Down with McLeroy and Perry

It's hard to be surprised anymore with the Texas State Board of Education. So it took some prodding from outsiders for me to gin up enough anger to post an entry on the latest outrage. Or maybe it's because Wendy did enough for both of us when she heard it, immediately sitting down on Saturday morning and firing off a letter to the editor of the Austin American-Statesman:

I was appalled to see that our State Board of Education hastily wrote and passed new reading and English standards that will affect my own kids for the next decade. What does it say about the Texas education system when there's a political Board that rejects the 3-year revision work of teachers and professionals in the field (who actually know something about teaching students), writes its own revisions overnight, and then doesn't let its members take time to review it? What's more, it is extremely embarrassing and disappointing that our representative, Cynthia Dunbar, voted for this revision. Her kids are home-schooled and private-schooled, so what kind of investment could she possibly have in our public education system? When she is up for re-election in 2010, we need to vote for someone who believes enough in the standards she is passing that she places her own children in public schools.

The outsiders I mentioned, whose comments I recommend you check out, are Pharyngula and Bad Astronomy.

Don McLeroy is the creationist dentist who is the chair of the State Board of Education. He was appointed by, and continues to be affirmed by, the Governor of Texas, Rick Perry (R).

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

The 2007 film was nominated for four Oscars, and won several other awards. (trailer here) It is based on the true story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, editor of the French fashion magazine Elle, who suffered a stroke and lived for a year and a half with "locked-in syndrome." He was completely paralyzed except for the ability to blink one eye, but his mind was completely intact. The amazing part of all this is that the true story was written by Bauby himself and published two weeks after he died of pneumonia in 1997. He dictated the book by blinking one eye.

A diving bell--or maybe a better term is diving suit, given the image used in the film--is the large deep sea diving suit with a large metal helmet. This is how his condition feels to him. He's trapped in an immovable suit plunged deep in the ocean. A special visitor tells him that he must cling to what is human inside him, and then he realizes: He still has full access to his imagination and his memory, and these things make him feel like a butterfly, shedding his cocoon (or diving bell).

His is a story of the immense capability (I hesitate to say indomitability) of the human spirit. But that's too close to a cliché. It's really a story of the chasmic neediness of the human spirit. In one of the most poignant moments, he remembers recently shaving his father, who gives him a rare compliment. Bauby remarks, recalling this encounter, that we are all children, and we all want approval.

It is a very realistic portrayal of his condition and his struggles, told with remarkable thoughtfulness and even humor.

I don't really understand the attachment Bauby continued to feel towards his lover who never came to visit him, and I thought it was improbable that he was surrounded with only beautiful women in the remote seaside hospital (his speech therapist, his physical therapist, the person who took his dictation, and, as he calls her, the mother of his children).

I can only speak for myself, of course, but it was a reminder to me that I have no reason to complain.

The "Dutchess" of Pedernales

This is funny, and though it has to do with the PEC board election, it might be entertaining to those who don't live in central Texas as well.

There's a person on the PEC4U Candidate Forum who calls herself "Dutchess." Judging by her comments, it is a fitting moniker (though should be "Duchess," since the only "Dutchess" that I'm aware of is a county in New York, and pop singer Fergie's album title). I've replied on the forum, so I won't repeat the exchanges here. But I suspect she's connected to one of the insider candidates, though she hasn't yet identified herself. On the topic of Board Compensation, the Dutchess refers to PEC customers (who have no choice in what utility to choose) as "'you' the members," and informs us that

"It's hard to understand board pay sometimes, but many of your successful people have earned 1M plus salaries, and have more to contribute than a $30k clerk."

That's an argument for why Board members should receive $50K salaries for a part-time advisory role on the board. That they are millionaires. Funny.

Pedernales Electric Cooperative

I apologize to those who do not live in central Texas, and are not members of the Pedernales Electric Cooperative, but now that I'm on http://blognetnews.com/Texas/ there's a slightly better chance that a post like this will reach more people for whom it's relevant.

About a year ago I moved to a new address, and my only option for electric utilities was the PEC. About the same time, stories started appearing in the Austin American-Statesman chronicling Bud and Bennie's Excellent Adventures.

So now it's election time for the PEC Board of Directors. Time to vote the bums out. Except there are 58 candidates to fill 5 positions, and only one incumbent to vote out, D.L. Ruff. And there's only one other candidate with an obvious connection to another board member, Sandra Tenorio. So how is the average person to figure out whom to vote FOR?

One step to take is to visit PEC4U, and especially the online forum, where some folks are starting to explore this question. Online and mail-in voting ends June 13, and the annual meeting is June 21.

blog net news

My blog has been added to blognetnews.com, Texas edition, by its editor, Ted McLaughlin. I'm still learning what all this means, and I'll be honest, I've never heard of BNN until now. But at least one thing I think it means is that this and all my posts will also show up there, whenever the editor hits refresh (?).

