Getting away with public endorsement of religion

John recently wrote about Ron Brown, an assistant football coach at the University of Nebraska who ruffled feathers recently when he testified against a non-discrimination ordinance which extended protections to gay and transgender people. And his reply to those who ask him if he's worried about losing his job? Bring it on:

To be fired for my faith would be a greater honor than to be fired because we didn't win enough games...I haven't lost any sleep over it.

But calls for Brown's resignation do not stem from his comments alone. Many who wish to see Brown go take issue him making his comments while acting as an agent of the University of Nebraska (which has a non-discrimination policy that includes protections for sexual orientation, gender and genetic information), not as an individual. From ESPN:

Brown -- in a decision he said he now regrets -- gave Memorial Stadium in Lincoln as his address of record...people could have inferred he was representing the university, not just himself, when he [testified].

Despite Brown's misuse of his public status, it appears that his job is, at least for now, safe:

Chancellor Harvey Perlman admonished Brown for giving the stadium address, but he said Brown's personal views do not reflect those of the university.

Ron Brown is only the most recent example of religious individuals working for public institutions claiming the right to endorse religious beliefs on behalf of the taxpayer. A few years ago, the issue was put in the spotlight just down the road from Kenyon College.

John Freshwater was an 8th grade science teacher at the local middle school in Mt. Vernon, Ohio. He was a local hero in the religious community for keeping a Bible on his desk and religious posters in his classroom, as well as making statements such as these in the classroom:

Science is wrong because the Bible states that homosexuality is a sin, and so anyone who is gay chooses to be gay and is therefore a sinner.

Freshwater was also reported to have told students to refer to the Bible for scientific research material and to have either ignored or intentionally mis-taught certain areas of the school's curriculum for years, particularly the section on evolution. But those actions were not deemed sufficient cause for his dismissal from the public school system. He was finally fired only after accidentally burning what appear to be crosses into the arms of two students with a tesla coil in a lab experiment.

Both Mr. Freshwater and Mr. Brown are entitled to their homophobic and anti-scientific beliefs as individuals. But when they leave their homes, churches and weekend communities to go to work they are no longer acting as individuals; they are acting as agents of the government they work for. For public institutions to allow their own employees to endorse religious beliefs - let alone bigoted ones - on the taxpayer's dime represents a dangerous and illegal encroachment of religious ideology that must be pushed back against.

Ron Brown violated the University of Nebraska's non-discrimination policy when he testified under his capacity as a representative of the school. It's shameful that he has yet to be held accountable for his actions.

GOP dissed research projects that ended up discovering useful things

Someone should ask the Republicans if Galileo was right in his battle against the Catholic church. (Though, to be fair, the answer is nuanced - though I seriously doubt they'll get that.) Speaking of Galileo, and the stars, this vid is cool:

Video: Space Shuttle Discovery flying over DC today

It's not often that really cool things happen in DC. But, today was different. The space shuttle Discovery did a fly-over on its way to to the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum out by Dulles. It came down, did a loop, then flew back. It was quite awesome.

To give a sense of how big this is, that little spec behind the 747 in my photo below is a fighter jet.

And, a short video I just took:



And NASA caught a really amazing photo of the Shuttle:

Preparing for a possible Romney presidency,
the Secret Service retrofits Air Force One to carry a dog.

More from the Washington Post here.

Google Glasses is awfully cool

Is awfully cool?  Are awfully cool?

Google is working on a project to put the Internet into a pair of glasses.  They released a preview today, and it's pretty darn cool.



I have to admit, I was intrigued when I first heard about this project, and also a bit confused as to how you might use the new Google Glasses. After watching the video, I'm sold.

I'm not entirely sure how I'd feel walking down the street wearing these things.  Once people know what they are, maybe, but first adopter?  Not sure I'm ready to be mistaken for a character on Deep Space Nine.  Also, will this be better or worse than a cell phone, in terms of taking people's attention off the road while driving and walking?  I also worry about someone running by and yanking this off your face - my glasses are expensive but not very useful to a thief.  This little toy, more so.

I watched the Google video, above, and felt like I was watching the future.  It makes me think of my friend Skip who used to work at Apple on all sorts of cool things, including the iPhone (he died last fall in an accident).  He was quite literally helping to build the future, and he knew it, and he loved it.  Not that we're not doing the same, in politics and with activism.  But there's something that's always particularly excited me about technology.  Nothing and no one can make me wake up early (thus the message from my mom earlier this week, at 10:40am, asking if I was still in bed), but the chance to go to my high school computer room, a few hours before class, and play computer games, even if it was that funky Star Trek game from the late 70s, there was no way I was gonna say no to that, even if it meant waking up a few hours early.

I know some people find some technology frivolous, and dehumanizing.  And I'm sure some of it is.  But technology can also change the way you think about, and see the world.  In this case, quite literally.

