... Not that the Texas school board creationists were coherent before, but what else do they have left? After the defeat of language in the state standards to teach the "strengths and weaknesses" of evolution in Texas public schools, the creationist school board members have rallied under the motto "Somebody's got to stand up to experts!" Thus, in defiance of the logical thinking and coherent grammar embraced so fondly by those nefarious experts, the Texas school board on Friday passed a number of incoherent amendments to their state science standards.

Creationists have put us into a bizarre, alternate universe, at least when it comes to curriculum design. Their latest attempt to undermine science education involves inserting the code words 'strengths and weaknesses' into the public school science standards. The idea is that, whenever something religious fundamentalists find controversial crops up in science class, teachers have to teach the "strengths and weaknesses" of that particular topic. Fortunately, this creationist code has just been kept out of the Texas state science standards, but you can bet the code is going to crop up again at some point.

It's worth taking a moment to think about how whacked this whole debate over strengths and weaknesses has become.