I am not sure if you have not been paying attention to the news about science lately, but the creationist have been trying to inject fundamentalist or intelligent design into our school rooms. I have just been done doing a critical report of the intelligent design movement for my communication class and here is what I want to share with you.
Okay, first intelligent design is an claim/argument that certain things are too complex to evolve on its own therefore an intelligent designer must had created the beings/animals fully form in its modern day present characteristics.
Second, biological evolution is decent with modification. The central idea of biological is that all life on Earth shares a common ancestor.
Third, a scientific theory is a large body of information that’s withstood a lot of testing. It probably consists of a number of different hypotheses and many different lives of evidence. One good example of a scientific theory is gravity and helicentricism.
Lets pretend that creationist wants to teach that the sun evolve around the earth because Joshua made the sun stood still. Since the sun stood still in the sky for a day, than that must means that the sun revolve around the earth. If Joshua did made the sun stood still for half a day, than there are two possibilities.
The null hypothesis is that the sun must evolve around the earth in order for Joshua to make it stand still in the sky for half a day. Will, Copernicus and Galileo said that the sun does not move at all. They even went so far to suggest that it is the earth the moves around the sun.
The alternative hypothesis is that if one accept the heliocentric theory than if Joshua did made the sun stood still, it must means that it was the earth that had stop for half a day. If the earth stood still for half a day, than everything on the earth’s surface will be flying at 600 miles an hour.
So the truth will be determined by the students to get the right answer. They would have to decide for themselves if the null hypothesis or the alternative hypothesis is correct. If the sun moves around the earth yet those on the earth surface did not go flying at 600 miles an hour, than an intelligent designer must had existence to keep the people in their place.
Here is what the creationist what to teach our children in high school biology classroom.
This is the first example:
Bernard Kettleworth’s explanation of evolution through natural selection by using different colored moths contributed to their survival based on where they lived. The light moths that live in less polluted areas has a better chance of survival since their wings resembles the light tree trunk therefore making it much more difficult for the birds to spot them during feeding time. The darker moths that lived in more polluted areas have a better chance of survival since their wings resemble the darker tree trunk. Since light wings moths or darker wings moth has a lesser chance of being eaten based on their environment, they have a better chance of passing down their genes of wings pigment to their off spring. As time passed and pollution became a serious problem, the government responds by reducing pollution. The trees with dark trunk became much lighter and the dark winged moths become less frequent because the birds were able to spot those more and contributed to their decline by eating them. Thus evolution through natural selection is correct. Hundreds of scientist had done the same experiment and they had reached the same conclusion.
Now, the creationists said that Kettlewell’s experiment was falsiable or flaw because he glued the moths to the tree trunks. Since the moths was not alive when Kettlewell did his experiment because he glued them to the trunks, than evolution through natural selection could not have happen. An intelligent designer must have made them fully formed just as they are thus disproving evolution because the moths were glued to the trees. Thus we should teach intelligent design alongside evolution or not teach evolution at all. Should we really teach this intelligent design argument to our students while leaving out the evolution through natural selection argument?
Just checkout this picture of the moths and how evolution through natural selection influences their genes being passed to their offspring’s.
You can read the article by a journalist who did a report about a creationist professor. Her name was Caroline Crocker. This is what she actually taught in her class. She wants to have the academic freedom to talk about the illogicality of other scientific experiments without being “force” to explain to the students of how the experiment was done. The journalist asked her if she was going to explain to the students about Kettlewell’s experiment is about and why it was so important and she said no. She just wants to have the academic freedom to teach about creationism and nothing more.
This video would explain the importance of evolution:
However, my biggest concern is this. With the increase of graduate students from fundamentalist universities, like liberty university own by Jerry Falwell (?) and other private universities who grants a degree in science education. Many of the students who do get a decent science degree that teach evolution in its proper context are pursuing jobs in the higher paying private schools or other sciences fields.
This leaves the graduate students with degrees in science education from fundamentalist university free to compete in public schools. This will lead our students to be taught creationism or be ignorant of evolution and what science is. So, what should we do as a society to fix this problem? Should we pay the science teachers who have a proper science degree more or should we ban people who had a science degree from a fundamentalist church.




