Hey, music lovers! There's a opera that is currently touring Europe, and just was performed this week in Rijeka, Croatia. Maybe it will soon come to a venue near you, which would be very cool, because...
...the entire opera is written, and performed, in Klingon. (Read about it here.)
It's called "U," which is a good thing, since if the title was actually a phrase in Klingon it would probably be slightly more difficult to pronounce. Klingon is a true language, invented by linguists hired by the people in charge of the Star Trek franchise; it has a real syntax, phonetic and morphological structure, and so on. So, despite the fact that it includes sounds similar to those made by a water buffalo being examined by a proctologist, it deserves recognition as one of the only complete synthetic languages (a distinction it shares with J. R. R. Tolkien's Elvish and only a handful of others).
And now, someone has written a Klingon opera.
The story apparently surrounds the life of Kahless the Unforgettable, a historical figure whom I had ironically enough forgotten about completely, even though I used to watch Star Trek: The Next Generation fairly regularly. Kahless, I was reminded by this week's news releases, was the first Klingon emperor, and the opera centers on his rise to the position of leader of the Klingon home world, and how he deals with the loss of the ones he loves, and ultimately, betrayal by his closest associates. So, basically, it's kind of Julius Caesar in Outer Space.
The people who are in charge of this production seem to be taking it pretty seriously. "The Klingons are known as passionate opera lovers but at the same time very little was known about Klingon opera here," said Floris Schonfeld, one of the opera's creators, who may need a refresher on the definition of the words "fictional alien species." "So as far as I was concerned, that was a very interesting challenge to try and make an authentic, or as authentic something out of that as possible."
I must add at this point that Schonfeld and his pals have also somehow convinced the owners of a powerful radio transmitter to send a press release in the direction of the star Arcturus, alleged to be the sun of the Klingon home world. The unfortunate part is that the radio signal will take 36 years to reach Arcturus, at which point I suspect the curtains will have closed on "U," so it's probably a fairly futile gesture.
I have to say that despite my poking fun at this Extraterrestrial Extravaganza, there's a part of me that thinks it is pretty awesome, and it's not because I'm some kind of closet Trekkie (which I'm not). It has to do with how awesome it is that the linguists hired by the original show have created a language that is complex and rich enough to actually write an opera in. C'mon, don't you think that's cool? You can even take college courses in Klingon. I'm not making this up. The University of Wisconsin, which has one of the most prestigious World Languages Department of any college in the world, has a 100-level course in Klingon. If you're more serious about your studies, you can attend the Klingon Language Institute, in Flourtown, Pennsylvania (motto: "qo’mey poSmoH Hol," which means "language opens worlds, or else crushes them into dust if they dare to resist"). There, you can achieve fluency, which will no doubt impress your friends, coworkers, and potential lovers ("I know that sounded like I was gargling with yogurt, but it actually means 'You are extremely hot' in Klingon!").
For some years, I have offered an independent study class at my high school in Intro to Linguistics, and the final project for this class is to create the rudiments of a synthetic language. I assign this project, in part, because it gets students to understand how complex language actually is; I've found that they learn more about English syntax by trying to create a synthetic one than they would from any number of English grammar classes. They are supposed to submit, as part of the project, a lexicon of at least a hundred words, and a passage from English that has been translated into their language -- my last group translated The Very Hungry Caterpillar, an accomplishment that was far harder than it sounds and of which they were, very rightly, proud.
It's always interesting to see what happens when the reins are loosed on human creativity. We might laugh about a Klingon opera (and better to laugh about it than directly at it -- when you laugh at Klingons, they tend to rip your arm off and beat you to death with it). But it really is pretty cool that such a thing could be written and performed.
I realize I am opening myself up to some serious ridicule here for saying that, but I don't care. So, to anyone who is going to give me grief about this, I say: "Hab SoSlI' Quch!" ("Your mother has a smooth forehead.")
Saturday, March 3, 2012
Friday, March 2, 2012
Code red
So this morning I was going through some of my favorite woo-woo sites, looking for a topic for today's post, and on "Paranormal News" I found a link to a story about a Tennessee woman who had an alarming encounter.
According to a report filed with MUFON (the Mutual UFO Network), a woman from an unspecified town in Tennessee was out standing on her deck on February 29, and saw at the other end of the deck a dark figure. "When I turned my head to look, this human-shaped solid black, very dark black, being was standing on the other side of my deck. It was turned towards the field, leaning on the railings, and seemed to be looking into the field. I was speechless, but not scared."
Well, if she's telling the truth, all I can say is that I'm impressed already. If I was out on my deck and a solid black being suddenly appeared nearby, I would have pissed my pants.
It got worse, however, because then the thing turned to look at her. "When it turned its head to look at me, it began slowly moving backwards. The legs moved as if it were walking backwards, yet it was floating very slowly. Cat-like movements, like when a cat is stalking its prey?" Sort of like a Michael-Jackson-style moon walk, is what I picture, only Michael Jackson (1) is dead, and (2) stopped being black back in the mid-1980s, so I don't suppose it could have been him.
In any case, the thing disappeared around the corner of the house, but then, "... it peeked half its body back around and stared at me for a moment. When it left this time, also slow, it dragged its hand across the wood. The black hand is the last I saw of the being."
So, the woman went to look for it, and of course it was gone. She reports that now she's afraid to go outside, and said that she got the idea that the thing was trying to communicate, "I'm not going to hurt you today, but I could if I wanted to."
Anyhow, all of this just seemed like your usual uncorroborated close-encounter story, until I looked at the end of the article, where there was this bit that said that Tennessee is currently under a "UFO Alert Rating Level 5." And I thought, "They have UFO alert levels? Sort of like the Department of Homeland Security's color-coded alert system?" (Current level: Code Mauve - don't even think about traveling anywhere; in fact, it is recommended that you spend the entire day huddled behind the couch.)
