08.08.07
Posted in Society, Literature
at 8:30 am
by Dave Badtke
Above is the title of Emily Wilson’s review in the current, August 3, Times Literary Supplement of two books about Isidore of Seville, “who became patron saint of the internet in 1999.” Unfortunately the books from Cambridge University are expensive, really expensive: Barney et al.’s The Etymologies of Isidore is $150 for 475 pages, and John Henderson’s The Medieval World of Isidore of Seville: Truth from Words is $99 for 244 pages. But these would be fun books to peruse if they were affordable or if the library purchased them.
Isidore’s effort in sixth-century Spain, when it was ruled by the Visigoths, to reestablish the importance of Roman culture through its language, specifically the etymology of Latin, had an impact that was comparable to the Bible’s. Indeed, Isidore’s family “played an important role in the conversion of the Visigothic kings to Roman Catholicism, away from Arianism (a form of Christianity which denied that the Son is co-eternal with the Father).”
While Isidore’s cultural impact was profound, much of what Isidore wrote, much like the internet today, was made up. “Most of Isidore’s supposed etymologies are — by the standards of modern academic philology — complete twaddle.” Take, for example, his entry on beavers:
It may often seem as if Isadore, like a bad search engine, offers little or no control over all this material. Certainly, much of the “information” he provides is (from a modern perspective) blatantly false, albeit entertaining. For instance, we are assured that “Beavers (castor) are so-called from castrating (castrare). Their testicles are useful for medicines, on account of which, when they anticipate a hunter, they castrate themselves and amputate their own genitals with their teeth.”
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08.06.07
Posted in People, Society
at 8:45 am
by Dave Badtke
Gail Collins of the New York Times has moved from editor of the editorial page on the left to the opinion page on the right, which is most welcome and has nothing at all to do with her political leanings. She’s just a really good writer and thinker.
See in particular her recent column on Mitt Romney who used to strap his dog in his crate on top of the family car when driving for summer vacations from Boston to Ontario, a distance of perhaps as much a 1,000 miles or more going who-knows-how-fast through an area of the country that can have some pretty nasty weather even in the summer.
Seamus, in case you missed the story, was the Romneys’ Irish setter back in the early 1980s. Mitt used to drive the family from Boston to Ontario every summer for a vacation, with the dog strapped to the roof in a crate.
As The Boston Globe reported this summer, Romney had the entire trip planned so rigidly that every gas station stop was predetermined before departure. During the fatal trip of ’83, Seamus apparently needed one more than the schedule allowed. When evidence of the setter’s incontinence came running down the back windshield, Romney abandoned his itinerary and drove to the closest gas station, where he got a hose and sprayed both dog and station wagon clean.
“It was a tiny preview of a trait he would grow famous for in business: emotion-free crisis management,” The Globe said.
The question raised is what ugly snippets like this reveal about character. From Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink, we could probably conclude that these little embarrassing moments — not little from Seamus the dog’s POV, certainly — are the most telling of all.
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07.27.07
Posted in Society
at 11:08 am
by Dave Badtke
On Wednesday a Benicia man, Danny Takemoto, who that day was beginning a new schedule, forgot that his 11-month-old boy was buckled into his car seat in the back of the car. Takemoto parked his car, went to work, and didn’t remember his son until his wife called many hours later, wondering why the boy wasn’t at daycare.
Can you imagine what this poor man went through as he dashed to his car? If you are or have been a parent with young children, you’ve probably experienced similar lapses. You’re not paying as much attention as you should and suddenly can’t find your child. You turn your back for just a second or your mind drifts off for even less time, and your child manages to dash into the street.
With luck your child is okay. I’m sure Takemoto was hoping the same. But his son wasn’t okay. Then, on the worst day in Takemoto’s life, when he had made the worst mistake he will ever make, he’s arrested and taken off to jail.
I suppose a cell to a police officer is like an emergency room to a doctor: if something goes wrong, each assumes the worst and takes action — one size fits all when there’s a crisis. But perhaps the quickness to lock someone up who clearly is not a criminal, who isn’t wandering the neighborhood endagering children, should be rethought.
In fact there should always be solutions that don’t involve handcuffs and incarceration.
The man has been released from jail, but prosecutors haven’t yet ruled out criminal charges. At sad times like this I’m not sure we’ve moved much beyond the stone age.
