Mar 18 2009
Education for Educators
Any teachers out there? You might be interested in checking out the 207th edition of the Carnival of Education.
Class dismissed.
Archive for March, 2009
Mar 18 2009
Watery Flesh
We need rain. Badly. And none is in the 10-day forecast. No, we don’t need it because I’d like to see some rain lilies. As above. Though that would be nice. We need the rain to make plant flesh internally wetter and less susceptible to fire.
Mar 18 2009
The Gravitational Shadow of Dark Matter
A number of years ago I heard a recording of a physics lecture by Richard Feynman, one of the “fathers” of quantum theory. It was an excellent talk and I came away from it with the clearer realization that knowledge of the universe depends upon our observations of it. Whether those observations are few, first hand and informal (less scientific) or many and strictly methodological with instruments involved (more scientific).
In a sense, to observe something you must interact with it. Preferably you can do it a number of times in a way that is verifiable/replicable. This notion, by the way, makes me strongly doubt any supposedly supernatural entity/phenomenon. How is a natural entity to observe via natural processes something supposedly beyond and undetectable by natural processes?
Quantum physics has revealed a philosophical conundrum at the atomic scale. To know something of tiny particles, you must interact with them. And the interaction changes the very thing you are attempting to gain knowledge of. Precisely measuring one attribute makes another less precisely knowable. Quantum uncertainty.
A more recent conundrum in the field of physics is that of “dark matter.” And we have just zoomed from the realm of the very small to the other extreme. Dark matter is called dark because it cannot be observed. So we are blind to it. We look and see only darkness.
Fortunately, scientists can be a clever lot. And they have recently found new evidence of the elusive matter. But not by directly observing. By finding indirect signs of it.
Mar 18 2009
Wine in My Family Line
No wonder I love wine, particularly robust reds like Burgundy — science has proved that it is in my genes. Or maybe not.
What researchers have discovered is the remains of a vineyard in eastern France dating back to the Gallo-Roman era. The site is near the town of Dijon.
Years ago a member of my family looked into the genealogy of my father’s side of the family — Bernardin — and was able to trace males bearing that name all the way back to a small town outside of the Dijon area of France.
No wonder why I love spicy mustards! It must be genetic. Or maybe not.
How did the scientists make their determination? Fortunately, the tell us.
How can we date these remains? Vines planted in rows are characteristic of Antiquity (and of the 20th century, but old land registers contain no trace of recent vineyards). Not only do these pits closely resemble those in other Gallo-Roman vineyards, but the spacing within rows, and the distances between rows, are multiples of the Roman foot (29.6 centimeters). The excavations showed that the pits were dug in ancient soil (from the Neolithic to the protohistoric periods), at a time that can thus be situated after the Gallic period. According to the fragments of pottery found in the pits, they probably date from the 1st century AD.
Okay, the vineyards date back only a couple thousand years. But that is five hundred years longer than the origin of the dating system that “gave us” B.C. & A.D. According to Wikipedia.
The Anno Domini dating system was devised in 525 by Dionysius Exiguus . . . .
Why didn’t the science writers use the more contemporary and inclusive “C.E.” I wonder.
Anno Domini is sometimes referred to as the Common Era, Christian Era or Current Era (abbreviated as C.E. or CE). CE is often preferred by those who desire a term ostensibly unrelated to Christian conceptions of time. For example, Cunningham and Starr (1998) write that “B.C.E./C.E. … do not presuppose faith in Christ and hence are more appropriate for interfaith dialog than the conventional B.C./A.D.”
Yes, more appropriate for dialogue with people of differing faiths. Or no faith at all. I’ll raise my glass to that idea.
Mar 17 2009
Looking Farther (14) – A Spinning Whirled
It is a darn good thing that our sensory organs and brains operate at the speed they do. Otherwise our view of “the heavens” might look like that above NASA photo.
Then again, maybe we do see the world something like the above. A rock, for instance, is solid material. Right? Yet if we sufficiently speeded up our perceptual abilities, and zoomed in close, would we not see a solid hunk of matter, but instead a whirling entity of particles in largely empty space?
Mar 17 2009
The Mother of Empathy
Is experience the mother of empathy? A fascinating study on The Neural Mechanisms of Empathy has suggested that lacking a personal experience of pain can make it difficult to “feel” the pain of another. And that people who lack the experience may have to rely more on such things as emotional gestures to understand another person’s feeling state.
So the next time you observe a person grimace after, say, a heavy box just landed on their toes, you might wonder whether you share a small bit of his/her discomfort because you know what it feels like to have your toes injured or because you can read the pain in their face. Or both.
Mar 17 2009
Deep Thought and Multi-Tasking
Is our Internet age of iPhones, iTunes, YouTube and whatnot producing a generation of shallow thinkers? That is the question posed in this science article: Is Technology Producing A Decline In Critical Thinking And Analysis?
