Get a scoop of ice cream for 31 cents tonight at Baskin-Robbins in support of The National Fallen Firefighters Foundation.

May 1: I took the family to the East Brainerd Baskin-Robbins last night after church. It was packed. The 5-6 people behind the counter could not stop taking orders. I heard one of them say she had never seen it that busy.

Here’s a story you won’t see in your local paper. A committee from a school board in Ahmedabad, India, is looking into what appears to be a full-fledged scam for passing high school final exams. Indian students can request a writer or exam-taker, if they are injured or unable to write the answers for their own exam. Naturally, the writer is supposed to put down only the answers provided by the student who should be taking the exam in the first place, and I think the policy allows academically weak students to stand as writers for other student. Presumably, the writer would not be able to help the other student. But if, say, you bribe a strong student or someone with answers to write for your son, well, if he gets a better grade, why should anyone complain? I ask you. Does the Bible say anything about taking someone else’s test in an Indian high school? No, it doesn’t, so what’s to complain about?

Granta, the magazine of new writing, has done something new with its website, so take a look.

Do you subscribe to any literary journals? Which ones or which ones would you subscribe to if somehow that special something made you do it–whatever that is?

In talking about Intelligent Design in the previous post, I looked up this NPR transcript from November 2005 on academic freedom for proponents of ID. Some of the same people featured in Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed are in this report. Here’s the end of it.

Ms. JESSICA YOUNG (Student, George Mason University): It does get overwhelming having it crammed down your throat every day in biology classes. I had–my animal biology professor said the same thing: `This is not a theory; this is a fact. This is–evolution is a fact.’ You know, it’s comforting to know that there are other people who question evolution.

HAGERTY: For Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education, these students with their Bibles are Exhibit A in the case against intelligent design. It has a religious agenda, she says, because it singles out the origins of life for scrutiny.

Ms. SCOTT: You know, we don’t know everything there is to know about the theory of gravitation. We don’t know everything there is to know about atomic theory. And yet nobody says that we should be presenting the strengths and weaknesses of atomic theory. People would look at you funny if you made that suggestion. But this is what happens all the time with evolution.

HAGERTY: The judge in the Dover trial is expected to rule in the next few weeks. The culture wars will rage on long after that. As for Caroline Crocker, she’s received plenty of moral support, but no one has offered her a university teaching job.