Bad math, overweight electrons, and zombie cats

Over the 26 years that I've been a public school teacher, I've noticed an interesting (and worrisome) phenomenon: some people seem to have no understanding of numbers.

I'm not saying they're bad in math classes.  In my experience, it's not the same thing at all.  These people often can learn to manipulate mathematical expressions by memorizing the rules, similar to the way you might memorize a noun declension pattern if you were learning Latin.  And they can usually use calculators quite well.  But once the calculator spits out a number, they have no idea if it's right, or even sensible.

I saw this more often in my first five years of teaching, when I taught physics in addition to my current subject, biology.  Physics requires a great deal of sometimes abstruse mathematics, and also dealing with quantitative concepts for which most people don't have a good numerical referent (e.g. charge, torque, frequency).  But you would think things like mass and velocity would be easier, right?  I distinctly recall assigning my students a problem in electromagnetic forces, the ultimate aim of which was to have them calculate the mass of an electron.  One young lady came out with 36 kilograms, and called me over to "check to see if it was right."

I looked at her in some disbelief.  I saw what she'd done, and it was a simple goof, the kind any of us could have done; she'd pressed the "divide" key instead of the "multiply" key on her calculator for one of the terms.  What amazed me was that she didn't look at the answer and immediately recognize that it was wrong.  I said to her, "Doesn't that seem a little... massive, for an electron?"

She shrugged and said, "Is it?"

I said, "36 kilograms is about 80 pounds or so."

She said, "Oh."

I hasten to add that this was an intelligent, articulate young lady, who actually was trying to understand.  She just seemed unable to look at a number, and recognize if it was in the ballpark based on an understanding of what numbers mean.  There was some quantitative common sense that she apparently lacked.

I've seen many other example of this sort of innumeracy.  The young man in introductory biology class who measured the diameter of an amoeba under a microscope, and came up with "114.7 meters."  A very earnest physics student who calculated the speed of revolution of the Moon around the Earth as 9.6 x 10^7 meters/sec -- just shy of the speed of light.  (And it gives me some cause for concern that this last-mentioned young man was bent on becoming an architect.)

I bring this up because having a sense of quantity is absolutely critical to everyday life.  Even if the majority of us don't need to worry about such things as the mass of an electron, having a general concept of what numbers mean -- not just how to manipulate them -- is pretty important.  But because a lot of people lack this skill, they become much more easily persuadable by bad thinking.  If you throw a statistic, graph, or data set at an innumerate person, they often will accept it without question -- and, worse, they won't recognize it if you're lying to them.

I ran into a particularly egregious example of this in this week's edition of our village's newspaper, The Trumansburg Free Press.  The Trumansburg Free Press costs 75 cents, but I guess the name The Trumansburg Three-Quarters-Of-A-Buck Press does sound a little clunky.  Be that as it may, this week there was an article that caught my eye, because it was about a subject that is near and dear to my heart; the problem of cats, both pet and feral, killing native songbirds.

The author of the article, Glynis Hart, went out of her way to be even-handed and "journalistic," presenting arguments from scientists at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology (who, understandably, would like to see pet cats never let outside, and feral cats eliminated as a noxious exotic predator) set against those of groups like Alley Cat Allies, who are supportive of outdoor cats in all forms.  Now, myself, I tend to agree with the former -- and I'm not only a birder but a cat owner.  I just see no earthly reason why cats, which are, after all, an introduced species, should have to go outside.  The toll on native bird species is undeniable -- even if we can quibble about exactly how many birds are killed yearly, and unnecessarily, no one denies that the number is large.

So, anyway, I was reading along, and then I got to the following line:  "Alarmists like to cite cat's [sic] amazing fertility to tell you that one pair of cats can produce another 400,000 in two years."

I had to pick the newspaper up off the floor after reading that.  Now, to her credit, Hart goes on to tell us that this statistic "isn't true," but what she doesn't give you is (1) any idea of how not true this is, and (2) the correct sense, that even the most virulently anti-cat, pro-bird person in the world would never claim such an obviously idiotic statistic.

