BD-10A high frequency generator tester leak detector, from Electro-Technic Products. “BD10ASV OUTPUT: 10,000-50,000 volts at frequency of approx. 1/2 megahertz. Power 230 V, with a momentary ON/OFF switch”
As described at the company’s website:
Model BD-10A is the standard tester
Model BD-10AS features a momentary ON/OFF switch
OUTPUT: 10,000-50,000 volts at frequency of approx. 1/2 megahertz
Generally, this tester should not produce serious injury, even when misapplied. Standard middle school lab safety rules would suggest that it should never be used to “test” a human for leaks. Such voltages are designed to produce sparks. Sparks do not always behave as one expects, or hopes. High voltages may make cool looking sparks, but the effects of high voltage jolts differ from person to person. It may be harmful.
Cuzelis said he is not aware of anyone seriously hurt with the device and said that his company has never been sued for injuries.
What sort of lab safety rules did Freshwater have for other experiments?
If you discovered your child’s science teacher had this device, designed to produce high-voltage sparks to highlight holes in rubber and plastic liners of tanks, would you be concerned? If you know what should go on in a science class, you’d know there is probably little use for such a device in a classroom. It’s been described as a Tesla coil.
Tesla coils of extremely small voltages can be safe. They should be safe. But one occasionally finds a safety warning, such as this generalized note at Wikipedia:
Even lower power vacuum tube or solid state Tesla Coils can deliver RF currents that are capable of causing temporary internal tissue, nerve, or joint damage through Joule heating. In addition, an RF arc can carbonize flesh, causing a painful and dangerous bone-deep RF burn that may take months to heal. Because of these risks, knowledgeable experimenters avoid contact with streamers from all but the smallest systems. Professionals usually use other means of protection such as a Faraday cage or a chain mail suit to prevent dangerous currents from entering their body.
Freshwater was using a solid state Tesla coil, if I understand the news articles correctly. Knowing that these sparks can cause deep tissue and bone damage in extreme cases, I suspect that I would not allow students to experience shocks as a normal course of a science classroom, especially from an industrial device not designed with multiple safety escapes built in.
Freshwater had been zapping students for years.
Here is a classic photo of what a Tesla coil does, a much larger coil than that used by John Freshwater, and a photo not from any classroom; from Mega Volt:
Tesla coil in action, from Mike Tedesco
There is nothing in the Ohio science standards to suggest regular use of a Tesla coil in contact with students performs any educational function.
I offer this background to suggest that the normal classroom procedures designed to ensure the safety of students were not well enforced in Freshwater’s classrooms, nor was there adequate attention paid to the material that should have been taught in the class.
The teacher, John Freshwater, has been dismissed by his local school board. Freshwater supporters argue that this is a case of religious discrimination, because Freshwater kept a Bible on his desk.
Among the complaints are that he burned crosses onto the arms of students with the high-voltage leak detector shown above. This gives an entirely new and ironic meaning to the phrase “cross to bear.”
Amazingly, this misuse of an electrical device may not be the most controversial point. While you and I may think this physical abuse goes beyond the pale, Freshwater has defenders who claim he was just trying to instill Biblical morality in the kids, as if that would excuse any of these actions. Over at Cafe Philos, I’ve been trying to explain just why it is that Freshwater does not have a First Amendment right to teach religion in his science class. There is another commenter with the handle “Atheist” who acts for all the world like a sock puppet for anti-First Amendment forces, i.e., not exactly defending a rational atheist position.
Below the fold I reproduce one of my answers to questions Atheist posed. More resources at the end.
State Board of Education chairman David Bradley of Beaumont told GOP delegates [at the Texas State Republican Convention] that the board was about to take up the science curriculum for public schools. He forecasted a fight over evolution vs. creationism.
Bradley said there are some on the board (he’s among them) that believe God created Man.
“There are others who think their ancestors were apes. That’s okay. But I’m going to vote the right way,” Bradley said.
Is there anything there that suggests Bradley wants good science in Texas textbooks and Texas classrooms?
“Our nation is at risk. The educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity. If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. We have, in effect, been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament. History is not kind to idlers.”
25 years later, Commissar Don McLeroy is leading the tide of mediocrity, doing crippling things to our education system that the likes of Nikita Khruschev and Mao Ze Dong could only dream about.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
But as Bill Provine points out in the film [Expelled!], neo-Darwinism is true, which means we don’t have free will.
