I don’t know much about New York City’s mayor Michael Bloomberg.  I’ve just not paid attention to him and am unfamiliar with his political leanings, beliefs, ideology, and general personality.  He could, for all I know, be the world’s most evil person, but his recent commencement address at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore certainly got my attention.

Bloomberg decried the political manipulation of science to further ideological ends, saying, “Today, we are seeing hundreds of years of scientific discovery being challenged by people who simply disregard facts that don’t happen to agree with their agenda … Some call it pseudoscience, others call it faith-based science, but when you notice where this negligence tends to take place, you might as well call it ‘political science.'”

In that context, Bloomberg deplored ongoing controversies over evolution education in Kansas, Mississippi, and elsewhere: “It boggles the mind that nearly two centuries after Darwin, and 80 years after John Scopes was put on trial, the country is still debating the validity of evolution,” adding, “This not only devalues science, it cheapens theology. As well as condemning these students to an inferior education, it ultimately hurts their professional opportunities.” Intelligent design, he said, “is really just creationism by another name.”

If only more politicians had this kind of common sense.  Ha!  I made a funny.