So, anyhow, I decided to find out how fast cats would have to reproduce in order for two cats to generate a total of 400,000 in two years.

After a bit of number crunching and use of logarithms and scientific calculators, I came up with an answer.  If you assume that every cat mating produces a litter, and each litter is made up of five kittens all of whom survive to adulthood and reproduce themselves, it would take a little less than twelve generations to generate 400,000 cats from one pair.  Cram that into two years, and you're talking about one generation every two months.

Yup.  This would require kittens to go from birth to sexual maturity in a little over eight weeks, which makes me wonder if Ms. Hart has ever actually seen an eight-week-old kitten.  But the problem runs deeper than this, because we're not starting from just two cats in the world.  There are millions of cats already, all apparently reproducing at a rate we more commonly associate with fruit flies.  So if this was true, we would be hip deep in felines, and LOLCats would not be a laughing matter.  It would be viewed more like people now view zombie movies.

"Bolt the front door, and lock up the cabinet with the canned salmon, Edith!  I just looked down Maple Street, and the cats is coming!!!"

As with my long-ago physics student whose electrons needed to join Weight Watchers, I'm sure Ms. Hart's rapidly reproducing kitties was just due to a simple mistake -- a miscalculation, miscopied number, or the like.  What bothers me is not that she made the error, something any of us can do, but that no one -- not her, not an editor or a proofreader -- caught it, recognized that it was impossible.

And lest you think that such errors have no long-lasting consequences, allow me to point out that the whole idiotic "chemtrails conspiracy" was launched when a reporter at KSLA News (Shreveport, Louisiana) reported that dew collected in bowls after an unusually persistent jet contrail had 6.8 parts per million concentrations of barium -- well into the dangerous zone -- when the actual amount was 68 parts per billion.  Even though they retracted the claim, and publicly stated that the correct figure was a hundred times smaller than their original number, the first value given still is quoted as the real one in conspiracy theory websites.  KSLA was "pressured to change the value" by Evil Government Agents.  And that little numerical slip-up continues to haunt us, lo unto this very day.  [Source]

So, anyway.  I'm not sure what, if anything, we can do about this one.  As I mentioned earlier, the solution isn't in taking more math classes, because taking math -- or even physics -- is no guarantee against trusting whatever comes out of your calculator, whether or not it makes sense or is even in the realm of possibility.  But it does generate one cautionary note: be careful when you're reading anything that uses statistics.  Don't assume that the numbers are telling you what they seem to be -- or that the numbers are even right.  As usual, the watchword around here is to keep your brains engaged.  At least until the Zombie Cats arrive and want to eat them.  After that, you're on your own.

The lure of the exotic

One of the first things we do in my Critical Thinking classes is to learn some of the basic logical fallacies, and afterwards, students are assigned to peruse current print media and find examples.  One of my students this semester, a highly intelligent and perceptive young lady, came up to me a few days ago with a frown on her face.

"I think there's a fallacy you didn't tell us about," she said.

"I'm sure there is," I responded. "We just hit some of the common ones.  What did you find?"

"Well, it's like... the 'exotic fallacy.'  Sort of the opposite of the naturalistic fallacy.  If something sounds exotic, and especially if it comes from some place distant and mysterious like Japan or Tibet, it must be real, or useful, or beneficial."

And she's right, of course.  Attributing anything -- especially some sort of health-related item -- to the Wisdom of the Ancients gives it immediate credibility.  And you'll notice that those Ancients never seem to come from, for example, Omaha:

The exotic fallacy is especially common in the area of "alternative medicine," where nearly all of the "alternatives" are herbs, extracts, and minerals from Asia and Africa.  Now, note that I'm not implying here that all of these treatments are useless; assuming that a traditional cure is useless because it comes from some faraway place is just as illogical as assuming that it must be useful because it does.  I'm more commenting on the immediate appeal -- especially, the selling appeal -- of the exotic:

