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Bible Study In Tennessee Public Schools
What on Earth was Tennessee thinking this week?
SB4104, a bill authorizing the state board of education to approve a curriculum for an elective state-funded course of a nonsectarian, nonreligious academic study of the Bible, passed the state senate on Thursday.
This mockery of legislature was introduced by Sen. Roy Herron (D) who has let his personal religion get in the way of his reason and understanding of our constitution and the separation of church and state. The whole thing is entirely unnecessary as the state already allows schools to teach the Bible and has a process for approving the curriculum local schools want to use.
The bill slipped past the Senate after three (3) amendments were made to include more ‘constitutional-friendly’ wording and is now on its way to the house as HB4089. If you life in Tennessee, you know what to do. Load up your email and send one off to your house representative telling them what a crock this bill is… Use nicer language though. I’ve already sent one to my representative, Judd Matheny (R). He’s a pretty cool guy. I have a good feeling he’ll do right on this one.
You can read the full bills in PDF: HB4089 | SB4104
Find your House Representative at the bottom of this page.
Brain Implants Are Here… And They Work
We’ve read about them for years in science fiction. They’ve been testing them for decades. Some people can’t wait to get their hands on them while others are afraid they could be used for malicious purposes. Brain Implants are small devices that stimulate areas of the brain that don’t quite work right on their own. Mostly due to the short lengths of the studies, reports have so far been hazy regarding their overall effectiveness until now. A long-range study being presented at the upcoming American Association of Neurological Surgeons meeting demonstrates how, over a 10-year period, patients aided by brain implants increasingly regained control over their moods and obsessive behaviors.
The data we are presenting on 43 patients is the result of more than 10 years of work across multiple institutions worldwide. These data represent the largest number and the longest evaluation of patients with psychiatric disorders who have undergone DBS implants, including some with long-term follow up,” said Dr. Rezai, who represented an international working group of physicians studying DBS therapy for treatment resistant OCD and depression.
To me, the scariest possibility with brain implants is security. As the technology proliferates, it’ll only be a matter of time until they become connectivity devices. Once they’re open to a network, the threat of malicious compromise becomes very real. How long does a device need to be connected to the internet before someone learns how to break in and use it for their own nefarious purposes? I could imagine some form of hierarchy of low-level to high-level where some implants are allowed connectivity with the outside and each other whereas others are hard-wired and dedicated to one task. Then we have the Black Market or the use of implants as drug relaying devices.
Regardless of the social implications, it’s still cool to know the technology is picking up and looking good.
Via: io9
I Knew Those Were Useless
A new study by Ohio State University researchers reported in the April 25th issue of the journal Science reveals the old “two trains traveling at 60 miles per hour in opposite directions” style word problems are less effective at training students in math than more abstract concepts, such as finding the value of x.
When asked to solve new problems using these teachings, major discrepancies appeared. In one case, abstract-learning students scored an average of 80 percent on a test. Their “real-world” counterparts, however, seemed unable to transfer their knowledge to a new situation, posting only a 44 percent average.
I always said thought it was the word problems that were abstract but that’s semantics. I don’t know that the blame of this lies solely in the type of problem but more in the execution of that style of problem. Word problems should be “real-world” and not concepts that have no bearing in real life, like trains leaving stations. Who cares? That’s what the train’s schedule is there for. So you can see when they arrive ahead of time. In my opinion, these “real-world” word problems would be more effective if they focussed on useful economics and statistics instead of pointless distances and concepts that only relate to the “real-world” in a teacher’s head.
Via: Scientific American
Crowd-Funding For Better Movies
Jessica Mae Stover has come up with a pretty nifty idea to fund her movie, ‘Artemis Eternal‘. Cut out the middleman and let the people fund the movie.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tokCs7Wl5d8
The idea is simple enough: visitors get to follow the entire process. Contributions for the film range from $1+ with the contributor getting an online credit for the contribution, $25+ gets the contributor a credit in the film, and $100+ gets credit in the film and “Wingman” status that offers name credits on the “silver aurum,” the development map on the front page of the movies website. So far the project has raised $40,000 of the $100,000 required to produce the movie.
Micro-funding and Crowd-funding has been picking up steam mainly due to the ease of the transaction through the internet. I can’t really think of a better industry to relinquish its powers back to the people than Hollywood… well, maybe the music industry.
Donations and ‘crowd-funding’ are near the core of most of today’s popular internet media outlets like Podcasts and Internet TV studios. Just outside of in-media advertising. Personally, I’d much rather live in a world where interested parties fund projects up front rather than everyone being subjected to advertisements in the end product.
Via: TechCrunch
Obama Wrong About Autism
Already? He’s not even in the White House yet and he’s already making idiotic claims that go against scientific evidence. That little image on my sidebar shows that I support Barack Obama in the 2008 US Presidential election. I’ve agreed with most of what he’s said… until now.
We’ve seen just a skyrocketing autism rate. Some people are suspicious that it’s connected to the vaccines. This person included. The science right now is inconclusive, but we have to research it.
Oh dear. The evidence clearly shows that it is indeed a combination of increased awareness as well as new diagnosis criteria. When you broaden the definition of an illness you’re bound to find more cases. Here’s a nice simplified thought experiment.
