Strike Two for California

A California high school history teacher has been found guilty of violating the First Amendment by calling a student's comments about creationism "religious, superstitious nonsense". Ouch! It gets worse.

In a December 2007 lawsuit, [Advanced Placement European history student, Chad] Farnan, then a sophomore, accused Corbett of repeatedly promoting hostility toward Christians in class and advocating "irreligion over religion" in violation of the First Amendment's establishment clause.

The establishment clause prohibits the government from making any law "respecting an establishment of religion" and has been interpreted by U.S. courts to also prohibit government employees from displaying religious hostility. --Scott Martindale, The Orange County Register

So government employees are not allowed to talk about non-religious alternatives.

It gets worse.

Corbett made his "superstitious nonsense" remark during a class discussion about a 1993 court case in which former Capistrano Valley High science teacher John Peloza sued the Capistrano Unified School District, challenging its requirement that Peloza teach evolution. --Scott Martindale, The Orange County Register

So yes, this comment really was in the context of a conversation about evolution and creationism. I will admit that how the teacher said it is quite disrespectful, but to call it the "establishment of (ir)religion?!" Are teachers not allowed to express personal opinion? The court found the school district not liable for the teacher's comments, so clearly this was the teacher's opinion, so if it was just his opinion how does it constitute the government establishing, because that's what the first amendment is about, the government And if it's the government doing the establishing, why is it the teacher is the defendant, and not the government?

And the part that I fear the most: does this mean my telling my science students that creationism is "not a scientific statement" is also violating the freedom of speech and separation of Church and State? Should I wipe my lecture on the origins of life on Earth in the context of astrobiology in the fear that a student will charge me with something?

This is just ridiculous.

Today Show on MSNBC screws up Equinox

As usual a news show tries to trump up how the Equinox is the only time you can balance an egg on end. This is entirely untrue, debunked by Phil Plait here and here. But that's not the fun part of the below video.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Appeal to Authority

Logical fallacies are viewpoints brought up during arguments which appear logical on the surface, but when you dig a little deeper are in fact mostly unfounded. One common fallacy is the appeal to authority, where you assume that just because someone is an "authority," that they have to be right. For example, "Pope Urban VIII said that Galileo's views were wrong, so since I trust the Pope I'm going to agree with the Pope and say that the universe is actually geocentric." Sometimes the flaw is that the "authority" isn't actually authoritative in the topic in question - the Pope isn't an astronomer, the President of the US isn't a meteorologist, etc. But even if the "authority" is actually an authority, that doesn't make him/her automatically correct. Even authorities make mistakes - look at Tycho Brahe for example. This is also the entire point of peer reviewed journals, to give the authorities the chance to duke it out.

So that said, when the NY Times Magazine devotes a 28-screen-long article to singing Freeman Dyson's laurels as a motivation for us to listen to his arguments about CO_2 levels, I find myself quite disappointed. Dyson is an authority on quantum physics and sci-fi concepts (such as the Dyson sphere, which led to Larry Niven's Ringworld concept/series); he is NOT an authority on environmental science. I don't care how many people think he's a genius, he isn't a genius in this field. And even if he were, even authorities can make mistakes. It is NOT appropriate for the NY Times to promote an individual's ideas based solely upon that individual's reputation. If the article were billing itself as a biography of Dyson's life, it could be an excellent one, but the article is trying to give us a view of Dyson's ideas and as such it is a remarkably poor one.

I guess in the end by expecting the NY Times to live up to its reputation, I too am guilty of putting too much faith in authority.

Texas BOE to vote on Science Standards again

Once again Texas has reviewed and revised its state science standards, and once again they're trying to put in creationism. In this instance it's particularly bad because textbooks for the largest state in the US will be selected based upon these standards. If this bothers you, especially if you live in Texas yourself, here's some info on who to contact to complain and bring some sanity back into the process.

"The Fair Copyright in Research Works Act"

The Fair Copyright in Research Works Act is supposedly intended to protect the intellectual property of scientists and their funding sources. Right now the NIH requires that all research funded by them be made available to the public for free after a certain proprietary period (in addition to their usual publication in peer-reviewed journals). Passing the bill would allow the NIH (and other federal groups such as the NSF, etc.) to remove this requirement from federally funded researchers, so that the researchers could choose to (or additional private funding sources could require them to) only publish their work in expensive peer-reviewed journals.

