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

The $7 million dogwood blossom

Not perfect — there is a brown spot on it; but beautiful, surpassingly rare, a creature of the serendipity of nature, it is a natural dogwood blossom in Dallas County, Texas:

What we came to see - the magical dogwood blossoms.

On April 5 Kathryn and I joined David Hurt and a jovial band of hikers for a trip into Dogwood Canyon in Cedar Hill, Texas. The physical formation of Cedar Hill upon which the city of the same name and several others stand, is one of the highest spots between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains. It is an outcropping of chalk, a formation known as the Austin Chalk, that runs from Austin, north nearly to the Oklahoma border.

This rock formation creates a clear physical marker of the boundary between East and West. Dallas is east of the line, Fort Worth, Gateway to the Old West, is 30 miles farther west. On this outcropping is married the plains of the west with the oaks and forests of the east. Within a few miles of the line, the botanical landscape changes, cowboy prairie lands one way, forest lands the other.

On the chalk itself, the soil is thin and alkaline. The alkalinity is a function of the chemical composition of the chalk underneath it.

Dogwoods love the forests of East Texas with their acidic soils. Early spring produces fireworks-like bursts of white dogwood blossoms in the understory of East Texas forests. Dogwoods die out well east of Dallas as the soil changes acidity; driving from Dallas one can count on 30 to 60 miles before finding a dogwood.

Except in Dogwood Canyon. There, where entrepreneur David Hurt originally planned to build a family hideout and getaway, he found a stand of dogwoods defying botanists and the Department of Agriculture’s plant zone maps, blooming furiously in thin alkaline soil atop the Austin Chalk.

(continued below the fold)

Vote today: Committee recommends against graduate creationism degrees

Good news:  A subcommittee of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Committee yesterday voted against letting the Institute for Creation Research award graduate degrees in science education because of their rejection of evolution.  The full committee will vote today.

ICR promises to fight it.

Dallas Morning News reporter Terrence Stutz’s report is worth reading.

Citing the group’s teaching of creationism rather than evolution in its science curriculum, Dr. Paredes said it was clear the school would not adequately prepare its graduates to teach the scientific principles now required in Texas public schools.

“Evolution is such a fundamental principle of contemporary science it is hard to imagine how you could cover the various fields of science without giving it [evolution] the proper attention it deserves as a foundation of science,” he said.

“Religious belief is not science. Science and religious belief are surely reconcilable, but they are not the same thing.”

Henry Morris III, chief executive officer of the institute, contended that the school would prepare students to “understand both sides of the scientific perspective, although we do favor the creationist view.”

After the adverse vote from several coordinating board members meeting as a committee, Mr. Morris said the institute may revise its application or take its case to court.

“We will pursue due process,” he told the board. “We will no doubt see you in the future.”

Quiet and educational efforts from Texas Citizens for Science and the Texas Freedom Network probably helped turn the tide on this issue.

Resources:

• Dallas Morning News editorialized against the degree program’s approval, Bathtub’s coverage
• MFB’s coverage of ICR’s disputing the editorial
• MFB’s coverage of Houston Chronicle editorial
• Texas Citizens for Science President Steven Schafersman’s testimony to THECB, April 16, 2008

Carnival Catch-up: Personal Finance

Behind on our carnivaling again . . . alas, not because we’ve been soaking in the tub, either.

Texas teachers, take note of the 149th Carnival of Personal Finance hosted by The Happy Rock. If you can’t find material there to bolster your personal finance curriculum, you need a lot more coffee.  Lots of posts on saving and investing and how to make it work on limited budgets, good stuff for the classroom.  Some are rather curious though — this one, from Squawkfox, suggests women should go around virtually naked in a sense, keeping no important documents or items in their purses.  Where should a lady carry her check book, seriously?

Tip of the old scrub brush to Don’t Mess with Taxes

The inaccuracy and spin go all the way to 11

There’s a guy who doesn’t like my comments on his blog, so he’s banned me. Every once in a while I find a headline or link to something, and it takes me over there — and I remember why he doesn’t like my comments.