Of course, this also applies to religion and philosophy, doesn't it?  Wicca wouldn't have nearly the esoteric air it has without the constant mention of the Druids -- who, if not exactly from an exotic place (sorry, British readers), still have that same air of the mysterious.  A quick Google search turned up literally hundreds of books, videos, and websites that purport to teach you about Ancient Wisdom from (these were just the first few I saw):

• the Bolivian Andes
• Tibet
• various Native American tribes (especially those in the Southwest)
• Japan (usually connected to Zen practices)
• India
• the Yucatán

As far as the last one goes, think about why the whole Mayan Apocalypse thing caught on like it did.  I'm sure that it was, in some part, because it was a Mayan Apocalypse.  As Harold Camping found out, apocalypses don't go nearly so well when they're managed by old white guys from Oakland.

It's a little mystifying why some places have a lot of exotic cachet, and others don't.  Polynesia has always seemed to me to be the ultimate in exotic destinations, but you don't hear much about Ancient Polynesian Vitamin Supplements or the Teachings of the Mystical Polynesian Elders.  (One exception is that the cult of Cthulhu comes from there, but I'm not sure that it would qualify in most people's books as "appealing.")  Likewise, Peru and Bolivia have appeal; Ecuador, Venezuela, and Colombia, right next door, don't.  Exotic stuff from Africa is seldom attributed to a particular country, because most of the governments of African countries are in such a disastrous state that any gain in exotic appeal a product might garner by being from, say, Cameroon would be canceled out if the potential customer knew what it was like to actually live in Cameroon.  So stuff from Africa is often attached to tribes rather than countries:

So, anyway, there you are.  A new fallacy to look out for.  I've traveled a lot, and if there's one thing I've learned from being in other countries, it's that no place, and no group of people, has cornered the market on wisdom, ethics, intelligence, rationality, or morality.  All cultures, including my own, have come up with good ideas and bad ones, smart practices and completely moronic ones.  Myself, I'd rather use my brain to figure out whether an idea or a product is worth anything, rather than just deciding that it must be good just because it supposedly comes from somewhere exotic. 

On the other hand, I have to say that I'd pass up a nice juicy hamburger if I could get some Trinidadian curried goat roti.  So I suppose, like most things, it's all a matter of what you find appealing.

The case of the telepathic mice

One area in which a lot of people could use some work is in how to draw logical connections.

It's not that it's necessarily that simple.  Given a lot of facts, the question, "Now what does this all mean?" can be decidedly non-trivial.  After all, if it were trivial, there would be only one political party, and the only job we skeptics would have would be uncovering what the facts actually are.  The deductive work, the drawing of a conclusion, would be quick and unanimous, and Washington DC would be a decidedly more congenial place.

To take a rather simpler example, let's look at the following picture, that's been making the rounds of the social network lately:

Even ignoring the rather dubious religious aspect, this seems to me to be a rather ridiculous conclusion.  Just because these foods vaguely resemble a human organ (really vaguely, in the case of the tomato and the heart), is their supposed beneficial effect on that organ why they look that way?  It doesn't take a rocket scientist, nor a botanist, to find a dozen counter-examples, of plants that look like a human organ, but which have no beneficial effects on that organ whatsoever.  (This whole idea goes back to medieval times, when it was known as the "Doctrine of Similars."  It's why so many plants' names end in "-wort" -- wyrt was Old English for "plant," and the doctors of that time, whom we must hope had their malpractice insurance paid up, used lungwort, liverwort, spleenwort, and the rest to try to cure their patients.  No wonder the life expectancy back then was so low.)

On the other hand, Amanita mushrooms look a little like a penis, and if you eat one, you're fucked.  So maybe there's something to this after all.

In any case, let's move on to something a little trickier -- last week's story of the telepathic mice.

Miguel Nicolelis, of Duke University, announced last week that he'd been able to accomplish something that no one had done -- to create a device that allowed the electrical firings in one brain (in this case, a mouse) to be beamed to another brain, influencing that brain's firing.  In his paper, released in Nature, Nicolelis and his team describe engineering microelectrodes that were then implanted in the primary motor cortex of mouse #1.  These electrodes are capable of detecting the neural firing pattern in the mouse's brain -- specifically, to determine which of a pair of levers the mouse selected to pull.  A second mouse has a different set of implants -- one which stimulate neurons.  If mouse #1 pulls the right hand lever, and mouse #2 does, too, they both get a treat.  They can't see each other -- but the electrodes in the brain of mouse #1 sends a signal, via the electrode array, to the electrodes in the brain of mouse #2, stimulating it to choose the correct lever.

Direct, brain-to-brain communication.  Obvious application to medicine... and the military.  But my problem is how it's been described in popular media.  Everyone's calling it "telepathy" -- making a number of psychic websites erupt in excited backslapping, claiming that this "scientifically proves telepathy to be real."  "They just showed what we've been claiming for decades," one thrilled woo-woo stated.

The problem is -- is this actually telepathy?  Well, in one limited sense, yes; the word, after all, comes from the Greek tele (distant) + pathéia (feeling).  So, yes, the mice were able to feel, or at least communicate, at a distance.  But remember that the only reason it worked was that both the encoder and the decoder mouse had electrode arrays stuck into their brains.  There's an understood mechanism at work here; Nicolelis knows exactly how the signal from mouse #1 got to mouse #2 and stimulated its brain to perform the task correctly.  This is in exact opposition to the usual claims of telepathy -- that somehow (no mechanism specified) one human brain can pick up information from another, sometimes over great distances.  Complex information, too; not just enough to know which lever to choose, but whole conversations, visual images, sounds, and emotions.

Oh, and some people think they can get into telepathic contact with their pets.  Which adds a whole new level of craziness to the claim.

So, actually, what Nicolelis got his mice to do isn't telepathy at all, at least not in the usual sense of the word.  But on a surface read, it would be easy to miss the difference, to see why (in fact) his experiment makes the claims of the telepaths less likely, not more.  If it takes fancy arrays of electrodes to allow the transmission of even the simplest of information, how on earth could two brains communicate far more complex information, without any help at all?  Add that to the fact that there has not been a single experiment that has conclusively demonstrated that telepathy, as advertised, actually exists (for an excellent, and unbiased, overview of the history of telepathy experiments, go here).  It seems very likely, just based on the evidence, that telepathy doesn't exist -- not between Nicolelis' mice, and certainly not between humans.

Just as well, really.  I'd really rather people not read my mind.  For one thing, my brain can be a little... distractible:

Most days, reading my mind would be the telepathic equivalent of riding the Tilt-o-Whirl.  So probably better that my thoughts remain where they are, bouncing randomly off the inside of my skull as usual.

Smilin' Bob's Psychic Warehouse

Yiddish, as always, has a word for it, and the word is "chutzpah."

"Chutzpah" means brashness, cheekiness, being unrepentantly bold; but those words don't capture the full nuance.  Better than any dictionary definition is the definition-by-example I remember hearing years ago: "Chutzpah is a kid who kills both of his parents, and then appeals to the court for clemency because he's an orphan."

I ran into an excellent, if not quite so violent, alternate example of chutzpah yesterday.  It's a website that has a page with the following cautionary advice:

HOW TO AVOID PSYCHIC SCAMS!
Untrustworthy Psychics
The top states for internet crimes are California, Florida and Texas.  Remember that psychic scams occur across the country, and are not relegated [sic] to these three states... the World Wide Web is often a go-to place for psychic scammers to make their money.

Sounds pretty reasonable, doesn't it?  The problem is that the source of this advice is "PsychicSource.com." 

Yup.  The whole message here is to avoid fake psychics; let us put you in touch with a real psychic.  And of course, my question is:  there's a difference?

Oh, but yes there is, according to PsychicSource.com.  Real psychics have "well-established psychic companies that use several rounds of interviews to identify authentic psychics from frauds."  They are up-front about customer reviews.  "Psychic Source," they write, "has over 300 authentic psychic advisors you can speak to by phone or chat online with, who have been verified through rigorous screenings and interviews."

