About Bloody Time, Too (Not That I'm Impatient)

The National Centre for Science Education is going to have an official response to Expelled. If, that is, it ever bothers to grace us with its presence. Wasn't it supposed to make its grand entrance on Darwin Day?

At any rate, here's the site: "Expelled" Exposed. And the very best of luck to them. Seems only fair, after the "hoax of dodos" response to A Flock of Dodos.

And no, if you're wondering, I don't link to creationists and their shrill shills, as a rule. I know it would be easier, but I don't like bumping their traffic, even by my own paltry numbers. You've got access to teh Google - use it, boyo.

Now, must... conserve... strength... in order to wade into one of those appalling PIG guides for a review over at Science Books Reviewed. And no, I'm not changing the name to "anti-science books reviewed", just for the occasion, but thanks for asking.

Tip of the ski-pole to the Amused Muse, who is better connected than I am (as is most everyone in the civilised world) and had this link up already.

Random Things That Make Me Laugh

Here's a random thing that makes me laugh almost every time that a new one comes out: the cartoons at Cectic.

This particular one is a few weeks old - don't know how I missed it.  If you don't know about the concept of "quote mining", then try the Wikipedia entry, here, or Pharyngula. These should be good places to start. If you want the shorter version, just follow this rule: if a known creationist or suspected creationist has quoted something and employed lacunae, or elided the text in any way - check the original source of the quote.

Enjoy.

Sunday Nature Hike 1: Smithville Lake, Smithville, MO

Here's a capsule breakdown of Sunday's stroll:

Location: Smithville Lake, Smithville, MO ( City | Park | Wiki )

Weather Conditions: Overcast, approximately 55 degrees F

Distance Covered: 3.2 miles

Image at right expropriated from Wikipedia (to be replaced with my own shortly)

Sunday morning, the Dear Wife decided that she wanted to go for a walk, preferrably on a trail somewhere.  I think that it was some sort of secular penance for the intemperate dining we had both done at a wedding the night before - probably, that was just me, though.  After some discussion, we decided on Smithville Lake, partly out of curiosity, and partly due to the fact that neither of us had ever been there.  After checking directions, we set out.  After about twenty-five minutes' driving, and yours truly missing the correct turning, we arrived at one of the trailheads, known, for reasons best understood by those who assigned its name, as the "Smoken' Davey Trailhead".  It lies just a few hundred feet beyond the bridge which, travelling east, crosses one arm of the lake on Highway W.

The Kansas City metropolitan area is increasingly being criss-crossed with trail systems, of varying levels of interest and difficulty.  Many are paved, some are not, others, like the Weston and Smithville Lake systems are a combination.  In some of the trail system maps there are suggestion of growing interconnectedness in the trail systems, although this is largely only seen in the southern parts of the metropolitan area.  As the Kansas City megalopolis encompasses some ten counties and hundreds of large and small communities, the lack of a full, coherent trail authority isn't really surprising.  Historically, the city has been far more interested in absorbing outlying areas and funneling tax dollars into their coffers to be mis-spent or handed to dodgy development schemes, rather than on delivering improvements, amenities, or even basic services.

We set off down the trail, having spoken with a man who walked the trails routinely, and who kindly asked how far we were thinking of going.  Taking one of the plentiful free maps at the gate, he pointed out how to make the walk we were hoping to take - more of a light stroll.  The main paved trails are intersected by more challenging woodland trails for hiking / mountain biking, but for this trip, we stuck to the main path, having once again forgotten our walking sticks.  At least, this time, I had remembered the binoculars (but forgotten my camera).

As we started out, three deer went crashing away through the woods, visible in the distance, although in a few weeks the returning vegetation will make sightings like that impossible.  Little has come to life yet in this area, but many of the more adventurous plants are already putting on buds for spring.  We bore due south on the Backbone Trail section, before turning west and then north, winding our way back along the Copperhead Ridge and Whispering Pine Trail sections.  Although the going on the Backbone was steep in places, the latter two were rather gentle, affording views of the lake, the sound of frogs around ponds, and the occasional red squirrel in the pines.  We took our time, and so spent roughly an hour on our stroll.

For reasons best known to myself, I decided to count birds spotted on this outing.  I came up with a total of seven, including the sparrow, junco, blue jay, cardinal, red-headed woodpecker, what was most likely a sandhill crane, and several gulls, probably American herring gulls, swooping and diving around the lake.  For reference, try this quite handy List of Missouri Birds, which gives further references to more birds than I have ever seen in Missouri, probably from a general lack of attention which I hope to rectify in the future.