Rationality and accuracy are barriers to be overcome for some bloggers, and this guy often falls into that category. Today he’s bummed that gay students and their friends and relatives protest bullying of gays with a Day of Silence. Neil Simpson wrote:

The Day of Silence (where schools encourage kids to be completely silent for a day to protest alleged discrimination against gays) is back, and students’ rights are being violated left and right. It is bad enough that they disrupt the learning process for a whole day, but now some schools aren’t permitting students to miss school that day or instituting other requirements.

Okay, that’s enough. I gotta stop the quoting and make corrections. “Where schools encourage kids to be completely silent for a day?” There is no such place. This is a fabrication of someone. Who?

The link in the quoted paragraph goes to Kevin Bussey’s blog; from there we get a link to a story in WorldNet Daily, perhaps the single greatest source of information pollution on the internet.

But read the story — even WND doesn’t claim that schools are supporting the event. WND only decries the fact that schools won’t bully kids into not supporting the anti-bullying campaign (irony drips from every serif of this story . . .).

Gay clubs and the “Day of Silence” have no purpose in schools. The GLBTX propoganda machine just uses the Trojan Horse of being anti-bullying to get them in. It is all part of the drive not just for tolerance, not just for affirmation, but to silence all critics.

But why have sex clubs and school-sponsored protest days just for that? All you need is a simple and thoroughly enforced anti-bullying policy:

If you physically or verbally harass other students on or off school grounds you will have swift and serious consequences. It doesn’t matter if you are bullying because they are gay / straight / fat / thin / smart / dumb / pretty / ugly / etc., or if it is just because you are a mean jerk. Zero tolerance. Training over. Now go to class and learn something.

Bullying is wrong. I would always protect gays if they were being bullied, but that isn’t what this issue is really about. If it was, then the kids who are picked on for all those other reasons should get a special day as well, and schools wouldn’t persecute students who wanted to opt out of this special day.

Just a stand against bullying? Maybe Simpson will take a stand against bullying, you think? Maybe Simpson would urge his friends at the Texas State Board of Education to rejoin the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE). Texas pulled out a few months back, protesting the anti-bullying curriculum NASB had put together. The Texas officials — speaking for themselves, not necessarily the people of Texas, let me assure you — said they didn’t like the part that said “don’t bully gays.”

When stuff like that happens, people will on occasion use their First Amendment right to petition and right to assemble and freedom of speech to protest the stupidity. In the immediate case, the protest takes the form of remaining silent.

When gays and the friends of gays don’t speak, it makes the hardcore fundies crazy. The voices in their heads seem so much louder.

Nuts.

San Jacinto Day in the rearview mirror

Have I been distracted by work? Here’s one way to tell: Yesterday was San Jacinto Day. And I forgot to note it here.

Fortunately, the celebration is set for April 26 — at the San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Site, near LaPorte, Texas. The battle reenactment is scheduled for 3:00 p.m. — be there early to get the benefit of all the exhibits, sideshows, and Texas cooking. (Press release on the celebration below the fold. Note the press release says admission is free, while the story from Houston’s KTRK-13 says there are admission charges.)

San Jacinto Day? April 21 is the anniversary of the Battle of San Jacinto, where Sam Houston and the Texian Army got the drop on Gen. Santa Anna and his much larger force, and in the course of a half-hour put the well-trained Mexican regulars on the run, and won Texas independence.

It’s a time to remember — or puzzle about — the true story of the Yellow Rose of Texas, a woman to whom Texans owe a great deal, or one of the better hoaxes of history. It’s a time to fume over the way Anglo Texians pronounced the J as J in “Jacinto,” distancing Texas from a small part of its Spanish-language heritage.

Unfortunately, it’s also a day most Texas students get smothered with reviews from their teachers for the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS), the state exam that had just ended last year on this date, and looms in the future this year. Instead of learning Texas history, Texas seventh graders spend this great day reviewing what educators are supposed to teach them. Nuts.

Hey, Texas teachers: Download the teachers’ guide to the Battle of San Jacinto right now – have it ready for next year. The kids need a break to study real history. You know they will need that break next year, too.

