The World Must be Ending: I Agree with a Republican Sponsored Measure

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

Source

Science of Star Wars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

TV Review - Bad Universe

Oops. I'm on the fail wagon. I only just got around to seeing Phil Plait's Bad Universe. Tardy. I know.

Overall score: Solid A.

Phil's enthusiasm, as always shows through and the show is a ton of fun because of it. Right from the very beginning the viewer hits the ground running with the doomsday scenario of an asteroid hitting the Earth. It jumps then, to simulating an impact and the resulting crater, to simulations of a nuke on an asteroid, through other tests, and finally a solution. The road is paved with tons of explosions.

But in the end, I felt... dizzy. While all the information was there, it didn't feel especially organized. It jumped between asteroids of varying sizes, compositions, and even to big nasties that weren't asteroids. Not that all these topics aren't important do discuss, but I often felt it kept going back and forth.

And worse, something very important was left as merely a single line that got brushed off. This isn't the exact quote, but I think it's pretty close:

"The damage from an impact comes from its kinetic energy which is determined by its mass and more importantly, its velocity."

Yep. KE = 1/2mv². See that squared term? That means that the velocity is gonna get real important, real fast. And that paraphrase I just gave, is the entire story of velocity in this show. There's an obvious reason for this though: The vast majority of the asteroids that could hit us are all from the same groups and the velocity range is narrow. The mass range isn't. So obviously that's what the focus would have to be on, but the jumpiness I mentioned earlier left it hard to get a clear picture of what size will do what damage.

Here's the breakdown:

Beachball = ~60 ft across
Stadium = Miles across
Few Miles across = No more dinosaurs

Great. But what about that HUGE gap between stadium and dinosaur killer? There was a ton that could be talked about there that would have been really great to get a real grip on how size corresponds to damage because it's not exactly easy given that mass doesn't scale linearly with size (given it's dependent on volume and all).

Obviously, there's quite a bit that had to be left out for the sake of time and to be fair, that was a perfectly reasonable thing to leave out. Because what the main focus of the show wasn't what the dangers and effects are, but what we can do to stop it. When viewed in that light, that's why I can give the show such a high approval rating despite not liking that some of the science was left out; The show achieved its goal.

In the meantime, there were some great lines. Working "epic fail" into a serious show = win.

But the best line in the whole show, one that makes me glad I wasn't drinking anything at the time, came from Dan Durda. As they're about to test the effect of a kinetic impactor on a large, spherical rock, Phil makes a joke about how it looks like they're about to make the Death Star. Without missing a beat, Dan responds, "Yeah, so let's blow this thing and go home." For those not fanboy enough to get the response, go watch this.

Solar Storms Follow-Up

On Friday, I wrote about some really poor science writing from Yahoo. While most of the garbage was stuff that an obviously clueless writer on Yahoo's part tossed in, but the base of it came from this article. It claimed solar scientists were worried about the upcoming solar cycle being the worst in 100 years and that trillions of dollars in damage could be the result.

I left a comment pointing out the gross misrepresentation of the position of scientists and the likelihood of such an event and the author, David Reneke, responded by shoving his foot even further down his throat.

Go take a look at it and see if you can figure out all the problems with his response before my reply makes it through the moderation queue. (HINT: There's not a single paragraph that didn't have major problems!)

PS: Does anyone know where this guy teaches? His personal website notes that he teaches at a college level, but doesn't mention where. Given the shoddy grasp of what people are saying and the sloppy sensationalism, I'm of a strong mind to write the head of his department.

UPDATE: Three days later and my reply still hasn't made it through the moderation queue. So I'll outline the problems here:

1) The author doesn't understand the English language. He claims he said "'could be' not 'will be'". But let's look at what he really said:
"Huge Solar Storms to Impact Earth", "the Earth will be hit", "solar storms that will cause the Sun".... Where's that uncertainty?

The only place a "could" pops up is when the author talks about the effects. In other words, he's saying the storm will happen, but the effects of it are where the uncertainty lies.

2) The author quote mines and conflates arguments. The quotes he has are universally in regards to the effects of a massive outburst. Yet he takes them out of context and presents them as if they're talking about this solar cycle. They're not.

3) The author provides no sources for the main point of the article. He names "space weather conference in Washington DC attended by Nasa [sic] scientists, policy-makers, researchers and government officials", but what is that really talking about? It's not whether or not it may or may not happen, but rather, every source he cites is in regards to the worst-case-scenario planning.

4) The author ignores contrary sources. I provided two sources from NASA's solar science department that show the main tracers of solar activity are predicting the next solar cycle's activity is going to be lower than the last solar cycle which flatly contradicts his premise. Yet he still asks "where’s the reference source?". Herp derp.

5) The author engages in baseless sensationalism. Since the above points show that the author has no basis for saying this storm will occur, the entire point of bringing it up is nothing but alarmism. It's bad journalism.

Conclusion: This guy doesn't understand basic astronomy or journalistic standards. I'm still looking for contact information on some of his supervisors to try to make sure this guy doesn't continue to get a national platform for his gibberish.

Penn & Teller - Not "dicks"?

Earlier today, Phil posted a link to a clip from a new episode Penn & Teller's show Bullshit on vaccinations and praised it. He called it "really effective" and "a brilliant move".

I don't have cable, and I don't watch the show too often, but I've seen a few episodes and one of the things that I seemed to remember is that Penn isn't exactly nice. In fact, I remembered him being pretty direct in calling a spade a spade, hence the title of the show.

So I dug up a few episodes of their show to see just how direct Penn & Teller were in their name calling. In their episode on Creationism, they call Creationists (not their ideas, but Creationists as a group): "Pesky", "desperate, deluded", "assholes", "scary", "stinking", and "foolish".

In the episode on the Vatican, he describes the Vatican (the core of Catholic faith), a "festering swamp of intolerance, greed, paranoia, hypocrisy," full of "callous disregard for human suffering".

In the episode on the Bible, they're pretty tame, only referring to "evangelical assholes" and calling people that supported the 10 commandments in the Alabama courthouse "uneducated".

Is this wrong? I think the core of that question goes back to what I tried to discuss in my last post on this topic: What defines a "dick"?

My argument was that things like the above aren't being dickish. They're perfectly reasonable given that some people need that societal pressure of being made fun of to reevaluate their position. This is echoed by Les at SEB.

But even if it is what people need to hear, isn't it still being a dick? I think the key here is moderation. It's the difference between what makes an ad hominem fallacy, and what makes a strongly worded argument. In the former, there is no logical basis or evidence. It's simply character assassination. In the latter, it's spice to the mix. You want a little to get people to sit up and pay attention, but it shouldn't be overwhelming.

My biggest problem with Phil's speech and his subsequent follow up, is that he's repeatedly failed to draw this line. He's left it worthlessly vague, giving no concrete examples by which to distinguish leaving people to infer what he's meant. Does it include people like myself, Les Jenkins, Jerry Coyne, PZ Myers, Richard Dawkins, and Penn & Teller, who will all outright call Creationists and other woo-woo peddlers "fools", or is the line further out leaving only people whose "logic in those situations is left by the wayside"?

One of Phil's major points was that, before you say something, you should stop to consider if it's really helping. Well, how has chiding people for doing something that hasn't been defined helping?

How not to write a story - 2012 + Solar Cycles + Sensationalism = Stupid

I've written about bad science journalism before. In fact, every time I've used my Science Journalism tag, it's been a bad article. And guess what. Here's another one:

Yahoo News is reporting a solar storm in 2012 is about to hit the Earth with a force of "100 million hydrogen bombs".

Let's work this out a little. A hydrogen bomb releases about 240,000 x 10¹² Joules of energy. Multiplying that by 100 million means we'd get 2.4 x 10²⁵ Joules of energy. The specific heat of air is ~1 J/(gºK) and there's about 5 x 10²¹ g of air on the Earth.

Multiply all that together in the proper manner and you get that the energy dumped into the Earth would raise the atmospheric temperature by 4,800ºK or 8,200ºF. In essence, Yahoo is claiming that the world is about to end.

But what is the author worried about? Only that this approaching storm has "the potential to wipe out the entire planet's power grid." Well damn! I mean, being dead sucks but no power?! Really?

Obviously something's wrong here. The number quoted isn't the actual amount of energy that would hit the Earth. It's the energy released in a large solar eruption. But almost none of it will hit the Earth. We're just too small a target and that energy is spread out way too much.

