I'm glad Colbert smacked down Miller's "welfare queen" verbiage. It's a horrible analogy, mostly because it's racist and sexist and based on a fiction, but also because ID activists don't want a mere handout. They want full authority.

"They're not very good at science, but they're awfully good at relabeling."

That's a great way to summarize the "evolution" of Intelligent Design. Just like the Republican Party and McCain trying to relabel themselves as the "Change You Deserve."

Bill Hicks was right, anyone who works in marketing are Satan''s little helpers. Especially if they're doing the marketing for ID. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDW_Hj2K0wo

Hicks was fantastic. The last eight years would have been far more bearable with him around.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rs-nHQYY6Fg

I'm glad Colbert smacked down Miller's "welfare queen" verbiage. It's a horrible analogy,...

To be fair, I think Miller was just trying to parry with Colbert's caricature. His wing-nut caricature can be hard to deal with because he is so deft at rapid-fire stupidity.

"How are we going to regard science?" As the enemy!

My tax money – I say we get to say what gets taught!

More than 50% of Americans believe that ID is a plausible theory...and if more than 50% believe that ID is a possiblility, then - this is a democracy - why can't we teach that in schools in science class?

Watching the Fox noise clips from TDS, I really wonder if Fox viewers would even see what is wrong with his terrific parody? I seriously wonder whether they would know this is parody, after all creationism/ID proponents don't sound at all different than Colbert's parody.

But your right, Miller's analogy didn't work.

Tim:

My tax money – I say we get to say what gets taught!

Although Colbert's tongue is firmly in-cheek here, he does expose a legitimate flaw in public education.

The fundamental concept of any democracy is that people are free to govern themselves. In practice, this makes ideas such as Mike Gravel's direct-democracy referendums very frightening to me.

As often quoted: Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on dinner. This is why the framers were so insistent on a Constitutional Republic- as Jefferson said, to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority.

Back to point: this is the ultimate catch-22 of public education; how can a poorly-educated society, responsible for electing their local school board, possibly hope to fix the problem? This is literally the dumb leading the stupid.

But what alternatives exist? Should the standards of public education be mandated from the Federal level? Is this really a better solution? See also: "no child left behind", which has been loudly criticized for removing critical freedoms from the local process, and resulting in the current "teach the test" system which has resulted is some outright stupid Millenials running around.

Speaking personally, the best teachers I ever had were those who ignored the syllabus. And, the same is true for the very worst teachers I ever had, such as the Spanish professor who was more concerned with President Bush than teaching us Spanish.

If local school boards result in ID leaking into legitimate biology, and Federalized education standards result in a dumbed-down populace, clearly, we need to devise a 3rd option.

Fix education, and I believe most of the other problems in America will resolve themselves within 30 years. Not all, but most.

Stupid git - Uh, I'm in marketing...:) If it makes it any better - I don't think I'm very good at it anymore - I really hate the wole social networking part of it now. What he said was pretty brilliant, though.

"Speaking personally, the best teachers I ever had were those who ignored the syllabus. And, the same is true for the very worst teachers I ever had..." Zaphod - that was funny and so true. What's so sad about teaching to the test was I never liked the students who would raise their hands and ask "is this on the test?" because I didn't want an exercise in memorization - I wanted to learn it in context so I wouldn't have to just memorize it...and then forget it two days later...

BTW - what does everyone use to highlight a quote? I've tried html but it doesn't seem to work?

BTW - what does everyone use to highlight a quote? I've tried html but it doesn't seem to work?

heh heh heh.

I shouldn't laugh; my weblinking skills have disappeared.

You can google markdown and get good information from those sites. For highlighting quotations, you need to surround the word blockquote with < and >. No space after >, enter your quoted text. No space after the quotation, then < immediately followed by /blockquote with your final touch as the > sign. I'm hoping this description works, because the moment I start entering things in markdown, this web response starts coding things for me and you won't know what to do.

Good luck!

BTW - what does everyone use to highlight a quote? I've tried html but it doesn't seem to work?

My general answer to questions like this is to view the page as "source" and copy the way you see - empirical, but effective.