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07.20.07
Posted in Places, Society
at 8:43 am
by Dave Badtke
In the NY Times today is a story about rats in need of a novel. My guess is that the author of the segment, Anand Giridharadas, is already writing it.
MUMBAI, India, July 19 — Behram Harda was a dancer in the Bollywood films of the 1970s, gracing the screen with his twist and his cha-cha.
Then he became a rodent assassin.
Today, in the sprawling B Ward of this teeming, filthy, exhilarating city, Mr. Harda is admired by his colleagues as the last of the great Mumbai rat catchers. His is a dying breed in a city whose dreams of being rat-free recede year by year.
The rat catchers can snag buckets full of rats in minutes, which they then kill in various gruesome ways, the worst being to grab the rat by its tail and beat its brains out on the ground. But then we’re talking about rats that might be carrying bubonic plague, not cuddly squirrels, beady-eyed raccoons or Remy, le rat de Ratatouille, who wants to be a master chef.
Unfortunately for Mubai, the number of rat catchers is decreasing because of better jobs, especially in call centers and software firms built from bytes:
But Mr. Harda is an Indian Sisyphus. When he got the job 33 years ago, the rats were no match for the catchers. Government service attracted India’s brightest in those days, and Mumbai was still clean enough to starve rats of the garbage on which they snacked. But in three decades, India has turned inside out, and so has the equation between catchers and rats.
Private-sector jobs in call centers and software firms beckon, and the government struggles to attract men of Mr. Harda’s caliber. Many rat-catching posts lie vacant. Meanwhile, Mumbai has metastasized from a genteel city of a few million into a grimy megalopolis of 17 million. More than half of the population lives in shanties surrounded by garbage — and, consequently, by rats.
So if you’re looking for a job in India that is more about spirited scurrying about than a lot of heavy lifting . . .
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07.12.07
Posted in People, Society
at 7:41 am
by Dave Badtke
From Look, No Hands by reporter Sena Christian in the Benicia Herald.
It’s that time again: time to roast documentary filmmaker Michael Moore, and nit-pick and debunk the most minute details in his latest film “Sicko,” burning him all the way to hell.
“Sicko” came out about two weeks ago. I saw it on the Fourth of July, doing my patriotic duty. I don’t know the last time I cried so much during a movie.
The film takes on the health care system in the United States, criticizing the nation for being the only industrialized country in the Western world without universal health care.
I should fall in line with the mainstream media and riot talk about our broken health care system or commend the film for bringing the subject of socialized health cate to the forefront of public discourse.
This column should absolutely not be about the nearly 50 million Americans — nine million of those children — uninsured.
I don’t want to talk about employers who fail to provide health benefits. I am one of the lucky ones. I signed up for Kaiser’s worst plan, (high co-pay and deductible), paying
the lowest monthly rate for the least coverage with the sole purpose of not going bankrupt in case of a medical emergency.
No, I won’t talk about that stuff. Instead, I should probably talk about how Moore is not a likable human. He’s disheveled-looking, a bit overweight and kind of rude. I don’t like the eyeglasses he wears and he interrupts CNN interviewers too much. All of this is of the
utmost importance.
You know, Moore blatantly misled the American public with “Sicko.” He told us that Cuba’s health spending per capita is $251. According to CNN, this number is actually
$229 per person.
When Dr. Sanjay Gupta, senior medical correspondent for CNN, broke this news, I was shocked. I no longer see Moore’s films as a journalistic look at the human condition and as passion-driven, personalized attempts to create a better world.
OK, so, I’m being sarcastic. I like Moore and wish we were friends. I agree, he is incredibly antagonistic, but so what? The best hell-raisers often are. I don’t understand
why we have become a society that values personality and looks over ideas and compassion.
When Al Gore was running for president, we said he was too stiff. But look what this boring politician who couldn’t tell a joke to save his life has done for raising awareness about the climate crisis, and for educating us about sustainability and clean technology.
There were those who said Gee Dubya had charm and look where that got us.
Moore’s abrasive nature came out full force this week on CNN’s “Situation Room,” during which he tore into the network for its failure to tell the American public the truth. He showed his contempt for corporate media: “I don’t talk in sound bites,” he said.
Host Wolf Blitzer was sent from the powers that be to drill Moore about inaccuracies
in “Sicko.” But one of the first things Blitzer said is reporting is a “business.” According to the Idealistic and Pure Journalism textbooks they gave me in journalism
school, this is not true. Journalism is supposed to be a profession, not a business.
