New from the "News That Is Way Weirder Than Anything I Could Make Up" department: Baywatch star Donna D'Errico is planning on climbing Mount Ararat to search for Noah's Ark.
D'Errico, who played the character Donna Marco in order to obviate the need of her having to remember that her character had a different first name than she did, brought several acting talents to the series, the most notable of which was a set of bazongas that left you wondering how she managed to walk upright. She reports that she has had a dream of finding Noah's Ark ever since she was in Catholic school at age ten.
"I read different stories about how people thought they'd found the cages," she said. This evidently being all the evidence she needed, she has organized an expedition to Turkey this summer in order to scale the mountain and look for the boat.
I don't know about all this. The Great Flood story has always sounded mighty fishy to me (rimshot!). I know that when I was ten years old and in Catholic school, I wasn't buying it, and peppered Sister Ursula with a good many uncomfortable questions. I wondered, for example, if the whole world was flooded, so that no land was exposed anywhere, where did all the water go afterwards?
And, of course, there's the whole problem of how some dude in ancient Palestine went to the Canadian tundra to bring back two caribou, to Australia to get a couple of kangaroos, and to South Africa for some rhinoceroses, and got them all safely back after the whole incident was over. Did Noah seriously go to California and bring back some pumas?
When I was eleven, my parents transferred me to public school. Funny thing, that.
In any case, the question of "how could this story possibly be true?" doesn't seem to bother D'Errico terribly.
"I've been studying this for years and know where the sightings have been," she said in an interview. "According to my research, the ark lays broken into at least two, but most likely three, pieces. I believe that one of those pieces is in the uppermost Ahora Gorge area, an extremely dangerous area to climb and explore."
Asked about the dangers, she said, "Many inexperienced climbers have done it, but you do need stamina and, obviously, a crew."
Obviously. With videocameras. Because this is not in any sense a publicity stunt. Sure.
"I am not doing a reality show," she claimed. "I will document this for myself and my family."
In other words, look for it to appear on television. It'll probably have a really creative name like "My Search For Noah's Ark, Starring Donna D'Errico." Or maybe just "Baywatch: Turkey."
If it doesn't end up on the so-called "History Channel" by December, I will be astonished. In terms of serious historical merit, it will be right up there with their other offerings, such as "Monster Quest," "The Nostradamus Effect," and "The Bible Code: Predicting Armageddon."
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Monday, January 31, 2011
The sins of the fathers
Christine Weston's novel Indigo, set in pre-World War I colonial India, chronicles the coming of age of three very different characters -- Jacques de St.-Rémy, the French son of an indigo planter; Hardyal Rai, the son of a wealthy Indian lawyer; and John Macbeth, a wry, tough Englishman, son of a colonel in the British army. Weston does a masterful job of describing the slow-motion train wreck of the British occupation of India in an even-handed fashion, presenting the native Indians neither as noble savages nor as helpless victims, and their British overlords neither as evil exploiters nor as the emissaries of civilization. Her characters are complex, three-dimensional entities, not easily pigeonholed.
The most interesting of the three is John Macbeth, who as a young teen at the beginning of the story mistrusts all native Indians, but through his friendship with Hardyal grows past his bigoted, black-and-white view of the world. Nevertheless, when as a young man he joins the police force, he and Hardyal end up on opposite sides of the growing revolutionary movement, and Macbeth has no choice but to do the job his superiors expect of him and support the cause of the British occupiers. Although he remains a man of his time and context, he represents the potential we all have for doing the best we can with what we're given.
Which brings me to Haley Barbour.
For those of you who are not newshounds, Barbour is the governor of Mississippi. He gained accolades for his handling of the Katrina tragedy, and easily won a second term. He is now considered a front-runner for the Republican nomination for president in 2012.
The pundits are already speculating about the extent to which his past, and his state's, will weigh him down if he does make a bid for the nomination, and as a result he has been peppered with questions about the South's racist past. His replies thus far have seemed disingenuous at best. When asked what he remembered about the civil rights era in Mississippi, he said, "Not much." When a reporter mentioned the riots of 1961, he said that mostly what he recalled about that year was being on Yazoo City's winning baseball team as a thirteen-year-old.
"What I remember was more Mayberry than it was Mississippi Burning," the governor said.
Predictably, he's come under fire for these comments. Some have referred to him as a racist who is attempting to whitewash the history of a state that saw some of the bloodiest violence of the entire civil rights movement.
Barbour has tried, with little success, to counter these perceptions. "I went to an integrated college," he said, when asked about his earlier comments. "I never thought twice about it." He told a story about sitting in a literature class next to a pleasant young African-American woman who let him borrow her notes.
None of this has done much to alter the views of his critics.
My question is: what did you want him to say?
Barbour is 63; he was born in 1947. He was a privileged white boy in the Jim Crow South, and went to a segregated high school. He was seventeen when the Civil Rights Act was passed, twenty-one when Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. Many young whites, growing up in that era, accepted without question the prevailing attitudes of the time - just as we accept today's.