US kids with autism up 78% in last decade

Not surprisingly, it's not entirely clear if this is simply because of better identification of kids who are autistic.  I remember when my nephew was diagnosed with autism.  Right before actually.  He was pretty young, already walking, but I'm guess two or three at most.  I could tell something wasn't right, I even remember telling my mom about it when we were all at my grandma's (the central hub of all family activity).  I don't recall how soon after he was diagnosed.  And this was easily thirty years ago.

From CNN:

"Doctors are getting better at diagnosing autism; communities are getting much better at [providing] services to children with autism, and CDC scientists are getting much better at tracking which kids in the communities we're studying have autism," Frieden says.

"How much of that increase is a result of better tracking and how much of it is a result of an actual increase, we still don't know. We know more about autism today than we have ever known," he says, "but there is still so much we don't know and wish that we knew."

In sort of related news, the NYT reports that Global Warming is not only lengthening the allergy season, but it's making pollen a more potent allergen. Hurray! And it may be why asthma is worsening too.

Other studies, including a recent one at Harvard, have predicted that pollen will continue to increase with rising temperatures. And some scientists suspect a link to the global rise in asthma — a condition that can be triggered by pollen.

I know my ashtma is the worst it's ever been this spring. Even my albuterol didn't really help the other day, and that's NEVER happened before (fortunately I don't get asthma "attacks," per se, just tightening in the chest (knock on wood)).

I wonder if it's not the food and the air quality going downhall that's part of the problem as well.

Schrödinger's Romney is both a conservative and a liberal - meow

The New York Times started putting their content behind a pay wall a year ago.  They've now cut the number of free articles you can access each month (without a subscription) from 20 to 10 (boo!).  This article by David Javerbaum is probably one of the best ways you can use your allotment of the Grey Lady this month.

A bit of context. Before Mitt Romney, those seeking the presidency operated under the laws of so-called classical politics, laws still followed by traditional campaigners like Newt Gingrich. Under these Newtonian principles, a candidate’s position on an issue tends to stay at rest until an outside force — the Tea Party, say, or a six-figure credit line at Tiffany — compels him to alter his stance, at a speed commensurate with the size of the force (usually large) and in inverse proportion to the depth of his beliefs (invariably negligible). This alteration, framed as a positive by the candidate, then provokes an equal but opposite reaction among his rivals.

But don't miss one of the best bits hidden in the caption to one of the figures:

The famous “Schrödinger’s candidate” scenario. For as long as Mitt Romney remains in this box, he is both a moderate and a conservative.

This is a pun on the famous "Schrödinger's Cat" thought experiment in which quantum mechanics says that a cat in a box containing some poison is both dead and alive at the same time. In Romney's case, he's both a moderate and a conservative, depending on the day, or the weather (and in Romney's case, the box with the cat would be on the roof of his car traveling 75mph).  Remember when Romney flip-flopped on Super PACS?  Or criticized Solyndra but then took money from its lobbyist? Or flip-flopped on the effects of carbon pollution, on gays, stem cells, and abortion, and even on whether he liked catfish?

Then again, back in 2000, Schrödinger's Bush was able to lose the election but still become President.

 You don't need a degree in nuclear physics to understand the piece but if you do it is even funnier. Javerbaum hits every mark with perfect snark.



NOTE FROM JOHN: Oddly, I've not found a good explanation online of the Schrödinger's Cat riddle. The video I posted above tries to explain it, but still doesn't do it well in my opinion. Here's another video explaining it, and I don't think it passes muster. What the explanations fail to explain, and what I don't remember well enough from college physics to explain here, is why in quantum mechanics do both states exist simultaneous - meaning, in real life it's 50-50, either or. In quantum mechanics, both states co-exist simultaneous, in a sense, so the cat IS both dead AND alive at the same time - that's the point of whole thought experiment.  I don't think the explanations get that point across well enough.  Can someone explain this better in the comments?

This is probably my biggest beef about the Internet. There's a lot of information about everything, but often not the exact information I'm looking for, about something obvious, like this.

REPLY FROM MYRDDIN: Schrödinger's Cat is probably best thought of as a koan rather than a paradox. It is a useful way to think about and discuss philosophical interpretations of quantum equations. In particular is observation a necessary or merely a sufficient condition to collapse the wave function? The equations work just as well either way. If you consider the idea that the cat is both dead and alive to be unacceptable then you need to take the view that any particle interaction that could be used to make an observation will cause the collapse. But the opposite interpretation is equally consistent with the theory.

NOTE FROM GP: Gotta weigh in, perhaps ignorantly. Light is both a wave and a particle in quantum physics. Why? Because what it appears to be, is a function of how you examine it, not when examine it. Metaphorically, look at it from the left, it's a waveform (i.e., has no mass); look at it from the right, it's a particle (oops, has mass) — all at the same time. That doesn't explain the cat story, but it does explain the simultaneous aspect John raised above. (I don't have cats, but my plants are always dead, so I'm no help there.)

