Which Witch Doctor?

Senator Elbert Guillory
CREDIT: Louisiana State Senate

Remember the Louisiana Science Education Act?  In January I wrote The D Word that highlighted one state senator who expressed quite eloquently his ignorance of biology.

Now Elbert Guillory, state senator from Opelousas, has provided more evidence that the lack of mental skills required for rational thought has no bearing on the ability to hold elected office.

Yesterday a committee of the Louisiana State Senate debated House Bill 26 that would have repealed the inappropriately named Science Education Act. The bill was killed by the committee.

Want to hazard a guess why Sen. Guillory opposed the House's bill?

Sen. Elbert Guillory, D-Opelousas, said he had reservations with repealing the act after a spiritual healer correctly diagnosed a specific medical ailment he had. He said he thought repealing the act could "lock the door on being able to view ideas from many places, concepts from many cultures." 

"Yet if I closed my mind when I saw this man -- in the dust, throwing some bones on the ground, semi-clothed -- if I had closed him off and just said, 'That's not science. I'm not going to see this doctor,' I would have shut off a very good experience for myself," Guillory said.

 He went to a witch doctor!

Happiness Is A Cold Beer

CREDIT: Some hockey fan going by the screen name goodkiller

It's been shown in a study published by the journal Neuropsychopharmacology.  A mere 1/2 oz. brings a rush of the neurotransmitter dopamine and the resulting sense of pleasure.  The amount is so small it's inconceivable that intoxication is responsible for the effect.

And now from the land of sky blue waters,...

Medicine Would Have Worked

Here are the parents of an 8 month old baby they allegedly allowed to die.

CREDIT: NBC 10 Philadelphia

This is not the first child of Herbert and Catherine Schaible to die.  They had a 2 year old that died in 2009 from pneumonia.  That death led prosecutors to charge them with involuntary manslaughter and child endangerment.  Found guilty, the Schaibles were serving a 10 year probation sentence in which they were to required to seek medical attention whenever any of their children - and there are now seven left - fell ill.

Why didn't they see a doctor?  They don't believe in medicine.

"Don't believe in medicine" - What a crock.  No one needs belief in science-based medicine. All that is required is doubt, skepticism, and experiment. I don't believe that viruses, bacteria, and toxins cause disease, I have reason.

And we have reason to put these two in jail.  Allegedly.

The New University of California Will Have No Faculty

California Assemblyman Scott Will of Santa Clarita introduced AB 1306, a bill that would create the New University of California.  What's new about this institution?  No faculty.

That's right, no professors to teach the students.  The bill states 

The New University of California shall provide no instruction, but shall issue college credit and baccalaureate and associate degrees to any person capable of passing examinations.

Students will just gain the knowledge and skills on their own and then pay the New University to take the final exam and receive academic credit. 

Students - just think.  No homework, no papers, no labs, no group projects, no tests except for the final, no all-nighters, no falling asleep in class, no professors droning on, no problems finding open seats in classes,…

CREDIT: The University of California Los Angeles

Who writes and proctors the exams if there're no professors?  The New University will buy them from "qualified entities" who will also give the exams.

Who would drive over a bridge designed and built by civil engineers alumni of the New University? If this idea is so wonderful, why restrict it to associate and baccalaureate degrees?  Who wouldn't see a physician who earned their M.D. from a medical school at the New University? 

Assemblyman Wilk to his credit does realize that even if there's no faculty, the New University does require eleven trustees and a chancellor.  This chancellor will be "authorized to employ and fix the salaries of, employees to assist him or her in carrying out the functions of the university."  How many administrators does it take to run a university that has no campus, no faculty, and no buildings?  Probably more than we can imagine.

The problem of access to higher education has a simpler solution that the ones proposed by Wilk and Darrell Steinberg.*  Invest in the existing systems: the Universities of California, the California State Universities, and the California Community Colleges.

* Steinberg introduced AB 520 that will require the state's colleges and universities to accept credits earned in Massive Open Online Courses. 

The Vagina Dialogue

Let's start with a quiz.  Fill in the blank on this anatomical diagram.  For credit, one must use the correct scientific term.

The answer is vagina.  Did you get it correct?

