Well, they’ve officially found evidence for anthropomorphic damage to the carbon cycle on Earth, reported here and the full Nature article here. This is apparently the first time the theory that the Earth has a natural cycle for dealing with carbon in the atmosphere has gained direct empirical support, and is hopefully a death blow to the people that try to argue that carbon gets eaten by all the trees in Maine or that the tooth fairy takes it away to Fantasy Kingdom. Of course, this won’t stop the people screaming about scientists are lying for whatever reason before demanding their antibiotics for their resistant staph strain, and then blogging about the experience on their semiconductor, thin film magnetism, and optics driven computers.

Posted: April 28th, 2008 under Science, Politics.
Comments: 1

I just read a Reuters FACTBOX regarding the Dalai Lama’s receiving the Congressional Gold Medal this coming Friday. The article can be found here. I think this is an excellent example of how the media skews things by attempting to compress information.

The first fact is

The Dalai Lama, Tibet’s god-king, fled on horseback after a failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959 and now lives in exile in northern India. China accuses him of seeking independence for Tibet. The 72-year-old spiritual leader says he only wants greater autonomy for the region.

which is incorrect on a few levels. First of all, referring to the Dalai Lama as a “god-king” is fairly misleading. In the Buddhist tradition, he is a bodhisattva of compassion, and not a “god”. His position is administrative, yes, but he is more a religious figure who happens to be traditionally a head of state than a “god-king” in the sense of other Western civilizations (ancient Egypt, for example).

The second fact

Within Tibet, simply having the Dalai Lama’s picture can be grounds for imprisonment. Critics say Buddhist monks and nuns loyal to the Dalai Lama have been jailed and tortured.

smiles on China’s intervention in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition too much. The tenth Panchen Lama died in 1989. On a par with the Dalai Lama, this figure is replaced in the Gelugpa tradition, the Panchen Lama is partially responsible for the search for the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama, and vice versa. The Dalai Lama, in exile, named Gedhun Choekyi Nyima as the eleventh Panchen Lama. He was promptly exiled and the Chinese government appointed their own Panchen Lama, thereby giving them “influence” over appointing the next Dalai Lama. This is a transparent power play to remove the influence of the Dalai Lama in exile upon the death of the current one.

Finally,

The central government has invested billions of dollars in improving Tibet’s infrastructure, including a new railway across the snowy plateau that links Beijing and Lhasa.

This almost downplays the poor treatment the Chinese government has heaped on Tibet, which is essentially a twenty-first century colony. Starting with the Great Leap Forward and on, 1.2 million Tibetans have died under the rule of the Chinese government, which Beijing of course denies.

I just wanted to point out how wording can have a large impact on how people read an article. Shame on you, Reuters.

Posted: October 16th, 2007 under Politics.
Comments: none

    The Supreme Court recently handed down two rulings [1] [2] [3]regarding using racial quotas to determine school enrollment. The court ruled 5-4 with a conservative majority that the use of race to determine where students are enrolled in a school district is unconstitutional. Despite the fact that it may be an unpopular ruling, I am definitely in favor of it. Read more »

Posted: June 28th, 2007 under Education, Politics.
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A few years back, University of Colorado professor of ethnic studies Ward Churchill created a national controversy for calling the victims of the 9/11 attacks “little Eichmanns”, referencing the Nazi SS officer who organized the logistics of evacuating the ghettos and setting up the extermination camps of World War II. Now, his research methods have come under scrutiny and he may have his tenure revoked and lose his position as department chair. Read more »

Posted: June 19th, 2007 under Education, Politics.
Comments: none

During a debate hosted by CNN, the question of evolution hit the Republican candidates yet again. During this debate, Mike Huckabee, who previously had said that he did not believe in evolution, resented the question being brought up again, claiming it was unfair:

“I’m not planning on writing the curriculum for an eighth-grade science book. I’m asking for the opportunity to be president of the United States.”

While this statement is true, it is a perfectly fair question to ask. The current president’s religious convictions that stem cells are, in fact, life, has impeded research into stem cell applications in medicine by eight years. It was during the current administration that the question of Intelligent Design as a scientific theory even came up (it isn’t). Under No Child Left Behind, the national government has a fair amount of control over national curricula. Governor Huckabee, it is a perfectly fair question, and a very valid test of how your administration would interact with the nation’s scientific community.

Posted: June 6th, 2007 under Politics.
Comments: none

To my faithful three readers,

In an effort to add content with a minimum of effort, as well as to educate my fellow physicists on where the candidates stand, I plan on sending this letter to the various presidential candidates in both parties. Of course, this is just a rough draft.  Suggestions are more than welcome, and do please feel free to leave comments about it.

Posted: May 17th, 2007 under Politics.
Comments: none

In a recent article on Inside Higher Ed, Scott Jaschik drew some attention to a rather disturbing (although very seldom-used) tactic on Capital Hill: Congressmen calling into question the validity of research grants based upon a cursory review of the title and abstract. In this particular case, the study in question was a sociological study entitled “Accuracy in the cross-cultural understanding of others’ emotions”, conducted by a UC Berkeley professor, Hillary Elfenbein. Read more »

Posted: May 6th, 2007 under Politics.
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Recently, a friend of mine sent me a link to an article by Hara Marano in Psychology Today entitled “A Nation of Wimps?“. The essential gist of this article is that hovering parents create children who cannot cope with the stresses of the real world. I have seen other articles to this effect before; one college administrator in another article referred to parents who must know about their child’s every action after they moved off to college as “helicopter parents”. This particular article gives a great deal of specific examples of how we have “softened” childhood for the coming generation.

Playgrounds are no longer a place for children to play together. Instead of allowing the child to figure out “how to play”, there is constantly a parent hovering around to make sure little Jimmy doesn’t fall and hurt himself. Parent-teacher conferences are more about making sure that the child has high grades, and what the teacher isn’t doing if the student doesn’t. I’m particularly fond of the 13-year old who has difficulty with “Gestault thinking”. Read more »

Posted: April 19th, 2007 under Education, Politics.
Comments: none

    Some people use a tragedy like the recent Virginia Tech shootings to effect change, you improve society or to prevent something like this from happening again. But then, there are these people, who use such tragedies to forward their political agenda by stretching reality until it breaks to forward their own beliefs.

Just ignore the fact that there are hardly any school shootings in Europe, and they have been teaching evolution in the science classroom, unopposed, for decades. Never mind that people have been violent and angry at nothing for as long as there has been nothing to be angry at. Turn a blind eye to the reality that the same brand of religious fanatic in Islam condemns the teaching of evolution as much as any crazed Creationist in the US, and we can just look at Afghanistan to see where that gets us.

The thing that disturbs me the most is that Creationists are opportunists who have no scrupples about what they will blame on evolution. Claims such as these are almost impossible to refute; where do you begin breaking down the logical structure of a statement so wild and unsupportable? Suggestions would be nice, but really, how do you even refute what is being said? The statement has no basis in fact, no support from anything, and yet people will dogmatically blame Columbine, Virginia Tech, or the Yankees blowing it in the playoffs on the teaching of evolution in public schools.

Maybe we should just let all the rabid Creationists have their own state, and let them run it the way they want to. We’ll check back in twenty years. If they are living in a man-made Eden after then, perhaps they were right. But somehow I doubt that this would happen, and the rest of us would get stuck cleaning up the mess they would make.

Posted: April 19th, 2007 under Politics.
Comments: none