Creationist lawsuit thrown out 13 Sep 2007 Larry Caldwell, a well-known proponent of antievolutionism, tried and failed to get “the controversy” taught in the school district of his kids’ school. He failed, so he sued the school board because he was “discriminated against… for being Christian”. The suit was just thrown out. What bothers me is not that antievolutionists would again try to use the legal system to change the definition and content of science – we have come to expect that in this political battle (and it is nothing else but a political battle. There’s no science or even decent philosophy there). What bothers me is the comment by one of the school board members: School board member Jan Pinney said Caldwell’s lawsuit amounted to “sour grapes.” “For two years all our energy was spent fighting this issue,” Pinney said. “He had more time before the board than anybody has ever had in my 12 years on the board.” Two years? The school board spent two years catering to this moron, while there were undoubtedly real educational issues to attend to? The fact that they even gave him a hearing is charity enough. This is incredible. General Science Politics
General Science Students publishing 13 Jan 20084 Oct 2017 TR Gregory at Scientific Blogging asks why advisors would encourage their students to publish. One of the reasons is: Most of the graduate and undergraduate students with whom I have worked directly have been quite excited by the possibility of seeing their names in print on a high quality piece… Read More
Administrative The Bastards are emerging 17 Jul 2010 We have now had three posts on Opinionated Bastards . Lorax on grant funding, Mike Haubrich on why religion and science are incompatible on an inductive inference, and now Eamon Knight on why pedophile priests and women priests are equivalent in the eyes of the Vatican. Stay tuned for more… Read More
Ecology and Biodiversity Developing dumbness 5 Aug 2008 I get a lot of Google alerts about various things, including species concepts, obviously. I have noticed a pattern: media from the so-called “developed” or “first world” almost never put much in the way of actual facts or knowledge in their reports, concerned, I guess, that it will scare the… Read More
Caldwell was, if memory serves, already well known in the area for being both a lawyer himself and suit happy. A certain amount of eggshell walking was prudent. But the bozo still can take satisfaction of having damaged, by distracting the board, the educations of numerous children, which, after all, was his intent from the get-go.
“. . . already well known in the area for being both a lawyer himself and suit happy.” Don’t know about ‘suit happy, but certainly as a lawyer previous to ’04. Most important was his alliance with at least two board members. Along with that was the eggshell walking that accompanies the possibility of denigrating one’s religious belief, or at least the expression of one’s belief system. Fortunately, despite his ‘disracting the board’ the education of numerous children was not (significantly?) damaged. The education of children occurs in the classroom, where I reside, not in the board room. I did not allow, as much as humanly possible, the distractions to negatively influence the education of my students. Instead, it was the children in my own home that suffered damage as I spent tired hours from staying up late with my children to combat Caldwell and/or missed events that I’ll not recover -I missed one of the only three wins from my son’s little league season that year. He was ‘fired up’;I was happy for him but don’t really know how he played, I wasn’t there – dealing with Caldwell’s nonsense (he requested, via protocol, all of the materials I use to teach Evolutin). Caldwell’s time in front of the board didn’t really occur over a two year period. June of ’03 to June of ’04 is the time period when we defeated Caldwell. During the remaining time, the battle occurred in the courts.
If I may say so, kudos to you for doing the right thing by your students and the school district. I am sorry that your kids had to bear the brunt of that raving moron’s idiocy.