Angry Astronomer

Happy New Year. Have an ID Bill Missouri!

2012-01-12T19:54:00.004-06:00

It's been quite some time since I've seen any pro-Creationism bills introduced in my home state of Missouri. In general, it seems we learned from our neighbors in Kansas when they had their big kerfuffle and had their pro-ID standards struck down and were embarrassed nation wide (if you don't remember, Kansas' bill actually was put into law for some time and changed the definition of science to include the supernatural, whereas most bills die before ever becoming law).

But it seems Missouri has forgotten the lesson and a pro-Creationist bill introduced recently. And boy is it loaded with some stupid. Let's take a look.

One of the first things it does is define a bunch of terms:

"Biological evolution", a theory of the origin of life and its ascent by naturalistic means.

Uh, no. Evolution has nothing to do with the origin of life. That's how you can tell real scientists didn't have anything to do with this bill. Real scientists know what words mean.

A second quibble is that "ascent" is a poor word choice that makes the assumption that evolution has a goal towards "higher" species. This is nonsense.

Theory philosophically demands only naturalistic causes and denies the operation of any intelligence, supernatural event, God or theistic figure in the initial or subsequent development of life;

Again, it's pretty painfully obvious this was written by scientifically illiterate Creationists. Evolution doesn't deny the existence of God; it just makes Him superfluous.

"Biological intelligent design", a hypothesis that the complex form and function observed in biological structures are the result of intelligence and, by inference, that the origin of biological life and the diversity of all original species on earth are the result of intelligence.

Hey! That one is almost right! It didn't attempt to pass Intelligent Design off as a theory, whereas they admit that evolution is, although they don't make any indication that they know what the difference is.

Since the inception of each original species, genetic material has been lost, inherited, exchanged, mutated, and recombined to result in limited variation.

Wait, what? So this bill is passing straight lies into law? No, genetic material has not been "lost". Sometimes it is, but through gene duplication and other methods, the amount of information increases. Creationists often deny this. Furthermore, we've seen species diverge, thus giving lie to the idea that there is "limited variation" with "each original species".

Naturalistic mechanisms do not provide a means for making life from simple molecules or making sufficient new genetic material to cause ascent from microscopic organisms to large life forms.

A claim without any supporting evidence.

The hypothesis does not require the identity of intelligence responsible for earth’s biology but requires any proposed identity of that intelligence to be verifiable by present-day observation or experimentation.

It claims not to, but every major ID proponent, from Behe, to Dembski, to Johnson, have claimed otherwise at some point.

Concepts inherent within the hypothesis include:
(a) The origin of life on earth is inferred to be the result of intelligence directed design and construction. There are no plausible mechanisms or present-day experiments to prove the naturalistic origin of the first independent living organism;

Um, argument from ignorance.

(b) All original species on earth are inferred to be the result of intelligence directed design and construction. There are no significant mechanisms or present-day experiments to prove the naturalistic development of earth's species from microscopic organisms;

Another argument from ignorance, and one that's actually untrue. Genetics "proves" the common ancestry.

(c) Complex forms in proteins, enzymes, DNA, and other biological structures demonstrated by their constituent molecules in regard to size, shape, quantity, orientation, sequence, chirality, and integration imply intelligent design was necessary for the first life on earth. Intelligence is capable of designing complex form;

Intelligence is capable of designing complex form. However, it's not exclusive. Roll a rock down a mountainside and the chips and nicks it accumulates are exceptionally "complex". But that doesn't mean it was done in any intelligent manner. Thus, they're trying to confuse people with a possibility as the only possible answer.

(d) Complex functions demonstrated by growth, reproduction, repair, food metabolization, waste disposal, stimuli response, and autonomous mobility in microscopic organisms imply intelligent design was necessary for the first life on earth.

In other words, "we're going to assume the first life was as complex as life is today requiring all these things." Evolution has never made such a claim. Thus, this is a strawman.

(e) Within the history of human experience, all exhibits of recurring discrete symbols from a set of symbols arranged in a specific sequence which store information and can be read by human intelligence, is itself the result of intelligence.

Since when are nucleic acids "discrete symbols"? We assign symbols to represent them, but that doesn't mean that's what they are. We use symbols to make things comprehensible, but we can't project backwards and assume the reverse.

(f) Intelligence-directed design and construction of all original species at inception without an accompanying genetic burden is inferred rather than random mutational genetic change as a constructive mechanism. Random mutational genetic change results in an increasing genetic burden and species degradation rather than species ascent;

Again with the ridiculous humancentric notion that there are "higher" and "lower" species. Also, they're making the absolutely false claim that mutations are only harmful. This is an outright lie.

(g) Intelligence-directed action is necessary to exceed the limits of natural species change, which is a combination of autogenous species change and environmental effected species change. Multi-generation breeding experiments illustrate the limits of natural species change and its inadequacy for developing required genetic information found in dissimilar species;

No. We have directly seen species diverge.

(h) The irreducible complexity of certain biological systems implies a completed design and construction at inception rather than step-by-step development, as indicated by the structures observed for sight, hearing, smell, balance, blood coagulation, digestion, and hormone control;

Wait... did they really just invoke Irreducible Complexity? That notion that got destroyed in the Dover trial? Hell, they're even including some of the exact systems that were shown to be reducible in that trial! It's cute they found some new ones to list, but it's still an argument from ignorance. Logical fallacies don't fly in real science.

(i) The lack of significant transitional forms between diverse species existing today and in the fossil record implies all original species were completed at inception rather than by a step-by-step development from other species. A lack of transitional forms is illustrated by the appearance of large complex life forms in the Cambrian fossil record without any significant previous fossils;

Wow. Two lies in one point. 1) We have a ton of transitional fossils. And even if we didn't, genetics and homology establish evolution beyond a shadow of a doubt. The fossil record is just bonus. 2) The Cambrian explosion has many fossils prior to it. Creationists just pretend they don't exist.

(j) Common designs and features evident in different species imply the intelligent reuse of proven designs analogous to the reuse of proven designs by human designers;

This is the gibberish that "common design implies common designer". No. If things weren't similar, then Creationists could claim it "implies a creative designer." Indeed, only a few hundred years ago, this is exactly the argument Creationists made. God was invoked to explain diversity.

The take away less is that a designer is assumed either way and since, no matter what, that's the case for common or different structures, there's no way to falsify the hypothesis. And if it can't be falsified, it's not science.

(k) The lack of significant present-day observable changes in species due to random variation, mutation, natural selection, adaptation, segregation, or other naturalistic mechanisms implies intelligence as the cause for all original species;

Again, an outright lie. We've seen numerous species diverge. When they diverge, that's very significant. But Creationists pretend that doesn't happen or use the term "species" so vaguely that it's meaningless.

From there, the bill goes on to proscribe "Equal treatment" which is defined as "the approximate equal teaching of each specified viewpoint for a single course of instruction in course textbooks" which should "contain approximately an equal number of pages of relevant material teaching each viewpoint."

That's right. The bill acknowledges that ID is merely a hypothesis, but claims it deserves as much time as a full fledged theory (which it spent considerable time lying about).

As expected, they go on to attempt to define "theory" but botch it:

"Scientific theory", an inferred explanation of incompletely understood phenomena about the physical universe based on limited knowledge, whose components are data, logic, and faith-based philosophy. The inferred explanation may be proven, mostly proven, partially proven, unproven or false and may be based on data which is supportive, inconsistent, conflicting, incomplete, or inaccurate. The inferred explanation may be described as a scientific theoretical model;

Nothing is ever "completely understood" in science. To do so would require infinite knowledge, something science doesn't claim to have (yet Creationists do!). Theories in science are not "proven" in an absolute sense. They are, however, proven beyond a reasonable doubt. If they are "partially proven, unproven or false ... based on data which is supportive, inconsistent, conflicting, incomplete, or inaccurate" then it's not a theory. The end.

Similarly, the sponsors of the bill can't manage to define a scientific law either:

(10) "Scientific law", a statement describing specific phenomena about the physical universe which has been verified by observation or experimentation and has no exceptions of verified empirical data. The statement may be described by formula;

"No exceptions of verified empirical data" you say? What about Newton's laws? There are numerous exceptions. Which is why the law had to be replaced... with a theory.

There's quite a few other ironies in the bill. For example:

If empirical data is taught, only such data which has been verified or is currently capable of being verified by observation or experimentation shall be taught.

Since every point listed in defining the thrust of ID is a logical fallacy, it is not "capable of being verified by observation or experimentation" in a broad sense. In narrow senses, some specific points may be, but every time those points have been raised, they have been found to be false.

Data with the appearance of empirical data which has never been verified and is currently incapable of being verified shall be identified as nonverifiable when taught orally or in writing;

You mean like Behe's claims of IC, or Dembski's entire concept of Specified Complexity which make up the core of many of the points previously raised?

If scientific law is taught, written textbooks statements identified as scientific law shall have no known exceptions of verified empirical data;

As previously pointed out, this actually has more of an effect on Physics than it does Biology.

But perhaps one of the most vile things the bill does, is after working so hard to (mis)define theory, they nearly admit that it's irrelevant anyway because they're going to mush everything up with false equivalence:

As used in this subsection, the term "theory" shall mean theory or hypothesis;

In other words, they don't care that ID hasn't been established. They're just going to promote it for no reason.

Here's another doozy:

If biological intelligent design is taught, any proposed identity of the intelligence responsible for earth’s biology shall be verifiable by present-day observation or experimentation

Either the sponsors of this bill are fiendishly smart, or incredibly stupid with this point.

As written, it would seem the intent of this passage is to prevent discussion that would link the designer to the Biblical God, thereby keeping it from running afoul of 1st amendment challenges under the guise that it doesn't promote any specific religion and is therefore secular. But Behe, Dembski, Johnson, et al claim to be able to infer the identity of the designer. Thus, if that was the intent of the sponsors, since those arguments are presumably scientific, there is a gaping loophole.

But then again, that may well be the intent, that those very arguments could sneak God into the discussion while excluding all other options. Again, either very clever or very stupid (as if the rest of the bill doesn't indicate the latter).

(6) If a scientific theory or hypothesis proven to be false is taught for historical, illustrative, or other reasons, the theory or hypothesis shall be identified as false when taught orally or in writing.

Wait... doesn't that mean the entire bill defeats itself?

As noted previously, the bill requires that all textbooks conform to this "equal time" nonsense. Obviously, this doesn't mean all textbooks are thrown out immediately, but all new ones purchased must be. In the meantime, the bill requires that a "supplemental textbook" be created. But the identity of the people to create it is asinine:

shall consist of nine individuals who are knowledgeable of science and intelligent design and reside in Missouri.

Wait... so they don't need to be Biologists? They can just be knowledgeable about any form of science to qualify?

It's no surprise why this is included: You probably wouldn't find 9 people that are Biologists in Missouri that would support such anti-science. Rather, as the Dissent From Darwin list shows, the vast majority of "scientists" that support ID aren't in any relevant fields. According to one survey, only about 0.01% of "dissenting" scientists are from a field which is applicable.

In other words, they want to include people that are illiterate in Biology to write material for a Biology class.

So here's a quick recap:

The bill admits that evolution is a theory and ID is a hypothesis.
It promptly tosses that distinction out the window to engage in some false equivocation.
It incorrectly defines most of its terms.
It throws out all of the typical Creationist/ID false claims against evolution and pretends that they're 1) honest criticisms and 2) a positive argument for ID.
Leaves a wide open door to promote the Christian God as the identity of the Designer.
Appoints non-experts to develop classroom material.

I sincerely doubt this bill will make it too far. However, I've looked at the wording of quite a few Creationist bills and I think this one rates pretty highly on the stupid density scale.

Poisoning the Well of Science in New Hampshire & The Back Handed "Help" From the NCSE

2011-12-30T10:18:00.003-06:00

Word's been getting around that there are currently two anti-evolution bills in the legislature in New Hampshire. While such bills pop up all the time and are nearly as quickly struck down, these ones are interesting to me because they may be signaling a new(ish) approach from the anti-science crowd: Poisoning the well.

For those that don't remember how Creationists have tried worming their gibberish into the classroom previously, here's a quick recap:

Straight out teaching Creationism - Ruled illegal in Edwards v. Aguillard
Straight out ~~teaching~~ promoting ~~Creationism~~ "Intelligent Design" - Ruled illegal in Kitzmiller v. Dover
"Critical Analysis" of Evolution using fake "facts" - Ongoing

So where does this new bill fall?

The new bills require that teachers tell students about "the theorists' political and ideological viewpoints and their position on the concept of atheism".

As if that has anything to do with anything when it comes to statistically sound science. Religion, or lack thereof doesn't change the observations or the math (unless someone's lying, which Creationists do all the time).

So what's this all about? One of the bill's sponsors, Jerry Bergevin (R-District 17), says that he wants things taught this way because of "the people who came up with the ideas.... It's a worldview and it's godless." He blames evolution for the Holocaust and the school shootings at Columbine.

Well guess what! So is gravity! After all, it's not Intelligent Falling! But as always, the anti-science crowd is singling out evolution for being "different". It's not. It's still well tested, robust science.

But despite Darwin being initially religious, Bergevin is trying to smear evolution by poisoning the well. This is really a subclass of the red herring fallacy, which attempts to distract from the real issues by invoking guilt by association.

It's one of the most pathetic, childish ways of arguing and Bergevin should be ashamed, but apparently doesn't have the good sense to be. To be fair, it's a tactic Creationists like Kent Hovind and Answers in Genesis have been taking for a long time, but when it comes to schools, they've largely been out of the picture for some time now.

So what does this mean?

It's hard to say. It could be just a coincidence, or it could be the start of a new strategy by the Creationist camp since their "critical analysis" has been stopped by and large since it's devoid of any honest information.

If it's the latter, then what's driving it? Is this a throwback to the harder line, totally bugnuts Creationists like Hovind and AiG? If so, I welcome it. It's only further evidence that the loons at the Discovery Institute have failed, and the old camp is one that's been so thoroughly defeated that the future battles will be a cakewalk.

But perhaps I'm reading too much into this.

Meanwhile, there's one more thing I think that's worth pointing out, and this is the response to this claim from the NCSE.

For some time, many science bloggers (especially PZ and Jerry Coyne) have accused the NCSE of going too far in defending evolution, to the point of actually promoting religion. I think the NCSE's response in this case is a pretty good example of this.

Instead of simply pointing out that Bergevin is committing a fallacy by trying to smear evolution without addressing any of its facts, they ignore this central issue, and instead, bend over backwards to point out

Evolutionary scientists are Democrats and Republicans, Libertarians and Greens and everything. Similarly, their religious views are all over the map, too. ... If you replace atheism in the bill with Protestantism, or Catholicism, or Judaism or any other view, it's clear to see it's not going to pass legal muster.

While this is vaguely true (there are religious scientists, many of whom I've written about on this blog), what's more notable is that the scientific community is about as non-religious as it gets. But the NCSE hides that, thereby giving the appearance that the religious component is far larger than it really is.

In other words, the NCSE is actually helping Bergevin because they're acting like his accusation is something of which they should be ashamed. Yes, evolution doesn't mention God. Yes, there are more non-religious scientists than there are religious. NO, this is not something we need to shy away from.

The reason is that the first point, not including God in the equations, is exactly what makes science work! Science began making its huge strides forward in explaining how the world works, in repeatable, testable, and meaningful ways, precisely when it cast off the shackles of the supernatural.

The second point, as I've pointed out, is nothing more than a logical fallacy.

But the NCSE doesn't seem to want to own up to these facts. Instead, they want to cozy up to religion and protect it, coddling the fear of atheism and in addition, the naturalistic method that makes science work.

I Thought This Argument Worked....

2011-12-17T10:33:00.003-06:00

Here's an example of what an open and shut court case should look like:

1) White landlord accuses daughter of black tenant of using hair treatment products that cloud up the pool.
2) Tenant files discrimination complaint
3) Landloard hangs sign that reads: PUBLIC SWIMMING POOL - WHITE ONLY
4) Tenant takes landlord to court and wins.
5) Landloard claims sign is "historic" and as such, it's ok.
6) Court disagrees and rules in favor of tenant.

I like this ending. Justice is done. Historicity isn't a good excuse and the courts didn't allow it to be used as one.

Yet this argument is one that I see used all the time and quite often it does work! It's the defense that's always trotted out for the violation of the first amendment. Whenever someone wants to post the 10 commandments in a courthourse, it's always for its "historical" value. "In God We Trust" on our money? It's historical (even though not so much). "Under God" in the pledge? Historic (with even less history than "In God We Trust").

So why is it that sometimes this excuse works but other times it doesn't? The obvious answer is that, despite our constitutional guarantees, there are special privileges being given to religions of choice.

Pregnant? Shut up and stay home!

2011-11-24T15:03:00.003-06:00

Oh Occupy Wall Street. When will you cease to stop showing us some of the worst of humanity. If it's not militarized campus police pepper-spraying peaceful protesters, it's something else.

The newest one is cops kicking and pepper-spraying a pregnant woman. The cops told everyone to disperse, she was trying to, but apparently that was still a threat.

What I find even more astounding is the responses to the whole situation. There's a huge number of commenters that blame her for joining a protest while pregnant:

the mother defiantly should be held at least partially responsible for getting herself in that situation in the first place.

And all those people that got pepper-sprayed? They're at fault too.

The only one she has to blame is herself. If she cared about her unborn, she wouldn't have gone there.

Let's do a risk analysis here. Are huge numbers of people getting kicked in the stomach by cops at rallies? No. Should cops be doing it in the first place? No. So what's this person's conclusion? Even with a minimal risk, a pregnant woman should still just stay home. Perhaps we should require we cover all pregnant women in bubble wrap just to be safe?

If you're protesting anything and you see the cops coming in in force and you don't want to be manhandled or pepper sprayed you should walk in the opposite direction QUICKLY.

That's right. Cops are to be feared. They're not here to protect our safety, just to chase away rascally protesters exercising their constitutional rights.

In other news, Guyism.com has an article on "7 of the Worst Things Men Put Up with for Sex. It's a serious cryfest. I'm hoping articles like this aren't serious. If the worst thing you have to do for a woman is meet her parents, life is not that hard.

Gelatogate

2011-11-24T11:58:00.005-06:00

In my last post, I made a brief reference to something that has come to be called Gelatogate. For those that haven't heard the story, I'll summarize briefly.

A few doors down from the theater at which Skepticon was being held, was a little Gelato place that, for awhile Saturday evening, put up the sign above. Nothing was really known about it until after Skepticon when the owner posted an apology on the company's main website. It was vague and he later posted a fuller explanation and apology on reddit.

What it came down to is he dropped in on Skepticon and caught Sam Singleton's mock revival Saturday evening. This talk was designed to lampoon religion by rather direct parody. This wasn't what the owner had been expecting, and he overreacted, running back to post the sign.

After about 10 minutes, he realized it was wrong, and took it down.

The bigger story has been how the skeptical community has responded to these apologies. Jen McCreight and Hemant Mehta accepted it unconditionally.

PZ and JT basically told him to shove it where the Sun don't shine.

The former both say he apologized, so all's good. The latter two say it was a meaningless apology and he only did it because his urbanspoon and yelp ratings plummeted, and he was called out loudly on his facebook page so it's hollow and he's trying to save face.

What I want to contribute is that we don't really know which case it is.

I'm absolutely against Jen and Hemant's position that a few words make it all better. But I'm also not going to declare that his response was hollow. We don't have enough information to judge so far and the owner isn't forthcoming with what we would need to make that call.

One of the things that's important when receiving an apology is that the person offering it truly feels bad about what they've done. I think the owner does. This is shown by him having removed the sign, after cooling off a bit, in short order (he claims it was ~10 minutes, others say it was a few hours). From this, I think it's entirely plausible that he actually felt bad for his actions, even before the possible financial implications of discrimination because apparent.

However, there's a difference between knowing something is wrong in your gut, and understanding why it's wrong. Children often feel shame and proffer apologies that are meaningful, but not deep. I think that's where the store owner is standing right now.

While he may understand that discrimination was wrong, he doesn't get the deeper reasoning behind the event that initially set him off. In short, he doesn't understand the reason talks like Sam Singleton's and David Fitzgerald's exist in the first place: Nothing should be above question and parody.

The event has haunting similarities to PZ's Crackergate; PZ didn't show "due respect" to a cracker and people flipped out. Here, Sam and the audience didn't show "due respect" to holy-rollers and the owner flipped out.

It takes me back to Julia's talk's first point about being a straw Vulcan and willfully ignoring that people have emotions and then blaming them for having them. I think that's what PZ and JT may well be doing here. It should be pretty obvious that someone might react that way. That's not laying the blame on them, nor is it laying the blame at the feet of Sam. It's simply a statement on the reality of the situation. But PZ and JT seem quick to blame him.

Which is foolish. Yes he overreacted. Yes he did something stupid. He's offered a thin apology, but instead of casting him off, what we should really be doing here is using this as a teaching moment.

We should be showing others the reason that their reactions are overblown, how we're exercising the same rights and freedoms theists do every day, just how accurate such parodies actually are, and how, when we do these things, we're vilified for it. The store owner may get that we were vilified, but I don't think he's gotten the big picture.

And that's what I want him, and others that may be tempted to follow in his footsteps, to take away.

But that's the exact opposite of what PZ seems to be doing. He seems to want to dub him a lost cause and pass up this opportunity. JT at the very least tried to engage him in further dialogue, but was apparently rejected (which makes me wonder if I'm being too charitable).

So the conclusion I stand on is that the owner's apology was at best thin, and at worst, a capitulation to the tarnishing of his reputation. Either way, not a worthwhile apology.

I'll quote Hemant briefly:

No one’s letting Andy off the hook for being a bigot. He still disapproves of atheism. Who cares. The point is that he (now) knows that his act of discrimination was wrong.

This is what I take exception to. He may know the discrimination is wrong, but big f'ing deal. This is something that elementary school kids should know.

But simply putting a lid on and hiding the discrimination doesn't actually fix the problem. The key driver "he still disapproves of atheism" is still there. We've just hidden the extrinsic display but the root is still there and will continue to be a problem until we have acceptance from the general community. This is what PZ, JT, and I want. We don't your bigoted feelings hidden. We want them gone.

Delving deep enough to root them out takes a lot more, and that might actually mean something to us.

Skepticon 4 Recap

2011-11-22T17:22:00.006-06:00

I'm still recovering from Skepticon this past weekend which seriously messed up my sleep schedule to the tune of a nearly 5 hour shift that's not wanting to jump back. Ugh.

Regardless, it was a fantastic time. Unlike last year, I didn't try to force myself to attend many talks that didn't interest me which probably helped. I skipped the Creationist Museum tour (I've heard this story so many times it's just boring now). I skipped the Give a Damn screening (which I want to see, but not when I've just finished driving for 4 hours). I skipped Dave Silverman (I just don't must care for what he has to say). I skipped Eliezer Yudkowsky's talk on Heuristics and Biases (I've had enough basic logic kthxbai). I skipped the panel on how skeptics should deal with death (I've got my own approach that suits me). I skipped Dan Barker's talk (I've seen him elsewhere and know what the FFRF is doing).

The first talk I did catch was Julia Galef's on "The Straw Vulcan" which looked at how Hollywood portrays "rational" characters when they're anything but. Her key example was Spock from the original Star Trek series. Her definition of rational had two variations:

1) Epistemic Rationality - The method of obtaining an accurate view of reality.
2) Instrumental Rationality - The method of achieving your goals, whatever they are.

In general, these two are related since, if you want to achieve your goal, it helps to have an accurate picture of reality. But for characters like Spock, he's often depicted as not achieving his goals or being able to accurately predict outcomes which would come from an accurate understanding of the world. Obviously, while he's portrayed as rational and logical, he doesn't fit either definition. So where was the disconnect?

Julia introduced five principles where there's a disconnect.

In the first, straw Vulcan logic is unable to deal with emotions. The example used came from an episode where Spock engaged in some saber rattling to attempt to scare off an alien species, but only proceeded to enrage them. When confronted with this, Spock blamed the issue on the irrationality of the aliens.

But at Julia noted, Spock was the irrational one given that he'd seen time and again the emotional capacity of others. He chose to willfully ignore that for some reason.

Her second principle was that pseudologic refuses to make a decision without 100% of the information. In any situation, its unlikely that we can know all the information necessary, but logic and reason gives us guides to do with what we have. Additionally, the time and resources often necessary to gather more information is generally tied to the law of diminishing returns.

The third principle was the straw Vulcans never rely on intuition. While intuition and quick reasoning is often subject to flaw and bias, the fact is, the vast majority of the time, it works (hence why we can have so many people running around not thinking at all. The trouble is that we, also not thinking, let them become politicians).

Fourth, Julia noted that to straw Vulcans, being rational meant not having emotions. Her counter was to point out that emotion is the root that gives us goals on which we can apply rational thought to inform actions. Without emotion, there would be no drive to do anything in the first place.

Lastly, straw Vulcans only valuable quantifiable things like money and efficiency. As a response, Julia showed two clips that demonstrated even Spock is expected to have deep emotions, although he hides them.

Her final statement summed things up pretty well: "If you're trying to be rational but keep ending up with the wrong answer, it's not proper to assume rationality is bad, but you're bad at rationality."

This sums up Creationists and other pseudoscientists perfectly. They try to be rational, dressing up their gibberish in scientific language, but they can't seem to produce any sort of models that, you know, work. So instead, they criticize the scientific method, crying that it's too dogmatic for now allowing the supernatural, and try to rewrite the definition as they did in Kansas in 2005, or just sneak it in without anyone noticing, as Behe admitted to on the stand at Dover.

The next talk was Greta Christina's. I'm not going to bother to summarize much of it because it's a rehash of this blog post of hers from 2007. It hasn't changed much. It's on why atheists are "angry". The short version is that they have good reason to be.

The second portion of her talk is whether or not that anger was a good thing. Her conclusion, one that I've agreed with completely for a long time, is that yes, anger is useful. As Julia pointed out in the previous talk, emotion is the driver of most actions. If we wish to effect social change and stop all the evils she'd listed, then we need that anger to fuel the movement. To take that away is to disempower ourselves.

She makes a fantastic note that anger is not violence, it is not bigotry, or hatred. It is an emotion stating displeasure and antagonism with the current state of affairs.

"Lastly, most harm is not about harm being done to atheists. Most of the things that make us angry, most of it is about harm that's being done to believers. We're angry on other people's behalf. We're angry because we have compassion and a sense of justice. We're angry because we want this to stop. We care about humans, not because we hate God or there's a God shaped hole in our hearts. We're not angry because there's something wrong with us; we're angry because there's something right."

I missed Rebecca Watson's talk because our dinner took FAR too long to arrive (waited nearly an hour), so PZ's was the next we caught. Last year his talk wasn't very exciting. It was a bit of fluff on genetics and how it drives evolution, but lacked a solid sticking point to really make it work. This year, he fixed that.

He opened with some quotes from Dumbski and Stephen Meyer about how DNA actually proves intelligent design because "junk" DNA actually has a function. And what's more, they stated this as a testable prediction. Demonstrating this was wrong would be another way to show ID was wrong.

So PZ went through the various types of DNA showing just how much was useful. I won't go through all of the details, but it stacked up like this:
5% - Functional DNA that codes for traits
10% - Structural DNA that keeps everything organized and running
45% - Parasitic DNA from retroviruses, transposons and the like
40% - Completely is completely unknown

At best, only 15% of that DNA can be considered directly useful. The rest can eventually provide fodder for mutations to potentially develop new traits, but that's a LOT of baggage to be reproducing every time a cell divides and not really worth it.

That was the last talk I attended for the day. Sam Singleton was up next, but I just don't find him interesting. So I skipped out and talked with some people. However, I will note that Sam's talk contributed to an event that's come to be known as Gelatogate which I'll be sharing my thoughts on in another post.

I slept in the next morning, skipping most of the early talks and only came in on Hemant Mehta's talk. This was disappointing since it meant I missed Jen McCreight's and she's always worth listening to.

Anyway, Hemant is a math teacher in Illinois and very much in the vein of Dan Meyer who I really like, so I made sure to attend this one on adding critical thinking to math classes.

Sadly, there wasn't much of that in the talk. Instead, it was more about getting students engaged in math thinking. It's much of what I've been saying elsewhere: Shoving kids through formulae that they don't understand or know where they came from, doesn't teach them anything about math. We make opportunities for them to arrive at "correct" answers without knowing math, and then wonder why math learning doesn't take place.

After having taught a few math courses, I know exactly why math teachers do this: Expecting a high school student to actually, think through a problem is damned near impossible. They have several years of education before high school training them to do the exact opposite and that builds up a lot of non-thinking momentum.

So if we're going to do it, we're going to have to be sneaky about it. And this is where Hemant and Dan Meyer really shine. Both of them have been doing the same thing I've been doing with my Anime Mythbusters talk, but in the classroom. They bring in clips from popular media and teach the math concepts behind it to make predictions that can be either checked against the footage (in the case of more reality based shows like Mythbusters), or used to show just how ridiculous something is (as in the case of the clips I show from anime).