The late Hoyt Axton sings “The Yellow Rose of Texas,” with John Hartford and others:

Other resources:

• On-line description of the battle, from the State Park
• On-line catalog of artifacts from the San Jacinto Battleground Museum (!)
• Lone Star Times, with Texans’ comments on the day

More “Expelled”: Origins of life research ignored by intelligent design advocates

A reader named Matt provided some incisive comments in another thread, “Cold showers for intelligent design:  ID not even fringe research,” and I bring them to the top here to highlight a major failing of the intelligent design advocates, their complete absence from participation in origins of life research.

Matt blogs at Consanguinity, which recently featured an exchange on Ben Stein’s mockumentary, “Expelled!“

Matt took issue with a characterization that the intelligent design movement is not science.  He wondered if they would get a fair hearing were they to submit their research to science journals.  I pointed to the court records that show they would get a fair hearing, but that they do no research and so submit nothing for publication — which indicates the lack of science we were discussing.  Matt suggested that Francis Crick and Frederick Hoyle were sympathetic to the ID cause, and I pointed out they both specifically refuted creationism and ID.

Our discussion is below the fold.

Saturday jellyfish

Pelagia plastica

In the meantime, I’ll post a photo of a jellyfish I crocheted from plastic yarn recently (I’ve felt that I have the brains of a jellyfish when I get home from work lately). It is loosely modeled on Pelagia spp. jellyfish, and I created the yarn from newspaper wrappers that friends at work saved for me. I used the hyperbolic crochet technique for the tentacles, and a simple cap pattern for the bell. All parts were crocheted using a size L hook.

In case you were wondering what to do to keep those plastic bags your newspaper comes in from ending up as junk/food that will kill a turtle in the Gulf of Mexico, I offer this jellyfish, from Guadelupe Storm-Petrel. (I think this may be a Texas blogger.)

Cold showers for intelligent design: ID not even fringe science

Experimentalchimp raises some serious questions about how fringe science sometimes stumbles into the stuffier meetings of real science – or, at least, into the gossip columns of real science, with his post, “How Empty Science Becomes Wisdom.“

The post discusses a silly proposal made by a fellow in Virginia that perhaps, just maybe, cold showers might fight depression.

Let me introduce you to Nikolai Shevchuk. He’s worked at the Department of Radiation Oncology at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine. One day Nikolai gets an idea. What if cold showers could treat depression? After all, cold showers get the adrenaline pumping, doesn’t it? So Nikolai gets a few friends together and asks them to try taking a cold shower and seeing if it improves their moods. Nikolai probably likes to take cold showers himself and he feels just fine!

So Nikolai writes down his ideas. There’s not what you’d call a huge amount of evidence for them. Nikolai tries his hardest to think up a mechanism by which cold showers can make you feel good. The adrenaline thing was good, but what if he can invoke some kind of evolutionary mechanism. Hey! Yeah! That’s it! Back when man was a hunter-gatherer chasing after prey, he’d have to swim after it in cold water. So modern man, lacking these environmental stressors must be getting depressed as a result!

It’s not rocket science, but it’ll do.

Nikolai doesn’t want to keep this breakthrough to himself, so he sends it all off to a medical journal. Medical Hypotheses, to be specific. Medical Hypotheses. It sounds so truthy, doesn’t it?

Truthy, indeed. (Right up the alley of Telic Thoughts, no?)

The story about how Shevchuk’s work got picked up by a journal, Medical Hypotheses, and how it migrated to the London Times and farther, may make you giggle. Or squirm.

But it also made me wonder: If this almost-admitted joker in Virginia can get this dubious quality conjecture published in a journal, why is it intelligent design advocates cannot get even a hypothesis published somewhere in more than 20 years of existence.