Tim McDaniel, a 10 grade science teacher in Dietrich, Idaho, is facing charges filed by four parents.  Among those charges is that he "used inappropriate language in class."  The language he used was vagina.  

Dietrich, ID

Mr. McDaniel has been teaching this material for 17 years, because the health teacher wasn't comfortable with the subject.  17 years without a complaint.

This section of Idaho is highly religious and predominantly Mormon.  While statewide Idaho's teen pregnancy rate is roughly the same as the nation's rate of 34.3 births per 1000, this region of southern Idaho has a teen birth rate of 60 births per 1000.  Jerome County, just south of Lincoln County where Dietrich is located, has a teen birth rate of 90.

I think there's a bigger problem than a teacher using a scientific term correctly.

Baby Pictures

A baby picture of the universe!

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/planck/multimedia/pia16873.html

This is a map of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the leftover radiation of the Big Bang, made by the Planck mission of the European Space Agency.    This light was emitted when the universe was 380,000 years old. 

There's a number of AWESOME results here.

1. The colors represent small fluctuations in the temperature of the radiation, about 1 part in 100,000 or 0.001%.  Since the average temperature is a mere 2.73 K (2.73 degrees above absolute zero), the fluctuations are roughly 0.00003 K.  To put this in perspective, imagine setting your oven to 350ºF and it never varies by more than 0.008ºF.

2. This light was created just 80,000 years after the universe was cool enough for neutral hydrogen atoms to form.

I couldn't find any baby pictures,
but here I am when I'm about
10% of my current age.

3. It provides the best estimate for the age of the universe.  13.82 billion years.

4. The universe is 4.9% normal matter (protons, neutrons, and electrons for the most part.) Dark matter makes up 26.8% and dark energy 68.3%.

5. The universe is amazingly uniform, isotropic in the physicist's lingo. But there is a tiny difference in the size of the fluctuations in one half of the sky as compared to the other half.  Intriguing!

6. This picture represents the universe when it was just 0.00002750 of its present age.  Let's compare this to one of my students who say is 20 years old; this student was only 5 hours at 0.00002750 of 20 years.    

2 Peter 3:8 & Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity

On March 26, Steve Hess posted to The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science (Official) FaceBook page. I have copied the text verbatim.

I guess me merging einstines equations with the bible isn't science enough for you, what do you honestly know about quantum mechanics and cosmology?  And we are the ignorant ones

Followed by Mr. Hess's derivation of something again copied verbatim.

here is something interesting if you take peter 3:8 which mention's a difference in time and plug it into einestines special theory of relitivity you get this. here i will show you

EDIT: I miscopied one number -  7.5060981.

To save you the trouble of running to a Bible, here is the verse Mr. Hess is referring to.

But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. (NIV)

Mr. Hess is impressed that the Bible seems to predict the speed of light.  However, he lacks understanding of what the time dilation formula is about.

What this equation deals with is the relative motion of two laboratories (okay - inertial reference frames for the physicists).  If lab A is moving by lab B at a constant velocity then when the observer in lab B looks at a clock in lab A, he measures clock A to be running slow.  That is, if clock B ticks off 60 sec, then clock A will tick off a time less than 60 sec.

So if the lord is in lab B watching us whiz by at 99.9999999996% of the speed of light then he would measure 1000 years go by while we age just one day or if we are watching him hurtle through space with that speed, we would measure 1000 years while he(?) experiences just one day.

Lest one worry about the word theory which has a different meaning to scientists than to the nonspecialist, this is a well documented effect.  One well known experiment* was performed by David H. Fritsch and James H Smith. Smith, by the way, was the professor who taught me special relativity at the University of Illinois. They measured that muons, a component of cosmic rays, survive 8.8 times longer as they pass through the Earth's atmosphere than they do at rest in a physics lab.  The factor 8.8 corresponds to the time dilation factor these muons have by moving at a speed  99.5% of the speed of light.

*David H. Fritsch and James H. Smith, "Measurement of the Relativistic Time Dilation Using μ-Mesons," Am. J. of Phys., 31, 342-355 (1963).

Here's the original image posted by Mr. Hess.