Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Didn't Find the Book Club, but We Did Find This. . .

Doh! The book club (Center for Inquiry - Austin) is on Thursday night and this is Wednesday! My days are all off. Well, it will give Scott another day to finish the book.

We did look around the bookstore where I found, "Science Evolution, and Creationism" brought to us by the National Academy of Sciences (click the title above to a link where you can find the book -- you can even read it free online.) This will save me sending off for it, although they were discounting it so cheaply if you bought copies in bulk, I thought I'd buy a few extra copies to distribute to some creationist relatives.

The bookstore was also playing such gawd-awful, somewhat atonal music -- not music that made me want to browse and spend $$ -- it was music that grated, irritated and made me want to flee! I have pretty broad musical tastes, but that was atrocious. We do hope it isn't playing tomorrow night, when the book club really meets.

Oh, and the book we're discussing is The Subtle Knife. Next month, I think, is a collection of short stories, Galileo's Children: Tales Of Science VS. Superstition, ed. by Gardner Dozois. Scott's read all of it, and I've read about half, so I should be able to finish that soon (and review what I have read.) This is about the same proportion of reading we've done for Subtle Knife -- I've read it all, and Scott hasn't finished.

Saturday, January 26, 2008

Master of "Science" Education

There is a big controversy here in Texas over the proposed "Master of Science Education" degree that the Institute of Creation Research wants to offer. If this degree is approved, I'm afraid of what we'll see in our science classes.

I have never seen a Sunday School/religious school religion assignment that has been in the least bit challenging -- they're all designed so that everyone "passes."

I can see the attraction some have to intelligent design/creationism/ and science "from a Christian perspective" -- after all, science is hard and Sunday School is mind-numbingly easy.

(I've adapted this from a comment I left at Possummomma.blogspot.com)