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E-mail: editor@dailyemerald.com
Online: www.dailyemerald.com
Wednesday, February 18, 2004
Oregon Daily Emerald
COMMENTARY
Editor in Chief:
Brad Schmidt
Managing Editor:
Jan Tobias Montry
Editorial Editor:
Travis Willse
EDITORIAL.
Attempted
'evolution'
ban entirely
misguided
Here we go again.
Every year some hysterical backwater administrator in
some Southern state manages to wield the Bible like a
scepter in a futile battle against — get this — the word
"evolution." It seems that these people would rather our
public schoolchildren be exposed only to the notion that
God created all, affectionately labeled "creationist theory,"
and that science is all just a bunch of bunk.
Laughably, these people don't see the irony in pro
claiming that evolution is an aberrant, sacrilegious theory
and that their personal beliefs — their faith, if you will —
are inarguable, concrete fart.
This year, the state of Georgia played host to the latest
debacle. In a semantic battle not unlike the flap over
whether certain people are entitled to use the word "mar
riage, " a dozen science teachers rallied to change the word
"evolution" to "biological changes overtime" in the state's
science curriculum, according to The Associated Press.
Apparently, the word "evolution" has become so loaded that
to even utter it could be Uagically blasphemous — perhaps
sending all the schoolchildren straight to hell in one fell swoop?
— and thus reducing the argument from a scientific debate to a
religious and moral squabble The whole affair reeked of Or
wellian Newspeak, and the suggestion was eventually dropped
after legitimate professors, educators and politicians spoke out
At its heart, the evolution-creationism debate revolves
around differences in microevolution, in which a series of small
genetic changes can form new subspecies, and macroevolu
tion, wherein large-scale evolution can form new taxonomic
groups (i.e. apes to humans). Opponents of the word "evolu
tion" generally tend to accept the tenets of microevolution. Ex
periments, such as Darwin's work with finches, show that pop
ulations can change in small ways to adapt to their
environments, and opponents rarely dispute these findings.
The contention lies in macroevolution. Opponents of
the word "evolution" say it has no scientific legitimacy
(read: no proof that any species used to be something
completely different) and therefore should not be men
tioned in a public school setting.
But most scientists disagree with the alleged lack of evi
dence for macroevolutionary principles. In fart, Douglas
Theobald, Ph.D., of the Department of Chemistry and Bio
chemistry at the University of Colorado at Boulder, cites 21
different pieces of evidence for macroevolution. His paper is
posted at http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc, a Web
site dedicated to the evolution debate.
As the late Stephen J. Gould, a paleontologist from Har
vard University, wrote in a May 1981 issue of Discover ..
evolution is a theory. It is also a fart. And facts and theories
are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing
certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures
of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away
when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Ein
stein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this cen
tury, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pend
ing the outcome. And humans evolved from ape-like
ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mech
anism or by some other yet-to-be-discovered."
Humankind relies on science for progress and understand
ing about our origins and the world around us. This is the so
cially accepted means of public scholarship in a country where
the church and state have been explicitly separated — although
this fundamental aspect of our society seems to suffer assault
on a daily basis. Because science is so accepted and so ingrained
in nearly all elements of life, it is only reasonable that it be
taught in public schools. If religious administrators have a prob
lem with that they can join private religious schools where the
accepted dogma is not science but faith.
EDITORIAL BOARD
Brad Schmidt
Editor in Chief
Jan Tobias Montry
Managing Editor
Travis Wilise
Editorial Editor
Jennifer Sudick
Freelance Editor
Ayisha Yahya
News Editor
r LOOKS ^
LIKE IT'S WORKING
TO me. A
7 THOUGHT THAT X
PLAY WAS SUPPOSED
. TO BRING WOMEN .