I didn’t say “20 years of trying,” because I suspect that the ID people are not trying to do even fringe science. (There’s that other joke, too: “Oh, yeah, they’re trying. Verrrrrry trying!“)

I have often said that intelligent design is to biology what cold fusion is to physics and chemistry, only stripped of the extensive experimental backup published in the journals. This points up one of the key problems of intelligent design: There is no intelligence in it. Intelligent design is the vapor ware of biology, too. No hypotheses, no experiments, no observations from the wild, no laboratories, no grants, no attendees at science conferences, only one or two poster sessions (and not by the grad student tyros, but by the greatest minds in ID) — nothing.

ID can’t crack the fringe science journals, because ID lacks the wisp of ideas required to be called fringe science.

Maybe science fiction next? Calling Orson Scott Card!

This contrast between intelligent design and intelligent conversation is so stark that the new ID mockumentary “Expelled!” has had to work hard to make sure scientists of faith do not appear in any way in the movie. Why? Well, Christopher Heard at Higgaion carefully explains, if the movie showed people like Ken Miller, a faithful Christian who happens to be the lead author on the most-used high school and junior college biology textbooks, it would give the lie to the film’s entire premise, that faithful Christians are not allowed into the halls of science.

But to return to the main point: the real reason that folk like Miller and Collins find no place in Expelled is because they do “confuse”—that is, complicate—the simplistic and false dichotomy that the filmmakers wish to construct. When your whole schtick is to pit religious “design proponents” open to the supernatural against atheistic, philosophically materialist “Darwinists,” all those pesky scientists who simultaneously affirm evolutionary biology and a robust Christian faith become very, very inconvenient.

(Heard also features a transcript of part of an interview Scientific American editor John Rennie had with the film’s associate producer of “Expelled!”, Mark Mathis. It really made me laugh for some reason — is it that I’m too deep into grading? Check it out, let me know.)

How did Miller get into the hallowed halls, anyway? He did real science, published it, got his Ph.D., and continues research, academic advising, and teaching.

Why can’t ID do that?

When the cold showers hypothesis gets more respect than intelligent design, it’s time to pull the drain plug on intelligent design.

Maybe Mathis should install cold showers in the lobbies of the theatres that show his movie. People who buy a ticket to the movie may need them, especially after they realize they’ve seen so much of the stuff before, in better venues (and with attribution).

Maybe Mathis, Ben Stein and the entire “Expelled!” team should try the cold showers out first, to see if maybe a cold shower might shock them back to reality.

Tip of the old scrub brush to Expelled! Exposed, for the tip to Heard’s piece.

Bedbugs, DDT

Bedbugs came back.

Common bedbug, Cimex lectularius - image from Preston City Council (England)

Once a scourge, bedbugs seemed to have gone away, largely, during most of the past 30 years, in most of the western world. International travel and other conducive conditions joined in the perfect storm, however, and bedbug infestation reports are rising in places like New York City.

A significant number of news stories on the topic mention DDT, which was briefly the pesticide of choice against bedbugs. Probably a majority of the blog posts on the topic call for a return of DDT for general use.

This blog is a refreshing exception: New York vs. Bed Bugs, “No DDT, thanks, we’re good.”

Update: In comments, Bug Girl suggests we look at the blog of Bedbugger, and especially this interview with an entomologist.  Take a look — the expert, Dr. James W. Austin of Texas A&M, says bedbugs are about 100% resistant to DDT.

Chairman McLeroy to Texas Hispanics: “Drop dead!”

With evidence mounting that the politically-motivated rewrite of English standards in Texas schools would harm the education of Spanish-speaking students, the Chairman of the Texas Education Agency told state legislators, English language experts and educators that he will not allow time to analyze the proposed changes to see if they are appropriate, let alone time for changes to the standards.

In short, McLeroy told Texas Hispanics to “drop dead.”

Board chairman Don McLeroy insisted that major changes to the proposed updates are no longer possible. Advocates say the standards need opinions from experts who have researched Hispanic children and understand their learning styles.

“There is no way that ignoring such a sizable chunk of this population from consideration of education policy will do anything but harm the opportunity of a generation,” Herrero said.

McLeroy said there had been plenty of time for experts to weigh in earlier on new curriculum standards. He said he was shocked by accusations that he and others board members are trying to shortchange Hispanic students.

