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Throwback Thursday: The Big Bang’s Last Great Prediction (Synopsis)

“These neutrino observations are so exciting and significant that I think we’re about to see the birth of an entirely new branch of astronomy: neutrino astronomy.” -John Bahcall From the Hubble expansion of the Universe to isotropy and homogeneity to the light elements to the leftover radiation glow to the formation of large-scale structure in the Universe, the Big Bang is by far the most successful scientific description of the Universe of all-time. Image credit: Illustris Simulation, M. Vogelsberger, S. Genel, V. Springel, P. Torrey, D. Sijacki, D. Xu, G. Snyder, S. Bird, D. Nelson, L.…

How Many People Were Slaves In The North vs. The South?

As part of the current discussion of the use of the Concrete Flag to express one's Free Asshatitute, in particular in relation to a volunteer firefighter who stuck one of the flags on the fire truck turing the Independence Day Parade in a small community in Outstate Minnesota, I saw someone state that there were more slaves in the North than in the South. Specifically, the individual, commenting on a the flag story on a local news site, said: Now, this particular joker was trying to say that there were lots of white people who "may as well have been slaves" in the North, or words to that…

Shut. Up. NOAA says February 2nd Warmest on Record

And by "Shut. Up." I mean shut up about whether or not global warming is real. The National Climatic Data Center of NOAA has just released the number representing the Earth's surface temperature for February and it is a shocking 0.82 degrees C above the 20th century average. This is the second warmest Feb on record, and I'm pretty sure it is the third warmest month on record, in that data base. Roughly speaking, the coldest we have experienced, the Last Glacial Maximum, was about 6 degrees colder than at present. It is generally thought that we need to keep the global surface temperature…

Cry me a river: Joe Cocker has died.

Joe Cocker is (was?) one of my favorite musical artists. Having said that I quickly add that while his work is well represented on my list of favorites, I also really don't like a bunch of his other work. But the stuff that's good is great. He died today at the age of 70. One of the best "albums" you can get if you like rock and roll is Mad Dogs and Englishmen. It's Joe Cocker and a bunch of other great musicians of the day, live, double album. On that album you will find Feeling Alright. Great song. I remember Amanda being very disappointed when she learned that the relevant statement…

A Second Helping of Turkey

Are you done with your Thanksgiving leftovers yet? You might think so, but not quite. We have one more helping of Turkey for you. This is "Another Helping of Turkey," the second of two installments of Eat This Podcast with Jeremy Cherfas: The domestication of the turkey probably first took place around 2000 years ago in south central Mexico, possibly for their feathers and ritual value rather than their meat. Their rise to the top of the American festive table came much later, not with the Pilgrims but with Charles Wampler, whose efforts to promote turkey raising started Rockingham County,…

Weekend Diversion: Happy Halloween 2010!

"Dusty Rhodes, do you think you're what our forefathers were thinking about when they thought up the American Dream? Ooooh, yeah, I don't think so." -Macho Man Randy Savage Those of you who've known me for any length of time know that Halloween is one of my favorite holidays, and know that I put a whole lot of effort into my costumes. Here's a scary song for you to take you through this year's costume, Caleb Meyer,by Gillian Welch. But I am not Gillian Welch for Halloween this year. One of the most ridiculous -- yet entertaining -- characters from my childhood was this guy: the Macho Man…

Fundy Christians: Shut the Fuck Up

... until you have cleaned house and stopped embarrassing yourselves. And by clean house, I mean, take are of this deeply offensive bullshit your people are now spewing out. You have turned a very bad situation into something ten times worse. As background, this comes from a meeting of national level evangelical leaders who got together to decide what to do about Donald Trump. They decided to fully support Trump, and the woman in the video shown here is giving their arguments. I am not making this up. See also: Two Women Say Donald Trump Touched Them Inappropriately Palm Beach Post…

Great White Sharks in Captivity

There aren't any. But, aquaria have many times tried to make it so, and it always goes bad for the shark. The basic problem is that great white sharks are pelagic, and it is very hard to keep pelagic creatures in a confined space, and the largest aquaria are very confined from the point of view of a large pelagic animal. Another problem would eventually become important in the event that an aquarium managed to keep a great white shark alive long enough. When they are young, great white sharks dine on fish. When they are adults, they seem to prefer mammals. So, imagine feeding time at the…

More reactions to recent creationism

Michael Lemonick has an excellent reply to Sam Brownback's recent attempt to weasel away from creationism. What he ended up doing was demonstrating that he doesn't really know much about science. If, writes the senator, "evolution means assenting to an exclusively materialistic, deterministic vision of the world that holds no place for a guiding intelligence then I reject it." How curious. Does this mean that the senator also rejects the laws of gravity? Last I heard, they reflected that same view of the world. No scientist I've ever run into, nor even any senator, thinks that things fall to…

Weekend Diversion: Art imitating Space!