However, even if he once believed that whites were superior - a claim that seems to have no particular basis in fact, by the way - there is no indication whatsoever that he still does. Of all of the news stories and editorials written about him and his past, no one seems to be able to find a single thing he has said or done that is explicitly (or even implicitly) racist. That he's unwilling to engage in a dialogue about Mississippi's violent history may seem suspicious, but to me it speaks of nothing more than political expediency. Barbour's claim "not to remember much" about the bloody protests of the civil rights era seems to be more wishful thinking than it is racism. That all happened a long time ago; I was young then. It's over. Let's move on.
For the record, I don't particularly like Barbour's politics; I very much doubt I'd vote for him. But to cast him as a racist for his reluctance to discuss something that happened fifty years ago when he was a teenager is ridiculous. Like John Macbeth in Indigo, he is a person of his time and place -- as we all are. But any time and place produces good people and bad, people who rise above the prejudices of their fellows and those who swallow them and sink. It remains very much to be seen that Barbour is one of the latter type.
The most interesting of the three is John Macbeth, who as a young teen at the beginning of the story mistrusts all native Indians, but through his friendship with Hardyal grows past his bigoted, black-and-white view of the world. Nevertheless, when as a young man he joins the police force, he and Hardyal end up on opposite sides of the growing revolutionary movement, and Macbeth has no choice but to do the job his superiors expect of him and support the cause of the British occupiers. Although he remains a man of his time and context, he represents the potential we all have for doing the best we can with what we're given.
Which brings me to Haley Barbour.
For those of you who are not newshounds, Barbour is the governor of Mississippi. He gained accolades for his handling of the Katrina tragedy, and easily won a second term. He is now considered a front-runner for the Republican nomination for president in 2012.
The pundits are already speculating about the extent to which his past, and his state's, will weigh him down if he does make a bid for the nomination, and as a result he has been peppered with questions about the South's racist past. His replies thus far have seemed disingenuous at best. When asked what he remembered about the civil rights era in Mississippi, he said, "Not much." When a reporter mentioned the riots of 1961, he said that mostly what he recalled about that year was being on Yazoo City's winning baseball team as a thirteen-year-old.
"What I remember was more Mayberry than it was Mississippi Burning," the governor said.
Predictably, he's come under fire for these comments. Some have referred to him as a racist who is attempting to whitewash the history of a state that saw some of the bloodiest violence of the entire civil rights movement.
Barbour has tried, with little success, to counter these perceptions. "I went to an integrated college," he said, when asked about his earlier comments. "I never thought twice about it." He told a story about sitting in a literature class next to a pleasant young African-American woman who let him borrow her notes.
None of this has done much to alter the views of his critics.
My question is: what did you want him to say?
Barbour is 63; he was born in 1947. He was a privileged white boy in the Jim Crow South, and went to a segregated high school. He was seventeen when the Civil Rights Act was passed, twenty-one when Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. Many young whites, growing up in that era, accepted without question the prevailing attitudes of the time - just as we accept today's.
However, even if he once believed that whites were superior - a claim that seems to have no particular basis in fact, by the way - there is no indication whatsoever that he still does. Of all of the news stories and editorials written about him and his past, no one seems to be able to find a single thing he has said or done that is explicitly (or even implicitly) racist. That he's unwilling to engage in a dialogue about Mississippi's violent history may seem suspicious, but to me it speaks of nothing more than political expediency. Barbour's claim "not to remember much" about the bloody protests of the civil rights era seems to be more wishful thinking than it is racism. That all happened a long time ago; I was young then. It's over. Let's move on.
For the record, I don't particularly like Barbour's politics; I very much doubt I'd vote for him. But to cast him as a racist for his reluctance to discuss something that happened fifty years ago when he was a teenager is ridiculous. Like John Macbeth in Indigo, he is a person of his time and place -- as we all are. But any time and place produces good people and bad, people who rise above the prejudices of their fellows and those who swallow them and sink. It remains very much to be seen that Barbour is one of the latter type.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Anti-science in the science classroom
In a recently released study, 13% of high school biology teachers in the United States admitted that they advocated young-earth creationism in class.
The study, conducted by Michael Berkman and Eric Plutzer of Penn State, surveyed 926 biology teachers from a variety of areas, and asked them questions about their approach to teaching the topic, how strongly they advocated for its factual basis, and their own (personal) views. To quote a Minnesota teacher, "I don't teach the theory of evolution in my life science classes, nor do I teach the Big Bang Theory in my [E]arth [S]cience classes.... We do not have time to do something that is at best poor science."
It is not necessarily a coincidence that you can receive a bachelor's degree from the University of Minnesota without taking a class in evolutionary biology. Randy Moore, a science and education specialist at UMinn, was quoted as saying, "We let that go in the name of religious freedom." (Advocating, apparently, the "freedom to remain ignorant.")
A full 60% "don't take a stance on the subject." Berkman and Plutzer call this the "cautious 60%" who are either conflicted about teaching a topic that they themselves have doubts about (or don't fully understand), or are anxious to avoid controversy with students and parents.
This leaves somewhat under 30% who teach the topic as valid science.
Guess which slice I fall in?
What it boils down to is, to quote Daniel Moynihan, "You are entitled to your own opinions, but you are not entitled to your own facts." The theory of evolution is supported by a vast amount of incontrovertible evidence, from every sphere of science even vaguely related to biology. In fact, we know far more about the mechanisms involved in evolution than we do about the mechanisms involved in gravity. If you are a young-earth creationist, you simultaneously have to discount the following:
Oh, and don't even start with me about how "evolution is just a theory." They call it "music theory," and that's not because they think that music may not exist, okay?