The lake itself is known as a major area for boating and fishing in the Northland (as well as annual fireworks displays), and accordingly we counted perhaps a half-dozen boats with fishermen out enjoying the Sunday morning, apart from the occasional speed boat which cut a wake through the lake's centre before disappearing to the south.  There is a dock for sailboats as well, known concisely enough as Sailboat Cove, but the wind didn't seem right for sailing.  It was just right for midges, however, which made their presence known at any point when we were within twenty-five feet of the water - higher in the woods, we were spared their ministrations.

There are three other trailheads which will merit exploration and entries in future: the lengthier Bonebender Trail (5.5 miles), the Anita B. Gorman Trail (1.9 miles), and the Cabin Fever Trail (the longest, at 7 miles).  As mentioned, these are paved trails, so hikers who take a more exalted view of their sport may well want to stick to the woodland trails, of which there are many.  As the days grow warmer, it will be increasingly pleasant to be out of doors, so readers can anticipate more from me on the pleasures of Smithville Lake, and hopefully the pleasures of "messing about in boats" as well.

Finally, Something Light-Hearted

Here's a diversion while I'm composing a rant to follow up from yesterday and a rhapsody on our hiking adventure today... Something that, if you grew up watching the coyote and road-runner cartoons, you will probably enjoy.  Judging from the byline, it's almost twenty years old - guess that I just missed it in my callow youth.

Tip of the ski-pole to Janet over at Adventures in Ethics and Science.

Someone Has Noticed, At Last

From the beginning, let me just say that I applaud the effort, even if I disagree in almost every conceivable way with the spin.

Apparently, someone has noticed that there are one or two (million) little problems with science education, and the local newsrag, which trades under the name of The Kansas City Star, on Thursday, 27 March 2008 produced something billed as a "Special Section produced by The Kansas City Star's Star in Education program", called "METS matters" (hopefully the link will be active shortly, it's two days overdue now).  "METS" is apparently an acronym for "math, engineering, technology, and science."  Could be catchy, could be confused for a baseball team.

Now here is the good part: the METS Summer Camp programme, billed as an initiative of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, is intended to help assuage the problem of an increasing number of scientifically illiterate or disinterested students.  They have devised these summer camps to give kids around the metropolitan area a chance to spend what could be up to four weeks (in the case of the Science City sessions).  And this is fantastic, really.  The Kauffman foundation, as far as I am aware, does a lot of good in the metropolitan area.  So this, as an extension of that effort at "doing good", gets full marks, at least from me, for being "the money".

The trouble, however, is not the lack of available facilities in the area.  Kansas City, for all its faults (and since I don't live there any longer, I won't list them unless provoked), has a surprising number of science-based activities available, and there are still more if you count the larger metropolitan area.  Science City is out there.  Schools can have access to the MadScience after school programmes.  There are local clubs for rocketry, rocks and minerals, and astronomers, to just name three.  While the METS Summer Camp programme sounds like a fabulous solution, it is not the place to start.  It may well help.  We should applaud the effort that is behind it.  But there are other problems to be beaten, either in conjunction with summer camps, or before the summer camps.

Here is a quick list of the problems which must be surmounted:

1. Parental Apathy

The comedian Mark Steel uses a riff in one of his fantastic diatribes which goes something like this: "You've got a child that is six years old.  They're bright and inquisitive and they ask questions all the time: 'Daddy, daddy why is the sky blue?  How do birds fly?  What does noise look like?'  So you say to yourself: 'Send the kid to school, they'll put a stop to that.'"  Children are naturally curious and filled with a sense of wonder: everything is new to them, and they want to learn about the world around them.  And it is a world where parents don't do their bit and where teachers don't do their bit which drives that spirit of inquiry out of all but the most hardy of young minds.  Not all parents.  Not all teachers.  But, clearly, many of them.

For example: earlier this year, I attempted to enroll the twins in the MadScience after school programme, which was to offered through their school, in the supposedly academically-responsible Shawnee Mission School District.  However, after enrolling them, I was told by the MadScience organisers that the session would have to be cancelled, as there wasn't sufficient interest from the school.  How hard could it be to get ten children into an after school programme?  Apparently, this is not an uncommon failing on the part of schools - it also happened at their previous school, in the Center School District too.

Why does this count as "parental apathy"?  Look at parents, look at what they spend their time doing.  I will admit to a major failing here, which is that I don't like other parents.  Never have.  But I've spent a lot of time around them, and do you know what I have never heard a single one of them say, even when prompted: "my child is interested in {insert anything scientific here}.  I want to encourage that."  The sole exceptions to this parental apathy?  Those two dozen or so that I see one Saturday each month, at the Beagle's Science Club.

2. Teacher Apathy

This one is difficult to address.  In this case, it's based on anecdotal evidence and an informal survey of local school websites, but let's consider it for a moment.  Who, exactly is teaching science in schools?

When I was making my way through public schools, I was fortunate that, apart from a history course taught by a basketball coach (and I still remember his name, which was Vic Bland: interestingly, he had originally been a Latin teacher before the district had axed Latin from the curriculum), my classes were taught by the people who were meant to be teaching them.  For instance, chemistry was taught by a chemist.  Biology was taught by a woman with a degree in biology.  There was, of course, the physical science teacher who everyone disliked (my mate Eddie used to call her "the devil" and make the sign of the cross at her, poor dear), the physics teacher who was just out of her education degree and a bit lost, to say the least, and the geometry teacher who went mad halfway through the year (for which reason I blame my utter lack of knowledge of geometry, and that I now have to relearn it).  But on the whole, in that particular time and place, the teachers were teaching in the fields in which they were meant to be.

Unfortunately, as I've come into greater contact with schools, and been researching them, I often find that science classes particularly seem to be taught by the people who lose when the faculty and coaches draw straws.  This was mentioned again at the Beagle the other day, when I was discussing the idea of an academic sales programme for the store with their part-time clerk, who is finishing her biology degree.  "I've seen it happen several times," she said, "where a person will come in from a school and say 'I've just found out that I'm going to be teaching science.  I don't know anything about science.'"  This observation seems to be borne out when reading through faculty lists for smaller school districts in the area.  Not in every case, but I could easily go back and find a half-dozen instances out of perhaps two dozen rural districts where the science teacher is also the track and field coach, the basketball coach, the football coach...

We need science teachers who are dedicated to being inspiring, insightful, and powerful science teachers.  We don't need them to be more worried about the condition of the grass on the playing pitch than about effectively communicating science.  We don't need them to be, if you will forgive the extension of the simile, "second-string".

3. The Distractions of "Culture"

Modern culture is largely vapid and pointless, with a few notable exceptions.  You don't need me to tell you that.  Nonetheless, it infects schools like MRSA in an NHS hospital, and that's the real problem.  Before you go looking to me for an answer, though, I'll have to disappoint you.  I don't have an answer.  I can identify the problem.  I can suggest unrealistic things like turning the television off.  Or spending time with your family.  Or trying to do your damnedest to turn out a remarkable child.  But, as yet, I can't offer a solution.

4. Local "Leaders" Speak Out?

I have an inherent distrust of appeals to perceived authority, especially when those appeals are intended to demonstrate that "local business leaders" are fully cognisant of the realities of the larger world, when in reality they often know very little beyond the narrow scope of their business interests.  The implication here, that these "leaders" are somehow more qualified and more important individuals to speak to the issue of the paucity of science education, is unmitigated rubbish.  Of the two "leaders" cited in the METS Matters special, the one biography I could easily find indicated that their education was consisted of a Bachelor's degree in Business Administration.  Which I'm sure is fine in a business... not so much under a heading "Do Math and Science Matter?" (from page 2 of the supplement).

If you're going to make an appeal to authority, why not ask someone who has something to do, directly, with science, math, or technology?  Don't ask the spokesmouth for "human resources", because, quite candidly, they very likely don't know their own backside from the collection of bones, ligaments, and sinews that allow their arms to bend.

I'll give you an example of someone who might have been more helpful.  When I was at the free local screening of A Flock of Dodos, one of the two moderators was Dr Steve Case, who also appears in the film, and who worked closely on the standards for the Kansas Board of Education.  When this question of science in the interests of business was raised in the question and answer session which followed the film, he was quick to step in, and what he said was roughly this: "I don't think that the most important thing about science is that it serves the interests of business.  Science needs to be studied for itself, for its own beauty and importance."  (Thanks to the DW for remembering this, and helping me piece together what is still a rough quote).

5. Making Your Case by Destroying Your Case

The language of this supplement is entirely self-defeating:

* "But before students can grasp the concept of a strong national economy, they have to first understand their own personal economy, which will be driven by their individual skills and abilities.  That's why we must focus on better preparing our students, from kindergarten through high school, with strong METS skills." (page 2)

* "Cool careers, cold cash await math, science, and technology grads" (page 3)

* "'When will I ever use this stuff?' is a question most students have asked more than once during a math or science class." (page 3)

* "In other words, math, science, and technology are more than a ticket to success.  With the necessary skills, today's young people can virtually write their own (sic)." (page 3)

* 'Let's face it: Math and science are the liver and onions of school subjects.  That is, in the minds of the majority of today's youth (sic).' (page 12)

I understand the desire of writers to make their copy "punchy", but there is a difference between building a case by first tearing the case down to the ground and then trying to reconstruct the edifice in the manner that you want.

As to the UpLink Teacher Tech programme, as described on page 5, I can think of no other word to use than "vile" to describe this complete and total inversion of what should be the roles of academia and business.  Perhaps the most damning quote?  "Externships provide teachers relevant, real-life experience they can use in the classroom.  And businesses benefit by getting the word out early about the kinds of skills the future workforce will need to succeed."  An "externship", I have learned, is when a teacher takes another job for the summer.  Why would the teacher need another job for the summer?  Well, obviously, because their work is so undervalued that they aren't paid enough to do their job during the rest of the year.  So why shouldn't business step in and "help" the poor teacher out, while gaining valuable insight at the same time?

In Part 2 of this post, I'll look a little further into this idea of academia, science, and business, and see if I can't say something constructive about it.  Cross your fingers.

Resolved: I Shall Spend More Time Looking Up

Several years ago, I came home late in a summer evening and noticed something intriguing in the night sky: a single brilliant point of light, travelling very rapidly from the south to the north. I stood in the darkened parking lot behind the apartment where I used to live, and followed it across the arc of the sky for a few minutes. Clearly, it was travelling too high, and too quickly, to be an aeroplane. I concluded that I must have seen a satellite, and frankly, I was fairly pleased with myself.

Yesterday, however, during a brief conversation with the Beagle's in-house astronomy hobbyist, I heard something that made me intensely envious: it was in fact possible to have seen the International Space Station (qv) and the shuttle Endeavour in orbit, passing directly overhead, last week. He had done so, and mentioned, in passing, that the ISS was the brightest thing in the sky. Also, being in motion, it's probably hard to mistake. But I, though sloth or lack of sufficient motivation or plain inattention, simply didn't know about it, or know enough to get out to see it.

I've always been fascinated by what was up in the sky to be seen. I remember spending time outside watching Comet Hyakutake in April and May of 1996, when it was the most spectacular thing in the sky, night after night after night. I was that odd child who cut out all of the photos and newspaper articles about early legs of the Voyager missions, at the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, and put them in a scrapbook that I'd really like to find again, one day. And my imagination was always fired by some of the great science television of the time, like Carl Sagan's Cosmos ( Book | DVD ), James Burke's Connections ( Book | DVD) and The Day the Universe Changed ( Book ), David Attenborough's Life on Earth and The Living Planet (as a side note, I did a rather juvenile impression of the now Sir David when I was in middle school - my few friends were geeks, too). But somewhere along the way, I was distracted and fell away from those pursuits. Explaining how and why is another post for another day.

But not any longer. The weather's getting nicer, so I no longer have that for an excuse. We have a small telescope, and a couple of pairs of binoculars, and that's enough of a start for me. The next time something interesting passes overhead, I intend to be there on the ground, looking back up at it. It strikes me now that the thought of doing that would make the little boy that I used to be somewhat happier with his eventual fate.

New Two-Armed Space Robot Installed

As much as I dislike heights, and therefore get giddy looking down on clouds, even I can appreciate that this looks like an amazing new addition to the International Space Station (photo via BBC Science)...

This is the new Canadian-built Dextre (or Special Purpose Dextrous Manipulator) robot for the ISS, as installed by the crew of the space shuttle Endeavour on its most recent mission. The full story is here...

Montana, Ho!

Well, it's going to be that time of the year again soon, and frankly, I'm excited.  Time, that is, for the second annual trip to the Hell Creek Formation ( wiki | State Park Listing ) near Jordan, Montana, to dig for Cretaceous dinosaurs, under the auspices of HMS Beagle.

I've become a huge dinosaur geek in the past two years or so, at first just due to my son's interest, but now, even as his wanes, mine is growing, as is my library, and plans for a dinosaur related website of my own that are steadily moving forward.  But I've been asked to take this trip not really due to my credentials (I've done a fair amount of quite amateurish geological and palontological fieldwork in my life, but not so as I'd have anything to really boast about), but due to the fact that I will be available.  And because the Beagle's owners are my in-laws (so, of course, the Dear Wife (TM) is coming too - good thing we both enjoy road trips).  I'm quite excited, nonetheless.  Previously, the biggest thing that I've ever hunted for was fish, and I didn't find any of them then, but did nearly fall twenty-five feet in a sandstone quarry, so good times all around.  I also took the children on a dig for fossil leaves last summer - tricky beggars, leaves.  You really have to watch them.

I wanted to do the trip last year, but didn't have the vacation time or the money.  Now, as vacation for an inadvertent freelancer isn't an issue, so much the better.  And, as a bonus, I get to go and dig for dinosaurs in 110-degree heat.  What more would one want for a summer's holiday?

While I'm at it, perhaps someone on this trip will be able to tell me something about the Permian rocks in eastern Kansas, because that seems like that would be an important and valuable place to dig too.  I must be missing something, but from what I remember reading in Peter Ward's Gorgon, he went all the way to South Africa to dig gorgonopsids out of the Permian layers there.  So I'm guessing that Kansas, unluckily for me, has a different era of the Permian, where there's nothing interesting at all.  Or, if there was, it was at the bottom of that pesky inland sea?  More reading for me to do, obviously, as well as some advance research on the formation and the area.  And eventual blogging fodder, of course.

