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Book Progress #24

more cat pictures There are few things more satisfying than being able to get back to original papers, letters, and articles to discover something new. Even though I could conceivably write a solid chapter based upon reviews and popular accounts I feel that reading original source materials is not only important for accuracy, but also for my integrity as a writer. Thanks to Google Books I was unable to uncover some information I thought I was never going to be able to find, as well as some information I didn't expect. While Richard Owen is commonly (and properly) cited for recognizing the…

How do we make things better?

Over at the Other 95% Kevin Z picks up where I left off on high school science education, publishing science books, and the barriers that he and I both face in our quest to become science writers (among other things). Most interesting, though, is his response to a somewhat off-the-cuff remark I made about making cheaper (if not free) science books available to the public. As someone who is working on a book and would like to write plenty more, there has to be a way for science writers to make a living. (If I could I would drop whatever else I was doing at the moment and focus on writing, but…

Frightening events at Rutgers

I'm not really plugged in to the Rutgers community; I rarely read the newspaper, I don't have many friends on campus, and I don't have much (if any) "school spirit," but some rather disturbing news has been making the rounds over the past few days. I haven't been able to find any news reports or details about either of these reports other than what I have been told my professors and students who were sent an e-mail, but the weekend before last someone was murdered right outside the building where I have my human osteology class. No one seems to know any details about it other than it happened…

WikiLeaks does humanity a service

It's amazing: WikiLeaks has just dumped over 91,000 classified documents from the Afghanistan war on the web. Just like that, we get an actual look at what's been going on over there, unfiltered by the traditional media, and definitely not given a rosy patina by Fox News. Fox New is, of course, treating this as a serious blow to their worldview — which isn't surprising, since reality does great damage to Fox. US Government sources also condemn the release, since it exposes the failures of militarism, and militarism is what the government and its profitable contractors have committed…

Don't believe Rotten Tomatoes; The Golden Compass is good!

I have to wonder if whoever was put in charge of the Golden Compass reviews page on RottenTomatoes.com has something against the film; it's listed as receiving a 44% approval rating but some of the reviews seem more positive then negative when I actually read some of them. I don't need to ask a reviewer how it was though since I just got in from seeing it, and I have to say that it was very enjoyable. I won't go on too long as I don't want to inadvertently spoil anything, but what's funny about the religious brouhaha surrounding the film is that many evangelicals are doing the very thing…

Tell and Repeat courses

Even though I have taught courses like this before (in a sense, my last physical science course was like this), I really don't like these courses. I will classify a "tell and repeat" course as one where the instructor tells the students stuff and then the students repeat this on the test. Look around, it happens a lot. But really, what is the point? Here are some example questions from a tell and repeat course (most of these I have used in a course - when you point a finger, 4 are pointing back at yourself): What is the difference between a meteorite, a meteor, and a meteoroid? Which has…

More grades: intrinsic vs. extrinsic

Think Thank Thunk is a relatively new blog from Shawn Cornally, a high school math and science teacher. I have found his posts to be quite entertaining. In Shawn's latest post, he talks about grades. You know I like to talk about grades. Shawn puts teacher into two groups in regards to their ideas about grades: " Grades should reflect a student's progress with course material. Where an A+ indicates mastery. Grades should be an amalgam of student's knowledge, behavior, and anything else the teacher wants to control. " I was in the middle of posting a comment to this post, but it was…

Demo: How to not spill your drinks

I know I saw this demo somewhere. Maybe it was at an AAPT conference a few years ago. I have always wanted to build this, but never got around to it. Until now. Here is the demo (it is easy, you should make one too) So, how does this work? I think the simplest explanation is that the drinks do not spill because the string can only pull in the direction of the standing glasses. A slightly better explanation is that the string lets the tray rotate so that the sum of the acceleration and the gravitational field is in the direction of the open ending of the cup. I am still not happy with…

MythBusters and the physics of knock your socks off

The other myth the MythBusters looked at last week was the phrase "knock your socks off" (along with the dropping and shooting a bullet myth). But before that, let me complain. Maybe it is just me, but I totally cringe when these guys use the word 'force'. Force probably isn't the best term to use to describe a collision especially when you are talking about one of the objects. "oh, we will just give this object some more force to impact with that other object". Force is not a property of an object, but rather an interaction between two objects. When two things collide, you really need…

