Deserved praise for Rachel Carson

New article in Prospect praises Rachel Carson — the authors post the longer version at Crooked Timber.

It’s spring. It’s not a silent spring here in Dallas, thanks to the efforts of Ms. Carson and others more than 40 years ago.

It’s spring, and the efforts to smear Carson and all people who work for clean air and water and good wildlife habitat ramp up again. Articles accusing Carson of genocide are on the upswing. Iain Murray has a book out on the disreputable Regnery label, so desperate to smear that he names this author, and so morally vacuous he includes a chapter complaining about “endocrine disruptors” without acknowledging that one of the chief endocrine disruptors is DDT and its byproducts.

Take a deep breath. If your air is clean, you’re lucky. Now let’s go to work to make sure others can safely take a deep breath, too.

Tip of the old scrub brush to reader Bernarda.

More about Rachel Carson at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub:

• World malaria politics, every day
• Dangerous, anti-science, bigoted ignorance
• ‘Twas DDT nearly killed the beast
• Rising at Buffalo News:  Carson was right
• DDT linked to testicular cancers in next generation
• World Malaria Day 2008
• DDT no silver bullet; environmentalists, medical care not monsters
• How to tell if someone is wrong about DDT and Rachel Carson
• Quote of the moment: Ted Williams (the conservationist)
• 100 things about DDT:  Dissecting #10

“A house divided.” Lincoln, right?

You’re a good student of history. You know that when someone says, “a house divided,” they’re talking about Lincoln’s famous, troubling speech from June 1858. Right?

Look below the fold.

Censorship in the oddest of places

I think it was Euripides who said, “Whom the gods destroy, they first make mad.” Evidence of the madness sometimes is small compensation for bearing the burden of having to deal with the madness of others.

Iaian Murray’s book is getting accolades from some of the odd sources you’d expect to rave over the book without ever having seen it or giving it a moment’s analysis as to accuracy, relevancy, or morality. I stumbled into a bunch of such sites looking to see why Murray took after me, and what I had said that he quoted, to earn me a place in his index.

One would not expect to run into a censorship buzzsaw at a site that proclaims itself to be free enterprise. But Bloodhoundblog has frustrated all my attempts to correct their errors on DDT, in a post “Cleaned by Capitalism: Our professed love of nature is an artifact of our enormous prosperity.” Perhaps I shouldn’t complain — the offending language on DDT was removed eventually. The extolling of Murray’s book remains, however, in an odd screed against public roads and compact fluorescent lightbulbs (go read the site — can you tell what the guy thinks about CFLs?)

Can the irony get much deeper?

Humorously, there is an ill-informed discussion of fascism vs. socialism as communism in the thread — the discussants blithely unaware that totalitarian censorship is a sin under any fair government scheme.

Was it just that they don’t want to discuss the science of DDT? I’ve corrected a minor error in history, too, in a later comment; will that comment hold up? You might want to check out the comments. Do you think the existence of public lands encourages their abuse? It seemed to me the discussants didn’t understand at all that much of our environmental trouble has occurred on private land, often problems of toxic pollution created by the owners of the land.

Ardent and loud “capitalists” often are the first to sell out. They fall for censorship, they fall for hucksterism — just so long as they still get to wave their flag, insult the academy, and a promise they can make some money doing it. Businesses didn’t stand up to fascism in the early 20th century — nor much of any other time business was promised a license to continue operations.

The issues are not simple. If we insist FedEx not do business in China, do we miss a great opportunity to insinuate a capitalist enterprise as a wedge into a crumbling structure of oppressive politics? If we allow China to host Olympic games, do we strengthen their oppressive structure, or weaken it?

Should we stand idly by while the Chinese government censors the internet (and this blog) to its own people? Should I not kick a little when Bloodhoundblog censors my comments?

Olympic history FAIL!, or great PhotoShop

Ed Brayton found it.

Do you think the sign maker was jesting? Or do you think the sign maker genuinely didn’t know? (See: 1936 Olympics in Berlin)

While we wait to see whether someone will confess to PhotoShopping this picture, we teachers might consider using this photo as a hook for a lesson on the differences between the rising totalitarian state of Nazi Germany in 1936, and the rising, increasingly economically free state of the People’s Democratic Republic of China today.

