Tag-Archive for » education «

May 22nd, 2010 | Author: sarcozona

Mining companies like to claim that they’re bringing economic benefits, but cleanup and health costs far outweigh positive contributions to the economy.

After thousands of years, we’ve finally discovered what the argonaut octopus uses its shell for – it’s essentially a ballast tank.

HUGE step: we’ve synthesized life.

Autism doesn’t have anything to do with vaccines, but children of migrant parents in Europe are at higher risk.

Susan B. Anthony wasn’t anti-choice, no matter what this obnoxious group claims.

The economy is fossil fuels.

Public pressure actually changed the rainforest destroying policies of Nestlé.

Because of decades of unsustainable fishing practices, we are now faced with a very unpleasant choice: the loss of 20 million jobs now or the permanent loss of the fish.

Cypripedium fasciculatum

Cypripedium fasciculatum

The BP oil spill is an American Chernobyl.

Try this fun logic puzzle with the not so fun title non-normalizable probability measures.

Ultrasound could be a good method for male contraception.

We still don’t fully understand why the bees are dying, but at least they aren’t dying everywhere, as was previously believed.

The end of Usenet.

Acupuncture might not be completely useless.

Ugandan women have high rates of maternal mortality that their health minister blames on poor training for health professionals.  Considering how much of that mortality is due to obstetric fistula, focusing on preventing child rape might go further than additional training for nurses.

Oh look, MORE sexism in academia.

The water crisis in Yemen continues to cause conflict and cost lives. We should expect much more of this kind of thing as the climate continues to change.

Many of the people I went to college with probably shouldn’t have gone to college.  And that may have been a better strategy.

Texas is rewriting history for its public schools:

Several changes include sidelining Thomas Jefferson, who favoured separation of church and state, while introducing a new focus on the “significant contributions” of pro-slavery Confederate leaders during the civil war.

The new curriculum asserts that “the right to keep and bear arms” is an important element of a democratic society. Study of Sir Isaac Newton is dropped in favour of examining scientific advances through military technology.

Sculpture by Mia Liu

Sculpture by Mia Liu

April 03rd, 2010 | Author: sarcozona

The rapists who don’t get caught are smart, misogynist predators, not confused young men. (via Michael Alan Miller)

Teaching teenagers about healthy relationships reduces teen pregnancy. (via OPT) Unfortunately, about the only people who get a decent sex education in the US grow up on a farm.

Thamnolia vermicularis

Thamnolia vermicularis (whiteworm lichen) on Botany Photo of the Day

Obama gives the go-ahead for offshore drilling, reneging on his campaign promise in a bid to get the Republicans to vote for climate change legislation. First of all, a potential three years of oil is NOT worth that much environmental damage.  But perhaps more importantly, shouldn’t you wait until you’ve got the votes to hand over the prize?

The Jews were never slaves in Egypt (and they were probably Canaanites to boot).  But Happy Passover anyway!

The crazies on the right think returning your census form is like the jackets from the V‘s Peace Ambassadors, but still stop efforts to model the population instead.

Ovulation

Girls are outperforming boys in school and some white guys think we should change the system because of it.  Lindsay Beyerstein has a spot on analysis of the situation: “Maybe boys are acting out and underperforming because they’ve been taught from an early age that the world should change to suit them.”

A fantastic series of lectures from a Berkeley Biological Anthropology course taught by Terrence Deacon is available online (you can also get it through iTunesU).  I’ve been listening to it on my walk to school in the mornings.

From a beautiful series by Sophia Wallace

People we “rescued” from Haiti are currently prisoners of our royally fucked immigration system because of a paperwork problem.

I’m not going to have kids and I’m happy about it. Are you?

Five ways the world didn’t end when the Large Hadron Collider turned on.

Gay marriage in the British Cavalry. Romantic!

March 20th, 2010 | Author: sarcozona

Poorly designed regulations contribute to sprawl, making walkable neighborhoods expensive or even illegal.

Contrary to popular conception, marriage is good for men and bad for women.

Nixon would have been hilarious if he hadn’t been president.

Not being able to predict when I’m going to have a migraine is a serious problem.

Advice for bossy people (like me).

Government regulation is important for preventing spills associated with oil & natural gas – companies sure aren’t going to do it themselves.

XKCD gets it right

Health insurance companies should be charged with attempted murder.

