SEC beats area high schools

Tennessee starts the year kicking some butt.  They slaughtered that perennial national title contender football powerhouse Our Lady of Mercy – Umm, I mean Western Kentucky.  At home.

What’s the deal with supposedly “power” conferences padding stats by playing whatever area high school team needs some cash?

Props to Alabama, Georgia, and LSU for actually playing college football teams in their openers.   The rest of the SEC proved absolutely nothing.

What does it tell you about your team when they beat Miami of Ohio, Western Carolina, Missouri State, or that other contender – Charleston Southern University?

Nothing.  And that’s the amount of respect I give teams who schedule pushovers.  If you want to be a big time team, you need to play big time opponents.   The SEC stayed on the porch opening weekend.

gk

New Tennessee Income Tax Proposed

There’s a proposal to institute a new income tax in Tennessee, and you can read the full text of the proposed bill here.

It’s called the “Tennessee Modernization and Economic Stimulus Act”, as if by calling a tax an “economic stimulus” suddenly makes it different than simply calling it a new tax.

One of the reasons I moved to Tennessee was that there wasn’t a state income tax.  Revenues to the state are mainly via a sales tax, which is the fairest method.  Think about it. Here are a few points as to why I think the sales tax is good, and the income tax is bad.

• If you make $200,000 per year, you’re probably buying more expensive clothes, food, cars, boats, etc. than someone making $40,000, so you’re paying a lot more in taxes.
• With a sales tax, the more you spend on items, the more you pay in taxes.  The state currently receives 7% of a $200 restaurant bill, and 7% of a $5 McDonald’s meal.  Which one brings in more revenue?  Who is paying more?  (Hint – It ain’t the poor!)
• A sales tax doesn’t penalize you for working more, getting a raise, or getting a better job.
• A sales tax encourages savings/investment and paying down debt to avoid taxes – both of which are extremely good things for long term financial health.
• An income tax forces employers to spend more more for bookkeeping and accounting.

To sum it up, I think this is a Bad Idea.  An income tax is simply a way for politicians to say they’re making “the rich” pay their fair share and to get their hands into another cookie jar.  Just say no.

gk

Why is Darwin still controversial?

I’m just sitting here, minding my own business, peacefully surfing through the local news tonight, when I see this story in the Knoxville News Sentinel.  It’s titled “Knox schools say they don’t teach human evolution, but how the process relates to all life”.

The story starts out with this:

“We have the purpose of preventing bigots and ignoramuses from controlling the education of the United States.”

– Clarence Darrow, defense attorney during the Scopes trial in Dayton, Tenn., 1925

About 84 years ago, Tennessee was thrust into the international spotlight when biology teacher John Scopes went to trial in Rhea County and was found guilty of violating a state law that banned the teaching of human evolution in public schools.

While the state law was finally repealed in 1968, the teaching of evolution based on the theories of Charles Darwin is still a contentious subject.

Why is this “still a contentious subject” in Tennessee?  Why haven’t people in Tennessee learned from the debacle of the Scopes trial over 80 years ago?  Has anyone – anyone at all – produced a better explanation to explain how we developed?  Not that I’ve seen.  Note:  “God did it” isn’t an explanation anymore than “because I said so” explains something to a child.

“The fact that this debate continues is a sign that we missed our target to educate people about the scientific process,” said Becky Ashe, science supervisor for Knox County Schools.

“Scientific process” is simply another way to say “scientific theory”, but Ms Ashe wants to avoid that word because it’ll offend someone.  Since most of what I write offends someone, I don’t have that restriction.  Check out the definition of “scientific method” on webster.com and you’ll see this: principles and procedures for the systematic pursuit of knowledge involving the recognition and formulation of a problem, the collection of data through observation and experiment, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses.

Scientists would have abandoned evolution long ago if it didn’t meet the above requirements – especially regarding the “formulation and testing of hypotheses.”  That’s the true test of any theory – does it correctly predict what will happen in a given set of circumstances.  Just like the theory of relativity, which predicted the atomic bomb, the bending of light by gravity, and the relative slowdown in time experienced at high speeds.  All of which have been tested and confirmed by numerous experiments.  If you need evidence, simply look at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Darwin’s theory of evolution is in the same class as Einstein’s theory of relativity.  It’s been confirmed by numerous experiments and observations.  There’s not a single bit of evidence that contradicts it.  But yet it’s still controversial in Tennessee – and Kansas, and wherever else ignorant people congregate in sufficient numbers.

The KnoxNews.com story I referenced in the first sentence of this posts also contains this paragraph: “A theory, to a scientist, is not just a guess. A theory is an overarching, unifying concept that is supported by, and explains, relationships between many different types of data and observations from different fields of inquiry. Thus, the theory of gravity explains why an apple falls from a tree, why the earth circles the sun, and why we don’t all go flying off the earth as it spins. So yes, we should teach the theory of gravity, atomic theory, cell theory, the theory of relativity and the theory of evolution by natural selection. … I know of no scientific alternatives to this theory. I am aware of a number of mythologies that address the creation of Earth and mankind, but they are not science and should not be taught in science classes,” Wellman said.”