Seasons, short and simple

I love this question: Why is it warmer in the summer than in the winter (for the Northern hemisphere)? Go ahead and ask your friends. I suppose they will give one of the following likely answers: The tilt of the Earth The tilt of the Earth makes us closer to the Sun We are closer to the Sun Really, that should be at least 85% of the answers. To really answer the question, think of the following key points: When it is warm in the Northern Hemisphere, it is cold in the Southern Hemisphere The Earth's orbit around the Sun is very close to being circular The seasons depend on the time of…

Indie acts

I've said it before, and will keep saying it until the DNC starts running ads quoting me: Like all indie acts, John McCain's early work was better. This ad is a good start: But here's the thing: John McCain's maverickness was an act. It was never genuine. Indie acts sell out to corporate interests and start putting out crap. Their audiences abandon them, replaced by fickle fans who can be swayed by radio play. John McCain has sold out. The Republican brand is so tarnished that there are no fickle fans left for it to draw in. It's possible to say that his early work on campaign finance…

Austin

I'll be in Austin, TX later this week to attend NetrootsNation and to stare steely-eyed at the state's Board of Education. I will also be part of this exciting event: Speakers to Highlight Dangers of Creationism Encroaching into the Public Schools Austin, Texas (July 10, 2008)- Science education in Texas is under attack as never before, as evidenced by the recent ouster of State Director of Science Education Christine Castillo Comer for the offense of promoting science education. Now, as Comer pursues her lawsuit for wrongful termination, the Center for Inquiry-Austin, Texas Citizens for…

Excellent idea

Forest Service May Move to Interior - washingtonpost.com: Among some lawmakers who hold the purse strings, there is a belief that the U.S. Forest Service is out of place. The 103-year-old agency, which manages 193 million acres of forests and grasslands, is part of the Department of Agriculture. Its bureaucratic cousins -- the National Park Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Bureau of Land Management, which manage 84 million acres, 96 million acres and 258 million acres of public land, respectively -- are in the Interior Department. … At the request of the House…

Richard Rorty

Richard Rorty has died. I was one of those innumerable undergraduates who, after failing to understand Heidegger or Wittgenstein or Quine or Davidson, picked up Rorty and felt enlightened. The man had a tremendous facility for interpreting the philosophy of others. After reading Rorty on Dewey, I went out and purchased a selection of Dewey books. I soon discovered that I preferred Rorty's Dewey to the actual Dewey. (For one thing, Dewey was a terrible writer. Rorty, on the other hand, was one of the few modern philosophers who cared about his prose.) One other Rorty note: I've never…

The Importance of Mothers

Mind Matters, David Dobbs' research blog over at Scientific American, is indispensable weekly reading. This week is no different. The topic is a paper documenting the importance of maternal presence in rat-pups. Apparently, the absence of a rat mother during a critical period of pup development permanently alters the behavior of the pup*: In their recent Nature Neuroscience article, researchers Stephanie Moriceau and Regina Sullivan explore learned olfactory preference and aversion as mediated by maternal presence. In this study rat pups were exposed to a peppermint odor that was paired with…

Science and Self-Criticism (Mirror Neurons Too)

Alison Gopnik has written a thoroughly entertaining takedown of the mirror-neuron hype: The myth of mirror neurons may not do much harm. Perhaps it's even good for science that in the 21st century we turn to the brain, rather than gods and monsters, for our mythical images. Still, science and science writing are supposed to get us closer to the truth, while the myth of mirror neurons may do just the opposite. Instead of teaching us about how the mind works, it may perpetuate some broad misconceptions about neuroscience and what the study of the brain can tell us about human nature. You should…

Frickin’ electricity, how does it work?

