Teacher offends high-schoolers with talk of vaginas and weather

Tim McDaniel

In today’s edition of what’s wrong with the US education system:

A Dietrich[, Idaho] science teacher is being investigated by the state’s professional standards commission after a complaint from parents over his teaching methods.

Tim McDaniel is being investigated after a complaint was filed by a handful of parents who objected to how McDaniel taught the reproductive system, Dietrich Superintendent Neil Hollingshead said.

Ooh, looks like we’ve got ourselves a pervert on our hands! Okay, so what did the miscreant do? What unwholesome, inappropriate, child-endangering teachings were forced upon his cherubic audience?

According to McDaniel, four parents were offended that he explained the biology of an orgasm and included the word “vagina” during his lesson on the human reproductive system in a tenth-grade biology course.

Oh, the deviant! What other unwholesome things did this fetishist do to those poor, defenseless young’uns?

According to a letter from the Idaho State Department of Education to McDaniel, the allegations also include that he shared confidential student files with an individual other than their parents, showed a video clip in class depicting an infection of genital herpes, taught different forms of birth control and told inappropriate jokes in class.

[…]

According to McDaniel, the commission is also investigating a complaint that accuses him of using school property to promote a political candidate. The complaint was because he showed the climate change film “An Inconvenient Truth,” also in his science class.

McDaniel said he includes the film to spark a discussion on climate change among the students. After watching the film, he asks students to write a response paper explaining their thoughts on climate change.

So he’s a political activist to boot! (Never mind that Al Gore hasn’t been in any elections in 13 years. That’s just no-good facts-talk.)

Daily Blend: Tuesday, January 29, 2013

[full size (584×764)]

Good: Federal judge stops DEA’s attempt to seize a rural Massachusetts motel after a few guests there committed crimes without the motel owner’s knowledge. ^[pictured]
(via Uzza)

PZ Myers handily dismantles the tired anti-abortionist claim that science proves that personhood begins at conception.

Meanwhile, the anti-abortion fetal “heartbeat bill” makes it to Arkansas.

Creeping Creationism in Missouri.

Ray Comfort: Surgeons can’t reconstruct chimp attack victim’s face, ergo, Evolution is dummy-dumb-dumb.

I’m 96% humanist! Take that, 2009 Humanist of the Year PZ Myers and your paltry 90%!

And finally, here’s a bunch of Christians I could have a drink with (if I drank):
(via Joe. My. God.)

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Bryan Fischer is clueless about evolution. Movie at 11

Here’s how the American Family Association’s Crank-in-Chief Bryan Fischer responds to new findings that a large number of intellectual disabilities may be due to random genetic mutations rather than inheritance:

Random gene mutations cause of many mental disabilities. Thot random mutations were key to evolution! fxn.ws/PqJySV

— Bryan Fischer (@BryanJFischer) September 27, 2012

The minimally educated observer may note both the crank’s characteristic knack for using a tangentially related topic as a sloppy attack on a subject they don’t like, and also, said crank’s remarkably brazen display of scientific illiteracy.

The reality (something Fischer would never be caught dead living in) is that mutations can be good or bad in terms of how they affect one’s chances for long-term survival and reproduction. Mutations that increase an individual’s physical or psychological abilities are thus more likely to be passed on to future generations, whilst mutations that impair an individual physically or psychologically are less so. Evolution is unable to give a damn about which of these genomic changes end up helping or harming a given population; it’s a blind, directionless, stochastic process that’s driven by the laws of nature.

But, of course, cognitive shrimps like Fischer are unable to grasp such nuanced and complicamated principles, regardless of how fundamental to science and even life itself they may be.

Tags: Bryan Fischer • gene mutation • mental disabilities

Fail Quote: Supporting NYC’s Nanny Statism by appealing to endowment?

