First, however, I need to provide some corrections to what has been said:

In fairness to Don McLeroy, the former chairperson our our State Board of Education, he did not run the Texas Board of Education. Likewise, Gail Lowe, the current chairperson, does not run that board.

There are 15 members of that board. I know each one of them, have spoken with most of them on the phone, and have emailed with 6.

On educational issues, seven are “social conservatives”, or “right-wingers” perhaps in the terminology of those on this list. Two are swing voters, and six are moderates, including a Republican Southern Baptist.
All were elected under party labels. All seven of the social conservatives, one of the two swings, and two of the moderates are Republicans, including a Republican moderate from west of Fort Worth.

Four of the seven “social conservatives” had no Democrats running against them last time, including both Cynthia Dunbar and Ken Mercer, who are the two representing districts which include parts of liberal Austin.

I think elections should be about choices, and in my opinion, that means having both Republicans and Democrats candidates. I think everyone should be involved. So that the no contest situation doesn’t happen in 2010, I started discussions in 2008, leading to filings in 2009. It looks like there will be two Democrats competing to run against Cynthia Dunbar in the 2010 election. Mrs. Dunbar, and both Democrats, have sent me their biographies, and these are included on this announcement.–John Keohane

State Board of Education Forums at Yarborough
For Saturday October 3, 11:45-1:15 pm
—Probable Candidates in SBOE-10
(This includes 59% of Travis County, which is that part north of the Colorado River, plus all of Williamson, Bastrop, Austin, Burleson, Colorado, DeWitt, Fayette, Gonzales, Lavaca, Lee, Milam, Waller and Washington, counties, plus 87% of Fort Bend County and 19% of Brazoria County.)

Cynthia Dunbar (R) is the elected member to the Texas State Board of Education, for SBOE-10. She writes that “District 10 is a very interesting district. Although it contains part of Austin, the overwhelming majority of the district is staunchly conservative.” Her undergraduate training was in biology and psychology and, as such, she has taught anatomy and physiology to high school juniors and seniors. She has been a licensed, practicing attorney for over 18 years and dedicated much of her practice to the area of appellate law. She has researched and studied the law on numerous Constitutional and Common Law issues that framed our nation. She regularly defends and promotes Constitutional purity, pro-life, and conservative public policy, and preventing the erosion of our nation’s identity. [Invited but not yet committed]

Judy Jennings (D) is a wife, mother and grandmother—and an expert in education policy. Her daughter is a public-school teacher in Williamson County, and her son is teaching English in Korea. Judy had not finished college when she met and married her husband, Hal, but as her children grew, Judy returned to school and earned her bachelor’s degree in sociology. She then earned her Ph.D. in education.
From her years as a teaching assistant at the University of Texas at Austin through her work on accountability at the Texas Education Agency to her current position as Director of Assessment at Resources for Learning, Judy has spent years working on the very issues for which the State Board of Education is responsible.

Rebecca Osborne (R) [Running. Has declined this event. May send a representative.]

Lorenzo Sadun (D) is a scientist and educator, who is a professor of mathematics. Since 1991, he has taught math at the University of Texas, where he sees what our brightest students know, and also what they need to know but were never taught. He knows that our kids need a 21st century education to meet 21st century challenges. He knows they need better science skills, better math skills, better critical thinking skills, and better English skills. Dr. Sadun is married with three children, who all attend public schools. His wife Anita served on the Bryker Woods Elementary PTA board. He has been an adult literacy teacher, a child reading coach, a math tutor in East Harlem, and a middle school teacher, all as a volunteer.

Forums are at Yarborough Public Library, 2200 Hancock Dr., Austin, TX 78756 This forum will be the seventh of eight. The last forum will be on Saturday, November. 7.

If you received this sheet in printed form, and want it electronically, or if you want additional information contact John Keohane keohane@prodigy.net (512) 371-3853

AI will hopefully be created within 5-10 years
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/08/20/artificiallife_tec.html

*Would you rather have the AI we created believe that you created him/her or would you rather have them argue over your existence?

I am a life form that believes in a creator =]

Um, ok, I’ll give you that. And if you go to a decent school they do teach you that. They teach you that there are ways to make educated guesses about conditions we can’t observe directly, based on evidence that is available now. Large amounts of evidence. And there is a difference between a valid theory that stands up to serious intellectual criticism, and one that doesn’t.

So it sounds like what you are saying is you think schools need to teach better science. Which I would agree with wholeheartedly.

The history of scientific inquiry is filled with cases where those guesses were amazingly correct, or just plain wrong, or cases such as quantum mechanics where we still don’t know if they are *right* but they let us do amazing things so we keep working with them.

Being wrong sometimes doesn’t invalidate science or experts on the whole. Any more than some priests being liars or pedophiles means that all priests are the same. Generalizing to all cases based on a few is a mark of prejudice, not intelligence. The whole point with scientific theories is that there are means to prove or disprove what you are theorizing. It’s not just guessing.

Science at least provides tools to make statements about what the *likely* conditions were 10,000 years ago. And scientific theories change over time as new evidence comes to light. Which is the whole reason we have the concept of evolution, and a constantly *changing* set of understandings about the fine details of what evolution means and how it happens. We’re not all still sitting around with Darwin’s original theory.

Christianity and creationism do not provide the tools to make cogent arguments or to prove or disprove theories because the underlying requirement for Christianity is the belief in a supernatural force whose existence BY DEFINITION cannot and should not be proven. That’s the problem with trying to mix religion and science – the moment you try to prove the existence of God or God’s works, you are no longer a believer. You’ve lost your way.

Christianity is about faith, not proof. That’s why it doesn’t belong in the same realm as science.

Well, that and the US Constitution which creates an explicit legal separation between church and state.

Perhaps you could take a look at this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleoclimatology

To quote: “is the study of climate change taken on the scale of the entire history of Earth. It uses records from ice sheets, tree rings, sediment, and rocks to determine the past state of the climate system on Earth.”

Now keep in mind that different dating methods give consistent results, meaning that often we can actually get a fairly good idea of what the Earth was like many years ago. The fossil record can tell us what life was like many years ago. But wait a minute! We weren’t THERE! (Judges love hearing that line by the way) So I guess in science class we shouldn’t teach evolution, we shouldn’t mention geology, and we certainly shouldn’t talk about astronomy as all these fields deal with events that happened before we were born. So what would we teach? This is like taking half of science out of science class, and anything which deals with things that take longer than a human lifetime, we throw it out.

Can we date a tree to 200 years? Don’t be ridiculous! A tree should be 100 years old, 120 tops – anything older we must say that we can’t know how old it is for sure because we weren’t THERE! And don’t say otherwise, because (for some reason) to do so is “anti-religious”. Not sure why though, but hey, if you say so because you’re smart enough to question the experts, right? I mean like you said, we may have all come from another planet 7,000 years ago.

I haven’t called you an idiot. I don’t care if you believe in creationism, nor what your religion is. I’ll just spell it out. You are promoting ignorance in public school science classes in the face of scientific consensus, and to ignore your ’suggestion’ is (apparently) anti-religious. Oh and uh, what does religion have to do with a scientific discussion again?

I’m going to go home and make sure my kids understand The Law of Evolution when I get home.