So, I clicked on the link, and was brought here, to the National UFO Alert Page. It turns out that California, Florida, Michigan, Arizona, Texas, and Pennsylvania currently have the highest alert levels (Code 3), with California reporting the most UFOs in February (71 reports). New York, my home state, is at Code 4, with a paltry 18 reports. The National UFO Alert Page also lists UFO sightings by the shape of the spaceship (in February we had 168 spheres, 102 stars, 92 circles, 78 triangles, 75 "other," 74 discs, 73 "unknown," 59 ovals, 59 fireballs, 32 flashes, 26 squares, 25 cylinders, 21 cigars, 12 "Saturn-like," 12 boomerangs, 11 diamonds, 10 eggs, 10 bullets, 9 blimps, 7 chevrons, 7 teardrops, 6 cones, and 4 crosses), the distance the observer was from the spaceship, and whether a takeoff or landing was observed.
Well, I have a couple of reactions to all this, and the first one is, that's a crapload of spaceships. I had no idea that the Earth was being visited so much, and frankly, I wonder what the aliens find so interesting about it. I mean, I kind of like it here, being a native and all, but if the universe is as thickly populated as all that, you'd think there'd be more interesting places to visit.
Another thing is that I'm pretty impressed that they're approaching it all so scientifically. Even if these are still anecdotal accounts, with a complete lack of hard evidence, at least there's an effort to do some statistics and data collection, which seems to me to be a move in the right direction. I'm still not convinced I believe most of the UFO sightings out there, but "most" is not "all" -- and in this I can at least claim the backing of physicist Michio Kaku, who last year made the stunning pronouncement that after careful consideration, he was of the opinion that there was a handful of UFO sightings that were "convincing" and "needed scientific explanation." "When you look at the handful, the handful of cases that cannot be easily dismissed," Kaku said, "this is worthy of scientific investigation. Maybe there's nothing there. However, on the off chance that there is something there that could literally change the course of human history, so I say, let the investigation begin."
So, anyway, that's today's story. Jet-black alien encounters in Tennessee, the UFO Alert Rating System, and a statistical analysis of close encounters. As for me, I'm still hoping to see a UFO one day. It would be a thrilling moment if I actually saw an alien, me being a biologist and all, given the implications it would have regarding the origins of life and evolution on other planets. And I hope, that in the spirit of interstellar amity and cooperation, that the alien would refrain from laughing at me for pissing my pants when I saw him.
According to a report filed with MUFON (the Mutual UFO Network), a woman from an unspecified town in Tennessee was out standing on her deck on February 29, and saw at the other end of the deck a dark figure. "When I turned my head to look, this human-shaped solid black, very dark black, being was standing on the other side of my deck. It was turned towards the field, leaning on the railings, and seemed to be looking into the field. I was speechless, but not scared."
Well, if she's telling the truth, all I can say is that I'm impressed already. If I was out on my deck and a solid black being suddenly appeared nearby, I would have pissed my pants.
It got worse, however, because then the thing turned to look at her. "When it turned its head to look at me, it began slowly moving backwards. The legs moved as if it were walking backwards, yet it was floating very slowly. Cat-like movements, like when a cat is stalking its prey?" Sort of like a Michael-Jackson-style moon walk, is what I picture, only Michael Jackson (1) is dead, and (2) stopped being black back in the mid-1980s, so I don't suppose it could have been him.
In any case, the thing disappeared around the corner of the house, but then, "... it peeked half its body back around and stared at me for a moment. When it left this time, also slow, it dragged its hand across the wood. The black hand is the last I saw of the being."
So, the woman went to look for it, and of course it was gone. She reports that now she's afraid to go outside, and said that she got the idea that the thing was trying to communicate, "I'm not going to hurt you today, but I could if I wanted to."
Anyhow, all of this just seemed like your usual uncorroborated close-encounter story, until I looked at the end of the article, where there was this bit that said that Tennessee is currently under a "UFO Alert Rating Level 5." And I thought, "They have UFO alert levels? Sort of like the Department of Homeland Security's color-coded alert system?" (Current level: Code Mauve - don't even think about traveling anywhere; in fact, it is recommended that you spend the entire day huddled behind the couch.)
So, I clicked on the link, and was brought here, to the National UFO Alert Page. It turns out that California, Florida, Michigan, Arizona, Texas, and Pennsylvania currently have the highest alert levels (Code 3), with California reporting the most UFOs in February (71 reports). New York, my home state, is at Code 4, with a paltry 18 reports. The National UFO Alert Page also lists UFO sightings by the shape of the spaceship (in February we had 168 spheres, 102 stars, 92 circles, 78 triangles, 75 "other," 74 discs, 73 "unknown," 59 ovals, 59 fireballs, 32 flashes, 26 squares, 25 cylinders, 21 cigars, 12 "Saturn-like," 12 boomerangs, 11 diamonds, 10 eggs, 10 bullets, 9 blimps, 7 chevrons, 7 teardrops, 6 cones, and 4 crosses), the distance the observer was from the spaceship, and whether a takeoff or landing was observed.
Well, I have a couple of reactions to all this, and the first one is, that's a crapload of spaceships. I had no idea that the Earth was being visited so much, and frankly, I wonder what the aliens find so interesting about it. I mean, I kind of like it here, being a native and all, but if the universe is as thickly populated as all that, you'd think there'd be more interesting places to visit.
Another thing is that I'm pretty impressed that they're approaching it all so scientifically. Even if these are still anecdotal accounts, with a complete lack of hard evidence, at least there's an effort to do some statistics and data collection, which seems to me to be a move in the right direction. I'm still not convinced I believe most of the UFO sightings out there, but "most" is not "all" -- and in this I can at least claim the backing of physicist Michio Kaku, who last year made the stunning pronouncement that after careful consideration, he was of the opinion that there was a handful of UFO sightings that were "convincing" and "needed scientific explanation." "When you look at the handful, the handful of cases that cannot be easily dismissed," Kaku said, "this is worthy of scientific investigation. Maybe there's nothing there. However, on the off chance that there is something there that could literally change the course of human history, so I say, let the investigation begin."
