's leadership that this law undermines the integrity of science and science education in Louisiana." [NOTE: Although the legislation was introduced as SB 561, it was renumbered during the legislative process and passed as SB 733.]

Pointing out that SICB had joined with the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS) in urging Jindal to veto the legislation last year, Satterlie goes on to say that "The SICB leadership could not support New Orleans as our meeting venue because of the official position of the state in weakening science education and specifically attacking evolution in science curricula." Salt Lake City was chosen as the site of the 2011 meeting in light of the fact that "Utah, in contrast, passed a resolution that states that evolution is central to any science curriculum."

Noting that SICB's recent 2009 meeting in Boston attracted "over 1850 scientists and graduate students to the city for five days," Satterlie pointedly tells Jindal that "As you might imagine, a professional meeting with nearly 2000 participants can contribute to the economic engine of any community." The implication of SICB's decision for both New Orleans, which is still recovering from Hurricane Katrina, and the entire state of Louisiana is clear. With Gov. Jindal threatening draconian budget cuts to the state's universities, the loss of such a significant scientific convention will only add to the state's deepening fiscal crisis.

...Sorry, Louisiana. You are a lovely state, but scientists won't be supporting you as long as you're going to be dedicated to anti-scientific foolishness.

Other states don't have cause for complacency, though — creationism is not exclusively a Southern problem. If this keeps up, we may be having all of our scientific meetings in Canada.

At this rate, the only thing that will smack of science in this state will be the parade tracker on WDSU.

Update, 2-16: In an email my dad sent me last night when I forwarded the links from Al R. on to him: this will probably be the last year that FASEB meets in New Orleans also. and we bring about 13,000 people to a meeting.

Thanks a bundle, Baton Rouge. Nice going, Bobby J!

Schmucks.

Anudder update, 2-16, 6:38 PM: Go read Dambala. Just go. Now.

Oh, get your minds out of the gutter and respect the classics. It's Lafcadio Hearn, for goodness' sakes.

So I've been checking out what about Hearn's writings makes him worthy of having a cult founded in his name. I started off with Chita and am now in the middle of a book of his selected writings which actually begins where he ended up: in Japan, with the unusual tales he recorded in his unique prose near the turn of the twentieth century. I am now in the part of the book that presents some examples of his writing from where he began - in Cincinnati, Ohio, as a newspaperman, when being a reporter was socially only a teensy bit above being a stevedore working along the levees, the sort of fellow that Hearn wrote about quite a bit before he moved on to New Orleans, its culture and its people. For whatever reason, his reporting on a "Violent Cremation" read like a precursor to the pulps that a certain Shecky I know is so fond of: not only does Hearn report extensively on the facts of the grisly deed and on its alleged perpetrators, he starts to try to solve the murder as he goes along with the tale. The folks who came up with the particular collection I'm reading seem to dismiss the earlier writings of Hearn's when he is in America, but that is an omission of a grave order, from what I have read so far. The man seemed to write like a chameleon, taking on the most florid of styles for the papers in Cincinnati and New Orleans and the sparest and choicest words for the tales of ghosts, deities, goblins, and ancestors returned from the dead originating in China and in his adopted home of Japan - but he always had a yen for a good yarn.

Makes me wonder how he'd spin some more recent bits of straw into gold...

We are a people who are supposedly big on sensational headlines these days. Recent ones have been feeding us tales of kittens thrown to their deaths on a local highway, of Ted Williams' head being treated less than reverently in its cryogenic state, of too many Kardashians behaving like Cardassians. When it comes to what matters most, however, we can't afford to keep our eyes off the ball.

For example, the state in which I live is keeping on with its experiment in making our children suffer further effects from the urine in the education pool introduced by the idiotic loophole that is the Louisiana Science Education Act. (thanks to Madame Dangerblond)

Don’t be misled into thinking that Louisiana is a small, hopelessly backward state, and what happens there is of no importance elsewhere. That state is being used as a testing ground for a nationwide theocratic effort to literally undo the Enlightenment. If the creationists’ schemes to reverse the progress of the last ten generations are successful in Louisiana, they’ll be deployed elsewhere. So pay attention.

Another thing to pay attention to is to watch it when folks such as Diaper Dave decide to throw stones from their transparent and fragile houses. Adrastos tells it like it is over at his virtual cafe and at First Draft, where he's been burning up their XML with the 'tude we all know and love so much in these parts.

I mean, the freaking senator needs to quit with these righteous crusades, as it is waaaay too easy for others to poke him full of holes when it comes to his illegal act of having paid for sex. Just resign, man, before we actually feel sorry for your sorry ass for getting yourself on the road to being disbarred.

At least the Saints are doing well, Drew Brees' cleats will be going pink this coming Sunday for breast cancer awareness, and defensive captain Scott Fujita has expressed support of marriage equality for all, no matter what one's sexual orientation is. It's so nice to be proud of the home team, no matter what sort of punters or tossers they might actually be.

ANYway, I'll be sticking my nose back into some more of Lafcadio's words, who wasn't into the sensational titles so much as the sensational stories. Hmmm, if Hearn were a blogger...