Study: College educated conservatives don't believe in science

No wonder the GOP hates education and wants to cut spending on education. To them, unless it's in the Bible, it doesn't count. While this is a unique and daring approach to building a country that can compete it may struggle when other countries focus on education. It's the dumbing down of America, brought to you by our good friends, the conservatives.

Conservatives, particularly those with college educations, have become dramatically more skeptical of science over the past four decades, according to a study published in the April issue of the American Sociological Review. Fewer than 35 percent of conservatives say they have a "great deal" of trust in the scientific community now, compared to nearly half in 1974.

"The scientific community ... has been concerned about this growing distrust in the public with science. And what I found in the study is basically that's really not the problem. The growing distrust of science is entirely focused in two groups—conservatives and people who frequently attend church," says the study's author, University of North Carolina postdoctoral fellow Gordon Gauchat.

In fact, in 1974, people who identified as conservatives were among the most confident in science as an institution, with liberals trailing slightly behind, and moderates bringing up the rear. Liberals have remained fairly steady in their opinion of the scientific community over the interim, while conservative trust in science has plummeted.

The conservatives can take special pride knowing that they aren't alone with being both educated and fearful of education. Pol Pot and his gang were all part of the educated elite in Cambodia. How'd that all work out?

Amazon's Bezos to retrieve Apollo 11 engines from ocean floor

Not that it's not interesting and sure, it would be fun to see them at the Smithsonian, but I'd rather hear about Bezos doing something about a bigger cause that actually impacts the future. Maybe it's just me but the costly mission to locate and then recover old rocket engines isn't as interesting as the less glamorous mission of educating or immunizing or feeding people or other critical issues of our time. MSNBC:

Amazon.com's billionaire founder, Jeff Bezos, says he's funded a successful effort to locate the mammoth rocket engines that sent the Apollo 11 mission on the first leg of its mission to the moon — and now he's planning to bring them up from the Atlantic Ocean floor.

It's shaping up as the latest high-rolling undersea adventure, alongside film director James Cameron's dive to the deepest spot in the Pacific, British billionaire Richard Branson's Virgin Oceanic expedition and the Deepsearch submersible project backed by Google's Eric Schmidt.

Bill Gates still takes flack in some circles but at least he put his money and his brain power into addressing some of the bigger issues of the world and not just stroking his ego like many of the other tech billionaires.

The Scale of the Universe, by a 14 year old

Check this out. It's a sliding scale of the smallest things and the biggest things in the universe, ending with the universe itself.  Then take note that this depiction was made by a 14 year old high school student.  Then feel terribly unfulfilled.

Study: Born-agains have smaller brains

The study is from last year, but this just crossed my desk and I got a chuckle out of it. Philly.com:

Older adults who say they've had a life-changing religious experience are more likely to have a greater decrease in size of the hippocampus, the part of the brain critical to learning and memory, new research finds.

According to the study, people who said they were a "born-again" Protestant or Catholic, or conversely, those who had no religious affiliation, had more hippocampal shrinkage (or "atrophy") compared to people who identified themselves as Protestants, but not born-again.

Now, it's possible that this study doesn't disprove the existence of God at all. It's possible that God simply likes people with smaller brains, which goes a long ways towards explaining American politics. To wit, this wonderful clip from the movie "Defending your life," with Albert Brooks and Meryl Streep. If you haven't seen it, rent it - it's wonderful.

Mice are people too

Very cool video of a mouse fetus developing.  Eerily humanesque - which of course simply means that God has a sick sense of humor.

Study: Horny fruit flies like to get drunk

Seriously. From the NYT:

To test the relationship between stress and alcohol in fruit flies, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, allowed one group of male flies to mate freely with available virgin females. Another group of male flies had the opposite experience: the females they mingled with had already mated, and were thus indifferent to any approach.

After four days, the flies in both groups fed in glass tubes outfitted with four straws, two providing a regular diet of yeast and sugar and two containing yeast, sugar and 15 percent alcohol. Fruit flies as a rule will, like many humans, develop a taste for alcohol and, in time, a preference for the 15 percent solution. But the rejected flies drank a lot more on average, supping from the spiked mixture about 70 percent of the time, compared with about 50 percent for their sexually sated peers.

I wonder what the fruit flies would do if you offered them 72 virgins?

Obama compares GOP to "flat earth society" for attacks on new energy

This is good.  It's a larger theme the Democrats should be pushing more broadly - namely, that the GOP is anti-science, and anti-facts.  Oh, and they basically lie.

Wash Post:

“Lately, we’ve heard a lot of professional politicians, lot of folks running for certain office, they’ve been talking down new sources of energy,” Obama said. Later he added: “Why would someone who wants to lead the country ignore the facts?”