This will be a nice experiment, then. Keep clicking on http://blognetnews.com/Texas/ and exploring the place until you see this post show up. There are front pages for all the states, as well as for countless other categories of interest.

science is for girls

Two things this week make me say that.

The first is a "This I Believe" segment by Holly Dunsworth: I am Evolution. It is very good, and inspiring.

The second is an assignment my fourth grade daughter completed. Students were to choose any question for research and presentation. All on her own, she chose "Evolution." I'm so proud of her.

View it here. (.ppsx)

Download Power Point Viewer free. (thanks Alan)

David Brooks, you disappoint me

I've noted on occasion how David Brooks is one of my favorite conservative commentators (and a U of C alum). But he is definitely in over his head with his latest column: The Neural Buddhists. I'm not an expert either, but I don't get my op-eds published in the New York Times.

Where should we start?

1) In his first four paragraphs he dismisses a caricature of some pretty impressive science, which he dubs "militant materialism," and "this kind of thinking," with the help of a twelve year old essay by a journalist, Tom Wolfe.

2) This quote: "Genes are not merely selfish, it appears. Instead, people seem to have deep instincts for fairness, empathy and attachment." He alludes to the title of Richard Dawkins' book, The Selfish Gene, without apparently even knowing what Dawkins' thesis is. The "selfishness" of genes has nothing whatsoever to do with selfishness as a human characteristic. Indeed, our "instincts for fairness, empathy and attachment" are explainable by "selfish genes."

3) "In their arguments with Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, the faithful have been defending the existence of God. That was the easy debate." Excuse me? Easy for whom? Has Brooks paid any attention to these debates? Has he heard of Daniel Dennett or Sam Harris?

4) "The real challenge is going to come from people who feel the existence of the sacred, but who think that particular religions are just cultural artifacts built on top of universal human traits. It’s going to come from scientists whose beliefs overlap a bit with Buddhism." Again, has he heard of Sam Harris?

5) "Orthodox believers are going to have to defend particular doctrines and particular biblical teachings. They’re going to have to defend the idea of a personal God, and explain why specific theologies are true guides for behavior day to day. I’m not qualified to take sides, believe me." Give me a break, David. You're qualified enough. Stop pretending that traditional theology has a leg to stand on.

6) Brooks can't seem to use the terms "atheist" or "materialist" without the prefixed adjectives, "militant," "hard-core," or "assertive."

Brooks actually has a decent point to make, somewhere in there. It's just that he's buried it underneath a lot of question begging, ignorance, mischaracterizations, flaccid research on his part, and false homage to traditionalism.

research surveys

Sam Harris has four questionnaires on his website having to do with belief and unbelief, and is looking for volunteers to answer at least one of them. I did all four, and they basically cover much of the same ground, though with some variation. Check it out if you're interested in finding out more.

consumption junction

What are you going to do with your tax rebate? Apparently the patriotic thing to do is to spend it. Immediately. It doesn't matter on what. Just spend it, and get something. Consume.

President Bush, in St. Louis on Friday (May 2), made this point about the purpose of the rebates:

"Secondly, we wanted to make sure that people were encouraged to be consumers. We want there to be consumption in our society. And no better way to stimulate consumption than to let you have some of your own money back."

Remember when "consumption" used to refer to an infectious disease?

I came across an interesting page about consumption as a global issue.

And then there's The Story of Stuff, with Annie Leonard. It's an overview of issues like environmental degradation, manufacturing, consumption, disposal, and the role of government and business in all of it. You might find some of it a bit cartoonish or too much of a caricature, but it's interesting and entertaining; and the section on "Consumption" is what I'm highlighting here.

Now let's be real. As long as we live and breath, we're going to be consumers. But to have consumption as a kind of goal, or purpose, or necessity for a good economy...it just seems a little sick and twisted to me. I'm going to do my best to save, or invest, or pay down some debt, with my rebate check.

plant a seed - see what grows

It's an Earth Day miracle! (for the proper intonation of that phrase, listen at the 4:39 mark of this video)

A year ago I was thinking about green roofs, and approached the Facilities department at my place of work about testing a pilot project on our buildings in downtown Austin. They were open to it, but had lots of other things on their plate, and so I let it go.

This morning, I was informed that they started a small test plot on one of the buildings. It's really small--one 2' x 2' tray filled with light gravel and bursting with drought resistant plants--but it's a start. If it lives, they'll expand their test area.

There's a lesson there somewhere...

*Update: Apparently some of the inspiration may have come from this venture at UT-Arlington.

black gold in NoDak

So is this good news, bad news, or ultimately inconsequential news?

Billions of Barrels of Oil...