In other words, don't go out there and get ripped off by charlatans; come here and get ripped off by our charlatans.

Because, of course, what they're claiming is the same thing that every other psychic in the world claims:

Why get a live psychic reading?  To know yourself better and face your future empowered.  Knowledge is power, and live psychic readings from our gifted psychics give you the insights, self-knowledge, and forecasts you need to plan for success and achieve happiness.

And these people have amped up the chutzpah even more, by actively discouraging clients to come face-to-face with the "psychic" they've hired:

You do not have to be physically present for the best psychic readings - When we ask our Advisors about this issue, they invariably tell us that their intuitive response to a person does not depend on that person’s physical presence in the same room. In fact, sometimes a person sitting in front of a live psychic feels apprehensive and is not easily readable, while a person getting a live psychic reading by phone or online chat may be much more open and in tune with the experience.

Nope.  Just give us your credit card number, and we can rip you off in the privacy of your own home.

Sleazy.  Clever... but sleazy.

I've been asked by readers why I care so much if people go to psychics, astrologers, Tarot card readers, and other such snake-oil salesmen.  Most of these questions revolve around two general contentions: (1) if the clients come away feeling happier, then there's no real harm done and it might be money well-spent; or (2) if the clients fall for such unscientific nonsense, they're just stupid and deserve whatever they get.  I can't really argue with (2), but I still do object to (1).  I think it is always better to face reality, however harsh it is, than to soothe oneself with a view of the world that is, at its basis, false.  Or, as Carl Sagan put it, "It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring."

Media, hype, and the Bermuda Triangle

Why does popular media have such a love affair with woo-woo nonsense?

Isn't science cool enough?  Can't the History Channel just be about history, and the Discovery Channel about discoveries?  Is it really necessary to boost the ratings with idiocy about the prophecies of Nostradamus, hunting the Loch Ness Monster, and searching for Noah's Ark?  What, you couldn't find any real stuff from science and history to tell us about?

Of course, the problem doesn't just apply to television.  Newspapers and magazines, especially the online versions, are just as bad.  Take the article I just ran across last week, from Huffington Post, entitled, "Vittorio Missoni's Disappearance Gives Rise to New Fears of Bermuda Triangles Worldwide."  In this stunning piece of investigative journalism by Lee Speigel, we hear first about the mysterious disappearance of fashion designer Missoni and five others, who were on a small airplane from an island in the Los Roques chain, bound for Caracas.  The plane vanished on January 4, and no remains of the airplane or its passengers has thus far been found.

So far, makes for kind of a blah story.  I mean, it's tragic enough for the family and friends of the missing six, but as far as evidence of any kind to show what happened, there isn't much.  One piece of luggage that was on the plane turned up in Curaçao, and two of Missoni's bags on Bonaire, leading to speculation that the plane might have been diverted (or hijacked) to the Netherlands Antilles.  Authorities are still looking into the case.

But Speigel couldn't let it sit there, because that makes for kind of a short article, not nearly enough to make his required word count.  "This guy and five others disappeared, and some luggage turned up elsewhere, and we don't know why."  No, can't just say that.  We have to take the slim facts we have, and leap right off the cliff with them.

The plane vanished "into thin air."  (I'll bet you my next year's salary it didn't.  The Law of Conservation of Mass is strictly enforced, even in Venezuela.)  Speigel points out that the plane was near the Bermuda Triangle, where "people, planes, and ships have vanished for decades."  (No, they haven't.  Hundreds of airplanes and ships, carrying tens of thousands of people, cross the Bermuda Triangle daily, and damn near all of them make it.  A thorough statistical analysis of the records -- i.e., actual facts -- show that there is no higher rate of planes or ships going down in the Bermuda Triangle than any other place on Earth.  In fact, Lawrence Kusche, who authored the study, said, "...The Legend of the Bermuda Triangle is a manufactured mystery. It began because of careless research and was elaborated upon and perpetuated by writers who either purposely or unknowingly made use of misconceptions, faulty reasoning, and sensationalism. It was repeated so many times that it began to take on the aura of truth.")

