science tagged posts

Before I get into today’s post, three updates to last week’s. First, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey has come out publicly in favor of teaching evolution and cosmology, specifically the “Big Bang” theory, which Superintendent of Public Instruction Diane Douglas wants to eliminate, in the public schools. Second, it’s important to note that Superintendent Douglas does not have the last word on this issue, the state Board of Education does, and Douglas is only one member. She does, however, control what is presented to the Board, so this is not entirely good news...

Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Diane Douglas, the state’s top education official, is once again on the attack against teaching evolution in public schools. Douglas has learned that she can’t just delete it from the curriculum, especially in favor of so-called “intelligent design,” because federal courts have ruled that that’s a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s “establishment clause,” which establishes the clear separation between church and state. So she’s trying to do it through the back door, by replacing the word “evolution” with phrases that sound similar to the layman but are not.

For example, according to a recent Capitol Media Services report, instead of the requirement that students be able to evaluate how inherited traits in a population can...

One of the things I do outside of my writing life is to be a judge at a local science fair. The Youth Engineering and Science (YES) Fair is sponsored by the local electrical co-op and the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association, or AFCEA. Each spring, students in grades 5-12, from schools in the co-op’s service area, compete first in fairs at their schools, unless they’re home-schooled, and the top projects come to the YES Fair.

The judges are all volunteers from the area. Some are active scientists or engineers, some are retirees, and then there are the oddballs like me who have never been a practicing scientist or engineer, but we’re interested in the fields and can talk a good game. (Or as Kristine Kathryn Rusch says, “we play one on TV...