Moving sucks already, but wait, there’s more!

So, our Sunday was to be spent moving our larger items of furniture with a borrowed pickup from our present abode to a new place in nearby New Albany, Indiana. While we were gone from apartment #2 getting stuff from apartment #1, a fire broke out in #2’s building.

We returned that afternoon to find workers crawling over the roof of the building, the Red Cross response team helping residents find hotel accommodations, and a bright yellow caution tape barring access to our part of the building. Our new apartment was now aflood in water and smelling strongly of wood smoke.

This after we had just got the cable and internet hooked up, and moved most of our kitchen stuff into the new kitchen, which now resembled a small wading pool.

Of the residents displaced by the fire, we got off easy, since we still can live in apartment #1 for another week and could store our undamaged stuff elsewhere in the complex. We lost a few small kitchen appliances and will have to launder some blankets. No biggie.

We will probably get a similar apartment to replace the one we lost. Everyone else affected, five other tenants, are holed up in a nearby hotel until the property management can figure out what to do with their residences.

You can read all about the fire here.

New science carnival, second edition

For lovers of the physical sciences — and isn’t that everyone? — the latest edition of the latest science blog carnival, Philosophia Naturalis, is at Nonoscience. Check it out.

For sale: Remote, lakeshore lots. Buyers must be methane-breathers

Oh, and be prepared to travel to stake a claim.

Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, is the only satellite in our solar system with its own atmosphere. It may well be the only object in the solar system besides Earth with lakes, as this recent image from the Cassini space probe reveals.

The dark, smooth features are lakes of liquid methane and ethane, not water, though. The weather on Titan is just a tad chilly — -178 degrees Celsius or -288 degrees F –coldÂ� enough for the two hydrocarbon gases to liquify.

Compare that image (taken with radar to penetrate Titan’s thick cloud cover) with this view of Lake Powell in Utah taken from orbit by the Space Shuttle astronauts:

We can see in the Lake Powell shot how the dark water contrasts sharply with the rough terrain, just as the methane/ethane lakes stand out from the rougher ground on Titan.

Scientists are especially curious about surface conditions on Titan, since it is believed that Titan’s atmosphere (methane rain, folks!) resembles the early atmosphere of Earth before photosynthesis “poisoned” the air with oxygen. In other words, Titan could be a large time capsule, providing clues to the conditions on the infant Earth.

And remember, before you buy any property off the internet, make sure you visit the site first, or at least talk to the natives. Good luck!

Sad news, the USA trails behind 32 other countries in its acceptance of evolution

We knew it was bad here, but not this bad. An international survey of adults’ acceptance of evolution places the US near the bottom of the barrel, just above Turkey and far, far below Japan and most of Western Europe. It’s yet more evidence that the US of A is a pretty benighted, or at least confused, nation.

The survey, conducted by two US and one Japanese researchers in 2005, asked adults in 34 countries their responses to this statement: “Human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals.” The responders were asked to state whether the statement was true or false, or to state they were not sure.

The results for the US group: true, 40%, not sure, 21%, and false, 39%. Only Muslim Turkey, with an acceptance rate of about 23%, scored lower than the States. Meanwhile, more than 75% of the participants in Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, France, Japan and the UK judged the survey statement as being true, and relatively few were fencesitters. Most of the other Western European countries were not far behind.

The US shared the bottom rankings with Bulgaria, Lithuania, Latvia, Cyprus and Turkey. I leave the reader to draw his or her own conclusions about that group.

The researchers were Jon D. Miller, Hannah Professor of Integrative Studies at Michigan State University, Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, and Shinji Okamoto of Kobe University, Japan. They published their results in the Aug. 11 issue of Science. A summary of the article just came in today’s mail in my copy of NSTA Reports, a publication of the National Science Teachers Association.

Miller, Scott and Okamoto pinpointed three key differences between the USA and its Western European counterparts, all of which are pretty obvious to those of us in the science education trenches.

1. Fundamentalist religions are much more influential in the USA than in most of the other countries, and these religions refuse to accept humans as just another animal and products of evolution. These religions teach that God created humans apart from the rest of life on Earth.