This is a scanned page from a Christian science textbook published by Bob Jones University. I think they've been listening to too much Insane Clown Posse. We're all just mindless zombies here at scienceblogs, but somehow, BJU is even more brainless. I swear, a creationist could walk by right now and I wouldn't even drool. But even in my decaying state, and as a biologist, not a physicist, I can answer this one. Electricity is not a mystery on the level this book is discussing. There is a lot we don't know about fundamental particles, but we understand the principles of electromagnetism so…

Worst Case Scenarios and Irrational Fear

So I'm watching a DVD and the usual legal disclaimer - "The views expressed in the commentary do not reflect the views of the studio, etc." - comes on the screen. Whatever. Such a warning label seems unnecessary, but what do I know? Maybe there's been a rash of lawsuits over DVD extras. Then the same legal warning comes on in French. Another 15 seconds pass by. Then Spanish. By the time all the warnings are complete, I've wasted 45 seconds of my life, and this doesn't even include the requisite FBI copyright warning. Granted, 45 seconds isn't a lot of time. But multiply those same 45 seconds…

Spindle Cells and Humor

Since the science of humor is in the news today, I thought I'd point out an interesting tidbit from a recent Cerebral Cortex paper: The speculation that humor may be a uniquely human cognitive trait (Bergson 1924; Caron 2002) prompted our third hypothesis: humor will activate both anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and frontoinsula cortex (FI), the 2 regions in which an evolutionarily recent neuron type, the Von Economo cells (previously termed ''spindle neurons''), are present. A review of the functional imaging literature reveals that the Von Economo cell regions, particularly FI, are active…

Bonus: Fixing a Kenmore 44072 Washer with F03 Error

This is not a "fix-it" blog. However, I think the Internet should be a useful friendly place. Think about the times you have had a problem. The Internet has been there for you - right? I remember not too long ago, I was trying to set up iChat video chat with my brother-in-law and his brand new iMac. I was 3 states away and it was getting frustrated. In the end, my friend the Internet helped me. Problem solved. Everyone one has found a perfect solution for a particular problem on the Internet - right? So, this bud's for you Mr. Post-obscure-stuff-in-the-hopes-that-at-least-one-person-…

Childish Creativity

Pablo Picasso once declared that "Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up." The solution to Picasso's problem is startlingly simple, at least according to the psychologists Darya Zabelina and Michael Robinson of North Dakota State University: We just need to think like a little kid. In their recent paper, "Child's play: Facilitating the originality of creative output by a priming manipulation," the scientists took a large group of undergraduates and randomly assigned them to two different groups. The first group was given the following instructions: "…

Politics and Current Events

A new paper by Paola Giuliano, an economist at UCLA, and Antonio Spilimbergo, an economist at the International Monetary Fund, looks at how severe recessions, depressions and other "macroeconomic shocks" influence the political beliefs of young adults. Here's the abstract: Do generations growing up during recessions have different socio-economic beliefs than generations growing up in good times? We study the relationship between recessions and beliefs by matching macroeconomic shocks during early adulthood with self-reported answers from the General Social Survey. Using time and regional…

The Greatest Show on Earth

In the latest edition of Publisher's Weekly, I have a short review of The Greatest Show on Earth, the forthcoming book from Richard Dawkins: Richard Dawkins begins The Greatest Show on Earth with a short history of his writing career. He explains that all of his previous books have naïvely assumed "the fact of evolution," which meant that he never got around to laying "out the evidence that it [evolution] is true." This shouldn't be too surprising: science is an edifice of tested assumptions, and just as physicists must assume the truth of gravity before moving on to quantum mechanics, so do…

No-Lie fMRI

This is disturbing stuff. According to the Stanford Center for Law and the Biosciences, No-Lie MRI has recently produced a report that's being offered as evidence in a California court. The case is a child protection hearing being conducted in the juvenile court. In brief, and because the details of the case are sealed and of a sensitive nature, the issue is whether a minor has suffered sexual abuse at the hands of a custodial parent and should remain removed from the home. The parent has contracted No Lie MRI and apparently undergone a brain scan. The defense plans to claim the fMRI-…

Liveblogging Texas MMMLDI

It's worth noting something about Garner's statements. He claims that evolution is treated specially, but this is nonsense. The language in question is used everywhere. He claims that the standards related to evolution is somehow less in-depth, that evolution is less scrutinized. Rick Agosto was chatting about investments with a couple of the creationists in the bathroom. Hillis is speaking now. It sounds like Tincey Miller is looking for a way to compromise between the S&W language and the language currently on offer. This is very, very bad. They seem to be talking about restoring S…