So does that mean there's no danger?

No. There is some, and the article hits on it. Large solar storms have the potential to destroy satellite's delicate circuit systems, destroy ozone, and all sorts of other effects. But is it something to really be worried about?

The answer is, who knows? Solar levels are damned near impossible to predict because most of what drives them is taking place inside the sun, where we can't really see it. In fact, the most recent solar cycle was supposed to have gotten underway last year. But it's been slacking. There's been a curious lack of solar activity as generally indicated by sunspots. They're starting to appear now, but no one's really sure why the extra long lapse.

So making predictions is a really tricky business. Looking too far ahead has large uncertainties associated with it. But that doesn't stop people from trying. In fact, there's large groups of astronomers that work on it. Check out NASA's page on Solar Prediction. There's a nice little graph on that page showing the sunspot activity predicted for this year based on ratios "between the size of the next cycle maximum and the length of the previous cycle, the level of activity at sunspot minimum, and the size of the previous cycle."

Given that, there can be some decent predictions and what does next year's look like? It's about half as active as last year's. Yet Yahoo's source (an amateur astronomer from Australia), claims that "[t]he general consensus among general astronomers (and certainly solar astronomers) is that this coming Solar maximum (2012 but possibly later into 2013) will be the most violent in 100 years".

ORLY?

And where is the peak on that graph? It's certainly NOT 2012. It's well into 2013. Radio flux predictions agree.

So why the 2012 bullshit? The article outright says it: "those who put the date of Solar Max in 2012 are getting the most press."

The media is playing on a feeding frenzy, reporting sensationalistic science without context, understanding what the quotes mean, or checking their facts.....

No way....

EDIT: One more irony - The amateur astronomer from which they're getting a lot of their clueless quote mining has this to say: "solar storms that will cause the Sun to reach temperatures of more than 10,000°F occur only a few times over a person’s life."

Hmmm.... last I checked the normal surface temperature of the Sun is 5,778ºK which is (drumroll please!) ~10,000ºF. So only a few times over a person's life are solar storms energetic enough to..... not change the temperature of the Sun.....

Right. I'm done with this one.

Don't be a Dick - My Take

I've been slow on responding to what's been a hot topic recently, but what else is new?

This topic, as the title of this post suggests, is Phil Plait's talk at TAM8 which has been retrospectively titled "Don't be a Dick".

Essentially, the point Phil makes is that being overly aggressive and confrontational doesn't do much to further the cause of rational thinking. In fact, it hinders is because when someone is challenged, their natural inclination is to entrench themselves. This isn't to say we shouldn't continue to challenge pseudo-science or other such topics in an impassioned manner, but Phil's claim is that we've lost passion and changed over to arrogant condemnation in which "hubris is running rampant, and that egos are just out of check and sometimes logic in those situations is left by the wayside."

I'd left off from commenting on this because I figured that someone else had probably already said what I was going to. But after following the response over the past week, the point I wanted to make has gone completely left out. So I guess I will comment.

First off, I'd like to agree with a lot of what Jerry Coyne said at WEIT. If you don't want to read his commentary, it boils down to this: Phil doesn't cite a single source of what he's describing because he assumes it's too "trivial". From that, Coyne concludes, not that it isn't happening, but it's not as widespread as Phil is claiming and Phil would likely have had to call out some popular skeptics like PZ.

I agree with this 100%. In his talk, Phil makes a point of how we need a united front from believers and non-believers alike to really combat pseudo-science because, without the extra help, we're just too few. Phil's a uniter so I can see why he wouldn't want to call someone out when a simple nudge would (hopefully) suffice. I'm not going to find much fault with that.

However, what I do have a problem with is being sloppy with definitions. Where's this magical line between strong worded, accurate rhetoric and being a "dick"?

To me, this is the key point that was somehow completely lost. When does the line get crossed and instead of reaching out to people, we're truly turning them away?

One of the most frustrating things, but also the most true things I've ever learned about learning was told to me by one of my astrophysics professors at KU; When we complained of how difficult his tests were, he'd always respond that "learning shouldn't be easy or comfortable."

And looking back, it's absolutely true. The greatest personal growth I've gone through, and I suspect most people go through, is that intellectual growth that had to be fought for. It was fraught with anxiety and self-doubt, being lost in the forest and stumbling around till I found the right path, but in doing so, learned the lay of the land well enough that I learned what wasn't the right path.

