Yearly Archives: 2006

Conflating Creation Myths With Understanding

This entry was posted in Education Religion Science on by

This question and answer session might be ok if it were couched in terms of understanding a work of literature or historical fiction:

They are trailing Rusty Carter, a guide with Biblically Correct Tours. At a large, colorful panel along a wall, Carter reads aloud from a passage describing the disappearance of dinosaurs from the earth about 65 million years ago. He and some of the older students exchange knowing smiles at the timeline, which contradicts their interpretation the Bible suggesting a 6,000-year-old planet.
“Did man and dinosaurs live together?” Carter asks. A timid yes comes from the students.
“How do we know that to be true?” Carter says. There’s a long pause.
“What day did God create dinosaurs on?” he continues.
“Six,” says a chorus of voices.
“What day did God create man on?”
“Six.”
“Did man and dinosaurs live together?”
“Yes,” the students say.
Mission accomplished for Carter, who has been leading such tours since 1988. He and the other guides counter secular interpretations of history, nature and the origin of life with their own literal reading of the Bible. And they do so right at the point where they feel they feel science indoctrinates young people — museums.

In the context in which it is presented, though, it is fraudulent and, perhaps, borders on child abuse.

Update (2/20): Myers is right that it is time to go on the offensive:

This is an excellent example of a place where the public and scientists and our institutions ought to be going on the offensive: when one of these tour groups goes through, and some biblical studies major babbles stupidly and misstates a scientific fact, everyone around him should turn around and shout, for the benefit of the group, “THAT’S NOT TRUE!”

Update 2 (2/20): Kieren Healy recommends some related reading.

Learning the Long Known

This entry was posted in Education Health Care Psychology on by

Apparently these researchers have never attended a typical school:

Obese grade-school children are more likely to be the targets of bullying than their leaner peers are, a UK study suggests.
Researchers found that among more than 8,000 7-year-olds, obese boys and girls were about 50 percent more likely to be bullied over the next year than their normal-weight classmates.
On the other hand, obese boys were also more inclined to describe themselves as bullies.

The article goes on to describe behavior that is pretty obvious to anyone who has attended a grade school. Of course, they have an astute recommendation:

So besides the long-term physical health consequences of obesity, the researchers conclude, many overweight children may also face the psychological and social effects of bullying.
“This study suggests that parents, school personnel, and health professionals need to reduce the occurrence of this behavior and the social marginalisation of obese children at an early age,” they write.

But, there is nothing in the Reuter’s article that indicates that the researchers made any recommendation as to how to achieve this reduction. So I will: simply stop sending children to these institutions.

Friday Ark #74

This entry was posted in Bird Blogging Cat Blogging Dog Blogging Entymology Friday Ark Invertebrate Blogging Pet Blogging Weekend Cat Blogging Weekend Dog Blogging on by

We’ll post links to sites that have Friday (plus or minus a few days) photos of their chosen animals (photoshops at our discretion and humans only in supporting roles). Watch the Exception category for rocks, beer, coffee cups, and….?

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Note for Haloscan Users: Haloscan started (the end of July) rejecting trackbacks if they were submitted “too rapidly” by the same host. I don’t know what the timer is but it is long enough so that it was very difficult to ping everyone that is using Haloscan for trackbacks. I’m sure that they are doing this to try to hold back the tide of trackback spam but it makes the service pretty useless for carnival type posts. Perhaps you can contact them and urge some different solution. Update: Typepad appears to be doing the same thing. Everytime I update the Ark it appears the timers are reset and the long list of MT autogenerated pings fail. Yecchhhh….