However, from my perspective and to be fair, oil spill would have to mean a spill that actually reaches land to cause environmental damage or at least have significant potential to do so. Any information that such was the case as a consequence of the Katrina destruction?

GW Bush, leading contender for worst President ever.

Just translating the rant--though the whole "California's been doing this for years" thing makes the rant look too silly to be worth translating, really.

...would have possibly made us capable of willful ignorance.

The bill is what it is. The people behind the bill are what they are. No sensible person disputes that the purpose of this bill is to teach Creationism (or its bastard cousin, Intelligent Design) in public schools.

It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.

The key phrase is "open and objective discussion of scientific theories." I don't think a plain reading of the bill requires that the "support and guidance for teachers regarding effective ways to help students understand, analyze, critique, and objectively review scientific theories" be itself limited to scientific theories. The whole premise (if we assume all this is meant in good faith) is to equip teachers and students with the ability to "assess" the validity of, say, neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory. And that's not itself a scientific task; done properly, it's a task for the philosophy of science. (Improperly, it's apology for pseudo-science.)

Or we can go at this another way: what's meant by "open," anyway? It suggests that the boundaries of the scientific pedagogy are invidiously narrow; how ought they be expanded? What are the options on the table for 'expanding' the scientific account of the origin of the human species beyond evolutionary theory? What can they possibly have in mind?

Maybe nothing; I'll be glad enough if the bill proves as vacuous in effect as it is in its phrasing.

Brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio.

of "scientific theories" which are not being sufficiently addressed by current Louisiana school science curricula, such that they merit special legislative action to promote them?

GW Bush, leading contender for worst President ever.

You owe me a keyboard

For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions, even on important subjects, which I once thought right but found to be otherwise - B. Franklin

is a county.

I'm finding this whole debate pretty funny, actually--since I'm likely the only person on this site who was actually taught 'Creationism" in a Louisiana public school. Nobody really believed then--nor do they now--that God created the world a few thousand years ago, as Bishop Ussher claimed, complete with fossils like a theme park. The legislature didn't, the teachers didn't, and 90% of the kids didn't. It was all a sop to Louisian's unique conservative Catholic--Fundie Baptist coalition, which is the first to bolt the doors at the first sign of evolution in bird flu or MRSA, for instance.

Evolution isn't the issue any more--"Intelligent Design" is. Liberals claim this to be a code word for "Creationism", but it isn't. It posits, at least in the form I've been exposed to, that God deliberately directed evolution in order to make humankind kings of the jungle. Why that notion would bother anyone is beyond me--not only is it a giant step in the right direction (since it admits evolution actually exists), it's unproveable either way, as is the existence or non-existence of God. Besides, it's hard to understand why anyone who eats meat would be so quick to reject the notion, since their right to do so now hangs by such a tenuous moral thread; the Spanish parliament has just granted full equal rights to apes (meaning that they can marry humans, apply for jobs and public housing, etc), and the European parliament will swiftly follow. Within 50 years these rights will be extended to all animals, and the fast-food carnage will cease.

"Intelligent Design" could one day become your only ticket to a steak.

As for Jindal being stupid, vicious, etc--that's just slander. No one here has ever met him or knows much about him. The one time I heard him speak in person, he reminded me of Bobby Kennedy. Who was also, you know, a Catholic. And who supported the death penalty for every kind of rape, which was then the law in most states. There's not a politician in America who couldn't be called similar names for supporting or signing some sort of legislation that offends some group or other. It would be my fondest wish here during what promises to be a pretty intense election campaign, to see all commenters moderating their personal attacks on all contenders, regardless of their own private beliefs. Name-calling doesn't persuade, it only alienates.

incredibly silly argument. "Evolution" has a rather long and respected provenance (in the scientific community) and "intelligent design" does not. Science should be taught in science class.

I had discovered a great secret. That everyone loves themselves more than they love anybody else. And if I wanted them to love me, I better be like THEM!... Ken Nordine

I wouldn't think much about it one way or the other really; I'll admit, once I'm done with this thread, I won't think about it much even though it does have "evolution" and "origin of life" included. I do find the kinds of arguments one sees coming out of the Discovery Institute to be almost insultingly bad, but thanks in no small part to the Honorable Judge John Jones III, I don't think they have much of a future ahead of them.

Teaching history is bound to be fraught by competing political viewpoints; but that's a whole different kettle of fish.

Brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio.

I certainly wouldn't suggest that you ought to be outraged about this--your cup, especially, seems to runneth over--but I don't think it's unwarranted to assume that the anodyne, deflationary language of the legislation belies a more expansive agenda on the part of its supporters, within government and without.

But I suspect Derbyshire's right, in any case, that any move to act on that agenda will end with a (costly) lawsuit, which the ID supports will rightly lose. The Dover decision isn't precedent outside of my fair state, but it's going to be pretty darn persuasive.

Brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio.