I gather that the Texas Board of Education has done something commendable, but I don’t know exactly what because the Washington Post (my source) was too busy deploring it to describe it. I assume it was something great because it reduced the Post to stammering incoherence. “Unbelievable” was only the beginning; “worse than silly . . . dishonest, futile, and stupid” were among the high points.

Apparently the board adopted “regulations allowing youngsters to graduate from high school without ever having heard of Charles Darwin or the theory of evolution.” Actually, if that’s all they don’t know, they’ll be better off than most high school graduates in any state I’m familiar with. Wonder how many D.C. high schoolers could identify Darwin or give an accurate precis of his theory?

The Post‘s editors ought to explain why this particular lacuna is so distressing. Would they be equally upset by a ruling that graduates need not “have heard” of Jesus and His theory of redemption?

Someone needs to point out, first, that we do not have a national educational system; second, that if states and localities are going to support public schools in the first place, they should decide what is to be taught; third, that they should have the right to make even foolish decisions.


* * *

Anyway, there’s good news from MIT for creation scientists. Dr. Hyman Hartman, a meteorologist, has suggested that there are some problems with the theory of the origin of life supported by most of his colleagues: that life originated from organic compounds formed by lightning in an ammonia-methane atmosphere.

Hartman believes that the earth’s atmosphere was nitrogen, water, and carbon dioxide (like that of Mars today); if so, lightning wouldn’t do the trick. He thinks the crucial reaction was between carbon dioxide and a substance called montmorillonite, in the presence of ultraviolet light.

What is montmorillonite? Well, it’s a kind of . . . Well, you see, it’s . . . What it is, is clay.


* * *

At the grass roots, American ingenuity still contrives to frustrate Federal meddlers. The non-Communist public continues to pray more or less at will, out of school or in it.

Since most non-Communist Americans seem to be in the South, or moving to it, the school prayer issue necessarily has a regional tinge. All the examples of defiance reported in a recent Wall Street Journal article came from Dixie. In Liberty, Kentucky, for instance, a school forbidden to post the Ten Commandments in classrooms posted instead a page from the Congressional Record—on which were found the Ten Commandments. In North Carolina, a survey estimates that 18 percent of all public schools ignore the Supreme Court’s usurpation and offer daily prayer anyway.

When prayers are outlawed, only outlaws will say prayers. (Didn’t we learn anything from Prohibition?)


* * *

Bootleg prayer seems to be pretty much a Southern phenomenon, but other folks don’t like being pushed around either. In Winnipeg, where a new law requires all restaurants that seat more than 30 people to provide a nonsmoking section, restaurateur Tony Rambone has designated his front veranda as the nonsmoking section—not unaware of the fact that temperatures there are typically well below freezing.

In this country, of course, antismoking laws have been pioneered by San Francisco, home of Sister Boom-Boom and the 1984 Democratic Convention. Leave it to the modern Democratic Party to meet in a city that regards smoking—and little else—as a crime against nature. Mama always said you don’t have to drink and smoke to have a good time, but I don’t think San Francisco is what she had in mind.


* * *

When my wife ventured out to Marin County recently, she came back with a copy of the local newspaper, The Sun. All I know is what I read in the paper: “The Church of the Healing Hands” advertises a Friday night hot tub liturgy. The Institute of Colonic Hygiene announces that it has changed its name to the Inner Beauty Institute. (It offers something called “full body facials.”)

Southern California seems only marginally less weird. Dr. Robert Franklyn, a Los Angeles plastic surgeon who, in 1952, pioneered augmentation mammaplasty (b**b jobs, as they’re known in these parts), claims that “we’re 10 to 15 years ahead of the East Coast.” Dr. Michael Hogan, an NYU plastic doc, agrees. His West Coast colleagues routinely use implants three times larger than the ones common in the East. Where’s Ralph Nader when you need him?

Look. If we can’t secede, can we kick them out?