Yes, I'm up late.

Just like sands through the hourglass, these are the days my brains turn further into mush.

Ok, if you didn't laugh at that, there is something wrong with you.

But I'm up late because I've spent the entire day in research.

Today, I spent time at the UNLV Library.  It's very nice.  It's not what I remember libraries being like.  Here's one that'll make you laugh for sure.

I grew up in a little bitty town...and you have to hear the itty bitty voice I do the "little bitty" in...because let's face it, my hometown is basically a dirt speck on the map.  Move your hand too quickly over the map and you'll probably brush it off of there...and nothing would make me happier.  That little bitty town is right smack dab in the middle of Texas, and it's called New Braunfels.

Now, I wouldn't call New Braunfels special by any means.  When I was growing up there, it had a whopping population of around 22,000 people.  Yes, you could call the wrong number and talk for an hour, it actually happened to me.  My first boyfriend, Ronnie (and this goes back to the question of why do men always leave me for ugly women...) he did, he bailed on me for this ass ugly girl named Andrea.  Ok, one sunny afternoon in 1987, I'm home alone after school (which was the norm, my parents were as absentee as you can get) and the phone rings! The conversation looked like this:

Me:  "Hello"
Ronnie:  "Sheri."
Me: "Ronnie."
Ronnie:  "Um, I went to call Andrea and I dialed your number on accident."


I'm not even kidding, Ronnie dialed the wrong number and we talked for an hour.

Why is it that the men I've been around all my life have a tendancy to bat low after I get done with them?  Never mind the Ex having a woman that looks like a bassett hound...and I'm serious about that.  Ass ugly doesn't even begin to cover her.  Ok, but enough about Asshole and Bassett, they're just not worth my time.

The New Braunfels Library back in my day was a small white building, not much to look at.  It had a cute little bridge out front where I went through going from a Brownie to a Girl Scout.  It was cool.  Yes, yes, shut up, I was a Girl Scout.

But the whole thing about the library is that it didn't dare be sophisticated.  We were fortunate enough to have 2 microfiche machines back in the day.  You were lucky if you could find a periodical that wasn't ripped to shreds and of course, if you wanted to find a book, you had to go to the card catalog to find it.  Oy veh...I'm so grateful for computers now.  I looked up the New Braunfels Library just now and well, lucky for them, I guess they tore the old one down and build themselves a new one.  OMG, that place used to just smell awful!  Just thinking about the smell of that old library reminds me of the smell of my Ex...musty and painfully boring.  I can't say enough good things for change.  Anything they do to bring that piss-ant town into the 21st century will do every child that grows up there a greater service.  But anyhow...that was my memory of the library I grew up with. 

Walking into the UNLV library today to research my paper on Evolution vs. Intelligent Design in schools, it wasn't at all like that musty old fire hazard I grew up with.  When you walk in, it's a spacious open atrium with rows of computers.  I looked around for a spot to grab a computer and I noticed to the left, just up a few steps were even more computers.  I've got to hand it to higher education, they know how to do things right.  So, I sit down and start going through the process of looking through CQ Researcher which is a very fancy way to find articles that have been published in academic journals and so forth.  An hour with that and then it was on to finding books.  Now I need 7 references for my annotated bibliography that's due on Tuesday.  I found so many books on the subject that I nearly dislocated my shoulder walking out to the car with all of the ones I checked out in my book bag.

There was one though that I had to go all the way across campus to the Law Library to get...and you know to me if it's law, I'm pretty much well convinced that it's going to be pretty dry.  Well, I couldn't have been more wrong.  I found a law case from 2005, Kitzmiller v. Dover.  Now get this, the book I found is all about that case and it's called The devil in Dover: an insider's story of dogma v. Darwin in small-town America.  

Before I break down Kitzmiller v. Dover, I have to take time out to talk about common sense.  As I said in my inaugural "That's just me of course" piece along time ago...

"Common sense is the rock in the road that people trip on, but they never bother to figure out why they landed face down on the ground in the first place."


You know that's the one thing I'm learning in NV School Law, some teachers and school administrators love nothing more to shove their heads clean up their own ass and then take their common sense and throw it clean out the window.  It's like something brushing past your face really quickly on it's way out a wide open window with the shears blowing in the breeze...startled, you holler "What was that?", then some fella walks up and says, "Oh shit, I think it was my common sense...did you see where it went?"  I'm serious...some people (and tune up your southern drawl for this one) just walk around with their heads so far up their own ass, they are their own proctologist!  They can do a colonoscopy on themselves it's jammed up there so tight!  I mean some people are just ignernt...and yes...I spelled it wrong on purpose...I-G-N-E-R-N-T.  They don't have enough brains in their head to get the rest of the letters in ignorant...they're not smart enough to earn them.  I mean this is a regal case of the dummy.  Or as Daddy would say, "they're just eat up with the dumb-ass".