Hemant showed a few really good clips that introduced some concepts, such as using the 2/4 Rule for poker for which he showed some edited footage from the World Poker Championships with the percentages blacked out so students could calculate. Another was dealing with playing pool and going "double or nothing" on a series of games, which would be an example of exponential growth. The last he didn't have a use for, but it was from the Office and had a screensaver with a logo that would bounce around and everyone watching it wanted to see it go perfectly into the corner.

Regardless, Hemant had three strategies to improve math education:
1) Use open-ended questions
2) Let their creativity run wild
3) Be less helpful

Spencer Greenberg was up next and was talking about using self-skepticism and realizing our own biases. But I severely tuned out on this one as it became mostly a bunch of fuzzy relativism.

David Fitzgerald gave a talk on "The Complete Heretic's Guide to Western Religion: The Mormons". In short, it was a roast of Mormon theology. Nuff said.

Darrel Ray gave the second to last talk on Sex & Secularism. The basis for this talk was a survey that got passed around the blogosphere earlier this year and garnered around 14,000 responses. It looked at the sexual practices and satisfaction of those that had left various religions as well as guilt when they were religious. Greta summed up the study very well when it first came out, so I'm not going to rehash it again. The key points are that leaving religion vastly improves sex lives, religion imposes a lot of guilt, but doesn't actually keep anyone from having sex.

The only point that Darrel did make in his talk was that when secularists were asked where they received sex education, only something 34% said they got it from their parents. Not very good. But when he looked at those that grew up in strongly religious households, he found they were far lower: only around 17%. This underscores the strong need for sex education in schools. While conservatives try to pretend that it's something that should be done at home, the fact is, they just don't do it.

The final talk was JT Eberhard. And what a marvelous end it was. JT talked on the need for the skeptical community to involve themselves with mental disorders.

For those that don't know, JT is anorexic and it almost killed him. He's blogged a lot in the past year or so about his struggles with it, and the majority of his talk was a very personal and emotional history of what he went through. But the takeaway was this: There's a lot of incorrect stereotypes about such disorders, such as they're something that you should just be able to "get over" with sufficient willpower. But like any other disease, it's not just a matter of willpower, it has physiological causes that are often ignored.

Additionally, there's many people out there that try to give misinformation about the medications involved in treatment. By trying to restrict these, they deny people the help they desperately need. Lastly, there's a bunch of alt-med (read: BS) treatments that give false hope while not really fixing the problem.

If the skeptic community is honest about countering falsehoods wherever they are, then this topic is one that has a lot loaded into it and effects more people than we realize. One in four people has a mental disorder in one way or another. Most aren't very severe, but some, as JT's is, are. And so JT asks that we be friends and advocates to those that need it.

Feminism Roundup

2011-11-04T12:29:00.004-05:00

Here's a collection of articles that have caught my eye lately on the topic:

Why Strong Female Characters are Bad for Women (Warning: NSFWish historical painting included)
If I had to summarize this article, it would be with the note that there's a difference between "strong, female" and "strong female". In the former the two components are distinctly separate; the character is strong, but is just female for the added sex appeal.

From the same site, there's an older post: Is Doctor Who Bad for Women?. As a huge Doctor fan, I appreciate the critique, just as I enjoy looking critically at the science in other series I watch. Critical analysis is good. The conclusion is that the Doctor's companions don't tend to be especially empowered. They're lost puppies, but then again, so is the Doctor. And I think that's the point. All characters are filled with deep flaws that make them human (despite the Doctor being not human), and that weighs far more heavily than any gendered factors. Sadly, this article quits just as Amy Pond was introduced. So far, she's my favorite companion by far, so I'd love to see what they'd think about her.

The idea that female characters need to be well rounded and have strengths and flaws is the idea of this article on how to write a kick-ass young adult heroine.

There's also a good analysis of the sexism in TV ads. I think the worst was the Dodge commercial in which a hypothetical man whines about domestic responsibilities as if they're a terrible burden that are beneath him. Poor hypothetical man.

Here's a good article on the trolling women constantly receive just by existing in public sphere. It's pretty censored, but I think it makes a clear point: The amount of gender charged insults towards women has a chilling effect on their free speech and people don't see this as a problem.

Physics Project Idea: Mythbusters Statistics

2011-10-24T13:43:00.005-05:00

Do you remember that episode of Mythbusters where the build team wanted to test whether or not firing an object backwards with a certain velocity while going forwards with the same velocity would cancel out the momentum?

In it, they went through dozens of tests, trying to get the air cannon to fire with exactly the right velocity and finally they got it so it canceled out just perfectly and the ball dropped straight down?

Very cool demonstration except for one thing: Doing dozens of tests and then picking the one you want to be right doesn't actually tell you anything. What would really be necessary is seeing if the average actually comes out to be zero.

This would require getting all the high speed footage from all the tests, analyzing it, finding the average, and standard deviation (which is related to the experimental uncertainty) to see whether or not the average truly fell where it should. Quite a bit of work, but I bet students would love it.

Topics it would address:
Velocity and/or momentum as vectors
Relative Motion
Coordinate Systems
Experimental Procedure
Averages
Experimental Uncertainty

Book Review - Zoo City

2011-10-10T10:55:00.003-05:00

Awhile back, I heard an interview on NPR with author Lauren Beukes who had recently won the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award for her book Zoo City. It sounded rather interesting, and the Kindle edition was a nice $0.99 so I grabbed a copy.

The premise is about a former drug addict, Zinzi December who has the magical gift of being able to track lost objects. She also has the unusual circumstance of having an animal familiar: A sloth. Many characters have such animals with them (reminiscent of His Dark Materials), and they are gained when a character has an exceptionally remorseful incident in their past.

Zinzi is hired by a music producer to hunt down a missing singer which gets her into all sorts of troubles. While it is an engaging and fast paced read, my final conclusion is that this book was lacking. Mostly in the character motivation and background departments.

!!!SPOILERS!!!

Zinzi's animal familiar was picked up because she feels remorse over being involved in her brother's death. Yet this isn't well explained. It's just left free floating.

The final villains also lack any credible reason for much of what they do. One is simply trying to rid himself of his animal because those that are burdened with them are stereotyped and looked down upon. This much is clear, but the fact that it's possible to transfer the animals to other isn't hinted at early on, and as such, it's a very quick "Where did that come from?" when that's what the character does. Very much a deux ex.

There's two other baddies that, in the end, get away, and their motivations are never explored at all. At best, they're just out for some money making them annoyingly one-dimensional.

The singer is found, but ends up being a brat who thinks her manager is out to kill her. She's right, but given that it wasn't made clear how she could have known that, her actions lack conviction.

Another frequent topic is how those that are followed by animals are constantly in fear of a mysterious power known as the Undertow, which will kill them horribly and is only kept at bay by the animals. This power too is never explained. That's not the end of the world to me. Mysterious powers abound in sci-fi and fantasy. Star Wars was better when the Force was just an "energy field" and not a ham-fisted attempt to rationalize it with "midichlorians".

!!!END SPOILERS!!!

This lack of motivation didn't make me want to stop reading. I continually hoped that it would be resolved, but upon reaching the end, I was just disappointed.

I'm somewhat curious if this book is just the first in a series, or a larger universe since it ends rather abruptly with villains, as well as the protagonist, still on the run and several loose ends. If that's the case, I may be tempted to continue reading, but on its own, this book didn't fare well with me.

Book Review - Relics of Eden

2011-10-06T13:13:00.003-05:00

My birthday was this past Monday and as a present, I requested a Kindle. I got one, so immediately I looked over my reading list and started grabbing books.

The first one I picked up was Relics of Eden: The Powerful Evidence of Evolution in Human DNA by Daniel Fairbanks. I really liked the idea behind this book. After all, it's often been said that even completely ignoring the fossil record, homology, and every other field of biology, genetics would be suitable to establish evolution beyond a reasonable doubt. Yet books like Greatest Show on Earth don't give it much of a nod. The most we're treated to is the evolutionary requirement that chromosome 2 in humans have been the result of fusion from an ancestral species.

Relics of Eden takes this same idea, but provides numerous more examples. The first chapter goes through the chromosome 2 fusion. The second, examines Barbara McClintock's study of corn which led to the discovery of transposons. When these were analyzed, they showed the same sort of divergence in humans and our closely related cousins as evolution would predict.

The third chapter is about "Bogus Genes" which are often duplicated genes that have been disabled by mutations. One of the lessons here is that evolution predicts that, since these pseudogenes aren't being selected for, they should have accumulated more mutations. This evolutionary prediction, as Fairbanks points out, is confirmed. This chapter also discusses the GLUO pseudogene which is disabled in humans and, in other species, serves to produce vitamin C. The function of this gene wouldn't likely be selected for since humans had a wealth of vitamin C in their diet and as such, the presence of this gene is much like a vestigial organ. Another gene, glucocere-brosidase gene (GBA), is repeated but one copy also shows a deletion of 55 base pairs in humans, chips, and gorillas, but not in orangutans have both functioning, and squirrel monkeys only have a single gene. Such patterns make sense in the light of evolution: The duplication happened after the divergence from the line that would lead to squirrel moneys, and the deletion happened after the speciation in which orangutans broke off. Another example of this listed is the cytochrome c pseudogene family which shows a similar pattern and confirms the divergences.

The fourth chapter is trying to figure out exactly when humans, chips, and gorillas split apart, or which one did first, a problem the author calls the "trichotomy problem". The answer can be found in mitochondrial DNA which reveals gorillas split off first. This can be independently checked using nuclear DNA.

Chapter 5 looks at more connections to selection effects in genetics. Like with pseudogenes, mutations tend to accumulate more in exons which aren't selected for. The chapter also explores the NANOG gene which can also be used to look for patterns of divergence.

Chapter 6 is about the inversions in genes between chimps and humans how evolution can explain these.

The last chapter that's really about evidence for evolution is chapter 7 which looks at diversity. Specifically looked at the dispersion of genes in humans alone, tracing specific genes (such as descendants of Gengis Khan) as they spread as well as looking at the origin of humans in sub-Saharan Africa.

Chapter 8 was a look at what evolution is. It's mostly a look at how scientists define it today with some historical nods to Darwin and a few mentions of some of the non-genetic evolutionary evidences (such as the development of whales and dolphins). It also has a bit on how genetics can be used to construct phylogenetic trees.

The 9th chapter is "When faith and reason clash". It is an abbreviated history of Intelligent Design and Creationism which is so brief, it fails to draw some important distinctions, like the direct development of ID from Creationism. The author treats them as independent and that simply ain't so.

The final chapter is on breaking down the divide between science and faith. In my opinion, it should simply be tossed out. It's accommodationist noise. It says nothing more than "Some people can compartmentalize." Yet it fails to address the frequent fallacies committed by those that do (such as Ken Miller).

After this "last chapter", you're still actually only half way through the book. There's 3 appendices. The first two are more evidences that are even more technical. The first looks more in depth at the NANOG gene previously mentioned. The second is more on the inversions in genes discussed earlier as well. The final one is a short history of Genetics.

So what's my overall feeling of the book? It has a ton of great information. However, it was poorly organized. It seemed to toss most of the information first, and then organize it later, after most readers would likely be confused at the significance. I think the writing could have been greatly improved by essentially reversing the book (appendices included), teaching more about the history of evolution and genetics, then looking at how the evidence fit those predictions. I also think that the way the evidence was presented could have been much stronger. It should be made much clearer that every way these evolutionary trees are constructed, no matter which gene, pseudogene, chromosomal reversal, or other genetic bit mentioned, they always come out the same and provide independent evidence. While it's hinted at weakly, it's never directly compared to the parsimony of a designer independently making all these changes in order to fool us. I've seen that argument presented elsewhere, and it's devastating to ID/Creationism. Yet the author sidesteps it.

Another note is that this book is rather technical. While the terms are defined, they are then immediately used heavily and readers are expected to keep up. Having done a great deal of reading on evolution over the past decade, and teaching a bio course, I followed along without too many problems, but an inexperienced reader would likely struggle. The introduction to terms could be improved as well as the usage when terms are required later.

So in closing, not bad, but needs an overhaul in the organization for the average reader.

Why Science?

2011-10-03T15:36:00.003-05:00

In my review of Sagan's Demon Haunted World, I mentioned my favorite chapter was on the short-sightedness of asking "What's the benefit?" from scientific investigations. The answer is "We don't know, but they're huge." Sagan discussed Maxwell's tinkering with E&M leading to everything from toasters to TVs.

Most people can at least see that connection, but in Astronomy, connections are often more difficult to point out. Astronomy is a prime tool for testing basic physics, which can then, in turn, be applied to all sorts of things, but that's a logic train most people can't quite follow.

But recently, Discovery News had a cool article about how research looking at spectroscopy in stars, may be turned to medical applications.

Archon 35 Recap

2011-10-03T09:41:00.002-05:00

This past weekend was Archon 35. Archon is a sci-fi/fantasy convention, as opposed to my more typical anime convention and although I like sci-fi/fantasy, I'm not generally up to date on much of it, and certainly don't know much of the older portions of the genre that many of the attendees adore.

Despite this, I had a blast this year. Friday I gave my Astronomy in Japan presentation to a small audience, but we suspect this was partially due to us closing the door to keep the hall sounds out and them locking to the outside thus stemming the audience population. Oops.

Regardless, one of the people that came in was Elonka Dunin, who was running a 2012 panel later that evening and asked me to join it. I hesitantly agreed, not knowing whether it was going to be debunking or crazy conspiracy theory hour but it turned out to be the former and was a bunch of fun.

My last panel I was on was Friday night and looking at bad science in movies. While this was fun, since it wasn't something I had much time to prepare (I only found out I was on panels when I looked at the schedule 2 days before and my name was on it), so it tended to be more ranting than prepared deconstructions. But what was more fun was at the end, we tied it back to the role of the media in the larger picture of science literacy and how we do at it as a country. This was the last panel in the room for the day, and as such, we abused it, going over time by an hour with a good 80% of the audience staying to discuss science education in the larger scheme of things.

Whenever I wasn't at panels, I'd grabbed my telescope from my car and, with a solar filter, aimed it at the Sun out front which had several large sunspots. I'd meant to get it back out at night, but the panel went so far over time, not many people were still around.

Saturday I didn't host or attend any panels and sat out again with the telescope. That night, I did get the telescope out again and pointed it at Jupiter with a few hundred people stopping by. After resting for awhile and socializing with one of the people that viewed Jupiter, I got the telescope back out (at 3am) and we ended up in the courtyard of the hotel (where there was a good number of people) for another viewing and astronomy lesson. Ended up staying out till the Sun came up before finally turning in.

Sunday I was pretty sleep deprived and left early so I could sleep the rest of the day.

Overall, this is probably the most fun I've had at Archon and I can't wait for next year.

Sexism and Comics

2011-09-27T20:21:00.002-05:00

Continuing with the bent of trying to make sure I'm educated on the gender issues, I recently was introduced to this article on depictions of women in comic books.

Of the many things that have been posted lately, I think this is one of the best. Here's a few of the salient quotes:

These aren't those women. They're how dudes want to imagine those women would be -- what Wire creator David Simon called writing "men with t*ts." They read like men's voices coming out of women's faces. Or worse, they read like the straight girls who make out with each other at clubs, not because they enjoy making out with women but because they desperately want guys to pay attention to them.

This is not about these women wanting things; it's about men wanting to see them do things, and that takes something that really should be empowering -- the idea that women can own their sexuality -- and transforms it into yet another male fantasy.

But this is what comics like this tell me about myself, as a lady: They tell me that I can be beautiful and powerful, but only if I wear as few clothes as possible. They tell me that I can have exciting adventures, as long as I have enormous breasts that I constantly contort to display to the people around me. They tell me I can be sexually adventurous and pursue my physical desires, as long as I do it in ways that feel inauthentic and contrived to appeal to men and kind of creep me out.

I'm not a comic fan, but these bits can be applied to nearly any genre out there.

You're Killing Me

2011-09-24T10:27:00.004-05:00

One of the worst things about being a science guy is that many of my friends, many of whom are well educated nerdy types, want to talk to me about science.

The problem is that they don't know much about it.

As I look more into our failing science education system, the more I realize it's not one problem. It's two. The first is that we haven't established a solid factual foundation. This is demonstrated in the numerous surveys demonstrating that we, as Americans, fail to correctly answer basic factual questions about science.

The second is that we don't understand the scientific process or engage in critical thinking about scientific topics*.

While many of my friends are nerdy enough to have a pretty good grasp on the basic facts, they're still dismal at the second. This morning, one of them posted as his facebook status:

For those of you who didn't notice, scientists have rediscovered yet another truth illuminated almost 100 years ago by the last epic genius to grace the face of this planet. Neutrinos, sub-atomic particles, move faster than the speed of light. This truth essentially invalidates Einstein's Theory of Relativity because Neutrinos are matter, which means that e=/= m(c^2). Tesla, man...where has all the true, selfless genius gone?

**

This is, of course, referring to the recent announcement that some scientists seemed to discover that neutrinos were exceeding the speed of light.

Let's take a review of what the actual scientists are saying here:
- Probably not. But maybe! Or in other words: science as usual.: Sean Carroll
- Faster-than-light travel discovered? Slow down, folks: Phil Plait @ Bad Astronomy
- We need it checked. We're very suspicious about this.: Brian Cox
- Don't Believe the Hype (Yet): Jennifer Ouellette
- This Extraordinary Claim Requires Extraordinary Evidence!: Ethan Siegel @ Starts with a Bang
- If true, then neutrinos from SN 1987a "should have arrived not a few hours early, but a few years, and there would not have been coincident arrivals at the different detectors on Earth.": Pete Coles @ In the Dark

Are you sensing a theme here? When faced with a spurious result that challenges a long standing, well established theory, scientists are extremely critical. They caution that the data be checked extremely carefully and, as the last link shows, they look to see what the implications would be and check to see if those are true too. That's not the response we're getting from the general public, which shows that we've failed to instill an understanding of how to analyze scientific results.

What we must do is weigh the new evidence against the evidence against it. As it turns out, the evidence for relativity (which requires that speed limit of light be firm) is pretty darn strong. It was first supported by the bending of light during a solar eclipse, but it explains the orbit of Mercury, the ability to detect muons created in cosmic rays, the orbits of pulsars slowing, gravitational lensing and redshift, space-time curvature observed by Cassini, and the results of Gravity Probe B.

That's a lot of experiments and confirmation to weigh against a single, as of yet, unconfirmed result.

So how about we keep that in mind.

* - Unless of course, it's to "critically analyze" them against fake "facts" in order to cast doubt on them like the Creationists want.
** - While this image refers to "neutrons", the initial name for neutrinos, discovered in 1930) was neutrons. When what we now refer to neutrons was discovered in 1932, there was confusion among the terms, and it was eventually proposed to rename the 1930 discovery to neutrinos in 1934. As such, the reference to "neutrons" here is likely actually referring to neutrinos, but I can't find enough information on this quote to confirm it. It seems to mostly pop up in quack science references about perpetual motion machines.

Book Review - Demon Haunted World

2011-09-21T09:49:00.005-05:00

I'm a pretty big Sagan fanboy, but until now, I've never read an entire Sagan work. I've listened to several interviews, seen all of Cosmos a few times, and enjoyed his clips in Symphony of Science. I have an audio book, of Pale Blue Dot, but lack a portable media device to make it convenient.

I'd heard of his book, Demon Haunted World (Science as a Candle in the Dark), before but had shied away from it. It was said to concentrate on pseudosciences that I generally find uninteresting (UFOs, psychic healing, etc...) due to their waning popularity and lack of influence on our government and educational system when compared to more insidious pseudosciences like Creationism.

Yesterday, as I neared the end of the book, I made a quick note on my G+ account saying as much. Universe Today's publisher, Fraser Cain dropped a pretty high piece of praise for it stating, "I'd say that book singlehandedly turned me into a skeptic."

Nicole Gugliucci (The Noisy Astronomer), echoed Fraser's enthusiasm, responding, "Ditto! It was already in process, but that book was pivotal."

The implication is that this isn't just another skeptic book; it's a game changer in a big way, and after reading it, I agree completely. I've been pretty ferociously skeptical since the end of high school, so near a decade now, but if I wasn't, I would likely be saying the same things as Fraser and Nicole. I've written a fair number of book summaries and reviews the past few years, but I would recommend this book above all others. I would suggest it be required reading, not just for scientists and skeptics, but for everyone, sometime in middle school, or by the beginnings of high school.

The first chapter begins by laying out the case: Many people believe things without good reason. In particular, Sagan recounts an experience with a chauffeur who accepted, without question, testimonies of extra terrestrials visiting Earth and seemed to have little interest in just how good the evidence actually was. Sagan asks his audience if that should matter and introduces a fantastic quote from Edmund Way Teale:

It is morally as bad not to care whether a thing is true or not, so long as it makes you feel good, as it is not to care how you got your money as long as you have got it.

Now if only people would realize just how important it is to get things right because, if Americans don't, other countries will continue to pass us in scientific achievement. In fact, Sagan notes that other countries are doing just that citing a 1994, Chinese proclamation which stated,

[P]ublic education in science has been withering in recent years. At the same time, activities of superstition and ignorance have been growing, and antiscience and pseudoscience cases have become frequent.... The level of public education in science and technology is an important sign of the national scientific accomplishment. It is a matter of overall importance in economic development, scientific advance, and the progress of society. We must be attentive and implement such public education as part of the strategy to modernize our socialist country and to make our nation powerful and prosperous. Ignorance is never socialist, nor is poverty.

What a statement. Similar rhetoric is often used by US politicians, but with one notable difference in my mind: US politicians will never call out pseudoscience and anti-science. We'll talk of progress, but never stop to look at the elephant in the room that hinders just that.

Working to get the point across in a deeper way, the second chapter deals with why we need to perceive science as so important. Without overstatement, he entitles this chapter "Science and Hope". Immediately, he makes a deep and prophetic statement that seems to read as a perfect description of today, despite Sagan dying 15 years ago this December.

Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time - when the United State is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.

He then goes through many of the ways science improves our lives, including a quote I've often heard referenced, but never realized originated in this book, "If you want to save your child from polio, you can pray or you can inoculate."

Why does science work so well? Sagan rightly suggests its because of how powerful that "way of thinking" actually is. As I quoted in my last review, Feynman describes it as a "kind of utter honesty". Sagan adds that students doing their PhD dissertations must stand before a panel and are "subjected to withering crossfire of questions from the very professors who have the candidate's future in their grasp" in order to "practice a very useful habit of thought: they have to ask: Where in my dissertation is there a weakness that someone else might find?" Scientists don't only search for the things that confirm their biases; good science also looks to anticipate the challenges and investigate them, before someone else does. "Valid criticism," Sagan notes, "does you a favor."

He illustrates how this works with a comparison to metaphysical pseudoscience which, while coming up with luxurious, and largely internally consistent explanations for whatever it likes, never investigates those explanations with honest evidence by comparing them fiercely to reality. "The difference" between science and metaphysical psedudoscience "is that the metaphysicist has no laboratory."

The next several chapters are what I consider to be the meat of the book and look at how we like to fool ourselves and how science encourages us to reflect more realistically on issues.

Sagan begins by introducing how our perceptions can skew our ability to think critically. His examples in this relatively short chapter concentrate on pareidolia, specifically the man in the moon and the face on mars. In general this chapter describes the human propensity for seeing patterns where there are none.

The fourth chapter extends this to aliens, describing how closely linked the phenomenon of "alien abduction" is to other historically described invasions, specifically demons. In both cases the visitors come at night, can paralyze the victim, walk through walls, communicate without speaking, and are often preoccupied with sex. Yet there exists a more prosaic explanation that is overlooked: sleep paralysis.

Sagan also looks at other alien related phenomenon such as crop circles, which were intentionally created by humans who confessed to the hoax. Yet UFOlogists engage in goalpost moving ("But what about that one then!") as opposed to admitting the general rule. Much the same as the ID proponents and "irreducible complexity".

He looks at why governments would (and should) want to keep some things secret and how military technology will often create anomalous signals that can easily be mistaken for something more unusual.

Another topic examines how we can gain false memories by our brains either doing something funny, or being tricked, intentionally or otherwise. He spends a great deal of time discussing how techniques like "hypnosis therapy" are easy to misuse and susceptible to the therapist guiding the victim. Sagan refers to great extent how this has been misused in searching for evidence of childhood sex abuse where nearly anything (including headaches) could be an indication that someone had been abused and that therapists were to operate from the assumption that they were. From there, the therapists would press patients to remember things, but while under the influence of hypnosis, they would create accounts that never happened. The same is true, Sagan suggests, for "recovered" memories of UFOs and abductions.

All of this reminds me of another fantastic Feynman quote. When interrogated about UFOs, he responded,

[F]rom my knowledge of the world that I see around me, I think that it is much more likely that the reports of flying saucers are the result of the known irrational characteristics of terrestrial intelligence rather than the unknown rational efforts of extraterrestrial intelligence.

Sagan then begins introducing the methodology of science in a more direct manner. In a famous example, Sagan discusses the "dragon in his garage". When a rational question for evidence is posed, he makes a case of special pleading to avoid having to present any (the dragon is invisible, floats as to not leave footprints, and incorporeal, but it's there!). He uses this example to build his "Baloney Detection Kit" (a good summary of which can be found here). The first part is to understand the workings of science, and to also be familiar with the logical fallacies and misdirections pseudoscientists like to engage in.

This chapter has another quote that I'd like to address specifically:

[O]ne academic UFOlogist suggests that both the aliens and the abductees are rendered invisible during the abduction (although not to each other); that's why more of the neighbors haven't noticed. Such "explanations" can explain anything, and therefore in fact nothing.

I've made nearly identical statements before, but in regards to ID/Creationism which, no matter what comes along, can always posit that "God intended it that way." If you can explain anything, you've explained nothing.

There's another great aside Sagan relates about the physicist Enrico Fermi who joining the Manhattan Project was introduced to several important generals.

So-and-so is a great general, he was told.
What is the definition of a great general? Fermi characteristically asked.
I guess it's a general who's won many consecutive battles.
How many?
After some back and forth, they settled on five.
What fraction of American generals are great?
After some more back and forth, they settled on a few percent.

But imagine, Fermi rejoined, that there is no such thing as a great general, that all armies are equally matched, and that winning a battle is purely a matter of chance. Then the chance of winning one battle is one in two, or 1/2; two battles 1/4, three battles 1/8, four 1/16, and five consecutive battles 1/32 - which is about 3 percent. You would expect a few percent of American generals to win five consecutive battles - purely by chance. Now, has any of them won ten consecutive battles...?

I like this because it is a perfect example of how we make such significance of short lived trends that are statistically likely given enough chances. Sagan returns to this later, but I think this quote summed it up better than his example of flipping coins.

Sagan goes on to discuss some of the work of James Randi who set up deliberate hoaxes to demonstrate how easily people would go along with them. The main one was of "Carlos", a supposed channeler of a 2,000 year old spirit who an Australian audience gobbled up, uncritically. His background was faked (and not even convincingly had anyone bothered to check that some of the places existed).

A chapter is devoted to the gibberish of those that decry science and attempt to tear it down as only another way of knowing. In the next chapter, he shows what folly this is giving a fantastic summary of the power of science:

We detect the light from distant quasars only because the laws of electro-magnetism are the same ten billion light-years away as here. The spectra of those quasars are recognizable only because the same chemical elements are present there as here, and because the same laws of quantum mechanics apply. The motion of galaxies around one another follows familiar Newtonian gravity. Gravitational lenses and binary pulsar spin-downs reveal general relativity in the depths of space. We could have lived in a Universe with different laws in every province, but we do not. This fact cannot but elicit feelings of reverence and awe.

Using this light of science, Sagan notes that "tenents at the heart of religion can be tested scientifically." He spends a few paragraphs on this, but treads lightly.

The next chapter is looking at the culpability of scientists for the dangers they help realize. While he agrees that the dangers are indeed great (hence the need for a critical and thorough framework of reason which is the topic for the entire book), and that scientists have often callously disregarded their consequences as "not their business", many others have worked feverishly to make sure their actions do not bring harm.

In another chapter, Sagan describes the marriage of skepticism and wonder: Science must keep an open mind, but be, at the same time, skeptical. This is the same as a response I'd made to a crackpot whose book I'd torn apart when he accused me of having a closed mind; I responded that it was open, but "guarded" while his was allowing any gibberish in.

The next chapter explores how science and the act of questioning is a human endeavor. He explores a tribe of hunters that, through interrogation of nature, has extraordinary skills. I think the concluding remark of the chapter summarizes nicely:

A proclivity for science is embedded deeply within us, in all times, places and cultures. It has been the means for our survival. It is our birthright. When we discourage children from science, we are disenfranchising them, taking from them the tools needed to manage the future.

