Teaching rubbish doesn't help students think

Arnold Loewy has an opinion piece in the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal (which may well be the coolest name for a newspaper I have yet heard).

Although the name of the newspaper may be cool, the column is not.

Currently, a national debate is raging over whether or not to teach intelligent design in public schools.

I haven't seen much debate on that front since the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial. I see a lot of people who want to attack the teaching of evolution, though.

To begin with, it is important to disabuse ourselves of the notion intelligent design is an alternative to, or the opposite of, evolution. The opposite of evolution is creationism, the theory that the Earth was created in six days, less than 6,000 years ago.

This is a peculiar opening gambit: to claim that some complex scientific idea has a necessary logical opposite. What's the opposite of germ theory? The opposite of atomic theory?

Be that as it may, there's a strange backhanded effort to claim that intelligent design is not an alternative to evolution. But that is expressly what it is meant to be.

The opposite of intelligent design is no intelligent design, or atheism. It is possible to believe that an intelligent designer designed evolution as many (I have been told, including Darwin) believe.

And here we have the classic wedge strategy: it's any religious belief you might happen to have, or evolution and godlessness. As always, this does a huge disservice to the wonderful variety of human beliefs.

Most of the objection to teaching intelligent design is predicated on the ground that the subject matter is religious, and should be taught only in church. I disagree. The characteristics of the intelligent designer are most assuredly a matter for religious training and belief. On the other hand, most religions posit the existence of an intelligent designer (usually denominated God), but do not seek to examine all of the scientific/philosophic evidence for or against that supposition. In short, they accept it on faith.

It's like he's destroying his own case. So... I think he's arguing that ID is religious... but that somehow that doesn't matter because...? I really don't understand the argument here.

While faith is everything in religion, it is not everything in schools. Every proposition has to be empirically examined to determine its validity. Thus, when intelligent design is examined in school, there is no a priori assumption of its correctness, or incorrectness. The evidence is examined and the chips can fall where they may.

But why teach discredited ideas in a school setting? Should we teach phlogiston theory?

The reason that I am so supportive of teaching intelligent design in public schools is because I studied essentially the intelligent design/no intelligent design debate in an English literature course at Boston University.

Stop! There is a huge difference between teaching something at a K-12 level and at the university level. What is perfectly appropriate for one level does not export well to all levels. Plus, the rules for universities are totally different than they are for K-12 public classrooms.

Frankly, this course of action is not risk-free for fundamentalists. Although I concluded that it was more likely than not that there was an intelligent designer, I suspect some of my classmates were not similarly persuaded. Consequently, if we do adopt the "teach the controversy" perspective that many fundamentalists are advocating in regard to intelligent design, there is a real risk that some percentage of the students will conclude that there is no intelligent designer, and hence no God.

For me, this is a risk worth taking.

That he characterizes this as a "risk" shows a lot going on here. Being religious is good. Not being religious is bad. So this clearly shows that proposing to teach intelligent design cannot be taught in K-12 public classrooms, for the same reason creationism can't be taught in classrooms: it is about using a public government institution to promote particular religious views.

Science teachers who don't understand science

The San Antonio Express News has an opinion piece by a public school teacher, one Scott Lane, about the "strengths and weaknesses" -- oops, "strengths and limitations" -- language that the Texas State Board of Education wants to put into the K-12 Texas science standards.

Mr. Lane is a science teacher, but he shows effectively no understanding of the state of modern science.

We... can present several hours of scientific evidence which supports creation. Included in these will be the fact that evolution violates the 1st and 2nd Laws of Thermodynamics, as well as the Law of Biogenesis. We can show you creation evidence in the fields of microbiology, genetics, probability, biochemistry, biology, geology and physics which support creation and undermine evolution.

Just... wow. This is one of those points where you don't even know where to begin.

Ups and down in teaching

Watching Ben Zander in his Pop!Tech talk the day after submitting final grades for my classes is a humbling experience.

@ Yahoo! Video

This week, I have worried a lot about teaching. Am I being fair and consistent in my grading? (That's a big one for me, as I know unfairness drives students absolutely nuts.) Did I ask reasonable amounts of work? Was I too soft?

Zander makes me think those are not the first questions I should ask. The first one I should ask might be, "Did I lift students up, or did I grind them down?"

I may have done more grinding than lifting this semester.

How interesting.

Missing the point of Science Commons

I've watched the Science Commons video (below) and visited the Science Commons website.

And I don't get it.



The video talks about knowledge in "silos," that highly overused business term. I think the "silos" they're talking about are for-profit journals that are protected behind password-protected subscriptions and pay per view deals. But it's maddeningly vague about this. If you mean you want open access publishing, say open access publishing.

The video talks about sharing data. For me, the big problem is still generating data. It feels like this is talking about automated, high throughput molecular data, not those who do any other kind of science.

