The Editor-in-Chief of Muskrat News is going to be Contestant on Jeopardy.
(He's the bearded guy in the lower right box on this page) Wish him luck.
(OK, so the show taped mnonths ago - superstition doesn;t have to be reasonable.)
Fresh Challenges in the Old Debate Over Evolution
By Valerie Strauss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 7, 2004; Page A14
Eighty years after John T. Scopes, a high school biology teacher, was charged with illegally teaching the theory of evolution in Tennessee, the social and intellectual values that imbued that trial with such meaning continue to stir emotions, prompting challenges in school boards and state legislatures, courthouses and schoolrooms.
About 40 states are dealing with some sort of challenge this year to the teaching of evolution at the state level, local level or both, said Glenn Branch, deputy director of the California-based National Center for Science Education, a nonprofit group that defends the teaching of evolution in public schools.
And it’s not just evolution. Emboldened by the perceived victory of “Values Voters” in the recent election, evangelicals are promoting a host of new changes to school curricula to conform them more closely to the Bible:
--In Kentucky, a lawsuit is challenging Archimede’s theory of buoyancy. “Clearly, Jesus could walk on water, so this whole idea that objects sink until they displace a volume of water that equals their weight idea is just wrong” said one local preacher. “Unless Jesus only weighed a few ounces, but that seems unlikely.”
--In Alabama, one local congregation is picketing local math classes to stop the teaching of fractions. “Fractions are un-Christian,” explained the (self-anointed) Reverend Cletus von Yokelberry. “Jesus fed the multitude with just seven loaves and two fishes. Clearly, if you ‘divide’ seven loaves by a multitude you get nothing but crumbs, so fractions must be some kind of new-age, one-world smoke and mirrors.”
--Another Church group in Plankton Springs, Arkansas, is getting together a petition calling for a boycott of the American Society of Internal Medicine after one local doctor opined that Jesus could not really have fasted for forty days without some sustenance.
--A splinter group of the North American Baptist Alliance is seeking to organize a letter-writing campaign against the American Society of Chemical Engineers for defining chemical compounds being changed only by other chemical or nuclear processes, noting that turning wine into water was neither, and should therefore be accounted for in freshman chemistry texts.
--Getting into the act, one local native American tribe is talking to their congressman about getting astronomy texts re-written to accommodate the possibility that stars are the sanctified remains of creatures from creation legends or simply disembodied celestial lights. “Our creation myths say nothing about gigantic balls of hydrogen fusing their stellar material into helium and other elements,” scoffed Peter Creaking Joints, Head Man of the suspiciously-named Fakealotta Indian Tribe.
Not all of this activity sits well with Evolution opponents. “We think they’re obscuring the message here,” said Unctuous P. Barndoor, head of the group Americans for Faith-Based Science. “We don’t want to abandon the world of science all together. At least, not right away. Not until I get that bypass surgery.”
Outraged responses to this story can be e-mailed to Webmaster@muskratnews.com
Remember, Kids, the part in bold is actual 100% news-flavored media product.
The rest is the fakey part.
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