Brilliant, ain’t it?
Never mind that one of the key themes of the mockumentary movie is that a religious belief in evolution drove Nazis in Germany to choose to take life unjustly, an exercise of free will they harp on in other forums.
Never mind that the claim is wholly ridiculous — Joe is arguing that being free of religious constraints means no one can choose how to act.
Consistency and logic: Not the domain of intelligent design advocates.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
I’m often struck at how creationists, including advocates of intelligent design, cannot maintain an argument in favor of their perverse beliefs against science for more than about five minutes without descending into erroneous descriptions of science, or outright lies.
Joe Carter pens the very well-read Evangelical Outpost. He attends church regularly, I gather, considers himself a good Christian, and for all I know studies the Bible regularly and tithes. But he’s also an advocate of intelligent design. In 2007 he provoked a bit of a storm claiming that scientists were making the case for ID by advocating evolution (no, it doesn’t make much more sense in the longer argument). (See “The moral imperative against intelligent design,” and “. . . in which I defend the judiciary against barbaric assault.“)
Had the critics remained silent over the past decade, ID might possibly have moldered in obscurity. If they had given the theory the respect accorded to supernatural explanations like the “multiverse theory” it might even have faded from lack of support.
But instead the theory’s critics launched a irrational counter-offensive, forcing people into choosing sides. The problem with this approach is that the more the public learn about modern evolutionary theory, the more skeptical they become about it being an adequately robust explanation for the diversity of life on earth. For instance in Expelled, Michael Ruse and Richard Dawkins provide two explanations for how life probably began. Ruse says that we moved from the inorganic world to the world of the cell on the backs of crystals while Dawkins says that life on earth was most likely seeded by aliens from outer space.
When even Dawkins admits that intelligent agency is involved in creation of life on earth it isn’t difficult to see why other people think it is plausible.
Is there a claim in there that is not completely false? Is there one claim that is not demonstrably in error — or an outright lie?
What virus causes this rabid departure from truth-telling among creationists? For if it’s not a virus, it’s a moral failing of the faith, isn’t it? And knowing that, wouldn’t advocates of Christianity’s growth, like Joe Carter, take steps to hide their prevarications?
If you have an idea what the cause is, comments are open.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Some of my earliest and best biology professors were Mormons — Latter-day Saints, or LDS — and from them and a few others I learned that LDS beliefs not only do not cut against evolution, preaching against evolution is “false doctrine” in the faith, since there has never been a revelation against evolution to the LDS prophets.
But as we know from the Methodist and Presbyterian and Catholic and other examples, official church doctrine doesn’t prevent members of the churches from jettisoning their reason when they discuss evolution and demonstrate a failure to understand even the basics of the simple theory. Mormons aren’t immune there, either. Alas.
Here’s an LDS blog where the authors are trying to argue that “philosophically,” creationism should be taught alongside evolution, since it’s a “better” myth than science. Or something like that. All that high-falutin’ use of six-syllable words, e.g., epistemology, makes me think that the words don’t mean what the authors think they mean, especially when the authors then go on to make foolish claims based on something they think they’ve “proven” logically. My tolerance of six-syllable words has been reduced by dealing with actual laws, I think.
Or perhaps, as I suspect, they’re just trying to claim that pigs fly.
“Knowledge is the glory of God” is what I remember* one engraving over one entrance to the campus of Brigham Young University, except when the epistemology is found to be offensive, or something.
You might do well to check out these posts, and other resources:
One of the affairs Ben Stein’s mockumentary covers is the Sternberg affair, in which a creationist bent the rules of the biology society whose journal he was editing to sneak into publication an article purporting to promote intelligent design. Stein claims the guy suffered persecution, though under cross examination in the Dover trial, no ID advocate could remember just what that persecution might be (creationists go quiet under oath . . . hmmm).
The mackarel by moonlight in that story (both shining and stinking at the same time) was a letter from the Office of Special Counsel which, while claiming to have found unspecified evidence of wrongdoing, said that OSC was the wrong agency to prosecute wrong-doers (OSC had an obligation to turn over any evidence of wrongdoing to the right agency, but Stein doesn’t mention that; there never was any evidence turned over to anyone).