From the totes legit sex expert, Ruth Westheimer, who seems to think a sophomoric appeal to a pervasive myth is a valid argument for New York City Mayor Bloomberg’s brand of health-crazed Nanny Statism:

Should big sodas be banned? All I can say to guys is: big bellies = smaller penis so ur choice, Big Gulp or big equipment?

— Dr. Ruth Westheimer (@AskDrRuth) September 13, 2012

To the uninitiated, that is what one might call “bullshit”. On a purely pedantic note, I’d like her (and anyone else who espouses this moronic idea) to explain by what biological mechanism the fat in one’s abdomen is supposedly extracted from their genitalia. More generally, I’d also like to hear how this argument is supposed to sway anyone who doesn’t already suffer from some crippling insecurity.

(At any rate, at the risk of going all TMI, I personally know at least one living refutation.)

(via Joe. My. God.)

Tags: Ruth Westheimer • obesity • penis • endowment • New York City • Big Gulp

Daily Blend: Monday, August 27, 2012

Reince Priebus

Wow: All nine bystanders who were injured during the recent Empire State Building shooting were hit by police. (But I’m sure random nobodies with conceal carry licenses would do much better!)

This year marks a new all-time record low for Arctic sea ice extent. But I’m sure it’s totally just a fluke, of course.

Very satisfying: MSNBC’s Chris Matthews unloads on Republican toady Reince Priebus ^[pictured] about the GOP’s playing of the “ethnic card” with Mitt Romney’s recent Birther joke.
(via @BilgeEbiri)

Biologists hook up a deceased squid’s tissue to an electrical current timed with ‘Insane in the Membrane’. SCIENCE! ensues.
(via Pharyngula)

And finally, here’s a little duckling offering its food to some hungry fish:
(via Cracked.com)

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Tags: Empire State Building shooting • Jeffrey Johnson • NYPD • mass shootings • sea ice extent • global warming • climate change • Chris Matthews • Reince Priebus • Mitt Romney • Barack Obama • race card • racism • squid • chromatophores • Insane in the Membrane • Woods Hole squid • ducks • ducklings • fish • altruism

NRO writer: Obama’s daughters are turning him into a woman!

Kevin Williamson

I’ve never heard of National Review Online columnist Kevin D. Williamson, and I’m willing to bet that no biology schoolteacher ever has, either. And yet, here he is, waxing profound idiocy about evolutionary biology in this bizarre argument about why women should vote for Mitt Romney instead of President Obama:

You want off-the-charts status? Check out the curriculum vitae of one Willard M. Romney: $200 million in the bank (and a hell of a lot more if he didn’t give so much away), apex alpha executive, CEO, chairman of the board, governor, bishop, boss of everything he’s ever touched. Son of the same, father of more. It is a curious scientific fact (explained in evolutionary biology by the Trivers-Willard hypothesis — Willard, notice) that high-status animals tend to have more male offspring than female offspring, which holds true across many species, from red deer to mink to Homo sap. The offspring of rich families are statistically biased in favor of sons — the children of the general population are 51 percent male and 49 percent female, but the children of the Forbes billionaire list are 60 percent male. Have a gander at that Romney family picture: five sons, zero daughters. Romney has 18 grandchildren, and they exceed a 2:1 ratio of grandsons to granddaughters (13:5). When they go to church at their summer-vacation home, the Romney clan makes up a third of the congregation. He is basically a tribal chieftain.

Professor Obama? Two daughters. May as well give the guy a cardigan. And fallopian tubes.

I’d declare that Williamson is a sexist prick, but upon further reflection, I realize that I have no bloody idea what he’s even trying to say. Having daughters makes a father effeminate? Are women supposed to be less likely to vote for a man based on whether his offspring is male or female? What about if he has both girls and boys? And what about the fact that he’s, y’know, the President of the United States, which one might think ranks a fair bit above “boring rich dude” when it comes to social “status”?

Oh hell, I’m overthinking it again. Williamson is a sexist prick – and scientifically illiterate to boot.