How we disenfranchise them is the topic of the next chapter. Sagan suggests we turn children away from science by teaching it wrong (as a collection of facts) and by pressuring them not to as "dumb" questions. How do we fix this? Sagan responds:

improved status based on teaching success, and promotions of teachers based on the performance of their students in standardized double-blind tests; salaries for teachers that approach what they could get in industry; more scholarships, fellowships, and laboratory equipment; imaginative, inspiring curricula and textbooks in which the leading faculty members play a major role; laboratory courses required for everyone to graduate; and special attention paid to those traditionally steered away from science. We should also encourage the best academic scientists to spend more time on public education - textbooks, lectures, newspapers, and magazine articles, TV appearances. And a mandatory freshman or sophomore course in skeptical thinking and the methods of science might be worth trying.

Sagan's advice for scientists looking to reach out:

Don't talk to the general audience as you would to your scientific colleagues. There are terms that convey your meaning instantly and accurately to fellow experts. You may parse these phrases every day in your professional work. But they do no more than mystify an audience of nonspecialists. Use the simplest possible language. Above all, remember how it was before you yourself grasped whatever it is you're explaining. Remember the misunderstandings that you almost fell into, and note them explicitly. Keep firmly in mind that there was a time when you didn't understand any of this either. Recapitulate the first steps that led you from ignorance to knowledge. Never forget that native intelligence is widely distributed in our species. Indeed, it is the secret of our success.

This same chapter also reveals that the same issues we faced in education, in particular, ranking among the bottom of industrialized nations in math and science scores for students, were prevalent 15 years ago as they are today. This came to me as a shock. When discussed presently, our ranking is always described as "slipping" as in the present tense. Yet for at least half of my life, we've been failing. We keep pretending this is a new crisis that we'll quickly pull through. Seeing this demonstrates that we're in for the long haul and our methods thus far haven't worked.

Before publishing this book, Sagan published a summary of the failures of the educational system in Parade magazine. One teacher asked her 10th grade class to read it and respond. Some of the responses were published and they were horrifying to read. Filled with grammar and spelling mistakes of which a 5th grader should be ashamed, or acted like they had an unbelievable burden and that improvement was simply asking too much. The one that mentally made me do the largest double take was this one:

I think your facts were inconclusive and the evidence very flimsy. All in all, you raised a good point.

Wha?

Obviously, these letters drove home the point Sagan was making. We're failing students. But Sagan responds that it is not simply the fault of parents or teachers:

The responsibilities are broadly shared - parents, the voting public, local school boards, the media, teachers, administrators, and local governments, plus, of course, the students themselves.

This statement stuck out to me because this is, again, a point I have been trying to make for some time, but the particular phrasing is also startling: "of course" students should bear responsibility. Yet when hearing about education reform today, I never hear students indolence addressed as a major concern. Yet Sagan treats it as a self obvious statement.

Sagan also brings up another important point: The misplacement of our national priorities:

Challenging programs for the "gifted" are sometimes decried as "elitism." Why aren't intensive practice sessions for varsity football, baseball, and basketball players and interschool competition deemed elitism? After all, only the most gifted athletes participate. There is a self-defeating double standard at work here, nation wide.

The next chapter, entitled "The Path to Freedom" was perhaps the best of the book. It is a sobering analysis on just how important education is at improving our station in life. It begins by recounting the story of Frederick Bailey, a slave in the 1820's who eventually taught himself to read and realized that keeping slaves ignorant was the key to their misfortune. Eventually he ran away and renamed himself Frederick Douglas. He became one of the most well spoken people against slavery and his freedom, his power, all rested on the foundation of knowledge.

Next up, there is a chapter on making too much of a statistical fluctation, flipping 10 heads in a row when you've flipped a thousand times. It should happen, but forgetting the larger context, people seem to get a high off of being on a "lucky streak". This applies in casinos, sports, and many other places. I'm not entirely sure why this chapter landed here and not earlier (perhaps when discussing the Fermi bit earlier).

The chapter called "Maxwell and the Nerds" was easily my favorite. While it didn't have, perhaps, the largest impact on the thesis as a whole, the point to me was so important as a teacher, that I couldn't help but feeling an overwhelming sense of agreement with it. The idea behind it is that James Maxwell, the creator of Maxwell's laws which are a mainstay of modern physics was rather denigrated as a child for being odd and poking into things in bizarre ways. When developing his laws that described electro-magnetism, he didn't necessarily know what they would be useful for, nor did anyone else. Yet today, these laws are the foundation of nearly all communication since they explain light of all wavelengths, as well as all of electronics since they describe moving charges and fields.

The point being that simply looking at science as esoteric and unhelpful, we must realize that we never know how it might be useful later. Maxwell didn't invent the television or our power grid, but without him, the knowledge for those that did wouldn't have existed! This is the perfect answer for students when they ask the inevitable "How is this useful?" question: We don't know, but having more knowledge never hurts, especially considering the previous chapter on Frederick Douglas. Sadly, most students will likely simply continue to use the question as a dodge of responsibility than internalize what it actually means.

The last two chapters Sagan makes a footnote stating that they're somewhat political in nature. Which is perfect. As stated previously, science isn't a collection of facts: It's a method and that method can be applied to political discussions as well.

Sagan returns to the witch trials going into them in some more detail, showing how the entire idea of a trial was designed to deflect critical analysis. I actually had to stop reading for a bit at this point because it offended me so greatly.

In the last chapter, Sagan discusses the founding fathers, noting that several had scientific training, Jefferson in particular. As a nation, we were founded with the freedoms to question and challenge. Yet we refuse our national heritage, blindly following political ideologues. Should it continue, the prophetic conditions Sagan laid out in the opening may well come to pass. Indeed, they already seem to be.

Cutting Money Improves SAT Scores?

2011-09-19T09:49:00.003-05:00

According to this conservative website, "reductions in state aid to local school districts has apparently had no discernible effect on the students in New Jersey’s classrooms".

What a fantastic piece of poor conservative logic.

To justify this, the author of the article throws in a red herring about how test scores have dropped elsewhere due to a cause completely unrelated to funding.

The next fallacy is the post hoc, ergo propter hoc when the author notes that NJ SAT scores have risen despite financial cuts. This comes immediately after the previous fallacy noting that finances aren't the only factor that effects test scores; the amount of minority students (which are the victims of large gaps in their preparedness) taking the tests do as well. As such, the author needs to demonstrate that the rise in scores wasn't in any way related to such other factors. But it isn't even mentioned.

Instead, he talks about how students taking the 2011 SATs would have been just entering high school when Governor Christie came into office. This is true, but a complete non sequitur. His coming into office has nothing to do with when cuts were instituted (in 2010). As such, those taking the 2011 SAT would have had several years of preparation under nominal funding making it even less likely that they would be largely effected by this change. At most, one year of their education could be effected.

So there we have it. Three fatal logical fallacies within three paragraphs. I don't mean to imply that this idiocy is par for the course for those in power in NJ (they only reflect the muddled thinking of the author, supposedly the site's managing editor), but in trying to sort out when the cuts were imposed, I found that the NJ Governor is a twit when it comes to education. His largest cuts specifically targeted poor schools with minorities who are already likely to underperform. Due to a 2008 act, that budget was, thankfully, ruled unconstitutional. Way to try to make the education gap for minorities even worse though, Christie.

THIS is Why Junk Science is Bad

2011-09-16T08:43:00.003-05:00

Since the beginning of this year, I've added a ~10 minute section to the beginning of the Anime Mythbusters talk I've been giving, explaining the motivation behind why I bother debunking cartoons: Aside from being fun, it's practice for good critical thinking when something comes along that actually matters, like your health. The main example I've included has been the anti-vax movement.

It's a stark contrast to the light and fun talk that follows, but many people have said it's a real eye-opener, so I keep including it. At several of the talks, I've also tossed in current examples of bad science in the media such as the ET bacteria reported this spring, the arsenic bacteria this summer, but there's a new example I'll switch in that I think fills the gap between the heaviness of the anti-vax movement, which is literally killing people, and the anime fluff.

Apparently some TV quack called Dr. Oz has been going around claiming that apple juice has toxic levels of arsenic which has caused schools to pull it from their lunch menus.

What Oz failed to take into account is that there's a difference between the free floating, inorganic arsenic and the organic kind that's bound into the actual molecules of the food. The former is deadly. The latter isn't.

The killer is that Oz knew this. He, or at least his producer, was sent a letter informing him of the difference a full week before his show aired.

But that didn't stop him from causing panics over nothing. And of course, most consumers don't know enough science to be able to debunk this on their own.

The good news is that the media seems to be responding fairly intelligently. They've been commenting on the FDA response and those of other doctors pointing out Oz's failure. But they're still giving Oz the time of day. He's dodging the substance of the points others are making, tossing up smokescreens of "we don't know enough so I'm concerned", moving goalposts, making inappropriate comparisons (more arsenic is in apple juice than drinking water?! *gasp* Of course that can't have anything to do with the fact we drink an order of magnitude more water than juice!) and displaying the best hallmarks of pseudoscience.

Book Review - The Gender Knot

2011-09-08T13:33:00.002-05:00

Gender studies aren't an issue that's generally towards the top of my list of interests, but the recent Elevatorgate made me stand up and take notice. In fact, the response outright pissed me off.

But I suppose I'm weird in a sense. When I get pissed off on a topic I don't know much about, I don't immediately start ranting, I try to get educated and make sure I'm justified in my anger. Odd concept. I know.

This is a subject that I wouldn't know exactly where to start on by myself. Fortunately, my sister happens to be a Women and Genders Study major and has a shelf full of her textbooks from previous semesters. I looked at a few of them, and eventually decided on (with her recommendation) The Gender Knot: Unraveling Our Patriarchal Legacy.

Quick warning: Because this is such a novel topic to me (and likely many of my readers), this is going to be a LONG summary/review since there's little I can take for granted here.

The book immediately starts off highlighting, briefly, the gender disparity faced by men and women in the workplace through an activity that's apparently used in gender workshops. In it, both genders are asked to make a list of both the positive and negative things they face in their job as a result of their gender. When this occurs, men easily make long lists of positives, women are forced to make lengthy lists of negatives. Immediately, this should signal a problem.

But what, exactly, is the problem and what's the cause of it? That's the true focus of the book and as the subtitle indicates, the author proposes it's due to the fact that we're a patriarchal society.

This argument is all contained in the very beginning of the book, but unfortunately, from there, the writing turns into a complete mess. The book is divided into three sections. The first is meant to define a patriarchy and explore its characteristics; the second, to explore why we're so mired in it; and the third, to explain how we can change things for the better.

While taken in a broad context, each section achieves that goal reasonably well, the trouble comes by the individual chapters and sub sections which have next to no cohesive form. The narrative jumps from topic to topic without much, if any connection. This may be why the writing often feels exceptionally redundant. I lost track of how many times the author noted the use of words associated with females, such as "bitch", "cunt", and "pussy" as pejoratives, while male traits, such as "growing balls" or "manning up" were always considered positively. Thanks. I got it. You didn't need to mention it every few pages. Nor mention a few times in every chapter that we don't perceive a system that we're part of because it's simply "normal" to us. Got that too.

There's also some just outright stupid comments in the book. At one point Johnson claims that he knows movements pushing for gender equality must be right because they provoke such a strong backlash and criticism. This is about as intelligent as Creationists claiming that they know they must be right because evolutionists fight them so hard. Creationists (and apparently Johnson) forget that being absolutely dead wrong is another good reason for a fierce response. This is not to say I disagree with what most of what Johnson says, but such a rudimentary logical flaw doesn't inspire confidence.

Because of the lack of cohesion, I'm not going to bother to say much on the sub sections individually, but rather, what things I learned from the larger sections as a whole or even tossed together. After all, I can't much remember what came where; the writing is just too jumbled and redundant.

The first major section was, as I stated, about what a patriarchy is and what its characteristics are.

Johnson defines a patriarchy as having three main traits. That is, it must be male dominated, male identified, and male centered.

Male dominated means that positions of power are dominated by males. This is not to say exclusively held by them, but that women entering these roles are exceptions. It doesn't take much to realize that this defines out culture pretty well.

Male identified means that positive traits are associated with males. This is highlighted by the example I gave above. Another important way it is realized is the way that women entering the male dominated fields are expected to act like "one of the guys" and adapt male traits.

At this point, I think the author toes the line of some pretty significant double think. Later on, he argues that what we consider to be "male" or "female" traits are anything but. We generally consider males to be the more aggressive, or dominant sex whereas females are supposedly passive. Yet both genders play both roles; a male will be submissive in front of a superior; a woman will be dominant when it comes to her children. Thus, the notion of gender characteristics has some serious flaws and in most cases doesn't make sense. As such, we peel away that layer and one would think that you can't identify traits that are inherent in both genders as particular to one.

But as Doctor Horrible once noted, "And sometimes there's a third, even deeper level, and that one is the same as the top surface one. Like with pie."

I think that's true here, which is what prevents the argument from truly falling apart: It doesn't matter if these gender roles are generally ambiguous - So long as people perceive such roles as existing, and identify the "good" ones as "male", then we're a male identified society.

Male centeredness is precisely what it sounds like: Our society pays special attention to males and what they do. This is highlighted, somewhat humorously, with a review of Oscar winning movies between 1965 and 2003, in which the vast majority featured male protagonists (only 4 featured females as the main character, and two of those were deemed trivial because they were musicals). Not mentioned in the book, but something I would add, is the Bechdel Test which analyzes whether movies have two female characters that talk to each other about something other than boys. It's staggering just how many fail.

This covers the first 11 pages of the book, and after this, it's where it starts to break down. Much of the next 110+ pages of this section is meant to help establish that we do indeed live in a patriarchal system. That system is both formed by individuals, and influences individual actions. This part I think is good: It shows how we often don't perceive our society as a patriarchy because we're so locked into it. We don't see the actions that lower the status of women as harmful because that's just the way things are. Additionally, by refusing to recognize these facts, we, unwittingly, perpetuate the problem; by not objecting to sexist jokes, we mark them as socially admissible. Additionally, the attempts we do make to stem this flow of sexism are often little more than topological. We attempt to look at individual actions (there's a good section in here on how this applies to violence on women) as the problem, and ignore the larger implications of how the patriarchal system allows for such things in the first place.

So why do I say this is where things break down? Because many of these topics are better suited (and somewhat repeated) in the next section on how we're stuck in this system. There's a division drawn between these two sections, but much of the material is interchangeable, scattered here and there.

Another topic that comes up in this section is why we exist in a patriarchy at all. The answer is not clear at all. A strong answer to this question would include how it originated and perpetuated, but the author even admits to skipping over origins. There is some good discussion on how the patriarchy evolved after the industrial revolution (I'll say more on this in a moment), but for the most part, the actual topic the author actually seems to cover is a more thorough look at some of the characteristics of a patriarchy.

One of the main ones the author touches on is control. The author asserts that men are simply control freaks (again, toeing the line of throwing gender roles around). This touches on the topic of why the patriarchy exists because it is woven into a narrative of how a patriarchy could have developed as we developed agriculture and herding: Johnson supposes that as we disconnected from nature, setting ourselves up as able to control it, we lost sight of the interconnectedness of it. He presumes that men became drunk off the power of this and then began to see themselves as having "power over" everything, including women and their productive capabilities. I don't find this scenario entirely unplausible, but there's no evidence to support it as being true either.

What bothered me, however, about this claim was where the author went from there. I'll quote Emperor Palpatine here who claimed, "All who gain power are afraid to lose it." Johnson makes the same claim, stating that the fear of losing their power over women and everything else, is the prime force for the perpetuation of the patriarchy. Yet he frequently claims that we're so lost in the patriarchal system that men don't recognize they have such power and privilege. How can one be afraid to lose something they don't even know they have? Johnson makes no attempt to even consider this question and offers absolutely no evidence to support his "fear" hypothesis. Such pivotal things often go unsupported and uncited.

A related example of this is the claim that homosexuality is vilified because it threatens to upset the patriarchal order and men fear this since they have so much to lose. Yet if this were true, then women should support homosexuality, since they, conversely, have so much to gain. Yet this is obviously not true and Johnson doesn't bother to explore this or make any effort of support. Such "hit and run" statements without sticking around to look at the conclusions reminds me of something Richard Feynmann said at a commencement speech in 1974, where he speaks of

a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty--a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you're doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid--not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you've eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked--to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.

The lack of such "utter honesty" greatly discouraged my appreciation of this book.

Meanwhile, I couldn't help but think, in this section, about another place in where I repeatedly heard the term "power over" used. It was in Gregory Boyd's book, Myth of a Christian Nation in which he noted that the right wing that sought to declare the US as a "Christian Nation" sought to spread their religion by forcing it onto others, and exerting "power over" them. The connection between religion and patriarchy isn't lost here (an issue I'll return to later).

Where the fear does come into play that Johnson explores in exhausting depth, is how men are afraid of losing the status they do realize, namely, their manliness. This goes back to the male identification discussed earlier, in which men are constantly having to show off their manliness to affirm their masculinity. This drives them to delve deeply into "manly" topics of sports, sex, and the like, which helps to reaffirm the gender roles and deepen the ruts in the patriarchal road.

I promised to say more about the bit on the industrial revolution transforming the patriarchy. When I initially discussed Elevatorgate with my sister, she wasn't at all surprised at the reaction of the general population and fired back with a claim that made me think she was downright crazy. She stated that sexism hasn't gotten better. It's actually worse than ever. Thinking of the women's rights movement which at least won women the right at least be legally permitted to hold any job awarding financial independence (even if not yet realized in practice), I couldn't see how this made any sense. But what the portion on the effect of the industrial revolution made me realize was that I was thinking too narrowly.

The idea is this: Prior to the industrial revolution, the labor performed by men and women wasn't readily distinguishable (in general cases. This obviously breaks down for the wealthy). Both sexes worked around the house. Both would help in the fields. Both would help with raising children, even if the specifics of each were different. Largely, the work was split, and fair credit was given to women, even if the man was still the "head" of the house. Men at least realized the interconnectedness. (At this point, I'm again connecting to things in the second section on why the system is perpetuated, but this topic bridges both sections well).

What happened in the industrial revolution is that work stopped being something that was done at home and in one's own fields. It was done elsewhere, in a factory. Thus one member had to leave the home to go there. Being that a patriarchy already existed, men were selected. But what drove this to cause the deep issue was that in this new society, worth wasn't measured by amount of work, it was measured in a new manner: By money. And men had it all. For the first time in history, the contributions of women, which still existed, were hidden from view, because they had no monetary value by which to measure it. As such, the respect women did have, vanished entirely and they became viewed as nothing more than a bunch of moochers.

In that respect, the gains women have made in the past ~50 years, has only served to help make up some of this ground. But because women on average, still can't compete with men financially (see: here for a recent example of this), the work they contribute isn't recognized, where as, prior to the industrial revolution, Johnson claims it was to a greater extent.

I haven't looked much into sexism prior to the industrial revolution to make an independent analysis of this and gut feeling tells me Johnson is overstating the view of women historically, but the point is an interesting one.

One of the best chapters in the first part, is on feminists and feminism. It began by looking at several stereotypes of feminism (that they're anti-family, no fun, male bashers, whiny pseudo-victims and all lesbians), and dismissed each one in turn. Not especially exciting, but I suppose that feminism has gotten such a bad rap, that it might be necessary to dispel such myths for some.

The interesting part was Johnson's discussion on some of the branches of feminism: liberal, radical, and Marxist. The first espoused that sexism was a product of miseducation and that all that needed to be done to fix it was get people a proper education. Radical feminism, as Johnson defines it, is the idea that you can't fix the problem by simply changing the people in the system, but rather, the system itself needed to be changed. In effect, that the entire male standard, our tiered system of government (based on power and control) and everything else that was male identified needed to be removed since such systems were inherently male biased and would only perpetuate the system which, in turn, influences the people in it. Marxist feminism laid the issues of sexism at the feet of unequal wealth, and claimed that if this could be fixed, equality would be reached.

It's interesting to reflect where I would stand in such a position. I'm very big on education being a driving force for change. In that sense, I identify with the liberal feminism. Yet I have to agree with the radical position that things won't change as long as the roots of the system are in place. However, this is again, where I start having a major issue with how gender labels become tossed around.

I understand our government is centered on powerful individuals, presidents, congressmen/women, supreme court justices, and the like, I don't buy that this is necessarily a bad thing. There's nothing wrong with power when used appropriately. If such positions were held by the most qualified, educated people, as opposed to career politicians and cronies, I can't find any fault with this. However, because such a system is associated with "male" traits, it comes under what I would consider, criticism for all the wrong reasons. It's attacked for being "male" as opposed to being corrupted by ideological idiots.

Another interesting aspect of this section, was the (briefly touched upon) interactions between the various camps. It resounded strongly of the "accommodationists vs. Gnus" fight in the skeptic movement. Jen McCreight and Rebecca Watson (I never realized until just now that typing "Rebecca" feels like typing "Chewbacca". Oh, the weird things I think of. Perhaps I need to sleep more) have both argued that skeptics should be natural allies with feminists since both suffer at the hands of religious oppression. Such parallels only underscore that connection.

So why does this system of inequality keep going? As I touched on earlier, it's because it's so "normal" to us, that it's effectively invisible. I've already provided examples of how it is written into our language. Another point Johnson makes is that women too go along with the system because it's simply easiest to do so. Fighting it requires great effort and often, personal sacrifice.

In many ways, we also disguise the problem by making it someone else's problem. It's not the problem of the oppressor, it's a "woman's issue" and even acknowledging that it exists is a kindness. But it's not something that males need to fix with themselves. A key example of this is how in sexual assault, the victim is often blamed. The "solution" is to warn women on walking alone at night, or providing mixed messages. Yet we ignore the deeper problem of the objectification of women that causes the issue in the first place. Another example Johnson provides of this is the rate of "teen pregnancies". The problem focuses on the females and their contributions. But rarely is there a mention of the males that contributed the other half. It's the women that have the problem. They're the ones that need to change.

And in many cases, that change means women are expected to conform even further to the patriarchal paradigm. Women that get ahead in business must conform to "male" traits of being competitive, cut throat, and often wears "men's" clothing. Again, this only serves to reinforce the status quo of the system, even if the inequality is somewhat lessened, and the wheels of the machine greased.

There's also a good section on false parallels that are used to deflect light being cast on the devaluation of females. The example given is especially good: When it's noted that females are made to be naturally evil (think Eve, Pandora, etc...), people often respond by pointing out the Devil is male. But what Johnson notes is different in these two scenarios is that for Eve, her evil, original sin, was borne from her gender which made her temptable, whereas for the Devil, it wasn't a flaw of his gender. As Johnson puts it,

It's hard to imagine how patriarchal Christianity would ever develop an evil female figure powerful and substantial enough to challenge God, for this would require that women be taken seriously. In other words, under patriarchy, women aren't good enough to be the devil.

Zing.

There's another argument in the section that I find interesting that deals with sexual objectification, namely the difference between female strippers and male strippers. Many people would use the existence of both as a sign that viewing the opposite sex as sexual creatures is practiced by both sexes and thus, even if morally gray, not something that has a net harmful effect since it can go both ways.

Johnson tries to explain the difference between male strippers and female strippers by claiming that because we live in a patriarchy, male strippers are affirmed by taking their clothes off and admired by their social inferiors (women), whereas if a woman strips and is viewed by males, then she's looked down on by the social superiors (men) thanks to the patriarchy. In other words, parallel actions are magically transformed by their presence in a larger system. That difference reinforces the social differences and thus, pornography is harmful.

What strikes me as bizarre about this is that if we could somehow remove all gender inequality, somehow this would change, and pornography would be perfectly acceptable in this view as long as it went both ways.

I'm glad to see this argument because when pornography and sexism are often discussed, many people imagine that the implication is that pornography turns men into horrible raping monsters after one view. It's very similar to the notion that violent video games make kids shoot up schools. There's studies supporting these views, but there's also contradictory studies. Thus, it seems to me to be a wash. Thus, I'm pleased to see a real argument on why pornography is often frowned upon by those that are working towards gender equality. Still, I question just how large this effect is on reinforcing the patriarchal system. Such a topic is skipped over which brings Feynmann's admonition back to mind.

The next way Johnson explores that the patriarchy is hidden from view is that men often feel like victims too: We perform more dangerous jobs, have shorter lifespans, are disproportionally involved in violence (especially when called to war), and portrayed as bumbling fools in media. So are men not victims? The answer is yes. But being a victim and in a position of privilege and power aren't mutually exclusive.

This highlights another important theme of this work that I touched on earlier: Despite the fact that we often view gender inequalities as a "woman's issue" it effects both genders and is just as much a concern for men. We'll have to give up many of our privileges, but there's many other things men stand to gain that could replace it.

The last reason Johnson discusses that I think is an important point on why the existence and harm of our patriarchy is overlooked is the fear of feeling guilty; it's easier to bury our heads in the sand and ignore the problem than risk feeling guilty over the issue. This is illustrated by the example given in the very opening of the book that Johnson returns to: When drawing up lists of advantages and disadvantages of their genders, men, by and large, do a pretty comprehensive job of listing all of the disadvantages of women. They know the problem exists, but don't do anything about it.

Which begs the question (that is addressed in the final two chapters of the book), "What do we do about it?"

The first of these chapters gives one recommendation: Men need to be the driving force since we're the ones with the power to enact much of the change. But for all the reasons listed earlier, we're too busy ignoring the problem to do so. Since many of those reasons are simple awareness issues (which could be fixed with some education), Johnson concentrates on the deeper one of guilt. He states that men need to accept that patriarchy exists, but realize that, although they are wrapped in the system, they are not, individually, the cause of it and thus, should get past the guilt. Nor can we pass the blame.

In the last chapter, Johnson also discusses how we have to get over our own egos. He doesn't put it in these terms but that's what it boils down to: We can't give up because we will only get involved if we can play a pivotal role, or we want to see the fruition of ending men's privilege within our lifetimes. Rather, we need to change the "paths of least resistance" so that future generations will have options that aren't so entrenched in a patriarchal paradigm.

Johnson notes that there are numerous little ways to do this, and I'm not going to go through all of them, but there are some that I want to highlight in specific:

"Dare to make people feel uncomfortable, beginning with yourself" - One of the most important things I ever learned as a student that informed my thinking as a teacher is that education should be uncomfortable. If it isn't, we're not moving out of our comfort zones in which we already know everything. Exploring always takes a bit of daring and shouldn't be something that's always comfortable.

"Because patriarchy is rooted in principles of domination and control, pay attention to racism and other forms of oppression that draw from those same roots" - As I noted earlier, the feminist movement should be a natural ally of skeptics who have also suffered.

That's the end of the book there. As a summary, this book had a good skeleton to it:

- Gender inequality exists
- It comes from a patriarchal system which emphasizes the "male" values of control and dominance
- It hurts both men and women
- We can't change it if we ignore it, which we do
- Change is going to be hard

Most of these points are well demonstrated. The weakest link is that patriarchy causes the gender in equality, although it's somewhat self evident.

But while this book has a good skeleton to it, many of the individual points that flesh it out seem haphazardly tossed out. Material that relates better to one topic is often found entirely elsewhere or is repeated at length. That's the biggest flaw of this book in my opinion: It's poor presentation for good material.

It has (hopefully) provided a good basis for more reading on the subject that I'll undoubtedly be doing. If anyone has recommendations for more books on the topic, let me know so I can investigate those.

Book Review - Greatest Show on Earth

2011-09-06T12:28:00.003-05:00

I finally finished Dawkins' Greatest Show on Earth. I bought the book shortly after it came out, and worked through most of it quickly before losing interest. I picked it up again this past winter and again, quit before finishing. Once again, I tried this summer and made it nearly as far as I did the first time, but having read it so many times, it stuck enough for me to quit for awhile, and come back without feeling the need to start over.

I still haven't figured out exactly what it is about this book that's prompted me to quit midway through three separate times. The book starts off introducing a little bit about how science works and what it means to be a "theory" in science. This is old hat for anyone that's been involved in the evolution "debate" so there's little new information here, but the thing that interested me the most was Dawkins' call for a new word to replace the frequently abused "theory". Likening a scientific theory to math, he calls for the term "theorum", a twist of mathematical theorems which are accepted as true even though they're often impossible to prove since there's an infinite number of cases in which they could apply.

The next several chapters work to build up an understanding of how evolution works, from scales that are uncontroversial, even to Creationists (who accept "microevolution"), gradually to larger and larger scales, through dogs, cows, and computer generated biomorphs, showing how each transition has been supported by observation.

From there, he discusses the "Primrose path to macroevolution", taking this even further. While the chapter doesn't truly demonstrate anything that could readily be called "macroevolution", its goal is to set the framework for diverging populations that will then be able to grow apart even further, if only there would be enough time, which is the topic of the next chapter. That chapter explores dating methods, like dendrochronology and radioisotope dating.

Of course, some changes don't take deep time to achieve and the fifth chapter explores rather astounding changes that take place within our own lives. I think the most interesting was a series of experiments with guppies, placed in isolated pools with different rocks on their beds, some with predators, some without. The variation from this was a fantastic demonstration.

Moving still, towards larger scales, the next chapter covers a bit of the fossil record, explaining the supposed "gaps" and just how little that really means. This is followed by a chapter which focuses even more on the recent fossil record that chronicles the development of humans and just how detailed the record is for supposedly being non-existent as Creationists claim.

