Kansas Guild of Bloggers Holiday Edition

Now that Christmas is over and I have roused myself from my turkey induced stupor, it's time for another edition of the KGB.

First up is a post with a new vocabulary word for me from the Angry Astronomer, Jon Voisey. The word is pareidolia and it refers to the seeing sacred images in mundane things-seeing the Virgin Mary in cheese sandwiches, that sort of thing.

Jon observes that:

"... the Church doesn't even acknowledge such false idols. Instead, the church encourages its followers 'to see the face of Christ in the homeless, the poor, the destitute and the immigrant.' My, wouldn't it be nice if its followers actually lived up to such ideals?"

Update! there is no "h" in "Jon". Also he has posted elsewhere on his blog about pareidolia.

Of course that's what this season is all about, ya think? Just to remind us, Bruce Alderman at It Seems to Me has some good commentary on the Christmas story was conveyed by the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. He notes that what we think of as the Christmas story is based on these two stories which we have mashed together. Bruce notes:

"Remarkably, the two gospels share almost no details in common, other than the miraculous conception and the birth in Bethlehem. What I want to do in this two-part post is to look at each birth narrative on its own, because I think they each have things to tell us, and sometimes the details can get lost when we try to conflate the two stories."

Lots of posts about travel and place. Blogmeridian has gone south to Austin, the City of Armadillos. I guess he is not aware that Armadillos are heading north, even up to Illinois and of course Southern Kansas. So maybe if he looks John can get his Armadillo fix and stew if he prefers right here while he is walking along the river with Scruffy. Not everyone has gotten to travel, She (AKA California Girl) finds herself in a funk being stuck alone for Christmas, but at least she's posting more recently...this is good. Over at Happy in Bag there is a nice post about those limestone hitching posts that are common in the older parts of Lawrence, less so in Kansas City where Happy is. He's even uncovered a museum dedicated to limestone hitching posts, the Post Rock Museum, right here in Kansas!

Joel Mathis has a couple of posts about radio and his new favorite station 96.5, here and here. Of course not all of the commenters agree with his choice. Personally it's NPR or nothing over here, but we respect Joel's choice of radio.

Over here we love scones but have never made them...but I can't wait to try Lady Gunn's recipe for cranberry cream scones. Rather than food, EMAWKC, has a lump of coal for us, or rather for those people on the East Coast who are upset at building coal fired power plants in Kansas. Speaking of resources and Kansas, Josh reminds us that Kansas is the world's major producer of helium.

"Helium is extracted from natural gas wells, and the first major terrestrial supply of helium was found in Kansas in 1905. An oil well in Dexter, Kansas produced a gas plume that didn't burn. KU chemists took samples of the plume back for analysis, and determined that it was 12% helium. In 1907, Ernest Rutherford and Thomas Royds determined that the helium nucleus is the alpha particle."

I've been pretty quiet aside from grousing about Senator Brownback (see also the WE Blog), but I was intrigued at all the coverage Komodo dragons have gotten over the holiday-I guess because of the headlines about virgin births in these lizards and you might check out my post about that here. Oh and that reminds me of the latest Phill Kline adventure as discussed by J.D. over at Evolution next step where he has some advice for conservatives.

Finally, getting back to Christmas, both Gwynne at the Shallow End posts on those inflatable Christmas displays in her post Christmas Cheese. Oh and I went over to the Prince of Thrift to see what tips he had for getting out of Christmas debt, but found that Brownback has upset his ambition to have a complete collection of campaign pins from every Kansan who ran for president or vice president. He shouldn't be too hard on himself and would be pleased to know that I did not use my credit card once this Christmas.


Next week's KGB will be at Blog Meridian. Remember, if you are not in KGB, and are a Kansas related blogger just go on over to http://3oclockam.blogspot.com/ and look for the kgb map in the right hand column and join!

Put yourself on the kgb's Frapper map while you are there.

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Leaping Lizards.

