Can one - need one - say anything more than this?:
Thank god for the birds, indeed!
Here we go again. The never-ending game of creationist-whack-a-mole continues, with an old head that had been hammered (even in court) popping up once again. Where else, but - in Texas, of course:
CREATIONIST GROUP PUSHES ANTI-EVOLUTION MATERIALS IN TEXAS SCIENCE CLASSES
Texas SBOE Asked To Consider Materials from Fringe Anti-Science Group
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 20, 2011In a move that should not surprise anyone, a well-known creationist/“intelligent design” group appeared on a list of publishers that have indicated an intent to submit science curriculum materials for approval by the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) later this spring. The formal inclusion of this creationist group means Texas will once again be ground zero for creationist attacks on 21st-century science, TFN President Kathy Miller said.
“In 2009 the State Board of Education approved new science curriculum standards that opened the door to creationist materials in Texas classrooms. Today we saw that one prominent creationist group intends to walk through that door,” Miller said. “Getting their materials in public schools has long been a top priority for creationists, and it’s clear that they intend to make Texas their flagship. Teaching inaccurate information rejected by the scientific community would be a huge disservice to Texas kids and a major setback for science education everywhere.”
Among the dozens of publishers who notified the SBOE of their intent to submit science materials for approval was a Richardson,TX-based group called the Foundation for Thought and Ethics (FTE). Approval of materials published by FTE, a self-described promoter of “intelligent design,” would create several serious problems for the board, including:
- FTE’s troubled legal history – FTE published the “intelligent design” textbook (Of Pandas and People) that was ruled to be unconstitutional for use in public schools in the landmark decision Kitzmiller v. Dover (PA).
- FTE’s well-established record of religious proselytizing through its textbooks – As recently as 2002, the group described its mission on IRS tax returns as “promoting and publishing textbooks presenting a Christian perspective of academic studies.”
The actual materials submitted for approval by FTE and other publishers will not be available to the public until March. The State Board of Education, however, has already begun appointing review panels – made up of citizens, educators and scientists – that will evaluate all materials for conformity to the state’s new curriculum standards as well as for factual accuracy.
There will be a public hearing on these materials at the board in April. The board will take a final vote on approval or rejection of these science materials at the conclusion of that April meeting. All materials approved by the board are available for purchase by local school districts for use in science classrooms.
Sounds like a good time for this documentary:
Click on the kickstarter link if you are able to (and want to) contribute towards the completion of this documentary - if you care about the nature of science education, that is!
On the all too rare mornings when the Central Valley's dirty air has been cleansed by a winter storm—and before the Tule fog has set in—I find myself fortunate enough to be gazing out upon the snow-topped peaks of the Sierra Nevada mountains from my office window, my view bracketed by two amazing National Parks: King's Canyon (with Mount Whitney, the highest peak in the lower 48 states of the US) at the southern edge, and Yosemite to the north. As a hiker and rock-climber in my youth, I spent many hours poring over photographs of these places in books checked out of the American Center Library in Bombay. I dreamt of visiting Yosemite, a mecca for rock-climbers, imagined myself walking through the fantastic landscapes captured on film by Ansel Adams, feeling the granite under my fingers. Rock-climbing gave way to bird-watching as I grew into an ecologist and a conservation biologist, and Yosemite assumed even more significance as one of the holiest places in any conservation pilgrimage of the US, indeed the world. What a model for nature conservation this National Park was, is. How wonderful the wilderness I could picture in these places in the writings of John Muir and others. And how lucky I am now to be living so close to such places. When I gaze out at the mountains, or visit Yosemite as part of the throngs of millions that flood its beautiful valley every year, I try to imagine what the place might have looked like a century or two ago—a fantasy we all share, those of us who despair over the state of the natural world. In my dreams now, though, I don't see it as a "pristine" wilderness untouched by humans, but a home to a community of native people, the Ahwahneechee who once thrived there, but whose existence has been sought to be erased from our collective memory and imagination, as a centerpiece of the still prevailing notion of a National Park as pristine wilderness, a place where human beings don't belong (and therefore never did), except as visitors who may be allowed to look and to listen, but scarcely to touch anything.
Today, I am pleased to share with you the following essay by Eric Michael Johnson, who reminds us of the human history of Yosemite, and what we in the conservation community have lost in seeking to airbrush humans out of our imagination of what Nature is supposed to look like, "unspoilt". We must reclaim that history too if we are to reconcile our existence on this planet—not apart from, but as active participants in, Nature. This guest post is part of Eric's Primate Diaries in Exile blog tour. You can follow other stops on this tour through his RSS feed or by following Eric on Twitter.