For 50 years oil has been known to exist in northwestern North Dakota, northeastern Montana, and southern Saskatchewan. This underground area is known as the Bakken Formation. A couple years ago, it was discovered that there may be more there than previously believed. Perhaps much more. Along the lines of 200 billion barrels or more. By comparison, Saudi Arabia is #1 in the world with 264 billion barrels of proven oil reserves. The keyword there is PROVEN. The early estimates for the Bakken Formation have not panned out. The US Geological Survey just released their report, which concludes that there are 3.65 billion barrels of oil recoverable with existing technology. According the to NYT article, this "technically recoverable" label is one notch below "proven." Furthermore, the reserves in Saudi Arabia are easily recovered, whereas the oil in the Bakken Formation is trapped two miles down between layers of shale and sandstone. It will take thousands of wells to reach these deposits. It's just more difficult and more expensive than it is in the Middle East.

There are two different BIG issues here that are easy to conflate. (I'm surely guilty of conflating several big issues into only TWO, but let's start from the top and work from there. I'm also not an expert in any of these fields, so caveat lector.) The first issue is Peak Oil. In a nutshell, we are going to run out of economically recoverable petroleum at some point. Google "peak oil" for yourself if you want to know more. It's not a controversial concept, only the timing of the peak and what we're going to do about it are in question. So is this good news, because it kicks the peak down the road a few years? Or is it inconsequential? The US alone consumes 7 billion barrels of oil in a year, so the number of technically recoverable barrels estimated for Bakken by the USGS is about 6 months worth. But the technology could improve, and more might become recoverable in the future.

The second big issue is climate change. Is this discovery bad news, because it just feeds our addiction to fossil fuels, when we need to be focusing on developing alternatives? Or is it inconsequential, for the reasons stated above?

There is a third big issue--energy independence for the US--but to me it seems like a smaller issue than the first two, because it is framed as a US-centered issue, rather than with the rest of the world much in mind. I think energy independence for the US is important, but I think that the world energy situation and the world climate situation are bigger, more important, and ultimately encompass our own narrow energy concerns as a nation.

* * *

I have to add that one of the factors that increases my interest in the North Dakota angle of this story is the fact that I lived in Stanley, ND, for a few months in 1984. So I can attest that--whatever other kind of news it is--this is NOT inconsequential news to those who live up there. My brother reminded me that I had a temporary job that summer with a landowner who went to our church. His two adult sons were doing some work in the Mountrail County courthouse records office (photo on the second page of the NYT article), and I worked as their page for about a week, fetching and reshelving records for them. I don't even remember (if I knew) what they were doing this for. But I wonder now how wide a swath of mineral rights they own.

go see "Expelled"

That's fine. It's a free country. But just please get a vaccination, first. And please don't come out and blame scientists for the Holocaust.



I will probably wait for it to appear on DVD, though judging from the reviews I'm not expecting to be impressed.

*Update: The Anti-Defamation League has something to say about it:

http://www.adl.org/PresRele/HolNa_52/5277_52.htm

participate in the awakening of life (iii)

So what about meditation? I confess I come to this subject with a little apprehension. I'm suspicious of any kind of "spiritual" practice that promises too much, or requires certain beliefs, or involves suspending my grasp of rationality. I've got a history, you might say. Meditation, to me, connotes foreignness and the far east, or granola-eating hippies in communes, or new age entrepreneurs hawking a book.

When I was younger, my standard evangelical take on meditation was that if one is going to undertake this highly advanced spiritual exercise, it should be only in order to meditate on Scripture, but that it might really just be a waste of time better spent on bible reading, prayer, and fulfilling the Great Commission. An idle and empty mind could leave a door open for Satan to implant impure thoughts in one's mind, or worse.

Without any real experience with what I think of as meditation, but having thought a little about it and having experienced moments of tranquility that I'd heard people talk about associated with meditation, I had wondered whether the state of mind might be something like the tranquility of an animal at rest (as opposed to an animal being chased by a predator), or whether it was like the moment before falling asleep. (I noticed that if I had trouble falling asleep, if I breathed deeply and focused on my breathing, I would fall asleep soon after.)

So what is meditation? And who is it for? I like the minimalist definition Stephen Batchelor gives in Buddhism without Beliefs,

"To stop and pay attention to what is happening in the moment is...a reasonable definition of meditation." (p. 59)*

This is the kind of meditation I'm most familiar with. The kind that involves sitting outside and losing myself in the pulse of life around me. It might be in a more natural setting, but not necessarily. It might be on a bus stop bench in the middle of a city. But the idea is that I let go of my own thoughts and worries, and absorb what is happening around me. Of course, there are many other more formal and structured ideas of what meditation is, and I'd once again recommend Batchelor's book to anyone interested in the basic ideas.

It's for everyone. Just take 10 minutes in the middle of the day and cease from your labors. Go outside and sit down somewhere. Listen, observe, feel, smell, taste. You might be surprised at what you've been missing.