Um, don’t look now, but the FBI raided the office of the OSC today, looking for evidence of wrongdoing. FBI and inspector general investigators appear to be looking into charges that the head of the office, Scott Bloch, retaliated against certain employees who, he suspected, had leaked information about political moves he had made in the legally non-political agency.
Jim Mitchell, communications director for the Office of the Special Counsel, in Washington on Tuesday. (New York Times caption). AP Photo by J. Scott Applewhite
One of the ultimate defenses of creationism, once you’ve demonstrated that there is no science and no good theology in it, is the creationist claim “it doesn’t hurt anyone.”
Well, yes, it does. Over the years I’ve noticed that creationism appears to suck the intelligence right out of otherwise smart or educated people. I also note that it tends to make otherwise good and honest people defend academic debauchery and dishonesty.
It’s as if claiming to be creationist hogs all the available RAM in their brains and forces a near-total synapse shutdown.
Cases in point: Creationists are scrambling to the defense of the mockumentary movie “Expelled!” in which Ben Stein trots out almost every creationist canard known to Hollywood in defending some of the greater misdeeds of the intelligent design hoaxers. Otherwise sane, good people, claiming to be Christian, make atrocious defenses of the movie.
I cannot make this up: Go see Mere Orthodoxy and Thinking Christian. Bad enough they defend the movie — but to defend it because, they claim, Darwin and Hitler were brothers in thought? Because evolution urges immoral behavior? I stepped in something over at Thinking Christian, and when I called it to the attention of Tom Gilson in the comments, he deleted the comment. (I’ve reposted, but I wager he’ll delete that one, too, while letting other comments of mine stand; he’s got no answer to any of my complaints.)
The stupid goes past 11, proudly, defiantly. The Constitution specifically protects the right of people to believe any fool claptrap they choose. These defenses of a silly movie come awfully close to abuse of the privilege.
Update: Holy mother of ostriches! Tom Gilson at “Thinking Christian” has a nifty device that bans people from viewing his blog. Paranoia sticks its head into a whole new depth of sand! Here’s a truism: Creationists who like to claim Darwin was the cause of Stalin and Hitler, which is by itself an extremely insulting and repugnant claim, almost never fail to resort to Stalinist and Hitlerian tactics when their claims are questioned. Call it Darrell’s Law of Evolution History Revisionism.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
A reader named Matt provided some incisive comments in another thread, “Cold showers for intelligent design: ID not even fringe research,” and I bring them to the top here to highlight a major failing of the intelligent design advocates, their complete absence from participation in origins of life research.
Matt took issue with a characterization that the intelligent design movement is not science. He wondered if they would get a fair hearing were they to submit their research to science journals. I pointed to the court records that show they would get a fair hearing, but that they do no research and so submit nothing for publication — which indicates the lack of science we were discussing. Matt suggested that Francis Crick and Frederick Hoyle were sympathetic to the ID cause, and I pointed out they both specifically refuted creationism and ID.
First the producers lied when they interviewed him for the film, claiming to be doing a different movie, a documentary. Then they refused to let him see anything that might reveal what of his own words they were using in the movie.
And now, the producers of Ben Stein’s great turkey of a movie, “Expelled!,” have booted the evolution teacher out of a viewing of the movie of which he is a star they promoted.
[Spew alert! Put the coffee/coke/beer down, and swallow before clicking on the link and reading the story linked to below.]
Must government agencies be “neutral” between science and non-science, between evolution and intelligent design?
The Texas Education Agency lost it’s long-time science curriculum expert Chris Comer last year in a sad incident in which Comer was criticized for siding with Texas education standards on evolution rather than remaining neutral between evolution and intelligent design.
Comes now Timothy Sandefur of the very conservative Pacific Legal Foundation with an article in the Chapman Law Review which argues that science is solid, a good way of determining good from bad, dross from gold. Plus, Sandefur refutes claims that evolution is religion, and so illegal in public schools. TEA’s position in the Comer affair is shown to be not defensible legally; Sandefur’s article also points out that the post-modern relativism of the TEA’s argument is damaging to the search for knowledge and freedom, too.
In short, Sandefur’s article demonstrates that the position of the Texas Education Agency is untenable in liberty and U.S. law.
