Florida has more sense than Texas

Ok, I'll make the obvious joke . . .

Florida has more sense than Texas, wouldn't it be hard not to?

There . . . it's done.

... wouldn’t it be hard not to?

Thanks Matt for posting this. We at Florida Citizens for Science fought to long and hard on the new Florida Science Standard to have them compromised by poorly written text books. This particular book has been around for quite a few years, so I really have no idea why it was even considered for Florida.How ever, if the publishers failed to fix the problem sidebars, we are just going to ship all the books up to Gainesville. Perhaps the pastor up there who likes burning books could find them useful.

The textbox on NCSE was clearly someone ever so cautiously drifting over the centerline into the creationist lane. But some of the signals are clear:

"This significantly differs from genetic drift in that it requires that new information enter the genetic code."

Oh no, "creationist information theory". Every time I see legitimate biologists use the term "genetic information" or the like I wince. "Try 'genetic functionality' instead of a term like 'information' that has been turned into a boobytrap."

Jonathan Smith said: ... if the publishers failed to fix the problem sidebars, we are just going to ship all the books up to Gainesville. Perhaps the pastor up there who likes burning books could find them useful.

I've not seen the book, but Florida science education standards are very, very good compared to most of the ones I've seen for Biology (and I'm comparing to Texas, Oklahoma, Mississippi, and Arizona here).

I know they have multiple standards that cover evolution and many, many objectives within those standards.

"blasted off meteorites from other planets"

but really isn't that just splitting hairs about the butterfly effect? The energy on earth comes from the solar systems sun anyway, and the material that made the earth comes from (insert origin of earths mass/matter)

I find it redundant to care/argue where genetic code came from. Any proof that material came from aliens or meteors is not fuel to suggest abiogenesis is impossible, and certainly can't suggest evolution is fundamentally flawed.
It's just an untested hypothesis to look like valid skepticism based on a pointless argument

The article (jpg on the NCSE link) "a subcomponent has no survival advantage" wow, irreducible complexity and we all know the ability to prove purpose. To be blunt WTF are they thinking?
I'm scratching my head....how exactly does 1 prove a subcomponent has no survival advantage?

Reads like a useless lecture built to just seem scientific. I wont even read the last 25%. I'm whoever was behind that snippet gets fired from any position that gets a hand in public education.

The part I most objected to was:

"2. Burden of proof for a theory lies with those who support it. It is not up to others to disprove it".

Actually, no scientific theory can ever be 'proved'. It can only fail to be disproved. And it is up to all interested and competent scientists to attempt to disprove it.

Wayne Robinson said: The part I most objected to was: "2. Burden of proof for a theory lies with those who support it. It is not up to others to disprove it". Actually, no scientific theory can ever be 'proved'. It can only fail to be disproved. And it is up to all interested and competent scientists to attempt to disprove it.

OgreMkV said: ... Florida science education standards are very, very good ...

Pete Moulton said:

Wayne Robinson said: The part I most objected to was: "2. Burden of proof for a theory lies with those who support it. It is not up to others to disprove it". Actually, no scientific theory can ever be 'proved'. It can only fail to be disproved. And it is up to all interested and competent scientists to attempt to disprove it.

Word, Wayne. That whole bullet point shows an utter lack of understanding of the scientific method. Let's turn the tables on them. If, as they say, the burden of proof is on the defenders of a theory, then where is their objective, testable evidence? Aside from unsupported asseverations, appeals to authority (including a 2000 YO book written by bronze-age goatherds), and pretzel 'logic', they got nothin'.

Pete Moulton said: where is their objective, testable evidence?

Mr Moulton, even the oldest parts of the Old Testament can't be traced back further than the seventh century BCE. That was well into the iron age in Palestine. And it wasn't written by goatherds, who were mostly illiterate, but by priests and wannabe religious authorities. By calling it "Bronze Age" you honour it with too great an antiquity, and by calling its writers "goatherds" you honour them by stating that they had honest jobs.

The problem remains that how has the obvious creationist perspective in the two page excerpt infected the rest of the textbook in more subtle ways?

It is possible that those two pages (a very compact assertion of creationist arguments) were just "dropped in" by the order of a senior officer of the publisher. In that case, where else in their book catalog has the same screed been buried.

Can the book, or the publisher be trusted at all?

Dave Luckett said: Mr Moulton, even the oldest parts of the Old Testament can't be traced back further than the seventh century BCE. That was well into the iron age in Palestine. And it wasn't written by goatherds, who were mostly illiterate, but by priests and wannabe religious authorities. By calling it "Bronze Age" you honour it with too great an antiquity, and by calling its writers "goatherds" you honour them by stating that they had honest jobs.

