Praying to DDT for a miracle that DDT cannot work

November 11, 2007

Evolution denier Ray Bohlin is in Liberia telling the Liberians their salvation lies with DDT, at least in fighting malaria. Wholly apart from the theological problems of elevating a chlorinated hydrocarbon killer to the level of idolic deity, DDT can’t solve the many problems that conspire to keep Liberia in the grip of DDT as a killer of children and pregnant women.

What an odd conflict of faith and science. Bohlin is a Christian. His strong faith in DDT is a double puzzle.

[And, what is it with all this denial? Creationist/IDist/evolution deniers tend heavily to be HIV deniers as well, and global warming deniers — now DDT deniers? Have they all had close encounters of the third kind, too? Is it a virus? Is it a cult?]

Fighting malaria in Africa requires a concentrated, integrated plan that provides appropriate medical care to cure any human who contracts malaria, thus breaking a key link in the malaria cycle. Malaria kills children under 5 and pregnant women in larger percentages than other people. Bohlin correctly notes that malaria kills, and that the disease disrupts the nation’s economy. But his recommendation that Liberians increase DDT use, in the absence of an integrated pest management plan, is a prescription for dashed hopes at best, and disaster at worst.

Bohlin seems to urge junk science. DDT offers significant dangers, which Bohlin seems blithely to ignore.

Why won’t DDT help much in the fight against malaria?

Wholly apart from the inherent problems of DDT — mosquitoes develop immunity, or already are immune; DDT kills beneficial insect and arachnid predators of malaria vectors, so the mosquitoes come back in geometrically increased numbers; DDT kills the food fish of people who live on fish; DDT kills reptile, mammal and bird predators of mosquitoes, so the mosquito population roars back with increased killing efficiency — DDT cannot solve the other problems that play a greater role in frustrating the fight against malaria. DDT doesn’t treat the disease once humans catch it; DDT is just one, small tool to prevent infection, and perhaps not the most effective. Read the rest of this entry »

13 Comments | Africa, DDT, History, Junk science, Malaria, Voodoo science | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Fly your flag today: Veterans Day

November 11, 2007

Fly your U.S. flag today, to honor veterans of military service. November 11 was originally celebrated as Armistice Day after World War I’s armistice.

Veterans Administration poster for 2007 Veterans Day

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

5 Comments | Flag etiquette, Fly your flag today, Heroes, History, War, World War I | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Global warming a hoax? No, the hoax claim is a hoax

November 9, 2007

Global warming a hoax? No, the hoax was the claim that there was a study that said global warming is a hoax.

Bob Parks put it succinctly:

4. GLOBAL WARMING HOAX: OR WAS IT JUST A HOAX OF A HOAX?
There was a wild scramble on Wednesday about the death of the manmade global warming theory, except the authors didn’t exist, nor their institution, nor the journal. It took two minutes to find this out, so what was the purpose? Just a prank?

What was it?

Nature reports the hoax site, looking like the website of a research journal, took the article down (that’s the link to the article; it’s gone, as you can see. The hoax included a purported article and a purported editorial from the journal.

But nothing checked out. The journal doesn’t exist. The researchers probably are bogus, too, nor does their purported institution/department exist.

Rush Limbaugh fell for it, though, as did several others who profess to be skeptical of global warming.

Certainly a hoax — but by whom? For what purpose?

In the meantime, junk science purveyor Steven Milloy claims that it was the skeptics of global warming who smoked out the hoax, not the many scientists who immediately smelled fishiness. Does he suggest the name of even one warming “skeptic” who called it? No.

Did Limbaugh apologize yet? Do you think he’ll be more skeptical next time?

Update, November 11, 2007:  Nature interviews the hoax creator and perpetrator. Explanation, excerpt, and links to the article.

19 Comments | Accuracy, Climate change, History, Hoaxes, Science, Voodoo science | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Econ teachers: Have you registered?

November 7, 2007

Have you Texas, New Mexico and Louisiana economics teachers registered for Evening at the Fed?

