Category Archives: Intelligent Design

12/06/2014
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BioLogos Foundation, Creationism, God, Intelligent Design, Monroe County Community School Corporation, Springsted Inc.

Hot Air

Who Needs Hallmark?

The Loved One was up almost all night earlier this week designing our 2014-15 holiday card. Her cards, in case you’ve never seen one, are whimsically creative. For my money, they’re the best.

Holiday Card 2014-15

A Little Taste

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We don’t send holiday cards to many people largely because I’m a Grinch and won’t turn over to her any list of people I like. But those we do send them to uniformly are impressed by TLO’s eye and sensibility.

I dunno, maybe I’ll pitch some names and addresses over to her this year — not because I’m becoming less of a winter holiday curmudgeon but because more people should see her great stuff.

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Teach Your Children Well

So, the Monroe County Community School Corporation just laid out forty G’s for a consultant to figure out if voters might pass a referendum to help the MCCSC get more money.

What else can the MCCSC buy for $40,000? Let’s see:

  • 166 iPad Minis
  • 3333 Social studies textbooks, Amazing Americans: The Rise of Industry: Jane Adams, McGraw-Hill
  • 4449 Copies, To Kill a Mockingbird, Grand Central Publishing
  • 7286 Boxes, Crayola Crayons, 64-count
  • 7421 Mead composition books, tape-bound

Mead Comp Book

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  • 13,652 Free student lunches provided by the US Dept. of Agriculture, Food & Nutrition Service, under its National School Lunch Program
  • 363,636 Staples No. 2 yellow pencils with erasers, 4 doz. pack

The MCCSC, though, has elected to direct a precious wad of 40-extra large to the coffers of Springsted, Inc., “a public sector advisor with services spanning every stage of your community’s life cycle” (from its website), to gauge the odds of getting more money from you and me.

Money, I might add, I’d be happy to pay for things like, oh, pencils, books, or iPads. In fact, I’d be happy to pony up scads more dough for the kids and their teachers. It can be money well spent.

Not on slick consultants, though.

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Who Needs Books?

Speaking of education, a recent poll commissioned by the BioLogos Foundation and conducted by Calvin College sociologist Jonathan Hill, have found that more than half the citizens of this holy land believe:

  • Adam and Eve were real people
  • Evolution, Creationism, and Intelligent Design should be taught in public schools
  • The Bible is the actual or inspired word of God, without errors

From "The Ten Commandments"

Where’s Your Certainty Now, Moses?

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A full one of five people believe Creationism alone should be taught in our schools.

Slate mag requested Hill’s numbers breakdown for this poll and lays out the details in a piece written by William Saletan. It turns out that when people are pressed on these beliefs they shy away from them a bit. When specific questions about creation and God’s role in it are included in the questions posed to poll respondents, people’s certainty in their beliefs begins to deteriorate.

This reminds me of all those polls that ask Americans if welfare is a good thing and most of them say hell no. Then, when pressed — for instance when asked if federal and state gov’ts should assist the hungry and the homeless — people suddenly become more altruistic.

The devil, you might pardon the pun, is in the details.

“Yes, we’re a creationist country,” Saletan concludes. “But apparently, we’re pretty creative about what that means.”

There might be hope for us yet.

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03/15/2012
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Atheism, Black P Stones, Chicago Outfit, Clarence Darrow, David Coppedge, Intelligent Design, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Latin Kings, Murray Humphreys, NASA, Paul "The Waiter" Ricca, Richard Dawkins, Richard J. Daley, Rod Blagojevich, Sam Adam Jr., Scopes Monkey Trial, Uncategorized, Vice Lords, Wrongful Termination

The Pencil Today:

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THE QUOTE

“We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.” ” Richard Dawkins

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OH, GOD

So, some god fetishist who got fired from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for haranguing people with his myth-belief is suing NASA for wrongful termination.

David Coppedge says NASA tried to discipline him for spouting his fairy tale.

NASA says he created a hostile work environment for his underlings by laying Intelligent Design propaganda on them.

This is perfect, kiddies.

