I had mixed feelings about Yoko Ono’s lawsuit against Expelled — fair use is a desirable goal, but I don’t think Premise Media was exercising fair use, since their movie wasn’t about Lennon’s music or ideas — so I can’t say that I’m at all surprised or upset that the lawsuit is likely to go down in flames. I’m also not appreciative of the fact that Lessig thinks this is a “great success”; it is at best a mixed result, because while it may support Lessig’s principled defense of fair use, it is also a case where he’s supporting people who are promoting lies and ignorance.

It really doesn’t matter much now, though. The propaganda movie is a dead issue, a complete flop, and it is not going to come back from the dead after a court decision that had no effect on its declining popularity is reversed.

Jerry Coyne recently gave a talk at Rockefeller University, which is now available on video. It’s a good talk, making points familiar to most readers here about the absurdity of creationism/intelligent design, with clean examples to rebut their major arguments. The real treat comes at the very end, though, when Coyne goes off the reservation to state the obvious: that religion is the root of the problem here, and that religion and science are fundamentally incompatible.

I’ve been saying this for years. Will you believe me now?

Don McLeroy is the deranged creationist dentist who was appointed to the chairmanship of the Texas State Board of Education, and who is responsible for the recent purge and intimidation of people who support good biology — he’s trouble all the way through. Take a look at his latest stunt.

The State Board of Education’s debate on new English and reading standards took another rowdy turn Friday as members approved a never-before-seen version of the lengthy document which materialized less than an hour before the board was to take a final vote.

After a wacky and terse debate on the new curriculum, the board voted 9-6 in favor of the new version, which will remain in place for the next decade and sets standards for state tests and textbooks, as well as classroom teaching.

Experts and teachers have been working on the new curriculum standards for two and a half years.

“I find it’s really wild that we can work for three years on a project and then the board is so qualified they can pull it out of their hat overnight,” said board member Pat Hardy, a Fort Worth Republican who, like other board members, received the substituted document when it was slipped under her hotel door less than an hour before their meeting was set to convene Friday morning.

Some social conservatives on the board prepared the latest version overnight.

This is similar to what our former education commissioner for Minnesota, Cheri Yecke, tried to pull — she tried to swap in a ‘minority report’ for the state science standards that was composed behind the back of the official committee … only McLeroy has outdone her by an order of magnitude or so. Why even bring in qualified educators and scientists to do the hard work of a standards committee if you’re just going to throw their work away and replace it with some hack job done by ideologues overnight? And to give it to them for review an hour before the meeting is just plain insulting.

This is for the English standards. What kind of circus are we going to see in response to the upcoming science standards?

At least one board of education member is calling for McLeroy’s ejection, although it sounds like she doesn’t expect anything to come of it. This is what we can expect of creationist conservatives: a dictatorship of the incompetent.

Some people practice their own special brand of Christian tolerance.

In learning about Central Valley Cafe Scientifique, we stumbled upon a startling incident that may or may not reflect on the scientific climate in the Valley.

The cafe’s next speaker, Fresno State professor Dr. Ryan Earley, found his car tire punctured this week and with a nasty note on his windshield saying: “Fuck you Darwinist. Take your car to heaven.”

Which side in this argument believes in turning the other cheek again?

Our local evangelical radio station is about to dump a load of tripe on the Twin Cities. I’m going to be tied up in domestic duties for a while, but if anyone else wants to tune in to KKMS (short for Khristian Krap for Mendacious Scoundrels) in about a half hour, here’s the drivel you’ll get to hear:

5:00 Hour – “Understanding the Science of Creation”

Dick Fischer, Founder and President of the Genesis Proclaimed Association joins us to explain some of the scientific facts that support the creation story found in the book of Genesis.

I’m going to try to catch some of it, but 5-6 is family time today. It’s gotta be ripe, though.

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Heh. I caught the first bit — this is turning out to be amusing. The guest started out by completely surrendering science to the scientists, saying that he had no problem with an old earth, and that he wasn’t going to argue with evolution. He’s still a loon, though: he claims that the book of Genesis is historically accurate in a literal sense. The DJs sound nonplussed, since he’s one of them, a biblical literalist, but he’s arguing for a different literal interpretation of the Bible.

You can practically hear the sizzle as their brains melt.

Apparently, a New York judge has upheld the injunction against the movie, so there will be no new showings, and DVD rights are in limbo.

The movie is dead anyway, so it doesn’t seem to be a significant decision. It’s not as if theater distributors are lined up clamoring for more copies of this stinker. Although, to be honest, I would like the rights cleared up, because the only way I’m ever going to see it is if I can rent the DVD from my local store.

Here’s the latest simple summary video from NCSE:

Here’s the most depressing thing I’ve seen all week (and I’m grading genetics exams): it’s the result of a national survey of high school biology teachers.

At least 16% of our high school teachers are young earth creationists. Furthermore, 12% our our teachers are using biology classes in public schools to teach creationism in a positive light. The majority are still pro-science, but even in the good cases, relatively little time is spent on teaching evolution.

The news isn’t all bad. One constructive discovery is that it is neither legal battles nor demanding state standards that determine how much effort is put into teaching evolution — it’s how much education the teachers have in the subject. The obvious lesson is that we ought to be encouraging more coursework for teachers; help educate the teachers, give them more material they can use in the classroom, and the students benefit.

Here’s the conclusion of the paper, which lays it all out very clearly.

Our survey of biology teachers is the first nationally representative, scientific sample survey to examine evolution and creationism in the classroom. Three different survey questions all suggest that between 12% and 16% of the nation’s biology teachers are creationist in orientation. Roughly one sixth of all teachers professed a “young earth” personal belief, and about one in eight reported that they teach creationism or intelligent design in a positive light. The number of hours devoted to these alternative theories is typically low–but this nevertheless must surely convey to students that these theories should be accorded respect as scientific perspectives.

The majority of teachers, however, see evolution as central and essential to high school biology courses. Yet the amount of time devoted to evolutionary biology varies substantially from teacher to teacher, and a majority either avoid human evolution altogether or devote only one or two class periods to the topic. We showed that some of these differences were due to personal beliefs about human origins. However, an equally important factor is the science education the teacher received while in college. Additional variance is likely to be rooted in pressures–subtle or otherwise–emerging from parents and community leaders in each school’s community, in combination with teachers’ confidence in their ability to deal with such pressures given their knowledge of evolution, as well as their personal beliefs.

These findings strongly suggest that victory in the courts is not enough for the scientific community to ensure that evolution is included in high school science courses. Nor is success in persuading states to adopt rigorous content standards consistent with recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences and other scientific organizations. Scientists concerned about the quality of evolution instruction might have a bigger impact in the classroom by focusing on the certification standards for high school biology teachers. Our study suggests that requiring all teachers to complete a course in evolutionary biology would have a substantial impact on the emphasis on evolution and its centrality in high school biology courses. In the long run, the impact of such a change could have a more far reaching effect than the victories in courts and in state governments.