One more lesson plan for this year — it’s reusable next fall, with the added bonus then that by then you’ll have the headlines of the actual Olympics to add to the discussion.

Update: The photo is said to have been was taken by Rowan Benum at a California site (see Mr. Benum’s comment). Since it’s all the rage on conservative sites, where the history ignorance is condemned but the conservative bloggers can’t quite bring themselves to endorse the Communist Chinese, I strongly suspect wondered about a PhotoShop origin. The torch was run through San Francisco; there are few palms in San Francisco (Californians: Can you identify the location?).

Update 5-13-2008: The photographer kindly dropped by comments to note the authenticity of the photo. I agree, the Tibetan prayer flags suggest authenticity; would a hoaxer think of such details?

Discussion questions for the classroom:

Students should look at the photo, and read coverage of the torch relay, such as CNN’s story about the San Francisco relay where Mr. Benum took the photo. Students should have access to information about the International Olympic Committee and its organization, especially the tradition of Olympic Truce. The Charter of the Olympics is probably too long for practical classroom use, but Paragraph 2 can be copied for the students, or perhaps the full page of the “Fundamental Principles of Olympism”:

“Olympism is a philosophy of life, exalting and combining in a balanced whole the qualities of body, will and mind. Blending sport with culture and education, Olympism seeks to create a way of life based on the joy found in effort, the educational value of good example and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles.”
Olympic Charter, Fundamental principles, paragraph 2

There is a wealth of information for classroom use at the website of the IOC. If you’re particularly adventurous, or deep into this topic, check out the podcasts of Olympic history from amateur historian Eli Hunt.

Students should also have some information about Tibet, and the Dalai Lama and Tibet’s government in exile, about the history of Tibet and China’s actions since World War II. Students should have some history of the 1936 Olympics, and they should be familiar with the stories of Jesse Owens’ accomplishments there and his return to a segregated U.S. You may want to provide an article about the U.S. protest of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, and the Soviet protest of the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, and other Cold War moments of Olympic tension.

1. Since the International Olympics Committee (IOC) is an avowedly non-political international agency, is it fair or rational to protest the siting of an Olympics on political grounds?
2. What do the protesters ask the IOC to do? What do the protesters ask others to do?
3. Under international law, what are the rights and duties of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC)?
4. Did the IOC ask anything of the government of the Peoples Republic of China of a political nature? Would such requests be fair, or rational?
5. Other international organizations function in other nations where governments do not have good records on human rights, such as the Red Cross/Red Crescent, Scouting, UNICEF, and others (can you add to this list?). What considerations must such organizations give to local politics where human rights are at issue?
6. Compare and contrast the issues surrounding the Beijing Olympics with issues surrounding the Myanmar relief efforts after Cyclone Nargis (2008).
7. Look at other protests involving the Olympics, especially in 1980 and 1984. Did those protests achieve what the protesters had hoped? Does the success or failure of past protests augur well for current protests?
8. The creator of the protest sign in the photograph appears to have not known about the 1936 Olympics, which were hosted in Berlin, then under the control of the Nazi government of Germany. The Olympics were sited in Berlin prior to the rise of the Nazi government. Does the protester’s ignorance of history affect the message of the sign? Does it reflect well on the cause the protester advocates?
9. What other famous or notorious examples of ignorance of history can you find?
10. Do you ever get embarrassed for the people captured in Jay Leno’s “Jaywalking” segments?
11. Georges Santayana (1863-1952) famously said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Do you find that statement to be true? Does this affect the course of history? (Students may want to explore the history of invasions of Russia by Napoleon and Hitler, or the history of invasions of Afghanistan by Britain, the Soviet Union, and the U.S.)
    

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.

Two million minute challenge

Just over two weeks to graduation, son James is concerned about global competitiveness.  He’s off to study physics at Lawrence University in the fall; he is insistent I note the news in the paper this week.  I still have an active  stake in public schools, after all — good call, James.  Here’s his concern, below.

Each child has two million minutes of life over the four years of high school. Whether the U.S. can remain competitive in the global economy depends more than ever on how each child allocates those two million minutes.

A new film raises concerns that U.S. children are losing out against students from India and China.

Dallas Morning News business reporter Jim Landers wrote about the movie, “Two Million Minutes,” in an article May 6. It’s an indication of something that this is front page in the business section — an indication of genuine concern, one may hope.

Science and mathematics education gets the major attention in the film. One wishes this film could compete with the anti-science film “Expelled!” which still lingers malodrously in a few theatres across the nation.

Landers wrote:

2 Million Minutes argues that “the battle for America’s economic future isn’t being fought by our government. It’s being fought by our kids.”

And in a series of international comparisons, the U.S. kids are not doing so well. The one area where they score better than the rest is self-confidence.

Once they leave the eighth grade, students have a little more than 2 million minutes to get ready for work or college and the transition to being an adult. This documentary, made by high-tech entrepreneur Robert Compton, follows two high school seniors in Carmel, Ind., two in Bangalore, India, and two in Shanghai, China, to see how they use their time.

All six are bright, accomplished, college-bound individuals.

Our students spend a lot of time watching TV, working part-time jobs, playing sports and video games, but not so much on homework. The Chinese kids spend an extra month in school each year, more hours at school each day and more hours doing homework. By the time they graduate, Chinese students have spent more than twice as much time studying as their U.S. counterparts.

While one may hope kids will pay attention, one may be unhappy to recall the topic, and many of the same or similar numbers, were published nationally in the 1980s by the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) at the U.S. Department of Education. I remember it well, since I was publisher for some of the work.

The website for the movie offers more details, including a calendar of screenings. DVDs are available, but at very high prices — $25 for home use, $100 for school or non-profit use. I’d love to show it to students; I can get a couple of much-needed PBS videos for that same price. I hope producers will work to arrange distribution competitive with opposition movies like Stein’s. I’ll wager “Expelled!” will hit the DVD market at about $10.00, with thousands of DVDs available for free to churches and anti-science organizations.

Landers chalks up some of the stakes, and we should all pay attention:

FALLING BEHIND IN EDUCATION

Nearly 60 percent of the patents filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in the field of information technology now originate in Asia.

The United States ranks 17th among nations in high-school graduation rate and 14th in college graduation rate.

In China, virtually all high school students study calculus; in the United States, 13 percent study calculus.

For every American elementary and secondary school student studying Chinese, there are 10,000 students in China studying English.

The average American youth now spends 66 percent more time watching television than in school.

SOURCE: “Is America Falling off the Flat Earth?” by Norman R. Augustine, chairman, National Academy of Sciences “Rising Above the Gathering Storm” committee

Archaeology marches on! Carnivals to catch up

Testing, grading, trying to correct errors, and meanwhile progress continues.

Four Stone Hearth’s 40th edition is out today at the redoubtable Remote Central — but I missed #39 at Hominin Dental Anthro.

Real science is almost so much more interesting than faux science. #39 features the discussions about the claims that the Hobbits had dental fillings. While such a claim is damaging either to the claims of the age of Homo floresiensis or to the claims about the age of the specimens and, perhaps, human evolution, no creationist has yet showed his head in the discussion. When real science needs doing, creationists prefer to go to the movies. There is even a serious discussion of culture, and what it means to leadership of certain human tribes, with nary a creationist in sight.

While you’re there, take a careful look at the header and general design of Hominin Dental Anthro. Very pretty layout, don’t you think?

#40 at Remote Central is every bit as good. World history and European history teachers will want to pay attention to the posts on extinctions on the islands of the Mediterranean. Any one of the posts probably has more science in it in ten minutes’ reading than all of Ben Stein’s mockumentary movie, “Expelled!” That’s true especially when science is used to skewer the claims of the movie, or when discussion turns to the real problems the mockumentary ignores.

Enjoy the cotton candy.