There is some debate about whether this is really as bad as it sounds. On the one hand, it sounds like the Act would allow the stifling of scientific communications and would mean that the American public would have to pay twice to see the work that their taxes paid for. On the other hand, it's my understanding that all federally funded research is required to be public domain and it's not clear that this Act would counteract that, or that the NIH and other federal groups would choose to do what the Act would allow. In addition, it might allow researchers to use multiple funding sources for a project which they may be unable to do right now - pharmaceutical companies may require NDAs for their work which the NIH regulations currently rule out since the researchers have to publish publicly.

Some links for more reading
The Act itself, Library of Congress
Phil Plait/Bad Astronomer's first post
His second post
A lawyer's opinion
Financial Times article

Windmill saves ski resort $450k/year

More land-using organizations should start putting up wind turbines, if the results from Jiminy Peak Mountain Resort in Hancock MA is any indication. Putting up a single turbine is saving them $450,000 per year, around 1/3 of their energy bill. Fortunately for them, the windmill produces the most electricity during the winter when it's the most windy, and seeing as they're a sky resort it's also when they use the most electricity (primarily due to their snow-making machines). (I can't help but think that if more companies used turbines, that we'd slow global warming and ski resorts wouldn't need to make fake snow as much.)

Also interestingly during the summer months the turbine produces more electricity than the Jiminy Peak uses. It appears they have not actually worked out a buy-back program for the excess electricity (where their utility company would actually pay *them* if they produced more electricity than they used), so instead the excess power goes into the grid - where it is then used up by local residents, reducing their reliance on the power company, on fossil fuels (coal burning is the primary source of electricity even in the Northeast US), and even their electricity bills. So this project has helped not only the ski resort, but also the local community.

Just don't tell the bats - the action of the turbine results in extremely low pressure air behind the turbine, which then results in internal bleeding. Shame that every improvement in one field leads to a problem in another. Time will tell whether the net good outweighs the net bad.

What is Science?

I'm working on creating an online course that is the equivalent of my face-to-face intro astronomy course. Think of it as an "astronomy for poets" course, as there's very little math, and it's an overview course. Below is the first online lecture for it, or if the embedding doesn't work well for you, here's the direct link.

Physics Limericks

Have I mentioned I love order of magnitude estimates?

How Fermi could estimate things!
Like the well-known Olympic ten rings,
And the one-hundred states,
And weeks with ten dates,
And birds that all fly with one... wings.

--David Morin, Harvard University

There's plenty more physics limericks on Dr. Morin's webpage or in his physics textbook.

Hubble problems

The Hubble Space Telescope is currently dead. The electrical circuit that controls ALL the cameras on the telescope, called Side A, has ceased functioning. The HST also cannot send any data. It can however be pointed in different directions (for what purpose though?), and can otherwise communicate with mission control. The HST also has a backup circuit, called Side B, that can provide power to the cameras - everything on these ships is built with multiple redundancy, even when they're serviceable. Unfortunately Side B hasn't been tested in orbit in the 18 years Hubble's been up - we knew Side A was working, so why mess with a good thing? (It did test out good before launch though.) They're currently working on switching over to Side B, but it may take a few days if all goes well, or a few months if not.

Meanwhile the servicing mission for mid-October has been put on hold. If they're not able to bring Side B online, I'm sure they will alter the postponed mission's objectives to start with fixing either Side A or B, or possibly installing a Side C, whichever seems easiest.

Pie Chart

"What your vote helps determine"

In case you're wondering where your research dollars go, and what difference your vote makes...



US Citizens, register to vote by early October.

Evolution in the classroom

An interesting NY Times article follows a science teacher who worked on evolution standards throughout a few days in his classroom. There's also a bunch of links to graphics and more information, such as the infamous 10 Questions About Evolution - and answers!

US News Best Colleges

The US News and World Report yearly college rankings are out. You can view the lists, or search on the college of your choice.

Famous Scientists

I was amused to stumble across the website Famous Scientsts while doing Google Image Labeler. They've got mini-bios and photos of some 20 scientists, and I was glad to see there's two women in the list.

More on UC vs Christian schools

Whee, CNN Video now allows embedding!



(If the video has problems, try this link.)

The girl's statement that her school teaches the "theories" of both ID and evolution and therefore is less "narrow" is exactly the problem - ID is not a theory, it's a baseless conjecture without any evidence. A theory needs to be well-tested, with an overwhelming amount of physical evidence to support it, such that it is well-accepted by the scientific community. These students are clearly NOT being taught that crucial distinction, and therefore do NOT understand how science works.

