Astronomy Day, May 10: Sponsors needed!

March 15, 2008

In all of Texas, only residents of El Paso have a sponsor for Astronomy Day activities (participating astronomy groups are the Gene Roddenberry Planetarium, El Paso Astronomy Club, and Junior League of El Paso, meeting at El Paso Desert Botanical Gardens at Keystone Heritage Park). Celebrate Astronomy Day on Saturday, May 10, 2008.

Why is this a big deal?

National Astronomy Day 2008 poster

Chiefly because I know there are students in Lubbock, Odessa, Killeen, Houston, Galveston, Victoria, Beaumont, Tyler, Dallas, Fort Worth, Waco, Austin, and San Antonio — plus starry spots in between — who should have a chance to see some stars on National Astronomy Day.

Plus, Astronomy Magazine has a deal with Meade Instruments 4M to give away a telescope at each sponsored site.

We need a sponsor here in Dallas!

“The Meade Instruments 4M Community will donate an ETX-80 telescope for each venue to give away and also provide a 8-inch LX 90 for the grand prize — Astronomy will pick the grand-prize winner from names collected at each venue.”

Where can you view? Check Meade’s site for a list of physical sites participating on May 10. Check Astronomy Magazine for an interactive map of sites.

Astronomy Day is a grass roots movement to share the joy of astronomy with the general population – “Bringing Astronomy to the People.” On Astronomy Day, thousands of people who have never looked through a telescope will have an opportunity to see first hand what has so many amateur and professional astronomers all excited. Astronomy clubs, science museums, observatories, universities, planetariums, laboratories, libraries, and nature centers host special events and activities to acquaint their population with local astronomical resources and facilities. It is an astronomical PR event that helps highlight ways the general public can get involved with astronomy – or at least get some of their questions about astronomy answered. Astronomy Week is the same concept as Astronomy Day except seven times long.

Novices get a chance to look at the stars, and one person at each site wins a telescope; one person in the nation gets a very nice 8-inch telescope. What are your chances? Last year 28 telescopes were given away; there were 3,700 people who registered to win the things.

Just for looking at the stars! What a deal.

Who will sponsor more sites? Where is the Texas Astronomical Society? The Fort Worth Astronomical Society? How about the Olympus Mons Astronomical Society (at UT-Arlington)? The Lockheed-Martin Astronomy Club?

2 Comments | Astronomy, Science, Travel | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Ann and Molly

March 15, 2008

I miss Ann Richards.

Ann Richards with her motorcycle
Photo of Ann Richards with her motorcycle, from the Texas State Library & Archives Commission, Prints and Photographs Collection

Here’s an excerpt from Molly Ivins’ column of September 18, 2006, the week after Ann died.

She knew how to deal with teenage egos: Instead of pointing out to a kid who was pouring charcoal lighter on a live fire that he was idiot, Ann said, “Honey, if you keep doing that, the fire is going to climb right back up to that can in your hand and explode and give you horrible injuries, and it will just ruin my entire weekend.”

She knew what it was like to have four young children and to be so tired you cried while folding the laundry. She knew and valued Wise Women like Virginia Whitten and Helen Hadley.

At a long-ago political do at Scholz Garten in Austin, everybody who was anybody was there meetin’ and greetin’ at a furious pace. A group of us got the tired feet and went to lean our butts against a table at the back wall of the bar. Perched like birds in a row were Bob Bullock, then state comptroller, moi, Charles Miles, the head of Bullock’s personnel department, and Ms. Ann Richards. Bullock, 20 years in Texas politics, knew every sorry, no good sumbitch in the entire state. Some old racist judge from East Texas came up to him, “Bob, my boy, how are you?”

Bullock said, “Judge, I’d like you to meet my friends: This is Molly Ivins with the Texas Observer.”

The judge peered up at me and said, “How yew, little lady?”

Bullock, “And this is Charles Miles, the head of my personnel department.” Miles, who is black, stuck out his hand, and the judge got an expression on his face as though he had just stepped into a fresh cowpie. He reached out and touched Charlie’s palm with one finger, while turning eagerly to the pretty, blonde, blue-eyed Ann Richards. “And who is this lovely lady?”

Ann beamed and replied, “I am Mrs. Miles.”

One of the most moving memories I have of Ann is her sitting in a circle with a group of prisoners. Ann and Bullock had started a rehab program in prisons, the single most effective thing that can be done to cut recidivism (George W. Bush later destroyed the program). The governor of Texas looked at the cons and said, “My name is Ann, and I am an alcoholic.”