====
*A similar tone is sounded by the title by Brad Warner's book, Sit Down and Shut Up! Warner is a Zen priest, or something. I looked through his book, the subtitle of which is Punk Rock Commentaries on Buddha, God, Truth, Sex, Death, and Dogen's Treasury of the Right Dharma Eye. It seems addressed to a younger, hipper audience than I'm part of, and Warner really is a committed Buddhist, so he's offering more than I'm looking for.

participate in the awakening of life (ii)

This is not a full summary or review of Buddhism without Beliefs, by Stephen Batchelor, but a translation into my own words of the core ideas I gleaned from it. By translating it further, I am de-Buddhizing it even beyond what some Buddhist reviewers on Amazon.com condemned Batchelor for doing. For example, I'm not going to formally structure my thoughts here around the "4 Noble Truths," as Batchelor does (with great skill, I note).

* * *

A four year old orphan girl dies of starvation in a refugee camp in Chad. A political prisoner is tortured to death in Baghdad. A 15 year old boy in South Africa dies of HIV/AIDS. An entire village in Sumatra is wiped off the face of the earth by a tsunami.

I have no earthly idea how to relate to the suffering and degradation that countless human beings experience every day.

A 41 year old woman--a mother and wife--is diagnosed with cancer, and dies within the year. A 17 year old boy kills himself and four of his friends after driving drunk one night. A young girl is raped and murdered. Citizens of an American city are trapped and cut off from food, water, and shelter for days after a natural disaster. A soldier--a father and husband--comes home without his legs. A 21 year old man faces life in prison.

These hit closer to my own experience, but are still rare enough or distant enough from my everyday life that they remain the exception, not the rule.

My car is stolen. I get sick and spend two days in the hospital. My father-in-law dies at age 72 after two months of painful illness. My religious beliefs slowly crumble and then suddenly collapse. My friend goes through a difficult divorce. Members of my family experience difficulties. I fail to land a job in my field after four years and 60 applications. I hear a sappy song on the radio that makes me think of how one day my two little girls will grow up and leave home, and they'll only be sweet little girls in my faulty, fading memory.

This is a sampling of life as bad as I've had it. Not really that bad. About as bad as most of you, more or less. But what we all have in common--all of us humans--is that what we experience is life itself. That's life. From murder, war, starvation, disease, to disappointment, loss, transience, and indigestion. For most people throughout human history life has been brief and brutal. Yet even for us--healthy, well-fed, educated--life still has that edge of anguish that always comes through. That's life. Then we die.

What do all the world's religions have in common? Belief in a supernatural being--God? No. Belief in an afterlife. If there is one thing that no one knows--and no one can possibly know--it is what happens after death. The one certainty in life is death itself. Religion is a response to this certainty--or an attempt to escape it, really. An escape from life's one certainty by inventing an ending that can never be substantiated.

Our experience of life is infused with more agony, suffering, and disappointment because we wish it was different than it really is. We indulge our minds in regrets, fears, and wishes. We separate ourselves even further from life as it really is by blindly following compulsions, habits, and expectations. We construct an imaginary self, something we call "I," separate from the world, distinct from the stream of life swirling around us. We replay a soundtrack of thoughts, memories, plans, conversations, and songs. We try to avoid dealing with the one certainty in life.

Is it possible to reduce this surplus of agony, suffering, and disappointment in life? It is. You know it is, because you've done it. You've noticed, from time to time, that the soundtrack in your head stops, and you listen to what is going on around you. You see colors and movement. You smell and taste your meal. You feel the temperature and the humidity. You sense yourself breathing, your heart beating. You "lose yourself" in the stream of life swirling around you.

Is it possible to bring the level of agony, suffering, and disappointment in life to zero? No. It wouldn't be good for you or anyone to completely give up on planning for the future, or evaluating the past. And it wouldn't be possible, short of giving up on life altogether. But it is possible to catch a glimpse of the cessation of worry, wishing, and regretting. To lose yourself in the stream of life. To face life--face the world--as it really is. To face the unknownness of the unknown, and accept it for what it is. By escaping from the trapped isolation of the self, by being conscious, aware, connected, and free, it comes so much more naturally to care about starving refugees, prisoners, the victims of disease, war and disaster, the insane, the addicted.

Again, you know how this feels. This isn't new to you. What might be new is the idea that we might be able to cultivate a way of life in which these moments are not left to chance, that we might learn how to experience this cessation of worry, wishing, and regretting in more predictable, prolonged spans.

The title of these posts is taken from Buddhism without Beliefs, p. 90:

"...we cannot attain awakening for ourselves: we can only participate in the awakening of life."

So how do we do that?

participate in the awakening of life

A couple years ago when I first read The End of Faith, by Sam Harris, it was the first contemporary book I had read that so clearly and eloquently presented a reason-based philosophy of life, free of faith. (For those keeping track, this was three years after my own loss of a lifelong religious faith.) So I was taken a bit off guard by his openness in parts of the book to eastern mysticism. His final chapter, "Experiments in Consciousness," made me think about the possibility of gleaning wisdom from these traditions. His core argument was that there is something about the nature of consciousness we can learn that does not require us to believe anything on insufficient evidence (pp. 206-7). About the time I was reading his book, Harris was attending a silent meditation retreat, and began talking about a "contemplative science." Harris gave a lecture in September 2007 exploring this area further.

