Carl Hiaasen in peak form

Carl Hiaasen, a man who's made a career of reporting and writing about all manner of Floridian craziness, sounds off about an effort to change the state's science curriculum.

In a move that could endanger Florida's flaky backwater reputation, the state Board of Education is poised to endorse the teaching of evolution as a science.

This is a dangerous idea -- not the presentation of Darwinism in schools, but the presentation of Florida as a place of progressive scientific thought.

Over the years the Legislature has worked tirelessly to keep our kids academically stuck in the mid-1950s. This has been achieved by overcrowding their classrooms, underpaying their teachers and letting their school buildings fall apart.

Florida's plucky refusal to embrace 21st century education is one reason that prestigious tech industries have avoided the state, allowing so many of our high-school graduates (and those who come close) to launch prosperous careers in the fast-food, bartending and service sectors of the economy.

By accepting evolution as a proven science, our top educators would be sending a loud message to the rest of the nation: Stop making fun of us.

Is that what we really want?

Here's the rest:

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/columnists/carl_hiaasen/story/421075.html

The wrongness of Bill Kristol

Bill Kristol, wrong in nearly every prediction he's made about the Iraq war, has recently been taken on as a columnist by the New York Times. There's only one problem. The Times has not explained to their readers that he's being put on display as a dire warning. Impressionable persons and the easily confused are at some risk of taking what he says seriously.

The Cliff Notes cartoon summary of his wrongness is here, but for those who want more, try this:

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174894

In it, there's a link to an appalling interview from 2003 in which he demonstrates (despite working in the Reagan and Bush I administrations) ignorance of Iraq's recent history, lies and obfuscates about other issues, and follows up by claiming we would never, never betray the Kurds. Kristol is truly a phoenix of wrongness. He arises from each pyre of inaccuracy with smarm renewed and eyes closed, flicking his bic, and heading straight at the next unconquerable brush pile of truth.

It's heartening to know that one can be so monumentally wrong and still get prestigious jobs. If I should suffer some sort of mental incapacity and no longer be able to program, I can look forward to a lucrative career in conservative punditry. I'll just have to practice being massively wrong in the meanwhile.