Editor's note: Michael Ackley's columns may include satire and parody based on current events, and thus mix fact with fiction. He assumes informed readers will be able to tell which is which.
Ackley will be on vacation for two weeks. His next column is scheduled to be posted Sept. 4.
Faith is a wonderful and a terrible thing, and you needn't look to the Middle East for proof. Evidence of a bemusing variety has been on display in a California seat of learning and science.
That would be the city of Davis – Yolo County home of a prestigious University of California campus. It is in the heart of the Golden State's great Central Valley, which in turn is the heart of West Nile virus country.
The county's creeks, sloughs, rice fields and irrigation ditches produce an annual bumper crop of mosquitoes, some of which become carriers of West Nile disease. And, as some human infections have turned up there this summer, vector control officials have instituted a program of aerial spraying to kill the insects.
Many Davis residents are upset, but not because people have taken ill. Remember, the city is the site of a University of California campus. While this makes Davis a center of learning and science (particularly the agricultural sciences), it also has its share of technophobic, back-to-nature Luddites. Thus it has been the scene of protests against the spraying, primarily because the insecticide might make somebody sick.
There also was concern on the part of boutique farmers that they might not be able to label their products ''organic.'' Some irony is to be found in the fact that a town that champions ''the old ways'' so vigorously supports a university that has pioneered scientifically augmented crop production.
But the greater irony lies in the fear-of-illness argument. For Davis also has been a leader in the drive for stem-cell research. In fact, the campus aligned itself with a $3 billion public bond issue for such research (Prop. 71, passed in 2004) and backed headquartering the measure's "California Institute for Regenerative Medicine" in nearby Sacramento.
This is because stem-cell research might lead to cures for Parkinson's Disease, diabetes and other ailments. While no cures have been discovered, there have been no protests against the cannibalistic aspects of the research, apparently because people who are sick might benefit.
On the other hand, there are protests against insecticide spraying, even though the process has been employed many times in the past in many communities, and nobody has taken ill because of it. There have been protests despict the fact that the effects of West Nile virus are well-known, ranging from zero symptoms to flu-like fever and aches, to paralysis and even death. Spraying is expected to wipe out 70 percent of the area's mosquitos, vastly reducing the chance of West Nile infection.
Perhaps you can explain how a town that is a center of learning and science can have so much faith in a technology that might work, and so little faith in a proven technology.
One for the books
Howard Bashford, publicist/lobbyist for Whodat Books, was looking downcast last week.
''Why so glum?'' we asked.
''It looks like we won't be rewriting California textbooks after all,'' he said.
Bashford explained that State Senate Bill 1437 had been amended, removing a section that commanded: ''Instruction in social sciences shall include ... an age-appropriate study of the role and contributions of people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender, to the economic, political and social development of California and the United States of America, with particular emphasis on portraying the role of these groups in contemporary society.''
''We were really optimistic,'' Bashford said, ''because the thing had passed the Senate, and we already were drafting new language for our public school textbooks. Then Gov. Schwarzenegger let it be known he would veto the bill, the author, Sen. Sheila Kuehl caved, and they took the requirement out.''
''But why would you want to rewrite perfectly good texts?'' we asked. ''Wouldn't that be a lot of work?''
He looked as though we had posed a truly stupid question.
''Work!'' he said. ''Shoot no. It wouldn't take much imagination to do what Kuehl wanted, and more importantly, it would mean we would be selling tons of new books because school districts would have to replace the old texts. SB 1437 would have been a publishers' gold mine.''
Bashford scowled for a moment but brightened when we asked how the new texts would have read.
''Let me give you some examples,'' he said. ''Here's one from 'Science for Semi-Literates,' designed for California's gifted students: 'William Little-Bigger developed the process for deodorizing Limburger cheese, giving it the same character and texture as processed American slices. He was a foot fetishist who collected more used women's shoes than Imelda Marcos.'
''And from 'Sort of an Introduction to American History' we have things like, ''George Washington, a heterosexual with gay latency, joined with fellow Virginian Thomas Jefferson, a probable miscegenator, in helping mold the new nation.'
''A new text, 'California, Land of Diverse Diversity,' was going to have passages like this, 'Although the California bandit known as Black Bart robbed stage coaches, he dressed well, wrote verse and lived in San Francisco, indicating he probably was gay.'''
''What do you think?'' Bashford asked.
We allowed that the publisher seemed to have gone overboard.
''Maybe,'' he said. ''Anyway, it's a moot point. The bill now just says textbooks shouldn't discriminate against the lesbians, gays, bixsexuals and transgenders, which we weren't doing anyway. I guess we'll just have to be patient.''
''What do you mean?'' we asked.
''Eventually, some social engineering group will get the Legislature to tinker with how we teach children,'' he said. ''We'll be in fat city – probably sooner than later. Kuehl's bill is toast, but this is still California, and it's a Golden State for textbook publishers.''
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