"All that I desire to point out is the general principle that life imitates art far more than art imitates life." -Oscar Wilde It isn't only the wonders of the Universe themselves that impress me. Oftentimes, just as spectacular are the technological achievements that have brought those wonders to us. (Or, in the case of space exploration, brought us to them!) So for you today, I've got a fabulous song to go with this article: Weary Memory by Iron & Wine. Weary MemoryAustralian artist Peter Hennessey has taken his appreciation to the next level. He's taken on many of the most famous…

Weekend Diversion: Partner Acrobatics!

You see that there is no war within you. You're on your own side, and you are your own strength. -Terri Guillemets Many of you don't know this, but over the last couple of months, my wife and I have been taking night classes in partner acrobatics! Why? Just because it sounded like a fun, athletic and adventurous thing to do. (And to make up the fun to you of not having a song last week, here's an amazing two-for-one, with The David Grisman Quintet's Flatbush Waltz / Opus 57, from a live performance during the summer of 2001.) Flatbush Waltz / Opus 57 Although I don't think we'll ever…

How FOX treats Christians vs. Muslims

Not the same. Muslims must take the blame for all things done by anyone linked to an extreme Islamic group or ideology. Christians have nothing to do with anything, they were just standing there minding their own beeswax. The video below was fixed by Media Matters for America thusly: In a notably hypocritical segment on Fox & Friends, the hosts and their guest, David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network, attacked media outlets that called on Christian leaders to denounce white supremacy and the recent violence in Charlottesville, VA. Fox & Friends highlighted articles that…

Science Books: New And Cheap (not necessarily both)

Let's start with CheMystery. This is a fun graphic novel mystery book by C.A. Preece and Josh Reynolds. Two cousins experience an incident that would make a physicist cry, but that works in a chemistry book because they now have the ability to observe and change matter. So this is a superhero book, designed to teach chemistry. The story is great, the science is great, and the pedagogy is well suited for kids and adults that like graphic novels. Preece is the chem teacher (high school) and Reynolds is the artist. This is written for grades 7 through 10 (ages 8-12) but some younger kids…

Australia Solar Thermal Plant: Messed up reporting

SolarReserve will build, for the South Australia government, a solar thermal plant rated at 150 MW, which is about 25 MW more than that government uses currently. Over time, assuming Australia goes all on clean and green, the amount of electricity used by South Australia will increase substantially, but for now, this plant will provide the extra to the regional grid. A solar plant is a way of making the use of solar more full time. Instead of just producing electricity by sunlight, perhaps storing some in batteries, it uses sunlight to produce heat, which is then used to run a turbine all…

Why is the White House silent on the Bloomington attack?

Is it because it wasn't a very big attack, and no one was killed or injured? The FBI has determined that it was an explosive device that blew up at the Bloomington Islamic Center. I'm reminded of the attacks on Secretary Clinton, by the likes of Congressman Nunes, about ambiguity in the identification of an attack as "terrorist" during the very throes of the event. Will Nunes hold Trump to the same standard over Bloomington? Will Nunes even give Bloomington a second thought? A first thought? Speaking of Nunes (who is the guy who tried to derail the House investigation of Trumpskygate), has…

Carnival of Space #113 is here on Scienceblogs!

I'm not responsible for this one, though! Head on over to Steinn's page, Dynamics of Cats to see this week's Carnival of Space in full. Sure, I wrapped up my series on the last 100 years, but you'll want to take a look at my top 3 from this week's Carnival: 1. Chandra's 10th anniversary: it was a big deal when Chandra went up on the Moon landing's 30th anniversary, and so don't forget to celebrate our great X-ray observatory's greatest discoveries, including the first incontrovertible evidence for dark matter! 2. Jupiter struck by something! Asteroid? Comet? ALIEN? Just what was it that…

Carnival of Space #109 is live!