Teach both they are still both theory and not scientific law. So until science find out exactly what occurred in the beginning we should hear all arguments. Also Intelligent Design explains DNA one of many thing that evolution can not explain.
"Something given has no value"~Robert Heinlein
"Having been poor is no shame, but being ashamed of it, is." Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richards Almanack, 1749
Why teach creationism, after all the Bible is just a book not historical fact.
I am also confused by your comment. Are you saying that intelligent design is a scientific theory or that it is a theological one? If it is a scientific theory, than it must be able to use the scientific method to prove its case. If it is a theological one, than it do not belong in the classroom. Also, if you Google DNA, you would be surprise about how evolution explain DNA.
Now, my question to you is this? How does intelligent design explain DNA by using the scientific method? And why should a book (because the bible is just a book not facts) is taught in a science classroom?
That is why I opposed intelligent design being taught because they cannot put worth a scientific argument. Please explain to me how intelligent design explains DNA by using the scientific method? Better yet, how does intelligent design explain skin color by using the scientific method?
Teach both
Let's see with evolution you can teach
(1) All life shares common ancestors
(2) Natural selection is the mechanism behind adaptive changes
(3) Mutation causes the variation necessary for natural selection to work
(4) Other mechanisms such as genetic drift in small populations, neutral mutation, multilevel selection, sexual selection, and punctuated equilibrium are also important.
(5) Common ancestry explains vestigial structures such as wisdom teeth, embryonic teeth in toothless whales, the presence of pelvic girdles in snakes like boa constrictors, the common bone structures in the arms of humans, the forelegs of dogs, the pectoral fins of turtles, the wings of birds and bats, and the forelimbs of spadefoot toads, and a host of other things.
(6) Common ancestry explains the fossil record showing NUMEROUS well documented transitions including the development of amphibians from lobe-finned fish, horses from hyracotherium, mammals from reptiles, whales from river grazing mammals, and humans from ape-like ancestry, and numerous others.
(7) Natural selection explains the development of antibiotic resistance in bacteria and insecticide resistance in insect pests.
(8) The distribution of populations in the ecosystem.
(9) Predator-prey relationships
And a whole textbook of other things
With Intelligent Design we are to teach what??
(1) Goddidit ... oh sorry, I mean Designerdidit.
they are still both theory and not scientific law.
I REALLY wish creationists would get off this stupid canard. What do you think a scientific theory is? The original post had a pretty good definition ... Let's use that:
Third, a scientific theory is a large body of information that’s withstood a lot of testing. It probably consists of a number of different hypotheses and many different lives of evidence.
The original post used heliocentrism and gravity as examples of scientific theories. Heliocentrism is the THEORY that the sun lies at the center of the solar system and the planets revolve around it. Historically, the opposing theory is terracentrism ... the earth is in the center and the Sun and planets revolve around it. Fairly complicated mathematical formula were derived that allowed accurate predictions of where the planets could be found in the night sky. Also terracentrism explains why it is that we don't feel like the earth is moving. So why don't we teach terracentrism as an alternative to heliocentrism? The reason is that given everything we know, terracentrism is ridiculous. The same goes for intelligent design.
Other examples of scientific theories are:
(1) Germ theory of disease --- perhaps you want the opposing theory ... demons cause disease ... also taught in public school.
(2) Cell theory of organisms --- perhaps you want the opposing theory --- organisms are composed of a syncytial protoplasmic mass infused with a "life force" --- also taught in public schools
(3) Atomic theory of matter -- perhaps you want the opposing theory of matter ... matter is composed of the four basic elements FIRE, WATER, EARTH, and AIR ... also taught in public schools.
After all they are all just theories.
Furthermore, what do you think a scientific law is? There used to be a law called the conservation of energy ... Energy cannot be created or destroyed. Well guess what ... It CAN be created ... In nuclear reactions matter is broken down and energy is created. Not only that energy can be destroyed too ... In particle accelloraters one can produce matter (subatomic particles from energy). So we no longer have that law. We had to change it. It is now the law of conservation of mass/energy. The total amount of mass/energy in the universe is constant mass/energy cannot be created or destroyed. And even there ... it might not be true. Let's see what we find out from studies of dark matter and dark energy.
There is no clear distinction between a law and a theory. For instance, we can talk about "the LAW of gravity", or we can talk about "Einstein's general THEORY of relativity", but the fact of the matter is that in modern physics, they are one and the same.