Blitzer questioned Moore about rumors that the federal government plans on investigating him for breaking the law by taking three U.S. citizens — 9/11 relief workers
– to Cuba for medical care, leaving it up to Moore to point out that Americans are allowed to visit the country for journalistic purposes.
And in lovely irony, the next day CNN aired the second part of the interview, at the beginning of which Blitzer said the first part was filmed the day before. Actually, Moore clarified, the second segment was being filmed that same day.
For the sake of accuracy.
I honestly don’t know which parts of Moore’s film are inaccurate or inconsistent. Maybe he did only show the positive side of other countries’ health care systems as many contend (he said to contrast and highlight our own inadequacies) and not the whole picture.
When Moore put Canada’s system up on a pedestal, people slithered out of the woodwork to complain about the long waits to see a doctor there and talked about’the Canada Health Act, which makes it illegal to obtain or supply private health care thus proving the discontent Canadians have for their health care system.
As one native Canadian now living in the U.S. commented on an alternative news site, the American health care system is far better than that of his homeland With one minor exception: “If you’re uneducated and unemployed then you’d be better off in Canada,” he wrote.
Well OK then.
As long as Mr. and Mrs. Ivy League, with their five bedroom house, three television
sets and Lexus are alright with their health care, then everything in the Land of the Free is great!
I try to be a good journalist. I understand the importance of accuracy in reporting,
but I can’t help but wonder why we get so up in arms whenever Moore comes out with a new film, and accuse him of cherry-picking statistics and when that doesn’t work, go off about his unpleasant demeanor.
Maybe it’s because Moore threatens the status quo. He breaks into our comfort zone, and forces politicians and business leaders to answer tough questions.
Moore didn’t make “Sicko” for himself. He’s rich. I’m guessing he has pretty reliable health insurance. Maybe he made the film for another reason.
Maybe he believes the sentiment expressed in “Sicko” that when it comes to health care, access to education, affordable childcare or anything else, we should widen our visino and not look out just for ourselves, but for on another.
Sena Christian is a reporter for the Benicia Herald
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07.06.07
Posted in Society, Sailing
at 8:01 am
by Dave Badtke
While my wife and I sail our small Corsair 750 Sprint, Dulcinea, on the Carquinez Straits and up the Napa River and out onto the various Bays that spread out to the east and west, I dream of sailing the open oceans. I get all the sailing magazines. I relish heavy weather stories and tales of sailing to distant islands that appear like slivers of dark sky floating on the
horizon. I read about the performance of new sailboats. I chart courses on Google Earth. And I dream of handling sails on some small boat that wouldn’t be overpowering, say a Hallberg-Rassy 342, in the middle of the South Pacific, heading south toward the Marquises or west toward Hawaii and Japan. In my future I visualize the vast open ocean where there’s nothing except our small boat, me, my wife, and the rolling waves and wind.
So I’m not sure I’m ready for the latest cruise innovation on the world’s ugliest boat that I read about today in the New York Times. Four Seasons is offering this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to purchase, for a mere $3.8 million, an 800 square-foot condo on a ship that forever sails, though it’s expected that the ship will be in port some 250 days each year. So really it’s a huge hotel (boatel?) stuck in a marina most of the time.
Can you imagine being on this monstrosity day after day, night after night, on this oceanship without a tree except those in pots, with others like you who have spent so much for so little and the privilege of being so close to others just like you?
If you feel that 800 square feet is a bit cramped — to put this in perspective, the Halberg-Rassy 342 is less than 300 square feet — residences as large as 7,000 square feet are also available, but I hesitate to ask the price — simple math would put it at about $33 mill — as I search my pants’ pockets for spare change.
Four Seasons Ocean Residences
WHAT Residential ocean liner.
WHERE Launching initially from London.
AMENITIES A spa and concierge service, among others.
PRICES Residences starting at $3.8 million.
STATUS Sales began recently, and the ship is scheduled to begin service in 2010.
DEVELOPER BV International Ocean Holdings.
CONTACT 
(877) 507-3393
or www.oceanresidences.com.
