So, evolutionists have finally figured out that those innocent Saturday morning cartoons and Hollywood movies about people and dinosaurs living together, somehow help the creationist cause.

Perhaps Professor Williams and PZ Myers have something new to boycott!

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How believing in Fred can help to spread creationism
by Laura Clark, Education Correspondent
Daily Mail (United Kingdom), p. 24.
July 4, 2009

Children as young as five should be taught about evolution to prevent them mistaking Barney the Dinosaur and Fred Flintstone for scientific fact, an academic has claimed.

James Williams, lecturer in education at Sussex University, says that letting pupils believe dinosaurs and humans lived together plays into the hands of creationists.

TV programmes such as The Flintstones and Barney & Friends, and films such as One Million Years BC, have created a popular culture cliche which is exploited by creationists, Professor Williams told the Times Educational Supplement.

read more…

Several years ago I was surprised to discover that Canadians were ‘treated’ to repeated showings of “Inherit the Wind” in their public schools and media. Since then, I’ve seen announcements of showings (movie and play) in the United Kingdom, Japan, and other countries.

The Dutch newspaper, Nederland Dagblad picked up on this today…and one should expect to see a flurry of news reports and showings as we approach the July 10th anniversary of the beginning of the Scopes Trial.

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Hard tegen hard in het apenproces
by Willem Bouwman
Nederlands Dagblad
July 1, 2009

Dayton was in 1925 een suffig en saai stadje in de Amerikaanse staat Tennessee, waar de Butler Act bepaalde dat alleen de Bijbelse scheppingsleer op school onderwezen mocht worden. Plaatselijke ondernemers die Dayton uit zijn sluimerstaat wilden wekken, probeerden een proces uit te lokken over de wet. Zij vroegen een leraar natuurkunde van de plaatselijke High School, John T. Scopes, enkele prijzende woorden over de evolutieleer te zeggen. Dat wilde Scopes wel doen. Hij noemde de evolutieleer een wetenschappelijk gegeven en de schepping een flauwe grap waarin alleen domoren geloofden. Scopes werd meteen gearresteerd wegen overtreding van de Butler Act. Het proces tegen Scopes werd een sensatie, die Dayton een zomer lang tot het hart van de natie maakte. Scopes werd aangeklaagd door William Bryan, een vaardig redenaar, driemaal presidentskandidaat, bijzonder Bijbelvast en overtuigd van de schepping in zes dagen van 24 uur. De verdediging lag in handen van Clarence Darrow, een ongelovige topadvocaat, die betoogde dat miljoenen christenen hun geloof verenigden met de evolutieleer.

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As anyone who has visited the Creation Museum knows, Professor Arnold Miller’s comments about “being demonized” are over the top. Nowhere in the Creation Museum (examples please, Dr. Miller) are evolutionists identified as “…responsible for all the ills of the society.”

Frankly, his comments need to be translated to understand his real complaint:

“This is a very well done museum that shows how wrong Darwin and evolutionists have been for the past 150 years.”
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Paleontologists visit enemy turf in evolution debate with field trip to Creation Museum in U.S.

The Amherst Daily News, p. 9.
June 25, 2009

PETERSBURG, Kentucky. In one of the largest gatherings of critics since the Creation Museum in northern Kentucky opened two years ago, six dozen paleontologists in the area for a conference Wednesday took a field trip to get a glimpse of the marketing tactics used by the other side of the evolution debate.

Paleontologists spend their careers studying evolution, and here they were visiting a place where nearly every room is dedicated to disproving it through Creationism, a fundamentalist Christian belief based on a literal interpretation of the Bible that contends God created the universe just a few thousand years ago.

“The real purpose of the museum visit is to give some of my colleagues an opportunity to sense how they’re being portrayed,” said Arnold Miller, a professor of paleontology at the University of Cincinnati, which is hosting the conference. “They’re being demonized, I feel, in this museum as people who are responsible for all the ills of society.”

…read more…

Despite some exaggeration, the UK’s Guardian G2 magazine insert featured a rather nice piece on Clarence Darrow. The occasion was the 85th Anniversary of Darrow’s defense of the notorious Leopold and Loeb. Like many other liberal views of their crime and Darrow’s defense, the UK applauds Darrow for his emotional appeal to spare their lives and his tirade against capital punishment.

See www.ScopesTrial.org for a critique of the movie, Inherit the Wind.

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Defender of the Damned
G2 (The Guardian), UK
by Donald McRae
June 11, 2009

Eighty-five years ago, on 2 June 1924, during a blistering early summer in Chicago, a ravaged courtroom bruiser stepped into the future. Clarence Darrow, with his seamed face and stooped shoulders making him look every one of his 67 years, was America’s greatest and most controversial defender of the lost and the damned. But, as he hunched over his desk to write to the secret love of his life, Mary Field Parton, the old lawyer felt breathless.