Then, Speigel goes even further out into hyperspace.  The Bermuda Triangle isn't the only Mysterious Triangle of Death, he tells us.  We have the "Michigan Triangle."  We have the Pacific version, the "Devil's Sea."  Then he starts blathering on about "time portals" and "mysterious vortexes."

And I'm thinking: this is journalism?

It's only near the end that Speigel gives a reluctant nod to some skeptics.  He quotes prominent science writers Benjamin Radford and Brian Dunning, and includes a statement from the United States Coast Guard:

The Coast Guard does not recognize the existence of the so-called Bermuda Triangle as a geographic area of specific hazard to ships or planes.  In a review of many aircraft and vessel losses in the area over the years there has been nothing discovered that would indicate that casualties were the result of anything other than physical causes.  No extraordinary factors have ever been identified.

Sounds pretty unequivocal, doesn't it?  But take a look at how Speigel introduces the quotes from the token skeptics and the Coast Guard; he has a lot of vague, woo-woo hand-waving, and then says that the doubters still aren't convinced.  He introduces the bits of science and rationality with the phrase, "And yet..."  In other words, "Despite the highly convincing argument I've just given you, some willfully blind so-called scientists still don't believe."

And he ends the article with a clip from a documentary about the "Devil's Sea..."

... from a documentary on The Learning Channel.

How did we get here?  I mean, I know it's about money; the television stations who prefer showing Monster Quest over Cosmos are doing so because it gets sponsors.  But it's a self-feeding thing, you know?  By putting this foolishness on the public airwaves and into what we would hope are legitimate news sources, we not only give it undeserved credibility, we create interest.  After that, when you've (1) generated curiosity in a subject, and (2) placed a seed in people's minds that it could be real, you've given them a thirst to find out more.  Which makes it more lucrative to do it again, only bigger and better this time.  And pretty soon you're in positive feedback mode, a woo-woo snowball effect that creates a big old avalanche of bullshit.

Explaining, I think, what has happened to the History Channel, Learning Channel, Discovery Channel, and others... and also why Huffington Post has a regular "Weird News" feature in which writers like Lee Speigel regularly treat this nonsense as if it were real.

The whole thing is especially maddening, because let's face it: the world as it is is pretty freakin' amazing.  There are so many things in science and history that are drop-dead fascinating -- you could make a documentary a week and not run out in your lifetime.  After all, there are people who devote their lives to studying this stuff, and virtually all of them do it for one reason -- it's cool.  So, to Speigel and the others who are fostering this hunger for the supernatural in place of reality, I'd like to make a request:  stop making shit up.  Learn some actual science.  Find a way to make that interesting to your readers and viewers.  And if you can't figure out how to do it, find a new job.

A call to civil disobedience

This time of year is always a difficult one in public schools -- and it has little to do with it being March, a month with no three-day weekends.

It's budget time.  State and federal funding levels have been set, local school boards are deciding on this year's tax levy -- and that means the announcement will soon come that identifies whose head is on the chopping block.  This is the season when younger teachers and teachers in the "non-core" disciplines such as art, music, and technology begin to polish up their resumés.  This, despite the fact that the number of years a teacher has taught has little correlation with his or her skill.  This, despite the fact that the areas dismissively referred to as "non-core" subjects are ones that expand the mind, foster creativity, push students to draw connections between disparate fields, and are downright enjoyable.

People -- teachers, students, and community members -- give lip service to how unfair it all is.  Every damn year.  "We should be committed to keeping excellence in our schools."  "We need to support public education."  "Build more schools, or build more jails."  And yet, each year at this time, we fight the same battles, having to cross swords with school boards who are strapped for money, arguing that our programs shouldn't be cut.  Inevitably we teachers end up in the uncomfortable position of trying to protect our own asses.  I give an impassioned plea to the board to save my job -- all the while knowing that if my position isn't cut, that of the teacher in the next classroom may well be.  At the same time, the state and federal government lays on more unfunded mandates, more high-stakes testing, as if you can legislate inspiring teaching, as if you can quantify the ability to foster creative connections with children.

