In the paper today was an article about anti-enlightment folks co-opting the global warming debate with their stance against evolution. These types of reports tend to annoy me in general (I’m always reminded of the MLK quote “Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity”), and the older I get the more I feel compelled to defend common, liberal values that have their roots in the enlightnment.

Anyway, one of the comments in the NYTimes had such an interesting response to the article that it’s worth sharing. He/she quoted “Inherit the Wind”:

“Can’t you understand? That if you take a law like evolution and you make it a crime to teach it in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools? And tomorrow you may make it a crime to read about it. And soon you may ban books and newspapers.

And then you may turn Catholic against Protestant, and Protestant against Protestant, and try to foist your own religion upon the mind of man. If you can do one, you can do the other.

Because fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy, and needs feeding. And soon, your Honor, with banners flying and with drums beating we’ll be marching backward, BACKWARD, through the glorious ages of that Sixteenth Century when bigots burned the man who dared bring enlightenment and intelligence to the human mind!”

By Diane Ravitch, who used to think NCLB was a good thing (but changed her mind after evidence – and how many people do that today – showed that it wasn’t working).

“There should not be an education marketplace, there should not be competition,” Ravitch says. “Schools operate fundamentally — or should operate — like families. The fundamental principle by which education proceeds is collaboration. Teachers are supposed to share what works; schools are supposed to get together and talk about what’s [been successful] for them. They’re not supposed to hide their trade secrets and have a survival of the fittest competition with the school down the block.”

This deserves a cross post.

This process was supposed to take a very long time (4-6 weeks), but it’s flown by for us! It only took 3 days to get our sentencia (where the courts legally assign permanent custody of Monica and Kelly to us). Now we’ve a few more things to wrap up (passports, visas, etc) but it looks like we’ll be back in the states before the end of January!

Ladies and Gentlemen, we are so happy to introduce Monica and Kelly…

From 2010-01-21

We’ve been blogging about our experience over at ardenlane, but I wanted to make a fun cross post here on some interesting things I’ve noticed about becoming a father. Nothing particular to adoption – and certainly noted by many before me – but (slightly) comical (at least I think so).

There’s nothing better than the laughter of my daughters. This doesn’t surprise me too much because before having daughters I would say there’s nothing better than the laughter of my wife. I love my family’s laughter.

Things just don’t gross me out as much. This has to be a survival strategy. Poop, snot, you name it you got to get over it. When they’re yours, you can.

On a similar note, I never knew how much fatherhood revolves around a toilet.

You have to eat fast. In fact, eating is an adventure. Our first eating experiences with Monica and Kelly were a whirlwind. We’ve now learned to tell them ahead of time “you have to give mami and papi some time to actually chew their food.” We’ve added a full 90 seconds to our dinning time!

Backrubs and head massages go a long way in helping to calm freak out moments.

I love incessant chattering. Both Monica and Kelly will have massive conversations with the air. Very fast, very light, and I really can’t understand a word of it (but I get the tone). It makes me happy.

Oh my gosh I am sore. Before getting on the plane my sister-in-law made a comment about coming home with some “guns” for arms. I thought she was joking. Nope. From the very first moment of waking up to an hour before bed I am holding, playing, hugging, swinging, piggyback hosting, dancing, jumping, chasing, diving, and running. For the first 3 days my muscles were screaming.

As this picture no doubt demonstrates. This is Papi trying to give a piggyback and piggyfront ride.

From January 16

Over the course of our marriage Renee and I have become incredibly talented with packing the (semi) necessities into small places. This is because we usually live out of car for the summer months – traveling to the hinterlands of this continent. 2004 was the high point, packing all our gear into a tiny Mazda protege and road tripping from Houston to Michigan to Alaska to California and back to Houston (15,000 miles if I remember correctly).

Our friends, the ones with children, would laugh, shake their heads, and say “wait until you have kids.”

The challenge today was to fit a week’s worth of clothing and a month’s worth of activities for 4 people (two little girls) into two suitcases that had to weigh 50 pounds or less. I’ll be honest. It was the most complicated packing jigsaw we’ve ever done.

In the end we’re left with one bag tipping in at 49 pounds and another at 51.5. We’re hoping the second one sweats off an extra pound and a half by Monday.