Evening at the Fed
 Dinner and Discussion for High School Teachers
 Dallas, November 29, 2007
Houston, December 4, 2007
San Antonio, December 11, 2007
El Paso, December 13, 2007

Financial Markets: Innovations and Challenges

The 2007 Evening at the Fed series will feature Jeffery Gunther, assistant vice president and senior economist in the Dallas Fed’s Financial Industry Studies Department. Gunther will speak on factors leading up to the recent financial market turmoil, in particular the role of nontraditional financial instruments. He will address such questions as:

  • Are financial innovations, such as hedge funds, forever changing the financial landscape?
  • What happened in the U.S. sub prime real estate market?
  • What does the consumer need to understand about nontraditional financial instruments?
  • What impact do these new financial instruments have on the US economy?

Join us at a location convenient for you. The fee to attend is $15, which includes dinner and materials. Space is limited and the registration fee must be received by the cut-off date.

This would probably be a good session for government and U.S. history teachers, too.

Registration details after the fold.

Read the rest of this entry »

2 Comments | Economics, Education, Federal Reserve Bank, Free market economics, Government, History, Personal finance | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Nobelist’s biography questioned: We’re still inspired

November 7, 2007

Mario Capecchi’s story of his mother’s arrest by the Gestapo, and his life on the streets of Italy as a young boy, only piqued interest in the story of his winning a Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology, earlier this year.

It is such a great story, people set out to write it down in detail. Some of the details discovered, however, don’t quite square with historical records.

A group of reporters with the Associated Press uncovered the discrepancies. Realizing that the story comes from the memory of a very young child, so far the headlines and the stories have been corrective, but gently and adoringly so.

The story Capecchi has told repeatedly over the years in speeches and interviews begins when he is 3 and the Gestapo, Adolf Hitler’s secret police, snatch his mother before his very eyes and dispatch her to Dachau concentration camp. The peasant family that takes him in abandons him and he spends four years wandering about northern Italy – a street urchin, alone and begging for food.

At war’s end – on the boy’s ninth birthday – mother and son are reunited in the hospital ward where he is being treated for malnutrition and typhoid. They set sail for America where he flourishes, embarks on a brilliant research career – and goes on to win the Nobel Prize for medicine.

But The Associated Press, which set out to chronicle his extraordinary story in greater detail, has uncovered several inconsistencies and unanswered questions, chief among them whether his mother was in Dachau, and whether he really was for a long time a homeless street child.

You can read the full story at The Salt Lake Tribune.

This is a classic case. Memory differs from the facts. Human minds fill in details that would otherwise leave a mystery, and the details filled in differ from the details that can be corroborated.

This is part of what keeps history lively.

We see here also a demonstration that there is much we can never really know for sure. Historians work from imperfect records in the best of circumstances.

The director of the Dachau Memorial, Barbara Distel, said women weren’t imprisoned at Dachau until September 1943 – more than two years after Capecchi says his mother was arrested. She also said only Jewish women from eastern Europe were held in Dachau’s satellite camps.

”I do remember – I remember the Gestapo coming to the Wolfsgruben chalet,” Capecchi told AP in the interview, conducted days after his Nobel Prize was announced. ”It’s sort of like a photograph. I can tell you how many people were in the room, which ones were in uniform and which ones weren’t. Just boom. It’s there.”

Pressed to explain how he could be certain he was just 3 1/2 at the time and remember it so clearly, he stood by his account.

The big question we want answered here is this: How can we get more great people like Mario Capecchi? Can we get a few Nobelists out of the current generation of children?

No one proposes revisiting war to make kids great, so the fascination with Capecchi’s childhood is more academic, if still for inspiration.

In the end, we have a mystery. How did Capecchi get to be such a great man? There remains that great chapter near the end of the book; early chapters are missing.

Perhaps AP could put a team of reporters on a story to explain exactly how Capecchi’ s research explains what it does, and what it means down the road. That’s a story that needs to be told, too.

2 Comments | Accuracy, Capturing history, Heroes, Historic documents, History, Research, Science, World War II | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Carnival catch up: Sputnik at Philosophia Naturalis 14

November 5, 2007

Interesting carnival of natural philosophy that I had not seen before — and Philosophia Naturalis Number 14 celebrates Sputnik. History teachers may want to visit the carnival.