Remember how we gave Tai Shan back to China a few months ago?  Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea since animals in Chinese zoos are starving or being killed so that their body parts can be used in Chinese medicine.

What can we learn from the spatial distribution of diabetes in the US?

A short history lesson: the Tea Party then & now.

Who doesn’t love worms?

There's something wrong here

October 24th, 2009 | Author: sarcozona

Lights on how the Christian community accepts rapists and vilifies their victims.

Green spaces make you healthier. I wonder if houseplants help.

Banning abortion doesn’t make it rarer, but it does make it more dangerous: unsafe abortions kill 70,000 women a year.  A lack of access to contraceptives leads to 60 million unintended pregnancies a year and increases abortion rates, often in unsafe conditions. If Christians really wanted to save lives, they’d be mailing condoms instead of gospel tracts.

Homeless people deserve better.  I hope that so many people losing their homes will lead to improved services for the homeless.

Proposed budget cuts in AZ target the poor and include wonderfully ironic cuts like “eliminating state supervision of loan originators, mortgage brokers and money transmitters.” Hawaii is dramatically shortening the school year because of budget cuts.

US drug policy blocks successful treatments for cluster headaches.

The difference between fields with lots of women and fields with few is other women.

Interpol hooked up with UN Peacekeeping.

Churches in Nigeria are torturing and killing children.  Isn’t God great?

So many of the same people who think blowing up all the Muslims is a great idea are also strongly anti-immigrant.  I guess they don’t realize how many immigrants are dying for their beliefs. Or they’re just racist.

The worst companies in the world.  Just in case you thought corporations were generally looking out for your best interests.

WWJD?

WWJD?

One week without health insurance was enough for this family to be denied real coverage for their daughter.

Wearing a bra is an evil deception deserving extreme punishment.

Garlic might actually help prevent colds, but the AIDS vaccine probably didn’t really work.

Companies with more women are better companies.

Thomas Hillier - The Emperor's Castle

Thomas Hillier - The Emperor's Castle

The Pansy Project: “Artist Paul Harfleet revisits city streets planting pansies at the site of homophobic abuse. Each location is photographed and named after the abuse received.”

If I go nuts, this is why.

August 29th, 2009 | Author: sarcozona

It doesn’t say anything good about our culture that sexual violence against women is eroticized and mainstream, but women choosing and enjoying sex is just too much for us.

A few songs are worth more than your life.  A lot more.  (via Michael Alan Miller) Oh, and Sweden took down pirate bay.

Well, this should change our lifestyles a bit.  Have I mentioned that overpopulation is a problem?

California is sacrificing education to prevent taxing big oil.  Wouldn’t it be awesome if our government thought just a little more long term? (via Edge of the American West)

Actually, money CAN buy happiness.

The Afghan elections weren’t fair.

Amino acids in space!

Cultural differences in interpretations of facial expressions.

Really, vaccines do not contain aborted fetal tissue.

Russia has some series race issues.

Just because change scares people doesn’t mean it should be slow.

By the way, were at war by bobster on flickr

By the way, we're at war by bobster on flickr

Music + politics = awesome

Think health care reform makes Democrats equivalent to Nazis?  Perhaps you need a quick history lesson.

Another reason to quit smoking: children pick the tobacco you smoke and it poisons them.

I really want to see this movie (via SublimeFemme):

An former health care executive comes clean. And yet another health care myth debunked.

We’re building a wall between Mexico and the US that doesn’t stop illegal immigrants, but is deadly to fragile wildlife populations.

The axolotl is about to go extinct in the wild

The axolotl is about to go extinct in the wild

American citizens in danger from chemical weapons – and they’re ours.

Iran is not a good place to be right now.

August 15th, 2009 | Author: sarcozona

Between things like steep fines and jail time for the “crimes” of being poor and/or a person of color and being unable to get a job because of poor credit, it’s almost impossible to escape poverty in the US.

Moonbow

Moonbow

Yesterday was the anniversary of Japan’s surrender in WWII.

Still sucks to be a woman in Afghanistan.

The Sri Lankan government doesn’t seem much better than the LTTE.

Plants can communicate and recognize self. Awesome.

No wonder we’re all addicted to the internet.

How and why patriarchy hurts men and who stands to benefit from feminism.

Scientists are grown-ups who refuse to give up their sense of wonder & curiosity.

It’s hard to keep believing Isreal is a “victim.”

