Yes of course you do because you all spend a disgraceful amount of time watching their adventures on the 'telly'. Every other blasted programme seems to feature American lawyers. It all started years ago, I suppose, when the strong-jawed, stiff-upper-lipped and tremendously dignified Gregory Peck played the noble Atticus Finch and defended the black kid against a rape charge in To Kill A Mockingbird. Since then, Hollywood has regularly placed lawyers on heroic pedestals and yet, oddly enough, this has gone hand-in-hand with a mounting detestation of the whole trouble-making bunch of them amongst the American population. If I had a lawyer's fee for every anti-lawyer joke I have ever seen or heard I would be worth suing!
However, on this occasion I intend to leap to their defence. Bless their silk socks, they'll do anything for money, including pleading cases on behalf of one of the most despised minorities in America - no, no, not paedophiles or Tea Party activists - I mean those who dare to question Darwinism (the unspeakable swine!), and even worse, those who by doing so upset 'Archbishop' Dawkins of 'The Holy Church of Genes & Memes'.
According to Evolution News, the California Science Center (CSC) has just been forced to cough up $110,000 for cancelling a booked film show called Darwin's Dilemma. Apparently the film was sympathetic to Intelligent Design (ID), an idea which causes 'Archbishop' Dawkins's eyeballs to swivel in opposite directions simultaneously. Anyway, the CSC, along with the Smithsonian Institution, and LA County Museum of Natural History, were all hauled in front of 'dee judge' for infringing the First Amendment Rights of the American Freedom Association.
Next in the dock, according to the Times Higher Education, was the magazine Applied Mathematics Letters which had begun by accepting a reviewed paper from Granville Sewell, professor of mathematics at the University of Texas El Paso, which posed criticisms of the awesome 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, but then withdrew it when the author's sympathies to ID were brought to their attention. Sewell reached for his trusty lawyers and, lo, he won an apology and $10,000.
Finally, and almost unbelievably, I turn to The Guardian of last February which covers the story of:
Dr Martin Gaskell [who] applied for the position of director at the new MacAdam student observatory at the University of Kentucky. He stood "breathtakingly above the other applicants in background and experience" according to the chairman of the selection panel, but he did not get the job.
Gaskell, an Englishman by birth, is a devout Christian and also expresses doubts concerning Darwinism. According to 'The Graun', his doubts are more nuanced than your average Bible-thumper which is hardly surprising in a man whose expertise lies in cosmological physics, in general, and massive black holes, in particular. He was applying for the job of director of the University's observatory but his 'politically incorrect' views on biology were held against him and he was passed over. After years of delay the university finally caved in and settled out of court for $125,000.
God Bless America - and American lawyers!
Incidentally, the lawyers concerned were, in order:
William J. Becker Jr., of the Becker Law Firm
Pete Lepiscopo, of Lepiscopo & Morrow
Francis J. Manion, American Center for Law & Justice
So, let's hear it for American lawyers, altogether now - hip-hip-hip . . . . . . oh come on, you can do better than that . . .
It would be rather interesting to seee a criticism of the Second Law that had intellectual merit. I wouldn't mind if the author thought himself to be Napolean, or were a Nazi or even a Guardian-reader. As for the observatory job - I tend to the suspicion that cosmology is just astrology with a more sciencey vocabulary, so worrying about a chap's prejudices about biology would be as silly as worrying about his taste in ties.
Posted by: dearieme | Thursday, 01 September 2011 at 02:59
I think anything that cast a merited doubt on the 2nd Law would be more than interesting. For example, it might mean that I could just stop 'injecting energy' into my garden and it would remain perfect all year! And my sock drawer would always be impeccably tidy!
Fat chance!
Posted by: David Duff | Thursday, 01 September 2011 at 09:19
"...eyeballs to swivel in opposite directions simultaneously..."
Did he, by any chance, follow that by shouting "We are all guilty", as his audience scrambled desperately for the exits?
Posted by: Andrew Duffin | Thursday, 01 September 2011 at 12:51
Ah, Andrew, you heard that one, too, did you?!
Posted by: David Duff | Thursday, 01 September 2011 at 17:16