Unfortunately, too many people don't want to be told they're on the right path. They're comfortable where they are. Furthermore, we have a society in which relativism reigns. It's not kosher to question anyone else's beliefs, no matter how damaging they might be to themselves, or worse, to others.

In an ideal world, we could simply point this out and, hallelujah, they'd come around. But, as Phil admits in his speech, it's quite often hard to do this because you can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into in the first place. Sometimes more is needed.

As I just mentioned, such people don't have the good sense to look around, see the harm they're causing and feel bad enough to fix it. They're often blinded by their own ignorance in a stunning display of the Dunning-Kruger effect. More is needed.

If someone doesn't feel bad that not-vaccinating their children is taking a deadly gamble, not just with their children's lives, but the lives of numerous others, they should. If someone doesn't feel bad that they killed one child through "faith healing" such that they would continue to use the same practice on another of their children, they should.

Such people often don't realize just how stupid they're being and need it pointed out. They need to be made to feel bad about it. If the facts won't do it, language might.

This isn't new ground I'm breaking here. Religion has known this for a long time. In fact, much of the foundation of religion is all about making people feel bad so they can sell them some snake oil that will make it all better.

While in college, I can recall several instances in which groups would stand around the campus pretending to do research for psychology study via a survey. They'd ask questions that boiled down to whether or not you'd violated God's commandments, and when they were finished, point out your "moral failures" and how you needed God. This doesn't always work, but more importantly, it often does. Many people are swayed by this sort of thinking. They're pulled into a manufactured guilt trip and it is the source of deep and unyielding faith. The religious call this "convicting" people of their sins.

It's a sneaky tactic, but one that we as skeptics can use in a much more intellectually honest way. After all, what we're selling is real. Critical thinking improves the quality of life and allows numerous more who wouldn't live otherwise, to enjoy that life. That's a demonstrable fact.

So how can we use this to our advantage?

By using strong, accurate, unequivocal language people are often taken aback. And although they can entrench themselves, I maintain there's a key time in here that's the most critical point for learning to take place.

When someone is told they're ignorant on a given position, the most natural response is to deny it outwardly. However, they really have to scramble at this point. No matter what, they're going to have to review their position, either internally to make damn sure they're not as ignorant as claimed. Or externally as they throw up their arguments to argue the claim. The problem is, that both of these ways allow them to repeat their "logic" process of how they arrived at this position and this is the risk. If the same process is repeated, it only becomes ingrained which is the exact opposite of what we're trying to achieve. How could anything positive come of that!?

But what's important here is that in that review process, there is the chance to change the flow. If new information is given that must be factored into that review, it can change the conclusion. And I think that's the key.

If the discussion is kept too light, it doesn't engage people sufficiently that they're really forced to internalize new information and see how it fits with their previous views. Skeptics are people who do this without needing motivation, but many people just don't (although the like to think they do). They're overwhelmed by confirmation bias and but don't even know what that means. They need that swift kick in the ass to get the ball rolling and as my astrophysics professor told me, "it shouldn't be comfortable."

So that's my general thought. You don't need to use this method straight off. See what sort of person you're dealing with. Test the waters. Toss out the facts and see what they do with them. If they internalize it, great. If they just leave them sitting there without addressing them, then perhaps it's time to make them start having to work through their ideas by putting them on a stronger defensive. But this is main point I want to make: Those facts must be there. And I'd like to think (hope) that this is what Phil was wanting to get at when he noted that "sometimes logic ... is left by the wayside."

When people review their position, they need to have the facts. And not just that, often people that don't reason themselves into a position won't know what to do with the facts they're given. So after giving the facts, we need to help people sort them out instead of just tossing them at people and walking away. Education is an investment, both for the person receiving and the person giving.

And that's the key to me. The line between being a "dick" and simply being strident is making sure that there's more than just name calling. There needs to be facts, and evidence, and the willingness to help someone sort through them once they realize they might just need to. And that investment is about as far from "dickish" as you can get even if there is a little bit of prick in the mix somewhere.