It’s the Battle of the Century. That is, the 11th Century versus the 21st Century.

Standing Tall Against Knowledge For A Thousand Years And Counting

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Democritus, Copernicus, Galileo, Darwin, and Sagan are all spinning in their graves. Hawking would spin if he could.

It’s god versus man in a cage match. The brain against the heart. Want a hint as to where I stand (as if you needed one)? The brain is the seat of thought; the heart is not. It’s a pump, dig?

I hope this lawsuit turns out to be as dramatic as the Scopes Monkey Trial some 90 years ago. I hope there’s a mouthpiece as deft and elequent as Clarence Darrow was. I hope NASA’s attorney puts Coppedge‘s lawyer on the witness stand. I can’t wait for the hologram movie about it all to come out in 50 years.

Who knows? Perhaps by that time we’ll have progressed so far as to tax churches. We may even have open atheists and agnostics running for high office. Our generals might not feel compelled to invoke the almighty to help us blow the brains out of enemy soldiers.

Nah.

I forgot; this is America.

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COLLEGE MAN

My old neighbor Rod R. Blagojevich gave his last press conference as a free man outside his home in Chicago yesterday.

The former governor of Illinois now begins his long stay at the federal hotel in Colorado. Or, as Outfit bosses used to put it, college. — as in, “Paul ‘The Waiter’ Ricca is still da man in dis operation, but he’s in college right now. Curly Humphreys is workin’ his ass off tryin’ to get him paroled.”

It’s funny: that’s the one thing Blagojevich was never accused of — playing footsie with the Chicago Mob. That’s probably only because the Chicago Mob was finished by the time Blago took over the state. Over. History, baby.

All the old Mustache Petes were long dead. Those who had been known as the Young Turks were either dead, senile, or in college.

“The Last Supper” Photo Of Chicago Outfit Bosses (c. 1978)

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Rod could have cleaned up had there been a lively Outfit to support him in his duties to the people of Illinois. The Outfit generally had county, state, and, on occasion, federal prosecutors in their back pockets. Judges and cops, too. Old Man Mayor Daley, the first pharaoh of Chicago, never made any bones about it — he had no choice but to work with the Outfit.

Now, thanks to the wonders of competitive capitalism, a Chicago mayor may work with any number of disciplined criminal organizations. There are, to name a few, the Latin Kings, the Vice Lords, and the Black P Stones. None of them, though, is as thorough and effective as the old Outfit.

None can point to their rolls and boast of a fixer as capable of gaming the political and justice system as Curly Humphreys.

Fixer Extraordinaire

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I’ll bet Rod Blagojevich rues the passing of the good old days.

Anyway, Blagojevich met the press and a passel of chanting supporters on Francisco Avenue yesterday. It was a circus. And Rod was the clown.

You’d expect a guy facing a stiff prison sentence to act somewhat contrite. Hell, most people would have the good sense to fake it if they still harbored thoughts of the unfairness of it all.

Not Rod.

He sounded more like a man running for another term in office rather than a convicted felon about to start a term in the joint.

What — Me Worry?

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“I believe,” he told the crowd, “I always, always, thought about what’s right for the people. And I am proud as I leave, and enter the next part of what is a dark and hard journey, that I can take with me the sense of accomplishment and a real belief that the things that I did as governor and the things that I did as a congressman actually helped real, ordinary people…. One thing I had a lot of was a desire to help average, ordinary people.”

Later, as he climbed into the car that would take him to O’Hare Airport and his flight to the federal pen, he said he had “a clear conscience and I have high, high hopes for the future.”

Wow.

Not a hint that he might have done one or two things differently during his term as the top influence peddler in Illinois. Not a breath that he even should have tempered his language, that maybe his faux tough guy, street wise lingo could have been misinterpreted. No.

“I’ve got this thing and it’s fucking golden, and, uh, uh, I’m just not giving it up for fuckin’ nothing. I’m gonna do it. And, and I can always use it.”

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Blagojevich spent his last day as a free man telling reporters, neighbors, and supporters what a terrific servant of the people he’s always been.