Texas Liveblagging 4: The Blaggening

Peter Johnston, parent, fmr. SBOE candidate, lawyer: Teach S&W. History of science shows that we aren't all objective. "Powers that be in science … resist change." Difficult to see outside the box. Maundering on Kuhn. Dunbar: "Mrs. Scott." It's "Dr.," dammit. What's the deal with consensus? Those that are in power resist change. John Huffner, math teacher: "What's wrong with telling the truth?" S&W sounds health to me. Education should be built on truth, not deception. "As a creationist, I don't want creationism taught in school." S&W protects teachers. S&W is…

When mammoths roamed (rarely)

Brian Switek, The extended twilight of the mammoths: So, if the team's analysis is correct, both mammoths and horses lived in the interior of Alaska between about 11,000 and 7,000 years ago. This is significantly more recent than the youngest fossil remains of horses and mammoths, dated between 15,000 and 13,000 years ago. There are at least two factors that might contribute to this disparity. The first is that fossils from this more recent time were preserved but have not yet been found. More likely, though, is that the populations of both mammoths and horses had dwindled to the point where…

Who believes in the evil eye?

A friend pointed me to a new Pew survey, Many Americans Not Dogmatic About Religion. It shows the general finding that though Americans are a religious people, they're moderately ecumenical in their practices and beliefs. I was concerned in particular though with the resurgence of supernatural beliefs with the decline of institutional religious orthodoxy. The back story to this is that many psychologists posit that humans have an innate predisposition toward supernatural beliefs because of the cognitive biases we're hardwired with. For example, it isn't a coincidence that almost all human…

Consilience?

In the new Seed, there's an excellent profile of E.O. Wilson, and his recent attempt to get evangelicals to embrace environmentalism. Good luck, Professor Wilson. I have a single (and very minor) quibble with the article, and it's a common enough mistake. Simply put, I think the reporter misunderstands what Wilson's Consilience was all about: In 1998, Wilson came out with Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, an attempt to demonstrate that all knowledge is intrinsically linked, both within the sciences and the humanities. Reduced to such a summary it can seem obvious, but the idea of…

Mortality Salience

Over at Mind Matters, I've got an interview with Sheldon Solomon. We talk about fear, death, the fear of death, and politics. In this excerpt, Solomon describes an extremely clever experiment, in which he primed judges to think about death and then observed how this affected their judicial decisions: LEHRER: How does this theory relate to mortality salience (MS)? And what's an experimental example of mortality salience at work? SOLOMON: A large body of evidence shows that momentarily making death salient, typically by asking people to think about themselves dying, intensifies people's…

Stop Signs Are Dangerous

In the latest Atlantic, John Staddon, a professor of psychology at Duke, has an article on the dangers of road signs and speed limits: The American system of traffic control, with its many signs and stops, and with its specific rules tailored to every bend in the road, has had the unintended consequence of causing more accidents than it prevents. Paradoxically, almost every new sign put up in the U.S. probably makes drivers a little safer on the stretch of road it guards. But collectively, the forests of signs along American roadways, and the multitude of rules to look out for, are quite…

Synthetic Memory

One day, your iPod will be made out of biological flesh. Just kidding. In general, I'm a pretty staunch skeptic of The Singularity, but I've got to admit that experiments like this are pretty rad: A team in Silver's HMS lab led by Caroline Ajo-Franklin, now at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and postdoctoral scientist David Drubin decided to demonstrate that not only could they construct circuits out of genetic material, but they could also develop mathematical models whose predictive abilities match those of any electrical engineering system. "That's the litmus test," says Drubin, "…

The electoral college map flip; drift?

Over at Culture11 James Poulos refers to the Great Flip; the Republicans of 1860 were a regional party of the North and Greater North (e.g., California). Today to a great extent that is the position of the Democrats; the narrow wins by Barack Obama in Florida, Virginia and North Carolina were due to suffrage of non-whites (which wasn't an issue in 1860) and the "fake" parts of these states dominated by recent migrants from the North. Take a look at the map below to see the flip for yourself. But the flip was not just regional, it was also ideological. In the wake of Abraham Lincoln's…

Politics, California and serpentine

Serpentine (as known as serpentinite), the current (and potentially soon-to-be ex-) state rock of California. This does not have a direct connection to volcanoes, but it sure is about geology and the science in the news. State Senator Gloria Romero of California has sponsored a bill to change the California state rock from serpentine because, as she claims: "[Serpentine] contains the deadly mineral chrysotile asbestos, a known carcinogen, exposure to which increases the risk of the cancer mesothelioma ... California should not designate a rock known to be toxic to the health of its residents…

Is Australia "overdue" for a volcanic eruption?

