Flowers and the pendulum that has stopped turning

First of all, in case you are anywhere near Brooklyn, we are at the time of year when the cherry trees at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden are starting to blossom. You can check the blossoming progress right here http://bbg.org/exp/cherrywatch/map.html And the big weekend when they have full ceremonies with Japanese music and dancers is the 30 of April and May 1st...

Secondly, I had dinner with a friend who is a professor of Political Science at the Graduate Center of the City of NY. Among the things we discussed were the recent controversy at Columbia University regarding the teaching of the middle east and charges of anti-semitism by some students. The report that emanated from Columbia pretty much said that what was going on was normal teaching and nothing to be alarmed about, but this report has been blasted by what are some pretty conservative groups, including David Horowitz, who publishes the online radical publication Frontpage (http://www.frontpagemag.com/index.asp ). My friend feels that even worse than this is Horowitz's push to have state legislatures require the teaching of creationism alongside Darwin's theory of evolution. I then asked him if he felt as I did, that if these currents continue in our country, we will sooner or later end up with two separate countries, one religious (the south, midwest) and the other secular (northeast - pretty much the original 13 colonies). He didn't agree with this, but simply stated that in his opinion we (the northeast way of thinking) will lose.