Cranks of the Week

Things continue to heat up on the Cynthia Davis front. She seems to be very eager to get back in the headlines with further demonstrations of her blithering ignorance, blurting out the kind of gaffes the newspaper reporters love to copy. My two favorites from the Kansas City Star article of Dec. 2

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/13306721.htm

are:

In comparing the proponents of evolution to the 17th Century Church fathers:

“You look at Galileo who was criticized as being a heretic because he thought the earth revolved around the sun instead of the other way around,”

On the date Representative Davis made this comment, Italian seismologists reported a slight disturbance in the vicinity of the Galileo family tomb in the Basilica of Santa Croce, while the father of modern astronomy turned over in his grave.

and:

Her remarkable ability to ascribe precisely her own logical failings to her opponents. I guess this is a symptom of all those on the right:

“For years, the proponents of evolution have asked the students to just take a lot by faith: Time plus magic equals life,” she said. “There are some parts of evolution that don’t add up.”

I can’t think of a better capsule comment on the serious defects of unscientific Intelligent Design and creationism: “take it on faith” and “Time plus magic equals life.” That’s the Genesis creation myth for you in a nutshell. And is there any respectable scientist or historian alive today who thinks the Bible adds up according to the canons of their disciplines?

What this woman doesn’t know could fill literal volumes – possibly even exceeding the entire historic record of science itself. I certainly hope she is as inept at political strategy as she is at the higher cognitive brain functions. After having studied the late mayor of Chicago, Richard J. Daley at close range for years, I have found the two are often mutually exclusive categories.

I think there is cause for optimism however in this article, in that Davis’ more rational peers in Missouri government seem to be making noises to the effect that they do not want to touch this issue with a rather sizable barge pole. I hope this consensus holds when Rep. Davis reincarnates the latest version of HB-35 in January.

Let us not sit on our hands however. We need to plan some sort of strategy. This had better not look like Kansas, Dorothy.

Peace.

Bob Boldt

The republican theory of how to save energy.  Just install dimmer bulbs.