U shaped

Why does it always seem that when marking assignment, you get a couple of really good papers right off the bat, followed by lots of utter dreck, before a few people near the end restore some semblance of hope that someone was paying attention?

Michael Rennie was ill...

The Day the Earth Stood Still – the original – was made at a critical point in Earth’s history.

Humans had split the atom, but hadn’t gone into space.

What a wonderful combination of terror and optimism. We saw the potential for complete destruction, yet I think there was really a sense of incredible potential then. People could almost taste space travel. And really, isn’t there a hint of pride that other civilizations could actually perceive us as a threat?

Today, I think we feel the threat, but not the sort of hope the early 1950s had. I don’t think we think of ourselves going into space, expanding ever out, they way we did then. Space travel has proved difficult.

It’ll be very interesting to see what zeitgeist the remake opening today tries to tap into.

This quiz must be faulty

D'oh!

Which College Major Should You Be?
	Your major should be Engineering. Logic is your friend. With enough work, you can find a solution to anything... Unless it involves dating or parties.
Find Your Character @ BrainFall.com

Well, too late now...

Make me laugh

In one of my classes, I had my students blogging throughout the semester. Last week, since it was the end of semester and I reckoned everyone could use a break and do something different, I threw down the gauntlet and issued a challenge.

"Make me laugh."

Oh, that was fun.

I got Canadian cartoons and signs.

I got profane Muppets.





And I got a couple of posts mentioning this picture, which I used in during lecture twice (only twice, really).


So that's what they're referring to here and, my personal favourite, this post.

Fail, 8 December 2008 edition

One of my students is trying to share some work with me through Google Docs. I try to login, and can't. I contact the specified email address. I am told, "You have to share the documents with their @gmail.com email addresses."

He apparently hasn't looked at the login screen.



Fail.

Even the might of Google is no match for institutional cluelessness.

On the fence

One of my earlier articles concerned the evolution of intelligence on other planets. This lengthy blog post picks up on some of those ideas.

Farewell, Forry

Forrest ("Forry") J. Ackerman has died at 92 (reported many places, including here and here).

If you knew Forry Ackerman, you were one degree of separation from everything connected to science fiction and fantasy in the 20^th century. He was an architect of today's society. George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and thousands more like them learned about movies through Forry's Famous Monsters of Filmland, for decades the only SF magazine about film and TV until Starlog came on the scene.

I can't say I knew him, but had the honor of seeing and meeting him a couple of times.

The first, at Norwescon, he brought the voice of H.G. Wells to the fans. Ackerman had seen a talk by Wells when he was young, and decided that he would try to memorize the way Wells spoke and some of his words. he had been inspired by one child who was so moved by Lincoln's Gettysburg address that he memorized it and would recite it in Lincoln's style to preserve it. Ackerman relayed his surprise that Wells had a thin, high voice, almost like one of old ladies in Monty Python skits. And the phrase was something like, "I am going to talk to you about the war. [Not certain if it was "war," actually.] East is east. West is west. And the two are coming together with a bang."

Additional: A better recounting of Ackerman's anecdote is here.

RYAN: MR. ACKERMAN, YOU HAD THE OPPORTUNITY TO HEAR [AUTHOR H.G. WELLS) SPEAK. WHAT DO REMEMBER ABOUT THAT?

Ackerman: It was 1938. It was predicted that 100 years into the future that on top of Mt. Everest, a statue would be erected in his memory, 'First of Civilized Men.' When he spoke, because he had given us WAR OF THE WORLDS and TIME MACHINE and so on, I thought he'd have this deep, sonorous, Orson Welles personality. I was very surprised to hear he had this squeaky little voice. He had this small rolly-polly, bloody complexion and said [in a high accented voice], 'I am going to talk to you for about an hour. Today, East is West, and West is East, and they're coming together with a bang.' He was very prophetic, because unfortunately we went to war with Japan.

The second time, at Con*Cept, I had more opportunity to hear him. He was in Montréal tracking down a rare edition of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. He gave an hour long panel talking about some of his many experiences. He talked about his love of Esperanto, and complimenting a beautiful woman in the audience in Esperanto. He expressed how disappointed he was with Tim Burton's movie Ed Wood, a depiction Forry said was terrible. (Forry had been Wood's agent.)

I asked him if, in building his renowned collection of sci-fi memorabilia, there were any pieces that he had tried to get for his collection that "got away," as I phrased it. His reply was not what I had expected, and he talk about items that had literally got away because someone had stolen them from his house.

At the end of his panel, I was able to get an autograph from him on -- of all things -- a Vampirella trading card. (Vampirella was a character Ackerman named that was undergoing a resurgence of popularity at the time.)

Robert J. Sawyer's post on meeting Forry gives a good sense of the well known generosity of the man.

I have to disagree with the reports that say he died from heart failure. A heart like his would never fail -- only stop.