Must be the time of year but the finding of Komodo Dragon females that are able to produce young from unfertilized eggs has really caught on as explained in this article from the Independent:

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article2091881.ece

Some articles have referred to what's going on as virgin birth but who really knows if the lizard was a virgin or not? Oh different use of the word. See for instance:

http://www.teambio.org/2006/12/virgin-birth-authenticated-babies-expected-around-christmas/

In humans, were this sort of reproduction to happen, the offspring would be female since the sex chromosomes are different size wise in males which typically have one X and Y chromosome. In Lizards apparently it is the female that has two different sex chromosomes.

So if the female produces a zygote by parthenogenesis the resulting offspring will be male according to the article. The Komodo uses a so called WZ sex determination system. WZ zygote develop into females, WW zygotes into males and ZZ zygotes are inviable. No females are produced by the parthenogenic Komodo lizards because the form of parthenogensis used involves a duplication of the female lizard's chromosomes in the gamete. So the diploid "zygotes" are either WW or inviable ZZ.

There are other parthenogenic lizards, the best known being some whiptail lizards such as the ones described here:

http://fireflyforest.net/firefly/2005/11/28/sonoran-spotted-whiptail/

In these lizards the offspring are all female. This is apparently because in these lizards, in contrast to the Komodo dragon, the females have two identical chromosomes size wise, the lizard equivalent of the 'XX' chromosomes of human females. See

Modi and Crews. Current Opinion in Genetics & Development 2005, 15:660–665
http://cluster3.biosci.utexas.edu/faculty/lizard/public/Modi_Crews.pdf

These lizards exhibit pseudocopulatory behavior where one female will mount another. Here is a movie from David Crew's website:

http://www.utexas.edu/research/crewslab/oldweb/movies/cnemi.mov

One lizard takes the male role the other the female role. This behavior has the effect of stimulating both lizards to ovulate.

As for humans and the Virgin Birth of Christ, it seems you have 4 choices:

• Just try to follow the contorted logic and misunderstandings of meiosis presented by this thread on another blog:http://www.uncommondescent.com/archives/1801
• Go along with the idea that the notion of Virgin Birth results from some sort of mistranslation:http://www.atheistfoundation.org.au/virgin.htm
• Accept Virgin Birth of Christ as a miracle.
  
• Or just enjoy the season. Of course this choice is not mutually exclusive of the other three.
  

Brownback relents on Neff Nomination

Senator Brownback has realized he went too far in blocking Janet Neff's nomination to the Federal Bench.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/19/washington/19judge.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Most telling is the opposition from other conservatives such as Charles Reid to Brownback's stance:

First of all, people go to parties for all sorts of reasons,” Professor Fried
said, and how one would rule on a case should not be inferred from that private
activity. Further, he said, "It would be inappropriate for the judge to
recuse herself from any such case because it is a judge’s duty to sit on cases"
unless there is a clear conflict of interest. There would be a genuine conflict
of interest, he said, if the judge had a financial interest in a case’s result
or had been associated with one of the parties in the case.

“For her to agree to any such restriction in this case would be wrong...”

Somehow I don't think we have seen the end of Senator Brownback's attempts to exploit LGBT people. After all he says of gay marriage, that this is "a big hot buttion issue".

Random Tidbits...

Well not quite random. I have been trying to get more information of the Indian athlete, Santhi Soundararajan, who failed her gender test. It isn't clear how she could pass one time but not another time, but at least the BBC was respectful:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6188775.stm

In contrast, Sports Illustrated's "coverage" reads as if it was written by a dude in a backwards baseball cap...hmmmm no wait... it probably was.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/more/12/18/failed.gender.test.ap/index.html?eref=yahoo

The SI article, titled "Dude looks like a Lady" at least had the little tidbit that the test failure had something to do with her chromosome count and that she has not had SRS. Exactly what is going on here isn't clear, but SI's coverage certainly belongs in the stone age.