DETAILS The Four Seasons — a 719-foot, 13-deck ship operated by the hotel company that will be filled entirely with residences — will begin construction next spring in Helsinki, Finland. Its 112 residences are described as nothing like standard cruise ship cabins. The one- to four-bedroom units, sold in whole ownership, will range from 800 to more than 7,000 square feet and will have full-length windows, walk-in closets, terraces and full-size kitchens. Each residence will be credited $12,000 a year for food, drinks and spa services. Amenities, other than the spa, will include a fitness center, a pool, a shopping promenade, four restaurants, a specialty food market, a wine cellar, a business center, putting greens and a driving range. Sailboats and motorized water scooters will be launched from the ship’s marina area, which will also be used for diving trips and shuttles to shore. Round-the-clock concierge service will be available to help arrange on-shore activities, and in-room dining will be offered. Plans call for the ship initially to follow a two-year fixed itinerary that will take it to Antarctica, the Amazon and the 2012 Olympics in London. During that time, it is expected that the ship will spend an average of 250 days a year in port.
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06.26.07
Posted in People, Society
at 3:26 pm
by Dave Badtke
Reading Joan Didion this summer should mean The Year of Magical Thinking. But I’m not up to dealing with her dealing with her husband’s death and the illness that would eventually kill her daughter, so I’m reading instead the Everyman’s Library compilation of her seven books of nonfiction written between 1968 and 2003: We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live. The title is from the opening of The White Album, published in 1979:
We tell ourselves stories in order to live. The princess is caged in the consulate. The man with the candy will lead the children into the sea. The naked woman on the ledge outside the window on the sixteenth floor is a victim of accidie, or the naked woman is an exhibitionist, and it would be “interesting” to know which. We tell ourselves that it makes some difference whether the naked woman is about to commit a mortal sin or is about to register a political protest or is about to be, the Aristophanic view, snatched back to the human condition by the fireman in priest’s clothing just visible in the window behind her, the one smiling at the telephoto lens. We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the “ideas” with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.
During the fall semester I’ll assign Didion’s “On Keeping a Journal,” found in most anthologies, because my students will need to keep journals that I’ll read and grade. I’ll encourage them to look carefully and record without worrying about reasons or consequences. Some will, but most won’t because it’s an alien concept, the metonymic truth that lies in detailed, seemingly syncretic observations. . . and inimitable prose.
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06.14.07
Posted in Society
at 10:56 am
by Dave Badtke
The following article appeared today, June 14, in the Benicia Herald. I’ve reprinted it here because I agree with the sentiments expressed by Les and also because I regret that since the Benicia Herald has no online presence, this article will be recycled by tomorrow — maybe most already have recycled it — only to be found with difficulty by going to the Benicia Library.
My Two Cents
By Les Mahler
The ongoing immigration debate has hit a nerve with me. And although I could say it’s because I am an immigrant, it’s more about the other side of this issue: how we treat people, be they immigrants, guest workers or whatever else.
While I did emigrate from the Netherlands (I was born in Indonesia but we were forced out during the Sukarno dictatorship simply because my father fought for he Dutch army during WWII), I became a United States citizen in 1962 through my parents. That should quiet down any questions about my status or worries that I believe in a socialist form of government simply because I lived under one in earlier years.
What really bothers me about the immigration issue is how the other side in this whole debate is missing — the treatment of these so-called guest workers. They pick the strawberries, the beans, the spinach and almost every other produce that grows in the Central Valley. And let’s be honest, without them, we wouldn’t have that produce on our dinner tables, would we? After all, how many of us would really work under the harsh conditions that these men, women and children work under? Be honest. After all, we’re accustomed to soft chairs, air conditioning, indoor plumbing, eight hour days, water cooler breaks and other things we simply take for granted nowadays. And after work, we usually go home, sit on a sofa, have dinner at the table and watch TV afterwards. It’s not a bad situation when you stop to think about it.
Now, what do you think are the conditions for most field workers? Don’t know? Well, as a reporter covering San Joaquin County, I got a firsthand glimpse of just what type of conditions field workers have to endure. I was the first reporter on the scene at the Lower Jones Tract flooding of 2004. And while the focus during those months was the loss of crop and agricultural land, we barely saw what those floods had done to the· workers, until one day after the waters subsided.
I was given a private tour of a farm outside Tracy, and I remember walking into a barrack-style building with 45 to 50 bunk beds, all in a row. What amazed and saddened me was how the flood waters had swept up each worker’s belongings, how they had the simplest of items as their possessions and now they were gone.