So, anyway, that's today's story. Jet-black alien encounters in Tennessee, the UFO Alert Rating System, and a statistical analysis of close encounters. As for me, I'm still hoping to see a UFO one day. It would be a thrilling moment if I actually saw an alien, me being a biologist and all, given the implications it would have regarding the origins of life and evolution on other planets. And I hope, that in the spirit of interstellar amity and cooperation, that the alien would refrain from laughing at me for pissing my pants when I saw him.
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Translation bias
You've probably heard about it already, but a group of theological and political conservatives have come together to retranslate the bible and bring it more in line with conservative principles. (You can read more of the details here.)
The stated goal of this group is to comb the bible and remove "liberal bias." Any lines that make Jesus come across as a social activist, for example (e.g. the part about feeding the poor), are to be rewritten to eliminate what they perceive as contrary to the conservative agenda. Murder is to be punished, including a new clause to protect the unborn. The whole thing, in fact, is to be retooled so that conservative principles can be proven to have a scriptural basis.
My first thought was that this was some kind of hoax. I thought, "Can they really be engaging in so transparently circular an argument?" Tragically, it is not a hoax at all. They really believe that the bible's current popular translations have been twisted into a liberal framework, and that it is god's will that they undo the damage.
Of the many problems I see here, first and foremost is: are they really arrogant enough to believe that they, and only they, have enough of a window into the intent of the original writers of the bible manuscripts to be able to accurately portray those intents in English? I'm sure that some of the current translations of the bible have errors -- either denotative (using the wrong word entirely) or connotative (using a word that is literally correct but gives the wrong impression). How do they know that theirs is any better? They admit that many of the people on the committee are not language scholars; they are merely hired to "comb the bible for liberal bias" and to submit a "better translation." You'd think that they, of all people, would want to be exceedingly careful about doing that. Aren't they the ones who believe that it's the inerrant word of god?
Of course, the central problem with most of these folks is that they want to focus with wearying intensity on some parts of the bible (such as the prohibition against homosexuality) and completely ignore others (such as the prohibition against usury -- lending money at interest). Some of the more peculiar prohibitions in the Old Testament, such as the command never to eat pork, wear clothing made of two kinds of thread sewn together, or gather firewood on the sabbath (the last-mentioned was punishable by death), they argue away by saying that "Jesus made a new covenant" which superseded all of the old, picayune laws in the Old Testament -- except, apparently, the ones they want to keep.
Note that I'm not trying to criticize Christianity or Christians en masse. Despite my own beliefs, or lack thereof, I really don't particularly care what sort of beliefs you choose to have, as long as you don't force them on me. I'm writing more because I'm genuinely mystified by the thought process that's going on here. How could any honest scholar look at any book -- much less one (s)he revered as holy writ -- and simply decide to rewrite it to eliminate or alter parts of it that (s)he didn't like? If there was a rational argument going on, backed up by facts from the people who are the experts (i.e. people who have spent their life studying Hebrew, Latin, and Aramaic) -- that I would understand, and in fact probably would never have thought even to comment upon. But to decide that the previous translators were biased simply because you don't like their translation is an act of tremendous spiritual pride. And even with my admittedly poor knowledge of the bible, I seem to remember that pride is considered to be one of the more serious sins.
Isn't there, in fact, something in there about how it "goeth before a fall?"
The stated goal of this group is to comb the bible and remove "liberal bias." Any lines that make Jesus come across as a social activist, for example (e.g. the part about feeding the poor), are to be rewritten to eliminate what they perceive as contrary to the conservative agenda. Murder is to be punished, including a new clause to protect the unborn. The whole thing, in fact, is to be retooled so that conservative principles can be proven to have a scriptural basis.
My first thought was that this was some kind of hoax. I thought, "Can they really be engaging in so transparently circular an argument?" Tragically, it is not a hoax at all. They really believe that the bible's current popular translations have been twisted into a liberal framework, and that it is god's will that they undo the damage.
Of the many problems I see here, first and foremost is: are they really arrogant enough to believe that they, and only they, have enough of a window into the intent of the original writers of the bible manuscripts to be able to accurately portray those intents in English? I'm sure that some of the current translations of the bible have errors -- either denotative (using the wrong word entirely) or connotative (using a word that is literally correct but gives the wrong impression). How do they know that theirs is any better? They admit that many of the people on the committee are not language scholars; they are merely hired to "comb the bible for liberal bias" and to submit a "better translation." You'd think that they, of all people, would want to be exceedingly careful about doing that. Aren't they the ones who believe that it's the inerrant word of god?
Of course, the central problem with most of these folks is that they want to focus with wearying intensity on some parts of the bible (such as the prohibition against homosexuality) and completely ignore others (such as the prohibition against usury -- lending money at interest). Some of the more peculiar prohibitions in the Old Testament, such as the command never to eat pork, wear clothing made of two kinds of thread sewn together, or gather firewood on the sabbath (the last-mentioned was punishable by death), they argue away by saying that "Jesus made a new covenant" which superseded all of the old, picayune laws in the Old Testament -- except, apparently, the ones they want to keep.
Note that I'm not trying to criticize Christianity or Christians en masse. Despite my own beliefs, or lack thereof, I really don't particularly care what sort of beliefs you choose to have, as long as you don't force them on me. I'm writing more because I'm genuinely mystified by the thought process that's going on here. How could any honest scholar look at any book -- much less one (s)he revered as holy writ -- and simply decide to rewrite it to eliminate or alter parts of it that (s)he didn't like? If there was a rational argument going on, backed up by facts from the people who are the experts (i.e. people who have spent their life studying Hebrew, Latin, and Aramaic) -- that I would understand, and in fact probably would never have thought even to comment upon. But to decide that the previous translators were biased simply because you don't like their translation is an act of tremendous spiritual pride. And even with my admittedly poor knowledge of the bible, I seem to remember that pride is considered to be one of the more serious sins.