The Atherton Tablelands in Far North Queensland, Australia. Nothing makes me shudder like any article titled "Blankety-blank volcano is overdue". Typically the article that follows is full of nothing but vapid speculation and media fear-mongering. So, it wasn't too surprising that an article titled "Volcano eruption 'overdue'" in the Brisbane Times (amongst many other sites) didn't disappoint (or, in particular, it did). Dr. Bernie Joyce is quoted as saying "It is much more likely to be a matter of when, rather than if..." in regards to potential future volcanism on the Australian continent…

Irking accomplished. Continue.

Draw Mohammed Day is over now, and we're getting the reactions now. Some people didn't get it, including Greg Epstein. There is a difference between making fun of religious or other ideas on a TV show that you can turn off, and doing it out in a public square where those likely to take offense simply can't avoid it. These chalk drawings are not a seminar on free speech; they are the atheist equivalent of the campus sidewalk preachers who used to irk me back in college. This is not even "Piss Christ," Andres Serrano's controversial 1987 photograph of a crucifix in urine. It is more like…

Wednesday Whatzits

This is another busy Wednesday for me as the Geology Dept. at UC Davis will be hosting Dr. Jacob Lowenstern, USGS scientist and director of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory. He will be giving the weekly seminar, along with another talk in the evening at Sacramento State as part of the Volcanological Society of Sacramento meeting (which is open to the public for those of you around Sacramento). I'm especially excited for the evening talk entitled "Domestic volcanic unrest and activity in 2009: Kilauea, Redoubt, Yellowstone and Washington, D.C.". I'll be sure to report any fun tidbits. For…

Just imagine

As Steve Benen notes at Rachel Maddow's blog, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker draws his governing lessons from interesting sources: Just imagine.  Then imagine that Noah had to build his ark in a capitalist market economy, and had to be able to turn a profit on the deal simply in order to start construction.  He might have to charge admission, treat it like a zoo or a theme park or something.   Now imagine that Noah's business plan didn't appeal to bankers, and even the people who supported his past ventures (like, perhaps, a museum about how the planet and all life on it was created a mere…

Religion people oppose torture

Tom Rees reports on a smart new study which tests the effect of religiosity on attitudes toward torture in the US. Using two different large surveys, the researchers first simply examined the correlation between religiosity and support for permitting torture. Realizing that conservative political ideology can also induce greater support for torture and can itself be driven by religiosity, they then compared the direct impact of religion on torture support with the indirect effect as mediated through political ideology. What they found is that religiosity (measured in one case simply by how…

A tense moment

Via the White House Flickr site, a tense moment in the Situation Room yesterday, as the national security team was updated on the raid on a Pakistani compound where Osama bin Laden had been in hiding. The weight of the moment plays out a little differently on each face. The political, diplomatic, and military cost of failure would have been enormous. The mission was, as we all know by now, successful, and led to spontaneous parties in streets around the world, with firefighters in New York making an impromptu pilgrimage to the hole in the ground where the World Trade Center once stood.…

Egypt's elections and the role of religion in social conflict

In my twitter feed, I commented briefly on the election results in Egypt. The vote was on a package of constitutional reforms. As I understand it, more liberal Egyptians opposed the amendments because they wanted more wholesale reform of the constitution. But the amendments passed overwhelmingly. I noted: 18.5 million votes were cast in #egypt, 77.2% favored the amendments, including a nativist requirement on presidential spouses. And added: It was the first election in #egypt when people didn't know the outcome beforehand. Lots of people voted for the first time ever. I also retweeted…

Dept. of Justice: DOMA is unconstitutional

It's three years late, but the White House and the Department of Justice have finally concluded that the misnamed Defense of Marriage Act â which forbids the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages performed in states where they are legal â is unconstitutional and discriminatory. The Attorney General recommended to the President, and President Obama agreed, that the government should not defend the act in court. Perhaps more significantly, they declared an intent to treat discrimination based on sexuality as a cause for "strict scrutiny," a harsher test than the "rational…