Science is a way of knowing. It requires the ability to draw inferences based upon facts and evidence. If a particular hypothesis does not fit the available evidence, it must be discarded. The religious way turns this on its head; it gives you the conclusion, and asks you to discard any evidence that doesn't fit the conclusion you've already accepted. Much has been made of the idea that "there is no necessary conflict between science and religion," but as far as I understand it, I don't think this is possible. They are, at their basis, mutually contradictory algorithms.
Note that by this I do not mean that you can't both trust science and believe in a deity; simply that if at some point these two different worldviews are in conflict, you have to choose one or the other. There is no reconciling them.
And therefore, the 13% of biology teachers who advocate young-earth creationism have no business being in a science classroom. What they are teaching is not science. It is at its basis a non-scientific viewpoint that ignores a quantity of evidence which would be overwhelmingly convincing in any other realm. If they cannot accept this, they should keep their views confined to the proper venue -- Sunday school.
The study, conducted by Michael Berkman and Eric Plutzer of Penn State, surveyed 926 biology teachers from a variety of areas, and asked them questions about their approach to teaching the topic, how strongly they advocated for its factual basis, and their own (personal) views. To quote a Minnesota teacher, "I don't teach the theory of evolution in my life science classes, nor do I teach the Big Bang Theory in my [E]arth [S]cience classes.... We do not have time to do something that is at best poor science."
It is not necessarily a coincidence that you can receive a bachelor's degree from the University of Minnesota without taking a class in evolutionary biology. Randy Moore, a science and education specialist at UMinn, was quoted as saying, "We let that go in the name of religious freedom." (Advocating, apparently, the "freedom to remain ignorant.")
A full 60% "don't take a stance on the subject." Berkman and Plutzer call this the "cautious 60%" who are either conflicted about teaching a topic that they themselves have doubts about (or don't fully understand), or are anxious to avoid controversy with students and parents.
This leaves somewhat under 30% who teach the topic as valid science.
Guess which slice I fall in?
What it boils down to is, to quote Daniel Moynihan, "You are entitled to your own opinions, but you are not entitled to your own facts." The theory of evolution is supported by a vast amount of incontrovertible evidence, from every sphere of science even vaguely related to biology. In fact, we know far more about the mechanisms involved in evolution than we do about the mechanisms involved in gravity. If you are a young-earth creationist, you simultaneously have to discount the following:
- our understanding of the physics of radioactive decay, which is how rocks and fossils are dated.
- pretty much the entire field of geology, which has demonstrated the antiquity of the earth in about a hundred different ways.
- the field of genetics, which has provided evidence of common ancestry between (for example) birds and reptiles.
- all of astronomy, for a multitude of reasons.
- how we developed nuclear reactor technology.
- why Iceland is getting bigger, why California is an earthquake zone, and why there are extinct fossil animals on the top of Mount Everest.
- why the DNA of chickens has a gene, now inactive, for producing teeth.
- why, if the Earth is only six thousand years old, we can see things that are more than six thousand light years away.
Oh, and don't even start with me about how "evolution is just a theory." They call it "music theory," and that's not because they think that music may not exist, okay?
Science is a way of knowing. It requires the ability to draw inferences based upon facts and evidence. If a particular hypothesis does not fit the available evidence, it must be discarded. The religious way turns this on its head; it gives you the conclusion, and asks you to discard any evidence that doesn't fit the conclusion you've already accepted. Much has been made of the idea that "there is no necessary conflict between science and religion," but as far as I understand it, I don't think this is possible. They are, at their basis, mutually contradictory algorithms.
Note that by this I do not mean that you can't both trust science and believe in a deity; simply that if at some point these two different worldviews are in conflict, you have to choose one or the other. There is no reconciling them.
And therefore, the 13% of biology teachers who advocate young-earth creationism have no business being in a science classroom. What they are teaching is not science. It is at its basis a non-scientific viewpoint that ignores a quantity of evidence which would be overwhelmingly convincing in any other realm. If they cannot accept this, they should keep their views confined to the proper venue -- Sunday school.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Giving credit where credit is due
The latest Flavor-of-the-Month at the New York State Education Department is called "credit recovery." Here's a quote from NYSED's proposal regarding this provision:
"Sometimes students may come close to passing a course and may have deficiencies only in certain clearly defined areas of knowledge and skill. In those cases, it may not be necessary for the student to retake the entire course. Instead, the student might be permitted to make up those deficiencies, master the appropriate standards, and receive credit. Of course, this should only be allowed under carefully controlled conditions to ensure that the student does receive the opportunity to learn and does meet the required standards... In order to receive credit, the student must receive equivalent, intensive instruction in the deficiency areas of the course by a teacher certified in the subject area... The provisions above do not require specific seat time requirements for the make-up opportunity since the opportunity must be tailored to the individual student’s need. There is precedent for allowing a reduced amount of seat time in the context of summer school."
I find this troubling. The concept of credit recovery may be well-meaning -- although cynics, present company excepted of course, make a plausible case that the only impetus for this provision was to boost graduation rates. But however well-intentioned the policy is, its implementation is considerably problematic.