The important part of the definition of scientific theory is "...that’s withstood a lot of testing". Tell me, oh wise one ... what testing has intelligent design withstood?
So until science find out exactly what occurred in the beginning we should hear all arguments.
So you think that we should not only teach evolution and intelligent design, we should also teach that life started from the God Tiamat being split into the earth and living things on it? We should teach that the earth rests on an infinite series of turtles? We should teach that storks bring babies to their parents? How about the cabbage patch?
Science HAS discovered a lot about the beginnings ... of the universe, the solar system, the earth, and the life on it. None of what we discovered necessitates a designer. In fact in my opinion ALL of what we have discovered argues against it. So why should we teach that for which there is no evidence while evoluton ... an area of BIOLOGY that does not deal with the origin of the universe, solar system, earth, or even the origin of life (it deals with the diversification of life) ... has abundant supporting evidence and explains all natural phenomena within its realm much better than any other theory ... especially when that theory has absolutely NO supporting evidence.
Also Intelligent Design explains DNA one of many thing that evolution can not explain.
And how does intelligent design explain DNA? Goddidit ?? OOPS ... sorry -- Designerdidit?? For your information from a scientific standpoint that is no different than saying ... Magicdidit!! For it to be an explanation it would require a mechanism by which God ... er, the designer ... did it. Do you have that? I didn't think so.
And who says that origin of life research (the naturalistic field that actually deals with these questions instead of evolution) cannot explain DNA. DNA stands for DEOXYribo-nucleic acid. Nucleic acids are composed of an organic base, a sugar, and inorganic phosphate molecules. The sugar in DNA is DEOXYRIBOSE. That is RIBOSE without an OH group attached to the 3rd carbon atom. There is another nucleic acid present in organisms. That is RNA ... RIBO-nucleic acid. Its sugar is Ribose.
DNA is almost certainly derived from RNA. We even know the evolutionary pressures that drove the change.
RNA is a molecule that can carry genetic information and it can act like an enzyme driving chemical reactions. The chemical reaction it is best able to drive is the formation of more nucleic acid polymers (like DNA and RNA). Thus, RNA was almost certainly the genetic material before DNA came into being.
Having an OH group coming off of the third carbon atom in Ribose, however, does allow phosphates to undergo an dehydration reaction that can cause a severe kink in the nucleic acid change. That reaction does not occur all the time but it occurs enough such that it would be a problem for long lived organisms. By doing a fairly simple modification and removing that OH group that type of mutation is prevented. What you get, of course, when you remove that OH group is DEOXYribose. Indeed the biochemical pathway that we use to make deoxyribose produces ribose first. Thus, DNA is a better storage form of genetic information than is RNA.
So there IS an explanation for DNA. It is not complete, we don't yet have a convincing explanation of how the component parts of nucleic acids (the organic base, the sugar, and inorganic phosphate group) came together originally. Perhaps there was a genetic material before RNA. We have ideas, but we don't know.
But to say that because we don't know that step, there must have been a magical sky-daddy to put it all together for us, is poor reasoning and NOT science. It would be a HORRIBLE HORRIBLE HORRIBLE thing to do to force SCIENCE classes to say that such crap is an acceptable scientific alternative.
DB
===
If a million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing. - Anatole France
Thank you DB I have not felt like a beaten child in a long time. I realized that I can not type sarcasm at all. To make more of a point lets look at your beloved evolution that you cling to like most Christians cling to their Bibles. If tomorrow some group of people came out with a scientific explanation that was absolutely nothing like evolution would you embraces it or attack it. Lets get to you statement.
(1) All life shares common ancestors
(2) Natural selection is the mechanism behind adaptive changes
(3) Mutation causes the variation necessary for natural selection to work
(4) Other mechanisms such as genetic drift in small populations, neutral mutation, multilevel selection, sexual selection, and punctuated equilibrium are also important.
(5) Common ancestry explains vestigial structures such as wisdom teeth, embryonic teeth in toothless whales, the presence of pelvic girdles in snakes like boa constrictors, the common bone structures in the arms of humans, the forelegs of dogs, the pectoral fins of turtles, the wings of birds and bats, and the forelimbs of spadefoot toads, and a host of other things.
