Wow! Ben Stein has an awesome new movie coming out

[Just Lucky]

Originally Posted by Rissask

If Yoko Ono is suing you.....you done something wrong.





God Bless Texas.

Thank You!

Unfortunately the reactionaries are threatening to take us to court. They are well known for their desire to have things legislated from the bench. The fight goes on.

[StewartG]

Originally Posted by Just Lucky

This was in my local paper April,24th

Yay!!!

My state is NOT the most backward in the nation!!!

Yay!!!

[StewartG]

Originally Posted by Just Lucky

Thank You!

Unfortunately the reactionaries are threatening to take us to court. They are well known for their desire to have things legislated from the bench. The fight goes on.

And now, lets hear it from the right:

"Damn those judicial activists... Unless they are on our side!"

[Just Lucky]

Originally Posted by StewartG

Yay!!!

My state is NOT the most backward in the nation!!!

Yay!!!

Now son, that's worthy of a good ol' Texas Yee Haw!

[Babaloo]

this from the left wing, godless online rag - MSNBC

CosmicLog
Alan Boyle

Ben Stein has done good things and funny things during his more than three decades as an actor, economist and writer (going back to his days as a Nixon speechwriter). His latest work, "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed," is not that good and not that funny. There's something creepy about the documentary, which blends a no-holds-barred assault on evolutionary theory with what sounds like a high-minded cry for academic freedom. It's a 90-minute campaign ad, aimed at swiftboating science.

Talk about negative campaigning: Stein and the "Expelled" filmmakers try to link Charles Darwin and "Big Science" to Nazism and Stalinism. Scenes of death camps, mad scientists, marching minions and the Berlin Wall are flashed on the screen when Darwinism is discussed.

Before I saw the movie, I wondered how wacky it might be. Now I don't think it's wacky. Instead, it's worrisome. The creepiest thing about "Expelled" is that the filmmakers' strategy of casting the scientific establishment as a big bad godless conspiracy just might work.

The rest of the story HERE

[Rissask]

And more from that link Rick...

But "Expelled" is also about rallying people who are unfamiliar with the issues to take a stand against mainstream science. For many of the million or so people who have seen the film over the past couple of weeks, "Expelled" might be as close as they come to examining the arguments for and against current evolutionary theory.
All the sound and fury may well turn those filmgoers against not only evolutionary biology, but against supporting any kind of study that they're told runs counter to their world view - ranging from stem cell research to paleontology to particle physics. And then what? In the interest of equal time, would research money have to be reserved for divining the signature of the designer in nature, or even discerning which holy book reflects that design best?

What makes me angry is that so many people seem to think that this whole issue is 'no big deal'.

[Juanito]

Originally Posted by Ben Stein, “How to Ruin American Enterprise“, Forbes 12/23/2002

12) Elevate mysticism, tribalism, shamanism and fundamentalism–and be sure to exclude educated, hardworking men and women–to an equal status with technology in the public mind. Make sure that, in order to pay proper (and politically correct) respect to all different ethnic groups in America, you act as if science were on an equal footing with voodoo and history with ethnic fable.

In other news.

Yet another bad reviewed of "Expelled", this time, by the extremely conservative National Review.

[Just Lucky]

Unfortunately there seems to be change in the way creationism is being marketed. It may be successful here in Texas:

DALLAS — Opponents of teaching evolution, in a natural selection of sorts, have gradually shed those strategies that have not survived the courts. Over the last decade, creationism has given rise to “creation science,” which became “intelligent design,” which in 2005 was banned from the public school curriculum in Pennsylvania by a federal judge.
Now a battle looms in Texas over science textbooks that teach evolution, and the wrestle for control seizes on three words. None of them are “creationism” or “intelligent design” or even “creator.”
The words are “strengths and weaknesses.”

Starting this summer, the state education board will determine the curriculum for the next decade and decide whether the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution should be taught. The benign-sounding phrase, some argue, is a reasonable effort at balance. But critics say it is a new strategy taking shape across the nation to undermine the teaching of evolution, a way for students to hear religious objections under the heading of scientific discourse.
Already, legislators in a half-dozen states — Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri and South Carolina — have tried to require that classrooms be open to “views about the scientific strengths and weaknesses of Darwinian theory,” according to a petition from the Discovery Institute, the Seattle-based strategic center of the intelligent design movement.
“Very often over the last 10 years, we’ve seen antievolution policies in sheep’s clothing,” said Glenn Branch of the National Center for Science Education, a group based in Oakland, Calif., that is against teaching creationism.
The “strengths and weaknesses” language was slipped into the curriculum standards in Texas to appease creationists when the State Board of Education first mandated the teaching of evolution in the late 1980s. It has had little effect because evolution skeptics have not had enough power on the education board to win the argument that textbooks do not adequately cover the weaknesses of evolution.
Yet even as courts steadily prohibited the outright teaching of creationism and intelligent design, creationists on the Texas board grew to a near majority. Seven of 15 members subscribe to the notion of intelligent design, and they have the blessings of Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican.
What happens in Texas does not stay in Texas: the state is one of the country’s biggest buyers of textbooks, and publishers are loath to produce different versions of the same material. The ideas that work their way into education here will surface in classrooms throughout the country.

More here

[Babaloo]

It seems the movie bombed
$7.5 million gross on a $3.5 million budget not including marketing

[StewartG]

Originally Posted by Just Lucky

Unfortunately there seems to be change in the way creationism is being marketed. It may be successful here in Texas:

More here

My son goes to public school here in Texas, and there is NO EFFING WAY I will stand for that crap!

[Rissask]

Geez, so it was a bomb huh, that's too bad.







Hmmm. I fail to see a real problem, there, Just Lucky. As long these are the strengths and weaknesses they outline:



Strengths- it's factual, it's scientific as opposed to pseudoscientific, it has truckloads of evidence and no legit alternative explanations have ben offered whatsoever in the past three centuries since it was first put forth as a theory.

Weaknesses- let's see....the creationists don't like it too much....can't think of anything else really.