(via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)

Tags: Kevin Williamson • Barack Obama • Mitt Romney • evolutionary biology • women

Fail Quote: Creationist explains why plants are not alive

Henry Morris III

Here’s Henry Morris III of the Institute for Creation Research, revealing just how dim these bulbs can get when they put the Bible before reality:

Obviously, animal and human life are different from plant life. In fact, the Bible uses the Hebrew word chay (life) and its derivatives 763 times in the Old Testament, never applying that term to plants or vegetation. No place in Scripture attributes chay to plants; only living creatures possess life.

Plants are indeed marvelous, beautiful, complex, and able to reproduce “after their kind,” but they are designed by the Creator to be a source of energy to maintain life. Plants are food—they are not alive.

So living things cannot be food. I suspect that revelation must make a lot of carnivores wonder just what the hell they’ve been eating all this time. And vegetation isn’t alive? Then how does it reproduce, if not through biological mechanisms that can only occur in living organisms? How does photosynthesis work in something that’s lifeless? Any answers to that in his book of fairy tales?

And somehow, it only gets better from there. Did you know that all living things can also move? (Which, if plants aren’t alive, must make tropism and especially rapid plant movement – think Venus Flytraps – particularly tricky to explain.) Or that all living things have blood? (Way to discriminate against 90% of life on Earth, dude.) Or that, of course, all living things have a soul? (So there must be a doggy heaven!) And naturally, all that comes together to prove how those doggone evolutionists are, like, totally wrong. Bet you didn’t know that, did ya, you fancy-pants naturalist with your science and stuff?

Well, I still don’t. But at least The Sensuous Curmudgeon does a nice job pointing and laughing at all the stupid. Go there and join in the hilarity. (Or despair at the fact that these whackjobs exist and are an actual force in the modern U.S. political machine. Either way.)

(via Rob F)

Tags: Henry Morris III • Institute for Creation Research • plants • vegetation • Creationism • life

That poor little bacterium had no chance against that leukocyte

Run, little guy, run …! Oh, wait, that’s a bacterium. In that case, go, white blood cell! Crush! Destroy! KILL IT!

Damn, one wonders why microbes and such even bother with trying to make us sick with these globular monsters on the prowl.

(via @cwage)

Tags: white blood cells • leukocytes • neutrophils • Staphylococcus aureus

Adopt an Atheist: Stan Johnson – Round 1

I’ll admit, I had little expectations when I put myself up for Christian adoption two weeks back in response to Bill Donohue’s “adopt an atheist” initiative. But lo and behold, I’ve received a challenge!

Taker: Stan Johnson (Protestant Christian)

Rules —

• The format is a free exchange (no jury or “winners”/“losers”).
• Each round starts with Stan’s argument(s) (A = Argument)) and concludes with my counter-argument(s) (R = Rebuttal).
• Subject matter is limited to arguments of logic and evidence to support the existence of God(s) and/or the validity of Christianity.
• Any other topics or tangents may be ignored.
• Any and all rhetoric, tactics and content is acceptable, so long as all participants adhere to the blog rules.
• Arguments can be as many and lengthy as desired (though conciseness is appreciated).
• Participants may choose to ignore any argument(s) that they feel have been sufficiently addressed (as to avoid beating a dead horse).
• Rounds will continue indefinitely until any participant(s) choose(s) to end the debate for any reason.

Note: Challengers’ arguments may be paraphrased/edited for clarity/formatting reasons.

---

ARGUMENT(S): Stan Johnson

A1: The natural world (specifically the biology of organisms) doesn’t seem random, and instead appears to have been designed. This is a thought even shared by some very well known atheists. Richard Dawkins in his book The Blind Watchmaker even said "Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose." Yet, non like Christians, who follow the implications of what they study (in this case that it is designed), atheists throw out the notion because it doesn't follow their worldview. Francis Crick was once cited as saying "Biologists must constantly keep in mind what they see was not designed, rather evolved."

