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" Why didn&amp;#039;t I think of this when I was in elementary school? I should have argued that actual answers to math problems were &amp;quot;too complex&amp;quot; to be explained by simple formulas and that I should be free to find my own way to the square root of 144 even if my answer was, &amp;quot;Paul Revere.&amp;quot; The Oklahoma legislature passed the Dare To Be Ignorant Protection Act of 2013 this week, by which students can feel free to give preposterous answers in science class without fear of being graded poorly by the teacher, who very likely is going to start keeping a pint of Virginia Gentleman and a glassine bag of downers in the top drawer of the desk, next to the stapler.&amp;#039; Gus Blackwell, the Republican state representative who introduced the bill, insists that his legislation has nothing to do with religion; it simply encourages scientific exploration. &amp;quot;I proposed this bill because there are teachers and students who may be afraid of going against what they see in their textbooks,&amp;quot; says Blackwell, who previously spent 20 years working for the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma. &amp;quot;A student has the freedom to write a paper that points out that highly complex life may not be explained by chance mutations.&amp;quot;  Gus is having some trouble with that pesky False Witness business from Exodus again, I suspect. I used to think that, sooner or later, this kind of thing would fade from the national scene \u2014 that cooler heads would prevail and realize that raising a generation of 18th Century ignorami was not the way to face the challenges of the 21ts century. But then I realized that making an 18th century theme park of the mind out of the country is exactly what these people are aiming to do. Tell me again how the Republican party is remaking its brand. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a19824/the-latest-in-devolution/?click=news>