“There’s no malice at all, none, zip, nada. There’s just no time to get another expert in,” McLeroy said. “None of us would do anything to hurt any group of children or any (individual) child. What we want is for them to be successful in the English language because it’s so important.”

In the latest of a string of politically charged bulldozings, McLeroy is pushing standards substituted at the last minute for standards Texas educators had worked on for three years. McLeroy hired a political consulting group to rewrite the standards and substituted the rewrite in a meeting earlier this year (you’ll see my bias when you read the story in the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram). Educators, parents, legislators and community leaders criticized the action for disregarding the educational needs of Texas students.

“It’s just ignorance on their part,” said Mary Helen Berlanga, a 26-year board member from Corpus Christi.

The board is set to take a preliminary vote March 27 on the new English language arts and readings standards, which will influence new textbooks for the 2009-10 school year.

A four-member board subcommittee signaled its intent Wednesday to stick with that schedule after state Rep. Abel Herrero, D-Robstown, pleaded to let Latino experts review the standards first.

McLeroy is flexing never-tried-before political muscles in a series of changes at TEA. Last year he led the SBOE to arbitrarily reject a math book by a major publisher, daring legal action, hoping he could finally win a case establishing that the board can reject books on political grounds. Biology books are due for a review in the near future, and science and biology standards will be rewritten before that process.

Moving against Hispanic students on the English standards, if successful, would tend to demonstrate that Texas educato needs to dance to the red book writings of Chairman McLeroy. While 47% of Texas public school students are Hispanic, Hispanic voters have generally packed less clout.

McLeroy appears to be counting on Obama and Clinton Democrats to demonstrate apathy again near the general election. If election numbers from the March primary hold up, McLeroy will remain chairman of the SBOE, but the legislature will be likely to shift against many of the actions he’s pushed since assuming the chair, and may turn antagonistically Democratic.

The stakes are higher for Texas students.

Critics of the process asked the subcommittee to allow an expert in Hispanic culture and language to assess the proposed new standards before a preliminary vote next week by the full education board.

The four-member subcommittee that worked on the curriculum did not include anyone of Hispanic descent, or anyone from South or West Texas, and critics said the committee did not seek advice from anyone with expertise in Hispanic language or culture.

Statewide, 47 percent of the more than 4.6 million public school students are Hispanic. Eighty-nine percent of El Paso County’s 173,000 students are Hispanic.

According to the Texas Education Agency, about 16 percent of students statewide and about 28 percent of students in El Paso County in 2006 had limited English proficiency.

Resources:

• Betsy Oney in the online Pegasus, “Whose interests do these elected officials represent anyway?”
• Houston Chronicle story, “State panel rejects Latino call for input on curriculum“
• KVEO-TV, “Board of Education Looks To Change Curriculum“
• Brownsville, Texas, Monitor, “State board education member urges public to rally for classroom …“
• El Paso Times, “Legislators say education panel lacks Hispanic“
• Draft TEKS ELAR (March 19, 2008) (in .pdf format)

8 year-old kid finds dinosaur tracks

Here’s a great story about a kid who made a significant dinosaur-related find: 8 year-old Rhys Nichols found the dinosaur tracks as he was strolling along a beach near his home in Scarborough, North Yorkshire.

Found the story via Prehistoric CSI, a blog which normally tracks dinosaur digs in Texas at the Seymour, Texas, “red beds” — and which is billed as having a limited run. Texas history and science teachers need to get over there to see what’s up. (Seymour is about midway between Fort Worth and Lubbock.)

Prehistoric CSI has some wonderful stories about digging and researching Texas fossils — see this one featuring 3-D images of a still-rock-encased critter.

I hope that site stays alive for a while.

Ann and Molly

I miss Ann Richards.

Photo of Ann Richards with her motorcycle, from the Texas State Library & Archives Commission, Prints and Photographs Collection

Here’s an excerpt from Molly Ivins’ column of September 18, 2006, the week after Ann died.

She knew how to deal with teenage egos: Instead of pointing out to a kid who was pouring charcoal lighter on a live fire that he was idiot, Ann said, “Honey, if you keep doing that, the fire is going to climb right back up to that can in your hand and explode and give you horrible injuries, and it will just ruin my entire weekend.”

