**Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Written by The Independent Weekly Staff
C'EST BON**
It's premature to proclaim we've dodged a bullet - the bullet being the millions of gallons of crude oil from the BP spill that haven't invaded our marshes and Gulf Coast beaches...
PAS BON
It is an indictment of us as a community that historic Holy Rosary Institute in north Lafayette has gone to seed in the more than decade and a half since it closed its doors. Now the doors are gone, too...
COUILLON
Pardon the mingling of geology metaphors to talk biology, but despite the inexorable, glacial creep of a mountain of evidence proving...
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Written by The Independent Weekly Staff
C'EST BON
It's premature to proclaim we've dodged a bullet - the bullet being the millions of gallons of crude oil from the BP spill that haven't invaded our marshes and Gulf Coast beaches. Time, tides and currents will tell. What isn't premature is joining the collective voice of the Audubon Society, the National Wildlife Federation and others calling on the feds to create a $5 billion BP escrow account as well as direct the millions of dollars BP is liable for in Clean Water Act violations to fund the 3-year-old Louisiana Coastal Area Ecosystem Restoration Plan, a blueprint for coastal salvation drawn up after hurricanes Katrina and Rita ravaged Louisiana. Time is ticking away on our fragile, priceless coast, the spawning ground for a seafood industry that supplies America's restaurants. It's time for Washington to dust off the pledges to restore Louisiana's coast. This is the perfect opportunity to turn the BP crisis into a Louisiana victory.
PAS BON
It is an indictment of us as a community that historic Holy Rosary Institute in north Lafayette has gone to seed in the more than decade and a half since it closed its doors. Now the doors are gone, too. Thieves made off with 40 cypress doors valued at about $1,000 apiece recently, further cementing the status of this increasingly dilapidated campus in north Lafayette as a neglected eyesore. Cops recovered a few of the doors at a second-hand shop, according to KLFY, but the theft is just further proof that despite the fit-and-start efforts of alumni to restore this gem of black Lafayette history, HRI - a National Historic Register property that opened its now-missing doors in 1913 - is headed for the ash heap of local history. Damn shame.
**
COUILLON**
Pardon the mingling of geology metaphors to talk biology, but despite the inexorable, glacial creep of a mountain of evidence proving - time and again - Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, the flat-earthers among us continue to attempt to erode the biology curriculum in Louisiana's public high schools with their unprovable, non-testable, indigestible pseudoscience. The latest example comes to us from Ouachita Parish, where Monroe's News-Star reports that "concerned" pastors and parents plan to review proposed science text books to "make sure the way evolution is taught reflects the most current knowledge." Said a spokesman for the self-annointed righteous brigade: "Darwin didn't have the microelectronic microscope. We are able to see inside of atoms. The DNA is so complex that mathematicians are saying that there is no way that macro evolution occurred. Science is proving creation." Science, of course, is doing nothing of the sort. We would dismiss such inane pontifications as preposterous if they weren't so dangerous.