Isn't there, in fact, something in there about how it "goeth before a fall?"
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Beam me up
After spending the last few days looking at such topics as the current US presidential race, the ethics of publishing teacher evaluations publicly, and the separation of church and state, let's get back to the issue that should be occupying the mind of every serious, concerned human being: lights appearing over Mayan pyramids.
It's kind of funny how lately, just mentioning the Mayans is enough to get you noticed. This is becoming increasingly annoying to the Mayans themselves -- there are groups of Mexicans of Mayan descent, living primarily in the states of Campeche, Yucatán, and Quintana Roo, and with the exception of the few who are happy to have the money from woo-woo tourism, most of them just seem to be rolling their eyes. In fact, one of them, Apolinario Chile Pixtun, spoke to reporters about the phenomenon, and was quoted as saying, "I came back from England last year, and man, they had me fed up with this stuff."
Well, Mr. Pixtun may be fed up, but let me tell you, the woo-woos are still starved for it. Witness the following photograph, taken by Hector Siliezar, which was taken in 2009 but just hit the internet last week:
The photograph, which was taken while Siliezar and his family were on vacation, is of one of the pyramids at Chichen Itza. A thunderstorm was coming, and Siliezar thought the pyramid with the dark clouds behind it would make a dramatic photograph, so he snapped several shots with his iPhone. It was, he said, only after he looked at them afterwards that he saw what appeared to be a beam of light coming from the top of the pyramid.
It's unclear why he didn't make the photograph public until now, but be that as it may, he decided to release it a couple of weeks ago to what he calls "occult investigators." And from there to every woo-woo in the world having multiple orgasms was only a short step. For example, check out this article, which not only contains an interview with Siliezar and his wife, but ends with the following hyperbolic quote from Schele and Freidel's A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya: "...As the Maya exploited the patterns of power in time and space, they used ritual to control the dangerous and powerful energies their [pyramids and structures] released. There were rituals which contained the accumulated power of objects, people, and places when they were no longer in active use."
So, basically, they're implying that the beam is some kind of gigantic psychic carpet shock -- that all of the rituals and whatnot built up energy in the pyramid, and eventually it just discharged, and Siliezar was lucky enough to get it on film.
Predictably, I'm not buying it. But that still leaves the question of what the beam actually is. For that, let's turn not to an "occult researcher," but to a real scientist -- Jonathon Hill, research technician for the Mars Space Flight Facility at Arizona State University. Hill, who specializes in image analysis, says that the beam is nothing more than a digital camera glitch.
What happened, explains Hill, is that Siliezar snapped the photo just as a lightning flash occurred, and the intensity of the flash "...caused the camera's CCD sensor to behave in an unusual way, either causing an entire column of pixels to offset their values or causing an internal reflection [off the] camera lens that was recorded by the sensor." This created the appearance of a bright column on the image. But how can he be sure of this?
Well, it turns out if you examine an enlarged copy of the image on Photoshop, you find that the beam is perfectly vertical on the image - not one pixel's variation. I don't know about you, but that strikes me as pretty hard to explain if you think it's a photograph of a real beam of light. It certainly struck Hill, who figured all this out, that way. "That's a little suspicious since it's very unlikely that the gentleman who took this picture would have his handheld iPhone camera positioned exactly parallel to the 'light beam' down to the pixel level," Hill told reporters.
So, there you have it, not that it will convince the woo-woos. In an interesting but clearly non-meaningful coincidence, I was just chatting with a student yesterday about what all the woo-woos are going to do when December 22, 2012 rolls around, and Quetzalcoatl hasn't reappeared, and our general take on it was that they'll just come up with some kind of bullshit recalculation of the date, and a few months later we'll have to go through it all again. Because that is, after all, what it's all about -- being a woo-woo means never having to say you're sorry.
It's kind of funny how lately, just mentioning the Mayans is enough to get you noticed. This is becoming increasingly annoying to the Mayans themselves -- there are groups of Mexicans of Mayan descent, living primarily in the states of Campeche, Yucatán, and Quintana Roo, and with the exception of the few who are happy to have the money from woo-woo tourism, most of them just seem to be rolling their eyes. In fact, one of them, Apolinario Chile Pixtun, spoke to reporters about the phenomenon, and was quoted as saying, "I came back from England last year, and man, they had me fed up with this stuff."
Well, Mr. Pixtun may be fed up, but let me tell you, the woo-woos are still starved for it. Witness the following photograph, taken by Hector Siliezar, which was taken in 2009 but just hit the internet last week:
The photograph, which was taken while Siliezar and his family were on vacation, is of one of the pyramids at Chichen Itza. A thunderstorm was coming, and Siliezar thought the pyramid with the dark clouds behind it would make a dramatic photograph, so he snapped several shots with his iPhone. It was, he said, only after he looked at them afterwards that he saw what appeared to be a beam of light coming from the top of the pyramid.
It's unclear why he didn't make the photograph public until now, but be that as it may, he decided to release it a couple of weeks ago to what he calls "occult investigators." And from there to every woo-woo in the world having multiple orgasms was only a short step. For example, check out this article, which not only contains an interview with Siliezar and his wife, but ends with the following hyperbolic quote from Schele and Freidel's A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya: "...As the Maya exploited the patterns of power in time and space, they used ritual to control the dangerous and powerful energies their [pyramids and structures] released. There were rituals which contained the accumulated power of objects, people, and places when they were no longer in active use."
