gregladen | April 10, 2008Yes, and it probably should. The bill requires that the home schooled students receive instruction from qualified individuals, and that the students be registered with the state. Both are reasonable requirements for any educational program, home schooling or otherwise.
But this is considered unacceptable by many homeschooling proponents (but not all). I found an interesting commentary from Michigan that demonstrates what I think is a widespread viewpoint among home schoolers. (Home schoolers by the way often insist that they are a diverse group, but I have seen very little dissent from…
gregladen | April 10, 2008The story goes like this: Paul Douglas was a back-room meteorologist for a local Twin Cities news show. He was one of the guys in the back that actually predicted the weather, which was then delivered by the pretty boy/girl weathermen/women on camera. One day the main weatherman was out of town, and the other weatherman was sick (details of the story vary), and nobody realized that they had no one to report the weather until the very last second. So they threw Paul a jacket and tie and said "Get out there, boy, you're the weatherman today."
....
So Paul went in front of the camera and…
gregladen | April 10, 2008Things are happening exactly as I predicted...(Expelled! The Movie To Be Pulled From Theaters Following Myers/Dawkins-Gate Screwup)
The movie "Expelled!" with Ben Stein (you may have heard of it) includes a segment consisting of the animation of the inside workings of a cell. It is said to look a lot like a production that came out of Harvard and a private animation firm last year or so:
People who saw the clip used in Expelled! were beginning to think that the video Expelled! used was not the Harvard video because there were some differences. However, this remains unclear. My thinking on…
gregladen | April 10, 2008A letter from Steven Ballmer to Yahoo:
Dear Members of the Board:
It has now been more than two months since we made our proposal to acquire Yahoo! at a 62% premium to its closing price on January 31, 2008, the day prior to our announcement. Our goal in making such a generous offer was to create the basis for a speedy and ultimately friendly transaction. Despite this, the pace of the last two months has been anything but speedy.
While there has been some limited interaction between management of our two companies, there has been no meaningful negotiation to conclude an agreement. We…
gregladen | April 9, 2008Recently published research shows that individual humans will be nicer (more altruistic) when there is the possibility that the recipient of an act can respond verbally. The paper, "Anticipated verbal feedback induces altruistic behavior" is published in Evolution and Human Behavior for March.
These results are not particularly surprising, but it is important to confirm these things through experimental work. From the abstract:
[Humans may be...] motivated by concerns for praise and blame. ... we experimentally investigate the impact of anticipated verbal feedback on altruistic behavior…
gregladen | April 9, 2008This is a brief overview of one school's foray into the OpenSource operating system Linux.
gregladen | April 9, 2008From FOX:
After seeing a new non-fiction film starring Comedy Central's Ben Stein, you may not only be able to win his money, but also his career.
Stein is that whiny little guy with the monotone voice that makes him seem funny and an unlikely "character" for TV appearances. But that career may be over come April 18, when a movie he co-wrote, narrates and appears in, called "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed," is released.
Directed by one Nathan Frankowski, "Expelled" is a sloppy, all-over-the-place, poorly made (and not just a little boring) "expose" of the scientific community. It's not…
gregladen | April 9, 2008This is an argument from Steve Shives:
There are many, many things I find dubious about the practice of parents homeschooling their children. I wonder how a mother or father who has not been educated as a teacher, who in many cases has not even been to college her/himself, can possibly provide their child with as good an education as students receive in our much-maligned public schools. And I can´t help but think that these homeschool students, of whom there are several million in the United States, are being robbed of a crucial formative experience by not attending school with other people…
gregladen | April 9, 2008The Blog Carnival Four Stone Hearth, Vol. 38: The Early Bird Special Edition is now up at A Very Remote Period.
gregladen | April 9, 2008
Please Visit Expelled Exposed ... the National Center for Science Education's official response to the Ben Stein movie Expelled .. you will find this collection of resources helpful!!!!!!
gregladen | April 9, 2008The atheists are on the march like never before. Why? Because creation is also being discussed like never before and they are worried! This weeklong series of lectures and activities will equip you and your children with the necessary tools and information to dramatically affect this world for Christ.
Here are a few of the topics covered:
Planetary Cataclysm
Plate tectonics modelling--
astounding new insights into Noah's Flood
How textbooks mislead
'Facts' are not neutral-and neither is education
The Mystery of Our Declining Genes
Startling data for recent creation--in our DNA
Leaving Your…
gregladen | April 9, 2008Cheeta, yoiu may not realize this, but it was YOU who got me interested in Africa and Anthropolology! Happy 76th birhday! You don't look a day over 50 or so.
And no, I don't say that to all the chimps, just some of them.
From Wikipedia:
Cheeta aka Jiggs (probably born in 1932) is a male chimpanzee noted for appearing in numerous movies and television shows, most famously many Hollywood Tarzan films of the 1930s and 1940s, in which he portrayed a fictional chimp of the same name. Cheeta was bought from Henry Trefflich, a New York animal importer and dealer. He was born in the wild in…
gregladen | April 9, 2008The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing edited by Richard Dawkins is now in pre-release state ... so you can order it with a discount from Amazon. Publisher's description:
Boasting almost one hundred pieces, The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing is a breathtaking celebration of the finest writing by scientists--the best such collection in print--packed with scintillating essays on everything from "the discovery of Lucy" to "the terror and vastness of the universe."
Edited by best-selling author and renowned scientist Richard Dawkins, this sterling collection brings together…
gregladen | April 9, 2008Monique Davis!
Hey, I didn't know Abe Lincoln was an Atheist. Cool.
Hat Tip: Pharyngula
gregladen | April 8, 2008Developmental dyslexia is a disorder affecting as many as 17% of school children. This neurological disorder involves an impairment in reading skills, and has been found to be "associated with weak reading-related activity in left temporoparietal and occipitotemporal regions" in English speakers. However, different abnormalities in the brain are associated with dyslexic readers in the non-alphabetic Chinese language, according to research just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
This is not terribly surprising. Earlier research had shown that individuals…