Hypocrisy all the way to 11

Tom Gilson is a muck-a-muck with Campus Crusade for Christ, and though claiming he is Christian he has no compunction calling Charles Darwin an accessory to murder and otherwise promoting the canard that evolution caused Hitler to go nuts and murder millions.

Making the link to Hitler in an era when Godwin’s Law has a well-visited entry on Wikipedia imposes on one a duty to check the facts.  Doesn’t faze Gilson:  Damn the facts, full calumny ahead.

Which is worthy of comment at the moment only because he’s banned my comments.  I was trying to figure out where he was coming from, and I followed his links to a column he wrote on Chuck Colson’s “Breakpoint” site, in which he discusses his struggles in debating scientists and others who understand evolution.

As one who does a lot of web-based debating against naturalistic (atheistic) evolution, I know I wouldn’t stand a chance if I weren’t studying what the best atheists and evolutionists have written, or without reading the most thoughtful Christian or ID-based responses.

The second protection against such an error is to know what we don’t know, and be willing to admit it. Evolution and ID involve specialized studies in paleontology, radiometric dating, geology, biochemistry, genetics, and more. Does ID challenge some of the prevailing wisdom in these fields? Yes. Can we read about these challenges on the web, or find a good, trustworthy book about them? Certainly! Will that make us qualified to “pronounce” on them? Well, no.

But that’s okay. We don’t all have to be experts. It will take many years (at least) for those who are to work out their differences. We can still know what we do know. We know that God created the heavens and the earth and all that lives in them. The details and the debates go far deeper than that. We should dive into these discussions only as deep as we’re prepared to swim—while at the same time always equipping ourselves to go to greater depths.

Excuse me, but I’d just come from another site that had the works of Hitler, discussing his own struggle — “mein kampf” in German.  I noticed a few parallels, and I called attention to them, sorta hoping Gilson would blush and back away from the claims.  Gilson’s stuff is mild, really.  He’s got a tin ear for science and a very narrow view of history, it appears to me.  Were he not so earnest in impugning others, I’d have just laughed it off completely.  That’s what I expected him to do.

But no.  He got huffy and banned me.  Censorship, refusing to discuss with critics, are just tools Gilson has to use in his struggle against evolution.  Only Tom Gilson can make wholly unsubstantiated claims in error against great men — no one else is allowed to question the Man Behind the Curtain.

If irony killed, there’d be no creationist left on Earth. If irony were science, creationism would win several Nobels a year.  If irony were worth a pitcher of warm [spit], creationism would have a permanent hold on the vice presidency.

But irony is not a response.  Ain’t it odd to hear these guys go on about their struggles, all the while they impugn the reputation of a good man like Charles Darwin, and all the time they have not got an iota of science to back up their position?

Gilson argues evolution played a role in the Holocaust.  He’s not sure how, and he doesn’t know anything about what evolution theory is nor the history of the Holocaust, but he’s sure that if he just reads the Bible earnestly enough . . .

If this completely unsupportable claim is the best we can expect from creationists, isn’t it frightening that anyone gives them credence?

Gilson will see the links.  Tom, if you come here, you’ll find someone who is willing to discuss with you your errors and why you should repent.  Bet you won’t.  Bet you can’t.

Update:  P. Z. Myers found this guy, Jeff Dorchen.  Gilson, he’s got Stein pegged, I think.  What say you?

All Ben Stein would have had to say to support the Nazis back then is what he’s saying right now.

Shut up, Godwin.

Just because George W. Bush won’t be in office next year doesn’t mean we’ve dodged the bullet of a white Christian supremacist dictatorship. We are not out of the woods yet, my darlings. That a man, let alone a Jew, could, without shame, walk on the graves of Holocaust victims and claim the theory of evolution was at fault, let alone a man whose nationalism, social darwinism (which is not Darwinism, by the way), anti-intellectualism, and disregard for the truth are beyond doubt - it’s like some ghastly executioner’s joke. If the message of Expelled weren’t being taken seriously by a religio-political movement that has already caused two presidential elections to end in disaster, it would be merely obnoxious. Instead, it’s chilling.

