Looks like another republican congressman is resigning in shame -- this time around, it's a rather mudane sex scandal, albeit under circumstances I find a bit odd: fathering a child with your mistress after she bails you out of jail and a DUI charge after the Super Bowl!
Oops...
I feel for this guy's family, especially his poor wife and existing children. It really sucks when your husband/father turns out to be a total jerk. On the other hand, things keep looking better for the Dems in November!
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Mainstream media coverage of the Pin Lapel "Controversy"
Well, it looks like finally some sense is coming to town regarding the flag lapel pin crap that's been continuing to float around the media and political coverage.
Even if it's coming as an editorial, it's good to hear it. And I wholeheartedly agree, both with Mr. Marten and Sen. Obama, who rightly calls the whole thing "... the kind of manufactured issue that our politics has become obsessed with and ... distracts us from what should be my job when I'm commander-in-chief, which is going to be figuring out how we get our troops out of Iraq and how we actually make our economy better for the American people."
Even if it's coming as an editorial, it's good to hear it. And I wholeheartedly agree, both with Mr. Marten and Sen. Obama, who rightly calls the whole thing "... the kind of manufactured issue that our politics has become obsessed with and ... distracts us from what should be my job when I'm commander-in-chief, which is going to be figuring out how we get our troops out of Iraq and how we actually make our economy better for the American people."
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Test your Scientific Literacy!
Try these three true or false statements before you read on:
1) The continents or land masses on which we live have been moving for millions of years and will continue to move in the future.
2) Antibiotics kill viruses as well as bacteria.
3) The earliest humans lived at the same time as the dinosaurs.
...
Now that you've had a chance to say True, False, False, and "Why are you asking me such easy science questions?" you may be shocked (as I was) that only 23% of respondents, when posed these questions, were able to answer all three correctly. 69% of the respondents had college education, with 27% holding college degrees and 14% having attended graduate school.
The interesting thing is that the survey, reported in the newsletter of the APS Forum on Physics and Society, then went on to ask respondents' views on the teaching of creationism, "intelligent design," and evolution in high school science classes. It turns out that those who answered all three questions above incorrectly were much likelier to support creationism while those answering all three correctly strongly favored evolution.
What surprises me is not the trend of low science literacy and favoring creationism, but that the bar for discriminating "low" science literacy can indeed be set so low and still yield the suspected underlying trend.
It also doesn't bode well for science education in America.
1) The continents or land masses on which we live have been moving for millions of years and will continue to move in the future.
2) Antibiotics kill viruses as well as bacteria.
3) The earliest humans lived at the same time as the dinosaurs.
...
Now that you've had a chance to say True, False, False, and "Why are you asking me such easy science questions?" you may be shocked (as I was) that only 23% of respondents, when posed these questions, were able to answer all three correctly. 69% of the respondents had college education, with 27% holding college degrees and 14% having attended graduate school.
The interesting thing is that the survey, reported in the newsletter of the APS Forum on Physics and Society, then went on to ask respondents' views on the teaching of creationism, "intelligent design," and evolution in high school science classes. It turns out that those who answered all three questions above incorrectly were much likelier to support creationism while those answering all three correctly strongly favored evolution.
What surprises me is not the trend of low science literacy and favoring creationism, but that the bar for discriminating "low" science literacy can indeed be set so low and still yield the suspected underlying trend.
It also doesn't bode well for science education in America.
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