The 8th chapter was the one that slowed me down the most every time. This one covered much more on the microbiological side, involving DNA and how it created forms through embyrology. It's not that the topic wasn't interesting, but rather, much of the material became very informationally dense at this point, and the chapter seemed to drag.

But once past this chapter, I think is where the book really began to shine. The last chapters really get to the meatiest portion of the book, providing the most clear cut evidence presented in the most direct fashions. Chapter nine discusses how the motion of continents isolated populations of one species, allowing them to diverge. Chapter ten covers family trees and the numerous ways they can be derived (from homology or genetics) and yet they always come out to agree. It also explores how non-coding genes can be used as biological clocks that also agree with other dating methods. Chapter eleven is about vestigial structures and provides some new examples beyond the usual ones which was refreshing. It also explores things that aren't vestigial, but that got caught up in evolution in other ways, like the vagus nerve.

The reason these chapters stood out to me is, in each one, they can be starkly contrasted with ID/Creationism. They all make sense in the light of evolution, but make the designer inept or deceptive (similar to the argument put forth in Miller's Finding Darwin's God, but not so plainly stated here). With ID/Creationism, each of these cases requires special pleading.

While the first several chapters made a good case for the idea of evolution, complete with steps along the way to bolster it, these last few chapters are the ones that really slam the nails in the coffin.

There's two more chapters. Chapter twelve explores the apparent stillness of evolution where arms races meet stalemates or have to keep changing just to stay in the same place, but nothing here is really a strong argument for evolution. The final chapter is a line by line discussion of the final paragraph of Origin of Species, putting each piece into the context of how Darwin's idea has been realized. It's a cute summary, but ultimately added very little to the book. If I were to reread this book, I'd skip it.

Included is also a appendix which includes studies of just how frequently evolution is rejected in various countries and seeks to put in context the scope of anti-evolutionism. I skimmed this, but didn't bother with it too in depth since the problem is already obvious.

My overall impression of this book is that it's good, but not exactly the slam dunk I think it was intended to be. Too much gets lost in the noise and isn't summarized clearly enough to really bring the full weight of the book out. This book could have been much better if each chapter contained some end notes that summarized the main points to clarify what the intent of the chapter was. Without them, it's easy to get lost, which is why I think I gave up so many times. The book lacks a direction that's immediately obvious. In retrospect I can see it, but that only works if you've completed the book, which isn't likely to happen unless you're as stupidly tenacious as me.

So who is this book worth recommending to? Obviously not Creationists. They've likely heard most of this anyway, and have the constant strategy of seizing on the details and finding bits they don't understand to hold up as "counter evidence" or simply moving the goalposts. In reading many segments of this book, a passage from the first book I reviewed on this blog, Science of Diskworld III, came to mind:

Yes, the proponents of intelligent design understand the eye . . . but as only one example, not as the basis of a general principle. ‘Oh yes, we know all about the eye,’ they say (we paraphrase). ‘We’re not going to ask you what use half an eye is. That’s simple-minded nonsense.’ So instead, they ask what use half a bacterial flagellum is, and thereby repeat the identical error in a different context.

I could just envision Creationists saying, "That's all well and good, but what about [Gish gallop]?" Trying to educate a Creationist is a waste of time.

But what about the middle ground? Those that aren't decided but wanting to learn more about the evolution and ID/Creationism? The first time I've been asked to recommend a book on evolution to such a person happened a few weeks ago with a girl at work. She rejects evolution for all the usual logical fallacies ("Isn't it all too complex?"), but didn't immediately accept ID/Creationism as something that had much science going for it either.

My choices of books to give her included this book, Shubin's Your Inner Fish, and Miller's Finding Darwin's God. (I would also have considered Coyne's Why Evolution is True, but I haven't read it and don't own a copy.) Ultimately, out of these three books, I recommended Miller's. Inner Fish is fantastic, but doesn't give enough direct back and forth between evolution and ID/Creationism that just shows why the latter is wrong. This one has that at the end, but it's simply too hard to get through for the reasons I explained before. Thus, it's not the greatest of books for the uncertain middle ground either.

The last potential audience is those that already support evolution and are looking for a more thorough grounding and a few new pieces of evidence that I haven't seen in other sources. This is about the only audience I think this book can really do much for.

Overall, this book is ok, but not nearly as good as Selfish Gene, which is my favorite Dawkins book of the ones I've read thus far, albeit for different reasons (giving a marvelous naturalistic origin to morals and altruism). I'm happy to have this on my bookshelf, but it won't be likely to get another read any time soon.

Education's Death Spiral

2011-09-05T11:52:00.004-05:00

There's a new infographic out looking at the amount of trust the public puts in our public education system. It's a dismal picture. It starts in 1977 with a high of 54% of responses saying they had a "A great deal" or "Quite a lot" of confidence in public schools. It's been slipping pretty steadily since then and for 2011, sits at an all time low of 34%. This is, of course, in direct contrast to the constant raising of standards and expectations for teachers.

Yet overwhelmingly, when given the choice between larger classes with "more effective" teachers or smaller classes with "less effective" teachers, people choose the former. This conforms to everything else I keep seeing that people seem to place everything on teachers.

Oddly, the portion asking people what they "perceive to be the biggest problem that public schools in your community face", "qualified teachers" isn't one of the answers. I don't know if they left that off because it wasn't a possible answer, or suddenly everyone responding forgot about teachers (I suspect the former) but it's an unusual oversight. Instead, "lack of funding" took the #1 spot. More funding is definitely important, but throwing money at problems rarely fixes anything.

Another portion looks at whether people got positive or negative impressions of teachers from the news. No surprise here, teachers are vilified with 68% saying they hear more bad stories about teachers.

But here's the one that really killed me:
How do schools stack up against other community and national institutions? We suck. As noted, only 34% of people rate schools as worthy of confidence. I'm glad to see that the Supreme Court is higher, but only just. A whopping 37%. Police fair a bit better at 56%. But the remaining four institutions worry me that they're rated so highly compared to schools: The Military, Small Business, Organized Religion, and the Medical System.

The military has gotten itself stuck in an endless war. Small businesses are great, of course, but often fail. The medical system is consistently rated as one of the poorest among 1st world nations. Organized religion is merely blind faith. None of those deserve to beat out schools. To me, this speaks of misplaced priorities. We'll slap "Support Our Troop" ribbons on everything, but there's no such ribbons for schools. We'll endlessly debate our health care systems in congress, but when it comes to education reform, we can't even be bothered to review NCLB.

To be fair, our primary education system is, like our medical system, rated extremely low, so it shouldn't be surprising. Yet surprising or not, it's a problem. When families teach their children to walk into schools believing that they're going into an institution that is horribly flawed, isn't really out to help them acquire skills they (should) want and need, then students aren't going to participate in their own learning. This in turn, weakens the perception further, making students again, less likely to want to try, and the spiral continues.

So how do we pull out of this death spiral?

The first key is to start making education rigorous again. I can't blame the perception of schools failing to educate kids when grade inflation induced by poor policies is out of control. Until schools have enough integrity to tell students where they actually stand, then it's no surprise that people won't trust them.

Learning Styles is an Excuse

2011-08-30T12:14:00.002-05:00

One of the things I've been saying for quite awhile now is that the ideas of learning styles is overstated. While we all have strengths and weaknesses, interests and things we couldn't care less about, these are trivial in comparison with the ability to learn when we need to.

The notion that learning styles, strengths in auditory, visual, kinesthetic or some 70 other proposed tactics towards learning are so profound that we should structure teaching around them is nonsense and recent research is backing that up. A review of the literature on learning styles has shown them to be statistically flawed, meaning there is little to no evidence for the learning styles notion. The report even goes so far as to note that in the few tests that did have statistical significance, some contradicted the learning style theory.

In my opinion, it's long past time to dump this. Even if there were some validity to it, I don't think employing it has helped. In fact, I think it has the potential to do far more harm than good because it has provided a convenient excuse that students can and will employ that is virtually impossible to argue against. Beyond simple grades, it teaches students that everything should be catered specifically to them, a lesson many take with them in life later creating a sense of entitlement and inflexibility.

So instead of flexing the curriculum to the (imagined) strengths of the student, we need to teach students to be flexible thinkers. They need to be forced to develop mental muscles that may not be immediately easy to them and produce well rounded thinkers instead of pigeon-holed into a learning style that can be used as an excuse for failure.

So Close, Yet So Far

2011-08-30T11:31:00.001-05:00

So here's me looking for a teaching position and what do I find from Northridge High School in Greely, Colorado?

Sweet. I wanna teach astrology! Muggles love that stuff.

Missouri's Teacher-Facebook Law Struck Down

2011-08-26T20:17:00.005-05:00

For those living out of state, you may not have heard of this law, so here's the story:

Earlier this year, the Missouri legislature passed a new law banning teachers from using websites that granted "exclusive access" to students, current or former. The bill was proposed to close potential gateways for predators. It was primarily targeted for websites like facebook.

But immediately, it was noted that the bill had some substantial flaws. Firstly, it didn't just tell teachers that they couldn't use websites to communicate with students, it said teachers couldn't use the websites at all. This would have an obvious chilling effect on teachers ability to their protected free speech and as such, would be unconstitutional. Additionally, it didn't make exceptions for parents that were teachers communicating with their own children. In general, the poor wording just made the law plain stupid.

Aside from that, several people criticized the law because it cut off potential gateways for communication that is good. In other words, teachers work to reach out to students through the methods students are employing, such as texts, twitter, and facebook. Obviously, much of such communication could be done openly, but there are often times students don't want to be seen asking for help and would rather do it behind the scenes. Similarly, any sensitive information like grades is required to be discussed privately. While this could certainly be done through a district controlled Email, let's face it, it's not what students are tending to use. Facebook chats and messages have largely replaced traditional Email. Cutting that out throws the baby out with the bathwater. So again, this creates more problems that it solves.

The last issue people (including myself) have with this bill, is the light it casts on teachers: Once again, they're the bad guys. It automatically assumes that teachers are all sexual predators just waiting for a private channel of communication. Guilty until proven innocent. Meanwhile, it places no admonitions for parents to monitor their kids online activity or text logs. It once again removes parental responsibility and places it everywhere but where it should be.

So no matter how I look at it, the bill is a pretty large failure and seeing it struck down is wonderful.

But what bothers me the most is that it even got signed into law with such glaring flaws. Not only that, it was passed unanimously. Politicians should need to understand law before writing it.

Another NCLB Failure

2011-08-26T10:24:00.003-05:00

This article has brought to my attention yet another way the NCLB is counter-productive in getting students proficient: It has forced schools to nearly eliminate science at the elementary school levels.

Since science, as a subject isn't tested until later, the schools, especially those in danger of failing the unreasonable standards set by NCLB, change their curriculums to focus on the immediate threat. At the elementary level, this has tended to be English.

More than eight hours of instructional time are devoted each week to teaching “English Language Arts” (“ELA” is a story in and of itself) and over five hours per week to math. By comparison, science is taught for less than three hours.

In other words, kids are getting short changed in science. They lose their base and by the time emphasis picks up, it's too late. They're uninterested and under prepared.

Bad Internet Poll

2011-08-22T14:10:00.002-05:00

I think everyone knows that internet polls are pretty worthless, but one of the most pervasive forms I see used to misinform people, is ones attached to a news report or article, which then asks your opinion on the issue about which you've just given information. Generally, the information has a significant bias, significantly skewing the poll even beyond the poor sampling the internet provides.

Today, I came across a really fun example of this. IGN has an article on "Why the SNES is the King of RPGs". It's a pretty one sided article. It lists some of the great SNES RPGs that were fantastic, giving a few details about them, but doesn't even give a nod to another system to allow for any sort of honest comparison.

Yet that comparison is absolutely necessary since, in some ways, if not many, other systems have blown the SNES RPGs out of the water. Case in point: The advances in sound quality have allowed for high quality music to be placed in these games that have become some of the most memorable video game themes ever. Final Fantasy 7 is known for its beautiful symphonic soundtrack. So are other Final Fantasy games which has led to the creation of the Final Fantasy Distant Worlds concert. While this includes symphonic adaptations of the NES and SNES scores, it is far more faithful to the actual renderings for the game produced for the later systems.

Another aspect that has improved along these lines is the possibility for voice acting that has brought characters in games like Final Fantasy 10 to life. If these characters were merely text boxes, their emotions, also portrayed by detailed facial features, would not have endured as well as they have.

It should be noted that these games aren't on the same systems. FF7 was the Playstation 1, and FF10 was the Playstation 2. There's a few other notable titles, such as the Kingdom Hearts series, but to be fair, the SNES has more titles I would consider memorable.

But is that because the SNES is truly the king of RPGs? Or is it because the SNES simply had a larger number of RPGs from which to choose from which means more will fall into the "classic" category simply because of greater numbers? Or is it possible that they're only deemed classic because the reviewers grew up playing these games (ie, is there a psychological bias here)?

None of these are addressed, leaving a heavily skewed article that merely masquerades as legitimate.

And of course, to add to its pseudo-legitimacy, they add a poll. And not surprisingly, it tells them what they just told everyone else.

When C's Became A's

2011-08-19T12:00:00.005-05:00

I think this image says it all.

The most important one to me is the second graph, showing the histogram of grades. It's pathetic.

However, I'm not going to jump and blame colleges straight away. As the infographic notes, "60% of college presidents say public high school students are less well-prepared... than they were 10 years ago." If that's the case, they're merely being forced to pass along students that have already been passed along. As a high school teacher, I've already noticed the same thing; students walk into high school barely being competent in basic arithmetic. Primary schooling is shuffling students along.

Why? Our educational policies punish schools that don't. This needs to be fixed.

Book Review - His Dark Materials

2011-08-17T13:39:00.002-05:00

I can't seem to keep my reading list straight. I was working on Greatest Show on Earth. It's actually the third time I've picked up the book and found it too tedious to keep me from distraction. Perhaps that's enough of a review right there, but hopefully, one day, I'll finish it.

Anyway, before leaving for my convention trips last month, I decided I wanted some lighter reading that would help me eat the rather considerable free time I'd have. So I grabbed the compendium of His Dark Materials I gave to my sister for Christmas when the movie came out for Golden Compass, which was the first book in the trilogy.

My overall impression of the series is that they were merely decent. Not on par with the Harry Potter series. Both worlds are exceptionally well fleshed out and have a similar feel that the authors (or perhaps it was intended to be the experience of the characters) had no direction in the beginnings. In Harry Potter, it was little more than Voldemort was a baddie until book six when it's suddenly, "Boom! Horcruxes!" which brought the whole story into sharp focus. With His Dark Materials, it was about rescuing kids from having their spirit animals cut apart from them until half way through the second book when it suddenly changed to waging war against false powers.

Again, comparing to Harry Potter, the writing felt more forced in this series as well. Critics of Harry Potter often note how convenient it is that the kids just learned the spells necessary to defeat whatever they're up against in class last week. In this book, they're wandering through dimensions and happen to stumble across everyone and everything they need. This hurts the characterization some since this blind stumbling seems to drive the characters nearly as much as their own ambitions which aren't always terribly convincing. This is especially true for one of the characters that comes in later, Mary, who is supposed to play a pivotal role, but doesn't get all that much page time and that role she does play, isn't nearly as powerful as the lead up to it was pretending.

Similarly, the main villains, past the first book, were all pretty lame in the end. As I'm sure most people know, the movie got a lot of grief because this series is heavily critical of the Church, and creates a scenario in which God isn't really the creator, but rather the first sentient being who just slapped his name on everything and stole credit to dominate all life from then on. I thought this was a fantastic premise that would lead up to a grand showdown, but it didn't happen. God was a hermit that wasn't really running the show and was being carried around by some angels in a chariot that got shot down without anyone even knowing. That's all.

Meanwhile, the guy actually running the show, the real baddie, Metatron (yeah, I'm picturing Alan Rickman too), never even went toe to toe with the main characters. Instead, he fought her daddy (ok, mommy was there too but largely worthless), and they all threw themselves off a cliff together. The devastating weapon, the subtle knife, that even Gods would fear? Never even delivered. Quite a letdown. The most threatening bad guy wasn't the actual angels or God. Instead, it was the Church in one of the many worlds which had an interdimensional bomb that could hunt you down no matter where you were with no more than a strand of hair.

Overall, the books were worth reading, but not something I'm likely to pick up again.

The End of NCLB?

2011-08-09T12:21:00.005-05:00

It looks like the No Child Left Behind act may be getting gutted.

The secretary of education has announced that he intends to start handing out waivers, exempting many schools from meeting the unrealistic standards set forth by the act.

However, I'm not entirely sure how this plan is going to play out.

Melody Barnes, director of President Obama’s White House Domestic Policy Council, emphasized that, while all states would be able to apply for waivers regarding NCLB’s accountability, only those seen as instituting “ambitious school improvement initiatives” — such as their own testing and accountability programs — would be granted them.

So... a state can make up their own tests and standards of accountability and get off of having any federal oversight?

This sounds like it could be abused greatly.

Also, the article says that they'll be looking for states to "improve teacher effectiveness and evaluation systems based on student test scores and other measures". So once again, they're laying all the blame at the feet of teachers. Another absurd proposition that completely misses the true problems we face in education.

I'll have to keep an eye on this one.

Pareidolia: n + 23

2011-08-06T14:04:00.002-05:00

Today over at Bad Astronomy, Phil has a post up about an angry fist shaking cloud. In the effort to one-up him, I present, a face in the clouds.

Natsu Con and my New Lecture

2011-07-30T14:12:00.003-05:00

Convention season isn't quite over yet. I still have a few more to attend this year. In two weeks is Natsu Con here in St. Louis, or more precisely, Collinsville, IL. I'll be presenting my main talk there as usual, but with the hope that a fire alarm doesn't interrupt this year, as it did last.

In the meantime, I've been working on a new lecture that I will be debuting at this con on Japanese contributions to Astronomy. Researching this has been an immense information overload the past few weeks. As with so much in astronomy, there are rarely "Eureka!" moments based off singular observations. Rather, discoveries come from classifying and categorizing large numbers of objects. Teams from all over the world will contribute. The result is that very little in Astronomy can truly be called strictly a discovery by one nation. Even the major instruments that make the discoveries, satellites and observatories, have contributions of components from numerous nations.

The result has been trying to find what the end result of these small, piecemeal contributions have been, if indeed they were truly worked directly into any major theory today. But with publications lists for a single satellite, such as ASCA's numbering in the thousands of publications, that's leaving me with numerous threads to chase down!

Regardless, there's a few big ones I've discovered so far and with the time it will take to explain the background science well enough to understand them, I think I should have a pretty full talk already. I really enjoy digging through the history of the development of ideas and watching them blossom.

After Natsu Con, I'm done with conventions probably until Archon (a more sci-fi/fantasy based con) at which I don't plan on giving any talks, but may reconsider if anything strikes my fancy.

Pareidolia: n + 22

2011-07-12T00:31:00.002-05:00

While at AFW this weekend, one of my friends showed me a great piece of pareidolia captured by her friend:

I think this is among the best examples I've yet posted on this blog. I can quite clearly see a kitten playing with the Sun.

Speaking of Cons: AFW Review

2011-07-10T21:34:00.002-05:00

This past weekend was Anime Fest Wichita. I was there helping to promote Naka Kon as well as running my usual panel.

In every respect, this con was dismal.

We'd paid for a booth with electricity to run our projector and other electronics. Which we didn't get. There was little apology from the organizers and we eventually dragged a promise of a refund for that payment out of them, which was not delivered until well after we'd planned to leave.

Our table was placed in the vendors room, which is pretty normal, but gave us a chance to talk to other vendors. Apparently, one had been told that AFW's attendance was an order of magnitude higher than what it was. Another had been packing up merchandise that wasn't selling and had one of the con's chairs flip out on them, telling them they were in violation of their contract which required to have their booth open until the dealers room closed. Which they were.... just removing some merchandise.

The short story was that their vendors were treated pretty poorly and many have decided not to be returning.

But how was the experience as a panelist?

Also disappointing.

I was given a large space, but when I arrived, there was no projector, no screen, and no connections for audio, all of which were checked on the submission form. I'd arrived 30 minutes early because I always expect the worst and had found a projector and (tiny) screen, but it took pathetically long to get audio working. It took nearly 20 minutes for a member of their A/V staff to arrive to attempt to make the sound work. But they weren't equipped with cables sufficiently long to make the connection. For 15 minutes they searched for some that were, but ultimately, didn't have any. The final solution was to move their entire sound box to right next to my laptop, which ultimately worked.

The panel started only 5 minutes late and went exceptionally well. I'd intended to leave 10-15 minutes for questions and discussions and ended with exactly that amount.

Lastly, my experience as a general attendee: Yet again, this con was a failure. For an anime convention, it was unfocused. It was loaded with panels and guests that had absolutely nothing to do with the topic. There wasn't a single panel that ended up being worth attending. The "dance" couldn't make its mind up what it wanted to be either.

The only reason I've ever attended this convention was as part of the Naka Kon staff. But as a guest, I'd not return on my own.

Elevators, Creepers, and Conventions

2011-07-05T11:39:00.003-05:00

The Feminism waters is one into which I rarely tread. I think it's partially because, assuming the popular definition of feminism as "he radical notion that women are people", it's too obvious for me to think much about. I take that as a given to think much about slapping a label on myself for the issue.

So I don't spend much time thinking about this topic. But a series of recent events has been sticking in my mind lately. If you've been following the skeptical blogosphere lately, the title should be a dead giveaway.

If you've somehow missed it, here's a recap:

While at the global atheist conference in Dublin, Skepchick Rebecca Watson was propositioned in her hotel elevator at 4am by a guy. She included this experience in part of a youtube video to make the point that some guys just aren't getting that it's really creepy to follow "a single woman, in a foreign country, at 4am in a hotel elevator with you, just you...." because it comes across as sexual objectification.

And of course, the apologists were all over it. Not the religious ones. The misogynist apologists. They claimed it wasn't a big deal, that it's not objectification, that she should be happy to get hit on, and, perhaps worst of all, that she should shut the hell up because there's bigger issues for women than guys being generally creepy.

The real kicker is that the last bit, came from none other than Richard Dawkins.

In some respects, I have to agree. There's creepers out there and on the grand scheme of things, making a quick note of it is all that needs to be said. And that's precisely what Rebecca did. Used it as a quick anecdote to highlight that men often do things that make women very uncomfortable and don't even think it's an issue. As PZ pointed out, "What these situations demand is an appropriate level of response." This should have been a done deal.

Instead, the apologists tried to dismiss it as an irrelevant deal.

This bugs me. The reason goes back to the definition of feminism I mentioned earlier: Women are people. They shouldn't be expected to ignore situations that make them uncomfortable any more than anyone else should. And given that women are sexually assaulted far more than men, situations like this should be viewed as even more spurious.

In my own experience, I go to a lot of conventions. I'm leaving town Thursday and will be away for 11 days two hit two, at both of which, I will be giving talks. At conventions, I've also been a frequent costumer. My best costume is my Sesshomaru a human form of a dog demon, reproduced from the series Inuyasha. The character is very popular and rarely costumed well. This, combined with the popularity of my talk has made me a well known and popular figures at conventions.

Which is awesome. But let's face it: It attracts creepers. And I've had more than my fair share. Perhaps the oddest was when I was wearing the aforementioned costume and a girl asked if she could "have my puppies." In other situations, I've had people do the romantic interest of a character I costume and proceed to follow me around conventions.

A general strategy is to have friends with whom you can hide for a little while to catch a breath, but some of my creepers have even gone so far as to try to make friends with them to take away my hiding places. That's fucking creepy and it's not at all welcome.

What's worse, is that all of my experiences have been in public. I've never even found myself cornered, even as long as it would take to stop an elevator and get off, by one of these creepers. And I sure as hell wouldn't want to be.

So I get how not cool creepers can be. They can completely ruin an otherwise pleasant convention or experience. As a result of my creepers, I am far less likely to wear costumes at conventions unless I have some of my closest friends there to help act as a buffer. I've changed my behavior and shy away from something I love because others can't act responsibly. That's a bummer.

That's why I get where Rebecca's coming from. She had a creeper that's raining on the fun parade. But in her circumstance, it's not just a matter of you don't do something as eccentric as costuming occasionally. What she, and other women face, is a daily ordeal. What do they have to quit doing to get rid of pervasive creepiness? Going out in public? Wearing veils so men can't think them attractive?

I don't really think that's a realistic scenario. Things, at least in the US, generally aren't so bad as all that, but it's the same principle: Why should others have to change their behavior because someone else is a creeper? I'm a person that doesn't appreciate it and women, being people too, shouldn't have to either. And you know what, that's perfectly fine to state.

Pareidolia: n + 21

2011-07-02T23:19:00.003-05:00

I think this has to be one of the worst bits of religious pareidolia I've yet seen. A town in North Carolina apparently has residents that think some vines growing on a telephone pole is a manifestation of Jesus.

Here's the picture:

Apparently, it's too hard for these people to understand that when you get something growing on poles with wires at right angles will necessarily look like someone being crucified because that happens at right angles too!

Meanwhile, I notice the figure is lacking legs. To me, it looks more like some sort of swamp ghost.

Google+

2011-07-01T12:24:00.002-05:00

I signed up for the Beta of Google+ last night hoping that it will eventually take the place of facebook. I have facebook because it's a convenient way to keep track of happenings, but I'm very unimpressed with the constant revisions that make private info public and have been waiting for a replacement.

I can't say what I think of Google+ yet since the most important aspect of a social network is the sociability of it and very few people I know have joined just yet. Meanwhile, I've been looking at some of the reviews and found a few articles I feel like commenting on.

First 8 Facebook Features Google+ Doesn't Have (Yet). What sorts of things am I missing?

1. Games: Oh thank the FSM G+ doesn't have these. I can't even count how many stupid facebook plug-ins and games I've blocked. And yet it seems every day, one of my friends just started playing Zonkborger and wants me to join their brain eating zombie colony. Not going to miss that!

2. Compatibility with Twitter: I can see this being a sticking point for many, but given I rarely update my twitter, I can't really complain.

3. Third-Party Apps: See (1) & (2). Overall, I'm pretty meh about all the crazy things facebook allows.

4. Hiding Some People's Status Updates: This is a pretty big one. I'm sitting pretty at 226 facebook friends which seems to be a low end of moderate. For comparison, my sister have 544 (she's a socialite). Popular public figures tend to have even more. JT Eberhard has 1721 presently. That's a lot of spam about how shitty people's days were. Sometimes, I just need to hide the downers or the people who otherwise post stupid shit. In facebook, I can just remove them from my feed. Apparently that's not possible in G+.

Is this such a bad thing? Not necessarily. It just means you might have to be a bit more picky about who you select as a "friend". G+ has several different groups. Not everyone has to be a friend. You can select them as "acquaintances" (or make user defined groups) and only show one feed at a time thereby cutting out all the people you maintain loose contacts with and hone in on the ones you really want to follow.

5. Birthday Reminders: Oh no! We can't remember birthdays without a computer to tell us!? Again, I don't care. About the only thing facebook birthdays seem to be any good for anyway, is getting your wall spammed with 300+ variations on "Happy Birthday, bro!". I generally remove my birthday from my profile a few days before hand. Just to see how many people really know. It's not many, but if I really cared, there'd be a party, and they'd all be invited.

6. Event Coordination: This one is important to me. I'm leaving in 10 days for a trip to two conventions and not coming back to St. Louis in between. I'm planning to crash on couches and hang with friends in nearby towns I haven't seen in forever. To coordinate this, I created an invent, tagged the people nearby, and put together an itinerary. Not having such tools will be missed.

7. Polls: Another annoying time sink. As usual, I don't care what people think so much as why they think it. I don't need a multiple choice piece of bifurcation. If you're my friend, let's actually have an intelligent discussion.

8. Users: Simply put, no one is on G+ yet. So far, of the people with whom I'm friends on facebook, a grand total of 3 have joined G+. I expect this will change slowly.

Now, what if the shoe is on the other foot? What can G+ do that FB can't?

1. Easy Sub Groups: As noted earlier, you can create sub groups of friends with limited access to your profile. Sadly, this is a painful process due to the labyrinth of facebook's settings. G+ makes it very straightforward. You see a bubble with your friends pictures on it and you can drag & drop them to any one you'd like. Done.

2. Live Video Chat: This is something I don't have much use for currently, but in which I can see a lot of potential for others. The article mentions that this can be integrated well with things like Google's Calendar. Not mentioned is things like Google Docs which could allow for real time, video conferenced collaboration. As part of the Naka-Kon convention committee, I have to do remote conferencing so this may come in handy down the road.

3. Watch YouTube Vids In Real Time w/ Friends: My best friend currently lives in Springfield, MO. One of the things we do frequently is watch episodes of Dr. Who together by queuing it up on Netflix and hitting "go" simultaneously. G+ builds such things straight into the video chat. It's also smart enough to mute your mics when the video starts and there's a push-to-talk feature. I love the idea of this and would greatly like to see it expanded to Netflix, Hulu, or places that host full shows instead of mostly user created content.

