It is good to know that the United States is ahead of Turkey (the country) in public acceptance of evolution.

As a biologist and scientist, the animation, “The Inner Life of A Cell” below is amazingly beautiful.

This is a terrific example as to how, through the power of art, the extreme beauty and wonder of life can be demonstrated.

Through this animation, one does not have to be a scientist nor understand how to use a microscope to be able to grasp the complexity and beauty of the inter workings of living biological cells.

For further information on the animation techniques used to create this amazing video see:
http://www.studiodaily.com/main/technique/tprojects/6850.html

RawStory is reporting: “New Christian broadcasting TV special featuring Ann Coulter links Darwin to Hitler.”

“Author and Christian broadcaster Dr. D. James Kennedy connects the dots between Charles Darwin and Adolf Hitler in Darwin’s Deadly Legacy, a groundbreaking inquiry into Darwin’s chilling social impact,” announces a press release issued by Florida’s Coral Ridge Ministries.

According to the promotional materials for this “documentary”:

“In this groundbreaking documentary D. James Kennedy looks into Darwin’s chilling social impact — and the mounting evidence that Darwin had it wrong on the origin of life”.

Well “here they go again”. Since the anti-evolutionists have been unsuccessful in either disproving the theory of evolution or using pseudo-scientific ideas to bump it out of public school textbooks, they are now trying to find a way to make Evolution to be “Evil.”

Think about it. Since Einstein discovered the relationship between energy and matter, does that make him responsible for the deaths of the people in Hiroshima? That would be the logic used by the anti-evolutionists in their new screed “Darwin’s Deadly Legacy”.

As a professor of natural sciences, I often give a lecture on Eugenics to my college classes, subtitled: “How common misconceptions regarding evolution, genetics, and heredity led scientists astray”.

It is true that two American scientists, Charles Davenport, Ph.D. Biology, Harvard and Harry Laughlin, D.Sc. Cytology, Princeton created the American Eugenics Movement in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s which, did indeed, influence the Nazi movement.

But Davenport and Laughlin completely misinterpreted Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. These scientists gone wrong did huge damage. However, their eugenics ideas were not based upon science but upon their their pre-conceived biases and prejudices. These guys twisted Darwin’s findings to rationalize their pre-existing racist and xenophobic beliefs. (Sound familiar as to how today’s conservatives twist science to match their policies and beliefs?)

For more on the Eugenics movement in America see: http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/

For more on conservatives >30 year effort to replace the scientific-method with policy based on ideology read Chris Mooney’s book: The Republican War on Science.

The “talking-heads” on TV and radio are sure to be agog about this latest proclamation from the anti-evolutions. Since most Americans have little understanding of the real mechanisms of evolution, this latest stunt will likely get much traction.

As the Los Angeles Times reported on June 17, plagiarism is a huge problem in American educational systems. In the Times article, John Barrie head of iParadigms, a company that tracks digital information and assesses plagiarism states, “Students are using the Internet like an 8-billion-page, cut-and-pastable encyclopedia.” Barrie’s plagiarism analysis service, turnitin.com, evaluates 60,000 submissions a day. Barrie says his services finds that 30% of student papers are plagiarized, either totally or in part.

To those of us working in education who have used the turnitin service, the numbers are, unfortunately, not surprising. My experience is that students have learned in grade school, high school and college, that the Internet is a great resource for creating class presentations in PowerPoint or for making posters. The idea of actually citing the source of the materials used in the students’ slide or poster presentations is rarely an issue either for the students or the teachers.

This practice of cutting-and-pasting images and ideas does not seem alarming in a slide or poster presentation. However, when 70-90% or more of the text of a term paper can be documented by the turnitin service to have been copied word-for-word and without attribution from others’ works, Houston, we have a problem.

Students who have committed academic dishonesty have insisted to me that they have NOT plagiarized. First, these techniques were always rewarded for them in the past and never identified as cheating or plagiarism and, second, by having entered some of their own words into the paper, they honesty believe that they have avoided the practice of plagiarism.

Many of us in academic and educational institutions that we are going to have to put much more effort into teaching students about plagiarism: what it is and how to avoid it through proper paraphrasing and citation techniques.

Our job is made harder when literary thieves like Stephen Glass, Jayson Blair, and now Anne Coulter ply their journalistic trade by stealing others’ words.

In the video below (from Keith Olbermann’s MSNBC show COUNTDOWN), John Barrie documents that Coulter’s work is “textbook plagiarism.”

Recently, there have been three potentially positive developments on U.S. efforts to improve student literacy and American competitiveness. Members of the Senate, the House, and the White House have begun to respond to reports in recent months regarding declining literacy in college graduates and the poor performance of our high school students (particularly in math and science) compared to their peers in other countries. (more…)

Laurie Goodman graciously allowed the posting of her writings regarding Intelligent Design on this blog:

The controversy surrounding Intelligent Design is front and center in the news these days, and nothing could make its proponents any happier. (more…)

Audio Version