(6) Common ancestry explains the fossil record showing NUMEROUS well documented transitions including the development of amphibians from lobe-finned fish, horses from hyracotherium, mammals from reptiles, whales from river grazing mammals, and humans from ape-like ancestry, and numerous others.
(7) Natural selection explains the development of antibiotic resistance in bacteria and insecticide resistance in insect pests.
(8) The distribution of populations in the ecosystem.
(9) Predator-prey relationships
Interesting (1) that sounds like something I have heard before “Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of thine hands” Hebrews 1:10. But I am getting off the topic.
(6) I have a question teacher. If the fossil recorders show the transitions that are occurred then why is the species that mutated no longer around? I ask because if they evolved into the next species letting the previous specie to die out then how can we get multiple life forms to form from one common ancestor at the beginning? It seems to me that when a species evolves into the next stage the previous species dies out.
Also, more on (6), Horses that is funny you evolutionist have no real idea on this one. Let take a statements from a scientist if you do not mind (actually I do not care if you do)
So your own have turned on you. Now if my understanding is correct that means that many evolutionists in many scenarios are going off of faith I mean logic and not scientific fact. Gasps can you all be a blind as the creationist please let it be true (note the sarcasm).
Now let’s tackle your other part of (6) you stated that mammals came from reptiles. Where are the fossil records showing that transition? Oh that is right it is during a time period that you have found only a skull from. I should I have all the fun lets let one of you fellow comrades speak on this subject.
I think that says all that I needed. I would like to go on more and trust me I could but currently I have no time. I just wanted to inform you of this much. I hope to have more time in the future in order to truly debate you. Thank you for taking the time to read what I had to say.
"Something given has no value"~Robert Heinlein
"Having been poor is no shame, but being ashamed of it, is." Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richards Almanack, 1749
It earns you ridicule because it shows that you don't have a clue about what you so arrogantly write about.
Thank you DB I have not felt like a beaten child in a long time.
This is an abused child:
He has been treated poorly enough to complain about. All you received was a post showing where you were wrong. So quit acting like you were the kid in the picture.
I realized that I can not type sarcasm at all. To make more of a point lets look at your beloved evolution that you cling to like most Christians cling to their Bibles.
I know a lot of Christians who cling to their bibles. It has not been my experience that they do so based on the evidence.
If tomorrow some group of people came out with a scientific explanation that was absolutely nothing like evolution would you embraces it or attack it.
That depends upon the evidence behind it, doesn't it? But since modern evolutionary theory is supported by 150 years of evidence, I doubt that anybody is going to come out with an evidence-based theory that is going to overturn it tomorrow.
Lets get to you statement.
(1) All life shares common ancestors
(2) Natural selection is the mechanism behind adaptive changes
(3) Mutation causes the variation necessary for natural selection to work
(4) Other mechanisms such as genetic drift in small populations, neutral mutation, multilevel selection, sexual selection, and punctuated equilibrium are also important.
(5) Common ancestry explains vestigial structures such as wisdom teeth, embryonic teeth in toothless whales, the presence of pelvic girdles in snakes like boa constrictors, the common bone structures in the arms of humans, the forelegs of dogs, the pectoral fins of turtles, the wings of birds and bats, and the forelimbs of spadefoot toads, and a host of other things.
(6) Common ancestry explains the fossil record showing NUMEROUS well documented transitions including the development of amphibians from lobe-finned fish, horses from hyracotherium, mammals from reptiles, whales from river grazing mammals, and humans from ape-like ancestry, and numerous others.
(7) Natural selection explains the development of antibiotic resistance in bacteria and insecticide resistance in insect pests.
(8) The distribution of populations in the ecosystem.
(9) Predator-prey relationships
Even better yet ... let's put that statement in some context. YOU said that we should teach both intelligent design and evolutionary in science class. I listed those things as tenants of modern evolutionary theory (and included the statement: "And a whole textbook of other things"). I asked you what we could teach from an Intelligent Design Creationism point of view other than "Goddidit" or "Designerdidit". I cannot help but notice that you don't answer that question at all. Why is that? Could it be that Intelligent Design Creationism doesn't say anything other than that? ... Yeah, I thought so.
Interesting (1) that sounds like something I have heard before “Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of thine hands” Hebrews 1:10. But I am getting off the topic.
