A commenter, Aoife, pointed to another animation of Tom Lehrer’s “Elements Song.” This one has the best production values of the three I’ve posted, and it’s available on DVD (teachers, note that it comes bundled with other science stuff probably good for classroom use).
It’s Macromedia Flash animation, by a guy from Texas, Mike Stanfill; go see.
(Where are the economics, history and government flash animations of equal quality?)
1 Comment | 
Brain learning, Music, Science | 
Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Chris Mooney, the Storm Pundit, dishes out the news on the record-making severity of Hurricane Dean. Mooney’s latest book is Storm World: Hurricanes, politics, and the battles over global warming.
False color satellite image of Hurricane Dean as it struck the Yucatan Peninsula; image from Weather Underground, via the Intersection.
Mooney’s information on Dean is at his blog, The Intersection, at the Huffington Post stable, and at the Daily Green.
Dean was officially the most powerful hurricane that we’ve seen globally so far in 2007, and was by far the strongest at landfall. It was also the first Category 5 Atlantic hurricane seen since the record-setting Hurricane Wilma of October 2005. In fact, Dean set some records of its own. Its pressure was the ninth lowest ever measured in the Atlantic, and the third lowest at landfall. Indeed, there hasn’t been a full Category 5 landfall in our part of the world since 1992’s Hurricane Andrew. Dean was in all respects a terrifying storm, and we can only hope that the damage will somehow be less than expected as it tears across the peninsula and then, after crossing the Bay of Campeche, moves on to a presumed second Mexican landfall.
Dean is already in the record books in ways that should make policy makers think hard about what to do in terms of disaster preparation, and in terms of what political entities can do to prevent actions that intensify such storms:
1. Dean is the ninth most intense Atlantic storm by pressure, and six of the top ten (Wilma, Rita, Katrina, Mitch, Dean, and Ivan) have occurred in the past ten years.
2. Dean is the strongest hurricane anywhere this year, and by far the strongest at landfall. It is the tenth category 4 or 5 hurricane globally and the 3rd Category 5.
Texas has mobilized disaster relief efforts as never before. School buses have been mustered near San Antonio for evacuations. 90,000 gallons of gasoline have been delivered to potential hurricane zones, to aid in self-evacuations. Helicopters are being mustered just outside potential storm zones. Someone is paying attention to the damage mitigation and clean up.
Leave a Comment » | Climate change, Disasters, Geography - Physical, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Elron Steele submitted one of his — I’ll wager several readers here have photos that should be included in the encyclopedic site of photos of North American Wildlife. The project is collecting mammal photos right now (birds, reptiles and invertebrates yet to come?)
I note the project has only one not-very-clear photo of a tassel-eared squirrel, and I know there are at least two species of these things ranging through Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado, and I know there are no fewer than four Boy Scout Camps in those areas — so does some Scout or Scouter have a good shot of one of the tassel-eared guys to include?
So, if you have a good photo, send it along to North American Wildlife, or drop it in an e-mail to the curator of the site.
In my recent excursion into New Mexico, we were south of Raton when I spotted a fine specimen of a pronghorn antelope alongside the road. Within a few minutes we had spotted way over a dozen, and returning along the route a week later we must have seen at least 50 of them, in groups as large as a dozen. While I got no decent photos zipping along at 60 mph, surely someone from one of the mountain states has a very good picture that could be contributed.
And teachers: This is a great source of images for student projects and presentations for biology, environmental science, history and geography.
3 Comments | Boy Scouts of America, Environmental protection, Images, Natural history, Student projects, Teaching | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
It’s been about a week since some global warming skeptic pointed me toward a recent piece from Freemon Dyson, claiming that if Dyson didn’t believe in global warming, no one should. Tip of the old scrub brush to whoever that skeptic was.
Dyson’s piece is online at The Edge, dated August 8, 2007: “Heretical Thoughts about Science and Society.” (If you are unfamiliar with Dyson, you should at least check out his biography there. A more comprehensive biography at Wikipedia reveals why you should be familiar with him as a great father, good physicist and astronomer who tends to work well in groups, and winner of the Templeton Prize. Then, next time you see the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode that deals with Dyson Spheres, you can nod your head as if you understand what’s going on.)
I read Dyson’s piece, and while he’s cranky, he’s not denying global warming. A good chunk of his piece discusses how to capture carbon dioxide to prevent further warming, or perhaps even reverse current atmospheric trends. Skeptics of warming who seize on Dyson’s piece as a rebuttal make a common error among the scentifically unquestioning ranters: They assume any criticism of part of an argument is a refutation of the whole. Dyson suggests we should spend time and money on figuring out how to get the microbiota in the soil to capture more CO2.