So, basically, they're implying that the beam is some kind of gigantic psychic carpet shock -- that all of the rituals and whatnot built up energy in the pyramid, and eventually it just discharged, and Siliezar was lucky enough to get it on film.
Predictably, I'm not buying it. But that still leaves the question of what the beam actually is. For that, let's turn not to an "occult researcher," but to a real scientist -- Jonathon Hill, research technician for the Mars Space Flight Facility at Arizona State University. Hill, who specializes in image analysis, says that the beam is nothing more than a digital camera glitch.
What happened, explains Hill, is that Siliezar snapped the photo just as a lightning flash occurred, and the intensity of the flash "...caused the camera's CCD sensor to behave in an unusual way, either causing an entire column of pixels to offset their values or causing an internal reflection [off the] camera lens that was recorded by the sensor." This created the appearance of a bright column on the image. But how can he be sure of this?
Well, it turns out if you examine an enlarged copy of the image on Photoshop, you find that the beam is perfectly vertical on the image - not one pixel's variation. I don't know about you, but that strikes me as pretty hard to explain if you think it's a photograph of a real beam of light. It certainly struck Hill, who figured all this out, that way. "That's a little suspicious since it's very unlikely that the gentleman who took this picture would have his handheld iPhone camera positioned exactly parallel to the 'light beam' down to the pixel level," Hill told reporters.
So, there you have it, not that it will convince the woo-woos. In an interesting but clearly non-meaningful coincidence, I was just chatting with a student yesterday about what all the woo-woos are going to do when December 22, 2012 rolls around, and Quetzalcoatl hasn't reappeared, and our general take on it was that they'll just come up with some kind of bullshit recalculation of the date, and a few months later we'll have to go through it all again. Because that is, after all, what it's all about -- being a woo-woo means never having to say you're sorry.
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Grading the teachers
Educators across New York state were shocked and alarmed by last week's decision by the New York City School District to release the scores earned by 18,000 teachers.
The reduction of a teacher's entire year's performance to a single numerical score is the result of the New York State Education Department's effort to comply with President Obama's "Race To The Top" initiative, which demands greater accountability from educators and administrators. The scores are calculated by a complex "value-added" formula, that supposedly takes into account student performance, student growth, and a variety of other factors.
And of course, the reaction by teachers to this public release of individual data has made the anti-education crowd howl with triumph. The teachers don't want the data released, they say, because it finally points a finger at underperforming educators, who should either fix what they're doing or else find a new career. The unions are complicit in this desire for secrecy, because they don't want to reform tenure law to make it easier to get rid of bad teachers. Why, they ask, shouldn't taxpayers get a chance to see the job evaluations of the people whose salary and benefits they are directly subsidizing?
Well, I've talked to a great many of my colleagues about this, and let me correct a few misapprehensions. First of all, no teacher I've ever met has ever stated a desire to retain teachers who aren't doing their job. In fact, more than one have expressed resentment against "rubber rooms" and other mechanisms sometimes employed to keep bad teachers on the payrolls. It gives, they say, a bad name to the whole profession.
Most teachers are afraid to have the data published for an entirely different reason. It is that they do not trust NYSED to score them fairly.
Here is an agency that spent, last year, 13.7 million dollars to develop, print, and distribute the Regents examinations statewide, and still can't write a test that meets any kind of reasonable minimum standard for reliability. As an example, a few years ago, there was a pair of questions on the "Living Environment" (Biology) Regents exam that went something like the following (I cannot find the specific questions, so am having to rely on my memory - but you'll get the gist):
31. Asexual reproduction produces offspring that
a) are exact copies of the parent.
b) contain a mixture of genes from both parents.
c) have many dominant genes.
d) are better adapted than the parent was.
32. Based upon your answer to #31, the organism that has the slowest rate of evolution is
a) humans.
b) bacteria.
c) oak trees.
d) mice.
Well, almost everyone got #31 correct; we make a major point of the fact that sexually reproducing species have varied offspring, and asexual species produce clones. But what, then, is the answer to #32?
The answer that keyed as correct is (b) bacteria. I remember checking the key more than once, thinking I'd misread it. Surely they can't be implying that solely because they reproduce asexually, bacteria aren't evolving -- that the method of reproduction is the only thing that controls the rate of evolution?
Yes, in fact, that is exactly what they were implying. Despite abundant evidence that bacteria evolve rapidly (witness the appearance in recent years of antibiotic-resistant strains of everything from staphylococcus to TB), this test claims that humans are evolving faster because we reproduce sexually. So I emailed the science specialist at NYSED, and asked if there was some mistake. Within hours, I got back a highly snarky response, that they had "consulted their experts" and the answer stood. I had to mark students wrong who correctly identified humans as evolving more slowly than bacteria.
In fact, the tests are so poorly constructed, and the questions (and therefore the allowable answers) so open to interpretation, that NYSED is no longer allowing teachers to grade their own students' Regents exams. Even more telling -- there is now a recommendation by NYSED that Regents exam scores not be used in a student's final grade calculation. How's that for a vote of confidence in the reliability of their own exams?
So I think New York state educators are to be excused if we lack confidence in NYSED's ability to design a fair assessment. I'll go even further; I believe that the scores that they are assigning to teachers are completely meaningless. Teachers have no control over what students they teach; no control over the poverty level, home life, and other outside stressors their students experience; and little to no control over what kinds, and how many, subjects they are assigned to teach each year. The idea that given that number of variables, you could find a single measure that could equally reliably represent the performance of a teacher of AP Calculus in a wealthy school in Westchester County and a 6th grade special education teacher in a poor school in the Bronx is ludicrous.
But that, unfortunately, is exactly what the micromanaging b-b stackers at NYSED have done, and that is what is being released to the public. Imagine if we did the same to our students -- gave them no feedback of any kind for most of the year, nor informed them how their grade was to be calculated -- just waited until the end of the year, and then assigned, on a seemingly random basis, grades between 0 and 100 for everyone.
