Call It A Comeback
At Ken Ham’s Answers in Genesis Creation Museum. I’m not kidding.
"Plans for the interior of the museum are taking shape, as well. As soon as guests walk through the front doors, realistic, life- size dioramas will provide a snapshot of an early world — including Adam with dinosaurs — that will challenge evolutionary worldviews," according to AiG’s Mark Looy.
Over at the Political State Report
The best demonstration that evolution is incorrect is the continued persistence of creationists and the more recent fruit cakes in the Intelligent Design camp. Today, Robert Bartley strangely swerves into a discussion of evolution. A discussion that is horribly confused.
Bartley claims:
On net, religious impulses are probably growing. September 11 persuaded others besides George Bush that evil is an active force in the world. The science of the Big Bang and DNA looks much more like the work of a creator than the cold world of Newtonian Laws and Darwinian evolution. And at least indirectly the horrors of the 20th century showed that the latter provides no moral compass.
I’m not quite sure what the work of a creator looks like and that is the essential problem with creationists–anything fits their claims. Other than finding ‘engineered by Yahweh’ inscribed on some DNA there really isn’t much to argue about here. One can accept on faith that God created the universe, but through means that follow natural methods. Insisting that God’s actions must be telegraphed seems a bit more in line with Greek Deities and not the God of the Bible.
More troubling is that Bartley thinks that a scientific theory is a philosophy. Of course, it is not. The method of scientific discovery is philosophically based, but is not a normative enterprise in terms of its practice. It is absurd to expect a description of how life on Earth evolved to explain moral questions. Bartley might as well be suggesting that explanations for El Nino are responsible for Peruvian corruption.
The Scopes Monkey trial of 1925, the great defeat of the fundamentalists, has in particular come in for reassessment. Noting for example that the ACLU advertised for a plaintiff, a 2002 PBS documentary let the people of Dayton, Tenn. say that they were not the dolts depicted by the news dispatches of H. L. Mencken and the 1960 movie "Inherit the Wind." And in his new Mencken biography "The Skeptic," Terry Teachout points to the unlovely side of the philosophy animating his account: A disdain of democracy, for example, in favor of credo of Social Darwinism, applying survival of the fittest to human communities, and its corollary of eugenics, shortly later discredited by the Third Reich.
I’m not sure how one gets to be a editor of a major national paper and cannot tell the difference between biological evolution as a science and social darwinism and eugenics as completely different concepts?
Go Read Kaus. He is very good today.
There are several new blogs out there who have linked to me. I’ll be adding the ones I catch–if you have linked to me I’ll generally reciprocate–just let me know. I, of course, reserve the right to do with my blogroll whatever I damn well want to.
For the Post-Dispatch Editorial Board. Let’s take a look at today’s attempt to make sense of the Wellston School District.
On the one hand they attempt to address how much the Wellston Superintendent makes and on the other hand they attempt to address how poorly the District has performed. And the editorial concludes, the district needs to think about things.
Let me take a stab at it–the Superintendent is paid just below the SLPS Superintendent. The Wellston District is about to lose accreditation. The Wellston Superintendent has held the job since 1984.
From this I can conclude, the Wellston Superintendent should be fired. Call me crazy. Nearly 20 years and his biggest impact is proceeding over a district that losing accreditation should come with some accountability.
The thing is, the Post-Dispatch cannot say that. Why not? I don’t know. They seem to imply it, but an editorial about a crisis in one of the worst school districts with some of the poorest kids doesn’t need to be danced around.
Chip Taylor has some suggestions concerning the Wellston School District as well. And Chip is correct in stating that Wellston parents need a choice now. The problem is how do we provide that choice and there it gets complicated. We could and should find a way to circumvent the district. There are several problems in doing so.
First, we do not really know how to educate poor kids with high levels of lead poisoning, few family resources, 90 % eligibility for free or reduced school lunch (a reasonable approximation of poverty) and high mobility. The problem is that we don’t know how to pull a quick reform. There isn’t a simple model we can implement to improve performance quickly.