4. Interest Based Content: Google is already known for building a profile of you based on your searches and other information you feed it and this is apparently integrated into G+. I'm still torn on whether or not it's creepy that Google has all this information, but I still come down on the side that as long as they're keeping it, not selling it off to shady 3rd parties, and I have the ability to wipe it when I so choose, it's ok with me.

With facebook, you can like things, but it doesn't generally change your experience, except perhaps on what adds you'll see. G+ will recommend content from the entire web. This again, is a double edged sword. It can display cool things, but as I've noted they also come up with crap. Additionally, there's the worry of getting trapped in filter bubbles.

5. Instantly Upload Photos, Decide What to Do Later: With facebook, you put a picture up and it's instantly shared. With G+, you'll be able to delay pictures uploaded from your mobile phone until you get back to your computer and then decide if you really want that picture from that party shown to the world. Apparently, you'll only have 8 hours to do so, but this is an interesting delay.

6. Quitting: One of the biggest criticisms of facebook is that it's near impossible to actually get your info gone. You can deactivate an account, but it's essentially like just not logging in. You can still be tagged, invited, and visible, just without the control. But actually deleting your account, making everything vanish, is damned near impossible to find. If you really want to do it account killer has the info.

But with G+ it's apparently easy to quit. A+ for that.

This article also has some interesting tidbits:

1. Integration with Picassa & Google Chat: I haven't done a lot of using of Picassa. In general, I just don't host a ton of photos on the web mostly because I don't take many. The pictures I hosted for this blog, until last year, were on a private web host which I discontinued (hence the numerous dead image links in old posts). However, since Blogger got bought out by Google, images can now be directly added to posts and are automatically put in a Picassa folder. That's been about the extent of my use. I do like the idea of having an image dump integrated with social networking. Facebook's is pretty good, but embedding them in other sites doesn't work.

I haven't done much with Google Chat. Aside from my previously mentioned friend who is on Yahoo messenger, and the occasional Naka-Kon meetings via Skype, instant messengers have fallen out of use. I didn't much like Google Chat due to, again, the sparsity of users. I used it a few times with people in Gmail, but that was confined to my browser and not worth the extra tabs. The stand alone program wasn't used enough for continued use. Integrating this may be more useful, but I'm doubting it.

2. Picture Tagging: As with facebook, users will be able to tag you in photos. This has caused a lot of heartache for people, especially teachers, who have lost jobs due to being publicly tagged in pictures revealing that they *gasp* have a life. Fortunately, it looks like G+ requires you go approve the tag before it goes live.

3. "Sparks": As noted before, G+ integrates your interests into a web feed. This is called Sparks. Apparently, it isn't (yet?) integrated with things like RSS feeds which is a bummer. So this may be more or less useful depending on how useful or junky it gets.

Blog of an Ex-Christian

2011-06-23T11:38:00.003-05:00

Back at KU, one of the members of the Society of Open Minded Atheists & Agnostics was Chris Redford, a former evangelical Pentecostal Christian. After I graduated and moved on, he began producing a fantastic YouTube series on his deconversion.

Now, due to facebook's odd policy of people being able to like things without the creator's control, he's decided to set up a public persons facebook page. Additionally, he created a new blog where he's responding to PMs sent to him on his YouTube channel.

I highly recommend checking out the series if you haven't seen it and reading through the blog. The mental gymnastics people will go through to try to keep their faith is astounding, but Chris does a meticulous job of breaking it all down.

Email!

2011-06-17T13:11:00.003-05:00

So last year, I reviewed a book, You Will be Forced to Become Wealthy written by a true crackpot. I reamed it, prompting the author to leave a gibbering reply which I also tore to shreds.

So imagine my surprise when I get an Email from a Victor Senchenko promoting another self published book promising to explain Grand Mysteries:

The Second Edition explains more precisely:
• Exactly from what everything is physically made of, and why.
• Exactly what gravity is, and why.
• Exactly who and what humans are, and why they behave as they do.
• Why god and gods do not physically exist.
• Why 'time' does not physically exist.
• Why there is homosexuality in humans.
• What 'happiness' actually is and how it can be obtained.
PLUS there is much, much more of what humans never knew – or misunderstood – about themselves and all that physically surrounds them.

These claims may appear to be far-fetched to all those who have not read this book. It may also appear as highly improbable that a mere book can contain information that had never before been assessed by human intelligence.

But here's a puzzle... what is intelligence in the first place? Where does intelligence originate? What does intelligence comprise of?

While current humans and their science may wonder about intelligence, they actually know neither what intelligence represents nor how it is derived. And yet, the source of intelligence – as many other unknowns – is revealed and explained in the book.

Hmmmm....

Is this worth following up on? Apparently Victor went on a big PR campaign a few years ago, sending announcements to many other skeptic blogs and organizations, then turning into a complete prick when they were, um, skeptical (See: here, or here).

Looking over the quotes others have posted, this guy apparently heard of quantum mechanics as he's using a centuries old claim that electrons should fall into the nucleus of the atom, ignoring quantum mechanics. Oopsie.

Still, debunking books like this is a good mental exercise, so I may pick up the copy. It's free to download apparently. However, I do have a review copy of a book from a real writer on the way, so it may be delayed. That is, assuming I ever actually get around to reading something I know full well is a critique of modern science by someone that doesn't understand it.

Why Educate?

2011-06-11T21:09:00.003-05:00

Today, NPR had a brief segment looking at the value of education beyond simply landing a better job (on average).

This is something teachers must consider very frequently. I don't think there's likely to have ever been a class (at least at the high school level) where some smart ass didn't think that asking "How am I going to use this in real life?" was an excuse for not having to learn. My smallest class this year was 2 students, and yet I still had the question asked. Repeatedly.

I think much of what was said in the NPR segment was very important: Education helps in that it creates an informed citizen base that will ultimately vote and decide the heading for the entire nation. Without educated citizens, we're likely to lead ourselves off a cliff.

The interviewer asked how important these esoteric ideals are to someone working as a barista? The response was that such times are a perfect time for education to again be important because such people can better analyze the economic situation (both nationally and personally) and hope to find a way to better their position. Without an basic, educated understanding of how economics work, you'd be lost. As such, it's no surprise so many Americans labor under amazing credit card debts that they will likely never be able to pay off.

The segment also touched on social benefits like "learning to think together" and, perhaps more importantly, "how to disagree." Personally, I think the social aspect of education is vastly understated and one I push to my students the most. One of the things that we find as we become more educated, is that the knowledge we've gained forms a web, and the larger that web gets, the more interconnected it is, the easier it is to connect it to new things. The result is that, even if we don't use a skill or a fact directly, it opens the door to other things indirectly. It allows for us to learn easier in the future. In other words, the true value of education isn't really to retain every factoid and be able to spew it back (although, that is an important component), but it's practice at processing information and assembling it into a coherent picture. What we're truly practicing in school is learning.

The social value of this is that it allows people to continue absorbing information outside of the classroom and sorting it in rational ways. Those tidbits we pick up here or there, from the news or conversations stick better and make us knowledgeable more quickly and easily on topics which we haven't directly studied, allowing us to partake in social interactions more deeply and authoritatively. As I tell my students, it makes you a more interesting person.

And that's worth a lot.

Not Hoax. Just Crazy.

2011-06-09T12:24:00.002-05:00

If a psychic calls the cops and tells them she knows where a bunch of bodies are hidden because of mystic powers, what should they do?

Same thing they should do if they claim Jesus told them, or a Ouija board, or reading of tea leaves, casting stones, or any other metaphysical nonsense: Hang up the phone.

Of course, in Texas, they took it seriously and sent in a task force to find.... nothing.

Sounds so very familiar doesn't it.

Anti-Science Advocate Running for President

2011-06-06T16:20:00.002-05:00

Today, Rick Santorum announced his bid for presidency. I don't know how much of a chance he's got, but given he's up against complete clowns like Bachmann, he might have a fair chance of getting the nomination.

However, if that's the case, Santorum is a dangerous person for science to have as a president. If his name sounds familiar, it may be because of his infamous "Santorum Amendment" which sought to amend the NCLB act to cater to the Discovery Institute's "Teach the Controversy" mantra by singling evolution out for special criticisms. In specific, he suggested science teachers help students distinguish between real science and "philosophical or religious claims that are made in the name of science". Sounds good, until you realize that, according to Santorum, "biological evolution ... relies heavily on the sensitive philosophical belief that evolutionary change can give rise to new species".

Herp derp.

Fortunately, Santorum only got his amendment into the Senate version of the bill. Since the House version lacked it, a special committee was appointed to decide on it and eventually rejected it.

Since then, Santorum has been flip-flopping on whether or not he supports ID, but has also come out against global warming. Given his poor track record, he's someone that anyone caring about science, should stay away from.

This is a good teacher

2011-05-28T13:04:00.002-05:00

Being a teacher wasn't something I've always wanted to do. As a kid, I went through the regular career choices of fireman, baseball player, astronaut, and the like. When I entered high school, I was thinking more along the lines of some kind of scientist. So I loaded myself up on science courses graduating with 5 and a half science credits.

But in that time, two of my science teachers planted the seed of teaching in my mind simply due to their passion of sharing the universe. One was my astronomy teacher, Brian Yates, who moved to another school shortly after I graduated. The biggest influence, however, was my physics and advanced physics teacher, Phillip Wojak.

Like most students, I have fond memories of his classes and his humor. When creating problems involving objects from platforms with initial upwards velocities, he generally drew it being dropped from a hot air balloon into an ocean in which he always sketched a triangle in the water. He would then ask what the triangle was. Initially we assumed it was a shark fin to which he'd reply, "No. It's a drowned witch." I still have all of my notes from his class, sketches included.

Mr. Wojak was a long time teacher at my high school and has been there 44 years, long enough that he had taught Mr. Yates when he'd attended that school and it showed. But at long last, Mr. Wojak is retiring, at least partially.

Still living in the area, I've seen him occasionally when I went back to the school to visit as well as around town, at the grocery and the like. I've let him know just how much he's inspired me, but his outstanding performance is one that cannot go understated.

Mr. Wojak is still, far and above, the most influential teacher I've ever had.

Backhanded Help

2011-05-21T20:27:00.003-05:00

I don't know how many people haven't yet heard about Damon Fowler's case yet. The short version of it is that a school was sponsoring prayers during graduation ceremonies. A student at the school, Damon, pointed out this was illegal and promised to contact the ACLU should the school continue.

The school, not being completely stupid, backed down and removed the prayer, but this caused public outrage. Community members started meeting at the local church to figure out how to worm prayer back into the ceremony, teachers publicly slandered him, and Damon started receiving death threats.

At the "class night", apparently a dress rehearsal for the graduation ceremony with senior awards mixed in, the school had its "moment of silence" which was anything but silent as the school allowed a student "leading" the moment of silence to lead the audience, instead, in prayer. Then, at the graduation itself, she did the same thing.

In the meantime, Damon's parents have promised to no longer help him pay for college and have apparently abandoned him, throwing his stuff on the lawn and then leaving for an unplanned "vacation".

Fortunately, the atheist community has done a fantastic job of coming together to support him. Currently, he's received nearly $10,000 in donations for a college fund.

To be fair, it's not only the atheist community that's decried the actions of those antagonizing Damon for enforcing Constitutional law. Many Christians have condemned them as well.

Well, kinda....

Here's a perfect example. In this article, a pastor chastises Christians who behave like so, but in doing so, says the following:

The power of evil through Satan is largely at work to hinder the love of Jesus in this world.

Translation: Don't be a jerk, but this kid is Satan.

Big help there.

Math Anxiety

2011-05-18T17:51:00.002-05:00

According to this article a recent study has shown that math anxiety is a very real phenomenon with measurable physiological reactions.

Duh.

However, the article goes on to prescribe the cure: "focus on the process of learning math instead of simply trying to get students to churn out the right answer... A classroom culture where students aren't afraid to fail and are encouraged to learn by talking through wrong answers is optimal."

As someone that's actually in the classroom, these sorts of answers just piss me off. It's not that there isn't a lot to be gained when students are willing to fiddle with an equation for a bit, or look over incorrect answers to learn to spot mistakes and learn from them. There absolutely is.

The problem comes in that students aren't willing to. All too often, students feel they've spent far too much time on a problem already, and having to look it over a second time is asking far too much. They're done. Time to move on. I've always offered students the option to take their homework, identify mistakes, correct them, and resubmit it for a good portion of the lost credit back. But even with this generous incentive, student's don't participate.

As far as process based learning, this too is a fantastic idea... but again overlooks the reality of the situation. Memorizing a set of steps to solve a quadratic equation by completing the square isn't nearly as good as teaching a student why completing the square works and having them work out the process behind the steps. But the reality is that this is a far deeper level of learning. Memorization of a few steps is the foundational level of Bloom's Taxonomy. Applying them is only the third. But a full understanding such that a student could fully understand the methodology is near the very top. And unsurprisingly, that deeper learning takes more explaining, more examples, and more time, which is often at a premium in the classroom.

And even if I had that time, students again, don't want it. It doesn't feel solid enough for them. As a recent example, I concentrated heavily on the concepts of solving quadratic equations in my algebra II class. Explaining, the zero product property with factoring, and why when you complete the square, you need to take half of the coefficient on the linear term and square it, going through the derivation of the quadratic formula. The steps were, of course, all there, but it got so lost with all the rest, the student failed the test with a 40%.

I let her have another week to study and again, concentrated, initially heavily on the theory behind the machinations, but again, she made it clear she was utterly confused. So on the last day, I had her write out a list of the steps for each method, use them as a guide on a few practice problems, and suddenly, she was immensely confident. On her retake she scored a 96%.

So what's the lesson here? Distilling math into rote memorization of simple processes lead to significantly decreased anxiety and subsequently, higher test scores. Of course, I fully realize that if tested on these methods in a year, this knowledge will be nearly completely gone. It's not an ideal situation, but given the alternative, frustration and failure, I'll take the battles I can win and hope that even if the process isn't fully remembered, it's easier to learn a second time around and crystallization comes then when the knowledge and experience base has been expanded.

It's not the best solution, but it's reality.

Go Out and Discover

2011-05-15T16:00:00.005-05:00

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is M 104, the Sombrero Galaxy. It's quite striking because of its nearly edge on profile and the prominent dust lane. You can click on the picture and blow it up. Which is cool because there's a lot more to see when you do.

In particular, even before enlarging the image, I noticed a really neat pair of galaxies. These two stand out to me because they're spiral galaxies that appear to be interacting. But what's really interesting is just how similar the two appear to be. They're the same size, similar surface brightnesses, and a similar color (a distinct blue, unlike many of the other galaxies in the field which are notably reddish).

Hidden in the fog of M 104 was another galaxy I liked. This one stands out because, just like the galaxy behind which it's lurking, it too has a prominent dust lane. Galaxies of a feather, or something like that. This galaxy, like many others is quite red, but I can chalk some of that up to the scattering and absorption as the light passes through the ISM of M 104.

Regardless, I was passingly curious about these little guys and wanted to know if there was anything exciting going on with them. So I pulled up the Aladin Sky Atlas with the SIMBAD overlay for object identification and.... there was nothing. Neither of these objects even have a designation.

It's times like these I'm suddenly struck and reminded of just how big our universe is. We catalog and explore millions upon millions of stars and galaxies, but there's always more waiting in the wings, waiting to be explored. A cosmic frontier just waiting for us to go out and discover.

Here's Why Math is Important

2011-05-11T00:32:00.002-05:00

Class question: What percents are they actually calculating.

"Spiritual" Scientists

2011-05-09T17:30:00.002-05:00

A recent paper, written by Elaine Ecklund on a hefty grant from the Templeton Foundation, suggesting scientists are frequently more "spiritual" than people give them credit for has been making the rounds, giving faitheists and accommodationists fits of glee.

Jerry Coyne dissects it pretty well but the paper, and his commentary reminded me of a clip from one of my favorite youtube videos. In it, Phil Hellenes discusses the amazing insight science provides and how it provides an amazing connection. As he puts it

When I looked at the galaxy that night, I knew the faintest twinkle of starlight was a real connection between my comprehending eye, along a narrow beam of light, to the surface of another sun. The photons my eye detects, the light I see, the energy with which my nerves interact, came from that star. I thought I could never touch it, yet something from it, crosses the void, and touches me.

This inspiring and moving feeling is all too common among scientists, and as Coyne and Hellenes rightly point out, that's precisely what the authors of the new study seem to be abusing. Again quoting Hellenes

That night under the Milky Way, I who experienced it, cannot call it a religious experience for I know it was not religious in any way. I was thinking about facts and physics, trying to visualize what is, not what I would like there to be. There's no word for such experiences that come through scientific and not mystical revelation. The reason for that is that every time someone has such a "mindgasm" religion steals it simply by saying, "Ah. You had a religious experience." And spiritualists will pull the same shit. And both camps will get angry when an atheist like me tells you that I only ever had these experiences after rejecting everything supernatural.

This is right on the money. It's not that these scientists are necessarily "spiritual" in the traditional sense, that they believe in supernatural "spirits", but rather, they stand in awe at the beauty of our universe, recognizing it as completely natural. When asked if there's "something larger" than them, the honest answer is "yes". It's called the universe. But it's not mystical nor magical. It's real and we can observe it.

But saying these things allows for the words to be taken out of context and usurped by those trying to shoehorn the religious gibberish together with the empirical reality. They can piggyback on these terms because our language lacks the tools to separate the secular emotions that well up within us from observation as compared to the ones we invoke through fantasy. This gives rise for sneaky shills like Ecklund a perfect opportunity to muddy the waters through equivocation.

A Thought From Feynman

2011-05-09T01:09:00.002-05:00

I'm doing a bit of research and I came across an interesting piece. It's an adaptation from Richard Feynman's commencement speech at Caltech in 1974 in which he discusses what he calls "Cargo Cult Science". In other words, things that sound scientific, but aren't.

In one portion, something stuck out at me:

Millikan measured the charge on an electron by an experiment with falling oil drops, and got an answer which we now know not to be quite right. It's a little bit off, because he had the incorrect value for the viscosity of air. It's interesting to look at the history of measurements of the charge of the electron, after Millikan. If you plot them as a function of time, you find that one is a little bigger than Millikan's, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, until finally they settle down to a number which is higher.

This is an important lesson to remember. When something new is discovered in science, there's often a great deal of uncertainty to it. But after thorough investigation, it generally settles down on an answer, even if that answer is quite different than the initial estimate.

Yet the gasbag Ray Comfort seems to think that's a problem. He's repeatedly complained that the Big Bang can't be true because astronomers have been furiously revising the estimates and made some pretty significant changes as we've beaten down the errors and refined techniques. He proposes that things that are eternal and unchanging are inherently better because you can't trust that darned Big Bang since the estimates keep changing.

Similarly, I guess Ray can't acknowledge the charge of an electron. Even though it's a fundamental quantity that underlies so much of electronics and physics and if it were wrong, they would crumble, if the estimate changes, it can't be trusted to exist in the first place.

This kind of thinking isn't just wrong. It's abhorrently stupid. There's no good response for such abject lunacy. The best we can do is point out the flaw and mock it, dissuading others from thinking it's a tenable position.

Go Follow JT

2011-05-07T14:36:00.002-05:00

JT Eberhard, the founder of Skepticon, has migrated to a new blog. So far it's been excellent and it's been largely free of the entirely idiotic trolls that plagued his previous Xanga.

Religion as Intellectual Neoteny

2011-05-05T11:43:00.003-05:00

Yesterday at Why Evolution is True, Jerry Coyne responded to criticism from Patrick McNamara in which McNamara took issue with Coyne's characterization of religion as a sort of wish fulfillment.

McNamara's argument was that if religion were merely fulfilling wishes, why would people wish for all the restrictive practices religion incorporates? I think Coyne did a pretty good job addressing the issue, but I feel there was another point that should be made in response to McNamara's question. It's really more of an observation, but I think it strikes at the heart of what religion is.

The observation is that in childish play, children will often have a wish and then create stipulations for fulfilling it that are entirely non-sensical, but more importantly, both positive and negative. For example, if a child wants a new toy, they often imagine that if they avoid stepping on cracks, it will be given to them.

It's entirely analogous to what religion is doing: They want eternal life, and suddenly, there's a restrictive system of rules set up to achieve it. The difference is that with these childish games, kids are pressured to grow out of it. With religion, they're pressured to stick with it.

So why do children do this? I can't offer a complete explanation, but I think it comes from the realization that if you want something, you must offer something in return. In the helplessness of a child with little resources available, they have nothing else to offer except self-constructed rituals. Thus, they offer this up as "payment".

As adults, we grow out of it, generally realizing that if you really want something, there's ways to get it that actually work. For example, saving up and buying it. Futility gives way to practicality.

But for the wish of eternal life, what payment could ever be offered for such things? No price could be put on it and as such, could it be that some prefer to continue ineffective rituals?

Perhaps, and if so, I think we should again take a lesson from what it means to grow up in other respects: Sometimes, the things you want just don't exist. A child may want a rocket powered dinosaur that can travel through time. An adult might too. But as an adult, we realize such things make little sense and thus, wouldn't waste our time on them. Now if only we could over the other ridiculous ideas to which we offer hollow rituals.

So to answer McNamara's question, humans create restrictive religious practices that are, in themselves negative to attempt to achieve a positive wish due to the immature inability to simply accept that the object of the wish isn't achievable.

And this isn't the first time I've seen arguments about the intellectual postponement religion imposes. If you're familiar with Brenda Frei, one argument that she made that's stuck with me is that she often encounters children making intellectually backwards arguments for religion full of logical holes and childish reasoning. Which is fine, given they're children. But she'll also encounter grandparents, well beyond the stage we'd expect such arguments, using them just the same. They've never grown out of them.

Thus, it would seem that one of the potential effects of religion is intellectual neoteny, at least in some, self-contained areas of thinking.

This is by no means a fully formed hypothesis and suffers from a developed sense of causality (ie, religion is the cause, or is it the effect, or is this a chance correlation?), but it's an interesting charge that I think could display itself in many more aspects.

New SciEd Blog I Like

2011-05-03T21:38:00.004-05:00

Tom, over at Dealing With Creationism in Astronomy recently turned me on to the dot physics blog written by a science teacher at the university level. I've read about a month's worth of archives now and found several posts I really liked.

The first was this one, on "flipping the classroom". I think I first heard mention of this strategy at dy/dan, but it's one I think is pretty interesting: Have students learn the general lecture portion at home from a web video (either one you created or from one of many other sources) and use class time for more targeted, individualized learning. I've wanted to try this out sometime, but the lack of internet access among my students has prevented me from doing so.

The other post I really liked was this one, on the problem with "professional development" which points out how teachers are required to keep going to courses to "improve their teaching" even if they already have the skills. The comparison to the Cargo Cults is pretty spot on and is a reminder of how disconnected the ones making the policies are from the reality of the classroom.

So this blog has made it onto my RSS feed and I'll be putting a link to it in the sidebar. Check it out!

Pareidolia: n + 20

2011-04-25T14:47:00.002-05:00

Looks like Jesus is hanging out in pizzas now.

Beyond the general personal incredulity at such things, this one goes to highlight the general nonsense when it interviews some fool from an Australian Catholic university who said

''There are a lot of misunderstandings in the making of saints and miracles,'' he said.

He said generally only "medical miracles'', such as healings, were accepted by the Catholic Church because those incidents could be tested using scientific means.

"We often rely on medical miracles because there is scientific proof it can't be explained by conventional science, that's where the validity comes from,'' he said.

Summary, "I can't explain this but it's not a miracle. Things happen in medicine that I can't explain. But those are miracles."

Herp derp.

"Validity" as an absence of evidence. Right.

Kindle?

2011-04-24T00:50:00.002-05:00

I've been somewhat ambivalent on e-readers for awhile now. I love the idea of having portable text readers with me. My netbook isn't too bad for it, but a tad on the large side to carry around and not super easy to read just anywhere. My phone is an antique palm trio and far too small as well as lacking the software.

So a dedicated e-reader doesn't seem too bad.

My main concern for the past year or so has been which reader would eventually wind up winning out: The Kindle, Nook, or something else?

So far, Kindle's look to be far ahead so I'm pretty set on getting one of them if I do decide to get an e-reader of some sort. I'm also quite enthused about the Kindle library lending program that was just announced that lets you digitally "check out" books from 11,000 libraries and save all your annotations for later use. I'm not entirely sure what that means, but it sounds like a lot more titles available for free. At least, temporarily. Still, I'm quite good with that!

However, the big issue is still title availability. I went through my reading list and for the books on my "Still to Read" list, 4 of the 8 had Kindle versions available. This is a fair amount and I'm happy with it.

I popped through the listing of science books in the Kindle store and there's some 2,500+ titles available. Not too shabby! However, looking through them, there's a lot of self published nonsense out there. Like this piece of stupidity from Richard Hoagland. So I guess the number of titles isn't all that impressive when any idiot can slap their crap up there to make a quick buck.

So, does anyone have one? If so, how have you found it on good sciencey books like the ones on my reading list? Is the 3G version worth the extra $50? I do like the idea of being able to pull up Wikipedia anywhere, anytime. Choices, choices...

The Unexpected Challanges

2011-04-18T14:30:00.003-05:00

Teaching this semester has been a real challenge. The difficulties I've been facing these past few months have been making me seriously question whether I'm choosing the right profession.

Most often, I'm very good at dealing with these challenges as I can anticipate them and prepare for them. But this semester, I've faced something new that I still have yet to come to terms with.

At the previous school I was attending, there were some pretty severe discipline problems. The students were disruptive and often rude. But through it all, they at least realized they were in the wrong and when consequences came to bear, they accepted them realizing their own actions had brought them about.

This year, the school has less overt behavior problems. The main one I've been fighting all semester is simply talking at inappropriate times. While I call it "simple", it's anything but.

It's an epidemic with my freshman class.

There's been occasions in which the students get so loud that the neighboring teacher has had to step in and ask them to be quiet (and me step into her class when she has the freshman and do the same). There's been times when I've asked the students what I just said and not a single student can tell me.

No amount of reminders, negative consequences, or positive reinforcement has had an effect on these freshman.

They don't seem to think it's a problem. Last week, during a test, I had students talking. My policy is that, since talking isn't permitted during tests, that if you're talking, you must certainly not be taking a test, and as such, I take the paper, finished or not.

During the test I'd given a reminder on this while handing out the test, another a few minutes later, already taken one student's test, and still I had a student who felt talking would be acceptable. Needless to say, her test was taken.

Incredibly, she still felt I was in the wrong and complained to her parents who consequently called the administration which in turn, called me in to discuss the situation.

This student is a pretty extreme example, but the general consensus is that class time isn't for learning, teachers can be ignored, and that failure is an option because if you whine enough, you can always make it up later.

And this goes beyond the freshman. I have juniors asking, after 15 minutes of class, if they have to learn more. I have seniors whose notebooks are filled with more scribbles than notes.

I've never expected students to enjoy school, especially math classes, but this bold rejection of knowledge is something I'd have expected from an inner city school where students are more worried about getting shot than doing their homework, not from private schools where parents are paying large tuitions to educate their students.

But beyond that, nothing prepared me for the self-righteous sentiment that the rules don't apply I'm seeing from these teenagers. And these unexpected challenges are easily the hardest part of teaching.

I'm not surprised at some resistance to the rules, but when telling a student to go to the principal and being met with a flat out "no" literally stunned me. I still haven't come to terms with it.

Astronomer's Humor: Part 4

2011-04-07T11:16:00.002-05:00

In browsing arXiv this morning, I found an article that's guaranteed to be interesting. The title is "Haloes gone MAD: The Halo-Finder Comparison Project". The MAD in the title isn't an abbreviation for some instrument, but rather, the paper takes its name from a conference from May 2010 in MADrid, Spain.

Tee hee.

So why do I know this paper is going to be interesting?

They told me so.

"27 interesting pages, 20 beautiful figures, and 4 informative tables accepted for publication in MNRAS."

We'll have to see whether it's interesting enough to write about for UT.

Even internet trolls are smarter than Creationists

2011-04-01T21:27:00.001-05:00

Why I Look Critically At Sci-Fi and Anime

2011-03-23T20:25:00.004-05:00

This past January, after having done my Anime Mythbusters lecture for two years, I rewrote the introduction. For the first time, I addressed the reasoning behind doing such a lecture. While part of it was just for fun, and part of it was to teach good science, another reason that I do it is to remind people that there's a lot of bad science out there and that we take it for granted.

While obviously the lecture concentrates on the worst of the worst science (because it's just more fun to debunk), there's a lot of silly science out there that is just real enough that people actually buy it. Just because a show is fiction, doesn't mean we dismiss all the science in it as complete fiction; we don't reject gravity because we saw someone fall down a flight of stairs. We will probably question the physics if they jump off a building and walk away without a scratch, but there's an intermediate area in there that bad science can make it into the public consciousness.

And a new study in the UK backs that up.

• More than a fifth of adults believe light sabers exist.
• Almost 25 percent of people believe humans can be teleported.
• Nearly 50 percent of adults believe that memory-erasing technology exists.
• More than 40 percent believe that hover boards exist.
• Almost one-fifth of adults believe they can see gravity.

