If you love Charles Schulz’s Peanuts, it’s just possible that you'll love What Was Bugging Ol’ Pharaoh?—or even the also-forgotten Young Pillars. These cartoons seem to be more obviously religious than Schulz’s other work. He also seems to love abbreviating the word “old” as “ol.” The fine folks over at Drawn! have a little sampling of this recently dusted-off work.

Source: Drawn!

Image by ComiCrazys.

Even the most intellectual of teenagers can be dumb sometimes. Neurologically, this makes sense. “It’s a paradoxical time of development,” Frances E. Jensen told Harvard Magazine. “These are people with very sharp brains, but they’re not quite sure what to do with them.” 

New research suggests that adolescent brains are only 80 percent developed. Some sections have high-learning potential while other parts are still unconnected. MRI scans suggest that brain development isn’t finished until people are in their late 20s, flying in the face of previously held beliefs. The researchers hope the results will help parents and children understand adolescents a little better.

(Thanks, 3 Quarks Daily.)

Like all science fairs, you could tell which projects had parental help and which ones didn’t at the 2008 Home School Science Fair. The blue-ribbon winning project on dinosaurs and people roaming the earth together, with the color photos and the perfectly cut lettering, probably had parental help. The one explaining how a broken motor disproves Darwin's theory of evolution, with the roughly cut pieces of paper and the penciled in chicken scratches, probably did not.

Every diorama in the Home School Science Fair, which took place inside a shopping mall in Roseville, Minnesota, had a biblical quote attached to it. A young woman whose project involved teaching her dog how to run circles between her legs decorated the words: “If you love me, you will obey what I command.” (John 14:15) in pink lace fabric. This quote got to the crux of the science fair, in my opinion: parental commandment. These parents pulled their children out of school, away from their peers, and said, “Now prove that Darwin was wrong.”

The projects all used classic high school science language: Start with a hypothesis, move on to testing, and then draw a conclusion. The problem was that much of the science was backwards. In good science, you start with a piece of evidence and try to find a truth. With creationist science, you start with a truth (the Bible), and try to find the evidence.

Before I arrived at the science fair, I planned to engage some of the children and parents. I wanted to ask them about creationism and education. Once I got there, however, I was overcome with a sense of pity for the children. They stood around the suburban mall, in the prime of the most awkward years of their life, being forced to preach blather. I didn’t want to exploit them for a cheap laugh while their parents and the company Answers in Genesis (whose literature was scattered throughout the event) were so clearly exploiting them to proselytize. The children’s gangly limbs and bad acne reminded me how vulnerable I was at their age and how easily someone could have brainwashed me.

I overheard one parent saying, “One thing is for sure, a lot of learning has gone on this week.” I would change that statement a bit: I’d say a lot of indoctrinating went on that week. Hopefully, a good college professor, and a few years of therapy, will help these children turn all that “learning” around.

—Bennett Gordon