Another evangelical caught fleecing his sheep.

from flickr user bobster855

from flickr user bobster855

I’m definitely going to make these cookies.

It’s hard to chastise other countries when you’re guilty too.

The Russian government doesn’t even try to hide it.

Attacking Iran would be idiotic.

Going home isn’t easy.

Cutting already insufficient education budgets means students pay more for less.

Odd and disturbing Time magazine cover.

David Trautrimas, Sprinkler House

David Trautrimas, Sprinkler House

Think people don’t use religion to escape responsibility for their actions? Think again.

Why taking physics is important:

Extreme Pool JumpCelebrity bloopers here

Major Prop 8 supporter gets divorce.

If ecology doesn’t work out, I’m applying at Netflix.

Incredible juxtoposition: US vs. Japanese representations of the bombing of Hiroshima.

Why we sleep: who knows?

May 23rd, 2009 | Author: sarcozona

A beautiful post on hierarchies and judgement within marginalized communities.

The Skeptic’s Book of Pooh-Pooh points out an awesome news story on the danger anti-vaxers create for children in their communities.  The anti-vaxers hypocrisy is also on display in their support of chemical castration for autistic boys.

We can’t expect toxic products to stop coming from China anytime soon.  Honesty and transparency are impossible with a government that actively represses knowledge of its own history.

Women continue to be kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and brutally murdered in Mexico.  Despite the hundreds of victims that are likely the victims of one or more serial killers, the police aren’t doing anything about it.

As the AZ legislature slashes education funding across the state, especially at the university level, the AZ Republic has a timely article about the importance of research – even if it sounds ridiculous.

Justice.”


Lindsay Beyerstein
explains that we do still need journalists and should be paying them – most bloggers provide commentary and synthesis, not reporting.

The role of partisanship in California’s economic crisis.

Something to have nightmares about: the rise of private policing in the US.

Right wing extremists kill more law enforcement officers.

Dr. Isis’s fantastic post Boys Talk About How Girls Should Talk About Science…

It’s easy to consider a civil discourse when you’ve never had your ass grabbed by a colleague, been called “young lady” in front of your peers, or been asked about your reproductive plans.  It’s easy to ask the participants to be calm, and minimize profanity, when you don’t have to keep in the back of you mind which which men to avoid at a meeting when they’ve been drinking.

Plants recognize themselves.

The representation of hetero men in conventional pornography vs. the spectrum of things hetero men actually enjoy.

FSP on “us and them.”

The next cake I’m going to bake.

Pennsylvania is starting to look like the deep south half a century ago.

Texas AND Alaska charge victims for their own rape kits.

April 04th, 2009 | Author: sarcozona

I loved Isabella Rossellini’s Green Porno on the sex lives of bugs.  Now she’s got a marine version!

Artificial intelligence and robots are getting better faster and faster.  This robot has made unique scientific discoveries – from formulating the hypotheses to running experiments. This robot has a biological brain and can learn.

On a related note, computers are doing more and more of the proofs in mathematics.

Misinformation is dangerous.  Jenny McCarthy is at least indirectly responsible for the deaths of 142 people due to the lies she spreads about vaccinations.

Worried about shit grades keeping you out of college?  Worry no more if you can pay in full for college!

Dr. Isis writes about the DREAM Act and responds to people who accuse illegal immigrants of stealing our middle class lifestyle:

I would like to apologize on behalf of immigrants everywhere to the American middle class for stealing their jobs.  Especially the investment bankers, attorneys, physicians, research scientists, and CEOs who have recently lost their jobs to illegal immigrants.

Why Obama should consider legalizing marijuana.

Fantastic advice on being an ally at Little Lambs Eat Ivy.

This guy says he’s got the joy of the lord, but he’s just crazy or scamming people (wait for the sales pitch at the end) or crazy and scamming people.  I wonder if the lord has rewarded this woman with his joy after she killed her son for him?  Wouldn’t it be great if religious people applied the “outsider test” to their own religions?

Iraq is about to execute a lot of people for “gay crimes,” and it looks like they’re implementing the death penalty for anything and everything lately. via 3QD

Things like this make me embarrassed for our country.  No wonder the British Ecological Society is worried about opposition in the US to action on climate change.

Spain is prosecuting Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, Douglas Feith, William Haynes, John Yoo, and Jay Bybee for torture at Guantanamo. I only wish we were doing it ourselves.