That is, in effect, what NYSED is doing. And you wonder why teachers don't want this made public. If your own job evaluation was done in this fashion, and by people with this kind of track record for reliability, would you want it published in the newspaper?
The reduction of a teacher's entire year's performance to a single numerical score is the result of the New York State Education Department's effort to comply with President Obama's "Race To The Top" initiative, which demands greater accountability from educators and administrators. The scores are calculated by a complex "value-added" formula, that supposedly takes into account student performance, student growth, and a variety of other factors.
And of course, the reaction by teachers to this public release of individual data has made the anti-education crowd howl with triumph. The teachers don't want the data released, they say, because it finally points a finger at underperforming educators, who should either fix what they're doing or else find a new career. The unions are complicit in this desire for secrecy, because they don't want to reform tenure law to make it easier to get rid of bad teachers. Why, they ask, shouldn't taxpayers get a chance to see the job evaluations of the people whose salary and benefits they are directly subsidizing?
Well, I've talked to a great many of my colleagues about this, and let me correct a few misapprehensions. First of all, no teacher I've ever met has ever stated a desire to retain teachers who aren't doing their job. In fact, more than one have expressed resentment against "rubber rooms" and other mechanisms sometimes employed to keep bad teachers on the payrolls. It gives, they say, a bad name to the whole profession.
Most teachers are afraid to have the data published for an entirely different reason. It is that they do not trust NYSED to score them fairly.
Here is an agency that spent, last year, 13.7 million dollars to develop, print, and distribute the Regents examinations statewide, and still can't write a test that meets any kind of reasonable minimum standard for reliability. As an example, a few years ago, there was a pair of questions on the "Living Environment" (Biology) Regents exam that went something like the following (I cannot find the specific questions, so am having to rely on my memory - but you'll get the gist):
31. Asexual reproduction produces offspring that
a) are exact copies of the parent.
b) contain a mixture of genes from both parents.
c) have many dominant genes.
d) are better adapted than the parent was.
32. Based upon your answer to #31, the organism that has the slowest rate of evolution is
a) humans.
b) bacteria.
c) oak trees.
d) mice.
Well, almost everyone got #31 correct; we make a major point of the fact that sexually reproducing species have varied offspring, and asexual species produce clones. But what, then, is the answer to #32?
The answer that keyed as correct is (b) bacteria. I remember checking the key more than once, thinking I'd misread it. Surely they can't be implying that solely because they reproduce asexually, bacteria aren't evolving -- that the method of reproduction is the only thing that controls the rate of evolution?
Yes, in fact, that is exactly what they were implying. Despite abundant evidence that bacteria evolve rapidly (witness the appearance in recent years of antibiotic-resistant strains of everything from staphylococcus to TB), this test claims that humans are evolving faster because we reproduce sexually. So I emailed the science specialist at NYSED, and asked if there was some mistake. Within hours, I got back a highly snarky response, that they had "consulted their experts" and the answer stood. I had to mark students wrong who correctly identified humans as evolving more slowly than bacteria.
In fact, the tests are so poorly constructed, and the questions (and therefore the allowable answers) so open to interpretation, that NYSED is no longer allowing teachers to grade their own students' Regents exams. Even more telling -- there is now a recommendation by NYSED that Regents exam scores not be used in a student's final grade calculation. How's that for a vote of confidence in the reliability of their own exams?
So I think New York state educators are to be excused if we lack confidence in NYSED's ability to design a fair assessment. I'll go even further; I believe that the scores that they are assigning to teachers are completely meaningless. Teachers have no control over what students they teach; no control over the poverty level, home life, and other outside stressors their students experience; and little to no control over what kinds, and how many, subjects they are assigned to teach each year. The idea that given that number of variables, you could find a single measure that could equally reliably represent the performance of a teacher of AP Calculus in a wealthy school in Westchester County and a 6th grade special education teacher in a poor school in the Bronx is ludicrous.
But that, unfortunately, is exactly what the micromanaging b-b stackers at NYSED have done, and that is what is being released to the public. Imagine if we did the same to our students -- gave them no feedback of any kind for most of the year, nor informed them how their grade was to be calculated -- just waited until the end of the year, and then assigned, on a seemingly random basis, grades between 0 and 100 for everyone.
That is, in effect, what NYSED is doing. And you wonder why teachers don't want this made public. If your own job evaluation was done in this fashion, and by people with this kind of track record for reliability, would you want it published in the newspaper?
Monday, February 27, 2012
Faith, the "secular left," and hypocrisy
In what appears to be nothing more than a coincidence, the top four stories in the "Most Popular" column on the Yahoo! News this morning form a fascinating quartet.
Santorum Says He Doesn't Believe In Separation Of Church And State
Gingrich Warns Of Role Of "Secular Left"
Penn Judge: Muslims Allowed To Attack People For Insulting Mohammed
Santorum: No Apology Needed For Quran Burning
In the first two, GOP candidates Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich make statements that all of us -- not just the "secular left" of Newt's warning -- should be concerned about. Let's hear first from Gingrich, who bemoans the eroding of the American principles our Founding Fathers intended to establish:
"The forces of the secular left believe passionately and deeply, and with frankly a religious fervor, in their world view and they will regard what I am saying as a horrifying assault on what they think is the truth," Gingrich said. "Because their version of the truth is to have a totally neutral government that has no meaning."
Santorum went even further, stating that the separation of church and state should not be "absolute," and he pronounced himself sickened when he thinks of John F. Kennedy's assurance to a group of Baptist ministers in 1960 that he would not attempt to press his Catholic views upon the nation's policy.
JFK's removal of faith from the public square, Santorum said, "... makes me want to throw up."