With so many people believing in fantasy technologies, it's no surprise that people can't understand just how poor of science Creationism, anti-vaccination, homeopathy, and the rest are.

This is why I do the lecture taking hundreds of hours of my time each year to prepare it. It's an introduction to critical thinking and skepticism on grounds that people aren't likely to find offensive. And at the same time, it's a reminder that science can be fun, without being bullshit.

Bus Bias

2011-03-18T14:36:00.003-05:00

It's often hard to come up with examples to teach in class that aren't completely canned, so I'm going to keep a series running of things I've come across that I want to remember and share.

Today's topic: Selection Bias.

I live in St. Louis which has a decent mass transit system. It's composed of both buses and a railway. The rail system is fairly new and doesn't have great coverage, but it's slowly expanded in the past several year and is improving reaching a decent area of the suburbs. But from there, you'll have to use the buses.

For a long time, I haven't felt the bus system was too great. Not because the buses don't run on time or are in disrepair, but because I constantly see them "Off Duty". It seems much like the stereotype of road workers: They spend more time sitting around than actually doing anything.

There's a reason for this that I'll get to in a minute, but first, let's toss in the statistics. Over the past few weeks, while driving, I've kept track of buses that were on duty and off. Out of ~30 buses, only about 5 were on duty. That's only 17% on duty. So what's up with that other 83%? Does St. Louis really waste 83% of their buses to just drive around off duty?

Obviously not. There's something affecting my sample that's skewing my numbers pretty significantly. Namely, it has to do with where I drive. It just so happens that a good deal of my driving is on Brentwood Blvd and the surrounding areas. This is also the street on which the station is for all the buses. The result of this is that, as buses are going on duty to where their routes are, or coming off duty to return at the end of their shift, they'll be frequenting this area. All of the routes go through this area at those times, but only one is actually on duty because they have a route on that street.

Thus, my numbers come out wrong because they were formulated on a lack of understanding of the situation.

This is news?

2011-03-06T12:08:00.002-06:00

Apparently CNN thinks a bunch of idiots declaring that the end of the world is May 21st is somehow headline news.

It's an exceptionally sad story. It starts off describing Sheila Jonas, a woman who has ditched everything to to on a nationwide RV tour to tell people that the apocalypse is coming. Other members of the caravan gave away everything they owned. Others left behind families, wives and chidren, all because they were so conned by a "broadcasting ministry" known as Family Radio.

This station, which has a long reach, backs up their nonsense with "irrefutible proofs" which are nothing more than throwing numbers together and coming up with things that come out to whole numbers every once in awhile and assigning significance to such incidences. As (I hope) even my students could even tell you by now, just because you get something that looks conceivably plausible doesn't mean you've done anything right. But that's what Family Radio, and other fraudsters like Richard Hoagland do. Sadly, scientific and mathematical skills are so poor, that people are easily conned by it.

Come May 22, when they should be forced to admit they were wrong, they, of course, won't. They'll simply say they made a mistake, fudge some more numbers, and do it again. Such people are beyond reproach. They can and should be left behind. They should not be treated with respect and civility. They should be laughed at and mocked lest others fall for their crap.

Angry over Education

2011-02-26T11:38:00.004-06:00

It's generally pretty rare that the title for my blog is accurate. As I've explained, there's a few issues that get me pretty angry (anti-science being lead among them), but since those topics don't generally come up in my everyday life, I'm not generally an angry person. In fact, as I've noted, I have quite a bit to be happy about.

But the past week and a half has brought into view another topic that has the capability of getting me exceptionally angry: The demonizing of teachers and education.

For those that don't know, when I began college in 2002, I started off as an education major. In 2004, when I started taking my first courses in the topic, I gave up on the field all together. At the time, there were two main reasons. The first was that the instructors seemed to be filled with nothing but hollow "philosophy" that even common sense should have told anyone, wouldn't apply in a high school classroom. The constant harping on something so inherently worthless demonstrated how vacuous the program was.

The second reason was that I'd already heard stories from friends and family that teach, on the arrogance of parents to blame teachers for all their students failings. While I certainly understand the need for a teacher to be experienced and qualified, they're not the entire equation. Students and parents themselves contribute heavily to the equation, and I didn't feel like constantly taking the blame for other people's failings as I knew would happen.

So I left the educational field. But obviously, I've returned to it. I've done so due to the realization that we need good science education. We're dropping the ball and instead of bitching and moaning about it, I would be much better served to actually try to fix things, even if only one class at a time.

I knew that teaching was not an easy job. I knew that teachers didn't get much respect and even less pay. I knew that students today weren't as well behaved as even 10 years ago when I was in high school.

But as bad as all these things were, things have been getting much, much worse in several states lately.

Front and center in all of this is Wisconsin. There, the state is working to implement a law that would essentially destroy the ability of teachers to organize and fight for the right to be successful at their jobs and be compensated adequately for it. The way this is often done is through unions.

The typical argument I've seen against unions is that they protect bad teachers. Almost universally, the example of this is the infamous "rubber rooms" in New York. For those that aren't familiar with these, this is a term applied to reassignment sectors in which teachers accused of misconduct are sent to keep them out of contact with students while their cases are investigated. For whatever reason, sometimes this takes years, all the while, the teachers are drawing their full salaries.

The conclusion is that this is somehow the fault of unions who are protecting child molesters and pedophiles. What the people citing this fail to understand is that people can be wrongly accused. Just as in the criminal justice system, in which people are presumed innocent until proven guilty, and punishment cannot be handed down without proper reason, so too should it be for teachers. A teacher should not be able to lose their job simply because they've been accused of something.

Another reason teachers are sent to these reassignment centers is because of "incompetence". Yet this is poorly defined. While one could argue that we can measure the ability of a teacher by the success of the students, this falls back on the problem I pointed out earlier that teachers are only part of the equation. Teachers should not bear the burden of simply having a class full of students who won't participate. There's no teacher in the world, no matter how experienced, that can fix that. Yet such a situation could easily land a teacher in serious trouble.

And such classes do exist. I've been in them myself. In one of my high school classes, the addition of one student led to the disruption of class every day to the point where the teacher lost the rest of the class' attention trying to deal with him. And our grades suffered for it. Yet she couldn't remove the student because of the red tape involved with doing so. Thus, so quickly dismissing teachers as "incompetent" is a slippery slope.

Similarly, the power to make this pronouncement is consolidated in the principal. This creates a situation in which a principal can simply call a teacher with whom they don't get along "incompetent" and have them removed. No evidence. Just accusations.

This quick and easy system would also allow school districts to unfairly remove senior teachers from positions so they couldn't draw pensions later. Essentially, teachers would become the sacrificial offering to balance budgets, without any sort of say in the matter. No voting. Just dismissal.

Teachers unions are a body that helps ensure teachers receive this basic right. By removing them, saying teachers cannot organize to fight for such rights, it essentially says that we should not be afforded them. Translations:

Teachers don't get the right to due process before being fired.

And being fired in such a manner essentially assures a teacher will not be hired again. It's a career ending deal. So teachers need every protection, because it's not just bad ones that can be the victim of this.

But teachers unions don't just concentrate on teachers. They make sure that teachers are equipped to do their jobs effectively and thus, benefit the students as well. As has been noted in many other articles on this topic, many of the highest achieving states are also ones with the strongest teachers unions. These unions help to do things like keep class sizes to a manageable level.

Class size is a serious concern. Not only because students often need individualized instruction, but because the larger the class size, the more difficult it is to manage students from a disciplinary standpoint. In a class of only 9 students, I already have students this year who think it's appropriate to simply get up and wander around the classroom in the middle of class. Of course, I immediately address the issue and have punishments assigned for such actions, but in the 10 seconds it takes to address the situation, the 8 other students are already gone and more class time is lost trying to coral them again. Imagine the difficulty in a class 3 times as large.

Or worse. Imagine a class size of 60 students. What teacher in the world could handle this? In college, where students are paying to be there and are sufficiently mature enough to not disrupt the class, sure. But not high school. Yet that's exactly what may be happening in Michigan. To close a budget shortfall, the school district plans to close half of its schools and merge classes into an unmanageable mass.

It's not hard to see what will happen. The correlation between class size and scores is already well known; Teachers won't be able to manage the classes and overall success of the system will plummet.

And when scores fall, who's the first that gets blamed? Oh yes. Teachers.

So once again, we're being set up to be a sacrificial offering.

Yet we're not given the right to protest this. Not only are states working to dissolve our right to assemble to ensure our due process, but we've already lost another fundamental right: The right to free speech and self expression.

In taking my teacher certification course, one of the most inane things it stated is that teachers are an "important and valuable part of the community", but if we wanted to have any sort of social life, we should leave the community.

Want to go to a bar with friends? Should probably do it in the neighboring town. Want to do go on a date? Don't do it where your students might see you.

Teachers can be respected, so long as they're nothing but teachers to the community. And without respect, teachers can be suspended and fired, even if it has nothing to do with their behavior in the classroom.

Thus, to keep our underpaid jobs, we must self censure. Even writing anonymously about difficulties in the classroom is dangerous. As such, there is little wonder that people have such a general lack of understanding of the plight of teachers. We're not allowed to point out obvious truths, that students are frequently, "rude, disengaged, lazy whiners. They curse, discuss drugs, talk back, argue for grades, complain about everything, fancy themselves entitled to whatever they desire, and are just generally annoying."

The above quote comes from a Pennsylvania middle school teacher who was suspended for the comments. Often, people argue that if students lack these qualities, teachers must inspire them. Yet most of them come from the home. We can try to engage students, but when families place no emphasis on education even the best efforts can fail. When families allow kids to disrespect the parents, no teacher will be able to command respect.

Those claiming that teachers should be responsible for passing along these skills are heaping on yet another burden: The burden of parenting, and then telling us that we shouldn't have the voice or the right to protest.

Teachers are asked to do more than ever and are receiving less respect for it than ever. We receive little to no support from parents, mild support from administrations, and thus only have each other to rely on. But with efforts to destroy this ability to work together to fight for our ability to teach effectively and fairly, even this thin thread is about to be cut.

We can't let this happen. Not because of the teachers. Not because of the students. But because of what it would mean for us as a nation. We're destroying our own school system by killing the key component of it.

And yes, I'm angry that as hard as I work to teach, it won't mean anything because the anti-intellectualism in the country has reached such epidemic proportions that we're willing to undermine those efforts.

We should be ashamed. But we're too stupid.

EDIT: This post is rather lengthy and hits on many topics so here's the summary -

Teachers are being asked to do more than teach their subject. They are being sabotaged by being handed students that aren't equipped with the basic etiquette to belong in a classroom, as well as potentially overburdened with class sizes and lack of appropriate materials.

No teacher could be expected succeed under such conditions, but we're being asked to anyway. And when we can't, we get blamed. Our only protection has been the protections for which unions have fought. Now, policies are being put forth to remove those protections and the unions that fight for them.

This leaves teachers in a no win situation. And with no teachers, there is no educational system.

Naka Kon 2011 Recap

2011-02-22T23:52:00.004-06:00

Another year of Naka Kon is complete. 2011 marks my 6th year in attendance, and my 3rd year on staff. And my how we've grown. The first year I attended, the con was at 650 attendees. This year we were somewhere over 4,500.

This year started off for me heading to Kansas City on Thursday morning and setting up the gaming room. We'd changed some things around from past years and I think it greatly improved the way things worked. Additionally, we finally supported some Magic: The Gathering and Pokemon TCG tournaments as well as running some sponsored D&D campaigns. Everything went exceptionally well except for a few staffing issues.

Aside from my official duty, I also was the MC for our costume competition which is always fun. I also ran a panel on how not to give a crappy panel, as well as a fan panel on my favorite anime, Gurren Lagann.

But perhaps my favorite part of Naka Kon every year is that it's where I always debut the new version of my Anime Mythbusters talk. I barely got it done this year. One of the topics wasn't working out as well as I wanted to and I only got it sorted a day and a half before I needed to leave.

This year I added three new topics. The first was the physics of Pokeballs as featured in Pokemon. The second was the amount of UV exposure from a pokemon that is supposed to have a body temperature twice as hot as the surface of the Sun. Lastly, I explored the possibility of having habitable worlds around red giant stars (which will be translated into a UT post in the next few days).

Every time I've given this talk, I've had standing room only crowds. So this year, I was given a larger room and still had people cramming in against the walls and sitting in aisles. It was a huge success and the feedback has been wonderful. There's a few changes I'm going to make before I tour it to some other conventions I'm expecting to attend again this year as well.

Fortunately, one of the people that's been to the panel the previous two years volunteered to tape it for me and very quickly got the video exported, broken up, and sent to me so I could get it on my YouTube account. The first segment is below:

Overall the con went fantastically. I'm still sore and needing another weekend already just to keep up on sleep.

Getting Ready for Naka Kon and Geometry Lessons for Circles

2011-02-15T23:49:00.003-06:00

Naka Kon 2011 is this weekend in Kansas city and I've been ridiculously busy preparing!

My biggest project for it has been the new version of my Anime Mythbusters panel. Every year for Naka, I prepare a few new segments and drop a few old ones. This year, I'm adding a section on the physics of Pokeballs, the effects of standing anywhere near a certain Pokemon who supposedly has a body temperature that's twice as hot as the surface of the sun, and lastly, the potential for having planets habitable for human life around red giant stars. These three topics have taken the better part of a year for me to work out so finally getting to present this is going to be a huge weight off my shoulders. I can't wait!

Additionally, I'm giving two other talks. The first is the "How not to give a crappy panel" panel, which is exactly what the name describes. The second is a discussion about character motivations and relationships in the Gurren Lagann series. These aren't nearly as labor intensive, so I've pushed them off quite a bit, and now I'm down to the wire!

The other huge stress is that I have to take a few days off of teaching which means I need to make sure to have material ready for a substitute which will likely be someone that's not terribly good with their math. So it needs to be self contained enough that students can reasonably do it on their own. Also, we're on block scheduling so the classes are 140 minutes long. So the projects need to really be time intensive, but not so complex they can't do them.

This wasn't too hard for my Algebra 1 class. I'm totally stealing the styrofoam cup stacking project from dy/dan's blog.

The challenge was coming up with something for my geometry class. Right now we're working on circles. Arcs, chords, angles, etc.... I looked and looked for some kind of project that would be suitable, but there's absolutely nothing out there that directly pertains to the material we've learned. So I did some inventing.

One of the most common things for students to do with circles is make pie charts. But this is exceptionally simple: Convert the percentages of responses for each answer to a percent of 360º and just measure off those angles with a protractor. No real math there besides conversion factors, which isn't geometry.

So to force some geometry into the mix, I've taken away the protractors and made them use a bit of geometry to relate those angles to chords which they can measure with the much more common rulers! I'll post the assignment sheet later, but man, what a pain in the ass to come up with a pertinent project. You'd think that with all the teaching blogs and resource sites, there would be some kind of projects out there for circles, but I guess most teachers just hate them as much as I do!

Can This Stop Now?

2011-02-09T10:36:00.002-06:00

One of the odder happenings I've kept up with on this blog is that of parents who do horrible things to their children because they believe their children are possessed by demons and are attempting DIY exorcisms. Generally it's not a huge topic. There's been only a few instances I hear about annually, but this year seems to be off to a bad start. Already, two parents have murdered their children to get out non-existent demons.

In the first case, a mother forced her child to swallow an oil and vinegar mixture which (unsurprisingly) he threw up. So the next time, she covered his mouth, apparently forcing him to choke on it. Today, there was a report of another mother who beat her son to death to get demons out.

This can stop now. There are no demons. There are no ghosts, no goblins, gods, jinns, spirits or anything of the sort. Children are hard to deal with and often act in strange ways. But this isn't abnormal and isn't a justification for murder. Instead of leaping to the conclusion that something supernatural is wrong and reaching for magical elixirs or beating children, parents like this need only a good dose of reality.

Improving Learning in Mathematics

2011-02-05T11:30:00.003-06:00

Over a dy/dan, a recent post recommended a document on improving math education. I looked over it and there's several ideas I think are pretty good in it.

The first is the use of mini-whiteboards which allow students to write largely and display their thinking easily and quickly to a teacher as well as the rest of the class. I think I may have to get a collection of these as I think the idea is very good. The disadvantage I see in this (which as usual, goes completely undiscussed) is that the record of their work either doesn't get preserved, or requires extra time to retransmit to their notes which would be a subject of much complaining. Part of my teaching method is to make students fully aware of all the resources available to them to learn the material such as, my lecturing, their book, their notes, their homework, review sheets, one another, and even the internet. I frequently remind them that with so many resources I ensure they have that this really puts the responsibility to use them and learn on them. Thus, losing any is something I'm somewhat reluctant to do.

Not directly from the document, but spawned directly from it is a way I'm considering to get students to pay more attention in classes. The challenge I've noticed at small private schools is that all of the students are friends and controlling talking is near impossible. In one of my classes this year, I have the unfortunate case of having one student that doesn't need me to explain anything before seeing how to solve the problems. She tends to get bored and then start side conversations, disrupting half of the class. Yet on the other hand, I have another student that doesn't understand (or doesn't try to understand) no matter how much I break it down and how many examples I give. If I don't slow down for her, she disengages and disrupts half the class. It's a horrible catch 22.

Thus I'm considering ways to force idle hands and minds into motion and add a little more peer pressure to the situation since I've had a few students actually complain about their classmates descriptiveness. Students that want to learn! What a concept!

One of the ways I'm thinking of doing this is by taking a small inflatable ball to class. Instead of calling on someone, I'd toss them the ball, literally putting it in their hands, and asking for the next step. Then they're free to pass it on to another student for the next step and students would (conceivably) not engage is as many side discussions since they would (hopefully) not want to turn around for fear of getting smacked in the back of the head by a ball.

The document also offers some ideas on how to manage my catch 22. It suggests allowing more individual (or small group) work, which is differentiated in one of several ways.
1) Giving advanced students extra problems that allow them to explore concepts deeper.
2) Differentiating by problem sets: While they note that this may encourage some teachers to remove material that is "too difficult" for lower achieving students, they recommend instead, that they allow students to pick from easy, medium, or hard level of difficulty problems and that most students would be able to better judge the difficulty of their learning.
3) Different levels of support in which students are all given the same problem, but more support material is provided to some than others.
4) Letting students create problems on their own level. An example is asking students to create problems they feel are "difficult" but know that they could solve correctly. These could then be passed to students on similar levels of achievement to solve and then passed back to have the original creator correct.

There's also a section on how to deal with technology on the classroom. So far, this is something I haven't been able to deal with much due to the lack of projectors in my schools. When I eventually have access to one, however, I'm not entirely sure how much I want to use them. One of the greatest pitfalls I frequently notice (that, again, is never discussed) is that using programs that aren't entirely intended for the purpose, and are co-opted and not entirely intuitive, students can often get distracted by how to use the program and not concentrate on what the mathematics or science is that's driving the entire experience. It's a double edged sword.

Still, there's several ideas that I think I may institute into some of my more challenging classes and see how it goes.

A Modest Proposal

2011-02-03T11:07:00.003-06:00

Last week I came across this article regarding a proposal that teachers would "grade" parents of children from first to third grade on basic things like getting their children to school on time, they've been fed, and ensuring that their homework is done.

I think this is a fantastic idea. Far too often is it forgotten that parents are a vital part of a child's education. Not for delivering content, but instilling in their children a value of education and equipping them to learn. Instead, these responsibilities are nearly universally dumped on teachers. But teachers can't teach when kids walk in the door loaded with the baggage their parents will lump on them.

So I think a reminder that parents are a part of the equation too, for these simple prerequisites at the very least, is a wonderful plan. Allowing a teacher to grade on these basics simply points out the connection in a non-binding way that places no punishment beyond a little personal guilt on parents who aren't pulling their weight in their child's education.

Sadly, commenters seem to to think otherwise. Looking over them, the most frequent response seems to be "If teachers can grade me, then I should get to grade the teacher."

In principle, I think that's a perfectly fair position. However, few commenters provide any reasonable criteria by which to judge! What sort of basic principles can one quickly and objectively use to measure propensity for success that aren't already used? The user "Kristi" provides some good ideas:

Does the teacher start class on time? Does the teacher have excessive absences and inservices? Adequate communication? Are the handouts and memos free from typographical and grammatical errors?

I think those would be some very basic foundational things by which anyone could judge, but the only ideas many of the other commenters seem to be providing are crazy ideas like "success based pay". Absolutely not. As this proposal is pointing out, teachers can't succeed when parents set their children up to fail. Yet these people want a teacher's (already meager) pay to rest in large part on someone else's efforts? Ridiculous.

Other commenters seem to think that teachers don't have the time to institute such policies. On the contrary. I think these grades could be easily determined since the data to create them is already collected: Missing homeworks and tardies. The only new data would be if a child came into the classroom complaining of not having breakfast on a routine basis, which I think would stick out anyway, and take no more time than a quick note in the teacher's gradebook. Done.

Still others try to excuse parents noting that in many instances, parents are simply too busy to involve themselves with their child's education since they are working two jobs to pay the rent. While this is true, and I greatly empathize, if in such cases parents can then shirk the blame, then so too should their students' teachers. If parents can be "too busy", then so can teachers since they already are frequently overworked with unmanageable class sizes. School districts with high cases of uninvolved parents cannot then be graded (via NCLB and other such acts) on the success of students since the large failure rate isn't their fault since they simply can't do anything about it, just like the parents can't. Such a proposal sounds ridiculous, even to me, but at the same time, it's fair.

But perhaps the saddest comments are those that decry the idea because it will create tension between teachers and parents. One commenter even proposes that this will lead to more school shootings by enraged parents. The idea that parents would go so far as to murder teachers is a bit far fetched, I hope, but the idea that parents wouldn't take too kindly to actually being held accountable for their own inactions is not far fetched at all. The comments clearly show this. But that's exactly why it's depressing. It shows just how little involvement parents want with their own children. As another commenter pointed out, the schools are providing a perfect mirror for American society and what a miserable state of affairs it is. Parents don't want to accept that responsibility, but I think we need to start working on putting it back in their hands. It's not going to happen if teachers are too scared of parents to do so.

When Education Doesn't Help

2011-01-31T14:31:00.004-06:00

Over a Fox "news", they now have a video up of Obama's chief science adviser, John Holdren, pointing out that those that deny climate change are in need of some education.

In reality, climate change and global warming is entirely a scientific question. We can collect data, compare it to models, make testable predictions, and everything else that is done in science. And as Holdren points out, the conclusions are in; overwhelmingly, we know the climate is changing and we're a big part of that, not the sun, not natural cycles here on Earth.

But while this should be a question of scientific merits, it's not been and I thin Holdren fails to recognize it. Look at the section in which Fox listed this clip: They don't list it as science. They list it as "politics". And to go further, Fox poisons the well from the get go, calling Holdren a "Czar", likening him to a dictator.

This is all too familiar. It's the exact same tactic that the ID/Creationist camp has been trying to take with their anti-science; remove the science and make it about "worldviews", or "academic freedom". Sadly, this is a very strong strategy for them. Especially so when you have a large portion of the population from which they're drawing their support not only being anti-science, but anti-intellectual. Reading through the comments is exceptionally depressing. It's a long list of people calling schools "indoctrination".

As a teacher, I can easily say the exact opposite is true, and that's part of the reason I have problems with the current movement in educational circles. Presently, we're obsessing over trying to teach students critical thinking, especially in science. There's so much emphasis on that process (which is the opposite of indoctrination), that we're losing out on passing along the basic facts on which all higher order thinking rests, that students may be able to follow the process, but they completely lack the knowledge base from which to even ask an intelligent question to solve. All we're giving them is confusion.

So what we have is a bunch of uneducated anti-intellectuals who sneer at the facts and treat them as negotiable, "political" points, or dueling "worldviews". They're not. But until we get these clowns to accept that, there's no amount of education in the world that can change their minds.

Evens or Odds

2011-01-28T10:11:00.004-06:00

When taking over some new classes this semester, my new students were quite upset when I told them how I managed homework. Their previous teacher assigned only even problems from their book. In most books today, the evens are the students favorite because they have answers in the back of the book so they can "check" their answers. Or, if they can't quite figure out the answer, they can look and try to reverse engineer it.

I don't particularly mind this. Checking the answer lets you know if you made a mistake and, if you did, you get practice finding mistakes as well as correcting them. Reverse engineering problems makes flexible thinkers who can view math as a set of tools that goes two ways instead of a strict linear process that can only be applied one way in one situation.

Still, I don't like students to rely on this too much. They argue that homework is still learning (which it is) so they should have as much help on it as humanly possible. I remind them that they already have a pretty phenomenal amount of resources available to them: They have my lecture (from which I hope they took notes), the book complete with examples that are exactly the same with swapped out numbers, and in many cases, each other. So I don't feel too much pressure to give them all even numbers.

So on this first homework assignment I gave a mix of odds and evens. Some they could "check". Some they couldn't.

In general, I found two common patterns for mistakes. The first was simply not reading the instructions. When it asks how many solutions a set of linear equations has, that question needs to be answered. Don't just draw the graph and leave me to do the rest of your thinking by seeing it only has one, or none, or an infinite number.

The second common mistake was (oddly enough) only on even problems. It was students having the answer to the next even problem. They'd written the problem right, gone through some algebra voodoo magic, and then amazingly arrived at the answer for the next problem. The only way I can explain this is that they did what they felt was enough work to arrive at the answer, "checked" it, wrote down the book's answer but because the answers are all squished together in the back, wrote down the wrong line.

So much for actually "checking" anything or taking that solution and reverse engineering it to meet your work. I'll be sticking to the evens now.

New Students, New Tricks

2011-01-24T17:00:00.002-06:00

This semester I'm taking over some math classes at a new school. First days of classes are always challenging since students will try to push boundaries as quickly as possible and set the bar where they want it. I'm generally pretty good at curbing that, but today my new 11th graders pulled a rather dirty trick that's going to mess me up for a good long time now.

The class is only 6 students and before class, they all met, organized, and traded names. Only after 20 minutes of using the wrong names, I asked a student to remind me of her name and she slipped, giving me her real name, which had previously been associated with a different student which is when I caught on.

Very sneaky.

I think I'm going to like this class.

Another reason to keep religion out of marriage laws

2011-01-23T17:28:00.002-06:00

According to the pope, the denial of marriages isn't reserved for gays. The Catholic Church is now wanting to exert its authority over straight marriages. According to him, even when it comes to straight marriages, "No one can make a claim to the right to a nuptial ceremony".

That's right. To the Catholic Church, getting married isn't a right. It's a privilege that they should get to bestow as they see fit. Fortunately, America has kept such nonsense out of our laws when it comes to straights, but hypocritically uses religious reasoning to prohibit gay marriages. Living in a country by secular laws, there is no excuse for this.

Just as Valid

2011-01-18T17:44:00.003-06:00

Given the recent hubbub over the Zodiac getting a shot of realism, of course, it was ripe for parody from the Onion. Let's take a look at mine.

Libra Sept 23 - Oct 23
Wait, if an existing constellation has that great an effect on one's destiny, then why didn't anyone make a fuss about Eris, Sedna, and Quaoar, the planet-sized objects in the Kuiper belt?

Good question. Oh but wait.... that's my old sign. Fortunately, taking a look at Sagittarius' forecast tells me how I should deal with change:

Just keep repeating: No matter what, you are still a Sagittarius. You are still a Sagittarius. You are still a Sagittarius.

These are about as accurate as any "real" horoscope, but infinitely more intelligent.

Isn't that a bit backwards?

2011-01-17T20:41:00.002-06:00

So I'm preparing the new intro for the talk I'll be giving next week at Illinois University. In it, I'm quickly discussing where the motivation for the talk came from (combating bad science) and demonstrating particular failures of public understanding.

Of course this means I'm looking over the Science and Engineering Indicators from this most recent year. In it, it lists the general "prestige" with which the public views various professions. Although Americans don't do very well on understanding science (but not much worse than most other nations except on some important issues), they generally rank Scientists as having a very prestigious career. The only one that beats it (by a mere 1%) is firefighters.

Meanwhile, down near the bottom, we find "actors". So can someone explain to me why the public isn't dying to see "Science Tonight" instead of "Entertainment Tonight"?

Sign of the Times

2011-01-13T20:42:00.003-06:00

As noted over at Bad Astronomy, today's been a big wakeup call for Astrology nuts. Apparently the word got out that, due to Earth's precession, the "signs" astrologers have been peddling are off. Astronomers have known this and pointed this out for a long time.

Meanwhile, the word has also gotten out that there's a 13th constellation in the zodiac (the collection of constellations through which the ecliptic, or the Sun's path, passes). It's Ophiuchus. I popped on Twitter to see what the BA was saying and looked at the comments in which "Ophiuchus" appeared. Apparently people are freaking out that their signs changed and now their tattoos are wrong.

But never fear! The Astrologers have a nice explanation for why it doesn't matter. According to ZodiacLife, "Ophiuchus would only apply to those born since its appearance in 2009."