Current Publishing Corp. represents the educational division of PADI, a world wide recognized leader in scuba diving instruction and certification. While our immediate goal is to develop marine science educational materials and services for high school students and teachers, our long-term commitment is to expand our curriculum offerings from Kindergarten through grade 14. Located in Rancho Santa Margarita, California, Current Publishing Corp. has collaborated with COSEE (Center for Ocean Science Education Excellence) to develop an integrated, interdisciplinary, multi-component marine science program written for high school students. Life on an Ocean Planet focuses on today’s marine science curriculum topics through standards based instruction to prepare students for tomorrow’s challenges.

From, "CAN YOU BE SCIENCE LITERATE WITHOUT BEING OCEAN LITERATE?" THE JOURNAL OF MARINE EDUCATION, Volume 23 • Number 1 • 2007.

"The impact of the Ocean Literacy Campaign, supported by COSEE, National Marine Educators Association (NMEA), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), College of Exploration, National Geographic Society, and University of California, Berkeley’s Lawrence Hall of Science, has been widespread among ocean scientists and ocean sciences educators across the country. A published resource from this campaign, Ocean Literacy: The Essential Principles of Ocean Sciences K-12 [4], has been presented at dozens of conferences, and has been the subject of whole conferences (CoOL: Conference on Ocean Literacy, June 2006; and the New England Ocean Science Education Collaborative [NEOSEC] Ocean Sciences Literacy Summit, October 2006). These Principles have influenced the development of a statewide media campaign (“Thank You,Ocean”) in California, and the development of a new textbook, Life On An Ocean Planet [1]."

1) Alexander, L., D. Desonie, C. Kelchner, et al. (2006). Life on an Ocean Planet, Current Publishing Corp.: Rancho Santa Margarita, CA."

So, COSEE, NSF and others are popularly associated with "Current Publishing, Corp, and "Life on an Ocean Planet."

These texts were recommended by the Technical Advisory Panel of the NOSB (National Ocean Science Bowl). ... Life on the Ocean Planet Contact: Current Publishing ...

President-Elect of NMEA (National Marine Educators Association) Diana Payne, "Recently, she led the NMEA effort to align the second edition of Current Publishing’s Life on an Ocean Planet textbook to the Ocean Literacy Essential Principles and Fundamental Concepts."

The publisher seems to be the most likely source of the creatocrap bomb, as I doubt that there is that much support national for creationists in marine science. This is a very well connected book, with well connected reviewers and contributers.

So, the questions are;

Who at Current Publications was the creationist who dropped the creationist crap into the book?

Where, and when did this happen?

and, How did the scientific reviewers all miss it, and what are they going to do about it?

The "where?" is most likely the publisher's office in Ranch Marguia, Ca. This is in Orange County, and is the home of the Red-est of the Red conservatives. The largest Christian Congregation is Rick Warren's right-wing mega-church, but we also have the equally creationist Calvary Chapel. Just a few miles down the road are the creationist gang at Trinity Broadcasting Network's Praise The Lord Club, which regularly features the "creation evidences" of Carl Baugh.

So, there are a highly toxic crowd of creationists locally available who could easily be running the show at Current Publications.

Connecticut Sea Grant is pleased to announce that Diana Payne, the program's Education Coordinator, has been voted President-Elect of the National Marine Educators Association (NMEA), and will take on the duties of this position in mid-July. Payne, who received her Ph.D. at UConn’s Neag School of Education, has also been invited to give a keynote speech on Ocean Literacy at the International Pacific Marine Educators Network biennial conference in Sigatoka, Fiji. She has been a member of NMEA since 1996 and is currently completing a term on the Board of Directors. Prior to serving as an elected Board member, she was the Southeastern New England Marine Educators (SENEME) Chapter Representative. Over the past few years, Dr. Payne has held leadership positions in SENEME, the Sea Grant Education Network (SGEN), the Sea Grant Association (SGA), and New England Ocean Sciences Education Collaborative (NEOSEC). In addition to being an active member of several NMEA committees, Payne currently serves as Vice Chair of the Ocean Literacy Committee. Recently, she led the NMEA effort to align the second edition of Current Publishing’s Life on an Ocean Planet textbook to the Ocean Literacy Essential Principles and Fundamental Concepts. She is also the Regional Co-coordinator for the Quahog Bowl, the Connecticut/Rhode Island regional competition of the National Ocean Sciences Bowl.

Well, if you are a creationist and you run a publishing house started by professional scuba diving instructors, you just drop the two pages in after all the "scientific" review is done.

The problem will be trying to clean them out.