Moreover, science is an essential part of the training for a free citizen because the values of scientific discourse — respect, freedom to dissent, and a demand for logical, reasoned arguments supported by evidence — create a common ground for people of diverse ethnicities and cultures. In a nation made up of people as different as we are, a commitment to tolerance and the search for empirically verifiable, logically established, objective truth suggests a path to peace and freedom. Our founding fathers understood this. Professor Sherry has said it well: “it is difficult to envision a civic republican polity — at least a polity with any diversity of viewpoints — without an emphasis on reason. . . . In a diverse society, no [definition of ‘the common good’] can develop without reasoned discourse.”
Science’s focus on empirical evidence and demonstrable theories is part of an Enlightenment legacy that made possible a peaceful and free society among diverse equals. Teaching that habit of mind is of the essence for keeping our civilization alive. To reject the existence of positive truth is to deny the possibility of common ground, to undermine the very purpose of scholarly, intellectual discourse, and to strike at the root of all that makes our values valuable and our society worthwhile. It goes Plato one better — it is the ignoble lie. At a time when Americans are threatened by an enemy that rejects science and reason, and demands respect for dog-mas entailing violence, persecution, and tyranny, nothing more deserves our attention than nourishing respect for reason.
III. CONCLUSION
The debate over evolution and creationism has raged for a long time, and will continue to do so. The science behind evolution is overwhelming and only continues to grow, but those who insist that evolution is false will continue to resist its promulgation in schools. The appeal to Postmo-dernism represents the most recent — and so far, the most desperate — attempt on the part of creationists to support their claim that the teaching of valid, empirically-tested, experimentally-confirmed science in government schools is somehow a violation of the Constitution. When shorn of its sophisticated-sounding language, however, this argument is beneath serious consideration. It essentially holds that truth is meaningless; that all ways of knowing — whether it be the scientist’s empirically tested, experimentally confirmed, well-documented theory, or the mumbo-jumbo of mystics, psychics, and shamans — are equally valid myths; and that government has no right to base its policies on solid evidence rather than supernatural conjurations. This argument has no support in epistemology, history, law, or common sense. It should simply not be heard again.
Science, Evolution and Creationismwas released today by the National Academies of Science (NAS), restating the position of the nation’s premier science organization that creationism has no place in science classrooms.
Date: Jan. 3, 2008
Contact: Maureen O’Leary, Director of Public Information
Office of News and Public Information
202-334-2138; e-mail news@nas.edu
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Scientific Evidence Supporting Evolution Continues To Grow; Nonscientific Approaches Do Not Belong In Science Classrooms
WASHINGTON — The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and Institute of Medicine (IOM) today released SCIENCE, EVOLUTION, AND CREATIONISM, a book designed to give the public a comprehensive and up-to-date picture of the current scientific understanding of evolution and its importance in the science classroom. Recent advances in science and medicine, along with an abundance of observations and experiments over the past 150 years, have reinforced evolution’s role as the central organizing principle of modern biology, said the committee that wrote the book.
“SCIENCE, EVOLUTION, AND CREATIONISM provides the public with coherent explanations and concrete examples of the science of evolution,” said NAS President Ralph Cicerone. “The study of evolution remains one of the most active, robust, and useful fields in science.”
“Understanding evolution is essential to identifying and treating disease,” said Harvey Fineberg, president of IOM. “For example, the SARS virus evolved from an ancestor virus that was discovered by DNA sequencing. Learning about SARS’ genetic similarities and mutations has helped scientists understand how the virus evolved. This kind of knowledge can help us anticipate and contain infections that emerge in the future.”
DNA sequencing and molecular biology have provided a wealth of information about evolutionary relationships among species. As existing infectious agents evolve into new and more dangerous forms, scientists track the changes so they can detect, treat, and vaccinate to prevent the spread of disease.
Texas schools must have the best science and technology instruction possible to make the state competitive in a 21st century economy. A science class that teaches children that the Earth is 6,000 years old and that species did not evolve from species now extinct is not worthy of the name.
Churches and other private institutions are proper places for the discussion of religious beliefs. Public school science classes are not.
Where are the Fort Worth, Austin, San Antonio, El Paso, Lubbock, Abilene, Beaumont and Waco papers? Is anyone tracking?
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
No, unfortunately, not at either the State Board of Education/Texas Education Agency nor the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.
At a better place, perhaps. A permanent exhibit on evolution, “Explore Evolution, opened October 1 at the Texas Memorial Museum at the University of Texas. The exhibit, funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation, explains evolution for students. It appears essentially the same at six different museums in the Midwest:
Museum of Natural History at the University of Michigan
Kansas Natural History Museum and Biodiversity Research Center
The Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History
Science Museum of Minnesota
University of Nebraska State Museum, and
Texas Memorial Museum at the University of Texas.
