Video
A hard rain's a-gonna fall: Steve Benen (16-
10th in a food series
Draggin' the line
Curriculum (content and hyperlinks updated; bumped up from 21-Aug-07)
Right-wing wishful-thinking about women: Homemaking concentration [required courses], Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary [Fort Worth, Texas], online at college

Colorado
"The consciences of youth also require an education" (T.O. Moore): •Facebook | Justin Schaffer [mirror website of Justin Schaffer's now deleted Facebook page] online at schafferfamilyvalues
•T.O. Moore (summer 2007), Graduation address: The call to greatness [PDF file], The Conversation ["a journal for educational theory and practice published by Ridgeview Classical Schools"]
•mysteriousways (05-
We have seen Justin Schaffer staying up all night not only to study for an AP Latin exam but also to finish a script to an unsanctioned dramatic production that did honor to the faculty and to the school. (I am told he even fit in some swing dancing and a couple of rugby games that same night.)
All of which makes Justin Schaffer's [Facebook] webpage extra-ordinary and even instructive. By clicking here, you can see Justin's webpage for yourself and wonder what sort of traditional family values were taught in Bob Schaffer's home.
Here are some questions that jumped out at me, for example: Is promoting slavery a traditional family value?
Is it a traditional family value to argue that democracy is bad, and to belong to a group saying so in its title – not to mention belonging to a group that calls itself "Pole Dancers for Jesus"? What about a group called "Affirmative Action Sucks"? Or "Bitch, please... I'm from Colorado"?
Is it a traditional family value to twist Biblical scripture to fit a political agenda? Is it a traditional family value to celebrate "diversity" by posting a picture of 18 kinds of handguns above the rainbow-colored word "diversity"? And is it a traditional family value to depict Jesus, in a televangelist suit and wearing a dollar-sign lapel pin, holding an Uzi against a Confederate flag background, and to ask, "What would Republican Jesus do?"
And is it a traditional family value in the Schaffer home to depict Barack Obama as Osama bin Laden, seven years after bin Laden's deadly attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, during which time the present president has said loudly and clearly from the James S. Brady Briefing Room of the White House, "I truly am not that concerned about [bin Laden]?"
And that brief list of questions ignores the other offensive references depicted on the younger, but still adult, Schaffer's webpage: the references to women as "slutty," the illustration of fecal matter with halos, the suggestion that drivers can earn "1,000 points" for hitting "slow children" on a road sign.
I don't know if I'd put my thoughts exactly this way, but one person called "Republican 36" commenting on the younger Schaffer's work here wrote,
If anything it shows a young man who was raised in a political family who has a callous and repugnant attitude toward slavery. After four hundred years of slavery, Jim Crowe laws and racist attitudes you would think he would have the intelligence, and training at home, not to post something like this, especially when his father is running for a high profile public office. Apparently, he is proud of his attitudes, including the antithesis of the words in the Declaration of Independence that states "all men are created equal."
We should not deceive ourselves because this man is only 20 years old. This is another example of the dark underbelly of the Republican-religious right and their drive to make ugly, racist values part of the mainstream again.
Colorado
Bob Schaffer's circle: Schaffer's son apologizes for Web posts (06-
People who are worthy of our respect hold themselves to high moral standards in every area of their lives. When the camera is not rolling and they are behind closed doors, good people are faithful. Good people are kind to everyone, not just their friends. They know that wrong actions always hurt someone. They know that wrong deeds diminish the doer as well (Congressional Record, 14-Oct-98).
Schaffer's Son Apologizes for Web Posts
The 19-year-old son of Republican Senate candidate Bob Schaffer of Colorado has apologized for an entry on his Facebook page that had the words "High Five ... Who's Gay" over a photo of a waving Barack Obama.
It also had a picture of the Pyramids with the words "Slavery Gets (expletive) Done."
