Friday, June 24, 2011
Little Green Spider
These spiders are fairly common in the woods here in Kansas but it's hard to get a good shot of them. The length of the spider is around 1/4 inch.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Pieces of Flower
In lab today we saw creatures
From two of the three domains-
Identified cocci and bacilli,
Paramecium and Amoeba swimming
or streaming under cover glass.
Then the plants-mosses green,
With diploid sex brown and erect;
Fern's hidden gametophytes
Androgynous creatures dwarfed
By cozy sitting room fronds.
Finally we consider the lillies-
Pink and spotted petals,
Orange pollen shed from anthers,
Little orange creatures slithering tubes
Down the style for sperm swim to the eggs.
Linnaeus glimpsed the flower's
Blindness to our conceits
Though his colleagues spun around
In their shrouds, screamed:
"No proper plant does this!"
Lab over, petals and sepals and ovaries
Are wings pulled from flies-
Pieces of flowers diced and swept away-
All the bone white facts collected,
Objectives checked for the next quiz.
We return to our cages and sit,
Peeling our soft triploid carpels,
Blind in our shrouds.
Tuesday, April 05, 2011
Science From Multiple World Views?
Recently I stumbled upon a small publisher of home school materials called Gravitas Publications. This publisher's main product is called Real Science 4 Kids by Dr. Rebecca Keller. I have no expertise in home school curricula, and from what I have seen some aspects of her approach seem sensible.
What bothers me is her claim that science can be taught from the point of view of multiple world views in a strictly neutral sort of way.
She writes:
"Yes! Real science doesn’t choose sides. So when teaching science, it’s important that the lessons let kids explore all sides. Otherwise, choosing one side can get in the way of understanding the real science. Darwinism, creationism, intelligent design theory, and all the other “isms” are simply paradigms (or “lenses”) through which science is viewed. The “-isms” are philosophies based on perceptions for how science is interpreted. Students need to learn how “-isms” play a role in science."
Ok, science doesn't choose sides in that is ideologically neutral- there is no conservative science, or Christian science, or Buddhist science. There ideally is just science. And she is right- our world view does affect how we interpret science. But is science really neutral in terms of the world view it admits?
Personally I think not. For example I don't see much support in science for the notion that the Universe or the Earth is say 10,000 years old or that the goal of a liquid is to seek its lowest level, or that magic is real. At the very least science since it is empirical forces scientific explanations and tests of scientific ideas to be mechanistic and transparent.
At any rate, check out Dr. Keller's video discussing the issue of multiple world views and see what you think:
What bothers me is her claim that science can be taught from the point of view of multiple world views in a strictly neutral sort of way.
She writes:
"Yes! Real science doesn’t choose sides. So when teaching science, it’s important that the lessons let kids explore all sides. Otherwise, choosing one side can get in the way of understanding the real science. Darwinism, creationism, intelligent design theory, and all the other “isms” are simply paradigms (or “lenses”) through which science is viewed. The “-isms” are philosophies based on perceptions for how science is interpreted. Students need to learn how “-isms” play a role in science."
Ok, science doesn't choose sides in that is ideologically neutral- there is no conservative science, or Christian science, or Buddhist science. There ideally is just science. And she is right- our world view does affect how we interpret science. But is science really neutral in terms of the world view it admits?
Personally I think not. For example I don't see much support in science for the notion that the Universe or the Earth is say 10,000 years old or that the goal of a liquid is to seek its lowest level, or that magic is real. At the very least science since it is empirical forces scientific explanations and tests of scientific ideas to be mechanistic and transparent.
At any rate, check out Dr. Keller's video discussing the issue of multiple world views and see what you think:
Saturday, April 02, 2011
Itsy Bitsy Spider
Caught this little jumping spider on a daffodil today. I am just a sucker for these spiders.
Friday, March 25, 2011
Late Night Visitor
I think this cutie-well I think it's cute- was probably feeding on left over seeds spilled from our bird feeder.
Cats and Birds....
There is an interesting article in the science section of the New York Times about the effects of domestic cats on bird populations.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/21/science/21birds.html
As the headline suggests, domestic cats are a major threat to bird populations. The article suggests that over 500 million birds are killed by cats each year in the United States-half by feral cats and half by house pets. The article also makes an interesting point that people get all upset about bird deaths due to wind turbines and yet seem to be much less upset about bird deaths due to cats. Wind turbines by the way can apparently be situated to minimize bird deaths.