Consider, for example, a student who is failing my Regents (Introductory) Biology class. Let's say that this student has reached April, currently has an average of 31%, and suddenly has the realization that he's headed toward failing for the year. Under the provisions of credit recovery, I could be required to give him an opportunity to make up the work that he'd failed, so that he'd have a chance of passing for the year.
While the provision as drafted by NYSED states that he should receive "equivalent, intensive instruction," practically speaking, there is no way to do that. The school district has neither the funds nor the facilities to hire another teacher to go back and reteach this kid; the duties would necessarily fall on me, as the subject teacher. During what time would I do this? I already teach a full schedule - in fact, in my case, I am a section over the contractual limit. Further, could this provision require that I put together activities that he'd missed, failed, or simply not turned in - including labs? Lab activities almost always require the preparation of chemicals, equipment, and supplies, which would all have to be redone for the sake of a single kid. I believe that under this provision, teachers could be required to do exactly that.
Of course, in practice, that's not what would happen. Besides labs, what about activities that can't be replicated, such as in-class discussions, group activities, and so on? Between the time constraints and the simple impossibility of recreating a curriculum, sometimes months after it was initially presented, teachers will inevitably be forced into developing worksheets, problem sets, and other "seat work." In other words -- whether or not we feel it's justified or even educationally sound -- we'll be in the situation of being coerced by state mandate to provide inferior delivery of instruction just so students can receive credit.
Lest you think that this is just a case of yours truly being a hysterical alarmist, there are places in the state where this is already being done, and it's playing out exactly this way. A teacher at Jamaica High School (New York City School District) quipped, "You shouldn't drive by our school with your window rolled down, because someone will toss a diploma in." Students there were being awarded credit for an entire course they'd failed by showing up for nine hours, total, during winter and spring break.
It's a case where everyone loses; the school districts' feet are being held to the fire by NYSED to develop some kind of policy, but at the same time they have no money to hire additional staff, and the current staff are already stretched to the limit. The kids figure out very quickly how to game the system -- you can take a whole year off, fail a course, and then get credit for putting in nine hours of busy work the following year. Tell me that won't be taken advantage of.
Myself, I have a philosophical problem with this, and one that goes deeper than the practical issue of how to implement the policy fairly. My feeling is that there's nothing inherently wrong with failing at something; it's a sign that you need to get your ass in gear and work harder the next time. If you're learning to ride a horse, and you fall off, the only thing that can fix your problem is getting back up on the horse and figuring out what you did that led to your falling off, and making sure you don't do that again. What credit recovery does is a little like your trainer saying, "Oh, you fell off? Well, no problem. Get up on this merry-go-round horse for a few minutes, and we'll all pretend that you can ride."
"Sometimes students may come close to passing a course and may have deficiencies only in certain clearly defined areas of knowledge and skill. In those cases, it may not be necessary for the student to retake the entire course. Instead, the student might be permitted to make up those deficiencies, master the appropriate standards, and receive credit. Of course, this should only be allowed under carefully controlled conditions to ensure that the student does receive the opportunity to learn and does meet the required standards... In order to receive credit, the student must receive equivalent, intensive instruction in the deficiency areas of the course by a teacher certified in the subject area... The provisions above do not require specific seat time requirements for the make-up opportunity since the opportunity must be tailored to the individual student’s need. There is precedent for allowing a reduced amount of seat time in the context of summer school."
I find this troubling. The concept of credit recovery may be well-meaning -- although cynics, present company excepted of course, make a plausible case that the only impetus for this provision was to boost graduation rates. But however well-intentioned the policy is, its implementation is considerably problematic.
Consider, for example, a student who is failing my Regents (Introductory) Biology class. Let's say that this student has reached April, currently has an average of 31%, and suddenly has the realization that he's headed toward failing for the year. Under the provisions of credit recovery, I could be required to give him an opportunity to make up the work that he'd failed, so that he'd have a chance of passing for the year.
While the provision as drafted by NYSED states that he should receive "equivalent, intensive instruction," practically speaking, there is no way to do that. The school district has neither the funds nor the facilities to hire another teacher to go back and reteach this kid; the duties would necessarily fall on me, as the subject teacher. During what time would I do this? I already teach a full schedule - in fact, in my case, I am a section over the contractual limit. Further, could this provision require that I put together activities that he'd missed, failed, or simply not turned in - including labs? Lab activities almost always require the preparation of chemicals, equipment, and supplies, which would all have to be redone for the sake of a single kid. I believe that under this provision, teachers could be required to do exactly that.
Of course, in practice, that's not what would happen. Besides labs, what about activities that can't be replicated, such as in-class discussions, group activities, and so on? Between the time constraints and the simple impossibility of recreating a curriculum, sometimes months after it was initially presented, teachers will inevitably be forced into developing worksheets, problem sets, and other "seat work." In other words -- whether or not we feel it's justified or even educationally sound -- we'll be in the situation of being coerced by state mandate to provide inferior delivery of instruction just so students can receive credit.
Lest you think that this is just a case of yours truly being a hysterical alarmist, there are places in the state where this is already being done, and it's playing out exactly this way. A teacher at Jamaica High School (New York City School District) quipped, "You shouldn't drive by our school with your window rolled down, because someone will toss a diploma in." Students there were being awarded credit for an entire course they'd failed by showing up for nine hours, total, during winter and spring break.