This one is hosted at Dynamics of Cats, one of the Seed Empire science blogs. I regret it took so long to call it to your attention.

1 Comment | History, History images, Science, Space exploration, Weblogs | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Accuracy in quoting: Hotheads after Kennedy again

November 5, 2007

Historian David Kennedy of Stanford University attracts flack almost everywhere he writes, these days, and for the life of me, I can’t figure out why.

A couple of years ago the neocons were angry at him for saying that America’s people are generally unconnected to America’s soldiers in Iraq, and that’s bad for policy. But a few months later when others noted exactly the same thing and issued the same call Kennedy issued to support troops, neocon pundits were quick to praise the idea they’d claimed was destructive a few weeks earlier.

Kennedy wrote a review of economist Paul Krugman’s Conscience of a Liberal, for the New York Times. It’s arcane, sure, but economist Brad DeLong at UCLA takes Kennedy to task for not understanding laissez faire economics well enough.

Academic disputes are so bitter because the stakes are so small, still.

Leave a Comment » | Economics, Free market economics, History, Politics | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Politicians can lie, but they can’t hide

November 5, 2007

A decision by the Supreme Court of the State of Washington last month had wags and pundits claiming that it is okay for politicians to lie, at least in the state of Washington.

On October 4 the Washington Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional a law that banned publication of “a false statement of material fact about a candidate for public office” in advertisements or other campaign materials, if the statement was made with “actual malice,” or with “reckless disregard to its truth or falsity,” according to a report in the New York Times.

“The notion that the government, rather than the people, may be the final arbiter fo truth in political debate is fundamentally at odds with the First Amendment,” Justice James M. Johnson wrote for four the justices in the majority. A dissenting justice, Barbara A. Madsen, wrote that “the majority’s decision is an invitation to lie with impunity.”

Justice Madsen added that the decision would help turn “political campaigns into contests of the best stratagems of lies and deceit, to the end that honest discourse and honest candidates are lost in the maelstrom.”

Utah’s voters now are engaged in a great debate that tests those views. Can voters discern the truth from a fog of claims and counterclaims about school vouchers?

Polls show vouchers losing. What does that mean?

Ironically, perhaps, in the Washington case, the candidate who got the claim wrong, according to the court’s decision, also lost the race:

Mr. Sheldon said Ms. Rickert had violated a state law that made it unlawful to publish “a false statement of material fact about a candidate for public office” in advertisements and campaign materials if the statement was made with “actual malice,” meaning in the knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard to its truth or falsity.

The commission ruled against Ms. Rickert and fined her $1,000. It found that Mr. Sheldon had not voted to close the facility and that it was, in any event, a juvenile detention center rather than one for the developmentally challenged.

Justice Johnson said the law under which the commission had acted was “a censorship scheme.”

“It naïvely assumes,” Justice Johnson wrote, “that the government is capable of correctly and consistently negotiating the thin line between fact and opinion in political speech.”

Mr. Sheldon had other ways to combat the brochure, Justice Johnson added. Mr. Sheldon and his supporters could have “responded to Ms. Rickert’s false statements with the truth.” And Mr. Sheldon remained free to file a libel suit, though he would have to prove not only falsity and actual malice but also that the statement had harmed his reputation.

In a brief concurring opinion, Chief Justice Gerry L. Alexander said the flaw in the law was that it penalized false “nondefamatory speech,” meaning statements that do not injure reputation. But he said the government should be free to “penalize defamatory political speech.”

The voters figured it out.

___________________________

Opinions in Rickert v. Washington:

 

Leave a Comment » | Education, Ethics, History, Law, Politics, School vouchers | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

When do we reach the “never” in “Never again?”

November 4, 2007

You won’t find this in your world history text.

Events in Congo trouble at so many levels. Reports in The New York Times and other places document unspeakable violence: 27,000 sexual assaults in South Kivu Province in 2006, just a fraction of the total number across the nation of 66 million people. The assaults are brutal. Women assaulted are often left so badly injured internally, they may never heal.

