Not often, but I sometimes get conspiratorially-minded. The case of the NCAA screwing up the investigation of Miami (FL) to my usually dormant conspiratorial instincts. This has the potential to save the NCAA from making a very difficult decision. Enough so that I wonder – at least a little – if it wasn’t sabotaged. I’m sure Miami-Ohio is breathing a little easier, though.
Tom Tancredo lost a bet and will have to smoke pot. Awesome. Good on him for keeping up his side of the bargain.
I link to this article of a fire in Chicago because you have to see the picture. It’s far out.
Canada has denied Randy Quaid’s request for permanent status. It looks like we’re stuck with him.
Via the New York Post and AP, an interesting story of how a clerk at Papa John’s managed to talk a thief out of taking money and into taking a pizza instead.
Having read this list of 10 lessons from creationist-inspired school books, I decided that I needed a drink.
I’ve been addicted to the Android game Temple Run lately. I can play it with one hand, which is very helpful when holding a baby. Here’s the story of how it came to be. Also from BusinessInsider, a look at where Google keeps your data.
Discussed recently on NaPP, a look at the rebound effect of energy efficiency. The “rebound effect” being that people who have more energy efficient things end up using it more and undercut the energy savings. They exist, but are not large enough to offset the energy savings.
A case for and against the Rooney Rule (actually the “pro-” says TRR isn’t enough). The Rooney Rule is the NFL’s insistence that minority candidates be interviewed.
Here is more on the giant squid, and its hunter.
Aquaman gets no respect.
After we made one, what exactly would we do with a neanderthal?
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Having read this list of 10 lessons from creationist-inspired school books, I decided that I needed a drink.
PBS took the post down. Any chance you cached it?
Rob! How are ya, man!
Afraid I don’t have an copy. It had to be seen to be believed. Among other things, it included the Trail of Tears being reframed as bringing the Indians to Christ.
Notably, the textbook maker of some of them was none other than Hit Coffee favorite Pensacola Christian College.
The PBS article appears to have been reproduced here. How dare anyone depart from liberal/evolutionist orthodoxy!
After we made one, what exactly would we do with a neanderthal?
I would assume he would be made eligible for affirmative action.
That link doesn’t seem to work either.
The science of the list didn’t bother me as much as the social studies. Lost Causism remains a significant problem for the south, and while I think history books often self-flagellate too much on certain things, trying to spin the Trail of Tears into a positive is… problematic.
From United States History (BJU Press): “[The Ku Klux] Klan in some areas of the country tried to be a means of reform, fighting the decline in morality and using the symbol of the cross. Klan targets were bootleggers, wife-beaters, and immoral movies. In some communities it achieved a certain respectability as it worked with politicians.â€
From Wikipedia: “The second KKK preached ‘One Hundred Percent Americanism’ and demanded the purification of politics, calling for strict morality and better enforcement of prohibition.”
From the paragraph on the Trail of Tears:
“God used the ‘Trail of Tears’ to bring many Indians to Christ,†says one text.
That’s it. No citation. No context. By carefully watching this video (which seems to be the source for the quotes in the PBS article), I think the source is the A Beka text, America: Land I Love. To be fair, I found many web articles commenting (negatively) on this sentence that give the citation. I found NOT ONE willing to give the context.
This is, roughly, the level of honesty that liberals have put in to this discussion. It’s a political hit job, not a scholarly inquiry into whether the sentence is, you know, actually true.
Prohibitionism isn’t the primary historical relevance of the KKK. The issue is not so much that the passage is false, and if it were used to indicate how complicated and messy history generally is, I’d actually be supportive. That is not the tone I get from said passage.
Some slaves were treated well, as that one said. That’s not the part that should be emphasized. And maybe it isn’t, but with the two primary sources of information being BJU and PCC, I guess I am less inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.
While I am skeptical that the necessary context for other bits are included in the text, I’m not sure what context could rectify the Trail of Tears bit. All of these things indicative of doing the exact sort of thing on the opposite end of the “America: A Story of Collective Guilt” sort of textbook I had. (Except the Civil War, as I’ve mentioned previously.)
My primary issue with all of it is this: I spend posts defending the South at the League on multiple occasions. Perceptions of the region are skewed and there are a lot of people that wish to identify the south precisely by its most intransigent elements. These books, and that the narrative within, are a big part of the problem. For providing ammunition, and for the perseverance of counterproductive ideology and mythology.
Prohibitionism isn’t the primary historical relevance of the KKK.
My reading of the Wikipedia article on the “Second KKK”, which is what we’re discussing, is that the primary historical relevance was immigration and the urban, corrupt, vice-ridden culture it created. Relatively few people are aware of this, and the text’s critics are implicitly relying on the popular association of “KKK” with opposition to Reconstruction (the 1st KKK) and Civil Rights (the 3rd KKK) to support the meme “CHRISTIAN TEXTBOOK SUPPORTS THE KKK!!!” That is far less honest than anything Bob Jones Press has done.
I am skeptical that the necessary context for other bits are included in the text
Google it. Almost all the hits you will get are to people pushing a political agenda: opposition to school choice programs. I don’t actually know what the tone the text takes towards the Trail of Tears (wow). And, for the record, I wouldn’t have characterized the work of, say, Samuel Worcester quite that way. But the quotation, on its face, doesn’t actually support the meme, “CHRISTIAN TEXTBOOK SUPPORTS TRAIL OF TEARS!!!”. But I’m pretty sure that if the context DID support that meme, we’d be hearing a lot more about it.
All of these things indicative of doing the exact sort of thing on the opposite end of the “America: A Story of Collective Guilt†sort of textbook I had.
I’m working on my own post about this, but suffice to say that I agree with you. Children’s textbooks of all stripes, on both science and social studies, set out to simplify a complex story in the service of somebody’s agenda. I didn’t like that when I was homeschooling, and I don’t like it now that I’m not. But if these are my choices, then why should I prefer the story of my enemies to the story of my friends?
There are a fair number of “if’s” involved there (If BJU isn’t trying to use the Prohibitionism of the second iteration to excuse the first and third, if they actually delineate between them, and so on) that can mitigate it. Ultimately, though, they haven’t particularly earned the assumption that they did these things. Neither NJU nor PCC exist in a vacuum.
If they did, I will gladly jump onto criticizing the critics. I do realize the political angle their jumping on (Louisiana most specifically), but it still seems to me that they are giving some good ammunition to torpedo a cause (school choice) that I support.
But if these are my choices, then why should I prefer the story of my enemies to the story of my friends?
I don’t see either side in terms of friends or (all-out) enemies. I can understand, to a degree, where you’re coming from on this part, though.
Pretty much all textbooks contain oversimplifications–history’s just too messed-up and complicated. (You can’t always expect the same people to be on the same side all the time once enough time passes, for example–look at the Margaret Sanger-eugenics thing, or William Jennings Bryan’s support of socialism, or anything else.) You can always cherry-pick the other side’s books for silliness.
History is narrative. So it’s pretty hard to come up with something that isn’t biased to some degree or another. It is understandable to try to move the needle, emphasize certain things over certain other things. It does often get taken further than I would like.