Read that last line again – “I am aware of a number of mythologies that address the creation of Earth and mankind, but they are not science and should not be taught in science classes.” Amen to that!

Biblical creation myths fall into the same class as Hindu creation myths.  And African tribal creation myths.  And Japanese Shinto creation myths.  None of them have A SINGLE SHRED OF EVIDENCE to back up their claims.  Yet they all claim to be the whole truth, nothing but the truth, so help me god.  And they want it taught in public schools.  And they wonder why they’re thought of as backwards hicks.

This is coming from a guy who grew up in a town of less than 100 in rural Missouri – I know all about hicks – I are one.  🙂  But that doesn’t mean I can’t learn and grow out of it.  Eventually.

And yet Tennessee allows ignorant parents to opt out of having evolution taught to their kids if they sign a waiver – which produces yet another generation of people ignorant of science.  Future scientists would do well to avoid this state if they’d like to learn anything that would actually help them learn to be scientists.

Hmmm….  This turned into a rant.  Oh well, deal with it.

Darwin’s 200th birthday is coming up on Feb 12th.  Read all about him here.  You can read his book “On the Origin of Species” online (or download it) in PDF format here.  Project Gutenberg has a plain text version available here.  Enjoy!

gk

Vols lose to Wyoming?

I knew the Vols were bad this year, that they have played some of the worst football I’ve ever seen from a major program, that their play calling on offense was horrid (Hey Fulmer – play Madden sometime!) but even I didn’t expect them to lose to a bad Wyoming team.  At home.

Here’s something to think about when pondering just how bad the Vols are this year.  Wyoming ranks 119th (out of 119) in scoring offense, and 94th in scoring defense.  Stats are from the NCAA web site for Wyoming.

Tennessee is ranked a pitiful 114th in offense, and 25th in defense.  I thought Fulmer was a great recruiter?  If he’s got such great talent on the team, he must REALLY suck as a coach!

Good thing there are only 2 games left this year (against Vandy and Kentucky) so he’ll avoid the embarrassment of double-digit losses – but only because the Vols will end up 3 and 9 because there aren’t any more games to lose.

Let’s put it this way – whoever is chosen to replace Fulmer can’t be any worse.   I know squat about coaching football.  I’ve never even played football.  But I could hire an offensive coordinator and let him design an offense to suit the personell on the team.  Evidently Fulmer can’t.

Why wait to replace him?  Get his fat ass out of town (on a very sturdy rail!) and get a head start on next year.  He’s gonna lose the next two games anyway – why wait?

gk

How bad are the Vols this year?

I watched the Vols beat up on Central High – oops, I mean UAB – today 35 – 3.  I also saw the highlights of the UCLA vs BYU game, where UCLA  lost 59 to 0.  That’s not a typo, the total points UCLA scored against BYU was zero.  Zip.  Nadda, Goose-egg.

Considering the fact that BYU is currently ranked 18th (just as the Vols were when they played UCLA) and that UCLA had 4 turnovers today (they also had 4 when they played the Vols) BYU is waaaay better than UT at this time.  And I don’t think BYU is very good

I don’t think that says much for UT Football.  To get beat by a team that loses it’s next game by 59 points is bad.  Really bad.  I thought the SEC was supposed to be the premier football conference?  Looks to me like the PAC 10 and WAC are kicking some SEC butt.

And unless UT finds an offense floating down the river sometime in the next week, the game next week against Florida is gonna be ugly.  Really ugly.  Two bagger ugly.

It’ll be the kind of game that you switch off shortly after halftime when the score is something like 35 – 6.  I hope that’s not the case, but I am not impressed with UT so far this year.  Florida won’t be impressed either.

gk

Final two

And then there were two….  Kansas and Memphis will play for the NCAA championship in a few minutes.  I haven’t seen a lot of either of them this year, but I did watch the tourney games. 

Both teams are damn good.  Both play an uptempo game, so I don’t think the game tonight will be a low scoring affair – unless the ref’s are as big a part of the game tonight as they were in the women’s game (Tennessee VS LSU) last night.

Last night I saw things that would be called pass interference in the NFL go by without a call.  Players were getting mugged all over the court.  Not that either team shot well (they didn’t!) but if the ref’s would’ve blown a few whistles and gotten the players to play instead of hacking each other, at least we’d have had a clean game.

Inexplicably, they also called quite a few fouls when no one actually made contact.  I hope the NCAA does something in the future when ref’s miss that many blatant calls.  It’s one thing to let the players play – it’s something else altogether when the game is decided by takedowns.

gk

Good Ol Rocky Top

The Tennessee basketball team is ranked high in all the polls, but how are they gonna celebrate when they win?  Check out this story.

“The arrest is aimed at drying up the sale of untaxed liquor and putting one of the best in the field out of business.”

It all comes down to the fact that the government isn’t getting its’ cut.  There’s really no difference between local thugs and gangs who demand “protection” money and our federal government – except the feds have more guns and can do it legally.

Corn won’t grow at all on rocky top

dirt’s too rocky by far.

That’s why all the folks on rocky top

get their corn from a jar.

Be sure to read the comments  on the WBIR story I linked to above.  Along with the normal stupidity, there are some good points being made.

gk