I've tried html but it doesn't seem to work?

Because you have to use Markdown on Onegoodmove. Just follow the instructions.

I never liked the students who would raise their hands and ask "is this on the test?"

As a professor, I can tell you that every good professor I know HATES this question with a passion. If the subject you have been discussing is very difficult, the best answer to give is, "Well, I wasn't going to put it on the test, but now that you've asked..." Peer pressure can do wonders.

I never liked the students who would raise their hands and ask "is this on the test?"

Welcome to the world of "No child left behind", where knowing the answer to the test is of paramount importance.

Jill, check this out

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown#Syntax_examples

Back to point: this is the ultimate catch-22 of public education; how can a poorly-educated society, responsible for electing their local school board, possibly hope to fix the problem? This is literally the dumb leading the stupid.

I guess it is fortunate that most of science has applied, utilitarian, technological offshoots that can be pointed to convince the uneducated that science is worth knowing even if they are ignorant of it themselves. In biology there is an unfortunate conflict between Christian mythology and exceedingly well-supported scientific theory. My wife has a friend who was visiting our home one Christmas morning and she said something about seeing a human footprint inside a dinosaur footprint at some goofy museum in the Dallas area. I lost it - I said, "If the Book of Genesis led your preacher to claim that this new iPod really has angels in it who sing each song as you select them, would you seriously discount the expertise of the electrical engineers who designed the components?" Kinda spoiled the festive mood...

Frankly, I don't see what the danger in "teaching the controversy" is. More attention in general should be paid to the philosophy of science, and this would be an excellent way to do it. More, such a course would, if it were taught well and by educated teachers, undercut the claims made by "intelligent design." (I went to a poor public high school, but even there every science teacher I had would have been qualified to carry on such a discussion.) Such a course was tried at George Mason, apparently, and had the effect of convincing creationists in evolution.

Beyond that, such a course would at least clarify the ridiculous catch-all term "evolution", which for some reason is never done on television (natural selection has occurred for billions of years, life evolved from single-celled organisms, animate matter came from inanimate over 2.8 billion years ago, etc -- the last of these is not yet a testable predictive theory, and it's doubtful whether the second one is).

As Karl Popper quoted:

For the open society: "Although only a few may originate a policy, we are all able to judge it." - Pericles

Against the open society "...In a word, he should dream to teach his soul, by long habit, never to dream of acting independently, and to become utterly incapable of it." - Plato

Thank you!!!!!

Just saw these answers so - next time I want to reference something, at least the quote part will make sense :)

"If the Book of Genesis led your preacher to claim that this new iPod really has angels in it who sing each song as you select them, would you seriously discount the expertise of the electrical engineers who designed the components?"

Hey, why'd ya not post my comment?

Without the self-corrective of the scientific method, you end up in a situation like the Soviets and their chief agricultural (quack) scientist, Lysenko. Science became politicized, Lysenko could do no wrong by Stalin, and any dissent, no matter how well supported by evidence was suppressed.

As a result, the Soviets had to buy grain from the US. Guess who gets to set the price? This, as much as the arms race, helped bring down the USSR.

It can't be said enough: good science is the foundation on which our policies stand.

Frankly, I don't see what the danger in "teaching the controversy" is. More attention in general should be paid to the philosophy of science, and this would be an excellent way to do it. More, such a course would, if it were taught well and by educated teachers, undercut the claims made by "intelligent design."

As far as science teaching, or philosophy of science teaching is concerned, there is no danger at all. But consider what would be the likely result if creationist views (whether dressed up as ID or not) were given the kind of treatment their "scientific" cases deserve. Christian parents would scream bloody murder. The teacher is undermining Johnny's faith! Our values/beliefs are being denigrated! (And they'd say that even if the teacher was completely dispassionate in dispatching biblical "hypotheses".) For any community where Christian fundamentalist groups are strong enough to put "intelligent design" on the school board's agenda, no truly scientific evaluation of ID would be acceptable to the fundies who insisted on "teaching the controversy". And that, of course, is because there is no scientific controversy to teach.