I've not really pursued these ideas, but they've been in the back of my mind. A few weeks ago I did something I almost never do: bought a book in a large chain bookstore having never before heard of the book, with only a vague idea of what I might be looking for in the first place. I picked up this title: Buddhism without Beliefs, by Stephen Batchelor. The author is described as a former Buddhist monk in both the Tibetan and Zen traditions who is now an advocate of "agnostic Buddhism." He touts the aspects of Buddhist thought that he sees as timeless, deal with life as we know it, and do not require belief to accept. The concepts of rebirth (aka, reincarnation) and karma require belief, and are what make Buddhism a religion. Batchelor is a Buddhist, and is fond of the traditions, and wishes Buddhism to find a new foothold in modern western culture. But in order for that to happen, he believes, Buddhism needs to be able to adapt to western humanistic and secular values.

I have no such soft spot for Buddhism, and do not care whether it lives or dies as a religious tradition. But having read this book, I am more convinced that there is something worthwhile to learn from the contemplative traditions that can improve life. I'd like to summarize what I've gained from Batchelor's book, in my own words. I'll do that in another entry.

(part ii)
. . .
(I like what Sam Harris has written about these things, and I've heard about another person I should probably learn more about: John Horgan, who dabbled in Buddhism but didn't embrace it, and has written a book entitled Rational Mysticism: Dispatches from the Border Between Science and Spirituality.)

Whitman Sampler #5

I sat watching the birds in my backyard this evening. Doves, cardinals, finches, a mockingbird and a woodpecker all made an appearance. My thoughts took me to these Whitman lines:

I think I could turn and live awhile with the animals....they are so placid and self-contained,
I stand and look at them sometimes half the day long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied....not one is demented with the mania of
owning things,
Not one kneels to another nor to his kind that lived thousands of
years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.

You could call this Whitman's version of "Consider the Lilies"* (Matthew 6:25-34), only with a different perspective on the hypothetical Father in Heaven. Is it possible for humans to learn to live this way?


* or, in the words of Ulysses Everett McGill, "consider the lilies of the goddamn field!"

that's some old shit!

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

But the oldest human remains ever found in the "new world," i.e., the western hemisphere, happens to be some human excrement found in Oregon. It's over 14,000 years old. This adds fuel to the fire, so to speak, in the controversy about the Clovis culture and the earliest Americans. This is the time frame that excavators at the Gault site 20 miles north of me are working with as well. Very interesting, and exciting, to see this connection to my new hobby in the news today.

my new hobby (ii)

part i

What were we doing, these 7 others and I? Were we setting up for a snake-handling revival later that evening? Had we discovered an alien spacecraft, crashed to earth? Were we being initiated into some bizarre sex cult? Had we come to sell a kidney to a black market organ transplanting ring?

No doubt some of you would be very amused if one or more of these was true. ("I knew it!") I'm sorry to disappoint. We were there to dig in the dirt. A few weeks ago I read this article by Pamela LeBlanc in the American-Statesman, and I volunteered. On Saturday I got my first chance, and LeBlanc's story happens to capture my experience pretty well.

The Gault Site holds a grand story of the earliest Americans, going back perhaps 14,000 years. This field of study reaches back farther than my academic training (ancient near east in the first three millennia before the common era), yet is much closer to the present than one of my other areas of amateur interest, where periods are measured in millions and billions of years.

I opened a new plot on the surface carefully measured just off the edge of an existing trench. One meter square, my job was to dig out the top 15 centimeters. I dug for about 5 hours, and did not finish my plot. I filled up about 10 buckets (5 gallon) two-thirds of the way up, and someone else came and washed them out over a screen. It seems like the dirt multiplies once you start scraping and digging it out. From my buckets, a gallon-sized ziplock bag was over half filled with flint chips and flakes--the by-products of tool and weapon production by humans over the past 500 years, perhaps. The top layer has been looted and plowed over the past 100 years, so precise conclusions can't be drawn from those upper levels. That makes it a good place to set loose a beginner such as myself.

This site is significant, not just because it has yielded so much knowledge about the Clovis people, but because it may reveal pre-Clovis habitations. In other words, this site may end up re-writing the pre-history of North America. The article I linked to above as "the earliest Americans" is a nice popular summary of recent issues.

The director of the project, Michael Collins, bought this ranch with his own money. He was there on Saturday, and is the nicest guy you could meet. He and everyone were patient, encouraging, and truly grateful for my strong back and willingness to get dirt under my fingernails. And it felt good to let out my inner Indiana Jones.

my new hobby

Early Saturday morning, I met seven other people on the side of a highway north of Florence, Texas. We drove a half mile back down a tree lined dirt road into the ranch, and parked in front of a steel barn. As we set out on foot, there was a longhorn standing in our pathway about 20 yards ahead, staring at us. It was just like a photograph, so beautiful (not unlike this one). It turned surreal when half a dozen small deer ran across our path almost literally right under the longhorn's nose. He didn't even flinch at the deer, but kept staring at us.

