Tag Archives: George Mason University

News

National Science Foundation proposes re-education program for weathercasters

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Take a look at this job posting at George Mason University, funded by the NSF (i.e. – the government, with your tax dollars). (H/T Watts Up With That via Todd)

Excerpt:

The George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication invites applications for a full-time Postdoctoral Research Fellow to support an NSF-funded planning grant titled Making the Global Local: Unusual Weather Events as Climate Change Education Opportunities. The goal of this project is to establish a national network of climate and weather science organizations, and university research and teaching programs, to engage, train, and empower local broadcast meteorologists to educate and inform the American public about climate change. The project will integrate informal learning, mass communication, and experiential learning theories to develop and test new pedagogical approaches to informal science education through frequent mass media exposure, linked to realworld experience (i.e., the local weather). It will also adapt and test conflict resolution theory and practice to engage meteorologists who reject the scientific consensus and climate scientists in constructive dialogue.

The government is using your money to convince you that you need to give them more money and keep less of your own money to buy the stuff you want – like private schooling for your children or to have a stay-at-home mother raise the children. Government knows best! Pay up, sucka!

Government messing with the news media… it’s Orwellian. But quite normal in the absence of evidence. What else can they appeal to when they don’t have evidence? It’s either propaganda or the gulag, right?

I must also note that this is the same university that sanctioned Caroline Crocker for dissenting from Darwinism. Global warming and Darwinism are two sides of the same coin.

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News

Caroline Crocker’s new book recounts her experience of being expelled

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Caroline Crocker
Caroline Crocker

Story from Evolution News.

Excerpt:

One of those incidents took place at George Mason University (GMU), where Caroline Crocker was ousted from teaching biology because she challenged to neo-Darwinian evolution and favorably mentioned ID in the classroom. Dr. Crocker later appeared in Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, but now many more details about Caroline Crocker’s story are revealed in her new autobiographical book, Free to Think: Why Scientific Integrity Matters.

Free to Think tells the story of a biology professor who cares deeply about students, received glowing student reviews, wouldn’t compromise her integrity when challenged to disregard anti-cheating rules, and produced high quality curricular tools. But Crocker had one fatal flaw: she would not capitulate to the Darwinian consensus in the classroom. When some GMU administrators learned that she’d challenged evolution, they told her that she had to be “disciplined” because she taught “creationism.” While GMU now denies that Crocker’s dismissal had anything to do with evolution, her book explains that this is most definitely not what she was told behind closed doors.

But Free to Think is not some sob story. It contains heartwarming and amusing accounts of Crocker’s interaction with students. What struck me were the lengths to which Crocker would go to accommodate and help students facing difficult life circumstances. It is saddening (though not surprising) that she has received many attacks on her character from evolutionists who know neither Crocker nor her story.

[…]At the very time Crocker was told by her Department Head that she would be disciplined for challenging Darwin, she received a performance review from her Provost that called her teaching “outstanding” as “evidenced by unusually high student rankings”! The Provost even praised her, saying, “This kind of teaching quality is essential for this vital educational program, and we’re very grateful for your successful efforts.”

Such statements hardly describe a teacher who would otherwise be expected to soon lose her job. Yet Crocker did subsequently lose her job, and we know exactly why. As Crocker documents in her book, her administrators didn’t want her challenging Darwin.

There’s more here.

And you can even listen to an interview she did with Casey Luskin about her new book.

I like Caroline Crocker a lot. I don’t talk about her as much as I do about Michele Bachmann or Jennifer Roback Morse, but she’s one of my heroes. I was disgusted with George Mason University for doing this to her. I remember Walter Williams saying at some point (maybe when he was guest hosting for Rush Limbaugh) that GMU is a normal liberal university with conservative departments of law and economics. That explains it.

News

Veronique de Rugy shows that stimulus money was allocated for political gain

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Veronique de Rugy

Story here on National Review. (H/T The Other McCain via ECM)

Excerpt:

As it turns out, when controlling for state capitals and a host of other potentially relevant variables, we find that the original findings still hold. We learn a few other things, too:

  • First, how and where the money is spent doesn’t seem to be related to unemployment or decline in employment in the district where it is spent.
  • Second, the district’s party affiliation matters in where the money is spent. (We still don’t know how much it matters compared to other factors.) The average Democratic district receives 81 percent more than the average Republican district. Even after taking out the money spent through state capitals, the average Democratic district receives at least 30 percent more than the average Republican district.
  • Third, whether a district has part of a state capital in it is an important factor in how stimulus money is spent. However, controlling for this factor, or even taking the money going to state capitals out altogether, doesn’t negate the finding that the district’s party affiliation matters in where the money is spent.
  • Finally, how long the district’s representative has been in office seems to have a small but significant impact on how the money is spent (this is a new finding, as well).

There is still much more to learn on the question “How are stimulus funds being spent and why?”

The more I dig into this, the more important the question seems.

George Mason University is a pretty moderate school, but they boast a fine conservative economics department. Jennifer Roback Morse used to teach there, and Walter Williams still does. It’s probably the best place for a conservative or libertarian student to do an economics degree.

Now seems like a good time to re-post Michele Bachmann’s denunciation of gangster government, too.

Michelle Malkin calls them Corruptocrats. It fits.

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