Man.

I’ll tell you one thing I learned yesterday. Blagojevich’s defense attorney, Sam Adam Jr., blew his best shot to get his client off. He should have advised Rod R. Blagojevich to plead not guilty by reason of insanity.

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01/31/2012
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Albert Einstein, Ambient Music, Apollo 11, Bram Tchaikovsky, Brian Eno, Buzz Aldrin, Camilla Williams, Charles Beavers, Edward J. Goodwin, Indiana State Legislature, Indiana University, Intelligent Design, Jacobs School of Music, Kansas (band), Koyaanisqatsi, Malcolm X, Mental Floss, Minimalism, Neil Armstrong, New York City Opera, Philip Glass, Prog Rock, Trance Music, Value of Pi

The Pencil Today:

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THE QUOTE

“Only two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity — and I’m not sure about the former.” — Albert Einstein

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A HEAVENLY PIONEER

Bloomington’s own Camilla Williams, international opera star and professor emeritus at IU, died Sunday. She was 92.

Williams

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Williams was thought to be the first black woman to appear with a major US opera company, the New York City Opera in 1946. Her late husband, Charles Beavers, was an attorney for Malcolm X.

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MASTER OF MINIMALISM

Philip Glass is 75 today. He is also still very, very cool.

Glass

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Do yourself a favor and download the documentary, “Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance.” It is a gloriously beautiful and ugly examination of life on late 20th Century Earth. It has no narrator; no human’s voice is heard throughout. The only sound you’ll hear is Glass’s musical score.

Glass presaged trance music by decades. And the composer certainly influenced Brian Eno, whose ambient forms beginning in the mid-1970s helped save the world from the navel-gazing pap of the likes of Kansas and other uber-pretentious prog rockers.

Eno

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Glass may well be the composer music students in the year 2512 revere as they do Bach or Wagner today.

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INDIANA: THE SQUARED STATE

Now that the great state o’Indiana is considering teaching the myth of Intelligent Design in our public schools, it’s worth keeping in mind that our fair fiftieth of this holy land once before attempted to throw a caveman’s club into the gears of intellectual progress.

Mental Floss points out that in the 1890s, an Indiana chucklehead by the name of Edward J. Goodwin fantasized that he’d discovered a method to “square the circle,” a long disproved mathematical exercise. Goodwin was convinced that by equating the circle with a square, one could easily find its area.

Part of Goodwin’s fever dream was to jigger with the value of pi, the constant that allows the sane among us to calculate a circle’s area. It was the equivalent of NASA navigators saying, “Aw, what the hell, let’s just call the distance to the moon 240,000 miles — what’s a couple thousand miles one way or another?”

Given that attitude, the mummified corpses of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin might today be floating several billion miles outside our Solar System.

Just Point That Thing Toward The Moon, Boys

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Goodwin — from the town of Solitude, appropriately enough — told the world in the 1890s that he’d found the secret to squaring the circle. In the grand tradition of many another snake oil salesman, Goodwin was more than willing to let mathematicians and educators use his secret formula — for a price.

But he had a soft spot for Indiana and offered to let Hoosier State schools teach his method for free as long as the state legislature would enact a statute declaring his crackpot idea the real thing.

And guess what — several Indiana House committees studied his equations, including his insistence that pi should be 3.2 (as opposed to the accurate constant 3.141592653589793….) The committees approved Goodwin’s methods and wrote up a bill declaring pi to be 3.2 and the circle, legally, squared.

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And then the full House approved the bill unanimously! By the time the nation’s newspapers got hold of this news and began to bray with laughter at Indiana, the state Senate defeated the bill. Even that vote was iffy after a Senate committee passed it onto the floor.

Science and Indiana — I wonder if this is the first time the two words have ever appeared together in print.

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GIRL OF MY DREAMS

Another chestnut from my college radio years, by Bram Tchiakovsky.

Pure power pop poetry:

Judy was an American girl/

She came in the morning/

With the US Mail.

Enjoy the soaring melody, goosebump harmony, and bell-ringing rhythm chord progressions.

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