So let me get this straight ... TO YOU saying that all life shared a common ancestry is the same thing as saying that "Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of thine hands”.
Er ... you need to have your comprehension checked.
(6) I have a question teacher. If the fossil recorders show the transitions that are occurred then why is the species that mutated no longer around? I ask because if they evolved into the next species letting the previous specie to die out then how can we get multiple life forms to form from one common ancestor at the beginning? It seems to me that when a species evolves into the next stage the previous species dies out.
What do you think evolution says? The second a beneficial mutation occurs every other member of that species suddenly and miraculously dies? Of course that is not the case.
Speciation occurs because one population of a species becomes reproductively isolated from other populations. In evolutionary science the factor that provides this reproductive isolation is called the ISOLATING MECHANISM. There are several well-known candidates in speciation. They include:
(1) Geographical isolation -- this is seen in the multitude of species found on islands. They are often very similar to other species in nearby islands (or continents if the island is close to that continent) but are distinct enough to warrant classification as a separate species.
(2) Behavioral isolation -- The best documented account of this concerns insects that mate and lay their eggs only on certain plants. It is also known to occur when birds have altered their mating calls.
(3) Anatomical isolation -- In this case there is an anatomical mutation that makes it such that fertilization by members of the parent population is much less likely. This has been documented in dragonflies.
(4) Genetic isolation -- This occurs when there is a mutation that makes successful pairing of chromosomes much less likely. This has been documented in plant evolution. Plants seem to be able to speciate quite readily by doubling their chromosome number.
Their are probably other isolating mechanisms that I am forgetting as well. But in all cases the parent species is still intact. It is easy for other populations to become isolated and speciate in different ways. Thus there is no problem in seeing how several species can be produced from a single species. In fact, Google Empidonax Flycatchers. Those are a group of species of birds that are very hard for even the most experienced birders to identify. They have obviously diverged from a single ancestoral species but there is at least 7 different species of the Empidonax flycatchers extant today.
Also, more on (6), Horses that is funny you evolutionist have no real idea on this one. Let take a statements from a scientist if you do not mind (actually I do not care if you do)
Actually I DO MIND. This is a notorious and dishonest technique used by creationists. As you did with me above ... taking a quote out of context you misrepresent the conversation. Let's look at that quote a little more. I used it to say what evolutionary science has determined beyond reasonable doubt. That was the purpose of the statement. I left unsaid the evidence that evolutionary science has discovered that makes those conclusions beyond reasonable doubt. The reason I did that was simple. I didn't want to write a textbook for you. The rest of the purpose was to demonstrate that Intelligent Design Creationism has NOTHING of comparison that it can lay claim to. But the way you quoted me, you make it appear as though those things are a dogmatic part of evolutionary theory. And you ignore the challenge to come up with anything that Intelligent Design Creationism can actually teach as part of its own theory. You have misrepresented the conversation. And done so deliberately.
Quotemining is a sign of lack of integrity. It is a sign that either you have deliberately misrepresented a person's views or that you don't know what you are talking about and have found something that you don't understand that supports your point and you present it as authoratative. I believe the second option above is what you are doing. But again you are misrepresenting.
(1) Gordon R. Taylor is a person I had never heard of. Since I feel like I have a pretty good grasp of the literature in modern evolutionary theory and a pretty good grasp of the history of its development, I suspected that he was NOT a scientist. Doing a simple google search showed that to be the case .
(2) It turns out that the book you quote from was published in 1983/4 which was evidently 3 or 4 years after Mr. Taylor's death. So it is not a contemporary source.
(3) You do not even consider the evidence from an Intelligent Design Creationism point of view. How does it explain it?
Now with that in mind, let's look at your quote from Mr. Taylor.
The first thing I note is the ellipses (the ...). That means something was left out, but what. If I were willing to grant you integrity, then I would be inclined to think that whatever it was did not affect the meaning of your quote. However, I am fairly certain that you are not quoting Mr. Taylor, but instead are quoting this site which is quoting Mr. Taylor, and I know that THAT site run by Turkish Creationist Adnan Oktar (aka Harun Yahya) has no integrity what-so-ever.