2. In no other country is the rejection of evolution part of a stated, official political platform. [One might also extend this idea to the use/abuse of religious dogma in political discourse here generally.]

3. Americans are generally ignorant of genetics, and are unaware, for example, that the DNA of humans overlaps significantly with chimpanzees and even mice.

The writers conclude, in part, with the following statement:

“These results should be troubling for science educators at all levels. Basic concepts of evolution should be taught in middle school, high school, and college life sciences courses and the growing number of adults who are uncertain about these ideas suggests that current science instruction is not effective.”

– Science 11 August 2006: Vol. 313. no. 5788, pp. 765 – 766

Now that’s an understatement, given that there are significant fundie forces in several states trying to force Intelligent Design – creationism in sheep’s clothing – into the public school curricula, and given that our educational “system” permits home schoolers and church-run schools to teach just about anything to our kids. It’s not just that current science instruction is ineffective. It’s just not there at all in many parts of the country!

While informative, the article ignores one other key difference between the US and other countries represented in the study. Most other countries have centralized national curricula that permit little leeway in what teachers can teach. That kind of centralized educational system is anathema to most US citizens, who fervently believe in each community’s “right” to local control of the schools. The religious fundies would cry foul as well, declaring that secular, Godless forces would be trying to undermine our Christian nation. (Of course, they’d be more than happy to force creationism on the rest of us, given half the chance.) Thus, our national government can encourage the teaching of evolution in the schools, but has comparatively little authority – or political will – to enforce it.

So, short of a second American Revolution, what solutions to this dismal state of affairs exist? We can resist efforts by creationists and ID-ers to push these non-scientific “theories” into the public schools. We can support teachers and schools who consider teaching evolution as part of their jobs. We have to be willing to reason with those who refuse to accept evolution as valid, by showing them (as much as possible) the genetic evidence that humans are part of the animal kingdom and the fossil evidence that traces the evolution of humans from earlier hominids. [Such reasoning, I grant, will probably result in little change, since arguing against one person's religious beliefs is generally doomed to fail, but one must try.] Finally, marshall any and all popular resources that discuss evolution dispassionately and be willing to talk about them; Time magazine – hardly a liberal firebrand — has run some pretty good cover stories on genetics and evolution recently.

We are at the bottom, but there is hope. Not all of America is in denial about evolution. As the authors of the article suggest, we need to work on that 21% that are undecided. The naysayers are probably past all hope of reform, but miracles can happen!

Why Facebook is better than MySpace

So, if I have a MySpace page, it seems only natural that I join the Facebook crowd, too. And in just a short few days, I have concluded all on my own that Facebook is light years ahead of MySpace in terms of form and function.

Form: None of the MySpace DIY webpage formatting that creates graphic abominations. True, Facebook pages are boringly identical in layout, but you CAN READ THEM! SInce they are easily read and navigated, it seems to be a lot easier to find people and for them to find you in Facebook than MySpace.

Function: Aside from the clear navigational aids, I was most impressed by Facebook’s “import a blog” feature, which I immediately enabled on my page there. It’s not a particularly complex feature, so I wonder why MySpace can’t do it, too. Blogs have feeds (RSS, Atom, etc.), so you give Facebook your feed URL and you get to post in two places at once. Result: wider audience and more traffic to your site (perhaps).

That being said, I feel like somewhat of an interloper on both sites. The vast majority of Facebook and MySpace users are less than half my age! So I definitely stand out in those friends lists. (Actually, on MySpace, Sir Sean Connery is standing in for me. ) Then there is the fact that many of my students use either or both sites, which is probably kind of weird from both our perspectives. People tend to be remarkably frank on these sites, so I see a side of my students (and former students) that I don’t usually see at school. My own sites are kind of bare right now, so the sharing is a tad lopsided. Give me some time, kids!

My cursory involvement in both sites has enabled me to see why they are so popular. They’re fun! You meet new people and keep in touch with old friends. Sure, there is the possibility for abuse — creepy guys impersonating teenagers and luring real teenagers away from house and home, cruel insults, flames, etc. — but any medium lends itself to both good and bad uses. (Look at cable TV!)

Case in point. Back in the day, prank telephone calls were (still are, I guess) an isolated, but common occurence. Kids made some of them. Creepy adults made others. No one suggested then that we limit telephone usage to users over the age of 14, or ask telephone users to confirm their identity before placing a call. To do so, would entail taking on the monolith, the Bell Telephone Company — the ONLY phone company — which could do pretty much anything it damn well liked. Instead, parents instead were cautioned to coach their children how to handle strange phone calls, and kids wereÂ� urged not to run off to meet some sweet-talking man on the phone. Somehow, in the intervening years, politicians and parenting uber-experts now expect the media operators to do the policing, instead of encouraging the intelligent and responsible use of the media by their users.

Now if we could just teach MySpace users what decent, readable graphic design looks like, all would be well.

And speaking of videos …

Sorry, no sex acts or nudity in these vids. You can find those elsewhere. Check out Anousheh Ansari as she demonstrates some zero-g effects while chatting with her husband, Hamid, from the International Space Station.

Ansari is by no means the first to perform somersaults in orbit or show how to spin an apple in zero-g, but of all the private citizens to have gone into space, she has done more in two weeks to humanize space exploration than all the world’s space agencies have done in 50 years. Read her blog posts. They are eloquent, heartfelt and at times darn poetic. Pretty good for an engineer!

Also, check her flightsuit, which features both the US and the Iranian flags. Rumors were flying before her launch that NASA had nixed her displaying the Iranian flag on her suit. If they were true, then Ansari effectively told NASA to go stick it. After all, it’s not like NASA could send her home.

Paducah area science teacher still sacked after appearing nude, and then some

It’s old news, since Tericka Dye lost her job last spring, but it’s a fitting counterpoint to Sydney McGee’s situation.

Dye is a popular, award-winning science teacher and volleyball coach at Reidland High School in McCracken County. When word got out that she had performed in adult films as Rikki Andersin 11 years ago, Dye got the old heave-ho. Despite legal and administrative efforts to regain her job, Dye remains unemployed as a teacher.

As Dye and her lawyer tell it, she was a broke 23-year-old with children to feed. She discovered, as many women have, that any halfway attractive female can make some big bucks quickly if she is willing to strip, move suggestively, and/or perform sex acts on camera. In Dye’s case, she worked as a stripper and was enticed to go to Los Angeles to film oral and anal sex scenes, which appeared in several XXX movies.

Unlike some adult film actresses, Dye did not stay in the business, despite a tidy $3,000 paycheck. She joined the army, went to college, got a degree and ended up as a science teacher in western Kentucky, land of God-fearing, forgiving Christian folk.

Despite shows of support from parents, students and local churches, and sympathetic coverage by Louisville’s The Southeast Outlook, the McCracken County school board decided that her previous occupation as an adult film actress would be “too distracting,” rendering her unfit to be a teacher.

Thus, we lose another gifted teacher to bureaucratic buffoonery. Frankly, Dye’s story would probably hold her students’ attention better than any teaching method known to the profession, even if she was teaching them about plate tectonics or botanical classification. Students usually find their teachers boring, because they find the subject boring. When they come across a teacher who is actually interesting and who loves his or her chosen subject, some kids actually get fired up about the subject at hand.

Dye has led a rough-and-tumble life. She took advantage of a lucrative job opportunity, which despite some bluenoses’ wishes, is quite legal in many parts of the world. She made some quick bucks, but gave it up for more legitimate, less “edgy” pursuits, and became a model citizen. Why punish her for something she did more than a decade ago?

Of course, if an art teacher can be suspended for showing students a nude sculpture of a 2,300-year-old dead guy, I suppose it’s to be expected that a science teacher can lose her job for sucking a live guy at age 23.

Dallas art teacher sacked after students see nude boy, woman

In yet another example of bluenoses running amuck in the heartland, a Dallas art teacher has lost her job after taking her fifth graders to the Dallas Museum of Art. One of the pieces of art the kids saw was this funerary figure of an athlete cut down in the prime of his youth, ca. 330 BCE.

You will note that, with the exception of his missing head and left arm, the boy is anatomically correct. The children saw other nudes at the museum, as well. Apparently, one of the children complained to a parent, who complained to Sydney McGee’s boss, who suspended her pending administrative review.

One doubts the parent or administrator took the time to actually view the piece in question, which has not been named.

McGee, 51, is an award-winning, popular teacher at her school, The Wilma Fisher Elementary School north of Dallas. While she has apparently had some minor run-ins with her principal, McGee seems to be a responsible, dedicated teacher who wants to expose (no pun intended!) her students to our rich cultural heritage.

It’s a heritage that includes accurate depictions of the nude human figure, which Greek sculptors celebrated in countless examples, and which Roman and Renaissance sculptors, among others, imitated.

According to this New York Times article, the children also saw Auguste Rodin’s tormented nude, Shade, at right, and Aristide Maillol’s alluring Flora, at left.

Here’s my re-creation of the conversation between parent and 10-year-old child that may have started this incredible story.

Parent: How was the field trip today, dear?

Child: OK, I guess.

Parent: What did you see?

Child: We saw a naked boy with no head and girl with a wet dress on. You could see her boobies.

Parent: A what? And a what? Her what?

Child: It was cool. There was other stuff, but it was boring. Can I go play video games now?

Now, I imagine the parent in question immediately picked up the phone, or perhaps waited until morning, to holler at the school’s principal for scarring that poor child for life by showing him or her graphic images of mutilated boys and participants in a local Dallas wet T-shirt contest. The principal might be one of those administrators who avoid controversy like the plague, and probably promised said irate parent immediate disciplining of the depraved teacher who forced such pornographic materials on the fifth graders.

Now we can yet another local school to our collection of communities to mock for their idiocy and teachers to praise for their dedication to their craft. It’s too bad the former so many times renders the latter ineffectual.

The end is near! Watch for receding coastlines, icicles in hell!

Yes, dear readers, ’tis true. I have joined the MySpace generation, after months of excoriating it as a graphic trainwreck and web navigation disaster. I have a modest, graphically simple (thank you) MySpace page at http://www.myspace.com/wheatdogg. Why? Because, like nature, I abhor a vacuum.

Some months ago, while writing about Brittany McComb, the Nevada valedictorian whose overly Christian message alarmed school officials, I tried to contact her. McComb’s only presence on the internet was her MySpace page, and you cannot contact a MySpacer without having a MySpace account yourself. She never replied to my questions, but there I was, stuck with a MySpace page with nothing on it. Rather than request the sitemasters to delete it, I decided to use it as a way to direct people to this, my real blog.

In short order, I joined a couple of groups, including that of the high school where I teach. Before long, students got wind of it. Most were amazed, or at least amused, but I overheard one say to a friend that I was still using the default MySpace layout. Youch! My wounded web developer pride forced me to explore more tasteful (read, less busy and confusing) MySpace layouts. The examples I have seen (some used by my students, in fact) are worse than the default, with backgrounds that hurt your eyes, color schemes that make it hard to read the text, and layouts that spill off the screen. In other words, they suck!

I settled on a minimalist design that eschews all the graphical nightmares of so-called professional MySpace layouts for simple text links in a three-column format. It’s not my design, BTW, just one I adapted.

Generally speaking, parents and teachers distrust MySpace, so I can imagine why my students were so surprised that I was using it. MySpace has had a lot of bad press, some of it deserved, because the site has done such a poor job of protecting its younger users from “internet predators.” Its reputation as a dating/hook-up site does not exactly add to appeal among the older generation, who would rather not admit that their teens might possibly have (or want to have) a love life.

But MySpace is not all about sex, drugs and rock and roll. Three of my own kids have MySpace pages, as do many of my students and former students. Most are connecting with friends old and new, not looking for one-night stands or dangerous liaisons with creeps. It’s a social networking site, after all. For the most part, the younger users are pretty smart about their use of MySpace. They listen to the news, too, and can cut through the alarmist reactions to isolated abductions and molesting incidents to a more cautious use of a new medium.

So, there I am, in MySpace-land. Who woulda thunk?

AMAZON.COM:

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I’m just plain jealous …

Check this photo from Anousheh Ansari at flickr.com. It’s the view from her bedroom window. A more direct link to her blog from space is http://spaceblog.xprize.org/by-anousheh/