Most teachers are team players.  Most of us went into the field because it seemed a good fit -- meaning we respect order and authority, believe that employees should do as told, think that whoever is in front of the room must know what (s)he is talking about.  So we grumble about all of the new laws -- laws that, in my state, will give teachers a numerical grade at the end of each year, based in part on how students perform on high-stakes end-of-the-year tests.  We complain about every year doing more with less.  We mourn for talented teachers who have been laid off, curricular areas that are simply not going to be taught any more because the school district couldn't afford to teach art, or choral music, or foreign language, or AP classes, or computer-aided design.

But we do little more than talk.  A big news story in New York state came just this week from the town of New Paltz, where the school board voted unanimously to protest on the state and federal level the increased reliance on high-stakes standardized testing, and the unfunded mandates, and the skewed and statistically absurd teacher rating system ("APPR"), and the destructive funding formula that has every year in the past five years caused significant reductions in staff.  (Read the whole resolution here.)  Although a step in the right direction, this amounts to nothing more than a symbolic gesture; Governor Cuomo and the state and federal Departments of Education have no particular motive for listening.  It still, honestly, is little more than talk, albeit on a different level than the demoralized complaining I hear on a daily basis.

Maybe it's time for something bigger.

Maybe it's time that schools band together and rebel.  No teacher, staff member, or school administrator I've ever talked to thinks that the way things are currently being managed is beneficial to the people who count the most in this endeavor -- the students.  All of us seem to feel that our hands are tied, because the state and federal governments oversee funding -- and if we don't follow the mandates, which (I must add) are almost all generated, crafted, and passed by individuals who have never taught a day in their lives, the purse strings get cut.  Both "No Child Left Behind" and "Race To The Top" carry significant financial penalties for districts who fail to meet the standards.  Because that makes sense, right?  Take districts that are failing, and withdraw more funds from them.  That'll help.

But maybe the time has come for some civil disobedience.  Maybe it'll take a group of school districts who have school boards with some backbone, to take what the New Paltz School Board did, and go a step further.  Say "no" to high stakes testing.  Send back the standardized tests that are now used to evaluate students, staff, administrators, and entire districts, and which have been shown time after time to be an unreliable measure either of student performance or of teacher performance.  Include a note saying, "Sorry, we're choosing not to participate."  Issue an ultimatum to the agencies that hold the power of the purse; revise funding formulas, so that schools can continue to provide quality education to our children -- or we will simply close and lock the doors.

It might be time to play a game of "Who blinks first?" with education, because at the moment, all of the power rests with a group of people who I am becoming increasingly convinced haven't the vaguest notion of what they are doing.  State and federal departments of education are revealing themselves to be a costly failed experiment.  It's time that committed individuals on the local level flex their muscles, and take some risks, to save public education. 

A giant conspiracy

Sometimes accusations of conspiracy can come from unexpected sources -- and can create odd bedfellows.

Just last month, I ran into a TEDx talk by a gentleman named Jim Vieira (now removed from the internet by the powers-that-be).  In this talk, he made some rather curious claims.  To sum up: the Mound Builder cultures of early eastern North America were not just comprised of the ancestors of today's Native Americans, they included a race of red-haired giants.  And I do mean giant -- some of these folks were twelve feet tall... or more:

Oh, and did I mention that they had two, or even three, rows of teeth?

Man, those would have been some seriously scary dudes.

As evidence, Vieira trotted out some newspaper clippings from the early 20th century, one of which I include below:

A few photographs of actual bones were shown, but then Vieira really went into deep water.  Because not only did he claim that such bones were commonly found in burial mounds in eastern North America, he claimed that hundreds of such bones had been sent to the Smithsonian Institution...

... which has, ever since, covered up their existence and denied it ever happened.

Now, my first thought was, "Why would they do that?"  What earthly reason would an institution founded to further knowledge have to arbitrarily pick one interesting archaeological finding, and deny it?  But that's what Vieira thinks; the giants walked the Earth, but the Smithsonian doesn't want you to know about it.

