THE CAVE SINGERS
Wack is Back, Part II
BARBARA FORREST knew the odds were stacked against her. “They had 50 or 60 people in the room,” she says. Her opponents included lobbyists, church leaders and a crowd of home-schooled children. “They were wearing stickers, clapping, cheering and standing in the aisles.” Those on Forrest’s side numbered less than a dozen, including two professors from Louisiana State University, representatives from the Louisiana Association of Educators and campaigners for the continued separation of church and state.
That was on 21 May, when Forrest testified in the Louisiana state legislature on the dangers hidden in the state’s proposed Science Education Act. …
The act is designed to slip ID in “through the back door”, says Forrest, who is a professor of philosophy at Southeastern Louisiana University and an expert in the history of creationism. She adds that the bill’s language, which names evolution along with global warming, the origins of life and human cloning as worthy of “open and objective discussion”, is an attempt to misrepresent evolution as scientifically controversial.
Forrest’s testimony notwithstanding, the bill was passed by the state’s legislature – by a majority of 94 to 3 in the House and by unanimous vote in the Senate. On 28 June, Louisiana’s Republican governor, Piyush “Bobby” Jindal, signed the bill into law. The development has national implications, not least because Jindal is rumored to be on Senator John McCain’s shortlist as a potential running mate in his bid for the presidency.
“New legal threat to school science in the US,” 09 July 2008, New Scientist, Amanda Gefter
I’ve written about this sort of thing several times before but these creationists, uh, intelligent design-ists, are the Energizer Bunny of radical Christian idiocy. It’s almost perfectly Orwellian: teachers are free to teach students non-science in the name of scientific objectivity.
I keep wondering at what point this sort of thing will create a common sense uprising. Why does any Christian want to compete with the schools, for one thing, or with science, for another? It seems to me that religions have much more effective methods of persuasion than the classroom.
The Myth of Multitasking
In one of the many letters he wrote to his son in the 1740s, Lord Chesterfield offered the following advice: “There is time enough for everything in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once, but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time.” To Chesterfield, singular focus was not merely a practical way to structure one’s time; it was a mark of intelligence. “This steady and undissipated attention to one object, is a sure mark of a superior genius; as hurry, bustle, and agitation, are the never-failing symptoms of a weak and frivolous mind.”
Christine Rosen, “The Myth of Multitasking,” The New Atlantis, Spring 2008
I have to say that, despite being a dyed-in-the-wool computers and writing guy, I find this sort of discussion refreshing. In my own work, I find that a limited amount of multitasking is very helpful. Right now, for example, I am listening to WILL’s program Sidestep. (It’s pretty good, but amateurish in some ways).
I discovered as a teenager that this kind of white noise is helpful. On the other hand, after working online full time for a few years I have discovered that it’s best to turn off email while I am writing or commenting on papers. I sometimes put on a video instead of a podcast, but I usually listen more than watch.
There’s also been a few stories recently about “no email Fridays” and the like which seems to confirm that multitasking can be counter-productive. I am not sure that I would go as far as Chesterfield, but it may be true that what we thought was helpful is going to turn out to be much less so.
I sense an economic blind spot. I have been thinking about Twitter in these terms, too. A colleague, for example, shared this post (via listserv) on “25 Twitter Tips for College Students.” What I find so interesting is that each item on the list is either unnecessary or better done in other ways.
Why have so many online “presences” at all? I think Twitter– and the Iphone– illustrate the absurdities that arise when consumerism meets technological fetishism. I’m hoping for a backlash that focuses on using these tools well.
Sinead O’Connor & the Chieftains- The Foggy Dew