Thursday, December 12, 2013

In Ms. Ali's post she talks about the current and future effects of the drought that Texas is currently going through. She also touches on the possible ways in which the state of Texas could alleviate the effects of the drought . Overall I agree with Ms. Ali, but I also believe there are certain things she could have done to make her argument stronger.
Her spelling and grammar errors distracted me somewhat from the point of her post. If you want your opinion to be taken seriously, care should be taken to proper grammar and spelling.
When she spoke of the domino effect of the drought, it came across as overly dramatic. Though those things could potentially happen, it wasn't necessary. It would of helped her point to approach it more logically and to propose actions that could help with the issues we are facing now instead of ragging on the worst case scenario.
I did think her focus on resolutions near the end of her post was a good place to end on. Rather then just ranting about the drought issue, she presented feasible ways in which we as Texas residents can help preserve the water that we have. It's important to  take an pro-active stance on dealing with natural resource issues.

Wednesday, December 4, 2013


For decades the Texas Board of Education has been scrutinizing our public school's teaching materials. Every time the science textbooks come up for review, it's always the same; they debate whether or not evolution should be taught. Evolution is an established factual phenomena, that is a necessary factor in understanding the natural world and should be taught in schools. Through constant study evolution has been proven time and time again. But because it conflicts with religious beliefs, they decide to put the quality of Texas children's education at risk in order to bring the lessons in line with some of the board members biblical literalist beliefs. Recently, the board met to give final approval to new science and math textbooks. This brought on a prolonged debate over Pearson Education Publishing’s coverage of evolution in their biology textbook. The Board then proceeded to pinpoint “factual errors”, which Pearson representatives was quick to refute. When is the Texas Board of Education going to enter the 21st century and stop wasting tax payers’ time and money by debating a process that is accepted by 99.9% of the scientific community? Texas children need a strong base in science education in order to succeed in the modern world. Texas can’t afford to let some narrow minded, anti-science individuals dictate what is to be taught in science classes.  Experts in the various fields should determine what should be included in Texas curriculum.