education
grrlscientist | May 15, 2009tags: Great Egret, Casmerodius albus, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery birds] Great Egret, Casmerodius albus, photographed on High Island, Texas. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 29 March 2009 [larger view].
Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope with tsn-pz camera eyepiece 1/1000s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Rick Wright, author of Aimophila Adventures and Managing Director of WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide, writes:
This is a big, lanky, long-legged bird with a pointed bill and a…
grrlscientist | May 14, 2009tags: Great-Tailed Grackle, Quiscalus mexicanus, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Great-Tailed Grackle, Quiscalus mexicanus, photographed in Arizona. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Richard Ditch, 2 January 2006 [larger view].
Date Time Original: 2006:01:02 15:42:48
Exposure Time: 1/159
F-Number: 10.00
ISO: 200
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Rick Wright, author of Aimophila Adventures and Managing Director of WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide, writes:
Start at the reeeaaarrr--among the blackish birds of North…
evolvingthoughts | May 13, 2009In keeping with the last post on humanities, I thought I'd ruminate with no effort or knowledge to back it up on what the term "secular" means.
If the fundamentalists are to be believed, it is a synonym of "humanist" and also "Satanist", "infidel" and "homosexual". But somewhat more seriously, I have seen it used in journals to mean those who are not religious, those who aim to the elimination of religion, and those who seek to exclude religion from the affairs of the political institutions. None of these are exactly right, as far as I can tell.
In Australia it seems to be a term used largely…
drorzel | May 13, 2009An example problem from today's lecture:
A sleep-deprived parent is warming a bottle for a midnight feeding. He places a bottle containing 250 ml of infant formula at 275K into 300 ml of water at 320 K. When the two liquids reach equilibrium, what is the temperature of the formula?
Answer: Trick question! While the bottle is warming, he dozes off holding the baby, and by the time they wake up, both bottle and water have cooled to only 288K.
grrlscientist | May 13, 2009tags: Northern Parula, Parula americana, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery birds] Northern Parula, Parula americana, photographed at Quintana and Beach, Texas. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 20 March 2009 [larger view].
Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope with tsn-pz camera eyepiece 1/1250s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Rick Wright, author of Aimophila Adventures and Managing Director of WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide, writes:
It's easy to be distracted by color in a bird as…
grrlscientist | May 12, 2009tags: White-Crowned Sparrow, Zonotrichia leucophrys gambelii, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] White-Crowned Sparrow, Zonotrichia leucophrys gambelii, photographed in Arizona. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Richard Ditch, 23 December 2007 [larger view].
Date Time Original: 2007:12:23 09:04:20
Exposure Time: 1/350
F-Number: 10.00
ISO: 400
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Rick Wright, author of Aimophila Adventures and Managing Director of WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide, writes:
Quick: what's the most abundant…
evolvingthoughts | May 11, 2009It is often the case that when non-academics, or even non-humanities academics, talk about my generic field, they refer to it as "arts", and mean by this the creative arts, like performing arts, crafts, and corporate accounting. So they justify the funding for the "arts" (or "the yartz", as a Barry Humpries character calls them) because we are supposed to entertain people and add to cultural life.
Those who know me know this is not what I do. I have been known to sing in the shower, but that is about it. So I was very pleased to see this piece in the Australian Higher Education section…
gregladen | May 11, 2009Having totally borked science education in the Lone Star State, the Texas School Board is now winding up to stuff their right wing ideologies into the Social Studies curriculum.
I for one can't wait until Texas leaves the Union so we can put Texas and Turkey in the same category and begin to summarily ignore them. In the mean time, have a look at what they are doing, from the Texas Freedom Network:
The Texas State Board of Education is set to appoint a social studies curriculum "expert" panel that includes absurdly unqualified ideologues who are hostile to public education and argue that…
grrlscientist | May 11, 2009tags: Green-winged Teal, Anas carolinensis, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery birds] Green-winged Teal, Anas carolinensis, photographed at San Bernard Refuge, Texas. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 8 April 2009 [larger view].
Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope with tsn-pz camera eyepiece 1/350s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Rick Wright, author of Aimophila Adventures and Managing Director of WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide, writes:
I can't see the toes to know whether they're webbed…
grrlscientist | May 10, 2009tags: Lesser Goldfinch, Carduelis psaltria, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Lesser Goldfinch, Carduelis psaltria, photographed in Arizona. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Richard Ditch, 15 May 2008 [larger view].
Date Time Original: 2008:05:15 08:07:26
Exposure Time: 1/45
F-Number: 5.60
ISO: 500
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Rick Wright, author of Aimophila Adventures and Managing Director of WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide, writes:
Now comes a teeny, short-tailed, yellowish bird from Arizona. The short tail…
grrlscientist | May 9, 2009tags: Loggerhead Shrike, Lanius ludovicianus, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery birds] Loggerhead Shrike, Lanius ludovicianus, photographed at Paul Rushing Park, Texas. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 28 March 2009 [larger view].
Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope with tsn-pz camera eyepiece 1/350s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Rick Wright, author of Aimophila Adventures and Managing Director of WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide, writes:
There's really nothing else that looks like a…
drorzel | May 8, 2009It's a nice demonstration of the oddity of the blogosphere that a libertarian political blog has become my go-to-source for thoughtful blogging about physics education. Thoreau had two good posts yesterday at Unqualified Offerings, one on the problems created by breaking down incorrect intuition, and another on the lack of calculus in calculus-based physics texts:
The ostensibly calculus-based introductory physics book by Knight is not really a calculus-based book. Sure, integrals and derivatives pop up here and there, but the vast majority of the problems can be solved without them, and…
grrlscientist | May 8, 2009tags: Wilson's Snipe, Gallinago delicata, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Wilson's Snipe, Gallinago delicata, photographed in Arizona. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Richard Ditch, 16 March 2005 [larger view].
Date Time Original: 2005:03:16 10:19:09
Exposure Time: 1/60
F-Number: 16.00
ISO: 200
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Rick Wright, author of Aimophila Adventures and Managing Director of WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide, writes:
"Start at the rear," indeed! As if this beautiful and humorous image left us any…
bioephemera | May 7, 2009An interesting perspective from education professor John Kitchens:
President Obama, you must understand that mandating standards without equitable funding creates punitive systems of education, and current forms of high-stakes testing too often pit student against student, and eventually citizen against citizen. The struggling economy will likely renew the sense of competition and education for the sake of occupational gain, while a sober look at the number of jobs available in the near future will reveal the futility of these motivations. However entrenched these ideas about education are in…
grrlscientist | May 7, 2009tags: Red-Winged Blackbird, Agelaius phoeniceus, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery birds] Red-Winged Blackbird, Agelaius phoeniceus, photographed at San Bernard Refuge, Texas. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 20 March 2009 [larger view].
Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope with tsn-pz camera eyepiece 1/320s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Rick Wright, author of Aimophila Adventures and Managing Director of WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide, writes:
A couple of years ago I was leading a…
gregladen | May 6, 2009According to Texas Education Expert!
She knows because she looked at some web sites!!!!!!!!! Holy Crap!!!!
grrlscientist | May 6, 2009tags: Hoopoe, Epupa epops, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery birds] Hoopoe, Epupa epops, feeding its chick [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Orphaned -- contact me for attribution [larger view].
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Can you tell me where this bird species is endemic?
Review all mystery birds to date.
drorzel | May 6, 2009The proprietor of Good Mom, Bad Mom emails to point out a post spinning off Monday's Goldilocks post. A good thing she did, as Technorati has collapsed into utter uselessness, at least for finding people who link to my posts.
Her post quotes an unnamed correspondent, who writes:
My two daughters are both compulsive readers, gobbling up everything in their path. As a result, they both have very large vocabularies are very well informed about a range of things. I love it--instead of watching TV and getting dumb, they're reading, and getting smart. Mostly they read novels, but it's amazing how…