A2: The Earth has to have been designed because it doesn't make sense for the earth to be able to exist unless there was a plan going into making it. The earth would have destroyed itself as soon as one minute thing was off. Also, a lot of things would happen at the same time because there are instances where one thing could not happen before or after other events for it to have come into being.

Mailbag: Christian tries to … convert me? (Or something)

I’m not sure whether this was really meant for me or whether it’s just some copy-pasted spiel, but nonetheless, it found its way into my inbox. A fellow named Michael writes (all [sic]):

Dear friend
I admire your way of words and your liberal passione for equality
However i wuld love for you to seriously reflect on my message below and
keep an open mind...thats what its all about right?
Consider Dr. Martin Luther King, a pious man who led my race to equality.
Consider the very essence of racism and social inequalities. To say all of
this hardship and sorrow and pain comes around due to coincidence, is it
reasonable.
One night when i was 14, ( im 15 now) , it was nearing the anniversary of my
grandfathers death and i was in steep depression. I grabbed some rum and
drank myself to sleep. I nearly joined a gang, nearly murdered my
realfather...i love my stepfaher...and sank into darkness. Ive always been a
christian, but i started to doubt god existed. But somehow i read my bible
and i rehabilitated, and now those bad habits and vices are gone from me. To
be honest, if you read thebible( i truly encourage you to do so, if not in
religious terms as a motivTional tool.) It deals aboht grue aspects. Love,
latience, longsiffering. Where do evolutionest thonk love cmes from. And if
it was an evolutionary quality developed by humans, why is it now so easy to
turn back on. My friend consider this. If your right about evution, when i
die it wont matter, ill decay and soon be lonv lost. But if im right, then
when jesus comes abain, you would haveost everything.

Next time you see someone you care about, telll them you love thwm. And god loves you, and i look foward to meeting you in heaven. Thanks

Amazing in its nonsensicality, isn’t it? Nonetheless, in the spirit of not being overly harsh towards what appears to be someone with limited typing skills, there are a few things I thought I should address:

However, I would love for you to seriously reflect on my message below and keep an open mind...that’s what it’s all about, right?

I’m always willing to hear anyone and anything out, though one should find it prudent not to open one’s mind too wide, lest one’s brain fall out.

Daily Blend: Monday, July 11, 2011

Dudley Clendinen

• Radley Balko explains the obvious: Why “Caylee’s Law” is a bad idea.

• Touching right-to-die essay from former New York Times correspondent and ALS sufferer Dudley Clendinen [pictured].
  (via The Agitator)

• Six lies about the human body you learned in kindergarten (and probably still believe).

• Information is Beautiful: The Sunscreen Smokescreen.

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Tags: Radley Balko • Casey Anthony • Caylee Anthony • Caylee's Law • Dudley Clendinen • ALS • suicide • human body • sunscreen

Richard Dawkins explains the evolution of the eye

It’s a favorite Creationist canard that the modern eye is too complex to have evolved (and therefore, evolution is false!). In yet another attempt at driving basic scientific facts through through their overly thick skulls, here’s Richard Dawkins making an appearance on the BBC production Bang Goes The Theory and explaining, in wonderfully clear and simple detail, how the ocular globe started as a mere light-sensitive dot on a cell and ended up as the incredibly complex device it is now:

My transcript: (click the [+/-] to expand/collapse →)

[−]

[summarized for brevity]

Presenter Liz Bonnin visits an ophthalmologist to learn more about the eye, which functions essentially as does a camera with light receptors behind a lens. Liz then meets with Dr. Richard Dawkins, who explains how the very first eye was no more than a dot at the front of single-celled organisms, called a flat-eye, which only responded to the presence or absence of light. He uses a strip of paper coated in a substance that glows under ultraviolet light as a representation of this earliest stage of eyeball development, and demonstrates that under a light source at any angle, the surface glows equally, thus making it rather useless in determining anything such as direction and orientation.