But that was only the beginning.  Vieira's talk spurred an unlikely association between several groups of wackos who normally don't have much to say to one another.  These included:

• Government cover-up types, who just loved having the Smithsonian involved in a conspiracy
• UFO believers, who think this is the result of human/alien hybridization
• Sasquatchers, who think the bones are the remains of Bigfoot
• Fundamentalist Christians, who believe in the whole Nephilim/ "there were giants in those days" thing (Genesis 6:4) and believe that this supports biblical literalism
• Various other wingnuts who just like it when the scientists are put in a bad light

Websites supporting one, two, or all of the above viewpoints began to spring up all over, most citing Vieira's research as if it were the Holy Writ.  Then they began to cite each other, and the whole thing exploded in a giant cloud of woo-woo quantum frequencies, to perpetuate itself lo unto this very day.

The problem is, the evidence for any of this is kind of... non-existent.  As for the photographs, the late 19th and early 20th century were rife with frauds involving skeletons (think Piltdown Man, the Cardiff Giant, and so on).  The newspaper articles aren't any better; I could find you a hundred newspaper clippings from that era that are demonstrably false, so this sort of "evidence" really doesn't amount to much.  As for the Smithsonian participating in a coverup, the following is a quote from an archaeologist who actually has worked for the Smithsonian:

In 2007 I was a visiting scientist at the Smithsonian Museum Support Center, and while it is full of amazing and bizarre material (e.g., an entire herd of elephants that Teddy Roosevelt shot occupies one floor), there is no conspiracy to cover up or hide Native American giant skeletons or artifacts. Like most museums, the Smithsonian displays less than 1% of its collections at any given time, meaning that a lot of material spends decades (or sadly centuries) in its vaults awaiting exhibition. We can debate whether or not this is responsible stewardship (a debate that would also have to include a discussion of the chronic underfunding of public museums and the economics of public education), but to portray the Smithsonian today as part of some sort of a conspiracy of ‘misinformation and corruption’ to cover up Native American history by hiding giant Mound Builder skeletons excavated in the 19th century is ridiculous.

And if that wasn't enough, here's a quote from a spokesperson for the Center for American Archaeology, one of the most respected anthropological research establishments in the world:

I can assure you that the archaeological Woodland and Mississippian populations were not giants. In some cases, one can observe a slight decrease in average height (a few centimeters) with the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture. This is a trend that is observed in many cultures that undergo an agricultural transition, and is likely related to shorter nursing times and increased early childhood grain consumption (maximum height is highly correlated to childhood protein consumption, so a high reliance on grain during childhood tends to result in shorter stature).

As a result of all of this, TEDx removed Vieira's talk (read the stinging rebuke Vieira received from TEDx curator Stacy Kontrabecki here). But that hasn't stopped the claims -- far from it. Kontrabecki was promptly accused of caving under pressure from the Evil Cadre That Runs The Smithsonian. Some bloggers claimed she'd been paid to silence Vieira. Virtually all of them agreed that the reason Vieira's talk was taken down was that... we can't just have this information about giants getting out there.

Right.  Because that's plausible.  The government has nothing better to do than to make sure the general public doesn't find out that Hagrid once lived in Ohio.

 It can't just be that Vieira, and the other folks who are putting forth these claims, are just making shit up.  Nope.  It has to be a conspiracy.

So the removal of Vieira's talk that hasn't stopped the aforementioned woo-woos from continuing to quote him, and his "evidence," as hard, cold fact.  If you do a search for "giant skeletons Smithsonian conspiracy" you will get thousands of hits, leading you to websites authored by people who, in my opinion, should not be allowed outside unsupervised.

So, that's it.  Zero hard evidence, a bunch of wild claims, accusations of a coverup, and a very peculiar association of groups arguing for the same thing for different reasons.  Once again illustrating the truth of the saying from South Africa -- "There are forty different kinds of lunacy, but only one kind of common sense."