Book Review - Greatest Show on Earth

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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+

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

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!

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?

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.