Last week, I was lucky enough to get to host the Carnival of Space. This week, the honor goes to Jennifer Ouellette at Twisted Physics, and my article on the 1950s and Fred Hoyle gets top billing! There are a bunch of other highlights to check out. Here are my top 3 CoS picks of the week: 1. Ever what would have happened in the 1960s if the Apollo program had failed? Beyond Apollo takes an in-depth look at a secret backup plan from the RAND corporation that was NASA's number 2 option. 2. All planets that can support life may have their possibly habitable lifetimes greatly extended once life…

Wide-Angle Lenses and Astronomy

Just a short while ago, I showed you how the most powerful telescopes were able to gather incredible amounts of light from a tiny part of the sky, and peer deeper into the darkest regions of the Universe than ever before. But there's another way to do astronomy that's just as majestic: view the entire sky at once. For an astronomer, this is easy; all you have to do is get a fisheye lens, and you can see an entire hemisphere with no problem. (The "up" hemisphere is much more interesting than the "down" one.) If you use it at night and take a time-lapse exposure, you can truly create some…

Weekend Diversion: Gimme Some Money!

Stop wastin' my time. You know what I want. You know what I need, or maybe you don't. Do I have to come right flat out and tell you everything? Gimme some money! My fellow Americans, are you impatient about getting your "stimulus package" from the government? First off, a lot of people are going to be getting $300 instead of $600; and I gotta now right now! So go here to have the IRS calculate how much money you're getting first. Then, you'll probably want to know when you're going to get your money! This is important stuff, people; we rarely get benefits just for being working Americans,…

Weekend Diversion: Jessie and Slater?

Remember the TV show Saved By The Bell? It was a high school comedy that was popular when I was in Junior High, and it was, of course, completely preposterous and cheesy. Like what you'd get if you married Beverly Hills: 90210 with Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and then cleaned it up to make it G-rated. There were two long-time couples, Zack (the blond preppie) and Kelly (the hot cheerleader in the sundress), and Jessie (the frizzy-haired neurotic) and Slater (the macho/sensitive latino). Well, Jessie (Elizabeth Berkley), the frizzy-haired girl on the left, is finally back on TV hosting…

Dubai Company Pulls Out of Ports Deal

Interesting development: A Dubai-owned company abruptly abandoned its plans for managing U.S. ports on Thursday, defusing an election-year showdown between President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress over an issue that had become a political land mine for the GOP. "DP World will transfer fully the U.S. operations ... to a United States entity," H. Edward Bilkey, the company's top executive, said in the surprise announcement that seemed to spread relief throughout the Capitol and the White House. It was unclear which American business might get the port operations. Just hours earlier…

Buttars' Bills Facing Veto

The two bills that Sen. Chris Buttars of Utah has been pushing in that state legislature, one that is anti-evolution and one that would prohibit students from forming gay-straight clubs in public schools, may both be vetoed by the governor of the state: Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. said for the first time Thursday that he'd veto a pair of controversial bills aimed at banning so-called gay-straight alliances in public high schools and at controlling what students are taught about evolution. "If they look and feel like they did in earlier incarnations, I will veto them. We'll have to see what they…

More Punishment for Insulting Islam

At the risk of being called arrogant for daring to tell another country what they should and shouldn't do (not that I really care, mind you - if it's arrogant to insist that liberty be protected everywhere at all times, then I'm proudly arrogant), here's yet another instance of our European allies throwing away free speech: A German court on Thursday convicted a businessman of insulting Islam by printing the word "Koran" on toilet paper and offering it to mosques. The 61-year-old man, identified only as Manfred van H., was given a one-year jail sentence, suspended for five years, and ordered…

Ask Ethan: What happens when a black hole's singularity evaporates? (Synopsis)

"My discovery that black holes emit radiation raised serious problems of consistency with the rest of physics. I have now resolved these problems, but the answer turned out to be not what I expected." -Stephen Hawking One of the most puzzling things about Black Holes is that if you wait around long enough, they’ll evaporate completely. The curved spacetime outside of the event horizon still undergoes quantum effects, and when you combine General Relativity and quantum field theory in exactly that fashion, you get a blackbody spectrum of thermal radiation out. Hawking radiation is what…

Are Canadians Inherently, Perhaps Genetically, Nicer, Smarter, Gooder?