  • Map of Congo, showing area of high violence in east, from New York Times Map of Congo, highlighting province of Bukavu where violence against women is epidemic, from New York Times

Genocide you say? Many assaults appear to be spillover from the Hutu-Tutsi conflict in next-door Rwanda. But assaults by husbands on wives also are epidemic. Result of civil war? Then how to explain the “Rasta” gang, dreadlocked fugitives who live in the forest, wear tracksuits and Los Angeles Lakers jerseys, and who commit unspeakable crimes against women and children? What nation are they from, and against whom do they fight, if anyone — and for what?

The facts cry out for action:

  • Nightly rapes of women and girls. The violence appears to be a problem across the nation.
  • Huge chunks of Congo have no effective government to even contend against the violence.
  • Killers with experience in genocide in their native Rwanda moved into Congo; they live by kidnapping women for ransom. The women are assaulted while held captive. Sometimes husbands do not take back their wives.
  • The oldest rape victim recorded by one Congo physician is 75; the youngest, 3.

Surely intervention by an international group would help, no? However

  • Congo hosts the largest single peacekeeping mission of the United Nations right now, with 17,000 troops. Congo is a big nation, bordered by nine other nations. How many troops would it take to secure the entire nation, or the entire border? No one knows.
  • 2006 saw an election that was supposed to remake history, end the violence and start Congo on the road to recovery; but was the $500 million it cost enough to change Congo’s history of a string of bad governments?
  • International attention focuses on other crises: Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan and Darfur, Iran, Korea, Chechnya, Turkey and the Kurds, Palestine and Israel. Congo, constantly roiling since the 1960s, is way down the list of world concerns, no matter how bad the violence.

Americans looking for a quick resolution to the situation in Iraq might do well to study Congo. At Congo’s independence in the 1960s, there was hope of prosperity and greater peace. Foreign intervention, including meddling from the U.S., regional civil wars, bad government and long international neglect, ate up the hope. Achieving what a nation could be is difficult, when so many forces align to prevent it from being anything other than a violent backwater. Pandora’s box resists attempts to shut it. Quick resolution is unlikely.

So the violence in Congo continues. In this world, when is the “never” in “never again?”

How many other such cases fall outside our textbooks, and off the state tests?

Resources:

2 Comments | Africa, Disasters, Economics, Genocide, Geography - Economic, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, History, Human Rights, Natural resources, Politics | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Quote of the moment: Price of repeating history

November 3, 2007

 

“Each time history repeats itself, the price goes up.”

Ronald Wright, A Short History of Progress, (House of Anansi Press, 2004) (Carroll and Graf, 2005)

Cover of Ronald Wright's A Short History of Progress(This book resulted from Ronald Wright’s 2004 lectures in the famous Canadian series, the Massey Lectures. The lectures are broadcast on radio by the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC), whose website features an excerpt from the Wright lectures. You may get a podcast of Wright’s lecture 1, here; and lecture 2, here. Wright suggests that, after 10,000 years of experimenting with civilization, generally leading to failure, we have a chance to get things right, now, if we act wisely. “It describes in particular how four historical civilisations – those of Easter Island, Sumer, the Maya and Rome – self-destructed due to a lack of foresight and to wrong choices. Wright argues ‘each time history repeats itself, the price goes up.'” Martin Scorsese is developing the movie rights.)

Wright’s use of the phrase is the earliest I’ve been able to document quickly; but it’s a popular phrase now. Please note in comments if you know of an earlier use that can be tracked down.

 

1 Comment | Disasters, Environmental protection, History, Lessons of history, Quotes, Santayana's ghost | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

The first use of “terrorism”

November 3, 2007

Did you ever wonder when the term “terrorism” first appeared, and against what terror it was aimed?

George Bush and Dick Cheney will not like the answer. François Furstenberg gives the history of the term in an opposite-editorial page piece in the New York Times, “Bush’s Dangerous Liaisons.”

Here’s a hint: The phrase referred to governmental the ruling party’s actions against its own people, originally.

Furstenberg is a professor of history at the University of Montreal, and a scholar of George Washington.

3 Comments | French Revolution, History, Iraq, War on Terrorism, Words | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Veterans Affairs will allow inaccurate history

November 3, 2007

At the same time the Cleveland Plain Dealer defended inaccurate history in flag-folding ceremonies, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs announced it would allow inaccurate ceremonies, if the family of the departed veteran requests it, and if the family provides the script. Here’s the news from the Akron Beacon-Journal.

