(Tier 1) Adventures in ACE XXV: The Grass Ain’t Greener

After getting almost every single detail of a spy plane wrong, plus screwing up science facts at almost every turn, the ACE writers continue our atmospheric miseducation. As per usual, the fail is in the details. They get the temperature of the thermosphere wrong by almost 1000°F. They also fail to mention that, due to the gas molecules being so sparse, you’d actually feel cold even in the 3,600+°F temperatures: there simply isn’t a great enough density of air to transfer that heat to our skin.

Leave it to ACE to miss the really fascinating facts.

They have a surprisingly good explanation of what ions are and how they’re formed. But any pleasure we may take in that is quickly ruined by the horribly unfunny comic strip on the following page:

Image is a comic strip. The first panel shows a boy in a green long-sleeve shirt, adjusting his round-rimmed glasses, as he says to a boy in a yellow shirt, "Pudge, do you know what an aurora is?" The next panel shows Pudge saying, "...au·rō'ra... an Italian lion?" as he imagines a lion saying "a·roar·a". The final panel shows the boy in green rolling his eyes, and saying to Pudge, who is standing in the background, "Oh, Pudge! An aurora is a colorfully lighted night sky."
Cartoon from ACE PACE 1088, page 18.

Racer says the weatherman he was listening to on the radio “said that the aurora borealis, the northern lights, were particularly brilliant at night this week.” Either the ACE people have never heard children talking, or Racer has been programmed to be a particularly tedious know-it-all. Kids don’t generally talk like that. It’s annoying, but not half so annoying as Reginald cutting in just as Bill finishes explaining to a clueless Sandy why they can’t see the aurora from where they’re at. He’s just dying for them to know what a pious prick he is. Continue reading “(Tier 1) Adventures in ACE XXV: The Grass Ain’t Greener”

(Tier 1) Adventures in ACE XXV: The Grass Ain’t Greener
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(Repost) Adventures in ACE VI: Vacuous About Volcanoes

People, it took me days to fact-check the 31 (thirty-one) pages of Science PACE 1086. I’m boggled. I have no idea how they manage to get so much wrong. It doesn’t even make sense – I mean, there are several creationist canards, and I know why those are there, but they fail at facts that even Answers in Genesis gets right. It’s like they got their information about rocks from a source translated from French, which was translated from Tagalog, which was translated from a paper written in Pig Latin by someone who’d never seen a rock in their life, but heard something about them once.

Take their inability to get famous volcanoes right. Not to mention their myths about medicine. Continue reading “(Repost) Adventures in ACE VI: Vacuous About Volcanoes”

(Repost) Adventures in ACE VI: Vacuous About Volcanoes

(Repost) Adventures in Christianist Earth Science Education IIIa: In Which A Certain Atmosphere is Created

After the absurdities of ACE and the travesty that is Bob Jones University’s idea of the earth sciences, it is almost with relief that I turn back to A Beka’s Science of the Physical Creation. Oh, granted, it is also full of creationist crap – but there were some useful, even educational, bits, and I hope to find more.

Alas, my hopes are dealt a blow by the introduction to Unit I: Meteorology and Oceanography. Beneath the facing photo of sailboats, Psalm 115:16 sez God gave humans the earth, and the first sentence of the chapter is, “God created the earth’s atmosphere…”

Let us pause here to observe just how such a statement can send you haring off in the wrong direction. Continue reading “(Repost) Adventures in Christianist Earth Science Education IIIa: In Which A Certain Atmosphere is Created”

(Repost) Adventures in Christianist Earth Science Education IIIa: In Which A Certain Atmosphere is Created

(Tier 1) Adventures in ACE XXIV: Cloudy With a 100% Chance of Fail

Welcome back to ACE Science PACE 1088! Last time, we saw the lengths God would go to in order to ruin a hot air balloon ride. Now we’re on to Section Two, where getting even the simplest facts right is completely beyond the ACE writers’ ability.

