Last summer, our governor and the GOP's Shining-Star-of-the-Future Bobby Jindal signed into law SB733, the "Louisiana Science Education Law," which of course, isn't about teaching science at all, but alternatives to same.

While the governor and the legislators who supported the law will mouth talking points about how the law "still requires teaching from the textbook" and "doesn't mandate any changes," intelligent design freaks like William Dembski are tickled pink with the legislation, which allows teachers to bring in "supplemental material" to "complement" the science instruction in textbooks, promoting "critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion."

Well, real biologists are having none of it. This week, the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology informed Gov. Jindal that his hijacking of science instruction had led them to cancel their New Orleans convention, depriving our town of the economic impact of 2,000 scientists, instructors and graduate students.

The SICB could not support New Orleans as our meeting venue because of the official position of the state in weakening science education and specifically attacking evolution in science curricula. Utah, in contrast, passed a resolution that states that evolution is central to any science curriculum."