Astounding signs of progress, 2011 AD

1) Creationism in Texas suffers an Epic Fail:

McLeroy's Folly (granted, he wasn't alone in pursuing it, but he was instrumental in making those clown shoes fashionable in the Texas State Board of Education) seems to have met a spectacular, 80's-era exploding car movie end:

Pop the champagne corks. The Texas Board of Education has unanimously come down on the side of evolution. In a 14-0 vote, the board today approved scientifically accurate high school biology textbook supplements from established mainstream publishers — and did not approve the creationist-backed supplements from International Databases, LLC.

"This is a huge victory for Texas students and teachers," said Josh Rosenau, NCSE programs and policy director, who testified at the hearings this week. In his testimony, Rosenau urged the board to approve the supplements — recommended by a review panel largely composed of scientists and science educators — without amendments, and to reject International Databases' creationist submission. The board did just that, and asked for only minimal changes to the approved supplements.

2) The Lamberth injunction ends, hurrah

I'll admit that I was worried about this, but not to the point that I couldn't see the following ruling eventually coming down:
  
A lawsuit that had threatened to end the Obama administration's funding of embryonic stem cell research was thrown out Wednesday, allowing the U.S. to continue supporting a search for cures to deadly diseases over protests that the work relies on destroyed human embryos.

The lawsuit claimed that research funded by the National Institutes of Health violated the 1996 Dickey-Wicker law that prohibits taxpayer financing for work that harms an embryo. But the administration policy allows research on embryos that were culled long ago through private funding.

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, chief of the federal court in Washington, last year said the lawsuit was likely to succeed and ordered a stop to the research while the case continued. But responding to a swift protest from the Obama administration, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals here quickly overturned Lamberth's injunction and said the case was likely to fail.

Lamberth said in his opinion Wednesday that he is bound by the higher court's analysis and ruled in favor of the administration.

"This Court, following the D.C. Circuit's reasoning and conclusions, must find that defendants reasonably interpreted the Dickey-Wicker Amendment to permit funding for human embryonic stem cell research because such research is not 'research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed,' " Lamberth wrote.

Good things come in pairs, if by "pairs" you mean roughly five days apart. Cherry-picking or no, these are both bits of very good news, IMHO.

About those anti-evo bills in New Hampshire

David Brooks (no, not that one) of the Nashua Telegraph authored a column on the bills submitted by Jerry Bergevin (R-17th) and Gary Hopper (R-7th) pushing ID in state classrooms, and - unsurprisingly - their comments say a lot more about them than it does about the dogmatic science it supposedly responds to:

In our phone conversation, Hopper said there was a second driving factor behind his LSR, born of concerns that cropped up when he was 17.

“I had been filled with this theory of evolution, which if you really boil it down, is a theory that we are here by accident, that there is no purpose. The conclusion is that we’re a bunch of accidents … you really have no purpose for existence,” he said.

“Teaching a child that it’s very possible that they were designed would infer that they actually have a purpose. There’s some purpose they were created, so that is a reason to live. Right now, we’re teaching children that basically they’re animals.”

Ah, creationist dog whistles. They never improve with age, do they? 

The NCSE piece that referred me to Brooks' column is a bit more direct about the ultimate point of all of this:

Brooks, for his part, disagreed with the legislators' view that accepting evolution is tantamount to nihilism, writing that on the contrary, "[c]reationism is meaningless, but evolution is a door to infinite wonder." "But," he concluded, "this is irrelevant here, because it has no bearing on what to teach in science class. My taxpayer dollars pay science teachers to teach science, not philosophy. Let's hope lawmakers don't try to get in the way."

Cretin(s) of the Moment

Homeopaths Without Borders (!), for "helping" Haitians in the following fashion:

So let me get this straight. A bunch of homeopaths go into an impoverished Third World country that is still recovering from a devastating earthquake. They find people still suffering from a variety of diseases, including ringworm, vaginal infections, and infectious diarrhea. They see malnourished, underdeveloped, dehydrated infants. And what do they have to offer? Arnica, Aconite, Ignatia, Causticum, Natu mur, Sepia, phosphorus acid, and sulfur, all diluted to the point that not a single molecule is left. In other words, all they have to offer is water and sugar pills infused with that water. They don't even have water with electrolytes in it, such as Pedialyte, which is what these infants almost certainly really needed, along with formula.

Cretin of the moment

Dr. Michael Egnor. "Egnorance" indeed.

New Hampshire: the nonsense continues

It's not up for a vote yet, but the usual predictable boilerplate legislation intended to insert creationism into the classroom is being requested for the 2012 legislative session. And for what it's worth (read: not very much, unless you're truly desperate for a set of opinions from people whose opinion you really shouldn't care about), it turns out that Miss New Hampshire and most of the rest of the field of Miss USA candidates are a bit confused about things.    

One of out two ain't bad

First, the good news: Texas House Bill 2454 is officially toast. Regrettably, the same can't be said for the misnamed Louisiana Science Education Act, since the bill (SB 70) that would have repealed it died in committee.  

While we're on the subject of cell phones...

Both Orac and PZ Myers seem ready to engage in some serious thinking contrary to "the sky is falling!" meme that the WHO report has generated in the media. Whether this and other sane discussion will result in much of anything that resembles a corrective (or even a calming influence) is beyond me.

When a new set of denialists spring up...

...you might want to point out the fact there are scientific ways of ensuring that "Osama bin Laden" is Osama bin Laden, and that there's probably a good chance that there's still enough of him left after his burial in the Arabian Sea to confirm that fact for some time.

Cretins of the moment

The collective anti-vaccination fanatics of the world for helping to bring Measles back to places where it hasn't been in years. Good going, idiots.

Tennessee creationism bills stopped - for now

Both House Bill 368 and Senate Bill 893 ended up running into impassable roadblocks, but considering that one of the people driving this car was the unfathomable Frank Nicely (R-WTF) who wrapped his rhetorical car around a quote that wasn't even authored by the scientist he attributed it to, this should have surprised no one.

42 Nobel laureates can't be wrong

Bobby Jindal (R-LA) really should have paid attention to how seriously scientists take politically motivated attacks on their work. This is yet another It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown moment for him, and all he got was this rock.