If I were on of the reviewers, I would be screaming bloody murder.

Gary Hurd said: If I were one of the reviewers, I would be screaming bloody murder.

Gary Hurd said: Well, if you are a creationist and you run a publishing house started by professional scuba diving instructors, you just drop the two pages in after all the "scientific" review is done. The problem will be trying to clean them out. If I were on of the reviewers, I would be screaming bloody murder.

Mike Elzinga said: A bit like Osiander’s preface to Copernicus’s work. ;-)

Who at Current Publications was the creationist who dropped the creationist crap into the book?

I KNEW there was a reason I chose to get my certification with NAUI instead of PADI.

:P

Ichthyic said: Who at Current Publications was the creationist who dropped the creationist crap into the book? I KNEW there was a reason I chose to get my certification with NAUI instead of PADI. :P

"2. Burden of proof for a theory lies with those who support it. It is not up to others to disprove it".

[Darwin] said that if we could trace the changes in all organisms to their beginnings,we would find that all life began with nonorganic chemical reactions. This is called abiogenesis, or less formally, spontaneous generation.

Darwin's various editions of "The Origin of Species" made little mention of the origin of life. He does make some general observations in the concluding chapter. He writes in the Sixth Edition (1872),

"I believe that animals are descended from at most only four or five progenitors, and plants from an equal or lesser number.

Analogy would lead me one step further, namely, to the belief that all animals and plants are descended from some one prototype. But analogy may be a deceitful guide. Nevertheless all living things have much in common, in their chemical composition, their cellular structure, their laws of growth, and their liability to injurious influences."

And,

"No doubt it is possible, as Mr. G.H. Lewes has urged, that at the first commencement of life many different forms were evolved; but if so, we may conclude that only a very few have left modified descendants."

And a bit later, "Authors of the highest eminence seem to be fully satisfied with the view that each species has been independently created. To my mind it accords better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator, that the production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants of the world should have been due to secondary causes, like those determining the birth and death of the individual. When I view all beings not as special creations, but as the lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Cambrian system was deposited, they seem to me to become ennobled."

Compare with the 1st edition Pg 484:
“I believe that animals have descended from at most only four or five progenitors, and plants from an equal or lesser number.

Analogy would lead me one step further, namely, to the belief that all animals and plants have descended from some one prototype. But analogy may be a deceitful guide. Nevertheless all living things have much in common, in their chemical composition, their germinal vesicles, their cellular structure, and their laws of growth and reproduction. We see this even in so trifling a circumstance as that the same poison often similarly affects plants and animals; or that the poison secreted by the gall-fly produces monstrous growths on the wild rose or oak-tree. Therefore I should infer from analogy that probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first breathed.”

The final sentence in the first edition, "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved." was slightly modified in the Sixth to clearly indicate that the "Creator" was responsible for the origin of life. Some scholarly studies claim that Darwin regretted making this concession to his publishers.

Charles R. Darwin, in a 1871 letter to the botanist Joseph Hooker wrote, "It is often said that all the conditions for the first production of a living organism are present, which could ever have been present. But if (and Oh! what a big if!) we could conceive in some warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, light, heat, electricity, etc., present, that a protein compound was chemically formed ready to undergo still more complex changes, at the present day such matter would be instantly devoured or absorbed, which would not have been the case before living creatures were formed. "

Later in the same letter, he observed,

"It is mere rubbish thinking at present of the origin of life; one might as well think of the origin of matter."

For some additional observations about more recent research on the origin of life, I have prepared "A Short Outline of the Origin of Life."

TomS said:

Pete Moulton said: where is their objective, testable evidence?

Where is their theory? (Much less evidence for their theory. "Objective" or "testable" is far out of the picture.) What is their alternative? No one has an explanation for the patterns of the variety of life on earth which does not involve descent with modification. No one has even attempted to account for (to take one simple example) the "complex, specified" fact that the human body is most similar to those of chimps and other apes without reference to biological relationship. ("That's the way that it is" is not, even if phrased as "Something or other did something or other somehow or other for some reason or other.")

How’s it hangin’ in the Hobbitville?

a bit slack, actually.

I have little hair left after ripping most of it out dealing with immigration here.

coming up 2 years in december... and still no work permit.

of course, the delays might have something to do with the massive corruption scandal currently sweeping the dept.

who knows.

still, other than the slacktivity at any government agency you can name, which has pluses and minuses, frankly, I do rather love it here.

reminds me a LOT of CA circa 1970's, with even less people, but even more diverse.

sadly, my only real complaint so far is the fishing here isn't as good as I was hoping. Too many foreign commercial fishing vessels have raped this place.