Scripts must still adhere to standards that prohibit racism, obscenity, or political partisanship.

2 Comments | Accuracy, Bogus history, First Amendment, History, Patriotism, Voodoo history | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

“Why should I read Shakespeare? Why should I study history?”

November 2, 2007

David McCullough might answer that question this way:

In conclusion I want to share a scene that took place on the last day of the year of 1776, Dec. 31. All the enlistments for the entire army were up. Every soldier, because of the system at the time, was free to go home as of the first day of January 1777. Washington called a large part of the troops out into formation. He appeared in front of these ragged men on his horse, and he urged them to reenlist. He said that if they would sign up for another six months, he’d give them a bonus of 10 dollars. It was an enormous amount then because that’s about what they were being paid for a month—if and when they could get paid. These were men who were desperate for pay of any kind. Their families were starving.

The drums rolled, and he asked those who would stay on to step forward. The drums kept rolling, and nobody stepped forward. Washington turned and rode away from them. Then he stopped, and he turned back and rode up to them again. This is what we know he said:

My brave fellows, you have done all I asked you to do, and more than could be reasonably expected, but your country is at stake, your wives, your houses, and all that you hold dear. You have worn yourselves out with fatigues and hardships, but we know not how to spare you. If you will consent to stay one month longer, you will render that service to the cause of liberty, and to your country, which you can probably never do under any other circumstance.3

Again the drums rolled. This time the men began stepping forward. “God Almighty,” wrote Nathanael Greene, “inclined their hearts to listen to the proposal and they engaged anew.”4

Now that is an amazing scene, to say the least, and it’s real. This wasn’t some contrivance of a screenwriter. However, I believe there is something very familiar about what Washington said to those troops. It was as if he was saying, “You are fortunate. You have a chance to serve your country in a way that nobody else is going to be able to, and everybody else is going to be jealous of you, and you will count this the most important decision and the most valuable service of your lives.” Now doesn’t that have a familiar ring? Isn’t it very like the speech of Henry V in Shakespeare’s play Henry V: “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers . . . And gentlemen in England now a-bed / Shall think themselves accursed they were not here”?5 Washington loved the theater; Washington loved Shakespeare. I can’t help but feel that he was greatly influenced.

He was also greatly influenced, as they all were, by the classical ideals of the Romans and the Greeks. The history they read was the history of Greece and Rome. And while Washington and Knox and Greene, not being educated men, didn’t read Greek and Latin as Adams and Jefferson did, they knew the play Cato, and they knew about Cincinnatus. They knew that Cincinnatus had stepped forward to save his country in its hour of peril and then, after the war was over, returned to the farm. Washington, the political general, had never forgotten that Congress was boss. When the war was at last over, Washington, in one of the most important events in our entire history, turned back his command to Congress—a scene portrayed in a magnificent painting by John Trumbull that hangs in the rotunda of our national Capitol. When George III heard that George Washington might do this, he said that “if he does, he will be the greatest man in the world.”

So what does this tell us? That the original decision of the Continental Congress was the wise one. They knew the man, they knew his character, and he lived up to his reputation.

I hope very much that those of you who are studying history here will pursue it avidly, with diligence, with attention. I hope you do this not just because it will make you a better citizen, and it will; not just because you will learn a great deal about human nature and about cause and effect in your own lives, as well as the life of the nation, which you will; but as a source of strength, as an example of how to conduct yourself in difficult times—and we live in very difficult times, very uncertain times. But I hope you also find history to be a source of pleasure. Read history for pleasure as you would read a great novel or poetry or go to see a great play.

And I hope when you read about the American Revolution and the reality of those people that you will never think of them again as just figures in a costume pageant or as gods. They were not perfect; they were imperfect—that’s what’s so miraculous. They rose to the occasion as very few generations ever have.

David McCullough, from a speech delivered at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, on September 27, 2005, “The Glorious Cause of America.”

Do your students know that speech from Henry V? Do your students know the story of Cincinnatus?