She devoted untold hours to helping other alcoholics, and anyone who ever heard her speak at an AA convention knows how close laughter and tears can be.

One to make history, one to record it.

I miss Molly Ivins.

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1 Comment | A Good Story, Government, Politics, Texas | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

World’s oldest playable musical instruments: Listen

March 14, 2008

About that 5,200-year old animation: Was there a musical score to accompany it?

Certainly flutes could have provided accompaniment: Research establishes that several neolithic bone flutes found in China are 7,000 to 9,000 years old.

9,000 year-old flutes from crane bones, Brookhaven National Lab

A 1999 release from the Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) discussed the dating of the flutes:

Recent excavations at the early Neolithic site of Jiahu, located in Henan province, China, have yielded six complete bone flutes between 7,000 and 9,000 years old. Fragments of approximately 30 other flutes were also discovered. The flutes may be the earliest complete, playable, tightly-dated, multinote musical instruments.

Garman Harbottle, a chemist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory and member of the Jiahu research team, helped analyze data from carbon-14 dating done in China on materials taken from the site. “Jiahu has the potential to be one of the most significant and exciting early Neolithic sites ever investigated,” said Harbottle. “The carbon dating was of crucial importance to my Chinese colleagues in establishing the age of the site and the relics found within it.”

These flutes were found in modern China, and the bowl with the jumping goat images was found in modern Iran. The spread of technology may have worked on a millennial time scale then. Did the flute technology cover the approximately 3,500 miles between the sites, in the 3,000 to 4,000 years in between their creation?

At least two .wav files exist of one of the flutes being played (here, and here), again from BNL; the actual tunes the flute creators played, we do not know, ASCAP and BMI did not protect the publication of the tunes.

What other astounding archaeological finds are out there, relatively unpublicized?

Resources:

9 Comments | Archaeology, History, Music, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Sticks nix creationist pic

March 14, 2008

“Expelled!” producers gave away free tickets. They invited legislators personally. But only about 100 people showed up for an IMAX showing of the movie in Tallahassee, Florida.

benstein-expelled-no.jpg

Hey, I got 1,000 times that many people to click on an 8-frame .gif animation of an ancient goat. Real science trumps creationism again.

Real science is almost always more popular than faux-science and bad religion, but that will not stop creationists from creating trouble in any state agency in any state they can.

Tip of the old scrub brush to Pharyngula.

[Yes, I’m aware of the historical implications of the headline.]

88 Comments | Creationism, Evolution, History, Movies, Politics, Science, State school boards | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Return to normalcy

March 14, 2008

For at least one hour this past week, the Bathtub got more than 11,000 hits. Who could have foreseen that a post about an ancient piece of pseudo-animation would catch the fancy of so many? I gather that the word “animation” played a key role in the enormous popularity of the post.

In two days the Bathtub got more than 100,000 hits; that’s big blog territory, about where WordPress phones and suggests it’s time to move to a paid format. The first day was chiefly driven by Reddit; the second day by Digg. At this point traffic is coming from about five different flagging services.

I wish other, more serious posts would merit such attention. In the real world, People magazine sells a lot more than Time, and a lot more than Natural History, and those magazines throw away an equivalent of the entire press run of The Journal of the Air Pollution Control Association just because of a crease in one page. Content quality bears no correlation to total circulation. But that’s my judgment; who can say that my judgment is better than the crowd’s? Santayana’s Ghost is a more amicable companion, but Galton’s Ghost haunts us, too.

So, some observations:

1. Archaeologists and anthropologists need to flack their finds better. The animated .gif was created in 2004 as best I can determine. I picked up the story from a tiny note in a monthly archaeology newsletter Kris Hirst’s blog at from Ask.com, which picked the story up from a note on a piece of controversy about the bowl (regarding whether it was the Assyrian Tree of Life depicted or not). The bowl was found, depending on the source, in the 1970s or 1980s (surely someone knows which date would be correct).

In other words, this “news” has been kicking around for a quarter to a third of a century. What other magnificent archaeological finds would people find fascinating, if they only knew about them?

