“Are Too Many Students Going to College?”

The cover feature for the November 13 issue of the Chronicle Review section of the The Chronicle of Higher Education is a forum on the question: “Are Too Many Students Going to College?“
People are sure to differ in their judgments as to how that question should be answered. What I want to call attention to [...]

CERU: 12th Annual Report on Schoolhouse Commercialism Trends

The Commercialism in Education Research Unit, a partner center of the Education Policy Research Unit at Arizona State University, has released Click: The Twelfth Annual Report on Schoolhouse Commercialism Trends: 2008-2009.
The word “Click” is part of the title this year (not just part of the link), since this year’s report is concerned with children getting [...]

Mooney & the “new atheists”: another round

Another round in the ongoing Neuatheismusstreit was touched off by an opinion piece in the L.A. Times by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum, authors of the new book Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future. They write:
It often appears as though Dawkins and his followers–often dubbed the New Atheists, though some object to the [...]

NY Times: “Flexbooks” displacing textbooks

Lewin reports that “Textbooks have not gone the way of the scroll yet, but many educators say that it will not be long before they are replaced by digital versions — or supplanted altogether by lessons assembled from the wealth of free courseware, educational games, videos and projects on the Web.”

This is interesting in many ways. For one thing, it underscores the necessity of having teachers who understand their subjects well. “Flexbooks” could greatly increase the importance of the teachers relative to state boards and legislatures.

Luskin on FoxTV: 100% of textbooks wrong on evolution

From Newshounds (“We watch Fox so you don’t have to”):
http://www.newshounds.us/2009/05/07/foxfriends_interview_intelligent_design_spokesman_to_critique_textbook_treatment_of_evolution_fair_and_balanced_or_bizarro_world.php

001.9 (more on creationism & the Dewey Decimal System)

The Sensuous Curmudgeon has pursued the question of creationism and the Dewey Decimal system, commenting that
If the DDC were working as your Curmudgeon thinks it should, all Discoveroid books would be given whatever DDC number is appropriate for books about the Bermuda Triangle and Alien Abductions.
This is one of those things that probably would not [...]

Intelligent Design and the Dewey Decimal system

I felt a vague recollection of something involving ID and Dewey Decimal some time ago. Thanks to Google Desktop, I was able to come up with better than vague memories. Here are the links:

Ebert slams Ben Stein’s Expelled

Ebert begins his column titled Win Ben Stein’s mind:
I’ve been accused of refusing to review Ben Stein’s documentary “Expelled,” a defense of Creationism, because of my belief in the theory of evolution. Here is my response.
For more on Ben Stein and Expelled:

more on Ben Stein: “Darwinism cannot explain gravity”

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Added Feb. 1, 2009: Here’s the current form of an amendment that Texas State Board of Ed Chairman McLeroy (with an egregious quote-mining rampage) got added to the current draft of the Texas science standards, as approved at First Reading Jan. 23, to be put to a final vote in March:
[Students will] Analyze and evaluate [...]

fair, or “balanced”?

Some observers have commented that nothing new or noteworthy emerged from the November 19, 2008 session of the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE).
Well, maybe this isn’t new, but I think it deserves notice:
Despite the overwhelming imbalance of testimony favoring standards that would support the teaching of real science in Texas, newspaper stories have managed [...]

“Behold: the atheist’s nightmare” (a banana) [ video ]

Before I say anything about it, just watch this video first:

The Pueblo, me, and Washington, DC

Last January was the 40th anniversary, capture of the U.S.S. Pueblo – as commemorated then on Ed Darrell’s blog.
More recently, Ed’s added a post on the continuing repercussions of that event, even reaching to last week’s negotiated agreement between North Korea and the Bush administration over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.
This new post includes a [...]

evolution disproved on GodTube

There’s a devastating disproof of evolution at
http://www.godtube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=817b7893bcdeed13799b
I had decided not to bother blogging about this, but that work’s been done for us by The Sensuous Curmudgeon.

Expelled — approaching extinction?

My guess is that Expelled will not survive out on the surface and in daylight. It might not be able to survive at all without some mutation to accommodate pressure from the legal environment — but after such mutation, the film will survive in dark, dank, cavernous environments; but the predators that feed upon such fare will still roam free to infect other populations with this malicious virus.

“Ben Stein is the Rosa Parks of Darwin Skeptics”

Proponents of “Intelligent Design” continue trying to portray their efforts as a struggle for civil rights, as in this amusing post touting Ben Stein as “the Rosa Parks of Darwin Skeptics.”

Ben Stein — EXPELLED

Judging from the website, we can expect this movie to be an extraordinary example of the propaganda technique known as the Big Lie. The movie apparently hammers away at a few claims of monstrous misdeeds by the “neo-Darwinists,” with one fabricated example after another.

Children of Jihad

I’m listening now to a fascinating presentation by a book author who has spent substantial time with young people in the Middle East. The book is:
Cohen, Jared. Children of Jihad a Young American’s Travels among the Youth of the Middle East. New York: Gotham Books, 2007.
Information about the book, including library holdings in local areas, [...]