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POPSIgnorance-only Sex Education It is strange that there's this whole suite of positions that would seem to be unrelated, but almost always seem to be adopted wholesale. If you know someone is against evolution, you can pretty much predict their positions on abortion, stem cells, the death penalty, education, GW Bush, and homosexuality. I wonder what common force ties all those disparate ideas together? - PZ
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POPSBad Desires Desires that thwart other desires of the agent The suicide bomber, or even the holy soldier whose desire to serve some god is strong enough to motivate him to risk injury or death Desires that tend to thwart the desires of others Opposition to embryonic stem-cell research, the teaching of ‘intelligent design’ (promoting an ignorance of evolution), adding misery to the lives of homosexuals, inhibiting the education of women, inhibitions on free speech and the free exchange of ideas Desires that cannot be fulfilled A parent with a desire that his children be healthy and happy will act in ways in which he believes will bring them health and happiness. However, the only acts that have real value are those that generate true health and happiness. If an act harms his children, even though he acted with the best intentions, the fact that his children were harmed means that this is an act he has reason to wish he had never performed
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POPSChallenges facing K-12 science education A state college is going to set them back about $20,000 per year; a private college is going to be double that, easily. Yet here come these poorly prepared kids who are going to be paying all that money for instruction in basic algebra, remedial English, and with heads full of unscientific garbage that we need to spend a year draining. It's such a waste of time and effort on our part and theirs, and these students are going to struggle and suffer and in many cases fail. Every time a school levy fails, every time some anti-education bozo gets elected to the school board, I want to grab the parents responsible and explain to them that that decision is going to personally cost them tens of thousands of dollars when they send their son or daughter off to a college to teach them the stuff they should have learned in 10th grade - PZ