Much of the rest of the piece is hopeful. Dyson disagrees with hysteric concerns about melting glaciers; he doesn’t think they’ll all melt or cause dramatic rises in sea level. At the same time, he urges caution and study, noting the holes in our knowledge that most arm-chair global warming skeptics want to ignore, including the possibilities that global warming itself would trigger a dramatic shift to a new ice age, which would be at least as catastrophic.
We can separate the climate cranks from the true skeptics if we look for similar flights of reality from people: The true skeptics will note how difficult it is to predict climate and weather, but do not deny the need to act against pollutants which are thought to cause climate change. This is a crucial difference. Bush administration officials originally denied the existence of global warming as an excuse to do nothing about air pollution; now they claim to recognized global warming, but still do little that might control human dumping into the air. In sharp contrast, Dyson proposes a partly-neglected sink of CO2 and urges that we work hard to increase its effectiveness.
In the past year I have posed that question in several climate discussions: Do you oppose controlling air pollution? The question quickly separates cranks from others; while the scientifically literate may argue about whether we can predict human effects on weather, few argue that we should continue our present trends of dumping.
In short, regardless the science, Melissa Etheridge is right. It’s time to wake up.
4 Comments | Accuracy, Climate change, Geography - Physical, Global warming, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Here’s an interesting tactic Dutch Christians seem to have picked up from Adnan Oktar: If you don’t have a rebuttal to evolution, buy the rights to the information and cover it up.
It’s a commercial/religious twist on what Richard Nixon tried to do, but this may be legal. Will it work? Can Christians, or Moslems, purchase the rights to the truth, to keep it from being broadcast?
David Attenborough is famous for his nature programs, usually produced for the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) and often broadcast in the U.S. on Public Broadcast System (PBS) stations. An evangelical Christian television network in the Netherlands purchased the rights to one of Attenborough’s latest productions, The Life of Mammals, but has edited out all references to evolution.
Are the edits significant? See for yourself:
Comparative clips of the English and Dutch versions can bee seen at Cloggie.
Still, with Adnan Oktar spending millions to publish and distribute widely a grotesquely inaccurate book on evolution (unholy to do such things, Adnan – really!), with Texas’s State Board of Education chaired by a hard-headed creationist, one does tire of the creationists’ tendencies to try to purchase the right to be stupid, and then force that stupidity on others.
Why not just stick to the facts? What’s so wrong about letting the truth out? What’s so wrong with the truth that religious fanatics will spend millions to cover it up?
Richard Nixon’s ghost is slapping Santayana’s ghost on the back, asking him to join in on the joke. Santayana’s ghost is not laughing.
More information:
2 Comments | Accuracy, Adnan Oktar, Capitalism, Creationism, Ethics, Evolution, Santayana's ghost, Television | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Economics teachers know stock market mavens and watchers call August the “dog days.” It’s slow time, usually — which puts a piquant point on the market gyrations of the past three weeks.
Why is late August called the “dog days?”
Roman astrologers and astronomers named two constellations in which they thought they saw the outline or framework of dogs. They named one Big Dog, and the other Little Dog — though, in Latin, they became Canis Major and Canis Minor, respectively.
Sirius is in Canis Major. Sirius is the brightest of the true stars (not so bright as Venus, but Venus is a planet). The name “Sirius” came from ancient Egyptians, who named it after their god Osiris; Osiris, of course, had the head of a dog (“Sirius” is a Latin corruption of Osiris, I suppose). So we have a star named after a dog-headed god, in a constellation called the Big Dog.
1 Comment | Mythology, Natural history, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Cover to the original vinyl record, “An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer,” containing his performance of his song, “The Elements.”
Great song, great table, entertaining mashup probably worthy of a more serious production; there are a lot of pictures of boxes on the periodic table.
Tip of the old scrub brush to Homeschool Stuff.
(Lehrer is a math instructor — he intentionally stalled out before getting his Ph.D. — who wrote a series of parody songs in the late 1950s and 1960s. There are three albums of his work, still available last time I checked. One legend is he stopped writing parodies a couple of decades ago, saying that satire was no longer possible after Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973. A collection of his works was assembled into a hit review, Tomfoolery! in 1980; it opened in London, moved to New York, and had a pleasant run in several other venues. Much of his work touches on the scientific, or dives right in.)
(You recognize the tune, of course. It’s from the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta Pirates of Penzance, “The Major-General’s Song.”)