Earlier that day, Darrow had agreed to represent Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, two teenage lovers and the sons of Chicago millionaires, after they confessed to the world’s first ‘thrill-killing’ of a 14-year-old boy with whom Loeb had sometimes played tennis. Darrow, the Ohio-born son of an abolitionist father and suffrage-supporting mother, was himself a leading civil libertarian and vehement opponent of the death penalty. In this case, however, he confronted seemingly insurmountable odds; his disturbing and disturbed young clients faced certain execution in what newspapers would soon call the trial of the century.

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Geologic Mysteries of West Virginia State Parks Solved – HuntingtonNews.Net
How were the famous Blackwater Falls formed? How did Canaan Valley get to be so wide? West Virginia s state parks and forests are famous for their natural beauty, and that includes the makeup of the land on which they are located. The geologic

Kumuka offer 5 per cent discount in Antarctica – Scoop
Kumuka Worldwide are offering a 5 per cent discount on Antarctica Explorations booked and paid in full by May 31. Prices on an 11-day exploration of the Antarctica Peninsula start from NZ$8,780 per person. Departures run from November to March

Bachelor’s Degrees – Eau Claire Leader-Telegram
Eau Claire: Randi Wagner, art education and art therapy. Lynn University, Boca Raton, Fla. Woodville: Jonathan McDougal, communications. UW-Eau Claire Abbotsford: Emily Kubow, art; Patrick Writz, Latin American studies. Altoona: Christopher Gearhardt

Outdoors Calendar – Norwich Bulletin
Learn why some trees grow in particular places and others don t and why the forest changes from place to place. 6:30-8 p.m., Goodwin Conservation Center; Hampton. 2-mile walk led by Laura Spitz to identify birds at Sessions Woods suitable for all

Asbestos map of Eastern Australia published – Mister-info.com
An article published online in Environmental Geology, an international journal of earth sciences, identifies parts of eastern Australia underlain by rocks with the right geological conditions to host asbestos. According to the author, Macquarie

New technique standardizes brightness of cosmology s best standard – Thaindian.com
Washington, May 19 (ANI): Scientists have found a new technique that establishes the intrinsic brightness of Type Ia supernovae, which are considered the best standard candles for measuring cosmic distances, more accurately than ever before. The

New technique standardizes brightness of cosmology’s best standard – Newstrack India
Washington, May 19 (ANI): Scientists have found a new technique that establishes the intrinsic brightness of Type Ia supernovae, which are considered the best standard candles for measuring cosmic distances, more accurately than ever before.The

Cosmology’s best standard candles get even better – Science Centric
Members of the international Nearby Supernova Factory (SNfactory), a collaboration among the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a consortium of French laboratories, and Yale University, have found a new technique that

Review: The Universe: Order without design – New Scientist
IN THIS excellent book , NASA physicist Carlos Calle tackles the question of whether the universe requires a supernatural “designer” or whether our cosmological theories can explain the wondrous reality around us. The standard model of cosmology, in

Hubble: a time machine that revolutionized astronomy – Space Daily
The Hubble space telescope, the object of NASA’s fifth and last servicing mission next week, is a veritable time machine that has revolutionized humankind’s vision and comprehension of the universe. Put into orbit at an altitude of 600 kilometers

Bad Astronomy Unveils The True And False Of Star Trek – Cinema Blend
That s why I find a recent article posted on the Bad Astronomy blog at Discover Magazine to be endlessly interesting. In the article, writer/astronomer Phil Plait dissects several scenes from the movie and comes to conclusions as to whether or not

The value of a pale blue dot – Guardian Unlimited
The 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote: “Two things fill the heart with ever renewed and increasing awe and reverence, the more often and more steadily we meditate upon them: the starry firmament above and the moral law within.” This

New crime of blasphemous libel proposed for Defamation Bill – goodbye – Politics.ie
Actually, tisn’t “internet creationist” so much as the weirdo American christian fundamentalists that are stuck with the literal creation idea. The Vatican did state that the Big Bang theory does not contradict the basics of Bible or belief. There’s

Herschel, Planck satellites to carry huge telescope, equipment into – USA Today Blogs
Scientists Thursday will embark on a mission to discover how the universe evolved after the Big Bang. The European Space Agency will launch two satellites aboard an Ariane 5 rocket. If successful, the satellites will stay in orbit collecting data

Quote For The Day – Andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com
“As a child in Tibet, I was keenly curious about how things worked. When I got a toy I would play with it a bit, then take it apart to see how it was put together. As I became older, I applied the same scrutiny to a movie projector and an antique