Blue Collar Scientist

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is out, and it looks pretty certain at this point as though it is only appealing to religious extremists. Predictions from the producers that the movie would make $12 to $15 million on opening weekend, and blow Fahrenheit 9-11 out of the water, have turned out to be no more than smoke from a wet campfire. And the self-satisfied predictions from the producers that this was going to be as big a deal to science as Galileo and Copernicus - well, that was all just silly.

But now that the movie is out, the fringe religious activists that are behind it are going to follow up with certain political action. I think that one of the political actions they are going to take is to try to get the movie screened in schools.

It isn’t a new idea - this was done with An Inconvenient Truth, for which a program was started to distribute free copies to science teachers. I’d expect a program like this to crop up for Expelled sometime soon, and I’m not the only one.

So, the question is - what do we do about it?

I’m of the opinion that the more widely that Expelled is seen the better - movies like this one, which are blatantly antisemitic, obviously misleading and condescending to the audience, and, by most accounts, overwhelmingly boring, really can’t hurt our cause as long as we are in a position to respond to what is happening.

At the moment we have no coherent response. I’m thinking of putting together (along with some of my friends) an information pack for Alaska school districts about the movie, utilizing some of the resources at Expelled Exposed, here, and elsewhere on the net. Perhaps I should seek the collaboration of other potentially interested organizations?

Let me know what you think.

…one where I am now, one where I live.

I’m currently visiting Florida. (The whirlwind ‘08 Blue Collar Scientist East Coast Tour comprised Orlando -> Jacksonville -> Tampa -> Orlando again -> Jacksonville again -> Fort Lauderdale for TAM 5.5 -> Washington, DC, and then -> Jacksonville again. I’ll be here a week and then I go home.)

Local news is reporting that a cop is being investigated by the New Port Ritchey Police Department and the Florida Attorney General’s Cybercrimes Unit. His action that might have been a crime? He has a MySpace “friend” who linked to porn. So apparently in Florida you can and will be criminally investigated for something that someone else does, even if it is associated with your police-department-approved MySpace activities.

What’s weird about this case is that the cop merely had a “friend” who linked to porn, and he is now under criminal investigation, but the school he worked at linked directly to a gay porn site from their official school website. But as far as I can tell, nobody at the school is under investigation by the elite cyber crimes unit.

There is, apparently, nothing about Florida schools that isn’t stupid.

Moving right along, back at home, we’ve got some State Senator - one of the seemingly few who have so far escaped prosecution, jail, or suspicion in the corruption cases surrounding the former VECO - who wants to ban a plant. Salvia divinorum, it is said, is a powerful hallucinogen.

Sen. Gene Therriault, R-North Pole … said the drug’s effects, which are similar to LSD’s, are too powerful, dangerous and unpredictable to leave it unrestricted.

Uh - ok. Here’s the thing, though. I can say that pine cones are a dangerous drug with effects that are too powerful, dangerous, and unpredictable to leave restricted - but saying that doesn’t make it so. Is it too much to ask that legislators actually give reasons when they want to ban stuff? I have no interest in using Salvia divinorum, but I also have no interest in going to jail for five years if some is found growing in my flowerbeds at home. (The BCS is not botanically savvy enough to identify which plants are banned and which aren’t.)

Reports of problems stemming from the plant’s use are rare to nonexistent in Alaska, said Lt. Andy Greenstreet, deputy commander of the Alaska Bureau of Alcohol and Drug Enforcement.

Its use while driving is of particular concern, he said, but driving under the influence laws already encompass all drugs.

Unlike LSD, however, Salvia’s effects generally last only about a half hour.

So we have a state senator trying to ban a plant that isn’t used as a drug, but which might be, and if it is, it is already illegal to use it in a dangerous and stupid way, and the high from which really doesn’t last long enough to make it an attractive drug to abusers in the first place?

I don’t get it.