What’s that over there? Oh, the edge of the earth. If I go there, I might fall off.

Idioits. Always idiots. I hope their faith sustains them during climate change.

The American Taliban won’t be happy until every American is living in caves, hunting for their food, and fearing some guy in the sky sitting on a throne who tells them to not believe in science. In other words, they want us to be dumb as their own children!

I have an answer for people like McLeroy but I’m not allowed to utter it.

I wonder if they have anything against 2 + 2 = 4? It all stems, as I understand it, from having to believe that the earth is about 5,000 years old. What do they do with the information that a star is 1,000,000 light years distant? Na-na-na-na-I-can’t-hear-you?

You can’t claim to be educating is you do this stuff. “Indoctrinating”, yes. “Educating”, no.

Best case ever for charter schools.

And Texas slides further back in education. It’s time that Texas claimed it’s rightful place at the top of the [edited] redneck pile of feces.

Hate science? Move to Texas.

Stay tuned, Texas republicans will soon be announcing the all new witch trials.

Is there a way to bring outside pressure to bear? I’d hate to cut federal funding for education they so desperately need but if they are voluntarily withholding science education from their kids why should the federal government and the taxpayers subsidize this farce?

Intelligent design? Did the big daddy up in the sky design hemorrhoids? Cancer? Child molesters? Republicans? It sounds to me like the intelligent designer was a total moron.

Then, hope like crazy, California has a bigger impact on science remaining as science. California influences text books far more than TX.

Well, if we didn’t have the bad, we’d never know and understand when things are going well.

“The State Board of Education on Friday adopted standards on the teaching of global warming that appear to both question its existence and prod students to explore its implications.”

Combining Creationism with Global Warming a needless distraction.

Global warming is lumped in with religious fervor; a shame it can’t be discussed as a separate issue. One Ad hominid attack damns both.

I sure wish this whole subject could be evaluated without political rhetoric. The moment that Global Warming is brought up, both ends of the spectrum trot out their bias. True believers of each meme destroy rational and constructive debate.

Politics is to Science what Religion is to Government.
Parochial ideology based in the former merely degrades the principals of the latter.

Don’t let your certainty about Creationism make you biased against the other. Consensus in science is as useless in science as it is fundamental to politics.

Look, as someone who loves Texas, I don’t want to abandon it to the crazies. Plus, given Texas’ effect on the national market for textbooks, you can’t just write it off. I hope the standards won’t amount to much in practice and that the insane posturing of the SBOE members will be mostly ignored by the people that do the real work of teaching children science. You know, gym teachers and part time coaches.

Honestly, I don’t think the new standards will stand up to litigation, since this seems to be another Dover situation. You shouldn’t teach kids the controversy about things which are not controversial, like global warming and evolution. It’s just confusing, and it’s an injection of a religious and political agenda into high school science classes.

The Texas SBOE is up for sunset review, so there’s hope that this increasingly irrelevant bunch of screaming yahoos may cease to exist in the near future. It’s an outcome to be fervently hoped for as they seem to serve no useful purpose.

Consensus in science is as useless in science as it is fundamental to politics.

What does that mean?

“Conservatives like me think the evidence (for human contributions to global warming) is a bunch of hooey,” McLeroy said.

Engineers like me think you should build your own fucking bridges, and have faith they won’t fall down as you drive over them.

And have no electricity in your home, and live in the dark.

Do they deny global warming because of religion? The 2 don’t seem connected to me.

Conservative correctness run amok.

-G

I wonder – does McLeroy agree with John Shimkus (R-IL), that “The earth will end only when God declares it’s time to be over. Man will not destroy this earth. This earth will not be destroyed by a flood. … I do believe God’s word is infallible, unchanging, perfect. … There is a theological debate that this is a carbon-starved planet. Not too much carbon.”

http://progressillinois.com/20…..plant-food

This is all perfectly in keeping with the U.S. sinking to the level of a 10th rate world power and authority.

and if i’m not mistaken there is a major textbook mfg. in TX, a Bush family member, who stands to be one of the textbook racketeers who’ll be printing this crap and feeding to our already dumbed down population of school kids. jeez.

Bart Ehrman, who wrote Misquoting Jesus and Jesus, Interrupted, has an interesting story to tell about being brought up in a fundie family and the shock it was to learn in college that most of it, maybe all, was not true. He is now an agnostic.

One way would be to have Universities outside of Texas to require students from Texas HS demonstrate proficiency in the basics of biology and the fundamentals of Scientific Method. If they cannot they may have to take a remedial course at a Community College in Biology.

ugh… I despise the Discovery Institute. Among other things, they used to back so-called crisis pregnancy counseling centers that were little more than fronts for human trafficking operations, where pregnant teens would be plied with tactics best described as brainwashing, their infants spirited away and basically sold to the highest (Christian) bidder, focusing on well connected politicos who could then help enable the CPCs – the dark side of the antiabortion movement. Their operative societal model is basically The Handsmaid’s Tale. Pure evil.

How much do you suppose Mexico would demand to take back Texas? Could that cost be rolled into Obama’s economic stimulus package?