Speaking of which, BBC also has an article about the new Answers in Genesis Creationist Museum opening up this Spring near Cincinnati.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6216788.stm

Observes the BBC reporter:

"Despite adopting the structure and technology of the most extravagant science museum, it remains that none of it is remotely plausible without first accepting Genesis. Without taking that leap and rejecting centuries of scientific reasoning, it all resembles just another Disney-style magic kingdom."

Sounds like a hoot- right up there with the flying saucer museum in Roswell NM.
http://www.iufomrc.com/incident.shtml

At least when people go to the Magic Kingdom they know it's fiction.

It is curious that employees of the museum have to sign an article of faith saying that they believe the Earth was created in 7 days. Maybe the Bush administration can take a page from this, in its efforts to slant the data on global warming and other politically sensitive science. Over 10,000 scientists have signed on to a petition protesting the Bush administration's politicalization of science. To be fair I suspect the Bush administration isn't the only administration to do this sort of thing, but certainly no other has gotten scientists so energized in opposition to its policies.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6178213.stm?ls

One Dobson is one too many...

The religious right ought to stop even trying to talk about science. The latest example is the recent James Dobson column in Time attempting to argue that Gays cannot be good parents. Dobson uses the public's interest in the Mary Cheney pregnancy to go on a rant about the alleged unfitness of gays as parents:

"With all due respect to Cheney and her partner, Heather Poe, the majority of more than 30 years of social-science evidence indicates that children do best on every measure of well-being when raised by their married mother and father. That is not to say Cheney and Poe will not love their child. But love alone is not enough to guarantee healthy growth and development.... "

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1568485,00.html

He then goes on to cite several social scientists to buttress his claims. Well the scientists have struck back accusing Dobson of distorting their work. As reported by Truth Wins Out one of the scientists, Carol Gilligan said in a letter to Dobson:

"there is nothing in my research that would lead you to draw the stated conclusions you did in the Time article. My work in no way suggests same-gender families are harmful to children or canÂ’t raise these children to be as healthy and well adjusted as those brought up in traditional households.

I trust that this will be the last time my work is cited by Focus on the Family."

http://truthwinsout.org/news/?p=37

The other scientist quoted by Dobson, Kyle Pruett accused Dobson of Cherry picking his research and goes on to say:

"You cherry-picked a phrase to shore up highly (in my view) discriminatory purposes. This practice is condemned in real science, common though it may be in pseudo-science circles. There is nothing in my longitudinal research or any of my writings to support such conclusions. On page 134 of the book you cite in your piece, I wrote, 'What we do know is that there is no reason for concern about the development or psychological competence of children living with gay fathers. It is love that binds relationships, not sex.' "

http://truthwinsout.org/news/?p=38

See also:
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/12/14/161224/09

Media Matters has done an extensive report on the misuse of science by Dobson and notes that Pruett in particular has repeatedly accused people of distorting his work to advance their own agenda. Indeed according to Media matters Pruett was even listed as a supporter of the recent amendment to ban "gay marriage" in Oregon, of which Pruett says:

"I was quite surprised, even dumbfounded, to see my name listed as if it were a scientific support or consultant to this amendment. ... It couldn't be further than either my personal or professional position."

http://mediamatters.org/items/200612110002?src=other

and

http://www.oregonlive.com/special/gaymarriage/index.ssf?/special/oregonian/gaymarriage/041022_tie.html

In the Oregonian article a conservative political director, Tim Nashif, appears to back petal, conceding that same sex couples and other sorts of families ought to be supported but then he goes right back to his distortions of Pruett's work!

This sort of strategy-tell a lie often enough and maybe the people will believe it- is wearing a bit thin. Maybe the religious right ought to just be honest about the source of their views that gay marriage is wrong- and while we are at it-that the earth is only 6,000 years old- because that's what they think the Bible says is true.

A Great Gift Idea...or NOT!