March 28th, 2009 | Author: sarcozona

What gender expectations do to people.

Settlers of Catan really is the perfect board game.  I should buy my own soon.

China refuses to participate in an important awareness raising climate change action in order to celebrate “Serf Liberation Day” – when the Dalai Lama was kicked out of Tibet. Oh propaganda.

If the Obama Administration does go ahead and officially identify climate change as a threat to public health, the US will have to take more action on the issue.  Unfortunately, we’ve got a lot of idiots in office who may make significant changes very very difficult.

There are so many awesome education tools and resources on the internet.  Youtube EDU is my new favorite resource. (Did you just call me a nerd for watching lectures on youtube?  Because I think this is way nerdier.)  Also, I think writing/editing/correcting wikipedia entries for classes is something that should be done more often – especially in grad classes.

One & two freaking awesome data visualizations from Flowing Data.

Just two recent examples of sexism in lower and higher education.

Many people think we should deport all of our illegal immigrants and support immigration raids (which target legal immigrants, too).  But they don’t understand what those immigration raids do.  They make a joke of our legal system, are unnecessarily cruel, and hurt EVERYONE in the community.

PZ has an awesome post up about the chronic underfunding of our nation’s universities and an important admonition for voters:

Why do you keep electing cretins to your legislatures who despise the “intellectual elite”, who think being smart is a sin, who are so short-sighted that they care nothing for investing in strengthening the country in ways that take ten or more years to pay off? Stop it! Your representatives should be people who value education enough to commit to at least maintaining the current meager level of funding, but instead we get chains of ignoramuses who want to demolish the universities…and simultaneously want to control them to support their favorite ideological nonsense, via “academic freedom” bills. This is also a long-term goal: we have to work to restore our government to some level of sanity. It’s been the domain of fools and thieves for far too long.

March 21st, 2009 | Author: sarcozona

Finding effective treatments for Lyme disease and other chronic illnesses has become much more difficult.  As usual, it’s all about the money:

The problem, they say, started back in 1980, when Ronald Reagan changed the rules governing how scientists (and the entities they work for) profit from their work. Where scientists used to gain fame and fortune by publishing and sharing their work in conferences and journals — and were thus rewarded for furthering general knowledge — the new rules encouraged them to hoard their discoveries as trade secrets; and then leverage their patents and their seats on medical boards to write the disease definitions, mandate approved treatments, and completely control the scientific discourse in order to maximize the profits they made.

This story shows we need to make very big changes to how we deal with chemicals and their effects in the workplace.  Right now, workers must prove that a specific chemical caused their problem.  This is often absolutely impossible to do.  Perhaps a better system would be to hold the employer responsible if workers exposed to a certain chemical show symptoms of exposure to that chemical.  It would certainly encourage employers to be more responsible and careful about exposing their employees to dangerous chemicals.

Best review of Watchmenyou’ll ever read.  And a fantastic review of the odious Miss March.

Dr. Isis takes on more sexism in science, specifically this frustratingly common misconception: one of the requirements of scientist-hood is a lack of femininity or sexuality.

A guest at Shakesville on adoption, abortion, and choice:

I’m the birth mother of an adopted child, vehemently pro-choice, non-Christian, very unsuited to motherhood, and after over a decade, have got some things to tell the world about adoption. It’s been stewing since I heard about the recent rash of pre-abortion ultrasound legislation. While I am touched that so many men in such various states are so deeply worried about women possibly being all sad from having an abortion, I wish to point out to these compassionately bleeding hearts that the alternatives are not exactly without their own emotional consequences.

Holy crap. The world O Magazine has actually acknowledged that lesbians and bisexuals actually exist and that gender and sexuality are, well, complicated.

Freedomgirl writes about her experience with marriage:

After the wedding, this circle of people treated us differently.  Our relationship was more serious, our status was higher.  People pressured us about having children, buying a house.

All well and good.  But we were doing this thing without understanding the whole story.  We aren’t straight.  There is nothing we can do to pass in the everyday world as mainstream and ordinary without denying some fundamental facts about who we are.  Which is precisely what we did for a long time.

Most depressing evidence yet of America’s failure to educate its citizens: Only 53% of adults know how long it takes for the Earth to revolve around the Sun. via Bad Astronomy.

Have I mentioned how much I love A Softer World?

VOLCANO!!!!

VOLCANO!!!!

A good take-down of the “morality comes from god” idea: