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
Evolution Development of the universe 25 Jun 2008 The French have always had an affinity for developmental models of historical processes. Comte famously argued that societies had four stages to go through. Lamarck held that species were like individual organisms that had a youth, maturity and senescence. And more recently Teilhard held that evolution was heading towards a… Read More
Administrative Empirical Perspectives 8 May 20128 May 2012 Jim Goetz, frequent commenter here, has started up what looks to be a physics and science blog at Empirical Perspectives. Go visit and make rude comments. Read More
Ecology and Biodiversity What is an individual? 11 Aug 2007 Rob Wilson has a new entry up at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, entitled “The Biological notion of an individual”. It discusses an interesting problem, one that goes back to discussions by Julian Huxley in 1911. What is an individual in biology? 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.