Tip of the old scrub brush to Collecting My Thoughts.

Leave a Comment » | 1776, America's founding, Famous quotes, George Washington, History, Literature | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Right wing flogs the flag: Old whine in old skins

November 2, 2007

Old hoaxes never die. Sometimes they don’t even fade away (making it certain that they are less honorable than any soldier).

Folding the flag by an Air Force color guard at Arlington National Cemetery; photo by Arlington National Cemetery

Folding the flag by an Air Force color guard at Arlington National Cemetery; photo by Arlington National Cemetery

The right wing whine machine is working up a dudgeon because National Cemeteries now have a policy against use of a flag- and history-insulting script that ascribes all sorts of hoakum to the simple folding of the American flag at funerals — a ceremony which is touching and sobering when done as a military color guard does it in silence, as they are trained.

A blog named headsup explains most of the issues, with a few links, at “Keep opinion to self.”

Regular readers recognize the issue. Fillmore’s Bathtub explained how the discontinued ceremony butchered history, how some people clung to the old ceremony, and how the Air Force devised a more accurate ceremony to use if color guards are asked.

People who sow strife for a living never let facts get in the way of a good dudgeon.

Were this worthy of controversy, it should have been controversial months ago. The “folding ceremony” in contention was never official, and was rarely used. Do your own survey of veterans’ funerals to see; I have never heard of the ceremony actually used. We have the DFW National Cemetery within a few miles of our home. I regularly visit with veterans, and I have attended ceremonies myself. Don’t take my word for it.

Stick to the Flag Code and the Constitution, and no one will get hurt.

Michelle Malkin? Any other wacko commentators who don’t know the Flag Code? Get a clue. Remedial history is calling you. Please get off the soap boxes. Please quit using the U.S. flag to cover your gluteus maximii.

It’s time to stand up for accuracy, for real history, and for the law. Honor the flag by following the rules, not by dressing in it, or dragging it through the mud for ratings points.

Dishonor Roll:

Honor Roll:

2 Comments | Bogus history, Flag ceremony, Flag etiquette, History, U.S. Constitution, Voodoo history | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Chemistry: No fun if nothing explodes

November 1, 2007

Our house had two or three of the things around from my three older brothers — you know, the old Gilbert or Chemcraft chemistry sets, complete with potentially dangerous chemicals, test tubes, an alcohol lamp, a couple of beakers and stands, and instructions for how to make cool reactions with warnings about not making things explode.

chemistry glassware with colored water

We all made things explode, of course. That’s the fun stuff. Making jellied alcohol was fun, too — older brother Wes did that at Halloween, as I recall, the better to make a flaming hand (once was enough, thanks). We didn’t worry so much about the poisonous qualities of hydrogen sulfide, as we did worry about how to claim somebody else was suffering from flatulence when we made it. The kits and their metal boxes were in poor repair by the time I got around to them, but other kids in the neighborhood had new ones, and we always had the labs at the junior high and high school, which were stocked with enough dangerous stuff to keep us on the edge of blowing up the school, we thought (probably incorrectly).

One sign of laboratory experience: The acid holes in the Levi jeans. Older son Kenny recently discovered these things still happen in a lab at college. It had never occurred to him to worry about it before — one of his favorite t-shirts, too. (Holes in clothes appear not to be the fashion statement they were for his parents . . .)

12 Angry Men laments the wussification of these old chemistry sets. No danger anymore, he says.

Someone in comments claims you can still get the dangerous stuff.

But someone else claims such kits may be illegal under Homeland Security and DEA rules. Heck, they say even Erlenmeyer flasks are illegal in Texas. They used to be very popular among the secretaries in the biology department because they made such fine vases for the single-stemmed flowers their grad-student admirers could afford. Gotta see what’s up with that.

Technology changes so you can’t get it anymore.

But, kids with solid chemistry experience make more money in the real world — especially chemical engineers. Here’s a Catch-22: Kids can make more money if they have the experience to get the job, but they can’t get the experience until they get the job.

Update, November 1:  The PBS/Wired Science segment on kids doing chemistry, and chemistry sets

4 Comments | Education, History, Learning, Life, Science, Technology, Technology in the classroom | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »