Now I have one less reason to believe the State of Ohio is planning to make my child intentionally ignorant:

COLUMBUS, Ohio – The Ohio school board voted Tuesday to eliminate a passage in the state’s science standards that critics said opened the door to the teaching of intelligent design.

The Ohio Board of Education decided 11-4 to delete material encouraging students to seek evidence for and against evolution.

It’s nice to see that even this particularly weak-kneed swipe against evolution is no longer considered viable in the state where I live. But the Law of the Conservation of Stupidity, in which stupidity is never eliminated, it merely changes form and location, is at work here: now South Carolina’s school board is fiddling with their high school biology standards to try to make evolution look bad.

However, right now that’s South Carolina’s problem, and as I’ve said before, if other states want to intentionally make their children more ignorant, that just thins the herd for Athena when it comes time for her college applications. So you go on right ahead, South Carolina, and make your kids as pan-hit dim as possible. Ohio is presently out of the “enculturating ignorance” business, and for the moment, that’s good enough for me.

They say you never forget your first telescope. Here’s Athena’s, a tiny Meade I got on clearance from Radio Shack as a Valentine’s Day present. And yes, she’s very excited about it. We’re going to go out and look at the moon tonight. A full moon is in fact not the best way to see the features of the moon (it’s a little bright), but it’ll be workable. And besides, we’ll have fun anyway.

Hope your Valentine’s Day is going well.

Before I forget, I did one of those Johari Windows thingies. I set it up for the folks over at AOL Journals, but there’s no reason you can’t tell me what you think about me, too.

Yes, I realize that some of you read By The Way as well as Whatever, so you’d already know this. But I find (anecdotally, at least) that the crossover between the two sites is actually rather low. So, just out of curiosity, how many of you do actually read By the Way on a regular basis? Bear in mind there is no wrong answer here; it’s just something I wonder about.

I’m trying to jam through stuff so I can get out of here to have Valentine’s Day lunch with my wife, so rather than stretching out a bunch of new reviews across several ego-gratifying entries, I’m just going to pile them into one entry.

First, a nice review of The Ghost Brigades in Library Journal, which gives the book a “highly Recommended” rating: “The sequel to Old Man’s War combines taut military action with keen insights into the moral issues revolving around developing technologies. Scalzi has a finely tuned sense of balance between personal drama and the ‘big picture’…” You can see the whole review on the BN.com page for TGB.

Second, Old Man’s War is getting a second wave of reviews thanks to its trade paperback release, and these have also generally been positive. This review at Book Fetish gives it fives stars (“hardcore, unapologetic Heinlein-esque military Sci-Fi”), and this review at Literal Barrage is also nice (“I’m pleased to report that I enjoyed this book greatly”). And over at Byzantium’s Shores, Jaquandor meditates on the difference between “neat Mil-SF” and “war-porn,” and among other things concludes OMW is not war-porn, which I appreciate. I also think some of his specific questions will be addressed in The Ghost Brigades, and probably also in The Last Colony, whenever it is I start writing that, which should be soon. He’s also ticked I got a free cell phone and is threatening to hit the library for my future release. Well, you know. I can live with that.

Now I’m off to shower and get ready for lunch with my lady. See y’all later, and happy Valentine’s Day.