I've long been a critic of HuffPo's "Living" section, where fake doctors peddle snake oil cures and vaccine conspiracy theorists spread their poisonous misinformation. Those who read the Huffington Post solely for its (usually good) political content often don't even realize that a couple verticals away is a den of quackery and pseudoscience.

The HuffPo has, they claim, a specific editorial policy against promoting "conspiracy theories." It is selectively enforced.

But publishing the new agey holistic naturopath crystal-healing Beverly Hills quack-to-the-stars bullshit of Arianna's good friend's nutritionist is one (stupid, potentially dangerous) thing. Giving a platform to the anti-science creationist dingbats at The Discovery Institute is a step in a darker direction.

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Yes, evolution. Being open to possibility of allegory. And in the 21st century, no less! Now, in some parts of the world, a candidate's response to such scurrilous attacks might be something along the lines of, "Screw you, mouth breathers." Instead, Byrne has gone on the defensive, stating that his remarks at a Piggly Wiggly appearance last November ("I believe there are parts of the Bible that are meant to be literally true and parts that are not") were taken out of context. On his website he's quick to insist, "I believe the Bible is the Word of God and that every single word of it is true" and that, "As a member of the Alabama Board of Education, the record clearly shows that I fought to ensure the teaching of creationism in our school text books."

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But unlike most of these attacks, "What Darwin Got Wrong," a new book by Jerry Fodor, a professor of philosophy and cognitive sciences at Rutgers University, and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, a professor of cognitive science at the University of Arizona, comes not from the religious right, but from two atheist academics with -- surprise -- a nuanced argument about the shortcomings of Darwin’s theories. Their book details (in very technical language) how recent discoveries in genetics have thrown into question many of our perceived truths about natural selection, and why these have the potential to undermine much of what we know about evolution and biology.

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Was this stunt shrewd or moronic? From the first it's been hard to tell. The plan, innocuously named "Origin Into Schools," was announced this September in a video featuring Kirk Cameron, a former television child star who co-founded a ministry called Living Waters with Comfort. There's something almost pitiable about the way Cameron crows over the scheme; he truly seems to find it ingenious. He points out that the University of California at Berkeley cannot prevent the action because "their own Web site" dictates that "anyone is free to distribute noncommercial materials in any outdoor area of the campus." "Besides," he gleefully adds, "what are they really going to do? Ban 'The Origin of Species'? That would be big news! Especially when their own bookstore sells it for $29.99!"

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If you believe any of those propositions, you are ... well, let's tack toward charity. You have been swept along in a tide that the British polemicist Damian Thompson likes to call "Counterknowledge." Moreover, you are legion. Millions of unwary souls from every quadrant of Earth are swallowing a daily diet of quackery, conspiracy theory, bogus history and faux science. We haven't just turned off our bullshit detectors, we've permanently disabled them. And in so doing, Thompson argues, we've made for ourselves "a thrilling universe in which Atlantis is buried underneath the Antarctic, the Ark of the Covenant is hidden in Ethiopia, aliens have manipulated our DNA, and there was once a civilization on Mars."

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The bill passed with a resounding 94-3 vote. As the state Senate has already passed a similar measure, the legislation will likely soon be up for Gov. Bobby Jindal's approval. Jindal is rumored to be under consideration as McCain's vice-presidential nominee. How he handles the evolution bill could wind up becoming a factor in whether he's chosen, as conservatives and liberals alike will be watching with some interest.

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This story illustrates the obstacles that face scientists in Muslim countries. While it's always risky to draw generalizations about Islam, even conservative Muslims admit that the Islamic world lags far behind the West in science and technology. This is a big problem for Muslims who envy the economic and military power of the United States.

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Meanwhile, in Boulder, Colo., a home-grown jihadi is terrorizing the University of Colorado at Boulder's ecology and evolutionary biology department. The Denver Post reported on Tuesday that "police are investigating a series of threatening messages and documents e-mailed to and slipped under the door of evolutionary biology labs on the Boulder campus." At the Panda's Thumb, a blog devoted to critiquing the "claims of anti evolutionism," excerpts of e-mails sent by the perpetrator to CU-Boulder faculty members display an unrestrained eagerness for escalating the ever popular with Christian fundamentalists creationism-evolution debate into an out-and-out holy war.

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University of Wisconsin historian Ronald Numbers is in a unique position to offer some answers. His 1992 book "The Creationists," which Harvard University Press has just reissued in an expanded edition, is probably the most definitive history of anti-evolutionism. Numbers is an eminent figure in the history of science and religion -- a past president of both the History of Science Society and the American Society of Church History. But what's most refreshing about Numbers is the remarkable personal history he brings to this subject. He grew up in a family of Seventh-day Adventists and, until graduate school, was a dyed-in-the-wool creationist. When he lost his religious faith, he wrote a book questioning the foundations of Adventism, which created a huge rift in his family. Perhaps because of his background, Numbers is one of the few scholars in the battle over evolution who remain widely respected by both evolutionists and creationists. In fact, he was once recruited by both sides to serve as an expert witness in a Louisiana trial on evolution. (He went with the ACLU.)

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Michaels' purpose, and Hume's, was to rebut a widely circulated Op-Ed article by Ross Gelbspan in the Boston Globe arguing that Katrina, and a host of other natural disasters, had been caused or exacerbated by the effects of global warming. A likable, slightly acerbic fellow who refers to himself as a "weather nerd," Michaels told the Fox audience in judicious, neutral-sounding language that there isn't much correlation between global warming and hurricane strength -- and added, almost as an afterthought, that there isn't much we can do about global warming anyway.

