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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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I'm never more optimistic about the future than when...
Then when reading political threads on supertopo..
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Is Accepting Evolution Optional?
Unfortunately, America has an uneasy relationship with experts. Many people don't like the idea of consulting some egghead at a university to get scoop on complex problems, even though that egghead might be the world's leading expert and hold a position endorsed by the National Academy of Sciences. Every night on Fox News Glenn Beck assaults expertise and education as if they are just different prejudices. He regularly pits his high school diploma against teams of Ivy League doctorates in a most amazing performance as America's leading anti-intellectual. A few hours later on Fox News, Sean Hannity hosts a "great American panel" in which he asks former beauty queens, football coaches, and country singers to comment on complex political and economic questions.
This sort of anti-intellectualism -- the religious and political roots of which are documented in Richard Hofstadter's classic work, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life and examined from another perspective in my forthcoming The Anointed: Evangelical Truth in a Secular Age -- provides much of the foundation for the assaults being made today on evolution. We are regularly told that we can "make up our own minds" about evolution. The preferred educational strategy being advanced is a "two models" approach where evolution and some version of anti-evolution -- like intelligent design -- are presented and students are encouraged to make up their own minds.
This is a disastrous approach to education -- anti-intellectualism disguised as democratic egalitarianism. To expose high school students to fringe perspectives, presented as genuine alternatives, and then encourage them to "choose" the one they like best is to send the message that there is no such thing as knowledge.
Unfortunately, America has an uneasy relationship with experts. Many people don't like the idea of consulting some egghead at a university to get scoop on complex problems, even though that egghead might be the world's leading expert and hold a position endorsed by the National Academy of Sciences. Every night on Fox News Glenn Beck assaults expertise and education as if they are just different prejudices. He regularly pits his high school diploma against teams of Ivy League doctorates in a most amazing performance as America's leading anti-intellectual. A few hours later on Fox News, Sean Hannity hosts a "great American panel" in which he asks former beauty queens, football coaches, and country singers to comment on complex political and economic questions.
This sort of anti-intellectualism -- the religious and political roots of which are documented in Richard Hofstadter's classic work, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life and examined from another perspective in my forthcoming The Anointed: Evangelical Truth in a Secular Age -- provides much of the foundation for the assaults being made today on evolution. We are regularly told that we can "make up our own minds" about evolution. The preferred educational strategy being advanced is a "two models" approach where evolution and some version of anti-evolution -- like intelligent design -- are presented and students are encouraged to make up their own minds.
This is a disastrous approach to education -- anti-intellectualism disguised as democratic egalitarianism. To expose high school students to fringe perspectives, presented as genuine alternatives, and then encourage them to "choose" the one they like best is to send the message that there is no such thing as knowledge.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/karl-giberson-phd/evolution-education-optional_b_870971.html
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Todd Gordon
Trad climber
Joshua Tree, Cal
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I'm never more optimistic about the future than when........I hear Sarah Palin speak about the USA and her plan for America.
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Ricky D
Trad climber
Sierra Westside
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You are either on the bus...or off.
The question is - would Ken Kesey have ridden the bus with Sarah?
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apogee
climber
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Hey! Todd just made a polititard post!
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Jennie
Trad climber
Elk Creek, Idaho
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I'm never more optimistic about the future than when...
...I read more women than ever are turning to elite sperm banks as means to motherhood.
re: eugenics, 21st-century style
One Stanford student (a grad by now) is purportedly the biological father of more than a 1,000 children. Imagine what goes through his mind.
Aside from the serious issues relative to raising children without identifiable and attentive fathers…
If a sperm donor sires too many kids, the risk of producing children who will eventually mate… increases. Half brothers and sisters (from the same donor father) have actually married not knowing they were related. Sperm banks place a limitation on the number of families a donor can produce. A limit prevents the problem mentioned above and is adhered to by most all sperm banks.
The Sperm Bank of California is very scrupulous …allowing no more than 10 families built from one donor.
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Lynne Leichtfuss
Trad climber
Will know soon
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I'm never more optimistic about the future than when ..... I wake up to a fresh new day. Alive, thinking, feeling and all the earth and critters around me feel the same. I hear them say so each new dawn. Smiles, peace and joy, lynnie
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