We moved warily past the longhorn, who moved his head only as we passed by. There were three other longhorns who appeared among the trees as we proceeded down the path. We walked perhaps a quarter mile on a rocky path, down a wooded hill. Everything was green and mossy. It was cool and a faint mist was in the air. We crossed a spring fed brook and into a grassy meadow, the size of a football field, I suppose. In the far corner was a large white tent, the shape of a quonset hut.

To be continued...

part ii

conversations about Barack and Hillary

Ventura's column is pretty funny in parts. I've had similar conversations with friends and family. Though we've never promised to piss on each other's grave.

I haven't said anything about the Jeremiah Wright thing here. But I posted a comment on Eileen Flynn's blog a couple weeks back, and my thoughts are about the same now as they were then:

1) Much of what Wright shouts is true. Some of it is not. You cannot condemn his anger and frustration and that of his audience until you have tried to honestly understand their point of view.

2) Obama has “European” background as well, and “in part” this has something to do with his success. So Wright’s criticism of “white America” is double-edged, as far as Obama is concerned. [The "in part" part is a quote of what G. Ferraro said about the role of Obama's African heritage as being "in part" responsible for his success; and I don't think that's untrue. Everything about him has some role, "in part," in his success.]

3) It occurs to me now that Obama’s religious affiliation is the source of his biggest headache to date. Thanks, religion, for bringing us all together. Thanks for nothing.

4) This seems to be the moment all the Obama-haters, be they Republicans, racists, or Clinton supporters (or some combination), have been waiting for. The venom, the palpable hatred in some of the comments here [i.e., on Flynn's blog], is as alarming as a couple of Wright’s remarks. When he wins the nomination, no one will be able to say that he just breezed through.

black angels: another dimension

Their first full-length album - Passover (sample tracks here) - is two years old already, so I'm far from the cutting edge--closer to the spine of the blade. But the black angels, based in Austin, are playing some SXSW shows this week. I heard a profile of them on the local NPR station this week; one of the things that intrigued me was that the leader(?)/founder(?), Christian Bland (is that a stage name?), is from a devout Presbyterian family (fun: check out the "band" link on their official page).

The music is referred to as "psychedelic rock," or by the band itself as "Native American drone 'n' roll." It sometimes reminds me of The Doors, and sounds like it could be the soundtrack for Waiting for the Barbarians. Whatever it is, it's got me mesmerized. Even without chemical enhancement. Check out four of the tracks from Passover (first link above), and get a preview of their next album, due out May 13, Directions to See a Ghost.

(Larry, is this band on your itinerary this week? It should be.)

Testing Madness

Wendy (my wife) wrote an op-ed column, and submitted it (unsolicited) to the Austin American-Statesman. We'll see if it gets published--I think it deserves to be--but in the mean time I thought it'd be worth posting here. ("TAKS" stands for "Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills.")
------------------------

TAKS Scores “Personal” for Round Rock Parents

This past Saturday I read Bob Banta's article, “TAKS scores personal for schools chief.” At first glance, it might seem admirable that RRISD Superintendent Chavez is betting his retirement benefit on an “exemplary” rating for the Round Rock ISD by 2009. But before making this judgment, ask the parents in the school district about this attention on TAKS. I am a parent of a 4^th grader who attends a Round Rock elementary school.

What I have observed this year has shown me that the “exemplary” rating is overrated. Until this year, my fourth grade daughter attended a “recognized” elementary school in the district. (“Recognized” is one step below “exemplary.”) We moved to a new neighborhood over the summer, and now my daughter attends an “exemplary” school. I have noticed that there is tremendous pressure on this campus to stay “exemplary.”

From the very beginning of the school year, teachers began talking to the kids about the TAKS test, which takes place in March, April, and May. They have spent countless hours and days practicing for this test. Teachers are conducting numerous tutoring sessions after school to make sure these 8-, 9-, 10- and 11-year olds perform for the test. The teachers email practice tests to the parents for students to complete at home. My daughter, who is a smart girl and received commended scores on her tests last year, has trouble falling to sleep at night because she is stressed that she will not pass the test. The school counselor has visited their classes to teach students how to deal with the stress of the test. And parents like me are throwing up our hands in despair. Why should a nine year old feel such pressure?

For me and my husband, education is of the utmost importance to the future of our children. We have worked hard to earn advanced degrees and hope our Round Rock educated children can do the same. But making outstanding TAKS test scores is not what I consider it’s going to take to get them there. It’s a system out of whack when there’s more pressure and less real learning going on in the classroom.

But don’t blame the teachers. The teachers are under tremendous pressure from their principals to make their students perform. The principals are under pressure from the superintendent to make sure their teachers perform. Chavez gets the bonus retirement if they do. The fact that he is wagering this retirement annuity only adds more pressure to these principals, teachers, and students. Of course, students need to show what they have learned. But this extreme focus on the TAKS test has gotten out of hand.