Imaging there is an illness that causes headaches and runny noses. For years you only define the illness by the symptom of headaches. People with headaches have the illness. New evidence starts to show a connection with runny noses and the headaches. This new evidence clearly shows that the two symptoms are part of the same illness so you broaden your definition of the illness to now include both headaches and runny noses. In one fell swoop, you’ve increased the number of reported cases. Are there really more cases of the illness or just more people being diagnosed using the new definition?
My point isn’t to add fuel to the autism / vaccine debate because I don’t believe there is one. It’s a non-debate. The majority of respectable scientists agree that there is no link between vaccines and autism. My point is how numbers can be confusing and that it would do everyone a world of good to be a little skeptical. Our presidential candidates included. These candidates intend to run my country and I don’t take well to them being idiots who don’t do research before making public statements.
I also want to make the point that this is exactly what happens when select interest groups come down on the candidates with questions that pertain solely to their misguided and often misinformed causes. I’m sure Obama is only making attempts to stay neutral. He doesn’t want to shut the potential voters out by putting their idiotic cause in it’s rightful place. Saying, “I’m sure you have a legitimate concern, I’ll look into it.”, is far from admitting the validity of those concerns. But it’s also far from having the integrity to put misguided and misinformed causes where they belong. I believe the President of the United States should be informed enough to feel confident in putting ludicrous claims in the grave. I wonder if Obama would stand so neutral over James Watson’s claims that African Americans are less intelligent than Caucasians. A claim that respectable scientists rightfully refute. Something tells me he would have a somewhat stronger opinion about that non-debate.
UPDATE: After watching the video, I see the “This person included” remark was directed at someone in the audience. My point remains about being informed enough to stamp out dangerous notions when they’re presented.
Religion Is ‘The New Social Evil’
I wouldn’t exactly call it ‘new’ but pollsters in the UK asked 3,500 people what they thought were the worst aspects of modern society and discovered religion was high on the list. The results were very reassuring… for the UK, that is.
The researchers found that the “dominant opinion” was that religion was a “social evil”.
Though poverty and drug abuse are higher on the list (and rightly so), it seems Britain is fed up with religion. Other issues expressed by the 3,500 polled included family breakdown, young people’s behavior and fears over immigration.
“Britain has had it with religion,” said Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society.
Via: Times Online
Dawkins Responds To Misguided Jew
The coming aftermath of Ben Stein’s disgusting excuse for a documentary Expelled is shown crystal clear in the form of a letter received by Michael Shermer sent by an angry Jewish filmgoer.
Now I truly understand who you atheists and darwinists really are! You people believe that it was okay for my great-grandparents to die in the Holocaust! How disgusting. Your past article about the Holocaust was just window dressing. We Jews will fight to keep people like you out of the United States!
Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins felt compelled to respond to the Jewish individual in an open letter in hopes of clearing up his misguided anger towards scientists and atheists. Anger created by the misinformation portrayed in Ben Stein’s Expelled film that incorrectly links Darwin to Hitler.
Things began to make sense once I saw the movie and I am just appalled. I have learned a lot from Ben Stein, a Jewish brother, who has opened my eyes up a bit.
I fear there are more ‘Jewish brothers’ out there who have been twisted by Stein’s film into thinking the same way. Make it a point to show these twisted minds the light.
Via: Richard Dawkins
More Quick Evolving Lizards
In just 36 years since being relocated by biologists from their home island of Pod Kopiste, in the South Adriatic Sea, to the neighboring island of Pod Mrcaru, a population of Italian wall lizards (Podarcis sicula) have undergone rapid evolutionary change in both physical appearance and internal structure.
Striking differences in head size and shape, increased bite strength and the development of new structures in the lizard’s digestive tracts were noted after only 36 years, which is an extremely short time scale,” says Duncan Irschick, a professor of biology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “These physical changes have occurred side-by-side with dramatic changes in population density and social structure.”
Because the lizard’s diet has changes to roughly two-thirds plant food, they’ve evolved longer and wider heads than their Pod Kopiste counterparts. Most interesting though is the changes in their digestive tract as a result of having to eat mostly plant food. They’ve developed fermentation chambers in their gut so microbes can break down harder to digest parts of plants.
Examination of the lizard’s digestive tracts revealed something even more surprising. Eating more plants caused the development of new structures called cecal valves, designed to slow the passage of food by creating fermentation chambers in the gut, where microbes can break down the difficult to digest portion of plants. Cecal valves … have never been reported for this species, including the source population on Pod Kopiste.
“These structures actually occur in less than 1 percent of all known species of scaled reptiles,” says Irschick. “Our data shows that evolution of novel structures can occur on extremely short time scales.
Via: Science Daily
Image Credit: Anthony Herrel of the University of Antwerp
Private Christian Schools
… are no better than the rest.
Darwin’s Personal Writings Go Public
Cambridge University Library is releasing some 20,000 items and 90,000 images belonging to the very private Charles Darwin on darwin-online.org.uk.
This release makes his private papers, mountains of notes, experiments, and research behind his world-changing publications available to the world for free,” said John van Wyhe, director of the project.
“His publications have always been available in the public sphere - but these papers have until now only been accessible to scholars.”
As happy as I am to see these get released to the public (and in digital form to boot!), I’m leery of how creationists are probably already prowling through these journal pages mining for quotes they can take out of context and use against evolution in their usual dishonest method. They do it all the time.
Creationist IDiots aside, I am still very happy about this public release. It will be nice to have access to his diary pages and field notes and really see how the evidence was built up piece-by-piece, fact-by-fact, until the case made itself.
Via: Reuters
