This is good fun – although a few of the answers will give people like Philip Blond fits. But that’s good, that will give him something to talk about next time he’s on the radio. No doubt producers are calling him all the time, now that he’s an expert on What’s Wrong With Science.

Anyway. Lots of good ones.

I would teach the world the importance of staying actively intellectually engaged throughout our lives, especially as we become elderly. There are good data now that point to the fact that continuing to challenge yourself late in life — taking up a new hobby, learning to play a musical instrument, doing crossword puzzles, etc — actually helps to maintain cognitive function,

Here’s a very useful collection for you – links to news coverage of Florida State Representative Dennis Baxley’s proposed ‘Academic Freedom Bill of Rights.’ People like Baxley are a big help, you know? Any time I listen to Start the Week or Saturday Review and get a little cross or downcast or highstrung about the way everyone simply takes it for granted that all Americans are both stupid and insane – well all I have to do is think of people like Rep. Baxley and I realize why UK radio chatters might think that.

The Alligator gets in some good jabs.

At the Capitol, Baxley opened the council meeting by saying that personal criticism he received about the bill was

I know I shouldn’t laugh. But oh dear, it is funny. They must have worked up such a sweat trying to think up a good theoretical explanation – and all for nothing.

Literary rediscoveries form a routine part of cultural life. They have a certain protocol. A given author has been “unfairly neglected.” The reissue of a book is “long overdue.” The rescue from oblivion is, in effect, the righting of a wrong. The most striking thing about the case of Emma Dunham Kelley-Hawkins is that, for once, the process is running in the opposite direction. Now that it’s clear the author was not African-American, her novels seem destined for something for which we lack a familiar language —

He’s right you know, Krugman is.

But studies that find registered Republicans in the minority at elite universities show that Republicans are almost as rare in hard sciences like physics and in engineering departments as in softer fields. Why?…In the 1970’s, even Democrats like Daniel Patrick Moynihan conceded that the Republican Party was the “party of ideas.” Today, even Republicans like Representative Chris Shays concede that it has become the “party of theocracy.”…Consider the statements of Dennis Baxley, a Florida legislator who has sponsored a bill that – like similar bills introduced in almost a dozen states – would give students who think that their conservative views aren’t respected the right to sue their professors…His prime example of academic