My job takes me throughout the state where I have the opportunity to speak with teachers. These teachers want to feel proud of what they are doing in the classroom. They are torn between choosing best teaching practices and the practice worksheets that drill their students for this test. There is not enough time in the day for both, but unfortunately guess which demand wins?

I do not believe that TAKS scores should define a district or determine my child’s education, but unfortunately it does. Somehow we need to shift our evaluation of what makes a good school. If Round Rock truly wants a school district that stands out from the rest, we need to stop focusing everything on this test. A great school district should be defined by their teachers instead of test takers, because good teachers are key to getting a great education. Round Rock has great teachers, but they need to be free to focus their energy on what matters in educating students. And what matters is teaching ALL the concepts necessary to produce thinkers, not test takers. If the district would invest in quality professional development for these teachers, provide them with outstanding curriculum and tools for their classrooms, and give them the time to work with their grade-level teachers to plan quality lessons based on the standards, then Round Rock will produce students who are thinkers, instead of “exemplary” test takers. Now that is something very “personal” that we can all be proud of.

Wendy Conklin

do I know fundamentalism...

or do I know fundamentalism?

Almost a year and a half ago I anticipated that Barack Obama might be identified as the antichrist by some Christian fundamentalists. I found it referenced in the mainstream yesterday, in Nicholas Kristof's NYTimes column (disapprovingly, of course). You can just google the terms to find your own nutbar vendor.

If you encounter anyone who may be concerned about this, just ask them to take a deep breath, and repeat after me: "Barack Hussein Obama is a Christian." (Yes, we need to just get used to his middle name. It's just a name.) And whatever you do, don't add "as far as I know" to that.

Obama-Clinton '08

Democrats clearly cannot make up their collective mind about who they want to be president. Here in Texas, primary voters gave the advantage to Clinton, while the Obama campaign and its supporters have better organization and more enthusiasm, giving him the edge in the Texas caucuses. I was never keen on a joint ticket, mainly because it was just to early to speculate on that, and I didn't see either of them willing to be in the B slot. But the longer this drags on, the more plausible it seems.

The conventional wisdom is that such talk will favor Hillary, because she seems like the more natural number one, and if voters know that Obama would be willing to settle for the second position, they'll feel better about voting for her...getting their cake and eating it. However, I think Obama-Clinton is the more likely scenario. And since no one really reads this blog, I'm not worried about such a discussion actually influencing voters in Wyoming, Mississippi, or Pennsylvania...

1) The main argument is that the delegate math is just too insurmountable for Clinton. She would have to win the remaining primaries by a 2-to-1 margin in order to just pass Obama in the pledged delegate count. She will need superdelegates to push her ahead of Obama and over the top. If that happens, she will have trouble inheriting the enthusiasm, the fund-raising and turnout, and the youth vote that has propelled Obama and made this race so interesting.

2) I don't think that Obama would accept a VP invitation from nominee Clinton. We've seen what happens to politicians who ally themselves too closely to the Clintons. (The House of Representatives, State governorships, and Al Gore.) There is no guarantee that in 8 years Obama will sweep into the White House. Besides, a VP should be fully qualified to step into the Presidency on day 2, if necessary, and Hillary doesn't believe Barack is.

3) One of the reasons I didn't think Clinton would accept a VP position is because of her age. Time is not on her side. If she cannot be the nominee this time (see point #1), eight years from now will be her absolute last chance. Of course, there's also no guarantee for her that she'll be swept to victory in 2012 either, but it's her best chance. But Hillary's age should NOT be a concern for voters and superdelegates. We should NOT choose Hillary because she is older and time is running out and besides (the reasoning goes), Obama is younger and he can wait his turn in 8 years (see #2). Hillary Clinton wants to be president. I think she will be willing to accept the "heartbeat away" position, because she is running out of time. If she is 69, that's fine. She'll still be younger than McCain is now.

4) (Related to #2) If Clinton is the nominee, it is more likely that Obama will be free to run again in 2012, against President McCain (see next point). In the mean time, Obama will gain more experience (see the end of point 2).

5) McCain and the Republicans would clearly rather run against Hillary than Barack. Rush Limbaugh encouraged Republicans in Texas to cross over and vote for Clinton in the open primary arrangement. McCain is campaigning against Obama.

Thoughts?

Encyclopedia of Life

A potentially amazing tool is now available online. The Encyclopedia of Life is a collaborative project to create a single portal for exploring the great diversity of life on earth. The site is still under some construction, and no doubt will get better over time. They were not prepared for the initial crush, but seem to have recovered. For some reason, the home page always features half a dozen fish at the top, when it would seem to be more appropriate to present a variety of different kinds of creatures. When you click on "more species," you just get more fish.

