Great Words from Michael Mann

Michael Mann, one of the leading climate scientists, and a real expert on the topic, has published a great article on the CNN's portal, in which he discusses a terrible political climate (pun intended) he and his peers in the field face in the United States and around the world:

Imagine you are sitting in your office simply doing your job and a nasty e-mail pops into your inbox accusing you of being a fraud. You go online and find that some bloggers have written virulent posts about you. That night, you're at home with your family watching the news and a talking head is lambasting you by name. Later, a powerful politician demands all your e-mails from your former employer.

I'm glad he presses on, despite the dishonest, personal attacks on him and the science of climate research, because, as he points out:

[...] as the father of a 6-year-old girl, I want to make sure the planet we leave her is at least as beautiful and healthy as the one we grew up on. At the very least, our nation's political and business leaders deserve to have a debate about her future that is grounded in reality.

My daughter, and all of our children, deserve no less.

Yes, our children deserve a planet at least as good as we've had, if not better.

Read the whole article: Climate scientists and smear campaigns

Can You See Our Precious Education Funds Going to the Lawyers?

Yes... all the lawyers across the Florida must have been jumping with joy, when they found out that our not-so-smart governor Rick Scott signed the Florida school prayer bill into law (also here), which authorizes school boards to enable students to deliver "inspirational message" (a.k.a. prayer) in public schools. This seems to be so unconstitutional, that the legal challenges will come quickly, and our school board districts will have to pay the legal bills.
You know this law has nothing to do with what its authors pretend it to be, when even prominent religious leaders are against it. It was politics at its worst, from the bill's sponsors, Sen. Gary Siplin and Rep. Charles Van Zant, to our governor (not that I expected any better from him), catering to the religious right to gain some dubious votes, and at the end our children will pay the price when the lawyers come knocking.
Maybe it's time for the sane ones to make sure the people above (let's repeat: Sen. Gary Siplin, Rep. Charles Van Zant, and Governor Rick Scott) are not allowed to represent us in the future. Let them know when the next election day is here.

Great To See Some Reason...

With all the recent economic trouble across the country (and the world), our local governments are looking to save money in all kinds of strange places. For example, our local school board is evaluating cutting the school week to four days, making them a bit longer instead.

When I first heard about this idea, I did some research and found out that there is relatively few school districts in the U.S., that decided to implement such a solution. As a result, there is rather slim amount of good data available to support its perceived value. It appears to me that there could be some benefits, but they are only apparent in very small and geographically spread out districts. For a district the size of Pasco County, the four day school week idea seems to have rather weak foundations, and might lead to more problems than it's trying to solve.

Unfortunately, when I attended a parents' forum with the chief proponent of this idea and the person who first proposed it, the School Board member Steve Luikart, my impression was that he was already convinced and all he wanted to do was to convince the rest of the board.

I'm glad to see that the issue is getting attention from some of the candidates to the school board during the upcoming elections. As The Tampa Bay Times reported today, Don Stephenson is firmly against the idea of the four day school week. Even though I do not agree with a lot of Mr. Stephenson's agenda, I am happy to be on the same side of the fence when it comes to the shorter school week. Hopefully, this will attract some much needed attention to this issue, and maybe, convince the current board to find better ways of saving money. Cutting our children's time in school is not the best way to ensure they get the best education possible.

Praying Away Our Tax Dollars

When most of our school districts in Florida struggle for every dollar out there during this hard economic times, our "brilliant" politicians keep themselves busy with more "important" things, like students delivering inspirational messages (a.k.a. prayers) at public schools' events. This new bill, just passed by the Florida House, is probably one of the worst and most useless laws recently created. Ordinarily, I would not have much of a problem with this, even though the idea of a "prayer" in a public school invites a large number of potential issues: how is this "inspirational message" given? when is it allowed? what happens if it offends anyone? who decides on the details? etc, etc...
The real problem with this piece of legislation is very simple: America was founded on a simple, yet effective principle of separation of religion and state, and any attempts to circumvent this principle will be challenged in court by someone, sooner or later, and rightly so. Such a challenge will be costly to the taxpayers (all of us). I does not take a genius to know that the first school district to enact such a policy, will be hit with a lawsuit (and, I'm afraid, the first district that refuses to bring this policy to life will be hit by a lawsuit too, just from a different side). At the end, the only winners are the lawyers, who will collect their legal fees. We, the parents, will end up paying for it, and our children will get just a little bit less of the education they deserve.
The final question is... what would the FSM do?

Chiropractic Is Bogus

I have no love for the alternative medicine. I think it is based on bogus evidence, or a complete lack of thereof, its various "branches" are mutually exclusive, it feeds on people fears and weaknesses, and it sucks up valuable resources (as in $$$) not only from our individual pockets, but also from larger public funds and governments.

Recent blog activities on the interwebs (some of this can be found here and here), reminded me of a case from a few years ago, in which chiropractic, a widely-accepted, "medical" practice, based on pretty much magic, was put to a test, not only by scientists (this has been settled long time ago), but in a court of law in Great Britain.
In this case, a British science writer, Simon Singh, was accused of libel by the British Chiropractic Association, after he had published an article in The Guardian, claiming that the practice of chiropractic is based on unscientific, unproven principles, and that promoting such practices equals false advertising. Even under the libel-friendly British law, the BSA was forced to withdraw the law suit, after it became evident that Singh was correct in his criticism. A side effect of the case was a magnified focus received by chiropractic and its principles, which boils down to a very simple thing: it is crap.

The problem is that a lot of insurance companies in the US will pay for chiropractic visits and that's the money that eventually comes out of our collective pockets. While I do realize that not all medical treatments are perfect (as all sciences are not perfect and definitive), when I'm paying for something, I would like to make sure that it has at least some validity. In the meantime, chiropractic is based on wishful, magical thinking and 100+ years of coming up with bs to justify charging people for a "fancy" massage. You'd be better off going to a real, licensed physical therapists. At least they get education and training in real medicine, and you get a real treatment.

If you want to find out more about chiropractic, The Skeptic Dictionary is a great place to start.

Less Is NOT More in Case of Education

I can't see ANY good reason to give our children less education... less as in the "four-day school week" idea, which is being studied in Pasco County this year as one of the possible ways to address the local school district's budget shortfall.
On the other hand, I can see a lot of very good reasons why we should try any other solution first to make sure our local schools operate well. Among them the pressing need for better Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM), as it is nicely described in an article on the CNN portal:

Two indicators are particularly worrisome, especially as this country experiences greater global competition and high unemployment. American students score 23rd in math and 31st in science when compared with 65 other top industrial countries. In math, we are beaten by countries from Lichtenstein and Slovakia to the Netherlands and Singapore. In science, we are beaten by countries from New Zealand and Estonia to Finland and Hungary.
For the United States, which led the way in space after Sputnik and showed the way in technological development and economic growth for the last 40 years, this is more than an embarrassment. And, for the future of our own GDP, economic well-being, and employer and employment needs, this is a disaster in the making. If the United States wishes to remain the most competitive and innovative country in the world -- never mind just another competitive and innovative country in the constellation of industrial nations -- this cannot stand.

Read: U.S lag in science, math a disaster in the making

This is just one reason, but probably one of the most important and compelling ones. It's good to see that the majority of parents are not happy about this idea and they are voicing their opinions in both meetings and online surveys.

Let's hope the cooler and smarter heads prevail, we'll stop smoking tea leaves and get some money for our children's education, even if it means looking for new sources of that cash.
 

Florida Science Standards - Fordham Institute Report

Well, while Florida fared pretty well when it comes to our teachers' quality, the science standards in our schools pretty much smell like a big pile of..., well, 'nuff said.

The Fordham Institute released its evaluation of science educational standards and Florida scored a big, bad D, mostly due to the lack of clarity, but also because both Physics and Chemistry ranked zero.
Surprisingly, even in the "southern" and unscientifically-leaning state like Florida, "controversial" topic such as evolution, gets some praise:

I guess, we have some work to do at home to ensure that out children are well prepared for the challenges of the 21st century

Evolution, on the other hand, is very well covered. Take, for example, the following:
Explain how the scientific theory of evolution is supported by the fossil record, comparative anatomy, comparative embryology, biogeography, molecular biology, and observed evolutionary change. (high school life science) Describe the conditions required for natural selection, including: overproduction of offspring, inherited variation, and the struggle to survive, which result in differential reproductive success. (high school life science) Discuss mechanisms of evolutionary hange other than natural selection such as genetic drift and gene flow. (high school life science)
Even human evolution is treated—a rarity in state science standards:
Identify basic trends in hominid evolution from early ancestors six million years ago to modern humans, including brain size, jaw size, language, and anufacture of tools. Discuss specific fossil hominids and what they show about human evolution. (high school life science)
Barely a handful of states tackle human evolution in their standards, bolstering the life science score of the Sunshine State’s standards.

It's Getting Hot In Here...

I do not think you could find a sane person at this point, who would question some of the largest environmental disasters our species brought upon this fragile planet: DDT in the 60s, acid rain in the 70s, ozone depletion in the 80s and finally anthropomorphic global warming in the late 90s and 2000s. All of them except the last one (as of today) were averted to some extend by a joint cooperation of many nations and all of as together.