The problem is, of course, that people like Gingrich and Santorum are never really talking about faith in its general sense. What they'd like is to have their own faith drive policy. It's why you have the Catholic bishops up in arms about having to include birth control in insurance coverage for their employees, and fundamentalists trying to get creationism and/or intelligent design implanted in high school biology curricula -- but rarely the reverse. The complaints about the inroads made by secularism never seem to focus on anything more than the particular religious beliefs of the person making the complaint.
This is what makes the third and fourth stories so interesting. In the third, a state judge in Pennsylvania, Mark Martin, threw out an assault case in which an atheist, Ernie Perce, was attacked by a devout Muslim, Talaag Elbayomy. Perce, it seems, was in a Halloween parade -- dressed up as "zombie Mohammed." Elbayomy, outraged, attacked Perce, and was arrested. And in an astonishingly bizarre interpretation of the law, Martin threw out the case, stating that the First Amendment does not give one license to "provoke others," and pronounced Perce a "doofus."
In the fourth story, we're back to Rick Santorum -- who is upset with President Obama for apologizing to President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, and to the Afghan people, for the inadvertent burning of some copies of the Quran in a trash pit, an act which caused riots and loss of life. Santorum said that Karzai should be the one apologizing to us on the behalf of the "Afghan people for attacking and killing our men and women in uniform and overreacting to this inadvertent mistake."
Easy to say, isn't it? Funny how on the one hand, the secularization of America makes Santorum want to "throw up," and yet when you look at the one place in the world where faith most strongly drives policy -- the Middle East -- any admission that their faith is worthy of respect is some sort of sign of weakness. And as far as Mark Martin, the Pennsylvania judge who believes that religious opinion should trump secular law -- isn't this exactly the kind of thing that Santorum and Gingrich want? Oh, wait -- that's the wrong kind of faith. Now I get it.
It's why secularism in the public square -- and that includes public schools -- is imperative. You should be allowed to believe what you choose, and let those beliefs guide your actions in your own home and in whatever house of worship you choose (or none at all). However, when it comes to any imposition of those beliefs on another person, secular law has to win. Are you outraged by zombie Mohammad, Mr. Elbayomy? Tough. Deal with it. Rail about it to your children, your spouse, your imam. But assaulting someone? Sorry, that's not allowed. Do the fundamentalists hate the teaching of evolution in public schools? Oh, well. That's why we call it "science class." You are free, in your home and in your church, to claim that the biology teacher is a big fat liar, or failing that, to put your child in a private religious school. Do the Catholics object to the fact that health insurance covers contraception? Too bad. Contraception is legal in the United States. No one is mandating that your followers use it -- simply that it is available.
It's why Santorum's bemoaning the separation of church and state, and Gingrich's fear of the "secular left," are blatant hypocrisy. When Santorum supports Mark Martin's dismissal of the "zombie Mohammad" assault case, and Gingrich pushes to see Hindu creation stories mandated in high school science classes, I'll believe that they really are supporters of faith in its broad sense. Until then, they are just trying to accomplish here what the ayatollahs and imams already do in their own countries -- imposing, from the top down, their own religious views upon the rest of the citizenry.
Santorum Says He Doesn't Believe In Separation Of Church And State
Gingrich Warns Of Role Of "Secular Left"
Penn Judge: Muslims Allowed To Attack People For Insulting Mohammed
Santorum: No Apology Needed For Quran Burning
In the first two, GOP candidates Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich make statements that all of us -- not just the "secular left" of Newt's warning -- should be concerned about. Let's hear first from Gingrich, who bemoans the eroding of the American principles our Founding Fathers intended to establish:
"The forces of the secular left believe passionately and deeply, and with frankly a religious fervor, in their world view and they will regard what I am saying as a horrifying assault on what they think is the truth," Gingrich said. "Because their version of the truth is to have a totally neutral government that has no meaning."
Santorum went even further, stating that the separation of church and state should not be "absolute," and he pronounced himself sickened when he thinks of John F. Kennedy's assurance to a group of Baptist ministers in 1960 that he would not attempt to press his Catholic views upon the nation's policy.
JFK's removal of faith from the public square, Santorum said, "... makes me want to throw up."
The problem is, of course, that people like Gingrich and Santorum are never really talking about faith in its general sense. What they'd like is to have their own faith drive policy. It's why you have the Catholic bishops up in arms about having to include birth control in insurance coverage for their employees, and fundamentalists trying to get creationism and/or intelligent design implanted in high school biology curricula -- but rarely the reverse. The complaints about the inroads made by secularism never seem to focus on anything more than the particular religious beliefs of the person making the complaint.
This is what makes the third and fourth stories so interesting. In the third, a state judge in Pennsylvania, Mark Martin, threw out an assault case in which an atheist, Ernie Perce, was attacked by a devout Muslim, Talaag Elbayomy. Perce, it seems, was in a Halloween parade -- dressed up as "zombie Mohammed." Elbayomy, outraged, attacked Perce, and was arrested. And in an astonishingly bizarre interpretation of the law, Martin threw out the case, stating that the First Amendment does not give one license to "provoke others," and pronounced Perce a "doofus."
In the fourth story, we're back to Rick Santorum -- who is upset with President Obama for apologizing to President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, and to the Afghan people, for the inadvertent burning of some copies of the Quran in a trash pit, an act which caused riots and loss of life. Santorum said that Karzai should be the one apologizing to us on the behalf of the "Afghan people for attacking and killing our men and women in uniform and overreacting to this inadvertent mistake."
Easy to say, isn't it? Funny how on the one hand, the secularization of America makes Santorum want to "throw up," and yet when you look at the one place in the world where faith most strongly drives policy -- the Middle East -- any admission that their faith is worthy of respect is some sort of sign of weakness. And as far as Mark Martin, the Pennsylvania judge who believes that religious opinion should trump secular law -- isn't this exactly the kind of thing that Santorum and Gingrich want? Oh, wait -- that's the wrong kind of faith. Now I get it.
