Happy New Year!

Since this blog is less than a month old I am surprised by how many posts I have made! It's been a busy month for me and my apparent new hobby -- Defeat the teaching of Creationism/Intelligent Design in Science Class. I hope the new year is as interesting as the old. On the horizon are a few things which bear watching:

This month South Carolina will be voting to approve two biology text books. These books teach Evolution and apparently that has raised the ire of the Chairwoman-elect and a congressman -- both Creationists apparently. All the other texts have been approved but these two. They are voting on Jan 9th and I hope Kenneth Miller and other supporters of science will be there to stop South Carolina from becoming the next Dover. The school children of South Carolina will not be well served by a school board that is pushing such an agenda!

Texas is also on the watch list. Just last month they effectively fired the state director of the science curriculum just before starting a review of the science curriculum. Interesting that the new president of their school board is a card-carrying Creationist. It will be interesting seeing who they put in place to be the new science curriculum director? Please keep watching or things could start going very wrong in Texas. Texas is also been asked to approve a graduate level program by the Institute of Creation Research, which moved over from California. Sure, let's start granting graduate degrees of pseudo-science!

Florida is another state to keep an eye on, specifically Polk County. There were reports that Intelligent Design was going to be added to the curriculum, but I don't think it ever got that far. The majority of the school board has expressed 'concerns' over the teaching of evolution as fact. Code words for another Creationist/Fundamentalist agenda. More watching.

School boards aren't the only battlegrounds. We need to watch Massachusetts and the suit by a fired evolutionary biologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic. He got canned by Woods Hole when he refused to do the majority of his job because it dealt with evolution! The state already turned down his claim of discrimination so he is resorting to a lawsuit. I hope Woods Hole stands firm and doesn't give into this type of blackmail. They shouldn't even settle or they will be opening the doors for all kinds of religious fruitcakes to use that for non-performance of their duties and companies will be afraid to take action. I can see it now, pharmacists who refuse certain medications because of their own religious beliefs, doctors who won't treat the opposite sex because of theirs. Pretty soon cashiers in supermarkets won't handle meat because of their beliefs . .oh wait, we have that now! Well I still hope Woods Hole does the right thing and denies this ID'iot a cent!

Plus let us not forget the Astronomer who was denied tenure because he didn't fulfill the requirements for gaining tenure . .and of course he blames his support of Intelligent Design as the reason. Well buddy, if your support of Intelligent Design caused you not to fulfill your requirements for achieving tenure, than I guess you have a point -- but since it was in your hands to begin with, you can cry about discrimination all you want! ISU should stay the course!

These are just a few of the things to look forward to in 2008. I can assume some of the things to not see will be any forward progress by ID'iots in the realm of science, like real scientific papers by Behe, Dembski, Wells and so on.

We'll probably see another series of popular press articles, lots of opinion pieces masquerading as science, and loads of knee jerk reactions from the Discovery Institute whenever anyone says something truthful about Intelligent Design. Thanks goodness for free speech! Oh, and yes, Discovery Institute, this is an example of free speech. Forcing Intelligent Design into science class is not free speech, nor is it academic freedom.