Zombie Creationism - It Just Won’t Stay Dead

Over at Pharyngula, PZ Meyers declares victory for real science education in Texas. Unfortunately, that’s a little premature.

Yesterday’s vote only closed out some amendments and took a preliminary vote on the “strengths and weaknesses” doctrine that the creationist zealots are attempting to preserve. The final vote will happen today, and include a board member who was absent yesterday. We can all hope this goes the way it should - with science education coming out ahead of fundamentalist claptrap.

That aside, I want to focus on the utterly horrible reporting by one Gary Scharrer at the San Antonio Express News. Look at this section, which quotes only creationist nuts and contains absolutely nothing refuting their spurious, misinformed opinions:

Scientists and more than 50 national and state science organizations urged the 15-member board Thursday not to include references “to creationist-fabricated ‘weaknesses’ or other attempts to undermine instruction on evolution.”

Many scientists contend basic evolutionary theory at the high school level has no weaknesses, and to suggest it does would confuse students.

However, Ken Mercer, R-San Antonio, fought to restore the “strengths and weaknesses” clause, which board-appointed science experts removed from the proposed standards. The board’s seven social conservative members supported that effort but fell one vote short.

Not all scientists agree about evolution, Mercer argued.

“There are questions about evolution. … There are weaknesses,” he said.

Darwin’s theory of evolution posits that all life is descended from a common ancestor.

The theory is not without its critics. Darwinists try to conceal some of the weaknesses and fallacies of evolution theory, said Barbara Cargill, R-The Woodlands.

“They are not the sole possessors of truth. Our schoolchildren belong to the parents, and they want their children educated,” she said. “They don’t want them indoctrinated with one side. They know that evolution has weaknesses.”

First of all, it isn’t “Darwin’s theory of evolution” anymore. It is the theory of evolution, the foundations of which Darwin was the first to publish. But even his work didn’t come out of the air - there were years of work by other naturalists and scientists behind it. And a lot of what Darwin published 150 years ago was flat wrong, and we know that now because of further investigation. For instance, his proposed mechanism for inheritence and gamete formation was WRONG WRONG WRONG. Hilarious, google “gemmule”, fun times ahead.

And as for Ken Mercer, well, the facile statement that “not all scientists agree about evolution” is true depending on what you mean — there are disagreements in the scientific community about specific mechanisms for evolution and those sorts of things, but no scientist doubts the fundamentals: life evolved from a common origin over billions of years through random mutation and natural selection. The only people you find trying to push controversy over that are religious fundamentalists and the charlatans at the Discovery Institute. People like Barbara Cargill who obviously cares more about preserving her minor position of authority by manipulating the passions of District 8’s ignorant electorate than she does about really giving Texas students science education.

But, that aside, I’m livid that a reporter managed to quote those two nuts without getting anything from the pro-science side of the board. This shoddy kind of work makes me pretty pleased that the Express News, easily the worst major metro daily I’ve ever read, is going the way of the dodo. Well, maybe that’s unfair, I suppose I’ll just hope that they’ll get new management that will improve the quality of their reporting.

What’s All This Then?

It’s a safe bet that I’m some sort of political junky. As such, I tend to read a lot of political magazines. A lot. Well, okay, I primarily read Reason, but time permitting I’ll gladly pick up TNR, The Atlantic, and a host of others. There are also those I know about but don’t read, Washington Monthly, for instance, or American Prospect. I’ve even been known to read NRO and The Weekly Standard sometimes. Oh, and yes, National Journal.

What all these rags (and the hundreds of others I haven’t metioned) have in common, really, is that they wouldn’t exist without the strange beltway culture. WIthout the insular world of think-tanks, politicians, and various campaign committees, there wouldn’t be a market for the sorts of agenda-driven journalism mentioned above. Such obvious political slant, which is neither hidden nor apologized for, sets these publications a bit apart from what the blogosphere has dubbed the MSM.

What’s more, many of those publications are direct participants in the blogosphere, and joined long before many MSM outlets decided to give it a try. Further, those publications in the political media that participate in the blogosphere act much more like, well, bloggers than their MSM counterparts.

The practical upshot being that there really isn’t a good thing to call this class of publications. They aren’t MSM, they aren’t exclusively blogs, and “political magazine” is just clunky. I therefore propose DC Media or DCM. Yeah, that’s right, I’m proposing an acronym. Formally. In a blog post. In any case the DCM plays a pretty big role in not only blogospheric conversation, but also in conversations between beltway insiders, and I think it’s high time we have an easy way to identify them. Your papers, please, as they say.

I Don’t Even Live In New York

Go to hell, Spitzer. Go. To. Hell.

There’s a goddamn difference between, I dunno, beating your spouse/girlfriend and a couple of co-eds slapping each other for cash. If you’re too goddamn stupid to see that, well, don’t go fining radio stations. Some DJs, appealing to the lowest-common-denominator, try to give away concert tickets and you bust them for unlicensed combative sports? Are you insane? You’re the AG of New York, man, there are probably some real crimes to be wasting your time on out there. To think, this guy is a Democratic front-runner for 2008. Between him, Hillary, and McCain, I fear for the future.

For Shame, Newsweek

Newsweek, a publication I’ve largely ignored for years, has published a false story about US forces at Gitmo “desecrating the Koran”. As expected, it has blown up. And understandably so, such inaccuracy is dangerous. Doubly so with respect to US endevours abroad. I’m sure the guys at Powerline are going nuts.

As tempting as it is to blame Newsweek for the riots in the Middle East that followed from their initial report, it’s not the magazine’s fault. At least not directly.

The riots were started, fueled, and participated in by people whose worldview is such that destruction of a copy of a book is punishable by death. This faction of the Arab population, and I’d wager by no means the majority, already hates the United States. Islamists will take any opportunity granted them to further characterize the US as the Great Satan, they will murder in the name of defeating us for the most tenuous of reasons and under the most thinly veild excuses. It is not as if a group of peace-loving America loyalists suddenly ran out and started burning flags. The folks faning the riots hated us before and will continue to do so. The danger that the Newsweek falsehood poses is summed in this comment from Austin Bay’s site:

I’m on my way back to Kabul, as I typically do every summer, but my family is completely opposed to my travel and work this year in Afghanistan even though I’ve safely transited there, in and out of State and UN/NGO service for nearly 20 years. The word I receive from Kabuli friends is that Isikoff has singlehandedly turned US triumph in the country to a total disaster. It was thought an anomaly last summer that some wonderful–and tragically forgotten–American DynCorps workers (mostly ex-military and my good friends) were killed in an environment that was pro-American to the core. That could be seen as a terrible tragedy, an unreasonable sad event impinging on an overall positive atmosphere–a last ditch effort by desperate Al Qa’eda remnants from outside Afghanistan to vent anger at the overwhelming success of the Americans. Now thanks to one Bush-hating reporter (google Isikoff if you doubt his intentions,) the recidivist Taliban-Pathans of southeast Afghanistan once again have an issue to de-legitimize the Karzai-US alliance.

That, in short, is what Newsweek is guilty of: giving an excuse to our enemies. Did they cause the riots? No, Islamists in the Middle East caused the riots. But they did provide a pretense under which our enemies can wreak havoc. There’s really no excuse for such shoddy reporting, none. And I think Newsweek should suffer dire consequences, not from the government, but on its bottom line. Punish with your pocket book, and just stop reading the damn thing. I quit years ago when the cover story was “Teens: What do they want?”, pegging that as an indication of impending laziness. Unfortunately, I seem to have been right and now Newsweek has provided an easy excuse for Islamists continuing their campaign of wanton violence.