B is for Picasso in his Blue Period. At right, Woman and Child by the Sea, 1902.
B is for... the many Blue notes in blues and jazz music, as found in Duke Ellington's Mood Indigo.
"You ain't been blueI thought my mood couldn't possibly be more indigo, 'til I ran across this piece in today's NY Times' "Science Times". It's about other B words: A backlash of a most bone-headed and insideous sort. (Use this login and password from Bug Me Not if you're not registered: login-blarglefish, pw-blargle)
No, no, no.
You ain't been blue
'Til you've had that mood indigo
That feelin' goes stealin' down to my shoes
While I sit and sigh
Go 'long, Blues"
Evolution Takes a Back Seat in U.S. Classes: "Dr. John Frandsen, a retired zoologist, was at a dinner for teachers in Birmingham, Ala., recently when he met a young woman who had just begun work as a biology teacher in a small school district in the state. Their conversation turned to evolution.
"She confided that she simply ignored evolution because she knew she'd get in trouble with the principal if word got about that she was teaching it," he recalled. "She told me other teachers were doing the same thing.""
Read it all and see what shade of blue you turn.
Backlashes within societies are not all-at-once lightning rod moments. It's not about blitzkrieg... They build up like distant and approaching thunder over periods of time, even though it may seem as if the storm is upon you in an eye blink. And it appears that in the case of evolution in science classrooms, the anti-intellectual, bible-banging flatlanders have managed to create an academic atmosphere in the US that is in effect broadscale de facto censoring of science teachers -- teachers afraid of what might happen if they even whisper the E word. Fear is perhaps the most potent of human motivators. Fight or flight, and all that. This is social backlash, gentle people. Nothing more, nothing less.
I'm not only blue about it all, but I'm also boiling mad and screaming Balderdash! So grab your little chalkboards, girls and boys. Help Blue Kate out. How many more B words can you come up with that apply to a land at least half-populated by brain-challenged Bozos? Here endeth the rant.
