Ahhh, Journalists

Our local newspaper just wrote a story about the new supercomputer our university recently put online.  The computer is great, but the story shows some need for science education.

“Star consumes 79, 000 watts of electricity per hour, the equivalent of 790, 100-watt light bulbs.”

Can anyone tell me what the hell that means?!?!  Read the otherwise good story here.

Physics Today asks the Candidates

The lighter reading side of the American Institute of Physics is Physics Today. They have recently asked presidential candidates about 6 issues:

Science Education

Teaching Evolution

Nuclear Weapons

Science Investment

Energy Policy

Climate Change

You can see the responses here.

NSF Finds Americans Are Falling Behind in Science and Tech

Since the National Science Foundation published “Rising Above the Gathering Storm” in 2006, their scathing and horror inspiring indictment of American science education and a warning about the dominance of American science and technology, some new developments have come to light. The New York Times has posted a summary (link here) of a rather depressing new study from the NSF (link here). The study finds the US dominance in science and technology is waning. Particularly important is how dependent the US is on foreign born scientists. Once the economies and educational institutions of India and China are sufficiently developed, there will be little need for scientists and engineers to immigrate from those countries. This may not be far off either.

Also noteworthy is that how ignorant must Americans are about science. My favorite NYT quote of all time comes form this story and is the following.

Many Americans remain ignorant about much of science, the board said. Many are unable to answer correctly when asked whether Earth moves around the Sun (it does).

Something about that “(it does)” part gets me in stitches. Apparently readers of the Times need reassurance about whether the Sun or Earth is more massive.

Perhaps most horrifying is how Americans compare against citizens of other developed nations with regard to both evolution and the big bang, two areas where average Americans are “noticeably more ignorant” than their foreign counterparts.

Don’t Teach in a State Ever Governed by a Bush

While we have heard about problems with religion popping into science curriculum in Texas, the problem has now moved to Florida. While the state itself has passed legislation stating that evolution is a fundamental concept in biology, local governments have not been so enlightened.

The Taylor County School Board has passed a resolution attacking Florida’s Sunshine State Standards for Science. This doesn’t yet go as far as the Dover school board did in Pennsylvania, but still shows a fantastic misunderstanding of science and biology in particular in America’s school boards.

Most humorous to me is how the resolution seems to be most concerned with how evolution is a theory about “the creation of the universe.” Not to be picky, but the creation of the universe isn’t in the domain of biology at all, but physics. Indeed, evolution says nothing at all about the creation of the universe itself nor about how life actually got to Earth, only how it has changed. If the resolution stated that evolution does not tell us how mitochondria first appeared on the Earth, that would be one thing, but this resolution is predictably ignorant of such subtlety.

You can read more about the issue as well as see the resolution here.

Great Evolution Lecture: horrifying fallout

Thanks to Penguin Burger, I just wasted the last few hours watching one of the best Evolution v. Intelligent Design lectures I’ve ever seen. This is the youtube video. The lecture is about an hour with about the same time devoted to some great questions from a somewhat famous room of folks (I spotted Lawrence Krauss, author of “The Physics of Star Trek”).

The lecture shows the recent history of the intelligent design movement and how, through brilliant P.R., creationism has changed to a questioning and analysis of evolution. If you don’t believe this is actually happening watch this clip of Ben Stein on Bill O’Reilly’s show.

If you want a much shorter video that gives you at least one talking point, you can watch this segment of an interview with Kenneth Miller. He quickly blows one of the central ideas of intelligent design out of the water …with a tie tack. Genius.

Creative Common(s) Education

A few related things have been driving my thinking in the last few days. They are this thing, this guy and this guy. For the clicking challenged, those are 1) the Amazon Kindle 2) Larry Lessig and 3) Richard Baraniuk. The links to the actual people show talks related to what I’m about to describe. So, how do these pieces add up?

Science Ed Anyone?

As if you didn’t already think we needed more math and science education in the US, chimps now have a better command of numbers than human adults.  The chimps have a cognitive advantage.  Crazy.  You can also hear Jane Goodall talk about a chimp who loves to play computer games.  I, for one, embrace our furry, tree climbing overlords.  From boingboing and ted.

Too many scientists?!?!?!

I think this is probably rubbish, but interesting rubbish should always get a close look.  The following article contends that k-12 students are improving in STEM fields and that we are actually producing more STEM university graduates than the job market can handle.  This is VASTY against other conventional wisdom and several other studies.  

 

From Business Week 

Why Linux in the Lab?

Many of us teach using computers.  More and more educators are discovering that the once Wild West of the Internet is actually a very useful place.  This can cause a multitude of problems when a lab full of computers is only maintained by an instructor on a as needed basis.  

 

Many instructors are reluctant to allow IT departments to take over because most teaching labs use course specific software that can’t be easily maintained by outsiders.  When instructors also need internet access for old computers, you quickly get a perfect storm of mal-ware.  

Putting Linux in the Lab

I just finish my TA assignment for the summer.  Yes, I teach in the summers as well.  Rather than work in the classroom, I spent the summer managing other instructors and all our equipment. 

 

The last few weeks were devoted to setting up some computers for the next academic year.  Mind you, these are NOT new machines.  I was handed about a dozen computers from the early part of the millennium, almost all of them riddled with viruses.  Most of them were still running Windows 2000.  Yikes!

 

This adds up to a hard disk formatting and a new operating system.  I couldn’t use XP because of licensing and because the computers lacked the ram requirements.  Double Yikes.  

 

Of course Windows 2000 doesn’t come with a new enough version of IE for me to use a current anti-virus utility, so I couldn’t even get service packs without first upgrading the web browser without getting on the internet.  Triple Yikes!

 

There is an easy way around all this and it’s called Xubuntu.  I found that even with a Pentium III and 128MG of ram, Xubuntu runs well, even though I had to use the Alternate Install CD since the Live CD requires more ram.  

 

With Xubuntu, I could have a working machine safely on the internet with all the updates I need and all the packages I need in about 2 hours.  With Windows 2000, I spent all day trying to safely get all the updates and holes patched.