I can certainly understand the concern and believe it needs study. Yes, many people are probably — probably — spending more of their conscious hours jumping rapidly between tasks. More time with our attention spread thinly means less time with it focused and sustained on any one task. But will this truly create a people lacking critical thinking skills? I wonder.
The study concluded . . .
As technology has played a bigger role in our lives, our skills in critical thinking and analysis have declined, while our visual skills have improved.
How did the author, Patricia Greenfield, determine this? Good question. Here’s one source of data she used:
Mar 16 2009
Knowing Alligators
[Lake Woodruff National Wildlife Refuge]
Since moving to Florida and living here for ten years, I’ve gained a greater understanding of alligators. One of the things I know now is where to look to find them. The last time boating, my shipmates and I spied over a dozen of them. A low bank facing south provides entry and exit from the water and an optimal angle to the sunshine that heats their bodies and speeds their digestion and other processes.
I have also learned that when startled a gator makes a beeline for water, no matter where whatever startled it may be. One time my wife and I went silently slipping around a bend, virtually silently in our small boat with electric motor, when we moved abreast of a huge alligator. Eight feet, minimum . . . near the length of our small boat. The gator saw us and charged . . . straight at us! Or so it seemed. After a large and loud spray of water, and the rocking of our boat, the gator slipped beneath us and out of sight. We had cut off its only retreat. So it dove beneath our boat. My, that was exciting!
On a humorous note, the mock science-reporters over at the Onion present this finding — Study: Alligators Dangerous No Matter How Drunk You Are.
Ain’t that the truth. While Budweiser consumption may make you more stupid, it does nothing to sedate the gator.
The first graph reads -
BATON ROUGE, LA—In a breakthrough study that contradicts decades of understanding about the nature of alligator–drunkard relations, Louisiana State University researchers have concluded that people’s drunkenness does not impair the ancient reptiles’ ability to inflict enormous physical harm.
I would imagine, however, that a person’s level of drunk-ness might predict how likely they are to flirt with winning a Darwin Award.
Mar 16 2009
High IQ and Avoiding a Darwin Award
The book series and website, “Darwin Awards,” came out a number of years ago. Their moto:
Honoring those who improve the species…by accidentally removing themselves from it!
At the site and in the books you will read of individuals like this one:
(Winter 1995, Michigan) During the ski season at Sugarloaf Resort, a new lift operator was assigned to work the bottom of Lift 2. He was greatly impressed by the bull wheel that turned slowly above his head. The giant spokes on the wheel were impossible to resist. He grabbed onto a spoke and did a few pull-ups while the wheel turned.
After entertaining himself in this manner for a while, he decided to try this trick on the outer rim of the wheel. His timing was off. He did not drop down in time. Caught between the wheel and the lift cable, he was sliced in twain during this fateful final trip around the bull wheel.
Personally, when I read anecdotes like the above, I’m not so much inclined to think What an idiot; did he have no common sense! Instead, I recall the times in my more impulsive youth that I came close to becoming a statistic myself: Skiing much too fast down a slope and coming over a rise to find a boy sprawled out on the snow directly in front of me. The last-second evasive action I took sent me tumbling into a snow fence. Fortunately, I busted only a fence rail and the lens to my goggles — not my body. What was I thinking . . . skiing so fast I severely limited my control!
I wasn’t thinking.
Nonetheless, there may actually be a link between IQ and accident-proneness. Robust frontal lobes — mature ones — may indeed help a person avoid winning a Darwin avoid.
As the news release, High IQ Linked To Reduced Risk Of Death discloses,
Mar 16 2009
Technology and Morality
The other day I read a notice about an upcoming debate titled, “Can We Be Good Without God?” I had to stifle a laugh. The answer to that question is a near no-brainer. It has already been answered by a natural experiment involving millions if not billions of subjects.
The hidden assumption that by “God” we mean “the Bible god” aside, all a person has to do is compare the rates of crime, violent, property, whatever, of groups of people who believe in a god and the rates for those who don’t. Japan, for example, has relatively few monotheistic believers, and their rates of crime are substantially lower than our own.
AHA! The critical thinker may think — but we must compare apples to apples and not Americans to Orientals. Why? Because there are so many variables involved. It is next to ludicrous, besides mentioning the possession of a y chromosome, to narrow down “good behavior” to one supposedly key variable. That variable — belief in a god — from all the research I’ve seen, is a pitifully minor variable at best, a non-variable or even a contributor to bad behavior, at worst. Within our own country there is no consistent link between belief and better behavior.
Of course, people like to cherry pick data to support their argument. Look at divorce rates! they will cry. Belief in god is going down (prayer to “him” has been removed from public school . . .) and divorce rates are up!
Behavior is a complicated thing. Recent research suggests, for example, that home appliances are as much to blame for an increase in the divorce rate as is loss of faith. Probably more, because there is good data to back it up.
Intrigued? Read on . . .
