Bill Nye the raving lunatic?

My Sunday school class demonstrated today why I probably need to find a new hobby.  In the course of starting a discussion of Adam Hamiltons "Why?" (a standard theodicy apologetic) our class president brought up Bill Nye's recent video "slamming" creationism.  The response from those in attendance was self assured muttering about "can't combine faith and science" etc.  I suppose some of those who remained silent were as uncomfortable as I was but I wanted to scream, "You can't faith away the evidence - the earth is a couple of billions years old!!!"  Of course I had to hold my tongue and then sit on my hands while the class defended innocent suffering with silver-lining anecdotes.  Suffice it to say, I was in a bad mood akl day after that.

This afternoon, I decided to look at the Nye video to see just how much foam was actually flung from his lips.  I mean, based on the reaction, I thought that he must gone all Rush Limbaugh on them.  Well here it is.  Jeez, he is the calmest guy I have ever seen.  He is right; teaching that the evidence of scientific investigation is of no value when it contradicts faith is to devalue the scientific enterprise as a whole.  Not a good idea if you want a technologically advanced culture.

Edit: meant to say he "slammed" creationism, not evolution

"Free" Markets

“There is no such thing as a free-market... A market looks free only because we so unconditionally accept its underlying restrictions that we fail to see them.”
Ha-Joon Chang

(HT Connor Kilpatrick)

What's Happening to Journalism?!

First you have NPR's statement that they will no longer practice opinions-on-the-shape-of-the-earth-vary reporting.

Next you have NBC firing the producer who "tweeked" the Zimmerman/Martin 911 tapes.

And now The National Review - THE NATIONAL REVIEW, I say! - fires a contributor for a piece on protecting yourself from "black people"

It's almost as if journalists care about the truth!

All joking aside, Strauss and Howe's Generations and The Fourth Turning predicted that society would face a crisis of failing institutions that would require a re-working of of our national institutions and norms. I do believe that the above is one manifestation of this process of renewal. Another may be the Supreme Court's flirting with dismantling the mechanism underlying the operation of Medicare and other state/federal programs.

The Future has Arrived...

... and it's directed by Terry Gilliam!