Biggest fish caught so far was about 6". Still, I have to temper that by saying I'm fishing mostly around the the coast near the capital city, and haven't gone fishing on any of the boats yet.

I have some pics up on the flickr site, but haven't posted any new ones in a while.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ichthyic/collections/72157617713277742/

that slacker thing seems to be contagious.

maybe I should renew my membership in the Church of the Subgenius...

Grossly OT:

The fishing here at Dana Point has suked totally. This is the June-September Winter season. The worst since 1994. Off-shore was on, and then off, and on and off and ....

I'll email you to chat this week.

cheers!

Gary Hurd said: Grossly OT: The fishing here at Dana Point has suked totally. This is the June-September Winter season. The worst since 1994. Off-shore was on, and then off, and on and off and ....

Robin said: Oh, and no I am not actually advocating fishing for whites.

Well, back on topic, I suggest that we send emails with the NCSE link to every person we can find that is associated with "Life on an Ocean Planet" and/or Current Publications.

Gary Hurd said:

Ichthyic said: Who at Current Publications was the creationist who dropped the creationist crap into the book? I KNEW there was a reason I chose to get my certification with NAUI instead of PADI. :P

And you a local boy?? How's it hangin' in the Hobbitville?

I don’t care much for shark fishing.

of course! who could kill a lovable sea kitten*?

http://features.peta.org/PETASeaKittens/about.asp

*shudder*

*fuck me, but ain't this the most horrid example of a pr campaign ever created?

It's in the "not even wrong" category of "helping".

I submitted a review to Amazon, quoting the Orlando Sentinel article and the NCSE two days ago and thus far they haven't published it.

Censorship again. Banning creationist criticisms which probably are at least a solid minority or a slight majority in that state.
Is this really going to work? When in a free country did this work in the end?
It just is a positive addition to the fuel for the fire. Burning creationist 'pages" just lights up the problem.

By the way there you go again claiming biologists support evolution with the assumption they are experts on the subject. you aee using the prestige of biology to argue for evolution because it doesn't make a good case itself.
Biology is about life. Evolution is about casts of former life and processes not in casts.
Biologists impact with evolution is barely more then what they learned in high school.
Biology is about biology. Living life.
Where the tools are test tubes and instruments to slice up life or what was recently life. Goo.
Evolution instead uses the tools like pick axes, dynamite, and pencils to fill in dots.
Evolution barely is dealt with by actual biologists.
Creationists always make a winning point with this.

Robert Byers said: Creationists always make a whining point with this.

Censorship again. Banning creationist criticisms which probably are at least a solid minority or a slight majority in that state.

science isn't done by vote, moron.

but hey, that aside, since you seem to like argumentum ad populum...

If all your friends jumped off a bridge to their deaths, I suppose that would mean you should too, right?

I mean, ALL your friends couldn't be wrong, could they?

phht.

moron.

Evolution instead uses the tools like pick axes, dynamite, and pencils to fill in dots.

wait, whaaa?

how does one use a pick axe and dynamite to fill in a dot?

WHY DO PEOPLE PUT UP WITH YOUR INSANITY!

Byers thinks that paleontology fieldwork is done with pickaxes and dynamite. That tells you how much Byers knows about paleontology.

Gary Hurd quoted the final sentence in the 1st edition of Charles Darwin's “The Origin of Species”: There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

Yea right. Evolution is wrong because all the real scientists agree. What a flaming pile of excrement. You think you are being censored? Well I didn't read most of your incoherent baloney, so yous rights. You stupditity has been censoreded. Next time, try it yourself, its easys.

Yea right. All that sequence data was obtained with pick axes and dynamite. What a moron. Maybe he never ever sequenced anything. What as shock. Maybe he has never even heard of evo devo, ya know the that real pickaxe and dynamite field! Seems like he is the only one who never learned anything beyond high school, maybe even beyond second grade. Specially englishes. Goo.

Robert Byers said: you aee using the prestige of biology to argue for evolution because it doesn't make a good case itself.

Biology is about life. Evolution is about casts of former life and processes not in casts.

Biologists impact with evolution is barely more then what they learned in high school. Biology is about biology. Living life. Where the tools are test tubes and instruments to slice up life or what was recently life. Goo. Evolution instead uses the tools like pick axes, dynamite, and pencils to fill in dots. Evolution barely is dealt with by actual biologists. Creationists always make a winning point with this.

We have no problem here in Texas as there is no money for new textbooks.

So Byers, who else if not biologists to tell us about evolution? Ah yes, silly us - we should ask creationist apologists.

So Byers, who else if not biologists to tell us about evolution?