She knew what it was like to have four young children and to be so tired you cried while folding the laundry. She knew and valued Wise Women like Virginia Whitten and Helen Hadley.

At a long-ago political do at Scholz Garten in Austin, everybody who was anybody was there meetin’ and greetin’ at a furious pace. A group of us got the tired feet and went to lean our butts against a table at the back wall of the bar. Perched like birds in a row were Bob Bullock, then state comptroller, moi, Charles Miles, the head of Bullock’s personnel department, and Ms. Ann Richards. Bullock, 20 years in Texas politics, knew every sorry, no good sumbitch in the entire state. Some old racist judge from East Texas came up to him, “Bob, my boy, how are you?”

Bullock said, “Judge, I’d like you to meet my friends: This is Molly Ivins with the Texas Observer.”

The judge peered up at me and said, “How yew, little lady?”

Bullock, “And this is Charles Miles, the head of my personnel department.” Miles, who is black, stuck out his hand, and the judge got an expression on his face as though he had just stepped into a fresh cowpie. He reached out and touched Charlie’s palm with one finger, while turning eagerly to the pretty, blonde, blue-eyed Ann Richards. “And who is this lovely lady?”

Ann beamed and replied, “I am Mrs. Miles.”

One of the most moving memories I have of Ann is her sitting in a circle with a group of prisoners. Ann and Bullock had started a rehab program in prisons, the single most effective thing that can be done to cut recidivism (George W. Bush later destroyed the program). The governor of Texas looked at the cons and said, “My name is Ann, and I am an alcoholic.”

She devoted untold hours to helping other alcoholics, and anyone who ever heard her speak at an AA convention knows how close laughter and tears can be.

One to make history, one to record it.

I miss Molly Ivins.

Retail politics in a democratic republic

More than 1,000 people showed up for our precinct caucus.  That’s 200 times more people than have showed in any previous year.  I didn’t get elected convention chairman by default, nor did I even get nominated.  The parking problems anticipated by The New Republic all came to pass — and no one really cared. 

It was fantastic to watch.

Obama got 89% of the 55 delegates to our Senatorial District Convention; Clinton got 11%.

More, later I hope, when I get a few minutes to write about it.

Pat Hardy turns back creationist challenge in Texas

Attention focused on one usually-obscure race for a seat on the Texas State Board of Education helped Republican Pat Hardy turn back a malicious challenge. Hardy won her primary against secretive Barney Maddox, a urologist who spent a lot of money on specifically-targeted mailings, but who also refused to speak with reporters or anyone else asking questions.

Showing just how odd and treacherous is the situation in Texas, Hardy got assists from science bloggers across the nation, though her position on science is far from what science advocates would like. Hardy’s genial “don’t gut the textbooks” stand was preferred to Maddox’s mad-dog, teach-creationism-in-science position.

Maddox refused to comment on the election, of course.

Hardy’s district includes parts of Ft. Worth and surrounding counties. According to the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram:

State Board of Education

Social conservatives failed in their attempt to take control of the State Board of Education on Tuesday when incumbent Pat Hardy of Fort Worth retained her seat against a challenge from Cleburne’s Barney Maddox.

Hardy, a career educator, has been a moderate voice on the board. The 15-member body still shows a close ideological split, but Hardy has helped keep it on a straight path.

The board’s powers come from its ability to influence the public school curriculum and the selection of textbooks. District 11covers about three-fourths of Tarrant County, plus all of Ellis, Johnson and Parker counties. There is no Democratic nominee for this seat in the November election.

Maddox’s entry in the race had set the stage for debate over the scientific theory of evolution, which he has described as “fairy tales.” Hardy took a better course: Teach kids about all theories, she said, from creation to evolution, and give them enough information to make up their own minds about what to believe.

Spoken like a teacher — and a person who should hold a seat on the State Board of Education

Tip of the old scrub brush to reader Ediacaran. Thanks, Bret.

Update:  News specific to this race from the Fort Worth paper.