What angered me most was how conditions in that barrack-style building were so stark: no air conditioning — just a large fan at the front of the building — and a small kitchen at the end of the room, with no restroom facilities, no shower and no living room. They were stacked in there like cattle, brought out to pick our fruits and vegetables and then simply herded back in at the end of the day. They were treated no better than cows; actually, that’s not true.
As an agricultural reporter, I remember going to a dairy fann in San Joaquin County and being told how when it gets hot, cows can gather under a mister or collect under shade. Every six months, a veterinarian would come in to check how the cows were doing, sort of a health checkup.
Perhaps what’s worse is that it isn’t just men who slave away this way, it’s families. During one interview with a mother of two boys who worked the fields with the rest of the family, I asked how old they were. When she told me 15 and 17, I reminded her that county department of education would require that her boys be in school.
With that, she terminated the interview and story. For, as she told me, the boys needed to work in the fields so the family could have a place to live. If they went to school, the family would be homeless.
Now, as the Senate and the president debate immigration reform, let’s bring in the elements of human dignity, treating guest workers, field workers and migrant workers, with dignity and not as second-class slaves.
If we’re going to have migrant farm workers do our backbreaking work for us while we reap the sweat of their hard work, then farmers need to make sure that conditions such as the above are part of the immigration debate. I just can’t see how it would be or could be any other way.
Disclaimer: The thoughts, opinions and whatever else contained in this column are mine and mine alone.
Les Mahler is the Editor for the Benicia Herald.
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06.07.07
Posted in Places, Society
at 3:16 pm
by Dave Badtke
I just remembered to check on the Jackson County vote on library funding. I was sure it was going to pass, and it seems some who actually live there and would have a better sense of local feeling thought it would be a close vote. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as reported by the School Library Journal:
The [Jackson County] system shut its doors in April, throwing most of its 115 employees, including 17 librarians, out of work. Jackson County is believed to be the largest library closure on record. “I thought the actual vote would be a nail-biter, and it wasn’t,” Interim County Library Services Director Ted Stark says of the vote, in which 58.3 percent of voters said “no” to a ballot question asking voters to approve an additional 66 cents-per-$1,000 of their appraised property value. (Link to article)
Facing the reality of people’s reading habits, which are rapidly dwindling, and the disinclination to support local services that are not directly linked to life and limb, i.e., police and firefighters, I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised, but it does hurt Ashland, Oregon, which is one of the 17 Jackson County libraries, since Ashland is a vibrant arts and education community. It’s not clear what Ashland can do. And it could be that the problem is spreading since neighboring Josephine County may be the next to shut its library doors.
While it’s nice not paying sales tax when we go to Oregon, the state is suffering as a result and should implement a sales tax that would help offset some of revenue lost when fed funds for nonexistent logging dried up and that would also mean that on cultural visits we’d leave a little extra behind.
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06.03.07
Posted in People, Society, Science
at 10:31 pm
by Dave Badtke
In New York Times on May 31, Sam Brownback, one of the three Republicans to raise his hand against evolution during the first Republican presidential debate, is trying to do the kind of explaining one needs to do after apparently not learning even after all these years in office that he shouldn’t answer a question with a raised hand unless the query has to do with coffee and dessert after dinner, which can be a good idea if too much rubber chicken hasn’t been eaten. But instead, Brownback’s eating crow, trying to explain why he raised his hand.
Ours is a sound-bite political culture, Brownback claims — though one wonders why there are so many willing sound-bite participants — which creates a stark contrast that does a “disservice to the complexity of the interaction between science, faith and reason.” He feels that since religion and science strive to understand the truths of their respective worlds, a materialistic world in the case of science and spiritual world in the case of religion, the truths of each can be complementary, but not contradictory.
The heart of the issue is that we cannot drive a wedge between faith and reason. I believe wholeheartedly that there cannot be any contradiction between the two. The scientific method, based on reason, seeks to discover truths about the nature of the created order and how it operates, whereas faith deals with spiritual truths. The truths of science and faith are complementary: they deal with very different questions, but they do not contradict each other because the spiritual order and the material order were created by the same God.