No, it turns out. Paul Douglass pointed me to this very interesting piece in Foreign Policy, from which I take a brief quote: ... The good neighbor has banked its economy on the cursed elixir of political dysfunction -- oil. Flush with visions of becoming a global energy superpower, Canada's government has taken up with pipeline evangelists, petroleum bullies, and climate change skeptics. Turns out the Boy Scout's not just hooked on junk crude -- he's become a pusher. And that's not even the worst of it. With oil and gas now accounting for approximately a quarter of its export revenue,…

Historic Heat Wave in the US West Next Week

This is just a weather prediction, so it is subject to revision, but the National Weather Service is expecting an historic heatwave in the American West next week, probably peaking next weekend. Temperatures in Death Valley will approach 130 degrees F, and Las Vegas will top 115 degrees F, if predictions pan out. The heat wave may extend to the Canadian Border. From Andrew Freedman at Climate Central: The furnace-like heat is coming courtesy of a “stuck” weather pattern that is setting up across the U.S. and Canada. By early next week, the jet stream — a fast-moving river of air at…

Do mites really live on my face?

This is the question everyone eventually asks themselves. The answer is no. They live all over your body in the follicles of your hair. But, the situation is much more complicated than that, and in fact there is a lot we don't know about these mites. But, there is a scientist who may be willing to scrape some of the mites off your face in order to advance our knowledge ... of something many people would probably not really want to know about. We’re interested in studying the evolution and diversification of Demodex mites ...we want to use the information encoded in Demodex DNA to map the…

Congressman Dan Young of Alaska on Mexicans and Mexican-Americans

This is why we can't have nice things, like immigration reform. From MSNBC: Amid a hot-button debate in Washington over how to overhaul the nation's immigration laws, Rep. Don Young, a 21-term lawmaker, referred to immigrant workers as "wetbacks" — a term that could threaten to inflame the debate about immigration reform. "My father had a ranch; we used to have 50-60 wetbacks to pick tomatoes," Young said in an interview with radio station KRBD. He was discussing the number of jobs that have been made irrelevant due to advances in automation. Young is one of the top Republicans in the House.…

Educate yourself about the Keystone XL Pipeline. Please.

I was distressed to find many people who are essentially pro-environment and who generally understand climate change science being less than terribly shocked about the prospect of the Keystone XL pipeline being built. Then I began to realize that many people don't realize the order of magnitude of the problem. I'm writing a blog post about this which I'll post Sunday or Monday, but in the mean time I want to provide a list of handy dandy reliable and helpful sources of information about the pipeline and related issues. Keystone XL decision will define Barack Obama's legacy on climate…

Fire and Climate Change

From the AGU fall meeting, 2012 Land area burned by fires has increased in the United States over the past 25 years, consistent with a trend toward climate conditions more conducive to fire. In contrast, fires for agricultural and forest management show declining trends in the western U.S. despite overall increases in wildfire activity and associated carbon emissions. Looking ahead, new IPCC climate projections offer insight into potential changes to U.S. fire activity over the next 30-50 years based on the climate sensitivity of fires in recent decades. Scientists will present new data on…

Travelin' Man

We're coming into the home stretch for the semester here—this will be the second to the last week of classes, and just as I'm panicking about everything I have to cram into the last few lectures, what do I do? Disappear! Flit about from place to place! It would be a great way to dodge assassins if I weren't also making my travel plans public. Tonight and Monday, I'm going to be at a Teaching and Learning Conference at the UMTC. I'm not driving for a change, so this trip shouldn't be too bad. Tuesday is Café Scientifique here in Morris, with Tracey Anderson of the biology discipline telling…

Carl Safina: The View From Lazy Point

Carl Safina is in some ways a modern Rachel Carson, an ecologist who writes excellent stuff about ecology. The View from Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World is his latest work. I saw him recently at the Gustavus Nobel conference where he gave this talk (the actual talk starts at about 9:00, following an epic-length introduction which I'm sure is very nice but you may want to skip): He's a great writer and a great speaker. The book is about nature, ecology, the world, etc. under current conditions of environmental threat including climate change. In the area of natural history…

