The Wrong Stuff, on purpose: Weikart misquotes Darwin

Richard Weikart is an arm of the Discovery Institute’s disinformation brigade. A couple of years ago he published a book attempting to link Darwin to the Holocaust in a blame-sharing arrangement. This book and some of its arguments appear to be the foundation of the text used to write the script for the mockumentary movie “Expelled!” featuring Nixon speechwriter Ben Stein.

Which is to say, the basis for the movie is dubious. Weikart’s scholarship creating links between Darwin, science and Hitler is quite creative. It is also based on arguments created from Darwin’s writings that mislead the innocent about evolution, science and history, or which get Darwin and evolution exactly wrong.

Michael Ruse published an op-ed in a Florida paper in February — a piece which is no longer available there (anybody got a copy? Nebraska Citizens for Science preserved a copy) — and Weikart responded, restating his creative claims. Alas for the truth, Weikart’s canards are still available at the Discovery Institute website, putting an interesting twist on Twain’s old line: The truth will go to bed at night while a falsehood will travel twice around the world as the truth kicks off its slippers.

Looking for Ruse’s piece, I found Weikart’s response here and here. I composed a quick response pointing out the problems, which I would like to posit here for the record — partly because I doubt Darwiniana gets much traffic, partly because the censor-happy folks at Discovery Institute don’t allow free discussion at their site, and partly so I can control it to make sure it’s not butchered as Weikart butchers Darwin’s text.

At Darwiniana I said:

Weikart’s strip quoting of Darwin is most disappointing. [Weikart wrote:]

Darwin claimed in chapter two of The Descent of Man that there were great differences in moral disposition and intellect between the “highest races” and the “lowest savages.” Later in Descent he declared, “At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races.” Racial inegalitarianism was built into Darwin’s analysis from the start.

Darwin argued the differences in intellect and manners between the “highest” of men and the “lowest” of men did NOT change the fact that we are are all related — legally, Darwin’s argument would evidence a claim absolutely the opposite of what Weikart claims. Here are Darwin’s words from Chapter II of Descent of Man, as Darwin wrote them, without Weikart’s creative editing:

Nor is the difference slight in moral disposition between a barbarian, such as the man described by the old navigator Byron, who dashed his child on the rocks for dropping a basket of sea-urchins, and a Howard or Clarkson; and in intellect, between a savage who uses hardly any abstract terms, and a Newton or Shakespeare. Differences of this kind between the highest men of the highest races and the lowest savages, are connected by the finest gradations. Therefore it is possible that they might pass and be developed into each other. [emphasis added]

That’s not inegalitarianism at all — Darwin’s saying they are the same species, related closer than the poets allow. If we stick to the evidence, and [do] not wander off into poetic philosophy, we must acknowledge that Darwin’s own egalitarian spirit shows here in the science, too. It would be an odd kettle of fish indeed that a crabby guy like Hitler, who shared the antiscience bias of Weikart’s organization, would suddenly accept the science of a hated Englishman that ran contrary to his other philosophies. Who makes the error here, Hitler or Weikart? If they both think Darwin endorsed racism, they both do — but there is not an iota of evidence that Hitler based his patent racism on science, let alone the science of an Englishman.

As to the second quote, Weikart leaves the context out, and the context is everything. Darwin is not arguing that “savages” (the 19th century word for “aboriginals”) were less human, nor that they are a different species. He was arguing that in some future time there would appear creationists like Dr. Weikart’s colleagues at the Discovery Institute who will deny evolution because, once Europeans and others with guns conduct an unholy genocide (which Darwin writes against in the next chapter), and once humans wipe out chimpanzees, orangs and gorillas, the other great apes, the creationists can [then] dishonestly look around, blink their eyes and say, “Where are the links? There cannot be evolution between (Animal X) and humans!”

Darwin wrote:

At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked (18. ‘Anthropological Review,’ April 1867, p. 236.), will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, [emphasis added] and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.

In the end, Darwin wrote against genocide, against racism, and in favor of the higher thinking abilities of all dark-skinned people. He wrote in favor of Christian morality. Darwin himself remained a faithful, tithing Christian to the end of his life.

Such a man, and such amazing science, deserve accurate history, not the fantastic, cowardly and scurrilous inventions Dr. Weikart has given them. We should rise to be “man in a more civilized state” as Darwin had hoped.

Dangers of creationism: Synapse shutdown

One of the ultimate defenses of creationism, once you’ve demonstrated that there is no science and no good theology in it, is the creationist claim “it doesn’t hurt anyone.”

Well, yes, it does. Over the years I’ve noticed that creationism appears to suck the intelligence right out of otherwise smart or educated people. I also note that it tends to make otherwise good and honest people defend academic debauchery and dishonesty.

It’s as if claiming to be creationist hogs all the available RAM in their brains and forces a near-total synapse shutdown.

Cases in point: Creationists are scrambling to the defense of the mockumentary movie “Expelled!” in which Ben Stein trots out almost every creationist canard known to Hollywood in defending some of the greater misdeeds of the intelligent design hoaxers. Otherwise sane, good people, claiming to be Christian, make atrocious defenses of the movie.

I cannot make this up: Go see Mere Orthodoxy and Thinking Christian. Bad enough they defend the movie — but to defend it because, they claim, Darwin and Hitler were brothers in thought? Because evolution urges immoral behavior? I stepped in something over at Thinking Christian, and when I called it to the attention of Tom Gilson in the comments, he deleted the comment. (I’ve reposted, but I wager he’ll delete that one, too, while letting other comments of mine stand; he’s got no answer to any of my complaints.)

The stupid goes past 11, proudly, defiantly. The Constitution specifically protects the right of people to believe any fool claptrap they choose. These defenses of a silly movie come awfully close to abuse of the privilege.

Other useful things:

• Time’s review of the movie
• Charles Darwin’s own blog
• Stein and Godwin’s Law
• No, Darwin was not a racist
• Darwin on how and why humans are moral

Update: Holy mother of ostriches! Tom Gilson at “Thinking Christian” has a nifty device that bans people from viewing his blog. Paranoia sticks its head into a whole new depth of sand!  Here’s a truism:  Creationists who like to claim Darwin was the cause of Stalin and Hitler, which is by itself an extremely insulting and repugnant claim, almost never fail to resort to Stalinist and Hitlerian tactics when their claims are questioned.  Call it Darrell’s Law of Evolution History Revisionism.

Disreputable publishers: Falsehoods in print

Our usual free press in history discourse suggests that the press, especially the newspapers, were more partisan in the early days of our republic than they are now. American Aurora tells the story of newspaper editors being thrown in jail during the administration of John Adams, for example, for their excesses (which may merit being known as “rabid” excesses).

Regnery Publishing is today at least as inaccurate, if not as completely vitriolic, as any of the nasty newspapers published in the John Adams administration. Regnery is the publisher of Jonathan Wells’ mostly fictional, all incorrect account of biology, Icons of Evolution, for example.

Regnery once again pushes the bounds of propriety with a new book by Iain Murray with a title that tells all the author thinks he knows: The Really Inconvenient Truths: Seven Environmental Catastrophes Liberals Don’t Want You to Know About–Because They Helped Cause Them.

You can bet the conservative and anti-science, and anti-environmental protection blogs will light up with this book.

I see from the index on Amazon that I get a mention. I hope Murray claims I caused one of those disasters. You can bet that if he says it, the opposite is true.

In the past couple of months I have had a couple of opportunities to spend some time in libraries and with databases. Checking out the citations from Steven Milloy’s “100 things” about DDT list, I discovered not a single citation relating to DDT’s effects on birds was correct; those articles that did exist concluded opposite what Milloy claims. Some of the articles simply didn’t exist. Bet Murray doesn’t question a single claim from Milloy.

And, did you know that DDT problems were common items for newspapers through the 1950s? You won’t learn that from Murray’s book.

Update, May 2: I have a copy of the book (Regnery did not provide it); it’s worse than I had imagined. Examples: The quote from this blog is criticized as being inaccurate; the quote describes Bush administration policies in 2004 and corporate actions in Uganda to discourage DDT spraying which continue. Murray’s rebuttal discusses Bush administration actions taken two years later, but fails to note that they have not yet worked.

Worse example: Murray has an entire chapter accusing “environmentalists” of being asleep at the switch for damages to fish and other wildlife due to birth control pill residues in the water; he fails to mention that DDT causes exactly the same problems. He fails to note that DDT and especially DDE are endocrine disruptors usually cited as culprits in these cases. He fails to note that the issues are at the top of the list of environmental organizations involved in fish, river conservation, and pesticide safety issues. Regnery’s name is rapidly becoming synonymous with”wildly inaccurate and politically skewed.”

Alas, that’s what I got from a skim of the book before this evening’s meetings.

Oklahoma parents speak out against Sally Kern’s unholy bias

From a paid advertisement in The Daily Oklahoman:

Full text below the fold, should you find it difficult to read this ad on your browser.

Other resources:

• Oklahoma Independent Media Center on Daily Oklahoman editing of letters on bigotry against homosexuals
• Pharyngula: “The odious Sally Kern;” “‘According to God’s Word;’”
• Digital Cuttlefish on Sally Kern
• Dispatches from the Culture Wars: “Kern: Gays worse than terrorists;” “A Brilliant Reply to Sally Kern“

Creationists make stealth bid to takeover Texas education board

Sane members of the Texas State Board of Education hold a slim majority over scripture-at-any-cost-in-science-books creationists.

Creationists are hammering away to defeat at least two incumbent board members to tip the balance, in classic stealth campaigns where they hide their intentions and spend oodles of money hoping to do evil by catching most voters asleep.  The creationists are campaigning to beat conservative, religious Baptists, because the Baptists are “too liberal” on evolution. 

Dallas Morning News columnist Steve Blow presents the facts in the State Education District 11 race, where a secretive urologist who patterns his campaign tactics after Kim Jong Il is outspending the sane incumbent at least $12 to $1.  The entire column is below the fold.

District 11 includes most of Tarrant County (Fort Worth), and Parker, Ellis and Johnson counties.

Social studies is also at risk here:  The stealth candidate, Barney Maddox, is making false claims against Texas social studies teachers and Texas social studies books, especially history books.  The guy looks like an ill-informed nutcase, and he has a good chance of winning.

For example, the campaign flier says: “Barney Maddox believes social studies textbooks should devote more space to American presidents than Marilyn Monroe and that the vicious attack of 9-11 should be portrayed as an aggressive act by terrorists, not an American conspiracy.”

Marilyn Monroe makes no appearance in some books; presidents get 100 times more space in any book you choose.  No book portrays 9-11 as an American conspiracy.  The man campaigns like your standard, wild-eyed nutcase.

Call, write and e-mail everyone you know in Texas to warn them to vote against Barney Maddox, and for Pat Hardy, in the District 11 State School Board race.  Your friends may not live in that district, but they should know.  There are other racess with similar problems.  

Early voting in this primary ends tomorrow night at 7:00 p.m.  Tuesday, March 4,  is election day.

Blow’s column, below the fold.

While you’re working at making the world safe for science, wander over to the Texas Freedom Network’s site, and sign the petition saying you’ll stand up for science.  Tell ‘em Ed sent you.

Personal privilege

So, if you check the comments over at Neil Simpson’s blog, somebody asked about the post Simpson deleted, and Simpson answered:

Didn’t read the thing? Heh. Figures. The comment reveals the depths of moral difficulty of the anti-Rachel Carson position — the position Simpson takes in the blog. Simpson can’t answer any of the criticisms.  No, I didn’t change my e-mail address — Simpson’s blog was just more loving of correcting dissent than Simpson.

Personal attacks? Bullbleep. Simpson thinks any correction is “a personal attack.” If one is chronically in error about the facts, and chronically belligerent about dealing with data, one gets a lot of corrections.

Here’s a challenge to Simpson: This blog is open. I’ll edit out only your profanities if you use them. But I’ll wager you can’t defend your position. I won’t go Joe Stalin on you the way you did on me.

Neil, you’re in error about Carson’s book. You’re wrong. You have a Christian duty to fix the errors. Bet you won’t.

Marshall Art, if you’re interested, you can read the remarks Simpson won’t read, here. Now you know why, in my opinion, he’s afraid to read them.  The comment isn’t even snarky, though heaven knows there’d be a right.

Historian (and lawyer) traps thief of history on eBay

Another story of another amateur historian going out of his way to save history in the form of a letter stolen from the New York State Library.Is Joseph Romito a Boy Scout? Can we give him a medal?

• Photo: New York Times photo by James Estrin; Joseph Romito at a press conference announcing the recovery of the Calhoun letter, with a photo of the letter at left.

Why eugenics doesn’t work

Dog and cat breeders, pigeon fanciers, racehorse breeders, and others whose livelihoods depend on their trying to do better than nature at the Darwinian game often offer anecdotes about breeding failures. They thought they might get a faster horse, but they got a skittish one instead; they thought they were getting a good bird dog, but the dog would panic at the shot of a gun.

Breeders know genetics carry a lot of traits, and trying to select for one is difficult. One may amplify a bad trait in addition to the desired trait.

In short, as the actors told us in the old Chiffon Margarine advertisements, it’s not nice to fool Mother Nature, and not always easy.

In one classic paper that more critics of Darwin should read, researchers discovered that instead of getting better egg production, they got mean chickens that damaged production of the entire flock.

Adam Lerymenko at Greythumb.blog notes the paper, and notes how the phenomenon was demonstrated among humans at the now-failed and discredited Enron Corp. (While informative, the piece may not be wholly safe for profanity filters in schools; the comments may be a problem, too.)

One of my favorite papers in evolutionary biology, which I have mentioned here before, is this:

Muir, W.M., and D.L. Liggett, 1995a. Group selection for adaptation to multiple-hen cages: selection program and responses. Poultry Sci. 74: s1:101

It outlines the group selection effects observed when trying to breed chickens for increased egg production in multiple-hen cage environments. In short, selecting individual chickens for increased productivity in a group environment didn’t select for increased productivity. Instead, it selected for mean chickens. The result was an overall reduction in productivity. Only by selecting at the group level was productivity increased.

The topic is a worthy one for discussion in economics courses, especially with regard to incentives for certain behaviors.

There is this caution: Adam notes that Enron annually fired the “bottom 10%” as a matter of policy, trying to encourage everyone else to work harder, trying to reward productive people, trying to prune deadwood from the corporate vine. At one point, some divisions of GE Corp. would purge the bottom 25%. That’s even more intensive selective pressures, for evil as well as good.

W. Edwards Deming was right, in his 14-point program for getting quality production from corporations and other organizations. He said no corporation ever appears to get it right when they select individuals to blame for problems with annual performance reviews, rather than working to improve processes to improve quality of their products. (See Point 12)

And when legislators try to purge education of bad teachers? Can they possibly hope to get anything but mean chickens? Economists indict our reliance on standardized tests of students.

So much to learn, so many a–holes.

Resources:

• William M. Muir at Purdue University, and later results from the attempt to get a kinder and gentler chicken; and more
• The Deming System of Profound Knowledge, from the Deming Institute (educators, this applies to you)
• “Gone But Not Forgotten,” an appreciation of Deming from Quality Progress; “Four Days with W. Edwards Deming,” from Quality Progress, 1993.

Photo: Enron tilted E sign from the Houston headquarters; Associated Press photo via ABC News, January 22, 2008.

Leadership: Why not Bartlett, or Vinick, for president?

Often I ponder that there are few, if any, worthy models of bosses in popular media, especially in television. This realization struck me several years ago when a friend and I were working on a book on leadership (never published). Models of action are very powerful things. When people see other people doing things, people copy the behaviors, even unconsciously — ask any parent whose kid suddenly informed the in-laws or PTA of the parent’s ability to cuss in a fashion that would embarrass most sailors.

So, the models of what we see as bosses probably affect what we actually get in the workplace. This should trouble you: There are not a lot of good models of good bosses in any medium.

In the comic strips, for example, we have Dagwood Bumstead and his boss Mr. Dithers, who wars with his wife, who seems to be an authoritarian despot who physically abuses his workers. Or in more modern strips, we have Dilbert’s pointy-haired boss, who is an incompetent at all human functions, and most management functions as well. Don’t get me going on Beetle Bailey with incompetents all the way up the line from Sgt. Snorkle.

On television we’ve had incompetents and yellers for years. Phil Silvers played Sgt. Bilko. In every incarnation of Lucille Ball’s programs, a boob boss was required — from Ricky Ricardo’s Cuban temper flareups through Gale McGee’s bosses whose manifold, manifest foibles made them great comic foils. Homer Simpson’s ultimate boss, Mr. Burns, anyone?

Generally, even where someone plays a pretty good boss — Crockett’s and Tubbs’ boss on the old Miami Vice, or the lab heads in any of the current CSI series — there is another boss above them who has some massive failing, or a vendetta against the good team.

Exceptions are rare. Some of the Star Treks did better than others. Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: Next Generation, was ideal as boss in many ways. It was particularly interesting to watch him give his “No. 1,” Riker, first choice in missions on foreign planets. The character Picard had a particular way of showing confidence in subordinates, in subtly demanding the best from them. He’d ask for opinions or ideas on what to do next; when someone came up with a workable idea, or even only the best idea of an apparently unworkable lot, Picard would look them in the eye and delegate to the team the authority to make it happen: “Make it so,” he’d say.

If only we could make it so.

Then there was The West Wing. I think it premiered when I was teaching at night. For whatever reason, I didn’t see a single episode until reruns shortly before the second season. I caught new episodes almost never.

“Grave breaches” of the Geneva Conventions

I tell students to go to the source; if they read the original documents, that puts them ahead of 99% of the people who claim to know what they are doing, especially in history.

Do you know what is a “grave breach” under the Geneva Conventions? Below the fold, material from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), with links to more original document material. DBQ, anyone?

Creationism school wants to offer master’s degrees

If the venerable, old and wrong Institute for Creation Research hoped to sneak through their request to grant graduate science degrees in creationism, they are disappointed this morning. The Dallas Morning News exposed their plans on the front page: “Creation college seeks state’s OK; Dallas school plans master’s in science education, fueling debate over teaching evolution.”

To be more accurate, the headline should have said “fueling debate over teaching creationism,” since that’s where the controversy lies.

Also see the story in the Austin American-Statesman. (Update 12/19/2007 — see these posts, too: Lack of resources; Bending science to keep religion rigid.)

Cartoon by Steve Benson of the Arizona Republic, 2004; via Panda’s Thumb

It’s scary to think people can be granted a degree in lying to innocent children, and that it would be counted as a factor in favor of their teaching, instead of as a problem to be overcome like a bad background report.

But ICR was granting degrees in California. They hope to expand their sales in Texas, closer to the Bible Belt’s buckle.

A state advisory group gave its approval Friday; now the final say rests with the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, which will consider the request next month.

How will the state’s serious higher education institutions respond? What should Texas education officials do? It’s a difficult question, really. Generally states allow any institution that gets accreditation to grant degrees. ICR was denied accreditation in California, but set up a separate accrediting company for Bible colleges and religiously affiliated schools. When the U.S. Department of Education authorized that accrediting association as acceptable for Pell Grant and Stafford Grant purposes, California’s ability to stop the madness was limited. Texas allows degrees for colleges that teach chiropractic medicine, and there are probably several other degree granting programs that would raise eyebrows of rational people, were they better known.

“It just seems odd to license an organization to offer a degree in science when they’re not teaching science,” Mr. [Dan] Quinn [of the Texas Freedom Network] said.

“What we’re seeing here is another example of how Texas is becoming the central state in efforts by creationists to undermine science education, especially the teaching of evolution.”

A group of educators and officials from the state Coordinating Board visited the campus in November and met with faculty members. The group found that the institute offered a standard science education curriculum that would prepare them to take state licensure exams, said Glenda Barron, an associate commissioner of the board.

Dr. Barron said the program was held to the same standards that any other college would have to meet.

“The master’s in science education, we see those frequently,” she said. “What’s different – and what’s got everybody’s attention – is the name of the institution.”

No, it’s not the name of the institution that worries us — it’s their history of defending buncombe, hoaxes and falsehoods as science, detracting from the education of science in a major way.

Science education in the U.S. is under assault. ICR is asking Texas to surrender the nation’s future and accept the ICR’s white flag of ignorance as the state’s own. It is unclear to me whether the state may refuse to do that, though it would be the moral thing to do to refuse.

See also:

• Unfair Park
• Educational Equity, Policy and Politics in Texas

The Story of Stuff

How many different lesson plans can you get from this video? How about from this video with the add-ons?

from www.willbrehm.com

posted with vodpod
You can see a higher quality version at Will Brehm’s “Story of Stuff” website.

The site offers a lot. E-mail updates on issues, cheap DVDs of the movie ($10.00 each for the first 10, $9.00 each for the next 10 . . . you may want to get a copy for each social studies classroom), background stories to the movie, story of Annie Leonard, background sheets, lists of organizations working on the issues and reading lists and more. I found no lesson plans, but you can surely cobble one together for an hour class, with 20 minutes taken up by the film. Plus you can download the movie, for free.

Go noodle around the site: There are lots of possibilities for student projects, student discussions, in-class exercises, homework, and fun.

This movie details, quickly and with good humor, the economics of recycling, the economics of waste disposal, and the economics of production. This provides a great gateway to talk about civics and government, and how to make things happen like garbage collection and recycling; a gateway to talk about economics, especially the various flows of money and goods; a gateway to talk about geography and how we have used our land and rivers to bury and carry waste; and how we use natural resources generally.

This would also be a good video for Boy Scout merit badge classes for the Citizenship in the Community and Citizenship in the Nation badges.

Contrasted with most of the industrial grade video I’ve seen for economics classes, this is fantastic. It’s better than any of the sometimes ambitious, but ultimately dull productions from the Federal Reserve Banks (are you listening, Richard Fisher? Hire Will Brehm’s group). (No offense, Osgood — yours is the best of that lot.)

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., probably has political objections to the movie, claiming it leans left, which indicates it’s in the mainstream. If you’re using any other supplemental material in your classes, this just balances it out.

Religion as science in Texas: Graduate degrees in creationism?

The venerable missionary group known as the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) moved its headquarters from California to Dallas a few months ago. Anyone who follows science education in America is familiar with this group, who deny that the Earth can be more than a few thousands of years old, who argue that geology, astronomy, chemistry and biology are all based on faulty premises.

Dallas is a good location for a missionary agency that flies to churches around the U.S. to make pitches for money and preach the gospel of their cult. DFW Airport provides same-day flights to most of the U.S. Airlines are glad to have their business.

Years ago ICR tried to get approval from the State of California to grant graduate degrees in science, because their brand of creationism is not taught in any research university, or any other institution with an ethics code that strives for good information and well-educated graduates. ICR got permission only after setting up their own accrediting organization which winks, blinks and turns a blind eye to what actually goes on in science courses taught there. It is unclear if anyone has kept count, but there appear to be a few people with advanced degrees in science from this group, perhaps teaching in the public schools, or in charter schools, or in odd parochial settings.

With a new home in Texas, ICR needs permission of Texas authorities to grant graduate degrees. Texas Observer reported that the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board put off consideration of the issue until their meeting of January 24 (no action was planned for this meeting, so failure to grant this authority to ICR should not be taken as any sign that the board is opposed to granting it).

Humor aside, this is a major assault on the integrity of education in Texas. For example, here is a statement on college quality from the Higher Education Coordinating Board; do you think ICR’s program contributes in any way, or detracts from these goals?

Enrolling and graduating hundreds of thousands more students is a step in the right direction. But getting a degree in a poor quality program will not give people the competitive edge they need in today’s world economy. Academic rigor and excellence are essential – both at the undergraduate and graduate levels. We also need to attract and support more research in the state for the academic and economic benefits it provides.

Check out the Texas Observer’s longer post on the issue, and since comments are not enabled there, how about stating here your views on the issue? Comment away.

Tip of the old scrub brush to Texas Citizens for Science.

No, this is not a joke.  Here is the agenda for the meeting this week, in .pdf form.

Diogenes, call your office: Honest man returns $2 million

Over 100 million boys in the U.S. have repeated the Scout Law, “Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean, Reverent.”

Jerry Mika of Draper, Utah, lives it.

Mika returned a check for $2,245,342 that the State of Utah had sent him in error (see the Associated Press story in the Provo Daily Herald — photo, above, by Jeremy Harmon, Salt Lake Tribune).

Mika returned the check — a mistake that occurred when an employee entered a serial number, not an amount — to state finance offices Wednesday.

“Clearly we have an honest, honest citizen. I wish I could do something more than say thanks,” commerce department director Francine Giani said.

Can’t Utah grant him a kingdom — half of Millard County or something? A little duchy in Fillmore, Utah?

Mika, who runs the nonprofit Providence Foundation to help Nepalese sherpas, said he’s had great fun showing off the state’s mistake.

“Everybody looked at it, started giggling and asked why I wasn’t already in Switzerland,” he said.

He admits to being tempted to deposit the money and draw a bit interest before the state asked for its return.

“That money would have gone a long way,” he said.

When a company comptroller complained to me once that the $4 million in refunds to our company would mess up his quarterly bookkeeping because he expected the money in the next quarter, I volunteered to park the money in an account for him. He quickly came to his senses. At low, passbook interest rates, the $4 million would have paid $141/hour, 24 hours a day — more than $3,300 a day. A few weeks of that and you’re talkin’ big money.

Because the check was state-issued, cashing it would probably have been easy, despite the large amount, Giani said.

“It was a valid check,” said Rick Beckstead, the state accounting operation manager whose signature is stamped on the check.

How honest are you, Dear Reader? How much of a temptation would it have been to cash that check? (I’ll wager this man is a former Boy Scout; how much does that account for his actions?)

Perhaps you could reward Mr. Mika’s honesty with a contribution to the foundation he operates, The Providence Foundation.

Teachers: Can you see how to make this into a bell-ringer, warm-up exercise?

Worried about plagiarism? You don’t know the half of it

Larry Lessig, speaking at TED, makes the case for kids who use stuff borrowed from others in their classroom presentations.

First, this speech should open your eyes to the danger of our only preaching against plagiarism to kids who borrow copyrighted stuff off the internet (see especially the last two minutes of his almost-19 minute presentation). What’s the alternative, you ask? See what Prof. Lessig says. What are the alternatives?

Second, Lessig shows how to use slides in a live presentation, to significantly increase the content delivered and the effectiveness of the delivery.

Wow.

Tip of the old scrub brush to Presentation Zen. Go there now and read Garr Reynolds’ take on Lessig’s presentation.

Who is Larry Lessig? You don’t know TED? See below the fold.