We start with vocabulary and cartoons! Oh, joy! Science words for this section include frisbee, hedge, and mare. You know, even if you grant some leeway and say that vocab in a science course can include other unfamiliar words, this is still ridiculous. These are the equivalent of eighth graders. They already know what a fucking frisbee is. And if ACE-educated students aren’t allowed to know what frisbees are until puberty, I think it’s time for the adults to sit down and think about where they went completely off the rails.

Now comes the cartoon, which, in the tradition of the other PACEs in this series so far, has bugger-all to do with anything. It’s just a way for the ACE people to showcase their remarkable lack of a sense of humor.

Image shows a boy and a girl, both African-American, standing and talking against an orange background. The girl is giving the boy some serious side-eye in the first panel. The boy is holding a blue-covered book, and is saying, "Miriam, this book says the former rulers of Russia were called Tsars and their wives were called Tsarinas. I wonder what the Tsar's children were called?" The next panel shows Miriam and the boy have switched places. Miriam is saying, "I don't know, J. Michael, maybe Tsardines?"
Cartoon from the beginning of Section Two of ACE PACE 1088.

Whelp. At least they’re people of color. Don’t get too excited, though, cuz we’re spending the rest of the section with the white people.

A bunch of the fine upstanding white Christian families are having a Founder’s Day* picnic. Racer is, like, so good at Frisbee that he can make it “float through the air like the clouds in the sky.” This strained simile leads the boys to talk about clouds. ACE dialogue is uniformly terrible, but this is even worse than usual. The boys sound like pompous robots reciting pre-programmed prose. And they use the word “distinguish” three times in three sentences. Gah.

They also get the simplest fucking facts wrong. Continue reading “(Tier 1) Adventures in ACE XXIV: Cloudy With a 100% Chance of Fail”

(Tier 1) Adventures in ACE XXIV: Cloudy With a 100% Chance of Fail

(Repost) Adventures in ACE V: Senseless About St. Helens

We have arrived at the section of ACE Science PACE 1086 wherein someone who knows bugger-all about rocks will proceed to explain rock types. There is so much wrong we’ll have to split it into groups, and even then, I’m not sure the posts will be short enough to prevent acute creationist crap poisoning. I do know I just spent the better part of five hours dealing with just the errors in the opening paragraphs.

I recommend padding all hard surfaces within a 12-block radius before we begin.

Mr. Wheeler, the ocean floor driller, is the narrator. It is apparent the instant he opens his mouth that the writer is not competent to write from the POV of a supposed expert, even a creationist one. “Igneous rock,” he pontificates, “is formed by heat.”

Um.

Actually.

Continue reading “(Repost) Adventures in ACE V: Senseless About St. Helens”

(Repost) Adventures in ACE V: Senseless About St. Helens

(Repost) Adventures in ACE IV: When Creationists Drill the Ocean

I’m assured by Jonny that Science PACE 1086 is something special in the bizarreness department. I can see this is true by all the crosses on the cover. The impression given is that they’re so threatened by the implications of a man standing on the moon that they have to spray the scene with god symbols, sort of like a dog dehydrating itself in order to advise other dogs that this is definitely its territory. So there!

The Table of Contents doesn’t give much away. We’re going to learn about “The Foundations of the World,” which seem to be the basics of geology: the crust-mantle-core stuff, rock types, and topography. One wonders how they’re going to spray god everywhere. I’m confident they’ll find a way.

We’re also going to learn to be dependable, and our verse is I Timothy 6:20: Continue reading “(Repost) Adventures in ACE IV: When Creationists Drill the Ocean”

(Repost) Adventures in ACE IV: When Creationists Drill the Ocean

(Tier 1) Adventures in ACE XXIII: An Atmosphere of Fail

The ballooning McMercys have just had their hot air balloon adventure cut short by God, who loves to ruin people’s fun. As if forcing them out of the sky isn’t bad enough, he waits for them to land, them BA-BAM! hits a tree right beside them with a lightning bolt. Dad McMercy doesn’t see that as God’s “And stay down!” message, though.

“However, the lightning that made [Becky] jump is actually a benefit God designed to help plants grow.”