Netroots Nation

I spent the last few days at the 5th Netroots Nation, in Las Vegas. As always, the conference has been a whirlwind of political geekery and good, clean fun. This year featured a video address by the President, and Q&A sessions with the Speaker of the House and the Majority Leader of the Senate, not to mention two panels on the use of snark in politics. My obligations here finished early. I'd been involved with three panel submissions, of which two were approved: one about politicized sciences and the other on politicized education. My colleague Steve Newton took over on the latter…

On marriage

Joel Mathis is upset with the National Review. The conservative journal responds to last week's ruling against the federal Defense of Marriage Act, an act that blocks legal recognition of legal marriages between same-sex couples, by arguing: If heterosexual coupling did not regularly produce children there would be no reason for the institution of marriage to exist, let alone for governments to recognize it. As Joel notes, this is a pretty silly basis for opposing gay marriage. What a depressingly -- implausibly -- narrow view of marriage. No doubt, children are a common byproduct of…

A few coynes short?

Jerry Coyne, in the throatclearing before an otherwise reasonable dissection of wankery on the Huffington Post, brings the ahistorical and gratuitous FAIL: I’m coyneing the term “New Creationism” to describe the body of thought that accepts Darwinian evolution but with the additional caveats that 1) it was all started by God, 2) had God-worshipping humans as its goal, and 3) that the evidence for all this is that life is complex, humans evolved, and the the “fine tuning” of physical constants of the universe testify to the great improbability of our being here—ergo God. Two main thoughts…

Creationists don't understand fossils

This headline is hardly news, but still noteworthy. A few days ago, Todd Wood (a young earth creationist from Bryan College, in Dayton, TN) noted an article in ICR's Acts & Facts on trilobite tracks by his predecessor at Bryan, creationist Kurt Wise: "Why would dozens of feet of rock have tracks but not the animals that made them?" asks Wise. He proposes that the Flood uniquely solves this dilemma. He quotes Wise: What if, when the "fountains of the great deep were broken up" (Genesis 7:11), the spreading waters surprised the trilobites living on the ocean bottom? As the water became…

Disco. 'tute: copyright hypocrites

Back when Yoko Ono was suing the makers of Expelled over their use of John Lennon's "Imagine," the Discovery Institute was a hotbed of copyfighters. Disco. DJ Bruce Chapman called Ono a "censor" and pitched it as a battle for free speech. Chapman complains about an Ars.Technica post which rightly notes that "intelligent design is not a scientific theory so much as an attempt to create the appearance of controversy using flashy PR tactics," and that Expelled "greatly exaggerates the persecution of intelligent design advocates": Notice the way the writer feels obliged to abuse free speech—by…

Denmark, a society with God (sort of)

Late last year I reviewed a book by an American sociologist on Danish secularism. The book was titled Society without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment, and apparently its publication resulted in some controversy in Denmark, in large part due to perceived misrepresentation of the Danish populace by the author. I suspected at the time that part of the issue was that of cultural miscommunication; what "secular" and "religious" are in the United States and Denmark vary a great deal, and the author was attempting to communicate primarily to an American audience…

Genomics is ALL WRONG!

One can acquire all kinds of interesting "scientific" perspectives on the interwebs. For instance, Professor Pallacken Abdul Wahid of Kerala Agricultural University has written a fascinating demolition of genetics and genomics for SciTopics ("Research summaries by experts!" Sponsored by Elsevier!) titled Phenomena of life and death explained based on a computer model of organism in the light of the Quran and the Bible. Take a moment to bask in the wondrous promise of that title before diving into the link. And have no fear, your every hope of delightful wackaloonery will be fulfilled! What…

How much support is the NAS willing to give to religion?

Imagine that a well-funded astrology organization were to establish a prize awarding a good chunk of money to a scientist who best affirmed the validity of astrology, all as part of a campaign to bestow a whiff of credibility to the belief that the position of the stars at the time you were born influenced your fate. Astrologers certainly want to pretend that they are scientific, so it's exactly the kind of thing many of them would love to do; their only problem is that real scientists would laugh them away, and they certainly wouldn't get the support of any of the major scientific…