Anime Mythbusters @ Tokyo in Tulsa

Apparently my Anime Mythbusters panel at Tokyo in Tulsa was recorded a few months ago. It's the same presentation I posted earlier that I gave at Naka Kon (as well as at Natsu Con more recently) so it's nothing new, but I always enjoy seeing how different audiences react as well as what crazy things I toss in off the top of my head. So if you want to see how it went, here's the videos:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

Sorry I'm dressed up funny. I'd been in costume that morning for pre-judging for the contest, but it was too warm to keep waring the full costume so I stripped most of it off.

Blag War! Education Reform - Round 2

Steve's reply is up. Have a read and my response is below.

As usual, I'll break it up into direct portions I'm responding to.

starting from 0% and adding points for things (in the context of the material being graded) would force the students to actually know what they were testing about and have a grasp of it. In other words there is no BS'ing ones way through it.

This is an excellent point. However, I don't think it can cure BS'ing nearly as much as one would expect. As educators, we often try to give our students the benefit of the doubt. Therefore, even if working from the bottom up, grades can just as easily be artificially inflated going that way as from going down. It's still mathematically equivalent unless the teacher is doing something horribly wrong.

Furthermore, I don't think there's really that big of a distinction between the actual methodologies as is being implied. Even when grading tests in American systems, the general practice is to decide how much each question is worth, award points, and then add up all the points given. So in that respect, we do have a bottom up system. In other respects, especially written papers, we tend to look for things to take off, so that would be a top down.

I don't see either as being better than the other in any real respect. If there's statistical data out there that is well constrained to this topic, I'd like to see it, but I don't see any real advantage either way.

As for your citing that Japanese schools have highest rates for suicide (which Southern India now holds apparently) you know as well as I do there is a Cultural basis here for it.

Indeed I am aware. In general, suicide rates are higher in cultures in which the practice is more acceptable. However (and I'm not certain on this), I seem to still remember suicide rates for schools being well above even the cultural norm. Thus (if this is true and my memory is serving me), this isn't a cultural effect and is endemic to the school system (although it would then be arguable whether or not the scoring system played any large role). This isn't really that important to the main topic so I won't pursue it.

Success on the standardized tests has been at the expense of Native American language and culture in the classroom.

I think this is a key issue here and where one of the biggest problems I had with your original posting lay, although I couldn't completely identify it at the time. I think you're fighting two battles and losing sight of the differences between them. Let me break it down into the two arguments I think you're making:

1) America's School System Sucks for Everyone - This was the main focus of the video cited and what you seemed to be getting at with your later arguments regarding the bare minimum of standards.

2) America's School System Sucks for Autonomous Cultures- This is the back argument that seemed to be what most of your actual citations (from your partner came from).

As I see it, I think you're trying to use arguments for (2) to argue (1) when in fact, they don't transfer since you're talking about radically different populations. Citing studies on distinct sub-populations doesn't have bearing on the larger population unless it's a statistically significant and well selected demographic which, by intent, they aren't.

Thus, I think I completely agree with you on (2). But I still have to take large exception to (1) despite your claims that, "many of the details in her research can and have been applicable across the board and within all demographic categories."

I need to see further backing on this because the major points of your argument thus far (like the one in my last blockquote) fail to be true when the tests are targeted for the appropriate culture.

In her current research she found that standardizations in education follow political patterns. Standardizations have been customarily linked with the ebb and flow of national politics and their main concerns in education for that era.

This is obviously true and can easily be further demonstrated by the constant flip-flop of science standards in places such as Kansas. But I don't think this (either your point about Native Americans or mine on science standards) demonstrates a large net problem with standardization in general. While I'd agree that getting bad standards in place is very harmful (such as the recent debacle on the Texas state standards removing prominent founding fathers), overall I maintain it's largely necessary for cultural (American, that is) cohesion. While bad standards are bad, good standards are good. Thus, standards are whatever they're made (again, to the proper populations).

Part of this was already answered earlier. But teaching kids how to pass a test based on the principals of the test is not conducive to learning. If you learn to pass a test, just how much of that material is actually being learned?

This is another major point that needs to be addressed in some depth and I'll preface it with some of the philosophical underpinnings to education to make it more clear.

