What's The Matter With Kansas?

Thus is the title of a recent book examining how the blue-collar booboisie of the great red state of Kansas got snookered by the Republican party.

I'd like to add another thing: its State Board of Education doesn't know anything about science. Today marks the opening of four days of courtroom-style hearings debating whether to admit intelligent design and creationism into Kansas science classrooms. A New York Times article and a Washington Post article discuss what some Kansans - undoutbedly considered "elitists" or "pinheads" by the majority of the state - are doing to make sure it doesn't happen. Can I send money?

Georgia talks about putting stickers on biology textbooks citing evolution as only a theory (just as gravitation and electromagnetism are) and not a fact. Well here's a sticker for Kansas:

"Variation coupled with natural selection is the most widely accepted theory that explains evolution. Evidence for evolution itself is so overwhelming that those who deny its reality can do so only through nonscientific arguments. They have every right to hold such views. They just can't teach them as science in this science class."

Coincidentally, the New York Times also has an article describing a Utah discovery of the fossilized remains of a feathered dinosaur caught in the act of eveloving from meat-eaters into vegetarians. I wonder what the Kansas Board of Education would make of this discovery? Thinking about it would seem to be out of the question.

It's bad enough red state hicks, gomers, and bumpkins now drive the American political process. It's a sad day when these yokels allow charlatans into our science classrooms.
K-