Monday, February 02, 2009

 

To Tell the Truth


Ooh, lookie!

By now you should of heard of Ben Stein's proposed gig as commencement speaker at the University of Vermont and his subsequent "withdrawal" from the ceremony. A local Vermont television station, WCAX, is reporting:

Stein has made headlines recently for his views regarding Darwin's theory of evolution, intelligent design and the role of science in the Holocaust. Several people from the academic community-- both locally and beyond the UVM campus-- quickly expressed concern over his selection and once notified of that, Stein withdrew from the ceremony.
Normally, I would expect the usual face-saving noises to be emitted by all and sundry involved. Not this time:

"This is not, to my mind, an issue about academic freedom or the openness of the campus to all points of view. Ben Stein spoke here last spring to great acclaim," UVM President Dan Fogel said. "It's an issue about the appropriateness of awarding an honorary degree to someone whose views in many ways ignore or affront the fundamental values of scientific inquiry and I greatly regret that I was not attuned to those issues."
Yeowch!

The next order of business is to start a pool on how long it takes the IDeologists to start using this as an example of the "Darwinist" suppression of "academic freedom" in public institutions of higher learning.
___________________________________

Update: Well, I'm going to have to award the prize in the pool to Dana Hunter for her time of 2.2 seconds. And who else would it come from but the Isaac Newton of Information Theory himself.
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Comments:
2.2 seconds is my guess.
 
And I was gonna guess 22 seconds. I always vastly underestimate how quickly the single-minded can react.
 
So how would you three feel about running a cheese consortium together? Between your acumen, my predictive powers, and their penchant for whining, we should make millions.

I say we begin by selling cheese on sticks outside Disco's HQ. The sticks would, of course, be imprinted with the proper phrase.
 
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