Dawkins then shows what happens if the paper is cupped slightly: different lighting angles allow for one side of the strip to be exposed to more light than the other, which in organisms having undergone a similar evolutionary step, would grant them a massive advantage in allowing them to determine which direction a potential predator’s shadow is coming from.

Dawkins then shows what happens if the curve is completed to form a pinhole camera with light-sensitive (photosensitive) cells on all sides. With this new development, the organism can now form an extremely rudimentary and very blurry picture of whatever is directly in front of them.

Dawkins then uses a small bag of water in front of an actual pinhole camera to demonstrate what happens if one uses a rudimentary lens: the image becomes much clearer. This bag of water would take the form of jelly inside organisms’ eyeballs, which over time and with more mutations, would gradually harden and reshape itself to form more of an actual lens, providing a clearer, crisper and wider picture of the creature’s surroundings.

Finally, Liz explains that scientists estimate that it only took about 400,000 generations to go from the first rudimentary flat-eye to a fully developed eyeball, which corresponds to roughly half-a-million years.

(via Roger Ebert's Journal)

Tags: Richard Dawkins • eye • Bang Goes The Theory • Liz Bonnin

Daily Blend: Friday, June 17, 2011

US DoJ seal

• US Justice Department [pictured] joins court battle over Indiana anti-abortion law axing Planned Parenthood funds and disqualifying the state from critical Medicaid funds.
  (via @BreakingNews)

• You know how the GOP always whinges about Democrats supposedly committing voter fraud? Well, how ’bout that …

• Bill Donohue growls at organization for being pro-choice when it comes to both assisted suicide and abortion rights. Includes lame punchline.

• A 7-year-old boy’s science blog about pre-dinosaur life on Earth. In case you weren’t ashamed of your non-genius childhood enough.
  (via Pharyngula)

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Tags: Indiana • Planned Parenthood • US Department of Justice • DoJ • Medicaid • Robert Ehrlick • Julius Henson • voter fraud • robocalls • Maryland • GOP • Paul Schurick • Bill Donohue • Compassion and Choices • assisted suicide • ABC • Life Before the Dinosaurs

Daily Blend: Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Bill Donohue

• Could the US right-wing get even crazier after 2012? A chilling prospect.

• Oprah finally signs off, and doctors everywhere cheer.
  (via The Daily Grail)

• Why is the G-Spot still such a mystery? Jen McCreight explains: “To put it simply? The current research sucks.”

• Bill Donohue [pictured] now kvetching about how San Antonio, TX mayor is ignoring his whining about a satirical play he doesn’t like. Also still has no idea what “hate speech” actually is.

• Good thing I don’t have a “don’t feed the trolls” rule for this blog, or I’d be guilty of high treason by now.

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Supplemental tags: Bill Donohue • Stupid • Random

Badass Quote: Homosexuality and natural bigotry

From Chad Aldridge on Facebook, replying to the concept of good ol’ Biblical morality:

Homosexuality is found in over 450 species. Homophobia is found in only one. Which one seems unnatural now?

Actually, homophobia is perfectly “natural” (in that it’s not in any way abnormal or artificial), just like homosexuality. The difference, of course, is that bigotry is wrong, whilst homosexuality just … is. It’s a state of being, not a positive or negative trait.

Anyway, we have another entry into the Memorable Quotes.

(via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)

Daily Blend: Thursday, March 10, 2011

Julian Assange

• Republican leadership edging away from efforts to defund Planned Parenthood.
  (via Right Wing Watch)

• Police investigator who first took up the case against Julian Assange [pictured] is friends with one of the “rape”* accusers. Conflict of interest much?
  (via @todayspolitics)

• Rick Santorum (R-PA): “Any child born prematurely, according to [President Obama], can be killed.” PolitiFact: “No wonder why you’re the one they call a ‘frothy mix of lube and fecal matter’.”

• Dalai Lama to retire from leader of Tibetan government in exile.

• Music porn: The history of videogame music.
  (via Ian Meredith)

• Mutated DNA led to loss of spiny penises and the growth of human brains.

