Children Held Hostage By Death Cultists

I'M scanning the Times this morning and I note the latest of our biennial battles over teaching 20th century biology in schools has begun in Texas (of all places), over a little-noted and much-ignored requirement that students critique "the strengths and weaknesses" of all scientific theories.

And the first thing that pops into my head is "Blah, blah, blah", followed by my most recent experience with Parker, the pernicious kindergartner from next door, who got into the house Tuesday afternoon on the pretense that his mother wasn't home, and immediately asked if we had a laptop. I talk with him from time to time, and I'm fairly convinced he's a bit weak in the analytical thinking department; forcing him to consider various knots and alternate theories of fastenings would probably do little except delay his mastery of shoe-tying several weeks, if not months. We gave him a sugar-free soda and let him play with the cat. With the Cartoon Network on. Young multi-tasker.

Next was the fact that this time around the exercise in small-town small-mindedness writ to Commonwealth scale is being spearheaded by a Young Earth dentist, and I had to wonder if he thinks A Good Talk With Jesus should be taught as a critical-thinking-man's alternative to the professional treatment of dental caries.

But as I read on, depressingly familiar argument after argument--and the required allotment of time for the well-heeled Discovery Institute to insist it isn't a Creationist front--something was nagging at me, and I was near the end when it suddenly crystallized. It was in paragraph two, and it's so familiar that it was hiding in plain sight:

The debate here has far-reaching consequences; Texas is one of the nation’s biggest buyers of textbooks, and publishers are reluctant to produce different versions of the same material.

Now, I've been listening to this for thirty years, since "Doctor" Duane Gish and Creationism v.1.0: California and Texas get to dictate what's in everybody's textbooks because of their buying power. But doesn't that belong to the era of Linotype? It's 2009 (that is right, isn't it?). If textbook manufacturers still can't insert or excise a paragraph somewhere and still make a profit it seems like someone would be eating their lunch somewhere. I mean, the kids today are all shopping at places like The Doghouseblogshop at CafePress, where inventive and attractive designs people spent an entire afternoon thinking up are custom-printed to your order on a variety of items you'll wonder how you ever lived without. Thirty years was long enough for the notorious slow-learners in the American electorate to catch on to Reaganism; maybe it's time the Prairie Barbarians fund their own Continuing Ignorance programs.

Just In Time For The Holiday Bankruptcy Season

YES, what boy, girl, or combination of the two wouldn't be thrilled to learn that I personally wasted an entire weekend designing crappy crap the pronoun of your choice can purchase from my new CafePress store? Just in time for the Holidays, only something like seven years late! Offering quality cotton shirts, in the two most popular sleeve lengths, short and long, featuring, respectively, the graphically-challenged "bats left throws right" logo, and the typographically-inept "bats left throws right" logo, plus your choice of motto: "all the shit that sticks™" or "English. It makes a poor cudgel" provided, that is, that you choose the one that has that on it. Proudly proclaim your Philistinism with the Rothko Paint-by-Numbers Large Capacity Mug (Caution: you may never get to drink out of it, because you'll always be spit-taking! It's that funny!). Laugh and learn about the principles of both physics and geometry with the Rectangular "Aphorisms suck" Magnet. I know I plan to stick several on the refrigerator that comes out of my next home, and I hope you will too. Finally, show the world you're not afraid to tempt a Yuletide's worth of mean-spirited wingnuts to run into your car with the "Phyllis Schlafly's the Mother of Modern Conservatism? No wonder the baby's so ugly." bumper sticker. It's something I said on a funnier blog than this one, and I'd like to make a buck or two off of it before Phyllis kicks off. So have a look, won't you? That's http://www.cafepress.com/doghouseblog. You'll want to be the only one on your block who does, guaranteed.

Economics Blegging

I'M thinking of writing a book. After reading the Amity Shlaes Rapid Response Team's reply to Roy I decided it was irresponsible not to.

And, as I've said, I know nothing about the subject, but I figure you must. So, a few questions:

1. I notice this is all still Jimmy Carter's fault. Does Economics time limit to such things? Is it measured in generations, or the movement of tectonic plates? Does it stop once Modern English has become what Chaucer is today, when "Jimmy Carter" looks like "Scyld Scefing "?

2. Wasn't Social Security in crisis just a few months ago? 

3. Similarly, that drawer with a piece of paper in it, the one which was the actual Holy of Holies of Social Security? If the Bush administration had managed to "privatize" the system, how long before it would turn up on eBay? Would the paper still be inside, or listed separately?

4. Does Jonah Goldberg save his really stupid shit for Fridays? Like the government does?

4a. Nobody should go to jail? Didn't countless accountants, CFOs, and CEOs sign off on information which was quite possibly fraudulent? Or do they keep that stuff in condoms, under their tongues, and ready to swallow? Whatever happened to that good ol' Right Wing Lawn Order stuff? File some RICO charges and we get to confiscate everything, right? We'll be Budget Surplussin' like it's 1999.

5. The one piece of economic advice I ever listened to in my life was the idea of husbanding wealth, erring on the side of conservatism, without the quotation marks, managing risk wisely, and never trusting the big, flashy score. Is that properly spelled "Sucker" or "Sucka"?