A million dollars if you can prove

that Jesus is not the son of the Flying Spaghetti Monster! Boing Boing has thrown down the gauntlet since Dr. yes! Dr. Kent Hovind has challenged us all to offer "empirical evidence" for evolution. Christians mock us because we think we "came from a monkey or a rock."

Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!!! Well, thank Udon that boing boing has pointed me to the REAL RELIGION , albeit without a very stringent moral code. The cult of the Flying Spaghetti Monster makes up in gluten what it lacks in virtue (it seems, like most religions, to be very oriented toward the male fantasy of paradise.) The intrepid Keven, prophet of the FSM has written this letter to the Kansas School Board requesting that diverse theories of creationism including the version promoted by FSM be taught.

And to the kind folks at NPR -- enough about the Pope already on unity, and kindness and tolerance and blah blah blah. Let him sound off on FSM Please! We need a real debate here.

Let him challenge my belief in holy Pasta! Now I understand why they called it "Angel Hair"!

R--AMEN

Vocational Education and low expectations

got its start with Charles A. Prosser's life adjustment movement: to read a laudatory history, click here. The darker side of this story is that so continued an anti-intellectual backlash within secondary education that led to the "life adjustment movement."

Education reform brought you health classes, home economics, shop and auto mechanics, socialization and popularity electives, all meant to enrich your education, do the job that your parents weren't doing at home.

Prosser was head of the Dunwoody Institute in Minneapolis for 31 years, and as an educational vanguardist, he pioneered from his home institution this down to earth pragmatism that still distinguishes the ethos of public education in that state. Academics for Prosser, was for stuck up elitists!

One of my French classes at the U of M didn't know who won the Trojan War. Well, that was long before Brad Pitt fought in it. Now everyone knows it was the Greeks and not the Trojans. The daughter of a friend of mine performed in the school band: I attended some of these concerts. The students may have been enthusiastic, but you could barely tell what they were playing. Criticizing their inability to play in tune would have been elitist I imagine, which is why they continued to play badly!

In high school English, many of my students were restricted to a reading list of novels adapted to film , and since it was the Clinton years, Maya Angelou. Angelous is many things to many people, but her poetry is terrible. No matter, that's elitist of me to say.

Objecting to the deterioration of standards once again, would have been seen as -- you guessed it, elitist. Now I know that I was living in a hot bed of education reform, a state at the vanguard of low expectations, which is why I was always so uncomfortably bringing up the rear with my coastal attitude.

God, not Gravity makes you fall!

Breaking News! Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent Falling' Theory

Thanks to Jost for bringing this news to our attention.

Out of Kansas comes Evangelical Physics who say that "secular" physics are just not consistent in theories of gravity. Consistency in the Evangelical mind is perhaps the criteria by which all truths and truth values should be judged and THAT'S why the Bible should be read literally, because we all know how consistent God was. Especially about shellfish and abomination -- do not eat the creepy crawly swarmy things -- and do not eat of the animals of the cloven hoof!

Satan's falling out of Paradise and Jesus' ascension to Heaven are not explicable if you follow the strict gravitists [sic]. Wow!

OK, so let me know how not to be disgusted with this kind of delusional Christian logic. Please!!! My sarcasm is a defense against my outrage. Says one Kansan, "We Just want our children to be educated properly..." for what may one ask? For life on another planet? Who is to say that we live on Earth?

I'm really looking for the right level of balance here. The Onion article is actually an example of pure restraint, so why should I not allow myself to become exercised? Help me, I've fallen down and I can't get up!

Conservative Manifesto from 1971

Supreme Court Justice Powell wrote the Powell Memo before he was appointed by Richard Nixon to the top court . In this memo, or manifesto, he outlines ways in which conservatives and business interests must take a more aggressive stance in defending the free enterprise system, American freedom and corporate values against the incursions made by the New Left.

According to the post at Kos, this memo was instrumental in forming the conservative think tanks that have become the source of Right-wing talking points: Heritage, Cato, we know the drill.

Do progressives have enough discipline to organize themselves along these lines by promoting an aggressive campaign on campuses, and in the media to reclaim the momentum for protecting progressive values as American values? Reclaim Democracy.org believes not. I see little sign of real change in the ways in which the Democratic Party is conducting business, but there are some hopeful hints that at least the smug establishment multiculturalism of the Clinton years is breaking up and that there is a real sense of crisis on the Left.

The World's first Stalinist News Feed!

Thanks to Mirko fo the for heads upon on NK News. North Korean Propaganda at your fingertips.

I especially liked the random insult generator, try it when you feel that your interpretation of Jane Austen promoted social justice and you'll immediately be taken down a few notches.

Will post more seriously at some point, but am writing furiously and find that blogging has become pure escapism. Please feel free to help me escape.

A Literary Organ

There are academics who believe that teaching literature in the proper way can make the world a better place! I don't even want to get involved in the silliness of this debate, but if you want to see a very impassioned discussion of this issue, check out The Valve's discussion of "theoretically oriented approaches" versus "politically oriented approaches" to literature and you'll see the nature of the dispute.

The fact that "literary criticism ought to further the cause of social justice" is justly criticized, but the debate degenerates into impassioned, and not very witty accusations and counter accusations - it must be said by mostly men.

It took me back ten years ago to the Derrida discussion list when I was so lonely in Minneapolis, that I spent my days on a 14.4 bps modem dial up connection on the internets!