V TOGETHER. 'S
Eric Layton Illustrator
It’s about oil
Last week at the 129th Meeting of the
Conference of the Organization of the Pe
troleum Exporting Countries, OPEC
member nation ministers decided to re
duce crude oil production from the cur
rent rate of 24.5 billion barrels per day to
23.5 billion barrels per day, a reduction of
4.08 percent.
In response, the U.S. government,
under orders from President George
W. Bush, issued a statement to the
world:
"It is our hope that the producers do not
take actions that undermine the American
economy... and American consumers."
What Bush is failing to see is that if the
2002 worldwide rate of consumption of
crude oil continues, decreases in produc
tion won't matter in 38 years because
there will simply be no recoverable oil
left. The well will have run dry, and our
economy will have to find another meas
ure of success.
We are an oil-dependent country. We
pour it into our cars, our heating systems,
our plastics and our hair gels. We go to the
pump, hand over our credit cards and say,
"Fill it up." We have no remorse, no vision
for the future.
In 2002, the United States imported
more than 1.49 billion barrels of oil
Aimee Rudin
Five feet of fury
from OPEC; that's more than 4 million
barrels of oil every day of the year. And
that's just from OPEC. Total, the United
States imports 9.14 million barrels of
crude oil per day and produces 5.7 mil
lion barrels per day from its own re
serves, all of this to feed our hunger for
industry.
We consume 2.9 gallons of crude oil per
person per day for every man, woman and
child living in America. Oil runs through
our world like blood through arteries. In
our economy, oil seems more important
than food.
OPEC currently produces 41 percent of
the world's crude oil and exports 55 per
cent of crude oil traded internationally. It's
no small thing that of the 11 member na
tions of OPEC, five — Iran, Iraq, Kuwait,
Libya and Saudi Arabia — have been in
volved in recent military action with the
United States.
The current United States involvement
in Iraq is not about terror, as the televi
sion might have us believe. It's about oil.
To steal a line from folk singer Amy Mar
tin, "It is about rich white men getting
richer."
Bush is right — a drop in oil produc
tion does have the potential to disrupt
the American lifestyle. If he sends
more soldiers to war in order to secure
oil, the deaths of our fellow citizens
and of the people they would battle
will be on our shoulders as the con- *
sumers of the oil.
We as a society need to move away
from the question of how much oil
can we get and toward the idea that
soon, within our lifetimes, we will run
out of oil.
We need to begin looking at alternatives
to oil. We must examine biodiesel, solar
and wind power, mass transit and other al
ternative transportation. We need to look
beyond economic projections and prices
per gallon. Tomorrow the pump could go
dry. We need to start thinking about what
happens next.
Contact the columnist
at aimeerudin@dailyemerald.com.
Her opinions do not necessarily
represent those of the Emerald.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Measure 30's failure
means lost hope
Since the fall of Measure 30 I've been
struck with a feeling of lost hope. As
statistics prove, a large majority of vot
ers are college-educated. Among other
statistics, this stands out the most to
me in light of the surcharge tax increase
proposition because those in opposi
tion to the measure were the ones most
affected by it, those with money to lose.
Currently being enrolled at the Uni
versity, I've tried to view my education
as something.more than a means to
future financial stability. Each class
has something to offer me as I begin
to take part in the sculpting of not
only my future, but the future of every
generation to come. With that I find
that I am directing my studies more
towards the good of humanity than
personal success as defined in our cur
rent materialistic media. I had hope
that others who have graduated from
colleges all over the United States have
discovered this same attempt at gen
erosity, at directing individual efforts
towards the community, city and na
tion as a whole.
This idea has been kicked down, and
my gut aches as I slowly understand
that even a college education doesn't
produce advocates of a progressive soci
ety, not in large part anyway. I thought
that maybe a college education helped
people understand inequality and lack
of equal opportunity, and encourage
people to help out when they have the
means.
Not only am I questioning the purpose
of this education, now I'm even question
ing whether I have the right priorities ...
maybe achievement is defined in mone
tary value.
Nicholas Wilbur
sophomore
pre-journalism