Science denial: a guide for scientists

Scientist could probably do a better job at understanding, and addressing, science denial. I know this is true. If I had a nickel for every time I've heard a scientist say something like "All you have to do is, bla bla bla" or "What I do is bla bla bla" in relation to science denialists, or addressing this issue in classrooms, etc. I'd have dozens of nickels. Yet the problem of science denialism continues. It is possible that we don't know what we are doing. Joshua Rosenau knows something about science denialism, as a scientist, scienceblogs.com blogger, and staff member at the National…

David Coppedge was not fired because he is a creationist.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory at NASA fired him for performance reasons. Ars Technica's John Timmer has the story: Coppedge had worked on the Cassini mission to Saturn, starting as a contractor in 1996, and later becoming a full-time employee. But one of the projects he pursued on his own time was the promotion of intelligent design, the notion that the Universe and, most prominently, life itself, is too orderly to have come about without a designer. (Like many others in that movement, Coppedge is a self-identified evangelical Christian.)\ In 2009, he apparently got a bit aggressive about…

Westminster Symposium 2012: Eugenie Scott on the intersection of science and religion

How Religion and Science Interact and the Issue of Evolution A featured speaker at Westminster College's 2012 Symposium on Religious Experience in a Global Society, Dr. Eugenie Scott, Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education (Oakland, California), discusses religion, science and evolution. Almost 80 years after the Scopes trial, the debate over the teaching of evolution continues to rage. There is no easy resolution—It is a complex topic with profound scientific, religious, educational, and legal implications. Dr. Scott discusses the nature of the evolution-creationism…

Best retitling of a sociological study ever

Fox News happily reports that a scientific study has found that Religion is Good for Kids! Jean Mercer scrutinizes the study, finds it dubious at best, and Dale McGowan suggests that a better title would have been Religion May Make Some First Graders Marginally Easier to Manage. Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with making first graders more docile—it would make them less likely to turn their priest in to the police, for instance. The paper is making its conclusions from some rather shaky and selective analysis of subjective observations, though, so it isn't even particularly…

Unsure of Climate Science's Predictions? Do it yourself!

Well before mid century we will probably pass a threshold beyond which we'll really regret having not curtailed the release of fossil Carbon into the atmosphere in the form of Carbon Dioxide. The best case scenario for "business as usual" release of the greenhouse gas is that some of the carbon, or some of the heat (from sunlight) gets taken out of the main arena (the atmosphere and sea surface) and buried or reflected somewhere for a while, and this all happens on a slightly delayed time scale. The reason we know this is a little thing called science. And, more exactly, physics. And…

Olympic Snow #Sochi2014

It has become difficult to rely on natural cold and snow even in traditional winter sports venues. This is because of increased temperatures caused by global warming. This may not be the biggest problem caused by climate change, but it is one that has attracted a certain amount of helpful attention. Perhaps the North American visitation of the Arctic Vortex, which has made some people think that climate change is not real, is partly offset by a Winter Olympics with more than its share of problems, including injuries and lost medals, caused by crappy snow conditions. Also, it is kind of a…

The evolution of four-winged birds

...When we look at living species (A and B) that we know shared a common ancestor resembling one of them (A), we can guess that the features seen in A evolved in steps more or less linearly to eventually resemble the corresponding features seen in B. For example, we think that chimpanzees and humans shared a common ancestor that resembled chimps a lot more than humans, and in fact, we consider living chimps to be a pretty close analog to this common ancestor. Chimp teeth are somewhat larger in relation to body size than human teeth, and human teeth have somewhat thicker enamel than chimp…

But aren't beards dashing and romantic?

What is it with this anti-beard sentiment? Here's an article that wonders why so many scientists have beards, with several amusing stories. But anti-beard arguments also ran rife in pre-Victorian times: Beards trapped food and the stuff you spewed out when you sneezed. At a stretch, they could even go as far as to catch fire and trap vermin, some argued. This all came to a head in 1907, with a rather remarkable experiment. A French scientist took one bearded and one clean shaven man from the streets of Paris and asked each of them to kiss a woman, whose lips were previously swabbed with…

Exceptional Migration Period Excavation Crowdfunding Now

Pompeii situations, where daily life at a settlement has suddenly and catastrophically been terminated and the site has then been abandoned, are extremely rare and extremely informative. As has recently been discovered, the Sandby fortified settlement on the island of Öland offers a Pompeii situation from about AD 500. The settlement has been attacked, its inhabitants killed or abducted, and then the aggressors just closed the doors and never came back, leaving their victims and all their considerable wealth still inside the houses. So far the Kalmar County Museum's excavations at Sandby have…

