Teacher Claims Fingerprinting Is ‘Mark of the Beast’

Sigh...

From Wired: Teacher Claims Fingerprinting Is ‘Mark of the Beast’. Ugh. Just ugh. Is she worried about the Trilateral Commission, too?

Barack Obama: Science President!

The latest presidential weekly address fills me with even more hope (there's that word again) for the future of our country. The whole thing sounds great but here's my favorite bit:

To ensure our children can compete and succeed in this new economy, we’ll renovate and modernize 10,000 schools, building state-of-the-art classrooms, libraries, and labs to improve learning for over five million students. We’ll invest more in Pell Grants to make college affordable for seven million more students, provide a $2,500 college tax credit to four million students, and triple the number of fellowships in science to help spur the next generation of innovation.

President Obama recognizes not only that education (proper education!) is vitally important to the economic future of America but that science education is even more vitally importanter.

And my skeptical heart grew three sizes when I heard him say these next words:

I know that some are skeptical about the size and scale of this recovery plan. I understand that skepticism, which is why this recovery plan must and will include unprecedented measures that will allow the American people to hold my Administration accountable for these results. ...every American will be able to see how and where we spend taxpayer dollars by going to a new website called recovery.gov.

Critical thinking ain't just for analyzing bigfoot, Heaven, and UFOs, folks. It should be applied to everything, politics doubly so. This level of transparency is what government should be practicing.

Here's the whole thing:


Also, I have to say that the presidential addresses being distributed via YouTube fills me with glee. Go 21st century!

Restoring Science to its Rightful Place

I've talked a little about President Obama's good choices for his science team. The following quote from his inaugural address give me even greater (dare I say it?) hope:

“We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its costs. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age.

After eight years of faith-based bullshit, I am so glad to have someone who talks like this in the oval office. Oh, also? He actually mentioned non-believers.

Needless to say, I'm happy so far.

Obama Chooses His Science Team

This is my favorite radio address so far.



President-elect Obama has made some very good choices for his science team. This makes two Nobel-prize winners on his staff. It's hard to pick a pullquote from this address because the whole thing is incredible (read the transcript here) but the following excerpt sums up why I am so glad we elected this guy (emphasis mine):

Because the truth is that promoting science isn’t just about providing resources—it’s about protecting free and open inquiry. It’s about ensuring that facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology. It’s about listening to what our scientists have to say, even when it’s inconvenient—especially when it’s inconvenient. Because the highest purpose of science is the search for knowledge, truth and a greater understanding of the world around us. That will be my goal as President of the United States.

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How To Argue With A Creationist and other links

The radically awesome Dr. Steve Novella of The Rogue's Gallery and Science-Based Medicine (which just added two new bloggers) tears apart three lame arguments against evolution.

(See also: How to argue with a creationist)

Orac of Respectful Insolence has an excellent post discussing the anti-vaccination crowd and why they have been able to gain such a strong foothold in the public discussion. He also has some good ideas for things that those of us with more rational minds can do to combat them.

EDIT: There is a follow-up post which addresses even more concerns and solutions regarding vaccines. Orac is not only very knowledgeable about the subject of vaccines and their actual side effects, he is one of the best writers I've run across.

Chanson from Rational Moms dives in and helps instill a love of learning in her child. That rocks.

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Skeptical Parent Crossing

domestic father has started up a new blog carnival called Skeptical Parent Crossing. Raising kids to think for themselves is a Big Deal to me. So, I put my money where my mouth is (so to speak) and submitted a post. If you've got a post about the topic, send it in.

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365 Days of Astronomy

2009 is the International Year of Astronomy. The International Astronomical Union and UNESCO said so! I think this is a marvelous idea and so do a bunch of podcasters.

365 Days of Astronomy is a project that will publish one podcast per day, 5 to 10 minutes in duration, for all 365 days of 2009. This is awesome! I'm going to volunteer. If you're a podcaster, if you've ever wanted to be a podcaster, or if you just want to talk about the stars for a few minutes, sign up and send something in.

Comic-Book Physics and Accidental Education

At last, all three of my active blogs have converged in a single link. James Kakalios is a physics professor at University of Minnesota where he teaches a class called Everything I Know About Physics I Learned from Reading Comic Books. He puts it best when he says, "As a physics professor and a comic book fan,” he said, “I am simultaneously a nerd and a geek.” Amen, brother!

The Perky Skeptic and I are often looking for ways to show our son, B, how cool science is. That physics course sounds like just the thing. When he's a bit older, of course. But it got me thinking about the ways we have already begun to help him learn about the world.

Perky is a great teacher. Even before B could walk on his own, she would take him with her for walks around the neighborhood and along the way she would point out the various plants and flowers. She's wicked smart and knows the binomial nomenclature for most of them as well as the common names so B (who has an amazing memory) learned them quickly.

Once, when he was not quite three years old, he and I were in the front yard together and I saw him pick something off the ground and eat it.

"What do you have in your mouth?" I said in the way fathers have been saying to sons for eons.

"Oxcalis," he replied

I paused for a moment and said, "Fair enough."

Now, I didn't know that it was edible but I trusted that Perky did. And I figured she had passed this information on to our son. He also went on to correctly identify clover, poison ivy, and yucca (which when he was really little used to pronounce "gucca").

B is now five years old and I am amazed just about every day by something new he has learned and processed that I didn't even know he was exposed to. It's going to take a few more IEP meetings, I think, to get his school environment to be as tailored to his needs as his home environment but we're working on it.

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