bwah. The nail thing: definite Lyndon-Johnson-having-meetings-in-his-toilet vibe(And I say that as somebody who cannot paint her own nails.)

A guy here who describes himself as real techsavvy/cool just mistook a Shuffle for an iPod remote control.

Does he not have billboards where he lives?

Most high school biology textbooks have a chapter on evolution, and no mention of it outside that chapter, making it easy to skip. His view, which I'd agree with, was that evolution is the basis of just about everything else in the book, and that almost every section (on anatomy, cell biology, etc.) should explain that the things are that way because they evolved that way, and go into an explanation of why.

No doubt. I hate biology. Am not interested in it at all because it seems so random. Physics and chemistry were fine- they had rules that made sense. Hil's hypothetical biology book is much more in keeping with my sense of order and the way I understand things.

My high school biology class was hideous, and i went to school in what was then a very coonservative area, and we learned evolution anyhow, and no one's head exploded.

I liked bio so much in HS that I took three years and planned on majoring in it. (until I actually got to college. It did not work out.). But I think I would have been really confused by an extra layer of evolutionary justification on top of the material itself. Evolution is not self-justifying like that-- that way leads ID.

The highlight of my high school biology class was the fetal pig organ fight.

I really don't remember if we discussed evolution or not. Probably not. The class annoyed me, as it was mostly a bunch of memorization.

High school conscientious objector here. No dissection of anything for me.

My alternative service was to run the ditto machine in the counseling office (foreshadowing? perhaps!). I skived off AND got woozy from the mimeo-fluid.

It was sweet!

My biology class wasn't hideous because of the material, I should say. I probably would have liked it a lot with a different teacher.

But we had an anorexic woman who, in a 45 minute class period, spent about 30 minutes discussing quotes of the day (not biology related, more Oprah-esque) and her diet, alternating with a succession of subs. It's a miracle I know any biology at all.

I don't remember formally learning evolution, but where I come from, it is just taken as a given. If I were asked to prove it, I would just turn on ESPN during a basketball game, or something.

I don't remember ever being taught specifically about evolution in school (maybe a single hour's nod to Darwin in first-semester bio and again in European history), but I do remember both textbooks and teachers making mention of it in ways that clearly indicated that this was background info we were expected to already have some grasp of.

My bookshelves at home were lined with things like kid-theology New Testament storybooks and kid-science explanations of the Big Bang and everything that happened since, and I honestly don't think it was until I was in college that I realized that there are Christians out there in the world right now who object to evolution. The Scopes Monkey Trial, Inherit the Wind and all that, but right this very minute? It caused me to boggle.