It's a case where everyone loses; the school districts' feet are being held to the fire by NYSED to develop some kind of policy, but at the same time they have no money to hire additional staff, and the current staff are already stretched to the limit. The kids figure out very quickly how to game the system -- you can take a whole year off, fail a course, and then get credit for putting in nine hours of busy work the following year. Tell me that won't be taken advantage of.
Myself, I have a philosophical problem with this, and one that goes deeper than the practical issue of how to implement the policy fairly. My feeling is that there's nothing inherently wrong with failing at something; it's a sign that you need to get your ass in gear and work harder the next time. If you're learning to ride a horse, and you fall off, the only thing that can fix your problem is getting back up on the horse and figuring out what you did that led to your falling off, and making sure you don't do that again. What credit recovery does is a little like your trainer saying, "Oh, you fell off? Well, no problem. Get up on this merry-go-round horse for a few minutes, and we'll all pretend that you can ride."
Thursday, January 27, 2011
The circle game
Yesterday, the news carried reports of an eye-opening first-ever event, an occurrence which some were attributing to supernatural forces, others calling a Sign of the End Times, and most scientists dismissing as a hoax: Ann Coulter said something nice about a Democrat.
No, not really, I wouldn't expect anyone to believe that that had happened. What actually occurred is that the country of Indonesia had its first recorded crop circle. And, predictably, the alien-invasion crowd immediately converged upon the spot, claiming that this was conclusive proof at last.
Villagers in Sleman, Yogyakarta, woke last Sunday morning to find that a rice field had been adorned with a pattern of circles and triangles seventy meters in diameter. The stalks were flattened in the "combed-down" fashion typical of earlier crop circles, and the symmetrical pattern soon became a magnet for gawkers.
(Check out a photograph of the circle here.)
The Jakarta Post quotes a local, Cahyo Utomo, as saying, "I think they were left by an alien spacecraft, like I saw on TV."
Well, far be it from me to contradict Mr. Utomo or his television, but it's already been demonstrated that crop circles can be made fairly quickly by a couple of guys with nothing more than a board, a spotting scope, and some rope; a couple of old English dudes, Doug Bower and Dave Chorley, even demonstrated back in 1991 how they had made a few themselves. Shortly after that, a couple of high school kids in Hungary were actually arrested for crop damage after making one, and a guy named Matt Ridley published an article in none other than Scientific American describing how he'd made several single-handed. You'd think that at that point, people would go, "Oh. Humans make these. I see now. How silly of me to think it was aliens."
You'd be wrong.
Since Bower and Chorley confessed on the BBC back in '91, the crop circle phenomenon has exploded, and the theories about what is making them have progressively gotten wilder and wilder. The most prosaic-minded theorists -- and this isn't saying much -- suggest that they're caused by some sort of localized, extremely symmetrical weather phenomenon. Basically, what they describe is sort of an OCD tornado. From there, the hypotheses sail on out into the void, and include visitations by aliens, signs left by secret societies as messages to other, even more secret societies, and (my personal favorite) attempts at communication with humans by Mother Earth herself.
My problem with all of these explanations, besides the obvious one that even writing them down makes me want to take Ockham's Razor and slit my wrists with it, is that if crop circles represent some sort of communique -- whether from aliens, the Illuminati, or Gaia -- they're a pretty obscure communique. Some of them are quite beautiful -- in fact, I've got a photograph of a crop circle as the desktop background of my computer at school, much to the wry amusement of my students. However, if they mean anything, it certainly isn't immediately obvious what that might be.
My general thought is, if aliens were trying to announce their presence, there are more direct ways to do it. Landing a spaceship in Times Square, for example, would certainly do the trick. Why a highly-developed, technological race would take the time and trouble to fly across the light years of interstellar vacuum, and then get to Earth, flatten a bunch of cornstalks, and fly away, I have no idea.
In any case, the woo-woos have been so stirred up by this incident that officials in Indonesia were prompted to take action -- the Indonesian National Atomic Energy Agency was so flooded by phone calls demanding that they investigate the site that they reluctantly sent someone out with a Geiger counter, which (surprise!) didn't register anything. Once again, what you'd hope would be the response -- "Oh, okay, I guess it wasn't an atomic-powered alien spacecraft" -- didn't happen. Most folks seemed to say, "Wow! Those aliens sure are pretty tricky, to come and go and leave no traces of radiation!"
Anyhow, as with all of these events, sooner or later the hype will fade, and the woo-woos will return to their crystal-lined, pyramid-shaped houses, and all will quiet down until the next time some college kids get into a field with a board and some rope. Maybe eventually, people will begin to see that these really are human-generated pranks, and not of paranormal origin, and will begin to take a more skeptical view of these sorts of things. Or maybe Ann Coulter will say something nice about a Democrat. Given a choice, I'd put my money on the latter happening first.
No, not really, I wouldn't expect anyone to believe that that had happened. What actually occurred is that the country of Indonesia had its first recorded crop circle. And, predictably, the alien-invasion crowd immediately converged upon the spot, claiming that this was conclusive proof at last.
