Need more Creation Science Fair?

Here’s another moderately detailed summary of the Twin Cities Creation Science Association’s Homeschool Science Fair. It’s about as I expected: some kids were enthusiastic about the science and actually thought about what they were doing, others were coasting by blankly, doing the work because they were required to. In other words, not any different from a secular science fair, except for the Bible verse nonsense and for some, the attitude that they were there to refute science…by using science.

How about if we stop pretending religion is an important academic subject at all?

I was asked to promote this petition to stop forced religious indoctrination in Greek schools, and I support it and you should go sign it if you agree.

Greek public schools hold daily Orthodox prayer, schedule regular church visits as well as mandate the taking of a “religious studies” class every year. However, Greek law also allows students to opt out by submitting a simple form signed by their guardian if they are under 18. Unfortunately, many school administrators are either unaware or simply refuse to allow the exemption and ministry officials are not holding them to account.

The latest case is Stavros Kanias, School Principal in the Glika Nera suburb of Athens. Kanias is refusing to allow a middle school student to opt out even stating that his refusal is based on a desire to “follow the law of Christ”. Even though the required form has been submitted it is not being accepted. Many similar cases are often not publicized.

When Greek MP’s have raised the question in parliament, the Education Minister has simply reiterated the procedure and deferred to lower ministry officials.

But I do have one reservation: it doesn’t go far enough. It’s a good idea to give students the ability to opt out of religious instruction, but why is religious instruction in any school any where?

I’ve usually taken a pragmatic perspective on this issue before. We don’t have much choice to but to give way on minor compromises in school curricula, and this is often an easy one: if religion is taught comparatively and objectively, it’s a good tool for breaking dogma. I can’t get too irate at a school offering a “world religions” class, because I know that would be the first step towards atheism for the students (for the same reason, though, I’m suspicious. Our opponents aren’t morons, and they’d know this too — I suspect them of plotting to smuggle orthodoxy into the classroom under cover of objectivity, and for instance, knowing that a local priest of the dominant cult will often offer to teach the course.)

But here’s my major problem. It’s a useless subject. And no, I’m not one of those elitist yahoos who thinks art and philosophy are useless subjects, rejecting anything that isn’t a hard science; I mean, it is literally useless, distracting, and narrow. If right now students were getting an hour a week in a “religious studies” class, I think they’d be far better served by getting an hour a week for anthropology, or philosophy, or poetry…or sure, more math.

I know what the usual argument would be: but every culture has a religion of some sort, it’s a human universal, people find it important and we ought to acknowledge it. So? Every human culture has parasites and diseases, so why don’t we have a mandatory weekly course in parasitology? It would be far more entertaining, interesting, and useful. What wouldn’t be quite so useful, though, is a course taught from the perspective of the malaria parasite, praising its role in shaping human civilizations for thousands of years, which is pretty much equivalent to what kids get in a “religious studies” class right now.

I don’t think religion will ever disappear, but I’ll be satisfied when seminaries and theology departments all shut down everywhere for lack of interest.

Ending bobcat trapping in California

I mentioned a bit ago that some yahoos have been trapping bobcats in my neighborhood. That trapping has attracted the attention of reporter Louis Sahagun, who cracked the lid off the topic this weekend with an article in the Los Angeles Times. Sahagun interviewed some of my neighbors as well as a couple of trappers, one of whom — Mercer Lawing of Barstow, California — came up with this little bon mot:

“We love those animals more than the people who are complaining about us trapping them do.”

That link above is to Mercer Lawing’s bobcat trap business page, which contains potentially disturbing photos. He took down his Facebook page yesterday after my followup piece at KCET linked to it. I’m sure that was just a coincidence.

I’d been meaning to write something at KCET on the issue for a couple weeks, and since Sahagun had done all the hard work and beaten me to it,  I followed his article with an analysis of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s epically crappy science on bobcats, and a call to ban bobcat trapping in California altogether.

My KCET piece is here. Short version:

The last time anyone came close to counting bobcat numbers in California was in the 1970s. Back then an estimated 72,000 cats lived in the state, and a scientific panel established by President Ford figured hunters and trappers could take one fifth of that population every year without damaging the species in California. The actual science was so tenuous that a judge stopped exports of California bobcat pelts in 1982, saying trade in pelts could resume only when the Fish and Wildlife Service came up with more authoritative numbers. That never happened, and the ban on bobcat pelt exports was lifted a few months later when changes in the federal Endangered Species Act made the case moot.

