Public Service Announcement

I'm guest-blogging at Instapundit this week. Mindles may post, and I may put up some longer pieces here, but most of your hot Jane Galt action will be over at Insty's.

Question of the day

How long does it take after your average nuclear explosion for the kill zone to become liveable again?

Taking recommendations

. . . for campsites within reasonable travelling distance of New York City, with hiking suitable for a not particularly athletic journalist type, good for at least two days of activity. Ideally, one where I can have a fire in the privacy of my own damn campsite, instead of having to crowd into one of those horrible "fireplace" areas so that I can enjoy my romantic firelight dinner in the company of every dyspeptic toddler in the tri-state region. But this may be an amenity reserved for large groups, or outlaws, the two types of camping expeditions I have previously enjoyed.

Intelligent Design Redux

Steve Verdon has some suggestions for other creation stories that we might want to include in our science curriculums. Excellent idea, but I feel his scope is too narrow. Why should we limit ourselves to already-existing creation stories? Why not encourage the citizenry to submit their own? For example, I have a theory that our cosmos is a third-grade science project for a multidimensional being beyond our ken who is named, for some reason, "Grimmet". Readers are encouraged to think of their own creation stories for inclusion in American textbooks.

On a serious note, yes, I know that President Bush was not urging that creationism be taught in our schools, or even that ID be given equal time. I certainly don't have a problem devoting a couple of classes to the holes in evolutionary theory--one of the things that irks me is that most of the people I know who believe in evolution believe in it on the same basis that most creationists I know (yes, I do know some) believe that the world was created in six days: because their friends and family, and a couple of authority figures they respect, believe it is so. The contempt those self-identified illuminati display for those with a more traditional brand of religious belief is cruel self-parody.

The problem is that the people pushing to "teach the holes" are largely also hoping to plug those holes with God. I do not like this in our nation's public schools--nay, nay, sir, I do not like it at all. President Bush's suggestion was fairly moderate, and even reasonable. But the ends to which it aspires are neither moderate, nor reasonable, and it gives me a squirmy feeling to contemplate them.

On the other hand, the Republic struggled along pretty well for 200 years with creationism (and bible verses!) being taught right there in the classroom. I do not think that our nation will fall if ID wends its way into classes; given how appallingly little our nation's students seem to glean from their classwork, I doubt we'll even notice very much.