Image shows a man wearing a maroon jacket and blue jeans standing with one hand holding his tan Aussie-style hat in consternation. He's standing in the wreckage of an enormous eucalyptus tree that is now a splintered stump and scattered limbs. The stump is taller than he is and too big around for him to be able to hug.
Eucalyptus tree that was blown apart by a lightning strike, Walcha, NSW. Public domain image and caption courtesy Cgoodwin.

Yes. Very helpful.

“Although air is mostly nitrogen, plants cannot use nitrogen directly from the air.”

And whose fault is that, from your point of view? Dude, your God is the shittiest designer. What a Rube Goldberg way to fix nitrogen! Continue reading “(Tier 1) Adventures in ACE XXIII: An Atmosphere of Fail”

(Tier 1) Adventures in ACE XXIII: An Atmosphere of Fail

(Repost) Adventures in ACE III: In Which We Are Sorely Tested

ACE is famous for asinine questions. You may remember some of the greatest hits from Jonny’s blog. In this edition of AiACE (pronounced Ay-ace, with ay being that syllable you utter when something has pained you), we shall deep-dive the Science 1085 Activity PAC, and ascertain just how inane it is. Continue reading “(Repost) Adventures in ACE III: In Which We Are Sorely Tested”

(Repost) Adventures in ACE III: In Which We Are Sorely Tested

(Tier 1) Adventures in ACE XXII: Full of Hot Air

Oh, joy, a new PACE! We’re starting Science PACE 1088, which is all about the atmosphere. After seeing how A Beka and BJU murtilated atmospheric info, I can only imagine how bad this is gonna be. I find my eyes trying to flee every time I aim them at the Table of Contents.

I’m already appalled. I mean, the list of things we’re to learn about the atmosphere is basic, but remember, every PACE also forces you to sing a terrible hymn and memorize a Bible verse. This time round, our theme is being flexible. What they mean by that is folding under the pressure to conform to some right-wing jackass’s interpretation of God’s supposed will.

Image shows a drawing of a fragment of parchment with musical staffs in the upper left corner. The song within is titled, "Flexible": My way may be a good way, but that is not th ereal test. I must be ready to change / today to the way God says is best.
Song from the Contents page of ACE PACE 1088.

Ye gods.

And here is our learning goal. In addition to memorizing some (probably largely incorrect) facts about the atmosphere, the student is

To learn to set my desires on Godly things so that I can accept changes made by others – to be flexible.

Like I said: fold to your authorities’ will, or be crushed.

For our verse, we’re supposed to memorize Colossians 3:2. Does it have anything to do with the atmosphere or flexibility? Nope. Of course not.

And before we can get on with the atmosphere, we have to survive a full-page ACE cartoon. I’m pretty excited about this one. Continue reading “(Tier 1) Adventures in ACE XXII: Full of Hot Air”

(Tier 1) Adventures in ACE XXII: Full of Hot Air

(Repost) Adventures in ACE II: In Which We Inherit the Earth

All right, then, my darlings: time to start acing ACE. We’re right at the beginning of our 8th grade-ish* science edimicashun. What has Science PACE 1085 got to teach us about?

  • “Earth and Its Neighbors,” in which we learn the earth is our inheritance. Just like the Bible says!
  • “To learn to be willing to work or dwell with others in unity – to be cooperative.” M-kay.
  • “To memorize and say Psalm 133:1.” Oh, yes, very sciencey.

This is a very… interesting… table of contents for a science text.

Image is a white and brown kitty looking upward, caption says, "LOL WUT"
Right, let’s move on. Page (two) 2 has a cartoon wherein creepy-looking boys in identical clothes, Reginald and Pudge, tell us how interesting our current PACE will be. Pudge is skeptical at first, the little devil, but is soon won over by Reginald’s Facts™. Many facts. Like the geochemistry terms “sial” and “sima,” which I did not know, because in all my time palling around with geologists, I’ve never seen them use them. Hooray, facts! I’m amazed I’ve learned some actual ones from an ACE PACE.

Let’s see what else we can learn about God’s world. Continue reading “(Repost) Adventures in ACE II: In Which We Inherit the Earth”

(Repost) Adventures in ACE II: In Which We Inherit the Earth