Bobcat

Also, an excuse to sneak a kitteh picture past PZ.

In the 30 years since, California bobcat trappers have had no limit on the number of cats they can kill. Five a day, ten, a thousand? It’s all the same to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. Aside from the trapping season, which runs from November through January, the only limit on bobcat trapping is that DFW closes the season early if the haul reaches 14,400 cats — a fifth of the controversial population estimate in the 1970s, which has not been updated. As the price of spotted cat fur goes up, the haul of California bobcats does too, with DFW sitting on its hands as long as that magical “14,400 dead cats” number isn’t reached.

Check out the whole KCET piece for more detail on that, plus a natural history story about how bobcats might be Joshua trees’ best ally in a warming world.

As someone who likes to eat venison, I’m no anti-hunt person per se. But essentially unregulated trapping of top-level carnivores is altogether different. And doing so with no scientific justification is even worse.

The Center for Biological Diversity, which has also been tracking the issue, has set up an action alert page where Californians can send a preformatted but editable letter to the appropriate California legislator urging them to ban bobcat trapping in the state. I hope you’ll consider signing it and sharing it around your circles, should you have friends in California.

And a few bobcat enthusiasts in my neighborhood have set up a site called Project Bobcat, where they’ll be posting updates and background information. Check it out.

 

 

Sasquatch is ill-served

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Melba Ketchum issued a press release announcing that she had sequenced Sasquatch DNA. That was back in November.

It stalled out at that point. It turns out the paper couldn’t get past peer review, and no one was going to publish it. We’re all heartbroken, I know.

But now she has overcome all the obstacles, and it’s finally in print! You can read the abstract.

One hundred eleven samples of blood, tissue, hair, and other types of specimens were studied, characterized and hypothesized to be obtained from elusive hominins in North America commonly referred to as Sasquatch. DNA was extracted and purified from a subset of these samples that survived rigorous screening for wildlife species identification. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequencing, specific genetic loci sequencing, forensic short tandem repeat (STR) testing, whole genome single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) bead array analysis, and next generation whole genome sequencing were conducted on purported Sasquatch DNA samples gathered from various locations in North America. Additionally, histopathologic and electron microscopic examination were performed on a large tissue sample. vel non-human DNA.

Umm, yeah, I know, it kind of falls apart in the last sentence, but that’s what it says.

How did she get it published?

Well, she says she bought an existing journal and renamed it (the Journal of Cosmology was on the market, and I hoped most fervently that that was it…but no, JoC is still online). So she owns the journal. It’s now called De Novo.

Then she came out with a special edition. It’s Volume 1, Issue 1. It contains precisely one paper, hers.

You should be laughing by this point.

The online journal is a mess. The layout is funky-ugly, it’s difficult to figure out how to actually get to the paper, and when you navigate to it, it’s got a wretched little “Buy Now” button imbedded in a couple of intersecting blocks of color in a hideous table-like layout. It reminds be of the esthetics of JoC.

Anyway, it’s $30 to buy a paper so bad they had to build a custom journal around it to get it published. Not interested.

Canada…is there a problem you haven’t told us about?

This is a horrible little spot for the anti-gay marriage people in the UK. The first part is whining about FREE SPEECH and how it’s terrible that people can be discriminated against just for believing in “man-woman marriage” (hint: no one has a problem with “man-woman marriage”. The issue is that these people want to restrict the rights of people to practice other kinds of marriage.)

But it’s the last half that has me worried. They want to point to a failed state that is afflicted with the horror of allowing man-man and woman-woman marriage; a place where chaos has erupted, civil liberties are trampled, and the people live in terror of oppression by The Gays. And that place is…

Canada?

Have there been riots up North? Are the heterosexuals now enslaved? They’re just not telling us about it, right, because as everyone knows, The Gays dominate the media and they’ve clamped down on the word getting out. Canadians, you can tell me — just post your stories about the lesbians with whips and the gay men with cattle prods stalking your streets. I want to know.

You’re so close. It wouldn’t take much for jack-booted homosexuals to spill over the border and take over Minnesota, you know.

(via Joe. My. God.)