*blink*

So here's this funny thing. Astronomers get excited when a supernova, not even visible to the naked eye appears in a relatively nearby galaxy, or when something suddenly brightens that was unexpected. You'd think that an entire freaking constellation appearing with several stars visible to the naked eye would have the astronomical community freaking out. Like to the extent that they'd maybe even get a front page headline or something. And not just them. It would require the violation of all sorts of physical laws to suddenly *poof* at least a dozen solar masses worth of matter into existence. Physicists would be flipping out too.

In reality, Ophiuchus has always been there.

So ZodiacLife clarifies: "There is no previous record of the Sun passing thru this sign until 2009."

Huh?

Actually, there is. It does it every year. The path of the Sun on the sky is called the ecliptic, and unless the Earth's orbit suddenly changes, that path isn't changing.

And it's not just ZodiacLife spouting this junk. Every "official" astrologer seems to be echoing the same lines. This shows just how little Astrologers really know about Astronomy. And obviously the public knows even less.

Really, I don't expect people to be able to define the ecliptic or be able to have a ready mental picture of 2D projections inside a sphere of a 3D solar system that could quickly show how much nonsense things like this are, but here's the thing: If you're going to start following something so closely that you make major life choices based on it, knowing the basics should be a prerequisite. This is why I spend so much of my free time working to promote critical thinking and science literacy.

All of Chemistry About to be Rewritten!1!!1

2010-12-19T13:44:00.002-06:00

Did everyone hear about how, "For the first time in history, a change will be made to the atomic weights of some elements listed on the Periodic table of the chemical elements". Apparently it has to do with atomic masses changing depending on where you are. Weird, huh?

No. I'm not making that up. It's what the article says. Really:

sulfur is commonly known to have a standard atomic weight of 32.065. However, its actual atomic weight can be anywhere between 32.059 and 32.076, depending on where the element is found. (Emphasis added)

Oh wait.... they're talking about "weight". Not mass. Silly me.

Oh wait. Silly them. Get outside of a gravitational field and there's no weight! Thus these ranges are a bit off.

Oh wait... that's still not what they're talking about? Well why didn't they say that?

What's really going on is that some people are wanting to include the ranges of stable isotopes (different atoms altogether) of certain, common elements. So.... they're not really changing anything. They're just pulling a bit of info off of the table of isotopes and including it on the periodic table.

No big deal really. Except now students are going to be a lot more confused about what number to plug into the formula they don't understand either. Yes. Let's compound the problems early.

Biggest Whiners over DADT

2010-12-18T12:37:00.002-06:00

After long hand wringing, it looks like the horrible policy of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" is going to be repealed. I think the effects will be interesting, but what's caught my eye more, are articles like this one, which make it clear who really care about the policy: The fundamentalists.

"Chaplains who aren't able to proclaim what they believe is true about this issue ... means that the soldier then, the airman, the sailor, the guardian, the Marine aren't able to get the full opportunity to hear religious faiths," retired Army Chaplain Brigadier Gen. Douglas Lee tells CNN.

Quotes like this one are what really get to me. Nowhere does repealing the policy say that chaplains can't proclaim that they think gays are evil. It just guarantees that servicemen and women will be able to be open, and perhaps for once, instead of their fellow service members nodding in agreement, they'll be able to stick up for their friends. It's harder to feel comfortable about bigotry when you have to be face to face, work side by side, and entrust your life to the people you're condemning.

This came in the wake of a report looking at the effects of reversing the DADT policy. According to the article, "Only three out of about 145 chaplains who participated in the study suggested they would quit or leave if the law were changed."

I'm not sure if that's good or bad. I think it's great that these bigots will leave and be preaching hate to less people, but at the same time, I have to wonder how many more will stay and do it anyway.

Speaking Event: 1/26 @ Illinois College

2010-12-15T02:21:00.004-06:00

Next month, I'll be speaking at Illinois College in Jacksonville, Illinois. As usual, my talk will be a variation on the Anime Mythbusters panel I've been touring to various conventions around the midwest. However, this time I'm speaking in a more academic setting, so I'm going to be including a bit more about how this entire thing ties in with science and the real world.

I'm being sponsored jointly by the math and Japanese departments, so this should be one interesting audience to talk to. It will be Wednesday, January 26, 2011 @ 7:00 p.m. in Kirby Learning Center Room 6.

More on Darwin vs. the Sun - Science & Epistomology

2010-12-14T12:41:00.005-06:00

Over at Universe Today, I just posted an article looking at a Catholic magazine and review called the Month from 1889 in which they covered the controversy over the age of the Earth as required by both Darwin and astronomers. History has shown Darwin as the victor in that, but there's something I left out of the article and wish to comment on here. Namely, the closing statement of the article.

Essentially, it concludes that because science, at that present moment could not fully answer the controversy that,

Science then, even by its own showing, is altogether incompetent to furnish us with a guiding line, by which we may regulate and order our lives. And as the nature of man instinctively feels the need of some such guide, and will be content with nothing less than the truth, it follows that a trustworthy basis for faith and deed must be sought elsewhere.

Although this article is now over 120 years old, I still hear this exact same argument used today (as well as the anti-science one I quoted in the UT article). I left this part of the UT article because it doesn't deal with science as much as epistemology and was better suited for here.

This sort of thinking pisses the hell out of me. While it makes a true statement, that humans are curious and want to know how things work, it promotes the cheapest and most superficial form of knowledge available, if one can even call it knowledge. Namely, it suggests that if you cannot have a satisfying and correct answer immediately from science on demand, then we should reject science and go for anything else that provides convenient and easy answers. The article promotes a search for truth, but provides no basis for establishing it and rejects the only reliable means by which to do so.

The ultimate irony in this is that the article spent several pages extolling the knowledge gained by science from Kelvin, Newton and other visionaries. But only because it provided the author with easy answers that confirmed his own biases. I suspect that if the author had lived in those times, he may have rejected the findings he later accepts. It's only from the retrospective vantage that the answers look clear.

This article highlights the confusion often apparent when new territory is being explored, but as with so many things before, the actual answer eventually came though. However, it didn't come by turning away from the search because it wasn't immediately gratifying. It came from working hard and looking for evidence. As Dan Meyer has said before, "no problem worth solving is that simple."

I cannot agree with this statement more. Instead of allowing for these cheap answers, as gussied up as they may be, we need to demand real answers. And we need to be promoting this to students and the public at large. Are things unknown in science? Absolutely. Are some of the things being hashed out today going to be wrong? Absolutely. Does this mean everything in science is wrong? Hell no. Does it mean that we should forsake science and turn to snake-oil salesmen? Absolutely not.

Those like the author of the article who answer yes to the last two of those questions should get no respect. It vexes me greatly that they still do.

Congratz to JT Eberhard

2010-12-13T12:36:00.003-06:00

For those that don't follow his blog, JT just announced that he has taken a job with the Secular Student Alliance where he will be their new Campus Organizer and High School Specialist.

For those that don't know JT, he's the guy that put together Skepticon. Having a guy that pulled together such a large and amazing convention as that working together with the SSC to help form new secular student groups at a time when such groups are exploding and flourishing is probably one of the best things that can happen for the skeptical community right now.

So congratz to JT. We know you'll do great. And you'd better. Because we're watching.

PS: Bwa ha ha ha!

"My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle"

2010-12-13T11:14:00.005-06:00

At work, one of the residents* learned that I was a science major. He told me that a friend of his, a pastor, had visited Einstein and had written an interview. He had a copy and would copy it and give one to me. Being that I've been working a great deal recently on astronomical history for a large project of mine (details when it gets closer to completion), I was very interested in seeing this.

Last week, he brought the copy by and.... well, I'll just repost the majority of it here and let everyone see what they think before I give my conclusions.

The housekeeper answered the door, and I asked if I could see Dr. Einstein concerning a particular matter. She invited me in and referred me to Einstein's secretary, who at the time was his stepdaughter. The stepdaughter went upstairs to check with Einstein and, upon returning, told me that her stepfather was willing to see me. I walked upstairs to his office.

Three walls were lined with books. The fourth "wall" was really a huge pane of glass that afforded a beautiful view of the Princeton University golf course, with the tower of the Princeton University Graduate School in the distance. Near the door hung portraits of Einstein's heroes, Mohanda Ghandi and the English physicist Michael Faraday.

Einstein was dressed in baggy trousers and a long-underwear shirt, the latter sporting what appeared to be soup stains. A pair of scruffy wool-lined slippers covered his bare feet. His hair was gray, bushy and very long - a preview of the hairstyles of the 1960's. He say back in his chair, puffing contentedly away on a long curlicue pipe.

Einstein was never much concerned about his physical appearance or about material things in general. His home was not at all the palatial mansion I had thought it would be prior to me arriving in Princeton; rather, it was a plain wooden-fram structure already 120 years old. Some of its shutters were cockeyed, and the whole place wanted paint, but the inside was quite neat, even spartan, which I attributed not to any efforts of Einstein's but to his stepdaughter and housekeeper.

He invited me to sit down. I told him who I was, and then I posed a question of a religious-scientific nature (I have long since forgotten what my question was). He gave me his answer, and since he seemed to be in a rec eptive mood, I continued with other questions.

"Dr. Einstein," I asked, "do you believe in God?"

He replied: "I suppose the average atheist would consider me a believer in God, whereas the average believer would call me an atheist or agnostic. Actually, I do believe in a supernatural force."

I then asked him a few questions about the Old Testament - what, for instance, he believed concerning Noah, Moses, David and the Psalms. He showed from his answers that he was acquainted with Old Testament Scriptures, evidently because he had been brought up in a Jewish home.

From this point, I proceeded to the New Testament, saying, "Dr. Einstein, I believe that Jesus Christ is the divine Son of God. How about you?"

"No," he replied. "I can't believe that."

"I believe," I continued, "that Jesus Christ made atonement on the cross for us human beings so that we might become children of God and heirs of heaven. How about you?"

"No," he responded. "I can't go that far with Jesus Christ."

Following his answers, he often laughed and chuckled a bit, and in this chuckling I could sense a tone of derision. This was especially apparent in connection with the subsequent remark I made.

"Dr. Einstein," I said, "according to the Bible, if we are lost, we have ourselves to blame. If we are saved, we have God alone to thank."

"To this he responded: "If that is the case, then I'll have to blame your God for giving me a mind that can't accept Jesus Christ as the Son of God and Savior of the world." Here is where his laughs and chuckles struck me as being particularly derisive, although I knew he meant no meanness by them. They simply seemed to say, "Young man, how can you be so naive as to accept that nonsense?"

It is evidently true, as the Scriptures say, that "the man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned" (1 Cor. 2:14).

Though humility was not especially in evidence on Dr. Einstein's part during the bulk of my 40-minute visit with him, yet a semblance of it did become apparent at the conclusion. As I left, I sad, "Dr. Einstein, I'd like to invite you to our Lutheran worship services at Westminster Choir College Chapel. I'd like to be able to tell my grandchildren one day that I preached to the smartest man in the world."

To this he replied, "Oh, no, I'm not the smartest man! I'm not the smartest man!" Once again he laughed and chuckled, but this time there was no derisive tone. He meant it.

*hurk*

Let's condense that down.

1. Arrogant preacher waltzes into someone else's home, without prior invitation.
2. Said preacher declares steadfast belief and asks if other person holds them.
3. Said preacher feels mocked when laughed at casually for having beliefs without bothering to support them.
4. Insinuates other person is not as intelligent as they seem for not sharing said beliefs.

This is a pretty perfect micro-summation of the general problem I have with religious blowhards like Jerry Falwell. They have large, public platforms, declare their beliefs, whine about persecution and intolerance when other people don't give them inherent and undue respect, and then insult the people that only go so far as to disagree and make it known!

While that's annoying enough in and of itself, the larger problem to me is that so many people seem to think this is a perfectly respectable position. There's not one iota of logic or reason in it. It only works if you already accept the conclusion that the absurd position is valid. It can only perpetuate itself by circular reasoning.

It's bad thinking. It needs to stop. These people aren't victims. A bit of scoffing isn't going to hurt them. But playing it off as if it does certainly hurts others.

* - I'm currently working at a retirement community while I finish getting my certification. I passed my last test and am just waiting on paperwork to go through so I can get back in the classroom!

PS: For those that aren't familiar with the post title, it's taken from the series Firefly in which Malcom Reynolds sarcastically informs Jayne that he's considering taking him more seriously after Jayne offers to trade a rifle for Mal's supposed wife.

Louisiana Gearing Up for Another Evolution Battle?

2010-12-05T17:54:00.003-06:00

It looks like Louisiana school boards are looking to insert the "teach the controversy" nonsense into their classrooms. They're scheduled to have a debate on whether or note they need to balance their textbooks with "information questioning the theory of evolution."

*snrk*

This comes after the school board asked a review council to look over the textbook before approving it and weigh in. Fortunately, it looks like the team is at least somewhat qualified as there was an 8-4 vote to approve it by that council. Obviously the school board was looking for a different answer because they're still stalling to try to open up "debate" on the issue. This sounds reminiscent of the Kansas Evolution Hearings in which the school board flew in "experts" in Intelligent Design on the taxpayer's dime to tell the board what they'd already decided on.

Of course, the advisory council obviously has some scientifically illiterate fools on it.

State board member Dale Bayard said he plans to vote against the texts—which the state textbook-adoption committee overwhelmingly approved—and will urge his colleagues to join him.

“The textbooks in the life sciences that were proposed ... did not include all science that is currently available on the subject [of evolution],” he said, asserting that some findings “refuting” the theory have been ignored.

Additionally, the author did have to do the job of poor journalism and get quotes from someone completely unrelated to the discussion, talking to a Reverend from the 'Louisiana Family Forum, an advocacy group whose stated mission is to promote “biblical principles in the centers of influence”'.

Right. Because a reverend is an expert on what should be taught in science classes. And not to be satisfied with just trashing evolution, he went on to state he had "other issues such as global warming and “embryonic issues.”"

Thanks for reminding us that this isn't just an attack on evolution. It's an attack on science.... being waged in our classrooms. It's disgusting.

Oops. Got the title Wrong.

2010-12-02T00:23:00.004-06:00

An article recently posted on alternet seems to think it's "shocking" that a non-religious parent has been deemed unworthy to receive equal custody of his child based on his agnostic position. While it's reprehensible and clearly shows just how little persecution the religious majority receives, despite their pleas to the contrary, it's in no way shocking. It happens quite frequently. And it's one of the reasons we need events like Skepticon: to remind the public that non-religious people are people to, deserving of the same rights as everyone else. Funny thing is, we don't get them.

Failure: Impossible

2010-12-01T12:18:00.002-06:00

A few weeks ago, I came across this article about a school district in Alexandria, Va. which has removed the failing grade (F) from it's possible grades. Instead, failing students will receive an Incomplete (I). The idea behind this is that the school feels an F is to final. It tells students that they're over. They're done. They didn't make it. Move on because you can't do this.

To me, it's an insult to our intelligence. I'm no psychologist, but effectively, an F and an I mean the same thing: You didn't complete the course work and if you want the credit, you'll have to try again. Are kids really so dumb as to think that this changes anything?

The only thing I can see it changing is that it may not impact a student's GPA. Most times, when an I grade is used, it's a placeholder that isn't counted for tabulation of GPA. Translation: It can't hurt you. It can slow you down, but so long as you get it done, you suffer no penalty for not keeping up. Since when does this work in the real world? All we're doing is lowering the bar.

I understand the hardships of feeling like you're behind. I felt like it much of my college year. But here's the thing: Unless you're feeling challenged, you won't work to better yourself. Telling kids that they can't fail essentially removes that pushing force.

Sure, it's not a force that will drive all students. Some won't care if it's there or not, but I can't see such students caring if you call it an F or an I either. But there are students that do need that threat to keep them working. And taking that away just feels like we're letting those students down in the long run, even though they may think they like it in the short run.

Skepticon III: Day 2

2010-11-20T11:55:00.002-06:00

Apologies if this seems a bit incoherent. I wrote most of this while the talk were going on with only minor revisions. After everything going on, I've been too tired to really sit down and edit it. As such, due to the need for sleep, I missed the first talk Saturday about sexuality in atheism.

The first one I made it to is DJ Grothe's talk. I wasn't sure what the talk was focusing on since it didn't have a title. But as I walked in, he was talking about what skepticism is. He claimed it should be applied to anything and every thing: from religion to politics to consumer products. But while skepticism should be broadly applied, individual groups should be narrowly defined.

Yet while narrowness provides focus, it can also cause stagnation. After all, "How many times do you want to look at Bigfoot."

Turning that to look at whether Skepticon is misnamed, he concluded it wasn't since atheism is applied skepticism (sometimes) on one topic.

There seems to be a "MENSA effect" in which the speaker says, "I'm smart. I'm right. You're smart, so you know I'm right." This can lead to a hierarchy which can lead to a zealotry. While this philosophical back patting can be fun and soothing to those involved, it's not really productive. The result becomes infighting (see: accommodationism). We should go full throttle after the woo peddlers who cause harm, but let slide the infighting. While those that are not skeptical in one regard can't help there, they can in others.

Religious believers get offended more because life after death has more of an emotional impact than disproving dowsing and we need to respect that. Don't go overboard in coddling beliefs. Have "tender hearts" in caring for people. Too much nay-saying makes you a crotchety curmudgeon. Too much tenderheartedness "makes you lax about the truth." Just being wright is not going to cut it. We have to be right and good and effective. Thus, there should not be any purity tests, and nothing out of bounds in skepticism.

The third panel of the day (2nd I attended) was Joe Nickell, a former detective and magician and now works for Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. He made it clear that he's an atheist for the reason that there's no good evidence, but he concentrates on claims for which there can be evidence.

"Let us not be a 'dubunker'," he said. He objects to the term because it implies we start knowing the answer. Sure, there may be no ghosts, but what's more interesting is what is causing the phenomenon that people call ghosts.

Joe wrote "The Mystery Chronicles" and was promoting his book. One example he discussed (presumably discussed in the book) was a young black brought up on charges of murder before finger printing was common. At the time, they took detailed measurements of the body for comparison with records. When the records were ran, a near exact match was found of someone in a prison. The two looked nearly exactly the same.

Ultimately this could be resolved through fingerprinting, hopefully. Yet the fingerprints were strikingly similar as well. The obvious conclusion was that they were identical twins.

Good story.

But what of the Amityville Horror in which Ronald Buch Defaile murdered his family. A year later the family that moved into the house claimed demons. But the events there were significantly different than the normal claims for haunted houses. So Joe investigated.

"Devil's footsteps in the snow" "doors and windows ripped off" "police called to counsel the family".

But the records showed the police were not called. The doors had never been damaged. On the date with the snow, there had been no snow. The story fell apart. The family's attorney admitted that the family made up the story to try to get a new trial for the murderer by claiming demonic possession.

Liberty hall is another supposed haunted house. Yet the curator admitted to having made it up. When the later curator decided against ghosts being good for business, tour guides stopped telling people and the sightings mysteriously disappeared.

On UFOs, Joe had investigated those as well. In 1952, Flatwoods apparently had an alien sighting on September 12. A group of children and a woman and a dog had an encounter. They saw a bright light across the sky and thought it landed in a nearby field. They grabbed a flashlight and investigated finding creature with glowing eyes and "terrible claws".

Other reports showed the light over several states and as such, was likely a meteor. Another person living there encountered the kids and confirmed they were genuinely scared. He went to investigate in his pickup and left skid marks and oil which was later interpreted as a UFO evidence. Yet no one would listen.

Mothman was another case Joe investigated. The key description was that of ruby red eyes which is characteristic of bard owls. Joe also looked into alien abductions and concluded it was waking dreams and hypnosis.

Spontaneous human combustion was another topic. The main case involved a woman who took sleeping pills while smoking in a flammable chair and nightgown. Joe implied the wick effect in which human fat burns well containing the flames and making the burning efficient.

Faith healing, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, were other topics Joe covered with a critical eye.

I was a bit late getting back to Dan Barker's talk thanks to lunch and a lack of parking.

As I walked in, Dan was talking about him, while religious felt himself receiving instructions from God to sit in the middle of a corn field. After sitting around he felt stupid.

He then started discussing the National Day of prayer being ruled unconstitutional, "pending appeals." In response, conservative groups have filed amicus briefs arguing the National Day of Prayer is not religious. Heh.

(Additionally, clergy in tax codes, excludes house payment or rent as rent. This is also being challenged as well.)

1952, Billy Grahm had a 6 week revival meeting encouraging the National day of prayer and a bill was put forth by Pat Robertson's father. Truman quickly signed it. Some presidents were slow about it which made it hard for the religious right to build an event around it. Thus a bill was passed to lock it on the same day in deference to religious groups.

A lawsuit was formed and eventually won, even though the judge generally disagrees in a strict separation. The day or prayer was directed outwards to the people. The Marsh decision says such cases can only be directed internally.

Richard Carrier was next up. His talk was regarding a book called "The Christian Delusion". The book is a response to the challenge that Dawkin's "God Delusion" was unscholarly. His talk outlined the possible positions of Christianity and addressed each one. He talked really fast so the rest of this summary is going to be more along the lines of an outline.

Are Christians Delusional? This requires a definition of "delusion"
1. Colloquial: A false belief
2. Psych: A false belief based on an incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly sustained (a) despite what almost everybody else believes and (b) despite what constitutes incontrovertible and obvious proof.

Delusion consists of certainty (absolute conviction), incorrigibility (not changeable by compelling counterargument or proof to the contrary), impossible of falsity.

Different kinds of delusion("Official Dr. Carrier scale")
1. Mildly delusional - men overrate their looks, women under
2. Majorly Delusional - only concentrating on this today
3. Worrisome
4. Crazy
5. Batshit insane

Modern Christianity drops Eve, but sill has an imaginary friend who magically manipulates the world for me and he also magically impregnated a woman two thousand years ago and she bore him a son who underwent ....

Varieties:
- nominal/apathetic
- dunno/metaphoric
- It's true as told (and Jesus is coming from outer space to kill you soon (40%)

The happy split:
- Personal theism + Jesus was cool (mildly)
- Jesus is truly the Son of God and Whatnot (majorly)

What if someone came up to you and said
- Friend name Zalmoxis
- Is real
- Never dies
- Ancient Demigod
- Cleansed soul with blood sacrifice
- Grants them power of living forever
- Lives in magic place
This religion actually actually existed in 425 AD

EX: Heaven's Gate
Get new bodies in alien spaceship flying by vs. Get new bodies in a magical alternate universe

OR
Quantum teleportation and neural engineering vs God needs blood sacrifice

Carrier proposed the first was more realistic since spaceships, quantum teleportation and the potential to modify brains actually exist where as there has been no such evidence for spirits in heaven or the power of blood sacrifices.

He then discussed part 2 of the book (skipping part 1) entitled "Why the Bible is not God's word" which had a few chapters in it:
Cosmology of the Bible (Ch 5)
The water globe was by the Egyptians, Babylonians, Sumerians, and Bible

Bible is not reliable source (Ch 6)
1. Inconsistent with self
2. Not supported by archaeology
3. Contains fairy tales
4. Failed prophecies
5. Many forgeries

Part 3: Why the Christian God is not Good
Ch 8: Yahweh is a moral monster
Ch 9: Darwinian Problem of Evil

BONUS: "The Will of God" Richard Carrier
sites.google.com/site/thechristiandelusion

Part 4: Why Jesus is not the risen son of god
Ch 10: Jesus: Myth and Method
Ch 11: Why the Resurrection is Unbelieveable
Ch 12: At Best Jesus was a failed apocalyptic Prophet

Christianity is Implausible, Bizarre and Patently Untrue.
Richard's intent was to show how the parts discussed so far refuted the various forms of Christianity:
Bible is God's word (Part 2)
Jesus is the Son of God (Part 3)
God is Good (Part 4)
This refutes most Christians.
Part 1: "I don't need evidence Christians"
Part 5: "But we need it Christians" - Society needs Christianity
Ch 13: Christianity does not provide basis for morality - Christianity is one among many, and not even good

Ch 14: Atheism was not the cause of the holocaust - Darwin or Martin Luther
Ch 15: Christianity was not responsible for modern science
BONUS: Christianity was not responsible for American Democracy

Part 1: Why Faith Fails
Ch 1. Cultures of Christianities
Ch 2: Christian Belief through the Lens of Cognitive Science
Ch 3: The malleability of the human mind
Ch 4. The outsider test for faith revisited

Outsider test for faith - You must test your own religious claims and texts by the same standards you apply to other religions. If your religion's claims and texts fare no better, then your religion is just as wrong as theirs is.

Choice of religious belief is positively correlated with cultural and geographic familiarity and access (science is the same everywhere).

Religious belief is negatively correlated with intelligence, education, and self-esteem.

Hyperactive Agency Detection (David Eller, Valerie Tarico, Pascal Boyer, Daniel Dennett, etc....)

Jason Long
- fear based messages suppress critical reflection
- time increases confidence faster than evidence
- rationalization is an autonomous instinct
- instinctive false generalization (as soon as we find one argument is found flawed, we toss the whole thing out even if the rest are good)
- confirmation bias is innate (only see/seek support)

Pscyhology trumps reason: This is bad news
- Face to face vs. indirect communications
- Avoidance behavior
a) swallowing lousy argument
b) avoiding exposure to opposition
- Fallacy of poisoning the well actually works

Why no outsider test
1. We don't have to test our faith by the same standards
2. Our religion passes the Outsider test because we have evidence

Sam Harris, Moral Landscape
- Belief is an emotion
- we have located it in the brain
- Can misfire like any other emotion
Ex: Phobias

Pscyhology trumps reason: good news
- The more someone is forced to defend a belief, the more you have to think about it and can counteract everything else
- Cognitive dissonance increases the starker (and more important) are the options/contradictions
- Combine and sustain both = effective @ deconverter

Book is meant to be a toolkit

Again, I arrived somewhat later on James Randi's talk. In it, he discussed his experiences in promoting skepticism and debunking woo.

He discussed Peter Popov's story, the "faith healer" who Randi became famous for catching in his act, calling out people to heal by name with the aid of God his wife and a radio transmitter.

He addressed how to get critical thinking in school. He claims parents would be very leery of it since they wouldn't be able to control the content directly and students could (and would) ask the wrong questions. To illustrate this, he discussed an experience which he declined to talk at a school because parents had told the school they didn't want him to address religion and he wouldn't guarantee he wouldn't respond to a question.

The 7pm talk was PZ Myers (yeah, I know how to spell it!) After lamenting that he wasn't invited to take his clothes off for the calendar, he reminded us that he's one hell of a drinker.

His real talk was on science education. Much of his job is pedagogical concerns and he started with the analogy of a poker game being like evolution in that
- A deck of cards is a great symbol of chance and variety
- It illustrates of the power of combinations
- It's a game with winners and losers, like selection.
- Everybody understands poker.

However, it has problems.
- It's a freakin' analogy, people!
- As the concepts get more specific, it falls apart.

But where the concepts fail can also be illustrative. He selected a volunteer and played a single hand. Neither got a royal flush but the lesson was that you don't have to be "perfect" to win.

The second lesson was that you can discard and draw which is analogous to mutation. The difference is that mutations are random. Mutations are also 0.000004% of the genome. 1:5 cards is 20%. Bit different.

A bigger difference is that one life = one hand. The only way to possibly change is to have children which is mostly a clone.

This illustrates Weismann's Barrier.

His next point was most of our cells aren't involved in reproduction. The only ones that are are the germ cells. In his life, he has "ejaculated three cells into the next generation". And that's it. The comparison was to that of a rocket: Something giant and lumbering with a grand fireworks show whose only "purpose" was the small capsule at the top.

To PZ, he didn't define himself by 3 cells. He defined himself by the fireworks and that next generation's job is to produce their own.

Coming back to poker, he discussed various types of mutations and how they could be approximated with cards. Additionally, if the deck is cut, a change in the pattern can show where it was.

Another comparison was wild cards to something known as reaction norms, which is how things respond to certain environments.

The last point was the problem of sex. One of the explanations for the reason of sex is the red queen hypothesis. This states that parasites are constantly adopting to eat us, so by randomizing our hand, it makes them harder for them next time.

Of course, the question all this poker talk begs is what the dealer must be like? By looking at the genome, we can figure out how the dealer must operate. These evidences are things like "junk" DNA. We know it's junk because
- These regions accumulate variations far faster than coding regions of the genome. They are not constrained by functional selection.
- We understand the mechanisms behind the generation of most of it: retro viral insertions, for instance, are random.
- Variations can be induced in experimental animals. Point mutations, deletions, duplications, and frameshift mutations within the "junk" does not seem to affect phenotype in most cases.
-The most striking example: Fugu
FUGU: tiny genome 390Mbp vs 3,300Mbp for humans, 20,000+ genes, relatively small amount of junk; <15% repetitive sequences, and make good sushi (http://www.fugu-sg.org)

So what can we infer about the dealer?
- He lacks foresight
- His major concern is the fidelity of reproduction
- All creativity is product of chance
- Lots of mistakes
- He's no more interested in humans than he is in Fugu or fruit flies or sponges.

This implies that "God" is DNA Polymerase. Or the FSM.

The last speaker for Saturday was Rebecca Watson. Her talk was on "How to Ruin Christmas (For Pretty Much Everyone Involved)".