If you’re hoping for some example of how having a common origin or initial condition — God — guarantees that two complementary things cannot be contradictory, you won’t find it because rational, evidence-based cause-and-effect relationships find little purchase in Brownback’s editorial. For example, one could certainly argue that in a marriage the partners complement one another. But does anyone really believe that because both were born of women that they don’t contradict one another? Well, you might say, my analogy is facetious, and you’d be right, but then it seems it’s Brownback’s problem that he neither chooses his terms carefully nor takes the time to carefully define what he’s talking about.
In any event, he gives no example, and in the next paragraph he states that “People of faith should be rational,” which is fine, but then states that reason “cannot answer every question,” which leads him to the disturbing conclusion that “Faith seeks to purify reason” so that we can see more clearly. “Faith supplements the scientific method by providing an understanding of values, meaning and purpose.” Diagrammatically, Brownback seems to be suggesting that the relationship between science and religion looks something like this, 
in which the truth that science finds is “purified” by religion. This could hardly be a more dangerous idea since one person’s purification is another’s propaganda or oppression. That there is a God is doubted by many or that there is a different kind of God from Brownback’s is believed by many more, but in either case a faith-based filter of science is doomed to fail because when scientists seek truth, their mathematics and modeling are not affected by ethical or religious considerations, which is not to say that they themselves are not so affected.
It’s critical to separate the search for scientific truth, which is not bound by ethics, from the scientist who performs the research, who is bound by ethics. As a result, the diagram above should be modified to reflect the filter that ethics and religion apply to the person to “purify” his or her thoughts, but not to the truths the scientist develops.
Within the scientific endeavor, the scientist discovers evidence-based truths. And in science something is the truth if and only if it is a carefully defined set of evaluated facts from which inferences can be made that quantitatively explain the past and predict the future. Physics does this in a Newtonian sense, for example, when it explains tides and solar eclipses, in an elementary particle sense when it explains the quantum properties of particles and fields, and in a flow and aerodynamic sense when it explains why birds, bees and Boeing 747s fly. Similarly, molecular biologists perform this kind of evidence- and model-based science when on a micro level they decode various genomes and discover that we and mice share 99% of the same genes. On a macro level, the evolution of our nervous system can be traced back to the much simpler structures found in worms and insects. And yes, monkeys do look and act like us, which you’ll discover if you spend any time with one.
Evolution, then, is a science as well established as the science underlying the various technologies we use every day from a toaster and cell phone to an automobile and airplane. The problem with evolution is, however, that it deals directly with us, with human development, and this has twisted the ideas of some in the religious community, like Brownback, into unsupportable intellectual knots.
He claims that “There is no single theory of evolution, as proponents of punctuated equilibrium and classical Darwinism continue to feud today” without understanding that the constant reevaluation of falsifiable scientific principles is the essential dynamic that drives scientific evolution much as natural selection drives biological evolution. But Brownback wants none of this dynamic if the assumption is that evolutionary theory offers a “vision of man as a kind of historical accident.”
Fortunately for science, unfortunately for Brownback, he has no say in the scientific debate unless he’s willing to participate as a scientist by assuming that his “truths” are falsifiable. Certainly he’s a senator capable of messing with the minds of Kansas children and children in other states, and that will take a terrible toll, but in the grand scheme of scientific evolution, his views will make no difference because those who pursue science will continue to discover truths whether the U.S. wants to participate or not.
Where he does have influence is in the ethical training of scientists, since this indeed is the filter that philosophy and religion apply to science. But that influence is weakened to the point of ineffectiveness if it is based on an unwillingness to understand the scientific process.
While no stone should be left unturned in seeking to discover the nature of man’s origins, we can say with conviction that we know with certainty at least part of the outcome. Man was not an accident and reflects an image and likeness unique in the created order. Those aspects of evolutionary theory compatible with this truthe are welcome addition to human knowledge. Aspects of these theories that undermine this truth, however, should be firmly rejected as an atheistic theology posing as science.
Sorry, Brownback, but if you want to participate in the scientific debate, you can never make such statements. Science will continue to evolve and answers will be found, and some of the answers will be horribly unethical, which is why it’s so important not to undermine ethical and religious training with principles that encourage people, especially children, to bury their heads in religious sands by claiming that scientific results can be rejected because someone believes them to be “atheistic.”
At times like these when some of our political leaders are behaving as though they can return us to the dark ages when Greek and Roman ideas were rejected, independent of their value, as pagan and corrupt, we need someone like Bob the Bird who can speak sense to nonsense. On this I will have much more to say in upcoming Benicia Herald articles.
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