...he'd probably never get a post out but once in a while or so. He reportedly was in constant torment concerning his endless searches for just the right words. His kids would be appalled at the way he'd moan and pace about the room shortly before he'd sit down to write.

But oh, such sweet torment...

The two things that really made me angry yesterday:

1. I saw this machine at a mall near the in-laws' house and I instantly wanted to take a bat to it and throw it over the nearest railing, which, incidentally, wasn't too far from the machine itself. Like we go around putting earthquake simulation machines in the malls down south...I did see that a Hurricane Simulator is located at The Esplanade Mall, though. There are many others in malls in other Gulf states, judging from the website, and I just want to shake my head and wonder why there aren't at least some booklets with some information about the damage storms can do accompanying the machines. At least there's some of that with the 40-below simulator that was at the hotel we stayed in while in Denali. The hurricane ones simply have you pay $2 for the privilege of having your head nearly blown off in a person-sized container. Know what I now want? An oil disaster simulator. It may be the only way we get funding for the recovery of the Gulf of Mexico and its shores. I think we should begin by inviting Tony "Frodo" Hayward to cough up his pension for the privilege of getting dunked.
2. The Louisiana Science Education Act has ensured that this state can add urine to its education pool in the form of teaching creationism alongside science if a school district desires - and now that some in this state actually want to get it going, it makes me want to vomit. Link via Suspect Device.:

   At its July 22, 2010, meeting, the Livingston Parish School Board announced its interest in teaching creationism under the 2008 Louisiana Science Education Act. Actually, they did more than announce their interest. They proclaimed it. There are more Discovery Institute connections to this development than you can shake a stick at....If there was any doubt that people in Louisiana understand exactly why the Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA) was enacted into law in 2008, those doubts have now been dispelled. Our citizens have clearly connected the dots that link the LSEA and creationism....

   How did they connect those dots? Barbara Forrest gives us the gory details.

Incidentally, one day the little guy had to get out of the swimming pool in which he was taking lessons a little earlier than usual, ostensibly for a safety lesson...which turned out to have been spurred on by someone vomiting in the other end of the same pool. We keep mixing water with too much crap these days. When will it stop?

______________________

There's a few more Alaska journal entries to come, don't worry. Our trip didn't end in Anchorage. Hang with me, readers.

"Yippee! Love, Dan" was what the card on the flowers said. I told Dan I loved it when I called him to check on his retrieval of our son from the babysitters' last night, and then I conked out. An anniversary dinner celebrated at a New Orleans Wine and Food Experience dinner will do that to you.

I'd never been to Broussard's before, though I'd walked by it many times and seen the picture of Gennifer Flowers in the window, along with the dates of her performances at the restaurant. They have a beautiful courtyard, a noisy dining room right off the street, and some of the strangest tiles of cherubs (uhhh, putti, pardon me) clad only in aprons and toques dancing around the walls of their foyer. It was there that I drank six-seven glasses of wine, some of it made from cloned grapes, enjoyed some conversation with my husband of eight years and some good, good food, and observed a fellow at the table next to ours taking iPhone pictures of the labels on each wine bottle the waiters used to refill each glass for each course of the meal.

"Beats collecting the corks or soaking the labels off, eh?" I said to him in my increasingly drunken state. He agreed, and we chatted for a bit. He was a Jefferson Parish policeman, and when he heard where we lived in New Orleans, he said, "Oooh, y'all be careful!"

Lovely. Just what I needed to hear.

"You know the crime is gonna be a biggie as far as the Super Bowl is concerned, right?" I said to Dan.

"Oh, we got the Super Bowl?"
"Yeah, for 2013," I said.

Sure, it's a good thing for this city. It always is when the NFL decides to put what has become more than just a game right here in our midst. Especially now.

Oh, hell, I'm not being ungrateful. If it weren't for Paul Tagliabue insisting on the Superdome being spiffed up and shined to a high gloss of sorts in time for the first Monday Night Football of the 2006-2007 season, Tom Benson would have moved the team to San Antonio, most likely. No Saints, no purpose for the Dome other than scrounging for more exhibitions, more Mardi Gras balls, more NCAA championship games and bowl games. Then the way is a tad more rocky for New Orleans hosting future Super Bowls. Tagliabue helped make it a smoother road right from almost the very start after the events of 8-29-05.

Detours on that road to Super Bowl hosting, however, have included other conventions taking a pass on New Orleans as their host due to the ever-popular urine in the education pool Louisiana Science Education Act Bobby Jindal signed into law and to the ever-present horrific specter of violent crime that is still rearing its ugly head. For the NFL to give this city its vote of confidence in hosting its biggest event is indeed a boost in many ways. We still run on tourism down here. There hasn't been much going on in the way of diversifying the local economy. But the fact that our population is growing much faster than anybody had predicted it would nearly four years ago - and that that population is supporting the home team in so, so many ways - are also big factors in having this event come back here for a tenth time in its history. We are the pros. We can do this, despite all that has happened to us. I'm sure there will once again be calls for New Orleans to host it every year.

This town has four years in which to address the problems that could cause all of this good fortune to come crashing down around us. I hope we take that time and use it wisely.

I will certainly raise a glass to that.