The neocons aren’t satisfied keepin’ their womenfolk barefoot and pregnant, and in the kitchen or in the bedroom. They are driven to keep us all ignorant. The ignorant must follow, or so they hope; they cannot lead, disagree or disobey.

I’m not optimistic that textbook publishers will change their ways. Unless driven by necessity, they will cram down the Texas version of “science” on everyone else. One counter, other than for Texans to toss out these board members, is to persuade school boards in other states to reject textbooks designed to meet Texas’ disinformation campaign.

That distributes the fight nationwide, dividing forces that oppose them. But so be it. That’s the nature of the assault on middle America anyway.

Democrats will need to start thinking beyond the ends of their noses. The post-World War Two America, built from hard work and FDR’s social legislation, is in the morgue and neocons are busy sewing A.B. Normal’s brain into it. Time for political pitchforks to stop them turning us into monsters or their fodder.

I guess it’s time to trot out the Jesus riding a T-Rex coloring book. I’m curious how these idiots reconcile raptor packs marauding in the valley of the River Jordan. Funny, none of the old testament scientists even mention any of the big lizards in their midst.

Stupidity is the great white Republican hope!

this is precisely what I don’t understand about the palinists. The articulated vision of the Discovey Institute et al are basically a mysogynist Brave New World, where technology and technocracy are harnessed to facilitate systems of social control which aim to see women disenfranchised and probably altogether silenced. Once they achieve their ideal state, women won’t have the vote, much less be able to serve as governors.

The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood, Canada, 1985. The neocons have been working on this theme a long time. It is about grabbing and holding political power; a healthy, functioning, literate society is not its objective. Hence, keeping millions of Texas children scientifically sub-literate is a feature, not a bug.

“Conservatives like me think the evidence (for human contributions to global warming) is a bunch of hooey,” McLeroy said.

Which means that their ideology puts blinders on them and prevents them from seeing what is right before their noses. And that is the problem. Science isn’t “about” ideology…it’s about explaining HOW the world works. If one wants to “value” the consequences of ones activities different…lets confront that independently of the Science. For example, if global sea levels are predicted to rise because of global warming we can opt to undertake different POLICY decisions…conservative ones, liberal ones, etc. But denying the SCIENCE simply means that you are unwilling to face up to the difficulties of your ideological stance. It might show it is politically untenable. It’s sort of like being in denial from a drug addiction.

a buncha hooey?

hooey?

this guy is an educator??

“Instead, teachers will be required to have students scrutinize “all sides” of the theories.”

I’m not sure what this even means? A “theory” itself doesn’t have “sides”. A theory is an extensively tested natural explanation for observable phenomenon. One may have different components of that explanation…for evolution there may be differences in the mix of factors involved in a particular lineage (e.g. gene flow, genetic drift, natural selection) but no biologist would argue that these are not important factors in general.

So are they merely trying to get teachers to suggest that controversies over these different factors in particular cases devalues the Theory? That’s absurd since no biologist believes this…whether one accepts that neutral mutations are more or less important in explaining the evolution of a particular trait, or not. They still accept that other processes are significant in other cases.

Or are these politicians implying that Intelligent Design is a “side” within the evolutionary Theory? It clearly ISN’T…as it is a supernatural imposition inappropriate to scientific investigation. How can we research a “god did it by waving his magic wand” hypothesis? It’s a dead end to gaining further knowledge of the phenomenon. It’s an argument that discourages the process of obtaining more evidence and relies utterly on the absence of evidence to “prove” its validity. That’s not Science…Science uses “positive evidence” that can be extrapolated to new conditions and circumstances (prediction).

Most of the criticisms of Evolution that the Discovery Institute uses are simply propaganda…not science. For example, they claim that modern biologists use Haeckel’s idea of recapitulation (that organisms embryos go through the stages of form of the adults of their ancestors)…and suggest that he doctored up his illustrations to “prove this”.

But modern biologists DON’T in fact accept recapitulation. In addition there are actual microphotographs of embryos that show that certain FEATURES of embryos in different species (e.g. the tail, the unopened gill arches, and a host of other characteristics) do suggest derivation from common ancestors. And the critiques of Haeckel doctoring up his illustrations are based on his simply altering the images to the same scale (since the embryo of a fish might be many times smaller than that of a human), cutting away overlying features to demonstrate the key similarities he needed to show, or other aspects…which he fully explained in his text that he did do…and why. Even the embryologist Richardson, whom the DI cites as their main source for showing “Haeckel’s fraud, has challenged their interpretation of his writings and stated that there is clear cut evidence for evolution in embryology. And Richardson states that the best case for fraud is that of the Discovery Institute and authors like Jonathan Wells who willfully misquote Scientists about their work in textbooks. This is a fraud perpetrated on our students!

The idoits. Wait till Texas students start trying to get into major universities with this shit in their backgrounds.

%$#^&%$^
no
I mean it
%$#^&%$^

morons

Regent University will offer them full scholarships. U of T at Austin? Possibly, if enough wingnut money flows its way.