The crazy thing is that while all of those issues had gone through a period of scientific uncertainty (as they should, given the proper scientific process), they also encountered a stiff opposition from denialists, usually associated with some political option. This denial went on for years, against well established scientific facts, studies and despite an overwhelming consensus from the experts in each field of study.
The methods and strategies used by such denialists have not changed for years and can be clearly seen in today's debate on the anthropomorphic global warming.

There is a number of reasons why I'm writing about this topic:

1. Wall Street Journal had a terrible article called "No Need to Panic About Global Warming", which, instead of using science to back up its claims (true or not), used a version of Godwin's Law, and invoked discredited Stalin's scientist Lysenko to drive its point, which can be otherwise refuted in a few easy steps (and, as a matter of fact has been: here, here, and here, to link to just a few of them, not to mention the letter signed by 255 National Academy of Science members).

2. National Center for Science Education (NCSE), a long time defender of quality evolution science education in the US schools, branched out and decided to use its resources on climate science as well. This move comes as no surprise, as both "controversies" keep showing up in our school systems and are driven by mostly beliefs and not real science, which is pretty much settled in both cases.

3. By pure coincidence I just finished reading "Merchants of Doubt", which connects the dots and shows pretty clearly how science has been covered up and muddled for political and financial reasons for many years, starting in the early 1950s with the tobacco industry's fight to cover up effects of smoking, to the present day with a fight to ensure that people are kept in the dark about the anthropomorphic global warming.

The science is in, the verdict has been reached, multiple studies and 99% of scientist around the world have said the same thing: our planet will be a very different place to live for our children, if we don't take action now. There is nobody else, who can fix it for us.

A Day Without Internet...

... or at least part of it. However, it could become a permanent state.

Wikipedia, Reddit, Mozilla and many other sites are dark today, and Google is blocking its logo to protest.

Both SOPA and PIPA are terrible pieces of legislation and they must be stopped. Fighting on-line piracy can't be done using censorship and intimidation to legitimate Web sites and portals.

Send a message to congress to prevent many sites you take for granted (YouTube, for example) from going off line.

Pasco School Board Elections - My Gripes

A few weeks ago, I’d mentioned our local Pasco County School Board campaign in one of my posts, and I received a comment to which I feel I should respond.

I reserve judgment on Mr. Stephenson’s campaign and his views when more info is available from his web site. However there are a few things that I have an issue with at this time:

1.      Taxes, fees, and fiscal matters. In my mind, a school board member should be primarily concerned with schools and education. To say point blank that raising taxes and fees for education is unacceptable makes me worried about our children, and their future education.

2.      Curriculum. Not much there when it comes to solid ideas, but here we go again… no taxes, no money from federal government, even if it means taking it away from valuable education programs and our kids. Leaving to the states to decide what are the standards and what is taught in our schools is dangerous. All it takes is a single generation of bad, irrational politicians (and we have plenty of those) to set bad standards and it’ll be very hard for any state to dig itself out of that hole (as the next generation, being poorly educated, would continue to dig the hole even deeper). US can be competitive in a global economy only if our children are educated to the highest standards. This also applies to Mr. Stephenson’s comments on International Baccalaureate (which he would like to remove completely): “the curriculum for the IB program is written with an emphasis on ideals of global citizenry rather than emphasizing ideals of American citizenship.” I’m not even sure what that means, except that it sounds like a sound bite taken from Fox News? We live in a global marketplace and global, interconnected economy. Pretending that we can disconnect our children from other cultures and points of view, just because we don’t like them (or we think that our point of view is the only one worth teaching) will only make them less competitive in that global market. Even if we think that some of our ways are better than the ways of others, it’ll take broad knowledge of other cultures to have any impact. I’m also not impressed by a blank opposition to a so called “radical environmentalism”, supposedly contained in the IB program. I think we are on a very well-defined path to destroying our planet and to say that we should not be teaching our children how to better care for it is irresponsible. If our children don’t who will? Maybe Mr. Stephenson should define what ideas he considers “radical” to make the discussion more concrete. To sum up, I would like to see more of his ideas on curriculum: social studies, science and other topics, with some details and not just general, ideological talking points.

3.      Vouchers and charter schools. I’m a bit split on this one. While I like the idea of charter schools, I’m concerned that they can lead to a lack of control over their curriculum and standards. There needs to be a firm control over them to ensure they don’t become ideological (I agree with Mr. Stephenson that ideology of any kind has no place in our schools). However, I do not agree with Amendment 7 proposal, as I think that no tax funds should go to any religious organizations. Period.

As I live in Pasco County and have my son in a public school here, I want to ensure the best possible education for him and others, who will live in a much more demanding, global world from the one we grew up in. This can only be achieved with an education system that’s placed on the top of our priority list, that’s well funded and that teaches children critical thinking, math, science and openness to the world outside of our own. Let’s hope our next local School Board members understand and implement just that.