There is an appeal to creationism for certain people: it lies in the ability to submit to a myth without reflection, debate or real understanding. But the ultimate goal in promoting it as a point of legitimate pedagogical inquiry appears to be to coerce the obedience of a superstitious civic collective under a socially and politically regressive leadership.

And it’s being used in this election cycle to counter intellectual and academic freedom in educational institutions.

Mike Huckabee and Ben Carson have both expressed their support of creationism and denial of evolution, with Carson attributing the teachings of evolution to “the Adversary”, Satan. Carson has promised that, if he becomes president, he will make the US Department of Education withdraw federal funding from institutions that show “extreme political bias”.

Carson’s example of “extreme political bias”? A lone professor who asked students to write “Jesus” on a sheet of paper and stomp on it. Carson failed to add to his inflammatory account that the professor used the […]

No Comments

Many states across the country are unprepared to face the risks posed extreme heat, drought, wildfires, inland flooding, coastal flooding and other extreme weather events, according to a new report card.

Only a small number of states – Alaska, California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, New York and Pennsylvania – have taken strong action to prepare for future risks across the threats they face, according to the report card.

States getting an overall F grade include: Arkansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada and Texas.

The report, “States at Risk: America’s Preparedness Report Card,” grades each of the  50 states based on the threats the state faces. Grades are based on both the magnitude of the current and future threat and the action states have taken to prepare for them relative to other states.

Key findings include:

• States are least prepared for extreme heat risk. All states in the continental U.S. face this threat, but only 14 percent are taking strong action to prepare.
• States are more prepared for coastal flooding than any other risk, but still […]
  
  Read the Full Article
  Leave a Comment

  1 Comment

While the world has made progress closing the gap between women and men in health, education, economic participation, and political empowerment over the last decade, the United States is not keeping up.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) just released its 2015 Global Gender Gap report, which showed that the gap has dropped by 4 percent in the last ten years. While this marks progress, it could take another 118 years to completely close the gap. Gender equality will not be reached until the year 2133 at this rate.

Progress also isn’t even across the globe. Over those 10 years, Nordic countries have consistently been doing the most to close the gender gap. Iceland came in at number one over the past six years, followed by Norway, Finland and Sweden.

The United States, on the other hand, has actually moved backward. On the list of 145 countries, the United States has never broken into the top 15 countries with the lowest gender gap. Worse, it fell eight places over the last year, to a rank of 28 for overall […]