Explore Evolution permanent exhibit opens Sept. 10 at NU State Museum
Lincoln, Neb., Sept. 7, 2005 — Using cutting edge research, a new exhibit at the University of Nebraska State Museum gives a modern shine to Charles Darwin’s 146-year-old theory on evolution. The permanent exhibit, Explore Evolution, which opens to the public Sept. 10, was developed by a consortium of six partner museums led by the NU State Museum and prominently features the work of two UNL scientists.
The project is made possible by a $2.8 million, three-year grant from the National Science Foundation’s Informal Science Education program and consists of nearly identical permanent exhibit galleries at six partner museums in the Midwest and South — regions where evolution education is controversial. Other components of the project include a Web site, inquiry-based activities for middle-school children in the form of a book titled “Virus and the Whale, Exploring Evolution in Creatures Small and Large,” and collaborations with five statewide 4-H programs.
“Interested 4-H’ers will have the opportunity to explore exciting scientific concepts and cutting-edge research methods,” said Bradley Barker, UNL 4-H.
Priscilla Grew, director of the museum, said the exhibit is a big win for Nebraska.
“By funding the Explore Evolution project, the National Science Foundation has elevated UNL’s State Museum into a national leadership position in museum science education,” she said. “Evolution has been called the cornerstone of modern biology. The scientific understanding of evolution is fundamental to advances in modern medicine, agriculture and biotechnology. It is essential both to scientific research on the biodiversity of today’s world, and to the scientific interpretation of the fossil record through geologic time.”
The museum exhibit features seven current research projects, each presenting a major discovery about the evolution of life by a leading scientist or team of researchers. Through graphics and interactive displays, museum patrons explore evolution in organisms ranging form the smallest to the largest.
UNL’s contributions to the project are significant. While the exhibit galleries were built by the Science Museum of Minnesota, a team from UNL played major roles in the creation of the artwork and content. Judy Diamond, professor at the NU State Museum, wrote the original grant request for the project and is the team leader on the project. Research from two UNL scientists — virologist Charles Wood and geologist Sherilyn Fritz — is featured in two of the seven sections of the exhibit.
Wood’s research takes him to central Africa to study how the HIV/AIDS virus is transported from mothers to their infants. Wood’s research showcases the virus and how it evolves rapidly in newborns, with new strains being produced that are resistant to the infant’s immune system.
Fritz, working with Edward Theriot from University of Texas at Austin, used core samples from Yellowstone Lake to investigate the evolution of an organism called a diatom. Sampling tracks the diatom’s evolution from the lake’s formation 14,000 years ago and shows how diatoms — which are good barometers of climate change — developed within the first 4,000 years of the lake.
Other scientific endeavors featured in Explore Evolution include Cameron Currie’s work on farmer ants and their coevolving partners; Kenneth Kaneshiro on sexual selection among Hawaiian flies; Rosemary and Peter Grant on Galapagos finches; Svante Paabo on the genetic ties between humans and chimps; and Philip Gingerich on fossil discoveries of walking whales.
Or, until that account is unsuspended by the forces supporting Donald Trump: Follow @FillmoreWhite, the account of the Millard Fillmore White House Library
We've been soaking in the Bathtub for several months, long enough that some of the links we've used have gone to the Great Internet in the Sky.
If you find a dead link, please leave a comment to that post, and tell us what link has expired.
Thanks!
Retired teacher of law, economics, history, AP government, psychology and science. Former speechwriter, press guy and legislative aide in U.S. Senate. Former Department of Education. Former airline real estate, telecom towers, Big 6 (that old!) consultant. Lab and field research in air pollution control.
My blog, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, is a continuing experiment to test how to use blogs to improve and speed up learning processes for students, perhaps by making some of the courses actually interesting. It is a blog for teachers, to see if we can use blogs. It is for people interested in social studies and social studies education, to see if we can learn to get it right. It's a blog for science fans, to promote good science and good science policy. It's a blog for people interested in good government and how to achieve it.
BS in Mass Communication, University of Utah
Graduate study in Rhetoric and Speech Communication, University of Arizona
JD from the National Law Center, George Washington University
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 