This is a constant problem. News gatekeepers — editors — generally do a good job, but the volume of news means many things people would find intriguing, get overlooked. Some day I’ll write up my experiences as a press secretary, telling how editors would repeatedly reject tips as “not news,” then run the items months later when the item came in through a different source, or a different route. (“She came in through the bathroom window,” the Beatles sang, and every press secretary understands why; the door and the grand staircase were occupied.)

The problem is compounded by the internet and computers. Most people who looked at the post did not start out the day wondering what had happened recently in archaeological digs in Iran. News reader filters for our “interests” may shut out things we really would be interested to see. I called it “animation,” and 100,000 people crowded to see. There’s nothing like an old fashioned newspaper to pique our interest in odd items we were not looking for at all, on pages where we read other stuff we were looking for.

2. We all need to marry the cyber world to the real world. I still know precious little about the artifact in question. Where can I find information on it? I don’t have access to archaeology journals. Without knowing exactly where to look on the internet, we are all at a loss as to where to turn. What museum is this piece in, if any? (If it’s not in a museum, Iran or its owners could auction it off at a pretty good price right now, I’ll bet.) Who were the Italians who found it? Where can we find the papers describing it? What about the 11-minute film mentioned in the press releases — where is that film, how can we see it? Those people who hold this information appear not to be plumbed into the tubes of the internets, or the spigots are turned off. There is an information vacuum here, and good, real information is difficult to find to fill it.

3. Most of us know precious little about the world; the internet is often limited in the help it can offer to cure our ignorance. Several commenters seemed to have some knowledge about Iran’s archaeological heritage. Most of us had never heard of the Burnt City, most of us still couldn’t find it on a map, and most of us don’t know where to go to get the next chunk of fascinating information. The internet is a great institution, but in these matters, it’s still hit or miss for people who really want to know. We’re missing the boat on using computers and the internet as education tools.

Readers: What else have we learned from this experience?

6 Comments | Archaeology, History, History and art, On-line education, On-line learning, Santayana's ghost, Weblogs | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Carnivals! Beach browsing for spring break

March 13, 2008

Spring break, lots of work to do (no beaches for me). Have I neglected noting the carnivals? There are a lot of good posts gathered in some of them.

Liberals

Tangled Up in Blue Guy hosts the 60th Carnival of the Liberals. Pay particular attention to Digital Cuttlefish’s little spur-of-the-moment poem on Sally Kern, an Oklahoma state representative who was caught red-eared, on tape, in a bigoted rant. Poetry doesn’t get the respect it deserves; this guy shows real wit in his rhyming.

Prehistory, archaeology

Four Stone Hearth #36 cooks along and warms our brains over at Afarensis. I think every history teacher and every geography teacher should visit this carnival from time to time, to find some of the best new stuff for the early chapters of every history course, the prehistoric human section that is never as good in the class textbook as it is in the journals or in these blogs. Who among us hasn’t had someone ask for the “final, definitive reason” the Neandertals went extinct? Instead of just answering “we don’t know,” you can refer a student to the “mad Neandertal” hypothesis, and ask them to report back on it from A Very Remote Period Indeed). Science, and history, are not settled on these issues — how better to let students see that than to experience some of the discussion? Psychology teachers probably should note this post from Not Exactly Rocket Science, on PET scans of human and chimpanzee brains while the subject is communicating. That’s just two posts in the carnival.

Education

Learn Me Good hosts the 162nd Carnival of Education, the March Mathness Edition. Take a look at Dave on Ed’s post about how school administrators are quick to jump on calling for change to match whatever is the latest fad in education, but slow to provide teachers with the training required to make the changes work. What fad is he talking about? Well, all of them — but you remember the talk a couple of weeks ago about the Finns getting education right? Mom is Teaching has some comments about the Finns beating Americans.

Psychology and neuroscience

I’m watching psychology more closely these days, especially with older son Kenny now working on a neuroscience degree, so I’ve been paying more attention to Encephalon, the carnival on psychology and neurosciences — Encephalon 40 finds a home at Mind Hacks. Hitting almost all my buttons, there is a pointer to a post discussing what is the real history of psychology at Advances in the History of Psychology — what counts as history? Great discussion. Encephalon 41 is due on March 17, at Pure Pedantry.