Justin Schaffer, a student at the University of Dayton, issued an apology Monday, calling the entries "offensive" and saying he alone was responsible. The statement says the materials "directly contradict the values that my parents taught me and are forbidden in my parents' home."
Bob Schaffer has said he and his wife decided on "firm punishment" for their son but declined further comment.
Schaffer's campaign opponent, Democrat Mark Udall, had no comment.
Peer-review science (updates published in reverse chronological order; bumped up from 01-Jul-08)
Conservative politics: •Z.D. Blount, C.Z. Borland, and R.E. Lenski (2008), Historical contingency and the evolution of a key innovation in an experimental population of Escherichia coli [full text available by subscription, or at Richard Lenski's website [PDF file] at Michigan State University (https:
•Conservapedia contributors, "Richard Lenski", Conservapedia, online at conservapedia
Identification of Flaws in the Following Paper Published in PNAS: Blount ZD, Borland CZ, andLenski RE, "Historical contingency and the evolution of a key innovation in an experimental population of Escherichia coli,"105 PNAS 23, pp.7899–7906 (June10, 2008)
The following flaws in this PNAS paper negate its claim that E. coli bacteria underwent an evolutionary beneficialmutation.[1]
1. Figure 3 depicts an "historical contingency" hypothesis around the 31,000th generation, but the abstract states that mutations "arose by 20,000 generations." The paper fails to admit that the Third Experiment disproved the hypothesis depicted in Figure 3.
2. Both hypotheses propose fixed mutation rates, but the failure of mutations to increase with sample size disproves this. If the authors claim that it is inappropriate to compare the Second and Third experiments to the First for scale, then it was an error to treat them similarly statistically.
3. The paper incorrectly applied a Monte Carlo resampling test to exclude the null hypothesis for rarely occurring events. The Third Experiment results are consistent with the null hypothesis.
4. It was error to include generations of the E. coli already known to contain trace Cit+ variants, and the otherwise highly improbable occurrence of four Cit+ variants from the 32,000 generation in the Second Experiment suggests an origin from undetected pre-existing Cit+ variants.
5. The Third Experiment was erroneously combined with the other two experiments based on outcome rather than sample size, thereby yielding a false claim of overall statistical significance.
The underlying data for this publicly (NSF) funded research have not been publicly released, despite requests to do so and despite NSF policy that "data collected with public funds belong in the publicdomain."[2]
Andrew Schlafly, B.S.E., J.D.
www.conservapedia.com, teacher of precollege students
cc: Randy Schekman, Editor-in-Chief, PNAS, University of California at Berkeley (by email and postal mail)
New Scientist (by fax - 0171 261 6464)
Rep. Brian Baird, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Research and Science Education of the U.S. House Committee on Science and Technology (by postal mail)
Judicial Watch (by email)
References: 1. Detail is at http://www.conservapedia.com and its talk page./Flaws _in _Richard _Lenski _Study
2. http://www.nsf .gov /sbe /ses /common /archive .jsp
The foregoing letter is to be sent by postal mail, return receipt requested, to PNAS, 500 Fifth Street, NW,NAS 340, Washington,DC 20001, by email to pnas@nas .edu, and by posting it in its feedback form at http://www .pnas ..org /feedback



Lenski is best known for his questionable claim to have observed the theory of evolution in practice, saying that E. coli bacteria made minor changes in a long-term laboratory study, and insisting that it was not due to contamination. His 2008 paper asserting his claims was peer reviewed in a mere 14 days, sparking obvious questions about the thoroughness of the review. When challenged, Lenski displayed several examples of irrational behavior, thrice referring to the challenges as slander, yet has filed no lawsuit charging that (or libel). Truth offers total legal protection from accusations of libel. He has also displayed annoyance, arrogance, and elitism when asked to release the information. When Lenski received a public request for the data underlying for his published claims, he did not provide the actual data even though his study was taxpayer-funded. Undisclosed data from the central claims in Lenski's 2008 paper are noted below...