Just After Darwin Day...

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

You really have to feel sorry for kids living in the world's last remaining superpower, don't you?

I mean, it is not their fault that they get fed on junk food from Macdonalds that gives them an obesity problem, is it?
And now, people who are old enough to know better want to bring in legislation that will ' teach the controversy' in schools, and develope their 'critical thinking'... yeah, right !!!

Oh, before I forget, have a link:-
http://www.secularnewsdaily.com/2011/02/11/%E2%80%98science-guy%E2%80%99-speaks-out-bill-nye-says-nay-to-anti-evolution-crusade-as-bills-pop-up-in-the-states/

Now, the obligatory opinion....

The fact is, there is no controversy regarding biological Evolution in science. Scientists are people who go into the field and into the lab and do their own original research and make their own discoveries and publish the findings for peer review among people well qualified in the same and in related fields, and the consensus among the scientific community is that the Earth is billions of years old and that our species has been around for a lot longer than the 6,000 years allowed for by a literal reading of the book of Genesis.

OTOH, Craetionists turn out overwhelmingly to be people who quotemine and misrepresent the findings of others, and then go on to copypaste the claims on Creationist websites. Rather than doing original research and making ground breaking discoveries like 'Lucy', the big names in Creationism, people like Kent Hovind, Duane Gish and Ken Ham simply sell their books and videos to make money off of a gullible audience. These websites, and the related books and videos advertsied thereon, are packed with misrepresentations and inaccuracies - and sadly, this is what some adult Americans actually believe to be true.

In a recent discussion on Facebook, the following comment was made-
Marcus Clark What they don't tell you is that "Lucy" is not only a compilation of bone fragments of multiple bodies but likely of multiple species. These bone fragments were also collected over a rather large area. By doing a little "digging" you'll find that "Lucy" is a total farce.

And this was cited as ' evidence'

Marcus Clark
http://www.forerunner.com/forerunner/x0714_lucy_fails_test.html
and
http://www.trueauthority.com/cvse/lucy.htm
and
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2004/0825lawrence.asp
...and
http://www.apologeticspress.org/rr/reprints/truthlucy.pdf
just to show a few.See more

However, as this crushing refutal shows, the original claim was misrepresentation - nobody claimed that the 1973 find was part of the Lucy skeleton, (except the creationists , of course) and the guy who discovered Lucy was quite clear that the knee joint find was from another individual, albeit of the same species - A aferensis.

Go take a look -

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/knee-joint.html
Saturday at 12:53

Now, if this ever comes up in class, how many teachers of the creationist persuasion are going to show both sides of the case, and how many are going to do a good job in demolishing guys like Hovind, Ham and Gish? How many Creationists are actually honest?

It does not bode well for the future of the USA when an agenda driven by the Religious Right gets taught as fact in the classroom. I hope that American kids will get a good deal for once and that this legislation will be rejected for what it is, a cunning plot to bring Creationism into class - but I am a realist. I know how many Americans believe in Creationism, and that many of these will sit on School boards, and have a vote in State politics. People do have a right to be wrong if they choose, it goes with the turf in a democratic nation. However, I don't thiink that these people are making a choice that willbe good for their kids or their country's future if they allow Creationism into the class room.

Comments

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Again, sure, Navajo is spoken in a region larger than Belgium, the Haudenosaunee continue to speak languages older than Spanish in North America, let alone English. None of this matters a hill of beans. English is the language of entertainment, government, media, and the overwhelming majority of the population.

As above, Texas and California were satellite states and proxies for US expansionism at the expense of a Mexico then as now perpetually in a state of civil war and revolution. Absorbing both nearly wrecked the country 20 years later and California these days is Bankrupt and Texas is pseudo-Iran. Alaska and Hawaii have the best claims to secession of any states in the USA, especially Hawaii. And only Alaska has a legitimate claim to be truly "distinct" from the lower 48 as far as a territory is concerned, Hawaii having been a Polynesian Meiji state.

Do black people speak Igbo or Yoruba in the USA today? Don't all the minorities, Hispanic, black, Indigenous, and Asian have equal claims to have built the United States as it is today, particularly blacks?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Are there are a great number of people who want to revive the US satellite state? No more than there are Southerners who wish to revive the Confederate States of America.

Not really, Massachusetts has a great deal of Catholic influence, more than people realize. And of course Massachusetts was the first state to plague the USA with religious fanatics forcing their views on everyone else's. Albeit abolition was beneficial, what the modern-day totalitarians want will never be thus.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Where that fits into my argument is that the United States is often seen as a society built by white people of English descent. Yet much of the South's infrastructure was created by black slaves amidst the horrors of the Slave Power, the US Capitol was built by slaves, without black men the US Civil War would have been the Confederate War of Independence, and black political leaders have often been the ones challenging the USA to live up to our lofty ideals instead of giving them at most lip service.

Where it matters with Indigenous people is New England and the Far West share in common pretending that there were never Natives in those regions, and yet Indigenous peoples have been the key determining factor of much of early US history into the late 19th Century. And in the present day Indigenous peoples are actually growing in population and political influence again, the exact opposite of what white people wanted them to do.

Spanish was spoken in what is now the United States long before English was, and Hispanophone citizens have been here since the 1840s, many of them better citizens than the xenophobic assclowns who are nowadays wanting an all-English USA.

With Asians, they were integral in US securing control of the West and their presence in politics is an increasing one, Norman Mineta, Bobby Jindal, and Nikki Haley all examples of this. As is Michelle Malkin.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Your argument is that California, Texas, and Alaska (somehow Hawaii was overlooked) were all entirely distinct from the USA. Presumably because with the first two having been part of the Spanish Empire made them thus. By that standard, however, Florida is equally so. Similarly everything in the interior USA really should be Francophone.

I did not say that they were little different. I was pointing out that in both states there is a powerful religious bloc in politics. Texas is currently busy trying to bring back the glory days of Medieval times, while Massachusetts is busy suffering under Romneycare Stalinism. /snerk,.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Actually my point with Hawaii is that it was at one point a *real* country with its own army and independent laws. As opposed to satellite states, which the Republic of Texas and Bear Flag Republic were and which West Virginia began as.

They pursue them because of cultural differences from the same exact root source. That is the difference between the "sovereign US state" and the sovereign states of the outside world.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

No, I'm pointing out that 50 nations is the improper term. By linguistic standards there are 334 nations. ;P.

[geezer-also.livejournal.com]

I love reading you guys :D

[geezer-also.livejournal.com]

I have an Indian and a Peruvian d-i-l does that count?

[geezer-also.livejournal.com]

Honest truth.....
Weird how that worked out wasn't it!?!

My Peruvian d-i-l was actually born in Peru, came here when she was 4.
My Indian d-i-l was born in New Mexico, but both her parents are from India.