Taking a break from grading exams, what do I find in the noosphere but a gift idea, Help Mom There are Liberals under my Bed! To get an idea of the plot go to this link from the New Republic online:
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20060703&s=cottle070306

Here is the New Republic's partial synopsis of the plot:

"Two grade-school brothers set out to earn money for a new swing set by opening a lemonade stand. But, when the aspiring entrepreneurs dream one night about "a very strange place called Liberaland," the story shifts into satire-saturated adult fare, as a series of "dastardly Liberals" pop up to meddle in the venture. A Ted Kennedy look-alike ("Mayor Leach") demands half the boys' take in taxes, a Hillary Clinton-inspired "Congresswoman Clunkton" makes them cut the sugar in their product and give out broccoli with each glass, and an "lclu" lawyer replaces their picture of Jesus with that of a big toe."

I think you get the idea. Needless to say since I don't keep my liberals UNDER the bed I will not be buying this book.

But if you want, you can go to the author's website at:
http://www.katharinedebrecht.net/

Supposedly liberals are furious (according to a PR release and PR releases are of course ALWAYS reliable) about this book and it's companion book titled Help Mom Hollywood's in my Hamper, but I suspect most liberals are chortling about this book. We do have a sense of humor after all.

A Great Response to Brownback...

is at the Liberal Faith Development Blog in the form of a letter that Steve Caldwell sent to the Senator:
http://liberalfaith.blogspot.com/2006/10/open-letter-to-sen-brownback-r-kansas.html

I particularly like:

"Judge Neff was taking part in a religious ceremony that is grounded in the United Church of Christ's understanding of God, Jesus, and the Bible.

Article VI of the US Constitution states that " ... no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States" and your criticism of Judge Neff's religious beliefs would be a religious test."

Great Letter Steve!

Men in elementary school teaching

There is a nice article in today's Lawrence Journal World about the lack of male teachers at the elementary school level.

http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2006/dec/11/few_men_teach_elementary_level/?city_local

The article notes that the number of male elementary school teachers has actually fallen from 18% to 9% and that the over all percentage of teachers who are male at all levels of pre college teaching is at a 40 year low.

At the secondary level, men tend to go into science and math, fields where good female role models are needed as well. The article quotes Marc Mahlios, the chairman of the KU School of Ed's Department of Curriculum and Teaching (Tip of the antennae to j.d for correcting an earlier version of this post):

"Men gravitate toward teaching at the university and secondary levels because the environment is more academic, he said. In contrast, the environment is more nurturing at the elementary level...For many males, the environment is decidedly more feminine than masculine... And I think that'’s a very real issue."

Can't males be nuturing as well? One of the commenters observes:

"My suspicion is that even if there were more men graduating with a background in grade school teaching, they would be screened out when it came time to selection following interviewing. They may get the interview but in these days and times they're not going to be picked for the job. Now if they're the "girly men" Arnold referred to, there might be the rare exception or three."

...screened out by the way by a so called (in the commenter's mind) old gal network.

Other commenters noted that it may well be the low pay keeping males out of the field but I think this commenter makes an important point:

"My college experience turned me away from education. I started out wanting to teach secondary sciences like physics and chemistry. The School of Ed. routinely spoke of bringing more men into the teaching profession. However, their actions proved to be just the opposite. When it came to classroom observations and student teaching opportunities, I was assigned to physical education classes every time. It turns out that I was not alone, as many of the other guys I spoke with complained of the same situation."

Yup..Since I have no interest in sports that turned me off as well. I was very fortunate to have strong male and female role models: great science teachers in my home town of Pittsfield MA such as George Hamilton, Roger Brown and Anne Nesbit; a great history teacher Mr. Hebert; great art teachers such as Morris Bennett, Mrs. Flynn in English, non academic role models including a wonderful choral director George Nesbit; Thom Smith of the Berkshire museum; George Miller, my first boss.

These were strong role models, not because they were male or female, but because they cared about people and also had high expectations. They encouraged all of us to excel and gender just was not an issue with these folks. A person like me, could just as easily been lost in the cracks. The point is we need strong role models of all sorts so that no one regardless of gender or gender identity is lost.