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It consisted of a cylinder of what seemed to be porcelain with a 2-millimeter shaft of bright metal in its center, enclosed by a hexagonal sheath composed of copper and another substance they couldn't identify. Yet its discoverers at first believed it had been found in a geode, a hardened mineral nodule at least 500,000 years old. If the Coso artifact was real -- that is, if it was really an example of unknown technology from many millennia before the accepted emergence of Homo sapiens, let alone the dawn of human history -- it would turn everything scientists thought they knew about the past of our species upside down.

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You see, Ruse is a philosopher of science and, to use his phrase, an "ardent evolutionist." He stops a crucial degree or two short of declaring himself an atheist, but he firmly believes in Darwin's theory that evolution (now established as fact) by natural selection (still under discussion, although widely accepted) is the driving force behind the diversity of life on this planet. He thinks that creationists, both of the old-fashioned "young earth" variety and the newfangled intelligent-design model -- which President Bush said earlier this week should be taught in schools -- are spewing dangerous claptrap and are in league, consciously or not, with a sinister right-wing political agenda.

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Martin is a member of Kansas' Board of Education and part of a 6-4 majority that appears dead set on changing state standards so the creationist theory of intelligent design, and perhaps other religious ideas, can be taught in science classes along with evolution. Martin and her creationist colleagues are ready to override a report recently issued by scientists and educators on Kansas' curriculum committee, which wants to keep the state's solid science standards intact.

But Martin had trouble even articulating just what she dislikes about the current standards. Martin, you see, has not really read the curriculum committee's report, nor does she think such scrutiny is necessary.

"Please don't feel bad that you haven't read the whole thing," Martin told a creationist "witness" at the hearings on the science curriculum, "because I haven't read it myself." Audience members groaned. To clarify, Martin later explained: "I'm not a word-for-word reader in this kind of technical information." So it went at Kansas' evolution hearings, which concluded Thursday, a Board of Education event where a concrete understanding of all that pesky technical information involved in science was apparently considered unnecessary to reach a verdict on evolution.

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But Bill Buckingham, a new board member who'd recently become chair of the curriculum committee, had an objection. "Biology," he said, was "laced with Darwinism." He wanted a book that balanced theories of evolution with Christian creationism, and he was willing to turn his town into a cultural battlefield to get it.

"This country wasn't founded on Muslim beliefs or evolution," Buckingham, a stocky, gray-haired man who wears a red, white and blue crucifix pin on his lapel, said at the meeting. "This country was founded on Christianity, and our students should be taught as such."

Casey Brown and her husband, fellow board member Jeff Brown, were stunned. "I was picturing the headlines," Jeff said months later.

"And we got them," Casey added.

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But which came first, the chicken or the hype?

"I think people are becoming emboldened," Michael D. Bowman, director of state legislative relations at the Christian advocacy group Concerned Women for America, told the New York Times this week. "On legislative efforts, they're getting more gutsy, and on certain issues, they may introduce legislation that they normally may not have done."

"People were mobilized during the election and they're still mobilized," added Judy Smith, CWA's state director for Kansas, where the group is working to put a measure banning same-sex marriage on the ballot in 2006. "We would be stupid not to act now. This is exactly what we had hoped for."

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What really happened in Kansas is that the opponents of Darwinism tested a new intellectual weapon. As they become more skilled in the use of that weapon, the tide in this protracted battle could shift in their favor. The new weapon is called "intelligent design theory," or IDT.

Until recently, the critics of Darwinism have championed creationism -- the idea that a literal reading of the early chapters of the Bible offers a more accurate account of human origins than Darwinian biology does. The Darwinians have easily defeated this position by dismissing it as a religious belief unsupported by material evidence and inappropriate in science teaching.

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I had the great fortune to have heard Cornel West speak during his visits to
Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minn., and to have taken a course he taught
as a visiting lecturer on comparative religion. While I doubt anyone at Macalester, or
even now, would accuse me of being part of the liberal conspiracy in today's intelligentsia, I would like to set the
record straight.

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Stephanie Zacharek is on the money about the dilution of Robin Williams'
movie performances. Maybe not surprisingly, his best performances are on the
talk-show circuit, embarrassing Leno and Letterman by pushing the network
censors, daring them to cut away from his endless masturbation gestures and
references. Why do those instances work and his recent movies falter?
Audiences. Give him a crowd to play to and he's Jackson Pollack. Give him a
camera and he's Anne Geddes.

There are two performances that illustrate his range, and I wish Zacharek had
made mention of them. In "Awakenings" he was at his best, restrained and
motivated, recreating Dr. Oliver Sacks. He had an actor of note to work
with (Robert De Niro) and he rose to the challenge, all but eliminating the
obligatory ad-libbed one-liner.

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and

Disney rocks!
BY LISA MOSKOWITZ

(08/24/99)

My children (ages 8 and 11) have been exposed to Disney products
throughout their lives. They know about Disney World: Their friends
have been and one of their cousins has been at least once a year since
she was 6 weeks old. We have never given the idea of going any
serious thought, though. Disney World sounds like an alcove in the great hall
of eternal damnation: hour-long wait for rides, cranky kids and parents,
exorbitant prices and a total waste of money and time.

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