It's why secularism in the public square -- and that includes public schools -- is imperative. You should be allowed to believe what you choose, and let those beliefs guide your actions in your own home and in whatever house of worship you choose (or none at all). However, when it comes to any imposition of those beliefs on another person, secular law has to win. Are you outraged by zombie Mohammad, Mr. Elbayomy? Tough. Deal with it. Rail about it to your children, your spouse, your imam. But assaulting someone? Sorry, that's not allowed. Do the fundamentalists hate the teaching of evolution in public schools? Oh, well. That's why we call it "science class." You are free, in your home and in your church, to claim that the biology teacher is a big fat liar, or failing that, to put your child in a private religious school. Do the Catholics object to the fact that health insurance covers contraception? Too bad. Contraception is legal in the United States. No one is mandating that your followers use it -- simply that it is available.
It's why Santorum's bemoaning the separation of church and state, and Gingrich's fear of the "secular left," are blatant hypocrisy. When Santorum supports Mark Martin's dismissal of the "zombie Mohammad" assault case, and Gingrich pushes to see Hindu creation stories mandated in high school science classes, I'll believe that they really are supporters of faith in its broad sense. Until then, they are just trying to accomplish here what the ayatollahs and imams already do in their own countries -- imposing, from the top down, their own religious views upon the rest of the citizenry.
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Everything in this blog is true
Regular readers of this blog may remember that about a year ago, a student of mine attempted to kill me by sending me a video clip of an apparently pathologically stupid woman attempting to defend the practice of homeopathy. This student, who by all appearances is a moral and upstanding young man, nevertheless induced me to watch something which he knew might well have the effect of making me choke on my own outrage and die in horrible agony.
Needless to say, I survived the first murder attempt. Not satisfied with failure, however, this same student has tried again, this time sending me a link to a website called “Truthism.com.”
I must say that as murder attempts go, this one was pretty inspired. The homeopathy clip was only about eight minutes long, while this website took a half-hour to read thoroughly – thirty minutes of my life that I will never again get back, and a half-hour during which I made many muffled snorting noises, rather like a bulldog with a sinus blockage. In case you’re understandably reluctant to waste that amount of time, or possibly risk dying of Exploding Brain Syndrome, I present below a summary of the gist of the Truthism website.
And you know, it’s not as if I can’t see the attractiveness of this as a theory. Think how positing the existence of evil, super-powerful cold-blooded reptilian alien propaganda specialists would explain, for example, Ann Coulter. But alas, it’s not enough simply to like a theory, it has to fit with the data, and at the moment, the lion’s share of the evidence is in the “against” column. So, sad to say, we must conclude that despite the website’s repeated claims of being true, its domain name should probably be changed to “EgregiousBullshitism.com.”
And with that said, I think I should go lie down for a while and recover from this latest assassination attempt. If this keeps happening, I may have to hire a bodyguard.
Needless to say, I survived the first murder attempt. Not satisfied with failure, however, this same student has tried again, this time sending me a link to a website called “Truthism.com.”
I must say that as murder attempts go, this one was pretty inspired. The homeopathy clip was only about eight minutes long, while this website took a half-hour to read thoroughly – thirty minutes of my life that I will never again get back, and a half-hour during which I made many muffled snorting noises, rather like a bulldog with a sinus blockage. In case you’re understandably reluctant to waste that amount of time, or possibly risk dying of Exploding Brain Syndrome, I present below a summary of the gist of the Truthism website.
1) Everything on this website is true.I have to point out, at this juncture, how much it cost me to write all this out for you. I can hear the pathetic little death screams of the neurons in my frontal cortex as I’m writing this. But being the selfless reporter that I am, on the front lines of investigation, I’m willing to undergo significant risks to my own health, safety, and IQ in order to bring this story to your doorstep.
2) If you doubt anything on this website, you are at best asleep, and at worst a mindless sheep who is being led about by evil government disinformation specialists.
3) Many things which turned out to be true were disbelieved, even laughed at, at first. Therefore if you disbelieve and laugh at this website, it must be true.
4) You do not have access to government Top Secret facilities and records. Therefore, anything this website claims is in those facilities and records must be true, because you can’t disprove it.
5) Science is just another means for the ruling elite to control the populace.
6) The ruling elite also invented religion and morality as a way to control the populace. The fact that science and religion are often in conflict is an indication that they are both wrong.
7) The current ruling elite are the same individuals who created the Egyptian and Mayan pyramids, Stonehenge, and the Nazca lines.
8) These individuals, for good measure, also created humanity itself.
9) Because the ruling elite aren’t actually people, but are super-intelligent reptiles from another planet.
10) Called “Annunaki.”
11) Did I mention that everything in this website is true?
12) The fact that many ancient cultures depicted snakes in their art is proof that the earth is being ruled by reptiles from outer space.
13) The caduceus, the symbol of medical science, is a pair of snakes coiled together. It looks a little like a DNA molecule, which is the repository of all the genetic information in the cell.
14) There you are, then.
15) If that doesn’t prove it to you, then consider the following chain of logic: Crop Circles, Area 51, Ancient Astronauts, the Face on Mars, Freemasons, the Hollow Earth Theory!
16) Ha. That sure showed YOU.
17) And as a last piece of evidence; everything on this website is true.
And you know, it’s not as if I can’t see the attractiveness of this as a theory. Think how positing the existence of evil, super-powerful cold-blooded reptilian alien propaganda specialists would explain, for example, Ann Coulter. But alas, it’s not enough simply to like a theory, it has to fit with the data, and at the moment, the lion’s share of the evidence is in the “against” column. So, sad to say, we must conclude that despite the website’s repeated claims of being true, its domain name should probably be changed to “EgregiousBullshitism.com.”
And with that said, I think I should go lie down for a while and recover from this latest assassination attempt. If this keeps happening, I may have to hire a bodyguard.
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