Can he sink any lower? Never underestimate the depths of degradation a Ben Stein might sound. My money’s on Ben Stein to be the first human being to reach the Earth’s core. 

Marriage rights and civil rights giant, Mildred Loving, 68

We learned today that Mildred Loving died Friday in Milford, Virginia.  She was 68.

2007 was the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court Decision in which she played a key role, Loving vs. Virginia.  In that decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that state laws against interracial marriage are unconstitutional.

The romance and marriage of Mildred and Richard Loving demonstrate the real human reasons behind advances in civil rights laws.  They left Virginia to avoid facing prosecution for having gotten married; but when they wanted to be closer to family, they wrote to then-Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. He referred them to the American Civil Liberties Union, who financed the case to get the law changed.

See the post from last year on the anniversary of the decision.  The Associated Press wrote today:

Peggy Fortune [daughter] said Loving, 68, died Friday at her home in rural Milford. She did not disclose the cause of death.

“I want (people) to remember her as being strong and brave yet humble — and believed in love,” Fortune told The Associated Press.

Loving and her white husband, Richard, changed history in 1967 when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld their right to marry. The ruling struck down laws banning racially mixed marriages in at least 17 states.

“There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the equal protection clause,” the court ruled in a unanimous decision.

Her husband died in 1975. Shy and soft-spoken, Loving shunned publicity and in a rare interview with The Associated Press last June, insisted she never wanted to be a hero — just a bride.

“It wasn’t my doing,” Loving said. “It was God’s work.”

Mildred Jeter was 11 when she and 17-year-old Richard began courting, according to Phyl Newbeck, a Vermont author who detailed the case in the 2004 book, “Virginia Hasn’t Always Been for Lovers.”

Richard died in 1975.

History loses another hero.

Update:  Just as one more showing of how things have changed, this is the headline of the story of Mrs. Loving’s death in the Fredericksburg, Virginia, Free Lance-Star, the local newspaper in Mrs. Loving’s home county, Caroline County:  “CAROLINE HEROINE DIES”

I’ll wager the Virginia headlines were quite not so glowing in 1967.

Call for help: Real story behind the Holocaust?

Historians, help me out here. I’ve recently become aware that many creationists have swallowed as accurate Richard Weikart’s book making Darwin complicit in the Nazi Holocaust of World War II.

I have always dismissed Weikart. His claims fly in the face of history recorded by too many reputable and trustworthy hands. Others aren’t concerned with what history really shows, or are simply ignorant of history (candidates for Jay Leno’s “Jaywalking” segment). I am working to assemble what I hope will be a short piece showing the error of Weikart’s claims.

It seems to me there are many holes in the history case Weikart tries to make. And the history case needs to be nailed down, accurately.

Scientists already have responded. The American Academy for the Advancement of Science complains that the scientific inaccuracies in the film muddy the waters between science and religion unfairly and unnecessarily (see video here). The Jewish Anti-Defamation League has complained about the unholy Holocaust claims. Movie reviewers have not been kind to the film, with reviews like the New York Times:

One of the sleaziest documentaries to arrive in a very long time, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” is a conspiracy-theory rant masquerading as investigative inquiry.

Still there are creationists, and other people of faith out there, who grant credence to Weikart’s claims. So we need a clear rebuttal to Weikart’s claims, from the history viewpoint.

The National Center for Science Education has a brief that touches on these arguments; what other sources do you recommend on these specific claims listed below?

Weikart makes six claims (I’ve borrowed here from an article he wrote for American Spectator):

1. Darwin argued that humans were not qualitatively different from animals. The leading Darwinist in Germany, Ernst Haeckel, attacked the “anthropocentric” view that humans are unique and special.

That seems directly contrary to the view of Darwin presented in the better biographies. I don’t recall Darwin ever arguing this point at all. Is Weikart imagining this?

2. Darwin denied that humans had an immaterial soul. He and other Darwinists believed that all aspects of the human psyche, including reason, morality, aesthetics, and even religion, originated through completely natural processes.

Darwin never denied the existence of human souls. While Darwin made rather brilliant arguments for how morality could arise through evolution, going so far as to say that morality is necessary for the survival of a social species such as humans, at no point in his arguing for the natural processes does he deny or disavow the supernatural. Descent of Man will offer Darwin’s work on the rise of morals and art — what other sources would you recommend?

3. Darwin and other Darwinists recognized that if morality was the product of mindless evolution, then there is no objective, fixed morality and thus no objective human rights. Darwin stated in his Autobiography that one “can have for his rule of life, as far as I can see, only to follow those impulses and instincts which are the strongest or which seem to him the best ones.”

Notes from Evil Bender, Creationist quotemining of Darwin: moral relativism edition, has already called out the gross error in Weikart’s claim here — this is quite contrary to what Darwin actually argued and said. But again, there should be a few other sources to rebut Weikart’s claim. Which do you recommend?

4. Since evolution requires variation, Darwin and other early Darwinists believed in human inequality. Haeckel emphasized inequality to such as extent that he even classified human races as twelve distinct species and claimed that the lowest humans were closer to primates than to the highest humans.

Actually, Darwin was a potent advocate of legal equality, for example in his advocacy and support for ending slavery. Weikart’s claim here completely steps away from reality. I admit to not being overly familiar with Haeckel’s work, partly because Haeckel doesn’t represent Darwin, partly because I have just never found the guy’s work particularly interesting or useful. What sources and arguments do you recommend here?

5. Darwin and most Darwinists believe that humans are locked in an ineluctable struggle for existence. Darwin claimed in The Descent of Man that because of this struggle, “[a]t 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.”

That’s a complete distortion of what Darwin wrote, of course — the NCSE site has a short rebuttal. Darwin was writing of the clash between colonists and natives, largely between Europeans and aboriginals, or between Europeans with guns and aboriginals without them. Key case in point: The Tasmanian “Wars,” which led to the almost complete extinction of native Tasmanians, a sad circumstance Darwin saw on his voyage. Got other sources you recommend?

6. Darwinism overturned the Judeo-Christian view of death as an enemy, construing it instead as a beneficial engine of progress. Darwin remarked in The Origin of Species, “Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows.”

This claim is so full of hooey I’m not sure where to start. What do you think? Can you imagine how quickly Darwin would have gotten his shotgun out for some fool who suggests, like Weikart does here, that Darwin was not grieved by the death of Annie? Are you outraged at the butchering of the last paragraph from Origin of Species?

There are a lot of Christians who should know better who have been misled by this claptrap. Will you help me make a brief against Weikart’s claims?

Comments are open. Please chime in.

China hammered by “globalization” - why students should study

Economics, history and geography, and “vocational” teachers take note:  David Brooks’ column, “The Cognitive Age,” in the New York Times today should be a warmup in your classes next week.  See why in this excerpt:

The chief force reshaping manufacturing is technological change (hastened by competition with other companies in Canada, Germany or down the street). Thanks to innovation, manufacturing productivity has doubled over two decades. Employers now require fewer but more highly skilled workers. Technological change affects China just as it does the America. William Overholt of the RAND Corporation has noted that between 1994 and 2004 the Chinese shed 25 million manufacturing jobs, 10 times more than the U.S.

The central process driving this is not globalization. It’s the skills revolution. We’re moving into a more demanding cognitive age. In order to thrive, people are compelled to become better at absorbing, processing and combining information. This is happening in localized and globalized sectors, and it would be happening even if you tore up every free trade deal ever inked.

The globalization paradigm emphasizes the fact that information can now travel 15,000 miles in an instant. But the most important part of information’s journey is the last few inches — the space between a person’s eyes or ears and the various regions of the brain. Does the individual have the capacity to understand the information? Does he or she have the training to exploit it? Are there cultural assumptions that distort the way it is perceived?

Back again: Measles

Copy a couple of these articles and give them to your school nurse to pass out to people who say they don’t want to inoculate their kids.

• New York Times, measles at highest level in years
• Washington Post, CDC cites biggest increase in measles since 2001
• Reuters
• Los Angeles Times
• ABC News
  

In 1991, we could have inoculated every unvaccinated child under the age of 10, in Dallas County, for much less than $20,000. Then the epidemic hit. One of the early hospitalizations for the company I worked with was $100,000. One kid went in, and after $1 million of care, spent the rest of his life in a local hospital (another decade).

The economic arguments for measles vaccination should be clear.

Update: Bug Girl is right (see her comment below):  Go check out Orac’s post on the issue, “Antivaccinationsim versus measles in the U.S.:  Are the chickens coming home to roost.”  I was posting in a hurry; Orac is posting after visiting the issue several times.  Contrast Orac’s views as a physician with those of people who tend to get herded into panics without the facts, only through the fault of not having the facts about the dangers of the diseases they let off the hook (make no mistake: most of these people are well-meaning).

My more complete measles story, below the fold.

DDT linked to testicular cancers in next generation

Rachel Carson’s careful citations in her book Silent Spring have been reinforced by a recent study that shows a more direct link between DDT and human cancers, contrary to claims by lobbyists, junk science purveyors and practitioners of voodoo science.

Another study suggests DDT causes damage to the reproductive organs of children of people exposed to the pesticide.  The connection is again to the daughter product, DDE.

Danger appears to result from exposure in utero or from breast feeding.  The Reuters India story said:

Researchers led by Katherine McGlynn of the U.S. government’s National Cancer Institute examined blood samples provided by 739 men in the U.S. military with testicular cancer and 915 others who did not have it.

The link between DDE and cancer was particularly strong with a type of testicular cancer known as seminoma, which involves the sperm-producing germ cells of the testicles.

If diagnosed, testicular cancers are among the most treatable.  It generally strikes men in their 20s and 30s.  About 8,000 new cases per year show up in the U.S.  In an average year testicular cancer kills 380 Americans.  The NCI study suggests about 15 percent of cases in the U.S. can be attributed to DDT exposure.

It is possible some of the men who later developed cancer of the testicles were exposed to DDE at very young ages — in the womb or through breastfeeding, the researchers said.

“In testicular cancer, there’s a fair amount of evidence that something is happening very early in life to increase risk,” McGlynn said in a telephone interview.

DDE remains ubiquitous in the environment even decades after DDT was being banned in the United States — and is present in about 90 percent of Americans, McGlynn said.

“The trouble with these chemicals is they hang around a long time. It’s in the food chain now,” McGlynn added. People who eat fish from contaminated areas can absorb it, for instance.

The study was published on-line in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute on April 29, 2008, ahead of print publication.

Resources:

• CTV (Canada) story, with links to the Journal of the National Cancer Institute
• MLA format citation:  Journal of the National Cancer Institute. “Pesticide Metabolites Associated With Increased Risk Of Testicular Cancers, Study Shows.” ScienceDaily 30 April 2008. 2 May 2008 <http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2008/04/080429170604.htm>; more colloquial format: McGlynn, K. Journal of the National Cancer Institute, April 29, 2008: vol 100: pp 1-9
• Science Daily report on the study
• Web/MD report, “Cancer Risk Lingers for Long-banned DDT“
• Earlier Science Daily report on Yale study that will look at potential causes of the spike in testicular cancers, focusing on endocrine disruptors like DDT and its byproducts.
• NCI Cancer Trends Report, 2007 - Pesticides

Happy 75th, Willie Nelson

He’s on the cover of Texas Monthly looking like the oldest piece of shoe leather south of the Red River (see photo at right — by Platon).  He was featured in the Dallas Morning News last week for “Red Headed Stranger,” the album that broke the country music mold and made him the monument to iconoclasm that he is.  And there’s a new book on  his life from Joe Nick Patoski:  Willie:  An epic life.

I’ll wager he’s on the road today, ready to make music.

Willie Nelson turns 75 today.

You oughtta check out:

• Texas Monthly slide show on Willie
• 1976 story on Willie leaving Nashville
• Live Willie, on “Austin City Limits” (via Texas Monthly)
• Dallas Morning News editorial on Willie’s 75th

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“