After talking for 15 minutes on how much she abused her handler, she finally got around to starting.

An example of a typical letter she gets around the holidays:
Dear Atheist Abby: My children believe in Santa and at this point I'm happy to let them enjoy this fantasy as I do think that some moral lessons of living and appreciation can come out of it.

But I began wondering what do you do about the Christmas conundrum... If you really are skeptics to the core....

Rebecca called this "Santa Morality" If you're good you get toys. But you get nothing if you're bad ... or if you're poor.

Complaints with Santa:
Encourages materialism
Causes psychological damage
discourages skepticism
forces parents to lie

Does it really cause psychological harm? Science says 90% of all death row inmates believed
1100% of children in Santa studies died (or will eventually)

Srsly: Santa does not screw you up. Most were happy when they figured it out.

preschoolers with imaginary friends are more creative, more social, and more empathetic.

The Candy Witch (Wooley et al. 2004) Introduced kids to myth of candy which (made up). The candy witch comes on Halloween and leaves candy. Some kids got candy, others didn't. Older kids believed more than younger kids because they used logic and evidence. Younger couldn't interpret candy as being evidence for premise.

Which is more helpful: telling kids to ignore the evidence, letting kids continue to puzzle it out?

In that context, Santa is a rational belief. Presents appear. Cookies are consumed. I sat on his lap, FFS. Strong anecdotal evidence.

As such, encouraging kids to puzzle it out, absolves the charge of discouraging skepticism.

As far as lying is concerned: Lying teaches kids to be skeptical of authority. "I'll know I succeeded as a parent when my kid says, 'Bullshit mommy'."

Rebecca's talk was absolutely hilarious and was probably the best of the entire con.

The afterparty was in a room with horrible acoustics so we didn't hang around. Regardless, my friends and I stayed up far too late having our own party. As such, we completely missed Day III.

Skepticon III: Day 1

2010-11-19T20:58:00.003-06:00

Today started far too early. The first panel was at 11:30 and for some reason, we decided to get up around 9:30... after being up talking with old friends until nearly 5am. Oops.

We were a few minutes late to the first panel on Skepticism on sexism which was essentially a review of all the bad reasons people are sexist. The speaker noted that those against women's reproductive rights are "mostly Christian". It's the new focus of conservative groups formed in the 1960's to oppose desegregation.

But aside from the blatantly religious motivations for sexism, she noted that there were several pseudo-scientific reasons people bring up to justify their sexism. It often attempts to justify sexism by implying that it's not truly present and simply a result of unequal abilities in the first place or that people want it. They claim women are genetically inclined to be nurturing. It just so happens that men's "natural" abilities tend to be for high paying fields.

She argued that sexism hurts women by allowing them fewer opportunities, gives them socialized reasons to have low self-esteem and fear of being assertive, and burdens them with lower incomes, more depression & more likely to be abused.

It hurts men by forcing them into a constant battle, encourages "emotional stunting" (like in Jackass), and lowers their lifespan.

It also hurts society because we lose out on half the human race's talents. Investing in women also pays more because they tend to invest more in families and their economy.

Overall the talk was pretty good.

The second talk was by David Fitzgerald, pimping his new book, "Nailed" which reviewed the historicity of Jesus. It essentially had 3 main points:
1) No contemporary sources of Jesus' life mention him. The ones that are cited were well after Jesus.
2) The Gospels are mostly plagiarized and contradictory.
3) Other sources have no corroborating evidence.

His conclusion: There's no reason to believe that Jesus really existed.

David was a hilarious speaker and went ~15 minutes over time, but no one seemed to mind.

The third talk was by Debbie Goddard regarding diversity in the skeptical movement. In general it was a large recap of much of the discussion on Blag Hag with Ms. Magazine.

It also examined differences in minorities and beliefs. It found many superstitions fall off with age. Exceptions were religion, ESP, communication with the dead, ghosts, and aliens.

The skeptic community tends to attract people with high levels of educations, leisure time, no young kids @ home, some disposable income. Blacks don't have disposable income and are most religious. Surprised?

Not really. But should we care?

Debbie says yes. Otherwise we'll be laughed at in the same way we laugh at the Tea Party for lacking diversity (heaped with their rather blatant racism). Additionally, critically thinking is improved by diverse ideas, diversity breeds diversity (like biodiversity), and humanism, skepticism and critical thinking should be universalizeable, good for all. Getting young people is also important since young people are the future of the movement.

Debbie seemed pretty disorganized as a speaker and it wasn't especially engaging. Sadly, it was the lowlight of the day.

Fourth was John Corvino speaking on the parallels between the gay movement and the atheist/skeptic movement and coming out in both.

John said coming out isn't an event; it's a process and often has to be repeated. In his experience, coming out as an atheist has been harder than as gay since the gay movement has gone public in a far greater respect than atheists have for a good while now.

The response from the religious right hasn't been a real argument, it's been a panic. Skepticism, John says, is a methodology by which forces people to calm down and look at the facts. All in all, he found 10 parallels between the two forms of coming out:
1.Deep personal significance
2.separate “mental book”
3.possible bad reaction
4.Marked as “flawed”
5.need for community: We cant' count on parents for wisdom and support if parents aren't gay/atheist
6.“Dumb” questions
7.myths
8.“dropping hairpins” - letting out hints
9.confidence matters
10.integrity

John also touched on the accommodation discussion stating "I cannot remain silent because I cannot forget what happens when they think they have infallible backing for their fallible prejudices."

The last two segments were discussion panels. The first was on accommodation.

In general, the panelists were pretty unified. Accommodationism is worthless. While it may score some quick points, the idea that we can cut out any of our points is to sacrifice the principles on which skepticism as a movement has been founded.
As John put it: " Integrity means being true to yourself but not necessarily saying it every time you can as loud as you can."

While de-emphasizing portions may be a tactical choice in some situations, that's not what accommodationists are calling for.

John told a good story in which a theist wrote Dan Savage regarding how to help with the recent spate of gay suicides without having to respect being gay because being told to would hurt the writer's feelings. Savage's response was "Fuck your feelings."

John said this wasn't his style and he wouldn't have responded the same way, but I think Dan had it exactly right: When it's someone's life and liberty vs. your feelings, based on lack of critical thinking and superstitions, your feelings should get no respect. If people think they should, they're not really working to treat the problem, merely treating a symptom. On the gay suicides, while downplaying the criticism of the religious bigotry might get us allies to find a few bullied kids helped, it doesn't fix the problem of why they're bullied in the first place.

Another sub topic that kept coming up was whether or not the NCSE actively pushes theism. PZ claimed it does. John disagreed but couldn't explain why. PZ meanwhile, noted that the NCSE only has material that supports the notion that religion and evolution are compatible, but not that evolution can be compatible with religion, thereby lending its credibility only to the fuzzy sort of watered down theistic evolution.

Regardless, we can accommodate somewhat on some issues, but to sacrifice integrity for some quick victories is folly.

The last panel was on whether or not skepticism leads to atheism. Again, the panelists were pretty agreed: Yes.

It's not a 100% guarantee, but if you're honest about skepticism, then it should.

The only even remote bit of dissent came from James Randi who said he didn't have much of a problem with a friend of his who, being skeptical in every regard, still consciously chose to believe in theism because it made him feel better, yet still admitted that he had no evidence or logical reason to do so. Randi accepted this because the person was at least intellectually honest enough to admit it was an irrational position and it was based solely on utility and didn't harm his critical thinking in any other regard.

Overall, it was a good day of talks and I'm looking forward to Saturday.

Skepticon III

2010-11-18T10:19:00.000-06:00

I leave to head to Skepticon III this evening. Details to come.

The World Must be Ending: I Agree with a Republican Sponsored Measure

2010-10-28T21:44:00.002-05:00

I never thought I'd see the day, but coming up for vote in Oklahoma is a measure initiated by a republican. Should the amendment pass, it will prohibit the use of Sharia law as a basis for rulings in court cases.

This seems like it should be common sense. Court rulings shouldn't be made in deference to religion or religious law. Yet apparently this needs reminding since a Muslim husband repeatedly beat and raped his wife and after his wife filed a restraining order, a judge struck it down on the basis that it was his religious beliefs that promoted it.

Thankfully, this was appealed and an appellate court upheld the restraining order. But the point still stands: Religion cannot be used as an excuse to mistreat others. As has been stated elsewhere, your rights, including religious ones, end where the rights of another begin.

Predictably, Muslims are whining that this is somehow persecution. It's not. America is a nation of secular laws that apply equally. You don't get exemptions and exceptions for religion.

My only complaint is that this bill doesn't go far enough. If this is going to be a reminder that we don't use Islamic law in our courts, it needs to also remember that Christian morals and laws aren't permitted either.

More Star Wars Pareidolia

2010-10-26T23:15:00.001-05:00

Source

Science of Star Wars

2010-10-19T15:08:00.003-05:00

Back when I started putting together my Anime Mythbusters panel, one of the inspirations was the series of "Science of ________" shows.

One of those, Science of Star Wars, is now available online. It's a fun watch. Light on real science though.

Comet Hartley2

2010-10-19T12:45:00.002-05:00

For those that haven't heard, Comet Hartley 2 is making it's appearance right now. It's not really exceptional as far as comets go and is only expected to peak at around 5th magnitude, but it's still the best we're getting this year.

I went out Saturday night to my aunt's house outside St. Louis where it's fairly dark (enough so to see the Milky Way) to go hunt for it. I think it must have vanished because, armed with sky maps and a 4" reflector, I spent three hours looking for it and found a whole lotta nothin. Everything I got in the eyepiece was distinctly stellar and I panned all over the damned field.

Anyone else look for it and have similar experiences? I notice that the link above points out that the coma is already over 1º in size, so this thing is huge. Perhaps I just wasn't expecting something so diffuse and passed right over it. The last comet I found was comet 17p Holmes and it was quite small in size at that point.

I'll go out again in a few nights if it's clear and try again. It's getting cold, but thankfully, my aunt has a hot tub.

Astronomer's Humor: Part 3

2010-10-19T12:08:00.001-05:00

From my friend Luis Vargas:

How, then, does this initial temperature profile evolve in time? There are classical methods for determining T=T(x,t) for t>0. One of the basic results is that one can start with an exciting temperature profile T(x), for instance one that resembles the skyline of Manhattan or the panorama of the Alps, and after some time the temperature profile always looks like the landscape of Nebraska.

Source: R. Kippenhahn and A. Weigert, "Stellar Structure and Evolution". pg 33, 3rd ed (1994)

Wait... I thought it was Kansas that was flatter than a pancake...

Astronomers Humor: Part 2

2010-10-09T15:38:00.002-05:00

Sometimes gender stereotypes are harmful. The shoehorning of gender roles has long limited freedom of choice for women, and still hampers their average earning potential.

Yet for some reason, we still joke about these stereotypes. Women's mood swings are the driving action of many comedies. Men failing to ask for directions is a standby. Women collect shoes and eat chocolate. Men love sports and beer.

This jestful stereotyping popped up in a paper I've been reading for a UT article. In it, the author notes that there seems to be an obsession with size.... of telescopes obviously. Bigger is better!

In a Freudian footnote, he adds:

1Speculation as to whether this is connected to the gender of most astronomers is outside the scope of this paper, but as the gender balance improves, it will be interesting to look for a reduction in the preoccupation with size.

Yep. That's it. Astronomers are compensating. *titter*

Oh wait.... was he being serious?

Another exorcism death, and a credulous judge

2010-10-07T13:31:00.002-05:00

In 2007, Janet Moses died from drowning during a botched exorcism in New Zealand. The family responsible for this was tried for manslaughter and recently convicted.

Exorcisms ending in death are tragic, but sadly common enough I've created a post tag just for them. In many of these cases, the law comes down fairly hard, but in this case, the family gets little more than a slap on the wrist. According to the article, the heads of the family that led the exorcism received

six months' community detention and a daily curfew. In addition they had to do 300 hours community work and 12 months' supervision.

I've always understood the purpose of punishments to be a deterrent for future actions (as well as, frequently, compensation for damages from past ones). But this sentence is so light, it doesn't effectively serve either purpose.

In addition, the judge in his sentencing remarks, doesn't even condemn the base practice of dangerous exorcisms themselves. Instead, he recommends that before carrying them out, people seek the advice of cult practitioners, as if they're somehow any more qualified:

But what can be stated is that tohunga or kaumatua should be consulted by whanau where makutu is suspected so that the whanau receive the correct expert advice as to how to deal with a situation, as such advice will be tempered by ensuring what is to be carried out by such exorcism remains within the laws of New Zealand as set down by Parliament

So apparently, if you kill someone by consulting the proper quack, New Zealand is fine with it.

UT Posts: 9/10 - 10/5

2010-10-05T16:23:00.002-05:00

Trojans May Yet Rain Down - A look at Neptunian Trojans and their potential as reservoirs as short-period comets.

Does a "Rock Comet" Generate the Geminids? - Can rocky bodies produce the stream that causes the Geminid Meteor Shower?

White Dwarf Pulsars? - Can white dwarfs pump out cosmic rays like the standard Neutron Star variety?

Electric Resistance May Make Hot Jupiters Puffy - Does a magnetic interaction with stellar winds heat hot Jupiters and make them expand?

The Case of the Missing Bulges - Why do some galaxies have bigger bulges than others?

A Varying Fine Structure Constant? - Does the fine structure constant vary in different places in the universe?

The Hercules Satellite: A Galactic Transitional Fossil - Is the Hercules Satellite galaxy on the verge of being eaten by the Milky Way?

Type II-P Supernovae as a New Standard Candle - Can these supernovae be normalized to tell distances?

The Thick Disk: Galactic Construction Project or Galactic Rejects - How his the thick disk of the Milky Way formed?

Why I Laugh at Creationists - That's Not a Journal

2010-10-04T14:18:00.009-05:00

I've been hanging out at JT Eberhard's blog (the guy running Skepticon) lately thanks to my friend Steve dropping a link there on facebook.

I first started reading it from this post of his responding to a rather vacuous creationist named Bakersdozen2. BD2 tossed out the usual list of Creationist fallacies, among them the bifurcated fallacy of "Big Bang is wrong, thus Goddidit."

Fallacy aside, the premise of the Big Bang being wrong is one that needs some serious evidence. I've addressed the Big Bang before and demonstrated that there's several independent lines of evidence that converge to support it. So how does BD2 support that the Big Bang is wrong?

Initially he linked to an article in an Indian Newspaper citing an article in the Journal of Cosmology. The main point of the article was that we haven't detected gravitational waves, thus the Big Bang is wrong.... as if the linchpin of the entire Big Bang Theory is gravitational waves....

I went ahead and looked for the original article and eventually found it... on viXra.org. If you're not familiar with viXra, it's an alternative to arXiv.org, which is a preprint server for several types of scientific publications. viXra decided it didn't like the "censorship" practiced by those ebil scientific journals and all those hoity toity types at arXiv (where you have to be vetted by someone in the field before you can upload, so a minimal peer review process), so they started their own club.

I bet readers are already groaning anticipating what viXra really is: A home for crackpots. And you'd be right.

But that's guilt by association. Perhaps, just perhaps, this article is legit. No idea why it wouldn't have been put on arXiv first, but it apparently made it in a real, peer reviewed journal.... right?

No.

The "Journal of Cosmology" is a sham.

First, check out it's "peer review" process:

Authors should submit the names, affiliations, and email addresses of 5 scientists qualified to review their paper

Yeah... that's right. You can pick your own reviewers. It says not to pick "friends", but that doesn't mean you can't pick someone that's not already sympathetic to your position and not going to give it a real shake. That's not peer review. That's cronyism.

While I've been informed that this is standard practice for some journals, a legitimate journal should at least review the reviewers picked and make sure they the proper qualifications and the job is done. How does this journal do?

Let's take a look at some of the articles. Here's one that the author of the paper BD2 likes to cite. It's about the "Myth of the Big Bang". Here's a quote that sums up the article:

Although most cosmologists will deny it, their Big Bang interpretations of data require it: a geo-centric universe with Earth as the center and measure of all things--exactly as demanded by the Judeo-Christian religion.

Wha? The Big Bang is Creationism is disguise?! Then why do so many Creationists have a problem with it?

Oddly enough, in this case, the Creationists actually understand the theory better than the author. The author claims

Therefore, data marshaled in support of the Big Bang place Earth at the center of the universe, with claims of age, distance, expansion, acceleration all relative to where the Earth is now

Uh... no. We use the Earth as a reference frame, but one of the centermost understandings of all of cosmology is that we do so because it's convenient. Not because it's the way things really are.

How did that slip by peer review? I guess the author recommended some elementary school students to review it. Behe would be proud.

So where does this guy come from and how does he know so much about Cosmology?

Well, he's from the Brain Research Lab. Oooh.... Research Lab. Sounds legit. Or not. They don't actually do research. They just produce stuff for the people that do.

But what about the original article BD2 referenced?

It's rubbish too. And it's not hard to see why. It's essentially the same game Creationists play - If you can poke enough holes in something, it will collapse, so make people think it's full of holes. The author cites numerous studies that attack various points of the Big Bang. Every single one falls flat. They're either things that the author simply doesn't understand (superstructure in the universe), or things that have never been justified (non-Doppler shift interpretations of redshift). His sources are crap too. Aside from the horrid nonsense I already pointed out he likes, he's also citing E.J. Lerner, a plasma cosmology lunatic. But even if they were supported, it provides no converging explanation for anything. Good theories tie many things together. This author thinks he's onto something when everything points in a different direction. Bad science. Bad journal.

Some of the other articles don't look too bad (although I've only glanced through a few of them). There's some written by some legitimate scientists actually working in their own fields including the person that started the "journal". In fact, he has quite a few, which is interesting. That's not a conflict of interest at all....

Overall, pretending this "Journal of Cosmology" is a credible source, is a bunch of nonsense. It's horribly and obviously flawed. But then again, so are Creationists.

UPDATE: Nancy, over at Universe Today, has also taken note of how another article fails to meet critical standards from experts in the field. This time on sponsoring missions to Mars. While one could argue that disagreements will always exist in cutting edge fields, the glaring inadequacies of these articles have shown that these aren't just disagreements over uncertain issues. These articles contain fundamental errors at the basic level. I mean, really? Selling property on Mars to fund missions in violation of international treaty? How did that one sneak by?

In general, it seems like most of the worst articles come from a guy named Rhawn Joseph, who this journal apparently loves and gives a free pass. He's a quack. PZ smacked him down last year. He, or one of his sycophants left a comment on my Big Bang post linking to some video about how the Big Bang never happened. I was going to do a full debunking of it and even downloaded it, but the sheer density of stupidity just hurt too much. I had 4 pages of notes and wasn't even 10 minutes in before scrapping it.

Book Review – Denialism

2010-09-30T11:18:00.003-05:00

During my last round of book buying, I found a book amidst the science section with a title that fit perfectly with many of the topics I've written about. It is Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives by Michael Specter.

I remembered hearing about it somewhere before so I picked it up. When I got home, I checked out the reviews on Amazon.com and almost decided to return the book. It's not that it has a bad rating (3/5 stars), but many of the top rated reviews said that, while the topic is certainly important, it lacks the rigor to support the danger implicit in the subtitle and worse, failed to get much into why denialism exists and what should be done about it.

But for some reason (probably laziness) I kept it and after finishing my last book, I did my general roll of the dice to determine what I'd read next from my pile and this book ended up being the scientifically selected winner. It's taken me almost 2 months to get through it, but now that I have, I think this book is one of the more important ones in the conversation.

The book starts out with Specter's thoughts on what may be part of the reason for why the rejection of science has become so commonplace. He suggests that it is due to some large failures of science that have caught the public eye. Specifically he cites things like the Challenger disaster, Chernobyl, Three-Mile Island, and Vioxx (the latter being the main focus). As he puts it

Thirty years ago nobody discussed the principal motive behind scientific research: nobody needed to. It was a quest for knowledge. Today, the default assumption is that money matters most of all, and people tend to see science through the prism of commerce.

The rest of the book is spent addressing several of the major forms of denialism.

The first is that of vaccines causing autism. In it, there is a very telling quote from Jay Gordon, Jenny McCarthy's pediatrician.

Let me state very simply, vaccines can cause autism. . . . The proof is not there yet. It will be found

Belief first. Evidence later. This is a hallmark characteristic of denialists.

The entire chapter is laced with success of vaccination efforts and the costs of not vaccinating. Although Specter never comes right out to say it, the message is clear: We cannot let unsubstantiated (or worse, disproven) fears stop us from using methods that we know save far more lives than they even hypothetically cost.

Specter's next target is what he calls the "organic fetish" and the scare over genetically modified foods. This is a topic I haven't gotten much into, but Specter makes many good points in the chapter. All food is genetically modified by hundreds and thousands of years of artificial selection. But by adding genes to add nutritional value as well as growth, we can and have improved the quality and quantity of food we produce. Given that "natural" foods haven't been fortified with extra vitamins, GMOs are in reality much better for us than the organic ones. In addition, they are designed to last longer and need less pesticides which are harmful to both our health and the environment. It's pretty much wins all around, except perhaps for a loss of some flavor.

While a loss of flavor vs a gain of nutrition isn't a huge problem in the US, where we don't have much of a problem getting balanced meals (whether or not we choose to is a different story), other nations don't have that luxury. GM foods would allow for poor nations to produce enough food of sufficient quality to feed their people. But many nations have chosen to ban GMOs because of the fear-mongering of the anti-GM crowd and instead, will let their residents starve. I think this is one of the many points Specter makes that really back up the claim made in his subtitle. When fear trumps progress, people die in the meantime.

The "alt-med" fad was the topic of the next chapter. From homeopathy to nutritional supplements, Specter addressed the effectiveness of each and concluded that few were of any value (of those that he did concede were some vitamins, calcium, and folic acid for pregnant women). And worse, many were outright harmful. One example he cited was that of Ephedra, a drug that "boosts adrenaline, stresses the heart, raises blood pressure, and is associated with an increased risk of heart attack, stroke, anxiety, psychosis, and death." Which is probably why the FDA finally banned it, causing outrage in the alt-med community, because, yet again, "[b]elief outranks effectiveness."

The bigger problem I, and Specter see, is that this nonsensical belief takes funding away from research that has true potential. In no case is this more true than the alt-med one, in which the denialism camp has fought so hard, they've conned the US government into funding a major scientific organization, the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), to review treatments that have already been demonstrated not to work.

This organization does operate scientifically, doing rigorous tests and coming to valid conclusions, the point is that these reviews shouldn't need to be done in the first place. Instead, we now spend $121 million annually to tell ourselves what we already knew: None of these "medicines" work. Thus far, the NCCAM has not approved a single treatment. Compare this amount with the funding for autism research from the government in a year which is only $118 million. Bunk science gets more funding?!

The last of the body chapters was on the need to recognize geographical background (or race) as an important consideration in medicine and how the taboo of race has largely prevented research into how differences in people of different lineages affects their responses to medicines. Again, the message is clear: while we deny the science, people die.

Specter concludes with a somewhat hopeful note. He discusses the potential of synthetic biology, real Intelligent Design of organisms, to change our manufacturing processes and potentially assist in everything from energy production, to cleaning up the atmosphere, to creating medicines. It's a rather utopian ideal, but the message is clear for anyone that's been paying attention; this could be our future. Are we going to let fear take it away?

Overall, I think the book was extremely well written. My worst criticism is that it didn't go far enough. Many of the points could have been spelled out even more instead of letting readers draw the conclusions that the material points them to. After all, the people that most desperately need to read such a book, can't seem to draw intelligent conclusions for themselves. Without this, the book is little more than preaching to the choir, but I think this stems from another major point that Specter didn't address, which is the root cause of denialism.

While I agree that fear is a major component of it, I think there's another component that was completely overlooked which is that of the general level of scientific ignorance in the world. But such points weren't really the topic of the book. After all, the subtitle was "How irrational thinking hinders scientific progress", not "Why is there irrational thinking". Ultimately, I think the latter is a far thornier topic and there's no single answer. Rather, there are many, only one of which Specter touched on. I'd love to see another book on that latter topic though. I think this, along with such a book on the "why", as well as some other books illustrating other harms of pseudoscience could easily be bundled together to make one of the most important arguments for rational thinking today.

So while others may criticize this book for its incompleteness, I think it's fine. It fulfilled the goals set out by its subtitle. There definitely need to be more, but that's the job of other books.

Texas Loses out on Education Funds

2010-09-16T16:33:00.003-05:00

I hope Texans are embarrassed right now. They've got a huge ass for a governor.

In 2009, when the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act started handing out funds to stimulate the economy, a sizable chunk of this was earmarked for schools. But what did Governor Rick Perry do?

He accepted the money and then cut school funding by an equal amount. In other words, he pocketed the money to use for the state's rainy day fund, bypassing the earmark.

Seeing this was more than a bit of a dick move (although it's happens all the time), Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Austin added an amendment to a more recent federal handout making sure Texas couldn't pull the same trick again.

So what did Perry do? When applying for $830 million for schools, Perry wrote in on the application that the feds had no right to tell Texas how to use the money it was being given and they could shove it. He told the Austin American-Statesman that he would, "look for ways around the requirement that the Texas governor assure that the state would maintain a level of education spending for the next three years."

Naturally, Texas' application was turned down. So where does that leave schools?

Apparently, 14,500 education related jobs are in danger in Texas due to budget shortfalls. The money was to follow a Title I distribution which would give the majority of the funds to areas with the poorest students so it would invigorate the highest need communities.

This coming after promoting creationism and "performance-based payment for teachers" which fails to take into account the difficulties of certain areas and demographics, thereby making a bad problem worse.

Education in Texas is looking more and more like a joke lately. As I finish my certification, I look more and more at areas I'd consider teaching. Texas is definitely on the list of places not to even consider.

UT Posts: 9/1 - 9/9

2010-09-09T20:47:00.004-05:00

The Race to Stellar Formation - A look at how feedback mechanisms in star forming regions can impede further formation.

Ultraluminous Gamma Ray Burst 080607 – A "Monster in the Dark" - A gamma ray burst hidden behind a cloud of gas in its home galaxy tells us about conditions in early galaxies as well as hinting at an explanation for "dark" GRBs.

How to Crash Stars Together - A look at the conditions necessary for stellar collisions to become likely.

The Black Hole/Gloublar Cluster Correlation - Study reveals relationship between mass of SMBH and number of globular clusters in galaxies.

The Origin of Exoplanets - Do exoplanets form in disks like our solar system, or do they form independently?

Two New Asteroids To Pass Earth This Week - Two newly discovered asteroids swing by the Earth, closer to us than the moon.

Aesthetics of Astronomy - A look at how the public interprets astronomical images.

The Other End of the Planetary Scale - What's the distinction between small stars and large planets?

Does Tidal Evolution Cause Stars To Eat Planets? - Tidal bulges by "hot Jupiters" could cause orbital decay.

Do Stars Really Form in Clusters - And what does it even mean to be "in" a cluster?

Follow-up studies on the June 3rd Jupiter Impact - What did we learn about the object that struck Jupiter on June 3rd, 2010?

Cutting Grass on the Moon

2010-09-03T13:22:00.002-05:00

I cut the grass today.

This is nothing exceptional really. I do it every week or two. But today, I found it rather challenging. For some reason, it took decidedly longer than usual.

I suspect that it was due to me cutting areas I'd already done because I was having a great deal of trouble telling where I'd already cut. Usually I do this by looking to see where the grass was suddenly an inch shorter, or by looking for the depressions caused by the wheels on the grass.

Today, both were exceptionally hard to find.

So what was different? Certainly it wasn't he grass. It's the same yard I've mowed over and over. The lawnmower didn't suddenly get lighter and not leave any impressions.

There was only one thing that changed: The time of day. Today, I cut the grass near noon. Usually I cut the grass in the early morning. But aside from it being nice and cool in the morning, how could the time of day possibly make a difference?

To answer this question I had to think about the moon.

If you've ever looked at the moon through a telescope, you may have noticed that there's certain times that it looks better than others. Generally, the best times are near the quarter moons (1st and 3rd) where the moon is half-lit from our vantage point.

The reason that these times are especially good is that the sun is striking the visible surface at a shallow angle. As a result, any topological changes that are above a nearby surface will cause long, sharp shadows. This is especially important in craters where crater rims are often raised slightly above the nearby terrain and can cast shadows into the bowl of the crater. Meanwhile, the opposite side of the crater will receive sunlight and be well lit.

This alternation of light and dark provides a sharp contrast to help define the features and make them stand out. When the moon is in the full phase, the sunlight is beating straight down making the shadows small and contrast almost non-existent.

The same thing happens when I'm cutting the grass. At noon, the Sun is at it's highest point making even the minor shadows that something as diffuse as grass can cast rather minimal. In the early morning hours, the sun is sill lower on the horizon, but strikes the grass at a shallow angle allowing for greater contrast. The grass I haven't cut can cast a shadow on that I have. Furthermore, the wheels will create additional low lying areas that can also pick up shadows and stand out.

With this in mind, I think I'll avoid cutting the grass near noon in the future. The only problem with that is, now I'll have to wake up early. And us astronomers are naturally nocturnal.