New moderated env sci forum

And the forum is: http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange/. Go have a look. Why? From the welcome message: We are creating a moderated newsgroup/mailing list for the discussion of environmental science, economics, policy and politics, especially as related to global change issues such as climate change, biodiversity, and sustainability. The signal to noise ratio on sci.environment and similar unmoderated discussion lists has dropped to the point where it can no longer sustain interesting or informative exchanges of information and ideas. The success of the lightly moderated discussions…

Pielke Sr. and Jr. Profiled in Nature

I stole my headline from RP Jr, who links to the Nature article. RP Jr modestly makes no comment; RP Sr is so modest as to not even mention it (though he is puffing the distinctly dodgy Scarfetta and West paper). So its up to me to comment, who else? Its a very soft article, nice and gentle. Most (all?) of what is written is true, but the impression left is... well. "To be frank, that irritates the hell out of me," says Gavin Schmidt is definitely true. The CCSP report gets a mention: Pielke Sr argued that members of the CCSP committee were focusing on their own work too much, and not…

Monster mouse

The capybara is the current champion for rodents of unusual size — it weighs about 60kg (about 130 pounds); another large rodent is the pakarana, which weighs about a quarter of that. Either one is far too much rattiness for most people to want hanging around. Now there's another king of the rodents: Josephoartigasia monesi, which is estimated to have tipped the scales at about 1000kg, over a ton. Don't worry about getting bigger rat traps; these beasties have been extinct for perhaps 2 million years. I've put a few pictures from the paper describing this new species below the fold. This is…

Sunday is a big day for Minnesota Atheists

Minnesota Atheists will be having the first of many weekly radio programs on Air America, starting on Sunday, 13 January, at 9 AM. They're getting off to a very strong start with an interview with Richard Dawkins, among many other features. Minnesota Atheists will launch a weekly, one-hour program on Air America Minnesota (AM 950) beginning Sunday, January 13, 2008 from 9:00 to 10:00 a.m. It will be broadcast live, streamed live on the internet, and made available later as a free podcast. The name of the program is Atheists Talk (the same as our cable television show). The show will feature…

Measles at the Super Bowl

Are you freaking kidding me??? Super Bowl Village visitors on Friday may have been exposed to measles Tuesday night, the state Department of Health confirmed they have requested information from county health departments as part of an investigation into a report that a person who has been diagnosed with measles attended the festivities Friday. According to the Super Bowl Host Committee, 200,000 people were at Super Bowl Village on Friday. At the free concerts late Friday night, 35,000 people were gathered to see LMFAO's performance. It is still unclear what time the ill person visited…

Links for 2011-12-16

Mellowmas | Popdose Your go-to guys for Christmas songs that DO suck... The 20 Unhappiest People You Meet In The Comments Sections Of Year-End Lists : Monkey See : NPR 7. The Self-Punisher. "I always hate your tastes, so I knew this would be a miserable and useless list before I decided to click on it and read the whole thing, and now I know I was right." [1112.3004] Time in the 10,000-Year Clock The Long Now Foundation is building a mechanical clock that is designed to keep time for the next 10,000 years. The clock maintains its long-term accuracy by synchronizing to the Sun. The 10,000-…

Cute Toddler Story

Those of you who follow me on Twitter/ Facebook have been getting the occasional snippet of cute dialogue from SteelyKid over there. This one's a little too long for breaking into 140-character blocks, so while I wait for her to come downstairs so we can make pancakes, a cute SteelyKid story: We play a surprising number of games whose goal is to convince her that I'm an imbecile, one of which is me "misremembering" the lyrics of songs like "The Wheels on the Bus." One day last week, we had the following exchange (more or less) in the car: Me: So, the wheels on the bus go up and down, right?…

Do You Really Need a Graph for That?

As long as I'm picking on education research papers in Science, I might as well call out the one immediately after the paper I wrote up in the previous post. This one, titled Graduate Students' Teaching Experiences Improve Their Methodological Research Skills, is another paper whose basic premise I generally agree with-- they found that graduate students who had teaching responsibilities as well as research responsibilities did a better job of writing research proposals than graduate students who only did research. From all appearances, it's a good study, and makes a valuable point. And yet,…