tqa | October 5, 2006My two recent posts on teaching seem to have stirred up more discussion than I first expected. Opinions are still mixed between those who favor an approach that relies more heavily on actively teaching material and those who favor pushing the students to learn for themselves. I'm still not certain which approach is better, but with today's quiz results, I have discovered one thing for certain: sometimes lots of students getting a question wrong just means that lots of students weren't paying attention.
Prior to giving the students a quiz on genetics, I reviewed some of the key concepts that…
tqa | October 2, 2006I needed to buy a few things for the house and yard yesterday, so I packed the kids into the car and headed off to the store. What I saw when I got there didn't make me feel very jolly, and I'm afraid that I said a few things that were naughty, not nice. One of the things that I said seemed to be a common refrain - I heard minor variations on it from at least two other people who walked in behind me: "You've gotta be shi--ing me! It's not even Halloween yet!"
I apologize for the poor quality on the pictures. The camera phone isn't great to start with, and I was still trying to figure out…
tqa | September 29, 2006As most of you probably know, there's been a bit of discussion over the question of whether or not the pro-Intelligent Design textbook Of Pandas and People qualifies as a "challenged" or "banned" book as a result of the ruling in the Kitzmiller vs. Dover lawsuit. A few things have happened since my first two posts about the "banning." In this post, I'm going to summarize the recent events, and explain what I've learned about the ALA's views on this situation.
On the 26th of September, William Dembski posted a brief article on the Uncommon Descent weblog mentioning that "a colleague" had…
tqa | September 29, 2006...but go read what Coturnix has to say about the state of our country. He's feeling like he's seen this before, and I'm becoming more and more afraid that he's right.
While you're at it, go over to Thou Shalt Not Suck and read the Obituary for America.
tqa | September 29, 2006This is a repost of something I wrote on my old blog back in April. With the general election rapidly approaching, it seems like a good one to put back out there.
The election season is starting to heat up. Scandals rock DC on what seems like a daily basis. The public is split, at least according to the polls, on many major issues. We are heading toward a political (and probably historical) crossroad. Now is the time for people to stand up for what they believe, and to help move the country in the right direction.
But where do I stand? Sometimes I have a hard time figuring that out.
I think…
tqa | September 28, 2006It's 4:20. Do you know what's happening in your National Parks?
If you listened to Morning Edition yesterday, you know exactly what I'm about to talk about: the environmental damage that pot farms have been causing in our national parks.
The problem is actually pretty simple: cannabis cultivation typically doesn't fit the certification guidelines of the National Organic Standards Board. To put it another way, ganja isn't a green crop.
Pot is a big business cash crop. It's also a crop that really can't be grown in large wide-open fields. Anyone who wants to make a big profit growing…
tqa | September 28, 2006Over at Uncommon Descent, DaveScot says something stupid about atheism and science. (In other news, Dog Bites Man, Pope Still Catholic, Bear Arrested for Indecent Exposure in National Forest, and Ocean Wet and Salty.)
At the end of a passage in his new book (The God Delusion) that discusses the relative frequency of "avowed atheists" in the National Academy of Sciences (~93%) and the United States Congress (~0%), Dawkins wrote, "What is going on here? I think we all know." DaveScot responded with this:
Yeah, I think we all DO know, Richard. The National Academy membership is a self-elected…
tqa | September 27, 2006I got a little frustrated while grading quizzes yesterday, and wrote a post about my frustrations. I asked for feedback, and boy did I get some. Some of the comments were more or less supportive of my approach. Others were not.
After reading the comments about my teaching approach and taking some time to think about the situation, I've reached the conclusion that the folks who wrote comments and blog posts that thoroughly trashed my approach are probably right. I've got to go teach the first of my sections in a little while, so it's time to see what I can do to fix the problem. I know what…
tqa | September 26, 2006Monday, I posted an entry here that discussed, in part, a Discovery Institute blog article claiming that the Dover ruling qualifies the cdesign proponentsists textbook Of Pandas and People as a "banned book." As I explained at the time, the claim is complete and total nonsense, so I suppose I really should have guessed that the anti-evolution movement would get behind it in a hell of a hurry.
That appears to be just what's happening. The latest twists involve the Uncommon Descent blog and the Wikipedia entry for banned books.
Over at Uncommon Descent, Dembski posted an item noting that, "A…
tqa | September 26, 2006I just learned, via Mike the Mad Biologist, that the Newsweek cover for the United States this week is just a little different than the covers for the international editions. (Click the link, and look at the sidebar.) That's right, folks. Right now, with just over a month to go before a mid-term election where terrorism and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan look to be major issues with the voters, Newsweek has a terrorism issue front and center everywhere but in the US. Here, an article about a photographer gets the cover slot. I'll never be able to prove it, but I bet I know why.