So I do not grant you your source. That is, I do not accept that Mr. Taylor's quote necessarily means what you imply it does. BUT IF IT DOES, then Mr. Taylor doesn't know what he is talking about. Let's look at some of the evidence (as opposed to some idiot's claim of what the evidence is), shall we?
This is a diagram that shows modern horse evolution. Each vertical line represents a specific species of fossilized intermediate. The position and the length of the lines represent the strata that such fossils have been found. Also on that chart is a designation of the type of plant-eating (based on inference from teeth shape) that the species performed. Those are all EXCELLENT intermediate fossils. The ONLY reasonable way to interpret that data is that horses did evolve and diversify.
Here are pictures of individual fossilized animal skeletons:
(1) Miohippus

(2) Parahippus

(3) Merychippus

(4) Equus (modern horse)

So tell us, how does Intelligent Design Creationism interpret that data? I doubt if you'll answer that. First, Intelligent Design Creationists DON'T answer that type of question, and (2) you have already stated that you don't care about your quotemining.
So your own have turned on you. Now if my understanding is correct that means that many evolutionists in many scenarios are going off of faith I mean logic and not scientific fact. Gasps can you all be a blind as the creationist please let it be true (note the sarcasm).
No one's "turned on" anyone. The evidence is what it is, and it overwhelmingly points to modern evolutionary theory. So your understanding is NOT correct.
Now let’s tackle your other part of (6) you stated that mammals came from reptiles. Where are the fossil records showing that transition? Oh that is right it is during a time period that you have found only a skull from. I should I have all the fun lets let one of you fellow comrades speak on this subject.
Er ... no.
That is a picture of many skulls.
This shows lower jaws, it also shows the gradual evolution of mammalian inner ear bones from reptilian intermediates.
This shows complete fossil skeletons. The figure labelled A is a reptile. The one labelled C is a mammal. The one labelled B has features of both and is hard to classify as one or the other.
This shows the relationship of fossil species over evolutionary time as species became more and more mammalian-like.
How would Intelligent Design Creationism explain this? That's right ... they wouldn't.
It seems that you are still relying on Adnan Oktar (aka Harun Yahya) for your quotemines.
George Gaylord Simpson was one of the most important evolutionists of his era. He along with Theodosius Dobzhansky, Ledyard Stebbins, Ernst Mayr, R.A. Fischer, J.B.S. Haldane, and others were instrumental in developing the neo-Darwinian synthesis, which united evolutionary theory with Mendelian genetics. However, Simpson died in 1984. The quote you are giving comes from his TEMPO AND MODE OF EVOLUTION (or at least it sounds like it to me) and that was written in 1951. So it may surprise you a little bit to know that things have changed since then. We have a bit better data to work with as you should be able to guess from the actual data presented above.
Again your quotemining is being dishonest. You try to present modern evolutionary theory as being stumped by something that it has worked out very well. In fact, your quotemine SHOULD tell a reasonable person how strong evolutionary theor is. At the time that Simpson wrote the above paragraph (almost 60 years ago) there was no distinguishable reptilian-to-mammalian intermediate. But evolutionary theory PREDICTED there must be some. Since then we have found quite a few ... just as modern evolutionary theory PREDICTED. That is strong support for it.
How does Intelligent Design Creationism deal with such verified predictions? ... That's right ... it doesn't.
I think that says all that I needed. I would like to go on more and trust me I could but currently I have no time. I just wanted to inform you of this much. I hope to have more time in the future in order to truly debate you. Thank you for taking the time to read what I had to say.
You should try reading what is really said instead of relying on such dishonest sources. They have put out enough lies that I am quite sure you could have gone on and on. But all you would have done is repeat lies. The evidence point more to the truth than your sources do. Try to learn that instead.
DB
==
If a million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing. - Anatole France
I wish to make one statement to you if you had actually taken the time to read my first line a little closer.
Thank you DB I have not felt like a beaten child in a long time
It is easy to miss when all you can see is blood. I lived in a household that was full of verbal abuse. I was yelled at and made to feel small and worthless everyday. I got over it. You first reply to me brought back some old memories. I thank you for remind me that there were and are kids in worse living conditions then me that is one of my ways of getting over it. When I get a chance I will respond to the rest of your reply. Have a great day.
"Something given has no value"~Robert Heinlein
"Having been poor is no shame, but being ashamed of it, is." Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richards Almanack, 1749