Second, there aren’t any other public school districts adjacent that are equipped to take on a significant number of students from Wellston. University City is challenged with a fairly high number of poor students and while it is making improvements, more poor students would overly burden it. The districts to the north face similar challenges and the SLPS is in no position to institute immediate change given the condition of schools in the Northwest part of the City are as poor as the Wellston schools. To give students an effective choice, students would have to be bused to districts that are not immediately adjacent to Wellston, dramatically increasing the difficulty and the costs of any such program. Public school choice is an expensive proposition with logistical nightmares.
Private school choice isn’t very realistic (at least om the short term)for many of the same reasons. The private schools in the area are close to full and getting them ot private schools farther out present two problems. One is the transportation problem, the other is many such schools are incapable of dealing with special populations. While I don’t see the number listed at DESE, the likely special ed rate is at least 25% of students or more in Wellston.
Finally, any solution has to assume parents won’t be likely to make alternative school choices in significant numbers. This may seem counterintuitive to many, but given the choice to have their children transfer, many poor parents choose not to transfer their kids. Why this is the case is complex. Many parents of kids in such districts do not understand the choices available to them and have little ability to make informed choices. I would actually argue this is true of the vast majority of parents, but most parents have the economic wherewithall to choose nicer neighborhoods and in doing so utilize rules of thumb provided by the press, real estate agencies (though often defective) and friends as to what constitutes a good school.
In the SLPS, the voluntary transfer program for African-Americans has never been fully subscribed. And in many cases, the number of African-American slots in the magnets have not been utilized forcing the SLPS district to reduce the total number of students going to the magnets. Such parents often are intimidated by schools and school officials even when such people are welcoming (and Wellston is not) largely because they had such poor experiences in school themselves.
So how does one solve the problem? Good question. No one really knows. However, in cases like Wellston, or Brooklyn, IL, or other small poor inner-ring suburbs taking over the district by the state has to be the first start. Increasing school choice is a long-term strategy, but in the short-term, giving fewer choices is probably necessary for most students.
The problem in Missouri is the State doesn’t want to do it. First, it doesn’t know how to solve the problems of poverty and learning. Second, it takes money and if the State is responsible and determines an expensive course of action is needed the State is on the hook.
Let’s consider this the first in the series on urban education problems.
UP DATE: Posted on both sites with some editing for clarity.
Dean addresses concerns that he is not sufficiently against Bush’s Doctrine of Preemptive War. Part of this came from his apparent willingness to use force in North Korea if necessary.
While one always wants to keep a bit of strategic ambiguity over specific actions that would lead to war, I’m still unclear on when unilateral action is acceptable given an imminent threat.
I supported military action in Iraq, though I was not particularly happy with the administration’s path. Much like Kenneth Pollack and others–presumably including Richard Lugar and Chuck Hagel who have been quietly, but consistently critical of the President, I understood the long-term problem, but did not grasp the reason to rush. However, if we were going to rush, well, okay.
Dean is saying the right things in general, but I’m still not sure where he would draw the line between courting multilateral institutions and deciding the interest was too great to not act unilaterally. That is a hard question to answer, but he is going to have to answer it if he is to do well.
The fundamental problem of the Bush administration isn’t one case, it is a pattern of ignoring international problems and agreements. When he trashed Kyoto–fine, it was flawed, but he offered no serious plan to replace it. The International Criminal Court? Okay, but what other institutional arrangements can we make. And what about another trade round? –oops I forgot, he isn’t actually for free trade.
Globalization and environmental problems that cross individual country’s borders have to be addressed internationally. Many of those institutions thought up by the Europeans are deficient, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t work towards functioning institutions, it means we should propose better alternatives.
This is what excites me about this next election–foreign policy returns and forces the Democrats to argue the issue. Dean seems to be up to it even if I think he needs to clarify specific issues, as is some others such as Lieberman. Some like Kucinich are off in meditation land, while others are trying to say much of anything.
For reconstruction of Iraq, Dean has offered a detailed seven point plan. Only Edwards and Lieberman have offered up their own detailed plans. The plan is quite good.
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