He is a politician who wants more power, beholden to one who already has it.

Nope, UT Austin is still solidly DFH.

Look, as someone who loves Texas, I don’t want to abandon it to the crazies. Plus, given Texas’ effect on the national market for textbooks, you can’t just write it off. I hope the standards won’t amount to much in practice and that the insane posturing of the SBOE members will be mostly ignored by the people that do the real work of teaching children science. You know, gym teachers and part time coaches.

Honestly, I don’t think the new standards will stand up to litigation, since this seems to be another Dover situation. You shouldn’t teach kids the controversy about things which are not controversial, like global warming and evolution. It’s just confusing, and it’s an injection of a religious and political agenda into high school science classes.

The Texas SBOE is up for sunset review, so there’s hope that this increasingly irrelevant bunch of screaming yahoos may cease to exist in the near future. It’s an outcome to be fervently hoped for as they seem to serve no useful purpose.

Somebody should tell the taxpayers of Texas that their State Board of Education just committed themselves to long, drawn-out, and very expensive legal action that will result in this not only being overturned, but at great cost to the State of Texas — meaning the taxpayers of Texas.

Regent’s not really accredited — and taking in Texas kids ‘educated’ under this régime is going to make them lose their already-weak accreditation, especially in the sciences.

I have to agree with you and the name ”American Taliban” is fits perfectly for how the far Right acts and talks.

Once again, extremely bad news, & our thanks for the heads-up.

This WILL provide some teachable moments for poor, harassed junior high-school science teachers. Believe it or not, 50 years ago in my working-class Hialeah, Florida middle school, we learned that species evolved from lower forms. The only “incident” was a student asking if we were descended from monkeys, and the teacher’s saying, “Maybe YOU are, Floyd.”

Can’t quite recall when we learned about throwbacks, but I’d guess some Texas School Board members were used for exemplary purposes.

The Constant Weader at http://www.RealityChex.com
Alumna of Henry H. Filer Junior High School, Hialeah, Florida

And Lo, the great Dog/God, shat a great shit and it became the world. And as with any great shit, a long, hard piss had to be taken. And, Lo, our ocean’s came to be.
And after having taken His/Her/Its great shit and piss on the bowl, did Dog/God, pick His/Her/Its nose and flick it upon the earth – and so begat Man. When he picked the hair from the bugger, He/She/It begat Women.
WTF!?!
Yeah, go ahead and teach your stupid creationist shit. How soon before parent’s that have any brain’s move their kids back to the Northeast, where science isn’t a 4-letter word.
How dumb do I want my kids to be? TEXAS DUMB! YIPPEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!

When talking about education, we used to say, “Thank God for Mississippi.” The tables have turned. Now Texas is fighting with Louisiana (which recently passed a law favored and signed by Bobby boy which said the same as the Texas standards) for the bottom rung on the ladder.

Years ago Ann Richards started to drag Texas education out of the Dark Ages. She was making fairly good progress, and then along comes the jerk with the pickled brain who did everything possible to revert to the original. Said pickled brain was followed by a complete idiot who has just about finished off education in Texas. God I hate the both of them and I’m so glad 1) that Ann isn’t alive to see what these cabrones have done to her state and 2) that my kids graduated before StfrBrains was elected.

Rather than forcing the rest of the nation to buy text books approved by the Texas Board of Education several other big states, say New York, California and Illinois should just tell the publishers that no books approved by Texas will be allowed in their states. The publishers would soon have other editions or other texts and actions of Texas would deprive no students other than their own of real science, history and literature texts.

No, he’s not an educator. He’s got a degree in dentistry and a degree in electrical engineering, but it is difficult to say what he is. Educator is not one of the choices.

Someone else made the suggestion that this will probably not change very much. Remember that this is the state where 94% of high schools taught abstinence only sex education, but that 94% included mostly the small rural high schools while the big urban high schools were further into the 20th century (not very many have actually reached the 21st.)

The same thing will happen with biology. The big schools will teach science and the rural high schools will teach religion. Along with Mark, I sincerely hope that somehow this stain on Texas can be washed off before too much damage is done. But 7 of the 15 members of the board were against the flat earthers, so don’t give up hope entirely.

How can pre-human creatures are allowed in Education board of Texas?
Only in Texas,folk!!!!!!!

Texas: Proud to Be Stupid

Maybe it’s time we forced churches to “teach the controversy” about their bullshit superstitions in exchange for their privileged tax status.

Texans can look forward to studying ‘luck’ and ‘Jesus made it happen’ in probability math class, and ‘intelligent falling’ instead of gravity.

To be consistent, High school science programs ought then to teach the pros and cons of all scientific theories; for example tectonic plate theory, relativity, Newtonian gravity, and on and on. Teaching critical thinking about science can be a good thing, but what is the basis for singling out only one theory for critical analysis? For that matter, shouldn’t we extend it to history and civics?

What do they do with the information that a star is 1,000,000 light years distant? Na-na-na-na-I-can’t-hear-you?

Close. They try to claim that the speed of light has changed over time. Notorious tax fraud Kent Hovind is famous for that one.