We accept predation as somehow natural but forget that the domestic cat is not native to North America and so is really an invasive species-so they are more like those big constrictor snakes that people have let loose in the everglades. Now if only we could train cats to attack non native birds such as starlings or English sparrows but I don't think that is going to happen.
Just by chance, my indoor only cat Carl caught and killed a chickadee that had gotten on to our screened in back porch yesterday. He had caught one other chickadee during the winter but he just held it in his mouth very gently and I managed to rescue the bird. This time he clearly figured out that the next step in hunting after catching the bird is to kill it.
I hope he never figures out the eating stage.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/21/science/21birds.html
As the headline suggests, domestic cats are a major threat to bird populations. The article suggests that over 500 million birds are killed by cats each year in the United States-half by feral cats and half by house pets. The article also makes an interesting point that people get all upset about bird deaths due to wind turbines and yet seem to be much less upset about bird deaths due to cats. Wind turbines by the way can apparently be situated to minimize bird deaths.
We accept predation as somehow natural but forget that the domestic cat is not native to North America and so is really an invasive species-so they are more like those big constrictor snakes that people have let loose in the everglades. Now if only we could train cats to attack non native birds such as starlings or English sparrows but I don't think that is going to happen.
Just by chance, my indoor only cat Carl caught and killed a chickadee that had gotten on to our screened in back porch yesterday. He had caught one other chickadee during the winter but he just held it in his mouth very gently and I managed to rescue the bird. This time he clearly figured out that the next step in hunting after catching the bird is to kill it.
I hope he never figures out the eating stage.
Saturday, March 19, 2011
More Ann Coulter Science
Ann Coulter whose previous forays into science have included such insightful critiques of evolution as the giant raccoon passing gas analysis of evolutionary theory has struck again. Apparently she has decided that we need not worry about radiation from Japan.
She bases her argument on a controversial idea called hormesis. The basic idea of hormesis is that certain environmental pollutants be they PCBs or ionizing radiation are harmful until you get to low dosages which mysteriously become beneficial. Proponents of this idea point to studies from a wide range of organisms that suggest that the phenomenon may indeed exist. But to argue as Coulter seems to that this means that government radiation safety levels are somehow useless seems to me to be the height of stupidity.
A bit of Coulter's reasoning can be seen in this quote from her article:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ucac/20110317/cm_ucac/aglowingreportonradiation
"I guess good radiation stories are not as exciting as news anchors warning of mutant humans and scary nuclear power plants -- news anchors who, by the way, have injected small amounts of poison into their foreheads to stave off wrinkles. Which is to say: The general theory that small amounts of toxins can be healthy is widely accepted --except in the case of radiation.
She bases her argument on a controversial idea called hormesis. The basic idea of hormesis is that certain environmental pollutants be they PCBs or ionizing radiation are harmful until you get to low dosages which mysteriously become beneficial. Proponents of this idea point to studies from a wide range of organisms that suggest that the phenomenon may indeed exist. But to argue as Coulter seems to that this means that government radiation safety levels are somehow useless seems to me to be the height of stupidity.
A bit of Coulter's reasoning can be seen in this quote from her article:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ucac/20110317/cm_ucac/aglowingreportonradiation
"I guess good radiation stories are not as exciting as news anchors warning of mutant humans and scary nuclear power plants -- news anchors who, by the way, have injected small amounts of poison into their foreheads to stave off wrinkles. Which is to say: The general theory that small amounts of toxins can be healthy is widely accepted --except in the case of radiation.
Every day Americans pop multivitamins containing trace amount of zinc, magnesium, selenium, copper, manganese, chromium, molybdenum, nickel, boron -- all poisons."
So would she then argue that more is better? In the radiation case it may well be that DNA repair mechanisms are activated by low levels of radiation but that is precisely in response to the harmful effects of DNA, not because the radiation is beneficial.
A good critique of Coulter's ideas is at PZ Myer's blog: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/03/will_radiation_hormesis_protec.php
Coulter by the way, is an alumna of Cornell University which goes to show that you can show a person to how to think but you can't make them think.
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