History

History Carnival 62 has been up for a couple of weeks at Spinning Clio. I just got there a couple of days ago — and you need to go see it, too. The History Guru has a series of podcasts on western civilization, the Western Intellectual History Lecture Series. Can you use this in your classes? Figure out how to use it in your classes. If you’re not making iPod recommendations for your students, you’re missing the boat and so are they. Go check it out at least. Such activities threaten to drag teaching into the last decade of the 20th century. There’s hope we can drag teaching into the 21st century sometime before 2090. The President of France proposes that each 10 year-old child in France memorize the history of one child deported from France during the Holocaust. Good idea or not? See the discussion here (yes, it’s in French; this is the internet, put on your grande fille culottes or pantalons adulte and deal with it). [Why is it that high school history texts never explain the origin of the name of the political movement in Paris, the sans-culottes? How could any kid fail to remember a movement known as “no-pants?” Do the book authors not know that kids would be interested?]

The History Carnival is particularly rich for high school teachers, I think; see these posts:

Over at Progressive Historian, contributor “midtowng” believes that the S&L Crisis is repeating today and compares it to the S&L crisis of the 1980’s .

Jon Swift exclaims Castro Resigns! Sanctions Work!

“It has now been forty years since May ’68, and yet we still haven’t gotten over it.” Greg Afinogenov looks at why.

Economics

Is the American Economics Blog Carnival the economics carnival I’ve been searching for? Struck in Traffic hosts the March 1 edition. Hmmmm. Not sure.

Okay, enough of the Midways. Where is the Fletcher’s State Fair Corny Dog Shack? (Controversy there, too!)

8 Comments | 1968, Economics, Education, History, History audio sources, Podcasting, psychology, Teaching, Technology in the classroom, Weblogs, World history | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

A Buddhist perspective on DDT

March 13, 2008

Or, why thinking carefully often outweighs shouting loudly in the free market of ideas. I stumbled across this entry, a serious question to a serious Buddhist practitioner.

2 Comments | DDT, Environmental protection, Reason, Religion | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

DDT conference: Safe or not? Who will report?

March 12, 2008

March 14 beckons from the near horizon. A group of scientists and policy wonks will gather at Alma College, in Alma, Michigan, to look at the issues of DDT and health. This is the first major conference of its kind since the POPs Treaty, at least.

Logo for Kenaga DDT Conference, Alma College, 2008

Controversy again swirls around DDT, with a large industry campaign again after the reputation of Rachel Carson just the same as in 1963 — though Ms. Carson has been dead since 1964. The disinformation campaign also impugns environmentalists, health care workers (especially if they’ve ever worked for the World Health Organization), Al Gore (there is no rationale), and when the minions think they can get away with it, it impugns bed nets and stagnant pool draining.

This public relations campaign against Rachel Carson enjoys a great deal of success. Oklahoma’s Sen. Tom Coburn, who seems never to have met an insult to a scientist he couldn’t use, successfully stopped the U.S. Senate from passing a bill naming a post office in honor of Rachel Carson, one of Coburn’s greatest legislative achievements. Several people in Congress, including Utah’s Rep. Rob Bishop, were similarly hornswoggled.

This conference could put real, accurate information in front of the public.

Are my expectations way too high? I hope reporting from this conference might inject sanity, comity, humility and courtesy back into the discussions of how to treat malaria, and whether DDT should ever be used.

Associated Press? Reuters? New York Times? Chicago Tribune? Detroit News, or Detroit Free Press? Lansing State Journal?

Who will report from the conference?

I hope major news outlets will have reporters there.

Resources:

5 Comments | DDT, Environmental justice, Junk science, Justice, Malaria, News, Newspapers, Public education, Public health, Rachel Carson, War on Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

600,000 visits

March 12, 2008

Passed it an hour ago. This is what P. Z. Myers gets every day, but it’s new for the Bathtub.

Now, I wonder what has to happen to get some of these visitors to turn the page to some of the more substantive posts?

7 Comments | Administrivia, Point of personal privilege, Weblogs | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

State of museums

March 12, 2008

Teachers: Run out to your local Starbucks, or newsstand if you’re luckier, and get today’s New York Times. Check out the special section on museums.

Science, arts and social studies teachers especially, go look. What local museums are you overlooking? Which museums should you plan a long-distance trip to see?

Duncanville ISD teachers sometimes require “field experience” for students, including visits to local museums. I doubt we’d have gotten our kids into the African American Museum otherwise; I think too few kids bother with the Frontiers of Flight Museum (or the C. R. Smith Museum closer to DFW Airport), and I know way too few bother with the Jack Harbin Museum of Scouting, a great shining gem obscured by its working class, Scout camp location and the proximity of the National Scouting Museum in Irving, Texas.

Our family plans to visit Lucy at the Houston Museum of Natural Science this weekend. I had a great time with Abe in Springfield last month, courtesy of the Bill of Rights Institute and the Liberty Fund (and I have not written about it, bad boy that I am).

The Times’s section makes me lust for Star Trek™-style transporters that take a whole classroom of kids, cheaply, to see the real stuff.  Be sure to check out the on-line videos and slide shows, too.

Leave a Comment » | Art, History, History and art, Museums, Newspapers, Science, Travel | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Homeschooler says ‘teach kids about Darwin’

March 11, 2008

Thoughtful post from a homeschooler, Geek Dad.  Check out the responses.  The heated exchanges reveal a lot.

6 Comments | Accuracy, Creationism, Darwin, Education, Evolution, Homeschooling, Science | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

550,000 so soon?

March 11, 2008

One lucky post — at today’s traffic rates, Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub will rocket through its 550,000th view this afternoon.

If it’s not repeatable, it’s a miracle, right?

[Update:  550,000th hit at about 2:20 p.m. CDT.]

5 Comments | Administrivia, Point of personal privilege | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Feynman: The beat goes on

March 11, 2008

Wow.

I believe this is an excerpt from a NOVA tribute to Feynman, which has never been available commercially so far as I have found.  Anybody know how to get a copy of the video?

Among other things, the piece included comments from some of Feynman’s closest friends, and it detailed their fascination with a tiny republic then inside of the Soviet Union, Tannu Tuva, which Feynman had determined to be the most obscure and difficult nation on Earth to travel to — and so, of course, he wanted to go.  The place is known today as Tuva.

No denying the man his orange juice.

1 Comment | Heroes, History, History images, Life, Physics, Point of personal privilege, Science | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

World’s oldest animation, 5,200 years old

March 10, 2008

Leaping Goat - World's oldest animation
Film showing images from a 5,200-year old bowl from an ancient burial site in Iran.

An Italian team of archaeologists unearthed the bowl goblet in the 1970s from a burial site in Iran’s Burnt City, but it was only recently that researchers noticed the images on the bowl tell an animated visual story.

The oldest cartoon character in the world is a goat leaping to get the leaves on a tree.

According to an article in the Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies:

The artefact bears five images depicting a wild goat jumping up to eat the leaves of a tree, which the members of the team at that time had not recognised the relationship between the pictures.

Several years later,Iranian archaeologist Dr Mansur Sadjadi, who became later appointed as the new director of the archaeological team working at the Burnt City discovered that the pictures formed a related series.

The bowl has some controversy associated with it. Some researchers claimed the tree on the bowl to be the Assyrian Tree of Life, but the bowl dates to a period before the Assyrian civilization.

Tip of the old scrub brush to Kris’s Archaeological Blog at About.com:

Now this is deeply cool. The Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts Organization (CHTHO) in Iran has made a short film using the images on a bowl from the Burnt City. The Burnt City (Shar-i Sokhta) is a site in Iran that dates to about 2600 BC, and has seen some decades of investigation. The bowl shows five images of a wild goat leaping, and if you put them in a sequence (like a flip book), the wild goat leaps to nip leaves off a tree.

Bugs Bunny has nothing to worry about yet, if you ask me.

Animate discussion, share the word:

Add to FacebookAdd to NewsvineAdd to DiggAdd to Del.icio.usAdd to StumbleuponAdd to RedditAdd to BlinklistAdd to TwitterAdd to TechnoratiAdd to Furl

183 Comments | Anthropology, Archaeology, History, History and art, History blogs, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Capturing history: Jim Brown at IUPUI and the Delaware Tribes

March 10, 2008

While you’re over looking at IUPUI and wondering whether you’ve ever heard of the campus before (sure you have — you follow the NCAA basketball tournament, right?), take a look at this video about Prof. Jim Brown and his work to record the history of the Delaware Tribe in photojournalism.

The Order of the Arrow, the camping honor society within U.S. Boy Scouting, takes much of its Indian Heritage from a tribe of the Delaware group, the Lenni Lenape. The last speaker of the Lenni Lenape language died in Oklahoma a couple of years ago; it’s good to see more efforts to record the rest of the heritage before it, too, slips away.

1 Comment | Capturing history, History, History images, History video sources, Journalism, Native Americans, Oral history | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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