So, here we go...Kitzmiller.  Some fella becomes the head of the school board there.  Well, this wart on the ass of humanity says basically that he was going to make it his mission to return America to it's roots as a Christian Nation.  Ok.  We gotta stop for a sec.  You know Washington, Jefferson, Adams...those white farmers who also decided to draft a really kickin' constitution?  They weren't Evangelical Christians.  They were Deists.  Now, BIG BIG difference between being a Evangelical Christian and being a Deist.  Check it out, from the Library of Congress website:  (3rd paragraph)



Another religious movement that was the antithesis of evangelicalism made its appearance in the eighteenth century. Deism, which emphasized morality and rejected the orthodox Christian view of the divinity of Christ, found advocates among upper-class Americans. Conspicuous among them were Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. Deists, never more than "a minority within a minority," were submerged by evangelicalism in the nineteenth century.


This means that those white farmers didn't believe in the divinity of Christ.  Any Evangelical Christian worth their salt will swear up and down that Jesus Christ is the son of God, that he died and came back to life.  That not only do they believe in his divinity, but how could we question otherwise?  Well, according to the Library of Congress...guess what?  They weren't Christians per se.  So how can this bonehead up in Dover, Pennsylvania make the claim that we were founded as a CHRISTIAN country?  Actually Jefferson, after the Constitution was written was a HUGE HUGE proponent of the separation between church and state!  Let's ice the cake...good ol' first amendment!  The government can not endorse a religion, nor can it inhibit practice of whatever religion floats your boat.  So, our friend Mr. Head of the Schoolboard...I should call him Mr. Head up the Ass...but I digress...made it his mission to remove evolution from the school curriculum.  The teachers were freaked, they could feel the pressure coming down.  But you know, the teachers, this was a really neat fact...all of the science teachers in that school district?  Christian.  Every last one of them.  BUT the physics teacher, the biology teacher, all of them said, 'we have to teach evolution, it's what all science is built on.'  They didn't let their personal bias get in the way, after all, as teachers, we're not supposed to.  We're supposed to present the facts and make sure the kids understand the principles we're teaching, no more, no less.  Our personal opinion is just that, ours, it's not a part of the curriculum.  But here's ol' Head up his Ass telling the teachers that they have to instead of the normal science textbooks, they now had to teach from "Of People and Pandas".  Ok, let me just break this down really succinctly.  Pandas is nothing but a Creationist textbook.


So, several of the teachers get together with the ACLU and a couple of other organizations and basically put that bastard's nuts over the spit and grilled them rotisserie style.


Let's just add more fuel to the bonfire I'm about to burn ol' dummy at...during the case, the judge saw right through that fella's nonsense and when the trial was over, basically said he perjured himself, he lied to people, he denied things he actually did.


Now, the whole thing is that he told someone and repeated himself to several people that he was going to replace Evolution with Intelligent Design.  He actually told one teacher, "I won't allow my daughter to be taught Evolution".  Oh lordy, I nearly came unglued when I read that.  I was like, "do WHAT?"  That sold me on the whole thing that that fella right there needed a swift kick in the butt and multiple shots with a cattle prod.

But the findings were worth their weight in gold...sufficed to say...it is against the law to teach Intelligent Design in schools because as Judge Jones found, "...Intelligent Design was just a label for creationism".  Which by the way, yeah, Creationism in schools, it violates the establishment clause...you know the whole "can't endorse or impede religion" thing from the first amendment?  Well, they took that first amendment and shoved it up that fundamentalist, evangelical, right-wing nut jobs backside.

Now, thanks to Kitzmiller...you can't even breathe on Intelligent Design in school curriculum.


The whole case?  It cost $2 million dollars.  Now let's really spell that out... $2,000,000.  Do you know what a school district can do with $2 million?  A whole lot!  That's lots of textbooks, lots of computers, lots of supplies, that is a boatload of great things!  What did that SOB do that was in charge of the school board?  He wasted it just because he had to put his dick in the middle of everything!


So, yeah, gonna use that case in my paper...that's enough to sell anyone on the fact that the ID guys, they're just really really bad snake oil salesmen.


Emerson!  Gonna go get ol' Ralph again!


Sing it with me!


"The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next."


Followed of course by a good ol' Sheri stand-by...


"The human race never fails to disappoint me."