Praise for scooters
Re: “The scooter blues,” Dec. 3 Writers on the Range column.
Thank you for publishing David Feela’s column. It brought a smile to my face, as his words resonated with my own experiences. I own both a scooter (Honda Metro) and a large “Euro-Turo” Yamaha FJR1300 motorcycle. I love both of my two-wheelers and personally, I’m happy to see the scooter craze pick up some steam. As a nation, we should congratulate anyone who does their part to cut gasoline consumption and reduce our dependence on imported oil.
Douglas Birch, Highlands Ranch
Dizzy art museum design
Re: “DAM: It’s dizzying,” Dec. 3 news story.
I am an architect who visited the new wing of the Denver Art Museum this fall and experienced very considerable disorientation and dizziness. I also felt that the building’s histrionics interfered at almost every level with my ability to look at the art.
If Frank Gehry is Mr. Swoopy, then Daniel Libeskind is Mr. Spiky – both architects make their mark with arresting shapes – and their buildings are most appealing at the scale of the street, especially in cities whose streetscape is boxy, repetitive and uniform. But neither architect, in my opinion, is willing to share the bid for attention with anyone or anything else, and that makes both of them unsuitable candidates to design museums for the display of art.
P.R. Jessup, Penn Valley, Calif.
Global warming?
Re: “Warming verdict may burn ski areas,” Dec. 3 Diane Carman column.
Diane Carman joins a long list of journalists, attorneys and politicians who are in over their heads on “global warming.” She quotes Aspen attorney Edward Ramey, who filed an amicus brief in a collective suit filed by more than 10 states against the Environmental Protection Agency. He concludes that “global warming” is settled and fait accompli. That suggests his paleoclimatological credentials are, at best, suspect.
We are in a period between the last glaciation, which ended about 12,000 years ago, and the next glaciation. Temperatures, remarkably, rise during interglacials and fall during glaciations. Global temperatures, from paleogeological and paleontological evidence, are constantly variable and have been cooling, with perturbations, for the past 65 million years.
Ramey contends that “global warming research is vast, thorough and conclusive,” says Carman. Vast and thorough, certainly, on both sides. Conclusive? Not at all. There is too much uncertainty in a science in its early postnatal infancy to suggest we know where we are in the process. We do not, and the dissent is loud and compelling.
Peter K. Link, Evergreen
Learning and schooling
Re: “Value of preschool proven,” Dec. 3 Perspective article.
I still don’t get the collusional mantra voiced by the educational establishment in this country that kids don’t learn hardly anything worthwhile unless they’re in school getting ready for … something. This article is a case in point.
While lauding Denver voters for passing the Denver preschool initiative – meaning more poor kids get to go to school earlier in their lives – the authors make the point that the preschool educational experience enables the kids to enter the K-12 system “ready to learn.”
In actuality, the human organism is a born learning machine, predisposed by divine creation and/or biological destiny to learn like a son-of-a-gun. The organism can’t do much else but learn stuff and, of yeah, eat and take care of what it eats in a naturally occurring manner. That’s what our kids are born to do – learn – and yet we seem to have this idea that learning only occurs when children are in “schools.”
And what we call learning in schools these days is getting defined as learning a particular set of skills, associated with a very particular theory of how to do well on CSAP tests, that are further associated with making kids ready for … pretty much the next CSAP assessment and a vague connection to making more money, which has a vague connection to being happy.
Actually, it’s more that a lot of people have to work to make a bunch of money for a few people. With a lot of people working, we need more preschools.
Preschools are a product of an economic situation that creates a selfish consumer consciousness and more poor people, coupled with a narrowing of what gets honored in schools. Now 4-year-olds will get introduced to the three rules of schools: sit down, be quiet and do your work.
Rocky Hill, Denver
Evolution and education
Re: “Standing up for science; Evolution key to biology,” Dec. 3 Perspective article.
Thanks to Jeffrey S. Kieft for his extraordinarily direct and well- stated position on education and its relation to evolution. He has cut through all the jargon-laden arguments that have characterized much of the discourse by science writers on the subject of evolution. There is no mistaking argument for teaching science as science, not something else.
As a geologist, I appreciate the importance of understanding evolution in the context of Earth history. Without an understanding of both evolution and Earth history (not to mention the cosmos), a student can hardly begin to understand the range of life forms on Earth and our position in the universe.
I am a volunteer at Dinosaur Ridge, where we host many school groups as well as adults and families. The attraction of dinosaurs is a great draw, and we attempt to place the fossils and their associated strata in a proper scientific context. It is fascinating (and disturbing) to see the number of students brought to this place by creationist groups to hear absolutely wrong-headed explanations. We only hope some element of truth and reality may filter through the fog of misrepresentation.
Duff Kerr, Denver
…
As I read Jeffrey S. Kieft’s article on the necessity of teaching evolution to our children, I had to wonder: To which evolution is Kieft referring? Is he referring to Darwin’s “The Origin of Species,” which theorizes that man “evolved” from primordial soup which somehow “evolved” into animals which somehow “evolved” into human beings? Or is he talking about the adaptation of species over time (commonly referred to as “micro-evolution”)?
Kieft refers to the scientific method being essential in teaching science because it involves explaining the way things are by testing and observation. I couldn’t agree more. But Kieft’s statement that “the teaching of evolution is not a religious issue, as there is no inherent conflict between the two” is where he loses me. If he is referring to Darwin’s evolution for the origin of the species, then we are talking about religion (faith). There quite simply has never been any scientific proof of Darwin’s theory: There is nothing in the record to document that one species turned into another species. No matter how you cut it, that part of evolution is a theory, and to believe that it is fact takes faith (religion). And therein lies the controversy using evolution to teach our children about the origin of all things.
Since science can’t prove the “evolution of something from nothing,” it had to have been supernatural, and that calls for an awesome God.
Kate Simonson, Englewood
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Jeffrey S. Kieft gets it exactly right. There need not be a conflict between science and faith. We cannot allow those with an extremely conservative religious agenda to destroy the teaching of science in our public schools. Academic rigor and, as Kieft points out, our very survival as an educated society facing difficult challenges demands that we educate students in the scientific method. Science education must include the teaching of evolution.
Evolution is not anti-faith or anti-Christian any more than gravity behaves differently when a person of faith or an atheist trips and falls. It does not attempt to prove the unprovable: the existence or lack of existence of a supreme being. I cannot, by science, prove the existence of God, yet I have no doubt of the existence of God. I also have no doubt that organisms change over time.
We will never know everything there is to know. Those with and without faith will always have doubts about what we know and what we believe. What is clear is that we human beings have an exploring brain and an exploring heart, an intrinsic desire to search for both knowledge and faith. Using both our hearts and our brains has served us well throughout time. The greatest sin would be to block either exploration.
Jeffrey L. Kaes, Littleton
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Jeffrey S. Kieft takes a position on strengthening science education with which few would disagree, and broadens it to a defense of evolution and an attack on intelligent design. He takes the position that the only alternatives in the debate are the “scientific” evolution and the “religious” intelligent design. With the debate framed in those terms, he cannot lose. His argument would have had more intellectual honesty if he had addressed some of the scientists’ concerns with evolution. William Dembski’s complex specified information and Michael Behe’s irreducible complexity are totally ignored. These scientists are hardly religious nuts to be ignored, and their science is not dressed up young-Earth creationism.
Kieft’s position on evolution and intelligent design, typical of the biological establishment, demonstrates an inability to defend Darwinism in any sort of intellectually open debate. Evolution is a failed theory, empirically unsupportable, and using the tactic of dismissing credible opposition on an a priori basis only demonstrates it.
Howard R. Spery, Evergreen
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By stressing the importance of science in our school curriculums, Jeffrey S. Kieft has made a point that everyone should embrace. He’s right to say that if we expect to provide our children with a proper scientific education, which is so important in a world that “demands technological and scientific innovation,” then only scientific conclusions should be taught in science class. However, he doesn’t say that we shouldn’t teach theology. As a Christian and parent, I applaud and thank him for his succinct essay.
Jim Ross, Castle Rock
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Jeffrey S. Kieft’s opinion that teaching intelligent design as an alternative to evolution would “undermine” scientific learning is incorrect. Scientific research is designed to solve problems or provide technological advantages. It is exceedingly rare for evolution theory or intelligent design to affect research structure or procedure. Those biases are added later, like icing on a cake.
Evolution theory establishes an interpersonal framework. If a theory is true, the framework prevents wasted effort. If a theory is false, the framework restrains or prevents scientific advancement.
Survival of even the simplest organisms depends upon incredibly complex interdependent biological systems.
Philip G. Budd, Pine
TO THE POINT
I received a secret, advance copy of the Iraq Study Group’s report. It contained only one page. On that page was written, “Click your heels together three times and repeat over and over, ‘There’s no place like home.”‘
George Hope, Morrison
The Denver City Council is worried about the distraction of signs hanging from overpasses. But I’m busy looking out for all the ne’er-do-wells with a cellphone attached to their ear. Wake up!
Steven Wells, Longmont
I wish Tom Tancredo would run for president. I would be first in line to vote for him. He is the only one in the government who has backbone to do something about the illegal immigrants.
Dolores Adams, Aurora
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