Once you click on a species, you are taken to a page with an encyclopedic entry for that species. On the right hand side of the page, you can see a version of the "tree of life" and click down through kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species. (And for you beginners, there are now 6 "kingdoms" in addition to plant and animal.)

By chance, I stumbled upon the "green anole," so I now know the real identity of what I was calling "gecko" here.

On a related note, I have to take this opportunity to give props to a friend of mine, Larry Kubin, who is the technical wizard behind a similar kind of tool exclusively for dragonflies: Odonata Central. (Odonata is the Latin name for the Order of dragonflies.) Larry and I started out in the same place here at UT, but he is younger, smarter, and more ambitious than most, and struck out on his own. This is one of the results. I note that the EOL lists 10 families under Dragonfly/Odonata, while Odonata Central lists 15 families. At this point I'm going to trust Odonata Central to be more accurate.

old time religion

Today two different graphs on religion caught my eye. The first is from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. It is based on a survey of 35,000 Americans age 18 or over. 44% of those surveyed have switched religious affiliations from that of their childhood. 28% have switched to an entirely different religion or no religion at all.

(click on the image for a better view)



There are now almost as many "unaffiliated" American adults as there are Baptists.

The other was produced last year by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, but I found the graph in this article from The Atlantic (which I haven't fully read yet). A lot could be said about this. What's most interesting is the general curve that includes most countries, and the prominent exceptions to the curve (the U.S., Kuwait, and some of the Eastern European countries). I suspect, based on the study above, that maybe the U.S. will slowly, perhaps kicking and screaming, drop down in the graph in future decades, more in line with other countries such as Canada, Japan, and Sweden.

(click on the image for a better view)

Texas' Religious Right: Ideology vs. Knowledge

The Texas Freedom Network has released its latest report on the state of the religious right in Texas. (You can download a copy for yourself there.) The focus in this report is on the State Board of Education (SBOE). It charts the rise of the religious right on the SBOE over the past two decades, and its most recent gains in the 2006 election. Christian groups on the far right targeted moderate Republicans in the primaries, and now 7 of the 15 board members are of this very conservative faction. Last summer, Governor Perry appointed Don McLeroy to be the chair of the board. He is an outspoken creationist, and the first representative of this right-wing faction to chair the board.

The Board was in the news recently, because one of the agencies it oversees, the Texas Education Agency, fired its science curriculum director for forwarding an email.

Four members of this fundamentalist Christian coalition are up for re-election this fall: Terri Leo (District 6), David Bradley (District 7), Barbara Cargill (District 8), and Gail Lowe (District 14). This is a crucial time for the Board, as they will be reviewing Texas science curriculum standards this year.

It is clear that this group of board members is more concerned with ideological purity than they are with ensuring that students have the best knowledge available. They want to withhold accurate medical and scientific information from students regarding prevention of pregnancy and STDs, ignoring evidence that "abstinence-only" approaches do not work. They want to withhold a robust presentation of biological evolution from students by muddling the curriculum with dubious discussion of "weaknesses" of the theory. They are queasy about too many pictures of minorities, the term "married people," and discussions of environmental issues like pollution and conservation.

Many of these board members who have children send them to private schools or home school them. It's not enough for them to want to protect their children from the evils of science, toleration, and non-sectarianism. They want to impose their own theological vision of America on the public. At stake is a knowledge of the world our kids need to meet the challenges of their lives.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Darwin

199 years ago, February 12, 1809, Charles Darwin was born. (As it happens, on the same day on this side of the Atlantic, Abraham Lincoln was born. And most importantly to me, but 166 years later, my brother Mason was born.) I'll admit, the first time I heard about celebrating Darwin's birthday, a few years ago, it seemed a little cheeky to me, kind of a poke in the eye to Creationists. But it's really not. It is a recognition of the critical importance of Mr. Darwin's theory* to the entire scientific enterprise, a way to honor his prescient genius, and (yes) a way to help inform the public about the science.

Happy Darwin Day! There are more "greeting card" images, like the one below, here.

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* theory. Dictionary.com. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/theory (accessed: February 11, 2008):

1. A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena.

blasphemy and death

Daniel Dennett has written a letter to the Boston Globe highlighting a recent story of blasphemy and a sentence of death, and what the civilized world's response should be.

Read it here.

Here is more information, and a link to an e-petition at the bottom.

Austin American-Statesman Endorses...

John McCain for the Republicans

Barack Obama for the Democrats

Barack continues to rack up some impressive editorial endorsements (LA Times and Chicago Tribune, for example). It's debatable what they're worth, and I'm sure the Statesman's is low down on the list, but I just had to report what the hometown editorial board has decided:

Like a veteran slugger on deck, Hillary Clinton has campaigned principally on the logic that it is her turn at bat. Democrats must resist the instinct to select the next in line and grab instead the best hitter on the bench. That is Barack Obama.

On the subject of editorial board endorsements, it was interesting to see that the New York Times endorsed Hillary, and over the next several days the