No more waking from a dream

Arguably anyone who has studied psychology or neuroscience has probably heard of HM, a patient who lost the ability for form new memories. He died Tuesday, 2 December 2008, at the age of 82.

His real name was Henry G. Molaison.

See here, here, and here.

Here is a famous quote from him, speaking on his own condition:

Right now, I’m wondering, have I done or said anything amiss? You see, at this moment everything looks clear to me, but what happened just before? That’s what worries me. It’s like waking from a dream. I just don’t remember.

Help the National Academies of Science

The National Academies are running a short and sweet poll on current science issues to find out what resources they should be focused on developing.

One of the interesting things is that when you reach the end, they should you how people have voted so far. I won't spoil the surprise.

Check it out and vote.

Lectures are over!

Just gave the "dead dog" lecture to my last class. I still have a huge amount of marking to do (about three major assignments), but at least there's no more prepartion to do, and the end is now in sight.

Barbara Forest talk in and about Texas

Barbara Forest has a talk recorded at Southern Methodist University on 11 November 2008, specifically about Texas.

She gives a great metaphor of intelligent design being a Trojan horse, not in the classical Greek sense, but like a Trojan horse that is a computer virus. It disguises itself as something beneficial and helpful... but when you actually try to run your computer, you discover everything is messed up.

For those who read this blog, there's not a whole lot new, but Forest's tracking of what people say is wonderfully comprehensive.

Additional: A good supplement to Forest's talk is this summary of objections raised by several State Board of Education members to people testifying on the Texas K-12 science standard. It totally fits with Forest's thesis that despite minor relabellings, the actual content of objections to evolution never, ever changes.

Horror

"Shocked" is used too often, and its impact is lessened as a result. I guess it's partly because of that that I would say that I am not easily shocked.

But today, I was shocked.

I was listening to The Current podcast for the day. And the story they described (scroll down to Part 3) is gruesome and horrific and nearly beyond belief.

In Tanzania, people who are albinos are being murdered so their body parts can be used in the potions of witch-doctors.

People are being killed to make magic potions.

I'm upset that this story broke over a month ago, but I haven't heard about it until now. This should be a much higher profile story than it is. And I'm upset that there's effectively nothing I can do. I signed a petition, and sometimes those can document that people are paying attention.

Do you still doubt that superstition and magical thinking are dangerous?

Prepare for more sputtering

I mentioned a new turtle fossil a while back. Today, Nature reports on another transitional fossil turtle. Strangely, it looks like the turtle shell formed bottom first, top second -- which might be the opposite of what you'd expect, since we tend to think of shells as armor, protecting from attacks to the animals' back.

See also here.

The Zen of Presentations, Part 22: Conversation, not isolation

I spotted this resource, iBioSeminars, over at The Daily Transcript. I'm not impressed with what I've seen so far -- and these are some very bright people, who I know can be playful and interesting. I see the same old stuff. I see low end PowerPoint slides and the sort of lifeless delivery that sucks the joy from so many scientific presentations.

The only novelty is that they’ve put the presenters on a green screen stage so that their slides can be projected behind them. These things make me appreciate television weather forecasters and reporters. The speakers I looked at don't do handle it well, looking offscreen more than looking at the camera. And some of these things go on for hours.

Videotaped talked can work; I’ve linked to enough TED talks in this blog to show I believe that.

A major problem here is that there’s no audience.

Hans Rosling gave a now famous talk at TED, but less well known are comments he made about it in a later presentation. Rosling said he originally wanted something that was interactive, and that people can explore, and not something passive that people would just watch. He was astonished that millions of people viewed his TED talk.

Rosling's talk would not have been watched by millions of people if it was was presented like the iBioSeminars: alone on a green screen stage with projected slides.

The audience is a big part of what makes Rosling’s talk so great. Go watch the first five minutes, and don’t listen to him—listen to the audience. The spontaneous responses, the laughter, the applause, those things make that talk live. I also doubt Rosling’s performance would have been anywhere near as energized if he was alone in a room, looking off camera to figure out if his fingers are pointing in the right place.



Human beings are very good at conversation, very good at face-to-face interactions. We like it. We crave it. Trying to take the information out of that social context almost always kills it. I think it’s why we have interviewers in many cases, not just people saying what they want. Having an interviewer makes it a conversation, not isolation. It’s why television comedies used to be filmed before an audience, and those that weren't had laugh tracks dubbed in over them.

The audience feeds into the presentation more than you’d think. The dynamics between a presenter and the audience cannot be underestimated. Every time the audience comes out of the equation, presentations suffer.

Anniversaries

Has it really been two decades since this...


...not to mention this?

Not a rock

The round thing in the foreground of the picture? It's not a rock.

It's one cell. An amoeba.

4 cm in diameter.

And it leaves trails on the ocean bottom as it moves.

Cool!