The modern conservation movement began at dawn on December 8, 1850, above the north fork of California's San Joaquin river. Soft orange light had just begun to spill over the craggy peaks of the eastern Ahwahnee mountains causing the jagged minarets to ignite like still burning embers from the Indian campfires below.
I was raised in the mountains of Northern California and walked the trails near the site of this tragic massacre as a child. But I had never heard of John Savage nor the terrible events that lay behind the formation of Yosemite National Park, a picturesque symbol of the conservation movement and a vacation resort for millions. Rather it was John Muir, that noble wanderer and founder of the Sierra Club, whose name was synonymous with this national treasure. When my brothers and I climbed out of the family station wagon to witness the majesty of this glacier carved valley, it was Muir's name that adorned the signs along the manicured trails and the celebrated volumes in the gift shop. If the indigenous population was mentioned in any of the brochures or trail guides I have no memory of it and I left with no indication that the region had once been inhabited. The impression I received was that Yosemite had always been a pristine wilderness, as sparse and pure as the Ansel Adams portraits that hung on my family's wall for years afterwards.[T]he main canyons widen into spacious valleys or parks of charming beauty, level and flowery and diversified like landscape gardens with meadows and groves and thickets of blooming bushes, while the lofty walls, infinitely varied in form, are fringed with ferns, flowering plants, shrubs of many species, and tall evergreens and oaks.It's not that Muir didn't encounter native peoples in his travels, he did, but he found them to be "most ugly, and some of them altogether hideous." For a wilderness as pure as his holy Yosemite "they seemed to have no right place in the landscape, and I was glad to see them fading out of sight down the pass." But, ironically, these "strange creatures" as Muir described them were the ones responsible for many of the features that gave Yosemite Valley it's park-like appearance, the "landscape gardens" that Muir so valued. It is this forgotten legacy that has undermined many of the successes in the global conservation movement today, one that traces directly back to John Savage and John Muir and the first protected wilderness site that later became the model followed around the world.
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| Yosemite Valley / Image: Wikimedia Commons |
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| Vegetation Density Associated with User Group Right to Make Rules. From Ostrom and Hayes, 2007. |
Some thought-provoking images from National Geographic on how noisy our oceans have become lately, thanks to our technology:
The deep is dark, but not silent; it’s alive with sounds. Whales and other marine mammals, fish, and even some invertebrates depend on sound, which travels much farther in water than light does. The animals use sound to find food and mates, to avoid predators, and to communicate. They face a growing problem: Man-made noise is drowning them out. “For many of these animals it’s as if they live in cities,” says marine scientist Brandon Southall, former director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) ocean acoustics program.
Like living in a city! Remarkable, really, to think about how much the noise generated by a terrestrial species—us—now drowns out the acoustic seascape underwater, in the marine realm. Here's another image from a study in the vicinity of Boston harbor (no longer a place for a quiet tea party, I'm afraid) that ought to shut us up, at least momentarily, and make us ponder what havoc we wreak upon this earth and its creatures:
What an excellent idea! Read the entire article which explores the possibilities quite well, and lists a number of cities that are studying these options. Fresno is not on the list, but really should be! Seems like a perfect opportunity for some reconciliation ecology experiments too, if ecologists and conservationists can get involved. Can we try some new ideas to invent habitats for other species while we are at this?
In the language of urbanism, “greenfields” usually means rural land at the metropolitan edge, where suburbia metastasizes. “Brownfields” are former industrial sites that could be redeveloped once they are cleaned of pollution. “Greyfields” — picture vast empty parking lots — refer to moribund shopping centers. Recently another such locution was coined: “redfields,” as in red ink, for underperforming, underwater and foreclosed commercial real estate.
Redfields describe a financial condition, not a development type. So brownfields and greyfields are often redfields, as are other distressed, outmoded or undesirable built places: failed office and apartment complexes, vacant retail strips and big-box stores, newly platted subdivisions that died aborning in the crash.
Now comes “Redfields to Greenfields,” a promising initiative aimed at reducing the huge supply of stricken commercial properties while simultaneously revitalizing the areas around them. (It’s a catchy title, if imprecise because it’s about re-establishing greenfields within developed areas, not about doing anything to natural or agricultural acreage at the urban margins.) The plan, in essence, is this: Determine where defunct properties might fit a metropolitan green-space strategy; acquire and clear them; then make them into parks and conservation areas, some permanent and some only land-banked until the market wants them again.
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