Almost immediate update: Oooh! Here’s an even more ambitious animation of a live performance:
6 Comments | Brain learning, Music, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Yahoo! News assembled half a hundred news photos from around the world relating to Scouting’s 100th anniversary — many from the World Jamboree at Brownsea Island, outside of London, and others showing Scouts around the world renewing their oaths on August 1.
1 Comment | Boy Scouts of America, History | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Nils Ribi is a city councilman in Sun Valley, Idaho, who blogs (public officials who blog, really, is probably a good trend).
Ribi urges that if one should find one’s self driving the highways of Idaho, one might want to stop at the nuclear reactor where electricity was first generated — the first peaceful use of atomic power in the world.
If you are driving the highway between Arco and Idaho Falls, take the time to stop and visit the EBR-1 site that is open to the general public. In 1951 it became the first power plant to produce electricity using atomic energy. It has been nicely restored as a historical site and is well worth the stop, although it is not quite like looking into an operating reactor. The kids will enjoy it too.
His blog features photos of recent forest fires in the area, some of which are starkly beautiful.
Photo of helicopter fighting the Castle Rock Fire near Sun Valley, Idaho, by Nils Ribi.
Leave a Comment » | Museums, Nuclear power, Science, Travel | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
It’s an act worthy of Nicolae Ceauşescu, or Idi Amin — but the Turkish creationist Adnan Oktar has taken legal action that effectively blocks more than a million weblogs from access in Turkey — all the blogs on WordPress, the host of this blog.
Here’s the general announcement to WordPress clients. This site has the text of the threats from Oktar’s lawyers to WordPress.
Here’s a link to Matt’s blog, which has more discussion.
Adnan Oktar is the guy who pays people to write under the name Harun Yahya. Under that name he has published dozens of anti-evolution screeds. You may recall that, in the past year, he has financed the publication of an 800-page book, handsomely bound with scores of pictures (many of them plagiarized), claiming evolution could not account for features of living things. The scientifically vacuous book was delivered to schools and libraries across Europe in 2006, and then to thousands of U.S. scientists, teachers and libraries earlier in 2007. (Here’s a good summary of creationism and Islam, from Taner Edis.)
I suggested in comments that protests should be made to the European Union. Turkey is working to gain admittance to the EU, and childish, totalitarian eruptions such as Oktar’s getting a court to censor a million blogs, significantly detract from Turkey’s chances and case. There is high irony here, too — Oktar is one of those who has willingly spread false claims that evolution was a cause of the Holocaust (when he’s not busy denying the Holocaust happened; consistency and accuracy are not among his strong points) — heck, just a few months ago he was claiming evolution is the cause of terrorism.
Do you have better ideas about what to do?
I hope the few of you who read this blog will spread this word far and fast.
Such disruptions of communication over an entire nation are the dreams of terrorists. Are we to understand that Adnan Oktar does this because Darwin convinced him? Or are his actions direct denial of his earlier claims?
I have been a journalist for a long time, having joined the Society of Professional Journalists in 1974. I spent many years in Washington, slugging it out against people who wished they had the power of censorship, and some who actually did have that power in other nations. I do not recall any similarly stupid activity outside of totalitarian governments, most of which are now gone.
Nuts.
50 Comments | Adnan Oktar, Censorship, Creationism, Evolution, Free press, Freedom - Political, Junk science, Religious Freedom, Totalitarianism, Voodoo history, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
If he’s successful — and he should be, I think — 9 year-old Kinlichiinii John will make history. He asks the Boy Scouts of America to recognize the Navajo religion Azeé Bee Nahagha, his own faith, so that he can earn a religious award as a Cub Scout.
He already has the backing of the President of the Navajo Nation, Joe Shirley, Jr.
[Associated Press via Santa Fe New Mexican] Cub Scout Kinlichiinii John of Clermont, Fla., front middle, poses with his family while holding a Cub Scout manual in his hands during his visit to Window Rock, Ariz. on Aug. 1, 2007. John recently visited Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley in Window Rock, where Shirley offered his support to John, who hopes to earn and establish a Boy Scouts of America Religious Emblem that recognizes his faith in traditional Navajo spiritual way of life, or Azee Bee Nahagha _ also called the Native American Church. Although emblems exist for 35 other religious affiliations, no emblem exists for American Indian religions. (AP photo/Navajo Nation, George Hardeen)
It is neither an easy task, nor a sure thing. While the National Council of the Boy Scouts of America recognizes religious awards, it leaves the rules governing such awards to the religious groups themselves. BSA rules on whether the faith measures up to Boy Scout standards, and authorizes Scouts to wear the religious medal when they earn it, or to wear an emblem over their left pocket to signify they have earned their faith’s religious award.
2 Comments | Boy Scouts of America, Religion | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Few of us use manual typewriters for business anymore. But there are a few people who use them.
From comments to a previous “typewriter of the moment” post:
It is so thrilling to see how the ‘little’ things such as our manual typewriter can connect people in far away places to real feelings! They are lucky kids indeed but how lucky are we that we get to be a part of it :) If you have a manual typewriter that you would like to see used and loved by “generation ?” feel free to send it to us. One just is not enough!
CSWS 9450 22nd Ave SW. Seattle. WA. 98106With Love
Sarah Airhart
Founder of the Community School of West Seattle.
So, if you’ve got a working typewriter in your attic or basement, or in your office acting as a paperweight, now you know where to send it — I’ll wager Sarah will give you a receipt so you can deduct the value of the machine from your income taxes.
But even if there were no deduction, wouldn’t the interest of the kids be enough?
4 Comments | Classroom management, Technology, Technology in the classroom, Typewriters | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
What would your ideal classroom have in it, especially with regard to technology? Brian Smith wants you to tell him what you need, and what you want, and what you dream about — here, and here.
Pushing the corporation’s training into the 21st century, almost two decades ago for AMR Corp., the parent of American Airlines and SABRE (which has been split off subsequently), a group of us in the future-looking department benchmarked corporate and academic training and education. One of our trips took us to IBM’s training center in White Plains, New York — IBM then being considered rather the leader in corporate training and education (running neck and neck with Arthur Andersen; tempus fugit, o tempora, o mores).
IBM put us through a wringer designed to make us think hard. For one example, they asked us why we weren’t benchmarking our own pilot training, which they had benchmarked a few years earlier. Pilot training at airlines in the U.S. was the best in the world, one fellow noted: You hire people who already know how to do the job well, and you have the pick of the best; you train them in simulators and in an intense classroom situations; then when they go to the job, they have trained people behind them to make sure they do it all right; then you call them back every year to refresh with the latest technologies. (Most other training at airlines still is not up to the pilot training standards, which is good for safety as far as pilots are concerned; aircraft mainenance is close behind. One gets an appreciation for true concern about safety when studying that process. But I digress.)
3 Comments | Classroom management, Classroom technology, Education, Education quality, Education reform, Teaching, Technology, Technology in the classroom | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Groucho Marx in a 1958 NBC publicity photograph. NBC Television-NBC Photo/Photographer: Elmer Holloway
30 years without Groucho is too much.
Leave a Comment » | Biography, History, Humor | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
American Presidents, which is a great blog for history and economics teachers and students anyway, hosts the Military History Carnival.
Got a lot of carnival catch up to do. This one should help you focus on polishing lesson plans and getting ideas for student projets.
◊ Tenth century soap opera? It’s a true story. Great background — is this the sort of story that might interest women more?
◊ Waterberg – the first genocide of the 20th century. “Trail of bones.” Largely forgotten — or unknown — history of war in Africa in 1904. I’ll wager you didn’t know about it. It’s not in your world history book.
◊ What do you know about African troops fighting in Europe in World War I? This post, “Forgotten soldiers of the Great War,” is guaranteed to make World War I more relevant to your African-related students.
◊ Are you really prepared to explain the significance of the Battle of Shiloh?
◊ The school’s network went down and took your PowerPoint presentation on the Spanish Armada. What to do? Here’s some help — the PowerPoint slides you’re missing, perhaps.
◊ History is Elementary is represented by a great post about camouflage in war, particularly World War I. This is a wonderful foundation for a lesson plan that deals with non-electronic technology — and as a sidelight, this is the sort of topic where the hunters among your students will be able to provide five or six examples of modern versions, with detailed explanations about the best places to use them. (You should read the post even if it’s out of your area; it’s a fascinating mashup of art, modern art, botany, zoology, psychology and war.)
There is a magnanimous link to the Bathtub’s post on panoramic photos of World War II sites.
And a lot more. Go see.
3 Comments | 1861-1865, 1914-1918, 1941-1945, Capturing history, Civil War, Famous Battles, Geography - Physical, Heroes, Historic documents, History, War, War of 1812, World War I, World War II | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
You are currently browsing the Millard Fillmore's Bathtub blog archives for August, 2007.
Ed Darrell on Texas's Colorado River
Come on in, the water's fine. Come often: Cleanliness is next to godliness.
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