• The self-evident Time-Lapse Blog. No, not getting sucked into it. I have things to do, dangit!
  (via The Agitator)

• Intruder calls 911, afraid homeowner may have gun.
  (via The Agitator)

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

* UPDATE: My use of “scare/sarcastic quotes” for ‘rape’ comes from my initial ignorance of the accusation that Assange had not quit intercourse with a woman who had asked him to stop. Having paid only intermittent attention to the case, I was under the impression that the charges against Assange were limited to a broken condom and not using one at all, which do not, in themselves, constitute rape. If this claim of continued sex despite the woman’s demand to stop is true, then that, itself, is certainly rape.

Supplemental tags: Evolution • Time-Lapse Blog • Cool • Websites/Blogs • Humor • Crime • Random

Daily Blend: Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Free Speech

• Almost satirically perfect example showing how whenever someone says “there oughta be a law”, there really shouldn’t be. [pictured]
  (via The Agitator)

• Latest faux right-wing outrage: State dinner pianist chose a Chinese song! Anti-American!

• Fake sex trafficker tried to pull a James O’Keefe on Planned Parenthood. It didn’t work.
  (via @todayspolitics)

• Excellent and insightful post by Jen at Blag Hag debunking the latest insane WorldNetDaily tripe about how gays may use genetic screening to abort heterosexual babies.

• Iowan Christians to gays: “Here, have a cookie while we try to take away your hard-earned right to marry.”

• Oh, the startling maturity of Fox & Friends.

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Supplemental tags: Gay marriage • Iowa • Fox & Friends • SOTU

Daily Blend: Saturday, January 15, 2011

Kaylee (~ 2½ years old), pretending she’s ceramic [full size (501×600)]

Alas, my beloved little Kaylee [pictured] is leaving me today. Now she can annoy the hell out of my father’s girlfriend’s sister. :3 (Yes, I will miss her.)

• Wingnut Rep. Leo Berman (R-TX) wants to ban all “religious or cultural law” in Texas, apparently doesn’t realize this also applies to the Ten Commandments he loves so much, along with things like religious marriages and wills.
  (via @todayspolitics)

• Another thing I didn’t know: Women apparently aren’t allowed to engage in combat in the US Military … yet.
  (via @todayspolitics)

• Pentagon apparently idolizes Solid Snake, now wants to start sequencing soldiers’ genomes.
  (via @todayspolitics)

• Florida trailer park man sues WikiLeaks for scaring him.
  (via Fark)

• Obama administration loosens some restrictions on travel to Cuba. I guess the rest of the Cold War-era embargo is still necessary.

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Nature by Numbers: Mathematics in the natural world

This video is almost enough to convince me that mathematics aren’t the spawn of the devil. (Almost.)

(via Bad Astronomy)

Daily Blend: Sunday, October 31, 2010 – Scary Halloween!

Pastor Jim Swilley

So: Atheists want eat your babies, gays want to homosexualize and gay-marry you, undocumented immigrants want to steal your jobs, Mexicans want to cut off your head, pot-smokers want to dope up the workforce, terrorists want to blow you up, the Kenyan-born US President wants to destroy the country, liberals want to destroy the military, Muslims want to conquer America …

Scary, scary Halloween!

• Georgia-based Conyers’ Church Pastor Jim Swilley [pictured] comes out as gay in wake of recent wave of LGBT teen suicides, declares homosexuality is not a choice. Shame it took him this long, but kudos nonetheless.
  (via Political Irony)

• US Department of Justice finally realizes humans don’t own nature, reverse longstanding policy declaring that human and other genes can be patented.
  (via Blag Hag)

• New York City, circa 1880s–1950s.
  (via @todayspolitics)

• Halloween: Where community exploration and opening up to neighbors actually make it the safest day of the year for children.

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Tags: Jim Swilley • Conyers' Church • homosexuality • gay teen suicides • US Department of Justice • genes • patents • New York City • photography • Halloween • children