Michelle Obama's portrait is so popular that the Smithsonian had to move it to handle the crowds.

We’re always changing things up here 👀 Due to the high volume of visitors, we’ve relocated Michelle Obama’s portrait to the 3rd floor in our 20th-Century Americans galleries for a more spacious viewing experience. Reubicamos el retrato de Michelle Obama al tercer piso del museo pic.twitter.com/OnBgmf6bQq

— Portrait Gallery (@NPG) March 9, 2018

Courtesy of The Root: 

Who wouldn’t want to go see the real first lady Michelle Obama, even if that meant “settling” for an amazing, intricate portrait rather than the real deal? 

As it turns out, everyone was just waiting to see the unique portrait Baltimore artist Amy Sherald painted of the former FLOTUS after it was unveiled at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery last month. 

So much so that the museum was forced to relocate the portrait because of the demand.

I am not so sure that it is the painting itself which draws so much attention, or that it represents one of the greatest First Ladies who has ever graced the White House.

We were so lucky to have them both.

BTW this is the message that the Obamas sent to those Parkland students.

EXCLUSIVE: Here’s the letter @BarackObama and @MichelleObama wrote to the #ParklandShooting survivors. In it, the former president and first lady tell the teens that they’ve “inspired” them, and commend them on “awakening the conscience of our nation.” https://t.co/FOQYVguNFw pic.twitter.com/xEPHE6iUL2

— Mic (@mic) March 21, 2018

Even out of office they are still supporting Americans and their quest to end gun violence.

Conservatives attempt to have bust of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger removed from the Smithsonian.

Courtesy of the AP: 

Conservatives are demanding that a Smithsonian Institution art and history museum remove its bust of the founder of Planned Parenthood in their latest offensive against the organization. 

But the National Portrait Gallery says it won't remove its bust of Margaret Sanger, an early leader of the birth control movement. It has been displayed since 2010. 

Sanger, who died in 1966, also supported eugenics, a now-condemned effort to discourage reproduction by criminals and others with undesirable traits. Brent Bozell, chairman of the conservative group ForAmerica, and a group of black pastors say Sanger favored using eugenics to limit the population of blacks, a claim that some Republican lawmakers have echoed but for which the evidence is contested. 

"It's one and the same," Bozell said Wednesday of Sanger's support for eugenics and her role in starting two organizations that eventually became Planned Parenthood. He said Sanger wanted to "sterilize out of existence the poor, the blacks." 

The conservative push to remove Sanger's bust comes after anti-abortion activists have released eight videos showing secretly recorded conversations in which Planned Parenthood officials discuss how the organization sometimes provides fetal tissue to medical researchers. The videos have prompted investigations by several congressional committees and efforts by Republicans in Congress and several states to block government payments to the group. 

The move against Sanger's bust has the support of presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, who are circulating a letter to other lawmakers. A draft of that letter calls the bust's display by the museum "an affront both to basic human decency and the very meaning of justice."

Of course this has absolutely NOTHING to do with Sanger's perceived racism and everything to do with attacking Planned Parenthood.

You can bet that if conservatives gave a shit about racism then Donald Trump would not be leading in the polls right now.

And if they want to start removing the busts of people who supported racism in this country, perhaps they ought to start with this one:

After all Thomas Jefferson owned hundreds of slaves and even fathered children by at least one of the women he owned.

Perhaps we should recognize that NONE of our heroes are perfect, however in many cases their contributions to this country far outweigh the perceived negatives in their character.

Nothing to see here. Just the President of the United States being scanned for 3D printing.

Courtesy of CNN:  

The first-ever 3D-printed bust of a U.S. President -- a life-size replica of Obama -- is now on display at the Smithsonian Castle after a project that was inspired by the life masks of President Abraham Lincoln. 

But unlike Lincoln, Obama didn't have to get plastered up. Instead, he took a seat as 50 LED lights, eight high-resolution sports cameras and six wide-angle cameras sparked off for about a second. 

"This isn't an artistic likeness of the President, this is actually millions upon millions of measurements that create a 3D likeness of the President," 3D digitization program officer at the Smithsonian Adam Metallo says in a White House video released Tuesday.

 So cool!

Now why do I have the inescapable feeling that this will freak out the Right Wing for some reason?

It will undoubtedly make creating decoys for him that can show up at events while he is plotting to overthrow the world that much easier I suppose.

Oops did I type that out loud?

The Smithsonian compiles list of the "100 most Significant Americans." Both George W. Bush and Sarah Palin make the list, but the first African American President does not.

Courtesy of Raw Story: 

This week, Smithsonian magazine asked its readers, “How much does Thomas Paine matter? More than Harriet Beecher Stowe? Less than Elvis? On a par with Dwight Eisenhower?” 

But curiously, the in-house magazine for the Smithsonian Institution decided that George W. Bush is a more “significant” figure in U.S. history than the country’s first Black president, Barack Obama, who did not make the list. 

Bush appears on the magazine’s list of the “100 most significant Americans,” released in this week’s issue. According to Smithsonian, it put together the list by considering data compiled by Google engineer Charles B. Ward and Steven Skiena, a professor of computer science at Stony Brook University. 

But instead of relying simply on statistics to determine the result, the magazine said it split Skiena and Ward’s results into several categories of 10 Americans apiece, then made its own determinations of who fit the bill. 

Other notable entries included former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) in the list of “First Women,” Hulk Hogan in the “Athletes” category, as well as Cotton Mather, who was a key figure behind the Salem Witch Trials, under “Religious Figures.”

So there you have it. According to the Smithsonian a with hunter, a witch, and a guy who pretends to wrestle on TV are more significant than the first black man to be President of the United States of America.

I guess ending wars, fixing the economy, and bringing prosperity back to this country is simply not as significant as lying the country into those wars, destroying the economy, and making the word hate America, right?

Here is the full list, just to fan your outrage:

When is a science teacher NOT a science teacher? When this is the "science" that they teach.

Larger image.

So essentially the argument used here is that since there have been advances in science which disagree with some of Darwin's hypothesis that the entire discipline should be rejected and a return to biblical explanations for life embraced.

And since when is the "true calling" of scientists to master nature for the benefit of mankind?

I thought their calling was to examine and explore facts in order to better understand the reality in which we live.

As for scientists rejecting Darwin, according to the Smithsonian magazine nothing could be further from the truth:  

Perhaps because of that remarkable success, "evolution," or "Darwinism," can sometimes seem like a done deal, and the man himself something of an alabaster monument to wisdom and the dispassionate pursuit of scientific truth. But Darwin recognized that his work was just the beginning. "In the distant future I see open fields for far more important researches," he wrote in Origin. 

Since then, even the most unanticipated discoveries in the life sciences have supported or extended Darwin's central ideas—all life is related, species change over time in response to natural selection, and new forms replace those that came before. "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution," the pioneering geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky titled a famous essay in 1973. He could not have been more right—evolution is quite simply the way biology works, the central organizing principle of life on earth. 

In the 150 years since Darwin published Origin, those "important researches" have produced results he could never have anticipated. Three fields in particular—geology, genetics and paleoanthropology—illustrate both the gaps in Darwin's own knowledge and the power of his ideas to make sense of what came after him. Darwin would have been amazed, for example, to learn that the continents are in constant, crawling motion. The term "genetics" wasn't even coined until 1905, long after Darwin's death in 1882. And though the first fossil recognized as an ancient human—dubbed Neanderthal Man—was discovered in Germany just before Origin was published, he could not have known about the broad and varied family tree of ancestral humans. Yet his original theory has encompassed all these surprises and more. 

Darwin never claimed to have provided all of the answers but the template that he did provide has helped just about every scientific discipline imaginable make incredible  discoveries that benefit mankind in incalculable ways.

We owe Charles Darwin a huge debt of gratitude for his invaluable assistance with breakthroughs in anthropology, biology, zoology, ichthyology, ornithology, genealogy, medical advancements, you name it and it was probably benefited in some way by the work of Charles Robert Darwin.

And EVERY science class in America should make it a priority to teach that to their students.