Villagers in Sleman, Yogyakarta, woke last Sunday morning to find that a rice field had been adorned with a pattern of circles and triangles seventy meters in diameter. The stalks were flattened in the "combed-down" fashion typical of earlier crop circles, and the symmetrical pattern soon became a magnet for gawkers.
(Check out a photograph of the circle here.)
The Jakarta Post quotes a local, Cahyo Utomo, as saying, "I think they were left by an alien spacecraft, like I saw on TV."
Well, far be it from me to contradict Mr. Utomo or his television, but it's already been demonstrated that crop circles can be made fairly quickly by a couple of guys with nothing more than a board, a spotting scope, and some rope; a couple of old English dudes, Doug Bower and Dave Chorley, even demonstrated back in 1991 how they had made a few themselves. Shortly after that, a couple of high school kids in Hungary were actually arrested for crop damage after making one, and a guy named Matt Ridley published an article in none other than Scientific American describing how he'd made several single-handed. You'd think that at that point, people would go, "Oh. Humans make these. I see now. How silly of me to think it was aliens."
You'd be wrong.
Since Bower and Chorley confessed on the BBC back in '91, the crop circle phenomenon has exploded, and the theories about what is making them have progressively gotten wilder and wilder. The most prosaic-minded theorists -- and this isn't saying much -- suggest that they're caused by some sort of localized, extremely symmetrical weather phenomenon. Basically, what they describe is sort of an OCD tornado. From there, the hypotheses sail on out into the void, and include visitations by aliens, signs left by secret societies as messages to other, even more secret societies, and (my personal favorite) attempts at communication with humans by Mother Earth herself.
My problem with all of these explanations, besides the obvious one that even writing them down makes me want to take Ockham's Razor and slit my wrists with it, is that if crop circles represent some sort of communique -- whether from aliens, the Illuminati, or Gaia -- they're a pretty obscure communique. Some of them are quite beautiful -- in fact, I've got a photograph of a crop circle as the desktop background of my computer at school, much to the wry amusement of my students. However, if they mean anything, it certainly isn't immediately obvious what that might be.
My general thought is, if aliens were trying to announce their presence, there are more direct ways to do it. Landing a spaceship in Times Square, for example, would certainly do the trick. Why a highly-developed, technological race would take the time and trouble to fly across the light years of interstellar vacuum, and then get to Earth, flatten a bunch of cornstalks, and fly away, I have no idea.
In any case, the woo-woos have been so stirred up by this incident that officials in Indonesia were prompted to take action -- the Indonesian National Atomic Energy Agency was so flooded by phone calls demanding that they investigate the site that they reluctantly sent someone out with a Geiger counter, which (surprise!) didn't register anything. Once again, what you'd hope would be the response -- "Oh, okay, I guess it wasn't an atomic-powered alien spacecraft" -- didn't happen. Most folks seemed to say, "Wow! Those aliens sure are pretty tricky, to come and go and leave no traces of radiation!"
Anyhow, as with all of these events, sooner or later the hype will fade, and the woo-woos will return to their crystal-lined, pyramid-shaped houses, and all will quiet down until the next time some college kids get into a field with a board and some rope. Maybe eventually, people will begin to see that these really are human-generated pranks, and not of paranormal origin, and will begin to take a more skeptical view of these sorts of things. Or maybe Ann Coulter will say something nice about a Democrat. Given a choice, I'd put my money on the latter happening first.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
When the volcano blows
The latest from the "News That Isn't Actually News" department is: We are all going to be killed in a massive eruption of the Yellowstone Supervolcano! It could happen tomorrow! Giant ash clouds! Searing bursts of gas vaporizing the entire state of Wyoming! We should prepare for the worst! Or at least run about, making flailing arm gestures, writing overhyped articles and webpages, and overusing exclamation points!
For some reason, recently this non-story seems to be all over the news. I've seen more than one reference to this geologic hotspot just in the last couple of days, usually accompanied by photos of the geysers and hot springs, or (in one case) by a photo of Yellowstone Lake, captioned, "It SEEMS peaceful... but hidden beneath its pristine beauty is a RED HOT MAGMA CHAMBER JUST WAITING TO BLOW."
Well, yeah, okay, technically I have to admit that they're correct. The Yellowstone Supervolcano is a pretty scary place. The last time it erupted, about 640,000 years ago, it produced about two thousand times the volume of ash that Mt. St. Helens did. It is reasonable to find the prospect of this happening again terrifying. The direct damage from the blast, the secondary damage from the ash cloud, and the climate changes which would ensue, would be devastation on a level humanity has never seen before. (The eruption of Mt. Tambora in Indonesia in 1815, which killed 71,000 people directly and led to the "Year Without a Summer," in which there were hard freezes in July across Europe and North America, would be a mere firecracker by comparison.)
However, the hysterical tone of some of these articles, which imply that we're "overdue for an eruption" of the Yellowstone Supervolcano, is completely unwarranted. For example, one source I read stated that the ground was rising over the magma chamber at "a rate of three inches a year," and "new geysers were forming," and that this was indicative that an eruption was imminent. This is ridiculous, as this source conveniently omitted mention of the fact that some areas over the magma chamber are actually subsiding; and in any volcanically active area, new geysers form frequently, and others cease to flow, and this isn't indicative of anything other than the area is experiencing movement of magma -- which we already knew, because that's what "volcanically active" means.