As I stated in my last response, one must learn to walk before they can run. This is a philosophy that is critical in education and is the idea behind what's known as Bloom's Taxonomy. The short version of it is that, you start with basic memorization, build up proficiency through application, and finally master material through analysis, critical thinking, extending, and creating. The latter are higher levels of thinking that must be worked up to.

Sadly, many students find themselves stuck near the bottom, at application. Thus, schools are forced to spend a lot of time at these levels. And any time a new skill is introduced, that's where it will start, and likely get stuck.... again.

So how does this relate to tests? A well designed test will cover the topics for which its designed by asking questions on each topic on each of these levels. Poorly designed ones will use will only check for understanding at low levels. Thus, if it's a good test, it will test in manners that go beyond simply asking questions that are strictly memorized. The test becomes an opportunity to practice and demonstrate the higher orders of learning.

We can of course argue about whether or not tests (especially standardized ones) achieve this goal. But we'd also have to consider how far long the progression of learning we expect students to be at a given point. We'd also have to ask how reasonable it is to test all skills at the highest levels of reasoning, which cannot generally be done with questions that are multiple choice since they are more subjective and take far longer to grade. Thus, what expectations are reasonable for the test?

I think that having national standardized testing should meet somewhere in the middle. We can't expect every student to retain knowledge well enough to be able to critically analyze every topic off the top of their head. We should select a few to test at that level and only require moderate proficiency for less fundamental topics. Thus, the tests cover what expectations we can reasonably have. I don't find fault with them. As such, it follows that I can't find too much wrong with teaching ways to do well on the test (assuming again, it's a well written test). I think there should certainly be more room for some extra material, but that's not going to happen until the high stakes placed on such tests are diminished, which is the main issue I have with the standardized testing.

“The GRE definitely does NOT measure your intelligence, nor does it measure how well you will do in graduate school. The sooner you accept this the better off you will be. Despite what ETS says or admissions officers think, the GRE is less a measure of your intelligence than it is a measure of your ability to take the GRE.” (pg. 16 Cracking the GRE 2010 Edition, The Princeton Review). So, the question is, does this same philosophy apply to school aged children?

Absolutely it applies. But again, if the test is well written, it aligns with the goals and objectives set forth for what we want students to learn.

Say a student makes a statement in class that, according to the teacher, is a bit off color. The teacher can encourage the student to find credible source material to back their claims and come back to explain the statement for everyone to understand better.

As nice as this sounds, it doesn't tend to work well in practice all the time. Students being given extra assignments not shared by their peers will often take it as a punishment and refrain from speaking out in the future, discouraging participation and group learning.

A better way to handle this is for the teacher to be knowledgeable enough about the subject to see where the student was coming from and help him expand on it if time allows. But time is often a key issue in classrooms. As you pointed out, imagine how overwhelmed students feel with the material they have to cover and imaging what spending much time on things that aren't very closely aligned to the curriculum will do!

“..there are CBE methods taught in native schools that teach science in story form.” This is difficult for many in our American society to grasp, as story telling is not a big part of our lives anymore, with the domination of visual media these days.

I think this is a fantastic point. Science is a narrative. It's a story of discovery with great characters. This makes for a great way to teach science because it goes through the whole chain of logic to build up our scientific understanding.

However, as I just mentioned, time is always a crucial issue in the classroom. How much can we cut from the story and still have the important curriculum topics intact in a learnable manner? That's ultimately the key issue.

I'll agree the balance is awful. Science books are filled with a collection of facts that need to be memorized and applied (andlet's face it, real synthesis and evaluation can't really take place in science before the college level) and then random inserts of character profiles. How silly. Either keep a narrative or don't. Half-assing it with random snippets is just a distraction.

I surmise that First there are those students that are wired differently. Be it from chemical (possibly genetic) issues like ADD and ADHA, or Cultural insights, MOST students will fall into a norm (statistical).

This is exactly what I was getting at. A population of student will fall into a statistical distribution and as such, the "best practice" (this is a term used frequently in education) is to teach to that norm as best as possible. Unfortunately, the inherent truth recognized by seeing a Gaussian distribution is that there will always be outliers that you can't reach without shifting the distribution of your teaching and then missing more of the other side! This is is the fundamental problem. How do we cater to as many students as possible without wasting precious time and without letting student interest for those not being catered to wane?

when I was in grade school I was at various levels of education (grade) for math reading and writing, and half way through the year I would be tested for ability, and either stay at the same level or be moved up, even before the year was over. So how hard would it be to do this for upper level classes?