Now if only enough people sign up to make the trip worthwhile, that will be great, and I'll get to go and dig for dinosaurs...  I know what will help - perhaps if I stop messing about on my blog and get back to working on the revised Beagle website...

What Do We Need to Know?

Recently, I inadvertently involved myself in a political discussion, by reading out a snippet in the local news rag about how John McCain's stump speech includes a line deriding how money was being wasted, in this case by spending US $3 million on research into the grizzly bear.  Apparently, the People's Grumpy Old Sod then made a moronic remark about not knowing whether the grizzly was involved in a paternity suit or a criminal investigation as the laugh-line... the kind of thing that gets feeble chuckles from crowds who have mainly come out to see whether McCain will blow his top at someone again.  I was rather pleased to read the riposte, reported in the New York Times (link to follow when I can find it), that McCain and his team needed to brush up their science literacy credentials, and sharpish, before making such outrageous statements about the inutility of research that they apparently didn't understand.

The response from my interlocutor, which I had honestly expected to be sympathetic, was instead derisive: "Grizzly bears are over-studied and over-populated, thanks to hunting restrictions, and $3 million is a waste of money."  I tried to smooth over with a quip, not being in the mood for another holiday row, while quietly vowing to do more research on the state of grizzly bears, as I have a feeling that this pronouncement may not be supported by what we in the skeptical frame of mind call "reality".

However, I did try to make the point, although I think that in the face of potential bombast I may have failed, that money spent on research, even a paltry sum like $3 million, is better spent there than on wasteful bureaucracies, on political campaigns that never seem to end, or on dodgy contractors in war zones.  My contention, entirely unsupported by research at this point, would be that it is better to waste money doing research into things, even things that may seem a bit off-beat, because, frankly, you never know when we might need to know something.  And, as an added bonus, it gives the News Quiz something to do for their clippings.

Today, however, there is a report on the BBC News website about the California almond crop.  Essentially, due to the mysterious effects of colony collapse disorder, there may not be enough bees to pollenate the almonds, which are reported as a US $3 billion crop (UK £1.5 billion).  To pollenate the almond trees, roughly 1.2 million hives of bees are required.  In response, the Almond Board of California, has allocated all of $200,000 for research into the problem.

Hang on a moment.  $200,000?  For a crop worth $3 billion?  Did I miss something?  I think, and I could be entirely wrong about this, as I am not now nor have I ever been an apianophile, and am therefore limited in my experience of bees to trying not to be stung, but doesn't something that could cost you a significant wedge of cash merit a bit more than a paltry $200,000 in research funding?  Come on, you spend that much on the average lame advertisement trying make people buy the wretched things, surely?  (Don't get me wrong, I adore almonds, especially in a Cadbury bar).

But more to the point, I wonder if, at some time in the late 1980s, an official wandering peripatetically through the corridors of power had happened to give tongue to this sentiment, perhaps over a quiet brandy, what might have happened?

"You know, there aren't that many feral honeybees running about the place anymore, perhaps we should make sure that we know everything we can about them, and how to keep the little devils fit and healthy, as they just happen to pollenate a significant amount of our produce, without which we might just possibly run short of a few things."

I think that I can guess at the result.  There would have immediately been another voice, much like the one that I heard, over a whiskey and soda, saying: "Who cares about the damned bees?  There are too many of them now, they've been over-studied, and they'll just do as they're told, or we'll sell their hives to the Chinese.  Study them?  Spend a million on the little swine?  Don't make me laugh.  It's a waste of money."  Of course, it being the hypothetical 1980s, someone else drinking a port and lemon would probably then have said: "Let's spend it on tax cuts for the rich, instead.  Or maybe space lasers to shoot down Russian mind-control satellites!"  We'll leave that to one side for the moment.

So the essence of what I'm saying, then, is this: who is to say when money is being spent wastefully on research?  I would grant that some studies that I have heard or read about have provoked groans of dismay even from me, and I'm largely sympathetic to the needs of academics to have the money to do research as they see fit.  It would take someone cleverer, and with a broader vision than me, to know what was useful research, and what was not.  Most of the time, I imagine that the money is reasonably well-spent.  And, in this case, I can't help but think of two expressions: "too little, too late" from the Almond Board (though I certainly hope that I'm alarmist and wrong), and "an ounce of prevention is better than £50 million on the cure".

So what do we need to know?  What's worth spending the money on, and when?  Where should our priorities lie?

Must I paint you a picture?

If I need to, then I'll start applying for picture-painting research grants today.

The Physics of Spring

My daughter has developed a healthy obsession with going outside for a game of catch.  We spent all but the coldest of the last four days of her spring break outside doing that, even after the four mile hike through the wood on the extensive trails at Weston Bend State Park.  At seven, she's surprisingly good... I don't remember having anything approaching her coordination when I was that age - I scarcely do now.  Granted, we're using her lightweight sponge-core baseball, which also happens to be pink (it matches her glove), but nevertheless, for a girl of seven to throw a ball overhand and hard enough, with enough accuracy, for it to sting when I catch it in my glove - to me, that's something.  When I recounted it to the Dear Wife (TM, pending) later, her remark was "excellent... that could mean a scholarship.  You should teach her this move..." at which point, she windmilled her arms like a softball player.  If I thought that I could do that without falling down or doing myself a nasty injury, I just might.

As we play, and I try to explain what I can remember of how pitching and throwing in general is a question of leverage (no doubt spoiling the game somewhat in her mind), there are crocuses blooming in the yard, some dark purple, and some variegated white with purply stripes.  Their pistils and stamens are brilliant yellow, and already there are bees moving among them.  Soon enough, we will have a few daffodils and tulips, despite the shade, as the days steadily warm.  Once they've finished blooming, I've been toying with the idea of digging up the bulbs and moving the plants around, maybe into the front yard, or maybe into a more centrally organised patch in the back, somewhere.  But for now, the anarchy of random growth has its own appeal.

The games of catch began as an exercise to get the not-yet-long-suffering Dear Wife (TM) and I out of doors and doing something, which we both enjoy but couldn't seem to find the time or inclination to pursue.  When we started, I probably hadn't touched a baseball glove in twenty years or so, and hadn't thrown anything (apart from a cricket ball, at my brother, in anger) in anything resembling a sporting vein in about that same span of time.  So I don't have a good arm, or a good eye, and I still miss catches routinely, but it's fun, whether it's the DW and I after work or either or both children and I, or some other combination of the numbers and people.  It's a simple pleasure, and I'm finding once again that I really enjoy simple pleasures.

I feel certain that spring is early again, of course.  Even relying on my fickle memory, I don't recall there being flowers in March when I was a child.  I remember the final thaw coming in April, and then the riot of colour as the plants first began to poke tentatively above the soil.  And unlike a tame Shrubhouse environmental scientist, willing to fly in the face of all evidence to the contrary (and the opinion of what amounts to essentially every other climate scientist on the planet), I'm one of those who accepts that there is such a thing as anthropogenic climate change.  As a family, we, for our part, are trying to do our bit - shoring up the old house where possible, recycling, driving one hybrid, with another to come when we can afford it.  We're also trying to consume carefully and conscientiously, consider our impact and our carbon footprint - things which, thirty years ago, I don't think were in the minds of but a few, if any, people.  It's important not only for our immediate comfort, but for that of a little girl and a little boy who might want to have their own spring days to run and laugh and play, for many years to come.  That, in essence, is the whole point of trying to do the whole "green" thing.  Not this , which provides yet another new definition for the word "pathetic".  News that some blinkered cretin or other has made the pronouncement: "trying to stop climate change will stop our precious delusion from coming to pass".  You know what?  If you want to fulfill some bizarre death-cult phantasy, left over from the darker days of the later Roman Empire or wherever this "rapture" nonsense originates, go do it somewhere else, and on your own time, on your own world.  Leave me, and mine, and everybody else's out of it.  

The trenchantly funny Marcus Brigstocke, in one of his better diatribes from the Now Show, once asked that when the three Abrahamic religions were done with all of the bloodshed and the destroying of the world, could the rest of us please have our planet back?  I'll go a step further.  It's our planet.  You will not just give it back - we are taking it back.  Sit down, shut up, go mutter in a dark corner somewhere about dead prophets or incomprehensible tongues or zombie mice or whatever.  I've a life to live, a family to look after, and your dementia doesn't apply to me, nor to anyone with senses and a mind that can make order and reason of the world around them.  And no, I didn't mean for this to turn into a screed - this is just how annoyed the so-called "faithful" make me.

The seasons will run forward without us if they must.  Climates may change, species live and die out - life and the Earth will carry on for another five billion years or so.  That is the reality, and it will be long after the individual atoms of these petty nonsense peddlers have re-entered the water and the air and the soil.  In the meantime, though, I'm torn, because I'm sick of the cold and the grey days.  So, contrarily, if these were concrete signs of a lasting and burgeoning spring, playing catch among the crocuses, for now, that would be perfectly acceptable to me.

A Catalogue of Reasons...

So I've finished the first draft of an academic sales brochure for the Beagle, and submitted it for approval.  It's nice to have a task off of the list.  One of the things that strikes me, in having read through several of these large catalogues in the past few weeks is just how much stuff there is out there to use in teaching science.  A single one, the Flinn Scientific catalogue, is over a thousand pages long (still not sure what their tagline "your safer source for science supplies" means, exactly, must hunt for information on that).  So why does it seem to be so hard for people to understand science, when the materials are there for it to be taught well, never mind interestingly?  If it's not due to a lack of materials, or a lack of information, why do surveys still consistently find that large percentages of Americans simply don't grasp the fundamentals of the world around them?

Perhaps it's simply this: teaching is hard.  Teaching well is harder.  And there is a lot of willful ignorance out there.

I'm sure that this topic has been beaten to death countless times already.  I just want to add still another voice to the chorus, I guess.

In the coming weeks, as I'll hopefully be talking to more science teachers in the area, maybe the answer to that question will become clearer to me.  More on that as events warrant.

So Much for Showing "Intelligence"

It's not going to come as a surprise to anyone who knows me that I might not be particularly impressed with arguments in favour of "intelligent design" - it's creationism in a cheap frock, intellectually dishonest, logically unsound and generally vapid.  If you've never been a lurker on a creationist site (especially the site of the Discovery Institute, for example), then give it a go, or listen to some of their podcasts for as long as you can stand it. It's instructive in how people fool themselves, and how they twist logic and reason to support their "faith".  Anyway, for a while now, it seems that the creationists have been trying to get their own back while the mounds of evidence grow, allindicating to the contrary of their pathetic delusions of deity.  That they are not respectors of the rules of debate, nor of publicity, is testified by their actions in recent years. This includes the "hoax of dodos" (world's lamest response) to the clever and basically open-minded Randy Olson film A Flock of Dodos, which dealt with good humour and more even-handedness than one might have expected from a biologist and former student of Stephen Jay Gould with the whole issue of evolution, specifically referring to the Kansas "laughingstock" School Board curriculum decision a few years back. (An aside: Seriously, go and see this film. I saw it at a free screening. Then I saw it again when it was screened at HMS Beagle over in Parkville. Then GHR kindly bought it for me on DVD, and I've watched it a couple of times since then. It's well worth it.)

Originally, I was planning to go to the American Atheists convention in Minneapolis, and now, after reading about this, I wish that I had.  A showing of the new "id" film, "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed", featuring that doyenne of unsophisticated conservatism, Ben "remember me? I was in Ferris Bueller's Day Off" Stein, was scheduled for last night, and unsurprisingly, a number of the deity-free were turning out, apparently completely in accord with the policy for the free showing as stated in email. That included submitting a reservation and signing in with identification at the door (this after a Florida film critic somehow got in to see the film - oh yes, he was *invited* - and - would you believe it? - wrote a genuinely critical review).

I will see "Expelled" when and if it comes to the area (if it lasts in theatres that long), although I might, as Skatje suggests, "accidentally" pay for another film and wander into that cinema - frankly, I don't want these people to see a single solitary brass farthing of my money, if at all possible.  Why, you ask?

First, the makers of "Expelled" interviewed the participants, among them Richard Dawkins, Eugenie Scott, and PZ Myers (he of the Seed magazine and Pharyngula fame, a biology professor at the University of Minneapolis - Morris, for those of you not keeping score), for a film that they said was called "Crossroads" (they've claimed it was a "working title") without telling them the true nature of the final film (ie; that it was going to be what is by all accounts a crude attempt at a hatchet job on scientists in general and evolutionary biologists specifically), "Expelled".  Secondly, they have then, apparently, spliced those interviews with film of Stein, frantically attempting to convey gravitas.  Thirdly, they are still beating that tired, pathetic drum of "evolution laid the groundwork for Stalin and Hitler"... which has been laid to rest so many times I can't begin to count them.  Fourth, and I'll stop at four reasons, the whole canard of "academic freedom", while it sounds eminently reasonable, is entirely bogus for reasons too lengthy to fit into this post now.  But, with many objections more forceful than mine deployed against them, the makers of this wretched waste of celluloid have been wandering the country like a travelling circus, trying to build sympathetic audiences.  And one of those attempts involved a free screening in Minneapolis last night.

Well, at that "free" screening in Minneapolis, Myers was singled out by a guard and told that he could not attend, because the film's producer, Mark Mathis, had specifically barred him from partaking in that particular cinematic feast.  Myers, who sounds basically a law-abiding and upstanding sort, apart from his unusual fondness for cephalopods, complied, and went to a nearby venue to blog the events as they were unfolding.  The irony?  Who did the producers *not* notice?  None other than Professor Richard Dawkins himself.  You can find a full resource of first-hand accounts on Greg Laden's blog here, and I certainly can't do any more justice to the matter than that, not having been one of the lucky, lucky people who was there.  Check out Kristine's reaction, for a start.