The whole idea of "overdue for an eruption" implies that volcanoes erupt on some kind of schedule, which is nonsense. The three known eruptions of the Yellowstone Supervolcano occurred 2.1 million, 1.3 million, and 640,000 years ago -- gaps of 800,000 and 660,000 years, respectively. Even presuming that there was some kind of pattern, we're still 20,000 years shy of the previous gap, and 160,000 years shy of the longer one. But, of course, a headline that says, "Massive Volcano Could Erupt Now or 160,000 Years From Now!" doesn't make people read any further.
And I'm not even going to go into the websites that claim that the Yellowstone Supervolcano is connected to (1) the 2012 lunacy, (2) the prophecies from Revelations, (3) conspiracy theories, or (4) all of the above. If you Google "Yellowstone Supervolcano" you can find plenty of those sites for yourselves, but if you read them you have to promise me you'll try your best not to find them plausible.
In any case, if you have a vacation planned to Yellowstone, it's probably a bit premature to cancel it. With apologies to Jimmy Buffett, I don't know where I'm-a-gonna go when the volcano blows, because chances are I'll be dead and gone before anyone has to worry about it.
For some reason, recently this non-story seems to be all over the news. I've seen more than one reference to this geologic hotspot just in the last couple of days, usually accompanied by photos of the geysers and hot springs, or (in one case) by a photo of Yellowstone Lake, captioned, "It SEEMS peaceful... but hidden beneath its pristine beauty is a RED HOT MAGMA CHAMBER JUST WAITING TO BLOW."
Well, yeah, okay, technically I have to admit that they're correct. The Yellowstone Supervolcano is a pretty scary place. The last time it erupted, about 640,000 years ago, it produced about two thousand times the volume of ash that Mt. St. Helens did. It is reasonable to find the prospect of this happening again terrifying. The direct damage from the blast, the secondary damage from the ash cloud, and the climate changes which would ensue, would be devastation on a level humanity has never seen before. (The eruption of Mt. Tambora in Indonesia in 1815, which killed 71,000 people directly and led to the "Year Without a Summer," in which there were hard freezes in July across Europe and North America, would be a mere firecracker by comparison.)
However, the hysterical tone of some of these articles, which imply that we're "overdue for an eruption" of the Yellowstone Supervolcano, is completely unwarranted. For example, one source I read stated that the ground was rising over the magma chamber at "a rate of three inches a year," and "new geysers were forming," and that this was indicative that an eruption was imminent. This is ridiculous, as this source conveniently omitted mention of the fact that some areas over the magma chamber are actually subsiding; and in any volcanically active area, new geysers form frequently, and others cease to flow, and this isn't indicative of anything other than the area is experiencing movement of magma -- which we already knew, because that's what "volcanically active" means.
The whole idea of "overdue for an eruption" implies that volcanoes erupt on some kind of schedule, which is nonsense. The three known eruptions of the Yellowstone Supervolcano occurred 2.1 million, 1.3 million, and 640,000 years ago -- gaps of 800,000 and 660,000 years, respectively. Even presuming that there was some kind of pattern, we're still 20,000 years shy of the previous gap, and 160,000 years shy of the longer one. But, of course, a headline that says, "Massive Volcano Could Erupt Now or 160,000 Years From Now!" doesn't make people read any further.
And I'm not even going to go into the websites that claim that the Yellowstone Supervolcano is connected to (1) the 2012 lunacy, (2) the prophecies from Revelations, (3) conspiracy theories, or (4) all of the above. If you Google "Yellowstone Supervolcano" you can find plenty of those sites for yourselves, but if you read them you have to promise me you'll try your best not to find them plausible.
In any case, if you have a vacation planned to Yellowstone, it's probably a bit premature to cancel it. With apologies to Jimmy Buffett, I don't know where I'm-a-gonna go when the volcano blows, because chances are I'll be dead and gone before anyone has to worry about it.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Alone again, naturally
Today's London Telegraph features a story in which Dr. Howard Smith, senior astrophysicist at Harvard University, has stated that alien life is almost certainly impossible based upon the conditions on the exoplanets so far discovered.
"We have found that most other planets and solar systems are wildly different than our own," Smith was quoted as saying. "They are very hostile to life as we know it."
So according to Smith, we're... all alone. *cue sad music*
Hang on a second. I think, Dr. Smith, that we may not want to resign ourselves to being Lost in Space quite yet.
We have, at last check, found about five hundred exoplanets. Most of them are of the "hot Jupiter" variety -- large, probably gaseous planets, orbiting very close to their sun. The reason that we've preferentially found those has nothing to do with their being likely to be more common in the universe; it's that they're easier to find, because they create a greater gravitational perturbation of the star they orbit. Small, rocky worlds, such as the Earth, are harder to detect, although we're beginning to be quite good at that, too. When the data from NASA's Kepler satellite is released in a few weeks, it is expected to include information about hundreds of additional, newly-discovered exoplanets.
However, there's a far bigger problem with Dr. Smith's statement than this.
