Creationism legislation–Tennessee Monkey Bill (Update 4)
If you’re looking for a cure for your cancer, don’t look to evolution-deniers for hope. As for me, I give thanks to Darwin and the researchers who have stood on his shoulders.–Leslie Brunetta
A quick update on Tennessee’s “Monkey Bill”, which is a Republican-led anti-evolution and global warming denying bill. The bill, HB 368, was sent to Governor Bill Haslam this week for consideration. Gov. Haslam has until April 9 2012 to either sign it, allow it to become law without his signature or veto it. The bill encourages teachers to present the “scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses” in topics such as “biological evolution, the chemical origins of life (known as abiogenesis), global warming and human cloning.” The scientific weaknesses are nearly nonexistent, except in the mind of the science denialists that inhabit the Republican Party, particularly in the South.
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The history of the anti-vaccination movement, includes a theme song
The rousing anti-vaccination hymn.
Sometimes I run across articles and posts just because someone I follow on Twitter or Facebook will post a link that I happen to catch. Of course, I miss about 95% of what’s posted because I just don’t have the time to read them all. One person’s postings gets checked more frequently, since she focuses on vaccines, autism, and health care myths of all sorts. I ran across her while reading comments that followed an article in the LA Times (the story has long been deleted from my overloaded memory cells). She was responding to someone who maintained parents of autistic children were cheating the government out of disability payments. Let’s just say she was much nicer than I was.
Today, she posted a link to the College of Physicians of Philadelphia‘s History of Vaccines blog, which I had never seen before. I could go on about how much information is out there in the internet, but I pick and choose what I read and don’t read. This blog will be on the “must read” list.
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Antievolution and anti-science education–New York City?
New York City Department of Education bans both. Irony ensues.
The reach of the crazy creationists always seemed like a southern thing. Mississippi and Alabama are backwards states with bad education where they invest more in football than science education. Tennessee is trying to relive the Scopes Monkey Trial. Oklahoma and Louisiana are trying to have their students deny all kinds of science from evolution to climate change.
But we have always assumed that the northern progressive parts of the USA were resistant to these science denialists. Unfortunately, the stupidity has reached north into the New York City Department of Education, by far, the largest public school district in the United States with over 1.1 million students. They have decided to ban the following words for testing, because it might offend some of their students:
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