The editors…
tqa | September 26, 2006This semester, I'm teaching Zoology 101 labs (Intro to Zoology for nonmajors). I'm enjoying my self a lot, and it's a class I've wanted to teach for a while. Right now, though, I'm grading quizzes and not enjoying life too much. Most of the scores absolutely suck, and I'm trying to figure out how much of that is the result of me setting the bar too high, how much is the result of me sucking at teaching, and how much is entirely due to other factors.
The quiz in question was on diffusion and osmosis. These aren't the easiest topics for non-majors, and they aren't all that interesting, so I…
tqa | September 26, 2006If you haven't already, go over to Pharyngula and watch the Assylum Street Spankers performing their new single, Stick a Yellow Magnet on Your SUV.
tqa | September 26, 2006Yesterday, three retired military officers spoke on the Hill. They weren't talking to an actual Congressional committee of some sort, because Congress wants no part of oversight these days. Instead, they spoke before the "Democratic Policy Committee." The topic of the "hearing" was Rumsfeld's performance. Most, if not all, of what was said was not particularly new. There were a couple of things, however, that should be repeated over and over until they sink in.
The first, and most important, is this: the current tempo of deployment is breaking the Army, and cannot be sustained:
"There…
tqa | September 25, 2006Last week, both PZ Myers and I posted about some anti-evolution candidates running for the school board out here in Hawaii. The state primary election was Saturday, so I thought an update on this election might be a good idea.
There's good news, not-too-bad news, and bad news.
First, the good news. Out of the small number of candidates who responded to a newspaper question about whether or not they think Intelligent Design should be taught in the science classroom, two candidates running for "At-Large" seats expressed views that did not indicate that they would be good for science…
tqa | September 25, 2006Two recent posts over at the Discovery Institute's Media Complaints Division blog have me ready to break out the world's smallest violin. Their new (well, newish, anyway - it's popped up from time to time before) argument is that they are being discriminated against. In the first of the two articles, Rob Crowther argues that "Darwinists" are trying to "censor" academic freedom in Michigan. In the second, John West starts by suggesting that "Of Pandas and People" should be the "Banned Book of the Year," and concludes with the outrageous and insulting claim that the "ultimate goal here is to…
tqa | September 25, 2006
Every time I see a yellow "Support the Troops" ribbon on a car that's sporting Republican bumper stickers, I want to vomit. Republicans love to talk up patriotism, and they love to use "support the troops" as a campaign slogan. But when push comes to shove, when the time arrives to actually support the troops, they are nowhere to be found. There are many, many examples of this, but it might just be harder to find a better one than the Pentagon appropriations bill that just came out of the conference committee.
The military pay raise built into the bill is one issue. The bill provides for a…
tqa | September 24, 2006Josh and Bora have already taken a swing at this, but the level of... of... of... I'm honestly at a loss for words. I just can't find any way to use printible words to describe how pissed off I am right now.
Apparently, some North Carolina residents were recently informed by the Fish and Wildlife Service that new regulations might be coming down to protect habitat for a rare woodpecker. This particular species of woodpecker will only make its home in living trees, building nests over a period of years, sometimes handing the nests down from generation to generation.
Many of the locals,…
tqa | September 22, 2006Here's an interesting take on why theistic evolution (TE) might be a bad position to hold:So essentially, both Dawkins and Miller see no evidence of design, and their philosophy as to how evolution works is the same, yet Dawkins follows that evidence and declares the world is without a designer and Miller claims to believe there is a designer. Bizarre. So Miller apparently, like most TE's, holds to his religious beliefs on faith ~alone~. That's the problems with TE's - they can give you no reason whatsoever as to why they believe what they do in regard to their religious beliefs other than…
tqa | September 22, 2006The policy forum in this weeks issue of Science discusses a potential problem with many of the crops that people are talking about using as biofuels. In what has to be one of the more striking instances of cosmic irony, it is entirely possible that some of the plants being considered as biofuel crops might actually be bad for the environment.
The reason for this is actually relatively simple: many of the ecological traits that are found in the ideal biofuel crop are exactly the same as the ecological traits that are found in nasty invasive species.
Ideal Biofuel Crop
Invasive Plants
C4…
tqa | September 21, 2006After Janet posted the results the other day (I was crushed to learn I'd only placed sixth), I thought the nerdoff was over. For better or worse, it's not. Someone found yet another Nerd Test, and as we already know, SciBlings can't resist nerd tests. I can't either.
Modern, Cool Nerd 78 % Nerd, 56% Geek, 26% Dork
For The Record:
A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.
A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.
A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social…