I must say that I would not have expected a prominent scientist to make quite such a catastrophically faulty inference. In order to make an inference, you're supposed to take into account a very important factor -- what your sample size is. Dr. Smith's mistake is analogous to someone going through my house, and finding that I own twelve flutes, recorders, tinwhistles, and so on, and concluding that that there must be 80 billion wind instruments on the planet Earth.
"Wait," you might be saying. "That's a bad comparison -- no one would be so foolish as to take a sample size of One Person and extrapolate it to all 6.7 billion people on Earth."
Okay, fine. Point made. Let's see how Dr. Smith's inference compares to that one.
There are something on the order of a hundred billion galaxies in the universe, and each of those has maybe a billion stars. (This information is from Cornell's astrophysics faq website, if you're wondering about my sources.) This means that there are potentially one hundred billion billion -- that's ten followed by twenty zeroes -- stars in the observable universe...
... and we've surveyed about a thousand of them.
So Dr. Smith's sample size is a thousand, out of a hundred billion billion. This comes to not one out of 6.7 billion, which was the sample size in my ridiculous inference about wind instruments, but one out of one hundred million billion.
There are so many stars in the universe that if we surveyed one star system every second of every day; 365 days a year; no time off for holidays; no potty breaks, for cryin' out loud -- it would take one hundred trillion years to finish.
And Dr. Smith thinks a thousand stars is an adequate sample size to conclude that we're alone in the universe? Oh, the pain, the pain...!
It's a little like my climbing on to my roof, and looking around, and saying, "No wombats in my back yard! No wombats in my neighbor's yard! In fact, no wombats anywhere to be seen! I guess wombats don't exist."
I know it's tempting to draw conclusions quickly; patience is not a notable human trait. However, a mark of a skeptical mind is the willingness to suspend belief and disbelief -- to be completely comfortable with saying, perhaps indefinitely, "the jury's still out on this one." I am frequently asked by students if I "believe" in various things -- UFOs, bigfoot, ghosts, the Loch Ness Monster, god... and my usual answer is, "I neither believe in, nor disbelieve in, anything for which I have no concrete evidence of any kind. If you want, however, we can discuss how likely I think those things are."
All of which brings me to a comment I've made before; the world would be a far better place if people had more facts and fewer beliefs.
"We have found that most other planets and solar systems are wildly different than our own," Smith was quoted as saying. "They are very hostile to life as we know it."
So according to Smith, we're... all alone. *cue sad music*
Hang on a second. I think, Dr. Smith, that we may not want to resign ourselves to being Lost in Space quite yet.
We have, at last check, found about five hundred exoplanets. Most of them are of the "hot Jupiter" variety -- large, probably gaseous planets, orbiting very close to their sun. The reason that we've preferentially found those has nothing to do with their being likely to be more common in the universe; it's that they're easier to find, because they create a greater gravitational perturbation of the star they orbit. Small, rocky worlds, such as the Earth, are harder to detect, although we're beginning to be quite good at that, too. When the data from NASA's Kepler satellite is released in a few weeks, it is expected to include information about hundreds of additional, newly-discovered exoplanets.
However, there's a far bigger problem with Dr. Smith's statement than this.
I must say that I would not have expected a prominent scientist to make quite such a catastrophically faulty inference. In order to make an inference, you're supposed to take into account a very important factor -- what your sample size is. Dr. Smith's mistake is analogous to someone going through my house, and finding that I own twelve flutes, recorders, tinwhistles, and so on, and concluding that that there must be 80 billion wind instruments on the planet Earth.
"Wait," you might be saying. "That's a bad comparison -- no one would be so foolish as to take a sample size of One Person and extrapolate it to all 6.7 billion people on Earth."
Okay, fine. Point made. Let's see how Dr. Smith's inference compares to that one.
There are something on the order of a hundred billion galaxies in the universe, and each of those has maybe a billion stars. (This information is from Cornell's astrophysics faq website, if you're wondering about my sources.) This means that there are potentially one hundred billion billion -- that's ten followed by twenty zeroes -- stars in the observable universe...
... and we've surveyed about a thousand of them.
So Dr. Smith's sample size is a thousand, out of a hundred billion billion. This comes to not one out of 6.7 billion, which was the sample size in my ridiculous inference about wind instruments, but one out of one hundred million billion.
There are so many stars in the universe that if we surveyed one star system every second of every day; 365 days a year; no time off for holidays; no potty breaks, for cryin' out loud -- it would take one hundred trillion years to finish.
And Dr. Smith thinks a thousand stars is an adequate sample size to conclude that we're alone in the universe? Oh, the pain, the pain...!
It's a little like my climbing on to my roof, and looking around, and saying, "No wombats in my back yard! No wombats in my neighbor's yard! In fact, no wombats anywhere to be seen! I guess wombats don't exist."
I know it's tempting to draw conclusions quickly; patience is not a notable human trait. However, a mark of a skeptical mind is the willingness to suspend belief and disbelief -- to be completely comfortable with saying, perhaps indefinitely, "the jury's still out on this one." I am frequently asked by students if I "believe" in various things -- UFOs, bigfoot, ghosts, the Loch Ness Monster, god... and my usual answer is, "I neither believe in, nor disbelieve in, anything for which I have no concrete evidence of any kind. If you want, however, we can discuss how likely I think those things are."
All of which brings me to a comment I've made before; the world would be a far better place if people had more facts and fewer beliefs.
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