Sometimes my expectations need to be re-adjusted, and other times they’re right on.<\/p>\n
Even in the face of all the assaults against teaching evolution in this country, this story mentioned at Pharyngula<\/a> took me by surprise: science museums that won’t show IMAX films that mention evolution, the Big Bang, or geology<\/a>. <\/p>\n The fight over evolution has reached the big, big screen. <\/p>\n Several Imax theaters, including some in science museums, are refusing to show movies that mention the subject – or the Big Bang or the geology of the earth – fearing protests from people who object to films that contradict biblical descriptions of the origin of Earth and its creatures.<\/p>\n The number of theaters rejecting such films is small, people in the industry say – perhaps a dozen or fewer, most in the South. But because only a few dozen Imax theaters routinely show science documentaries, the decisions of a few can have a big impact on a film’s bottom line – or a producer’s decision to make a documentary in the first place.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Okay, science<\/span> museums. That are afraid to talk about evolution, the Big Bang, and geology. Institutions whose nominal purpose is to educate people about science. I just can’t quite wrap my head around this idea. And somehow I don’t think that squeals of outrage from elite Northern liberal bloggers are going to make them change their minds. I’m going to redouble my efforts to help promote the Project Exploration<\/a> science center that we’re planning here in Chicago, and suggest a greater emphasis on traveling exhibitions of some sort or another.<\/p>\n On the other side of the ledger, we have the Terri Schiavo melodrama. (Good articles at Majikthise<\/a> and Alas, a Blog<\/a>.) The last thing the blogosphere needs is more comment about the case. But I was struck by the mention by Ezra Klein<\/a> (that he got from No More Mister Nice Blog<\/a>) of a set of talking points<\/a> being passed around by Republicans. <\/p>\n ABC News has obtained talking points circulated among Republican senators explaining why they should vote to intervene in the Schiavo case. Among them: “This is an important moral issue and the pro-life base will be excited…” and “This is a great political issue… this is a tough issue for Democrats.” <\/p><\/blockquote>\n In all honesty, my reaction upon reading that was, “That seems like a pretty straightforward memo; I’m not sure what is so notable about it.”<\/p>\n Finally I realized: the thing that was supposed to be shocking is that the GOP is consciously using the case to score political points. The thought that they weren’t — that Frist and DeLay were actually motivated by concern for the woman — had simply never occurred to me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sometimes my expectations need to be re-adjusted, and other times they’re right on. Even in the face of all the assaults against teaching evolution in this country, this story mentioned at Pharyngula took me by surprise: science museums that won’t show IMAX films that mention evolution, the Big Bang, or geology. The fight over evolution […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellany"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}