What do I get from this?  Well, that academic freedom, free and fair discourse and debate is the *last* thing that these people can stand.  It's a fine principle to stand up for, but that freedom cuts both ways.  We are faced with an adversary that does not care for our rules and our system and the work that we have done to build up our understanding of the universe.  We must engage them, and we must take their arguments to bits, again and again, until they stop.  And that's why we have to keep speaking out - everyone who is of this mindset.  That's why I took time out to write this.  

Sometimes, I'm bothered by the vituperative nature of the responses from the scientifically-minded, myself included, to the "id" crowd.  I wonder if we're all just taking it too personally.  I figure that if something offends *my* sensibilities, then it's probably crossed a line, or is at least unproductive.

But then I read about events like this, and I think "no, really, it's justified: let the bastards have it".

A Funny Thing Happened While They Were Mapping Your Neighbourhood...

It should go without saying that the newest mapping feature from Google, Street View, is a work in progress. There was a flap last summer about people finding all sorts of mildly amusing and moderately salacious things in some of the Street View imagery (mostly girls in bikinis and people in various postures of illegality, I seem to recall). However, mapping of streets has now even reached our own small corner of the world, outside the Kansas City metropolitan area, just outside of Liberty, Missouri. For a laugh, I took a look at our road, and did that thing that is common to all people, I think... I took a virtual drive past our house and down the road.

And what did I find? Well, let's take a look. As we begin, it's a beautiful summer's day along the semi-rural road which leads up to Liberty Drive.

I can tell that this must have been early last summer, judging from the state of our yard. These pictures were taken *before* I became fed up with the brush in the front garden and started chopping it down. It also includes our old mailbox, which was savagely attacked one night, and which I later replaced, complete with a built-in laser defense system (hey, you don't *know* that I didn't, now do you?)...

For those of you who haven't been mapped yet, or haven't heard about Street View, it's a system incorporated into Google Maps which allows you to enter an address and, if the road is outlined in blue, click on that space and view what the area looks like at street level, in a panoramic view taken by multiple cameras from a moving van. Street View even has at least one fan site, which features five views from the area (two from the same area, around Union Station and the Liberty Memorial, and one of that interesting house shaped like an inverted letter "L" just west of Downtown).

Surely, Adkins Road wasn't going to be as interesting...

No, so far, it wasn't. The lack of "interest" is part of the reason that I like it. Anything for a quiet life.

Up to the junction of Adkins and Melody Lane, now. But hang on - what lies ahead, and to the right?

It's becoming clearer now - something lurking in the shadows under those trees. Hard to see on a bright summer's day...

A bit closer still...

Now we begin to see what lies in the shadow.

Ah! Falls the shadow...

Of course. It's the friendly local Clay County Sheriff. This road is zoned at 25mph, for what are, as far as I am concerned, are two very good reasons: (1) it's narrow and bends on a blind corner, and (2) there are a number of children in the neighbourhood, including my own, occasionally riding their bikes. So I appreciate the radar patrol, for one, especially considering the number of people who seem to think that speeding by at 40mph is acceptable. Attention drivers who frequent Glenaire, MO, here's a public service announcement, with guitars... you have the right... to drive the speed limit (apologies to the Clash).

The interval between photos must be somewhere between 30 and 50 feet, perhaps based on the speed of the vehicle. Let's just take advantage of the panning feature and see what the van was passing...

And there is the sheriff's deputy's car...

And there...

So clearly, the eyes of the law will have passed lightly over the Google Street View van as it passed. From what I can find on the net so far, it looks like the van has a turret mounted on the back, with at least eight cameras taking what amounts to synchronised panoramic views as it drives down the road. So perhaps that piqued the deputy's interest...

Or perhaps not...

Wait a minute...

They're moving, aren't they?

They're definitely moving.

And I think now that they are, as they so often put it on those ridiculous television dramas, 'in hot pursuit'.

Or at least lukewarm pursuit.

The driver has twigged the fact that he has fallen under the lynx-like gaze of the law, and has dutifully pulled to one side (observe the white line in the road).

Without knowing the frequency with which the cameras take their pictures, it's only possible to guess whether he was really speeding...

...or had merely piqued the interest of the deputy in the patrol car...

...but were the flashing lights really necessary?

Of course they were. Otherwise, taxpayers who might happen to be watching would not feel that they had gotten full value for their money.

And now, the long arm of the law...

...extends and clutches the Google Street View Mapping Van.

All could be lost.

The law appears suspicious.

But no! Victory snatched from the jaws of defeat, as demonstrated by this apparently convivial exchange!

Bloodied, but unbowed...

The Mapping Van pulls away...

...to drive and map another day.

We hope that you have enjoyed our play (with thanks to Google, who hopefully won't mind this tiny and harmless use of their images...).