#24498: — 05/10  at  07:48 AM
In a similar vein: http://www.biggercheese.com/index.php?comic=546

#24531: — 05/10  at  12:05 PM
Wichita, Kansas, may not be exactly paradise on the prairie, but with Wichita State, a very fine school, the Wichita Eagle, a very good newspaper, featuring Richard Crowson, a great cartoonist who deserves wider distribution, Wichita is probably a very good place to live and think.

#24533: — 05/10  at  12:17 PM
And let's not forget that Wichita State just hired historian and philosopher of science (and ID critic!) Niall Shanks... My guess is that he will be busy in his new position.

#24541: — 05/10  at  01:07 PM
I can see the headline they 'should' use, "Scientists boycot school board discussion on Intelligent Design, but win anyway."

#24542: — 05/10  at  01:16 PM

I can see the headline they 'should' use, "Scientists boycot school board discussion on Intelligent Design, but win anyway."

Did we win? As judged by whom? You and I both saw that

* Pedro put most of the witnesses on record as plain old Creationists; i.e. there's nothing new to I.D.

* Most witnesses and a couple of the board members admitted to not reading the standards they were supposed to be considering, bringing their fairness and competence seriously into question.

Was this enough to impress a sizable number of the citizens of Kansas? My experience is that Creationists are impervious to logic, and as far as the reasonable middle is concerned, my confidence in their existence has been waning these last 4.5 years or so.

#24548: — 05/10  at  01:51 PM
Back in Georgia, when someone pointed out some embarassing aspect of culture, eduction or politics, we always said, "Thank goodness for Alabama." In Alabama they said, "Thank goodness for Mississippi." Now we can all say, "Thank goodness for Kansas."

As arcticpenguin points out, at least one grinning idiot board member admitted she had not read her own standards and didn't care what anyone said. She was still in favor of making Kansas school kids as ignorant as herself.

#24557: — 05/10  at  04:12 PM
I like the note at the top. "We sent a cartoonist to cover the hearings, and all we got was a bar bill." Well, what did they expect?

#24563: — 05/10  at  06:02 PM
I meant win as in 'a battle', not the war. Much like extremists in the ME, creationists are unlikely to disappear just because they lost. Nope, ID is just the latest IED (Improvised Extraneous Device) in the creationist arsenal. Sadly they seem to be completely unable to recognize that a flag poping out the top, like in cartoons, is not actually the same things as an explosion. lol

#24607: Michael Snider — 05/11  at  07:54 AM
William Saletan, at Slate, has written on the Kansas shenanigans here. There's a lot he gets — but he doesn't seem to understand how high schools work and why the way they work makes any treatment of ID as a viable alternative to non-theistic evolutionary theory a very bad idea.