Bizarre observations from normal videos

There's a couple videos making the rounds right now where a woman observes some natural phenomenon and makes really bizarre conclusions. Although these are posted by two different people, I believe they were originally made by the same person - the rainbow link is a reposting, the Moon one appears to be the original person if you glance at some of her other videos, but I don't see the rainbow among them.

The Rainbow DiHydrogen Monoxide Conspiracy



This was discussed by the Bad Astronomer, and I didn't have the desire to view it then, but will now. If anyone here really does need an explanation of this "freaky unnatural rainbow sprinkler, since light isn't naturally a rainbow," in short, whenever there's a fine mist (such as clouds, or spray from a waterfall, or from a sprinkler) in front of you, and a source of continuum light (usually the Sun) behind you, the light bounces around inside the mist droplets and comes back out as a rainbow. A similar effect can be seen with ice particles in clouds around the Moon at night - since it's ice, the way the light bounces is different so you'll see the ring around the Moon instead of in the opposite direction.

The statement "This cannot be natural, it didn't happen 20 years ago," is simply an indication that 20 years ago she was not as observant as she is now, and in fact if she had been listening in school 30 years ago, she might even know "what the hell is going on".

The Moon is Broken



What's happening to the Moon in this video is known as earthshine. The Moon appears bright because light from the Sun bounces off the Moon and into our eyes. If you were standing on that part of the Moon you'd see a bright Sun in the sky. The other side appears dark usually b/c no light is bouncing off of it. Sometimes we can actually see the "dark" side due to reflected light from the Earth - light from the Sun bounces off the Earth, then off the Moon and into our eyes. If you were standing on the Moon there you'd see a bright Earth in the sky, much like the Full Moon looks bright to us here.

As for her last comment in the video ("The Moon seems awfully low for this time of year"), it's not actually the time of year that matters, it's the phase of the Moon. The crescent Moon is never far from the Sun in the sky, so it makes perfect sense for the waxing crescent Moon to set right after sunset.

While this woman's conclusions are entirely bizarre, I have to applaud her observational skills, and her desire to learn what caused these various effects. There are many more people out there with even more bizarre ideas in their heads, but they never bother to look up or around themselves, and thus have no hope of ever leaving their strange little worlds. This woman at least has a chance.

Judge says UC can deny religious course credit

(08-12) 17:25 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- A federal judge says the University of California can deny course credit to applicants from Christian high schools whose textbooks declare the Bible infallible and reject evolution.

Rejecting claims of religious discrimination and stifling of free expression, U.S. District Judge James Otero of Los Angeles said UC's review committees cited legitimate reasons for rejecting the texts - not because they contained religious viewpoints, but because they omitted important topics in science and history and failed to teach critical thinking.

(Bob Egelko, SF Chronicle)

This is excellent news for science and history, for universities, and for students. For science and history because it promotes fact-based and logic-based teaching, saying that making assumptions before performing the research is NOT an acceptable method of analysis. For universities because we can continue to defend our rigorous standards without government or religious interference. And for students because students will continue to be delivered quality higher education requiring them to learn critical thinking skills which will serve them well in life, and hopefully parochial K-12 schools will begin to reconsider their courses which do not teach such skills.

Partial Lunar Eclipse: Aug 16

On the heels of last week's total solar eclipse, this Saturday night, August 16, there will be a partial lunar eclipse, visible in New England, South America, Africa, Europe, and parts of Asia. Sorry rest of the US, you don't get to see it.

Lunar eclipses often precede or follow solar eclipses because a solar eclipse requires the Earth, Moon, and Sun to be very precisely lined up, with the Moon in the middle. This precise condition doesn't last very long, maybe a couple weeks, but fortunately that's how long it takes for the Moon to go around to the other side, so we now have Moon, Earth, Sun.

I also mentioned this phenomena here, or you can Google on eclipse season or line of nodes for more info.

The Eye's Evolution

Latest from the National Center for Science Education is a video about the evolution of eye. This video is a very simple explanation of why the irreducible complexity argument for the eye is flawed. The answer: it isn't irreducibly complex!

More poor science in the news

My goodness, is this CNN video misleading. The person who wrote this video is trying to make the point that older cars get better gas mileage than newer cars, when in fact the reality is that he's just supporting the known fact that smaller cars get better gas mileage than bigger cars. In both cases the person interviewed traded down in car size when they went to the older car - one guy went from an SUV to a smaller pickup truck, the other from a pickup truck to a sedan. Whoever wrote this article needs to go back to college and take a science course where they teaching about controlling the variables.