A very fair question, but also a very simple answer: It's damn near impossible.

The reason is that when you start putting every student on their own pace, it requires the teacher to spend a great deal of extra time individualizing instruction. This requires a large amount of extra planning work for the teacher (which they already receive little time to do so it's largely done on their own time without direct compensation) as well as the logistical nightmare of having to keep track of where every student is.

I had experience doing this with my math class this past year. Essentially, I gave a test 1/2 the way through the year. Half the class was allowed to move on. Half didn't. Thus, what was one class, became two. I had to plan and organize accordingly. Additionally, it required me to budget classroom time differently. I had to spend the first half of the class instructing and guiding the "advanced" students, and then the second half with the "slow" ones (for lack of a better term). This created behavior problems as students that aren't being actively engaged in some way or another are impossible to manage.

Thus, it doesn't work well on many levels. While it's possible to do some bifurcation, too great of an extent of this will cause chaos in the classroom without a much better teacher/student ratio.

He coached me through some Pre-algebra (after school)

This is an excellent teacher. Keep in mind that teachers time after school is often their own. While some are required to have office hours for some time, spending such a large portion of them tutoring and not working on their lesson plans and grading, is done of his own free will and extremely charitable. To be fair, I believe most teachers would do this as the reason we go into teaching is to help others succeed and are willing to invest much of ourselves in it, even if it means working large amounts of time other than what we're strictly paid for and even receiving rather substandard pay.

OK, so if this problem inundates the higher educational arena, exactly what criteria are public schools attempting to pattern?

Good question.

As your quoted source stated,

college rankings system is merely a list of criteria that mirrors the superficial characteristics ... Instead of focusing on the fundamental issues of how well colleges and universities educate their students and how well they prepare them to be successful after college, the magazine's rankings are almost entirely a function of three factors: fame, wealth, and exclusivity.

Those last three things are the judge of the college apparently. So what things are high schools compared by? Generally, I see things like attendance rate, drop out rate, scores on national testing, and diversity being reported as well as the rate of students that goes on to higher education.

I think the standards are pretty different.

But national standards still allow for ranking systems to be rather top heavy when it comes to the elite --- and standardizations have yet to equal the playing field in this arena.

This I agree with and is one of the things I find the most fault with NCLB for. It punishes schools that don't perform by cutting their funding. Yeah.... that's going to help. It only serves to enlarge the divide between the successful and those that aren't.

The United States would like to see the academic standards increase for all students, and rightfully so, but attempts to provide equal opportunity can actually be detrimental when standardizations usurp culturally based education, which is instrumental in successfully educating the nations indigenous population.

This is a pretty self obvious statement. By allowing any population to do more of the things they're good and familiar at, their skill will improve. So.... why not include it?

It's much the same question as asking, "If we were to allow Creation myths in schools in the proper context (meaning in Social Studies or Comparative Religion classes), which ones would we teach? Which would we leave out?"

The problem is there's so many sub-populations that all need recognition that addressing them all would jumble the curriculum. Thus, something's got to give. I obviously speak from the privileged white, male, majority so I may come off as cavalier by saying this, but I can't see a workable solution that would allow us to include everyone as you'd like. And even if we tried to, I think this next statement highlights another problem:

Study after study shows that if students from other cultures are allowed to express that culture in their own work ... they do much better as students.

I'd agree allowing and helping a student to express their own identity assists in learning. But at the same time, how well would a teacher that's not familiar with that culture be able to grade it? If they got the general gist of it and found it to be wanting, how much pressure would the teacher be under to pass the student anyway for fear of offending the culture, much in the same way teachers must tread carefully when giving bad marks to positions that are overtly religious in the classroom. I fear this may cause grade inflation and may contribute to the apparent success of the students.

A sticky situation to be sure.


Closing remarks: As stated before, I think you're arguing two points. I disagree that the system is deeply flawed at its core as the argument the video stated and you implied with several other remarks. There's problems, but as I've tried to highlight, they're very difficult to fix.

One of the largest problems is what to do with minorities seeking identity. This is an even thornier topic and one I can't comment much on except to highlight (as I've tried) the difficulties of integrating.