Education

Now on YouTube, “In God We Teach," a documentary about Matt LaClair’s exposure of his U.S. History teacher’s proselytization in the public school classroom. Historical Comments Alan (2012-05-31): Very well done documentary. Well worth the time to watch. Thanks for the link. – Alan Ed Darrell (2013-01-30): Amazing to me that in 2011 that was still a controversy: http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2007/02/20/fisking-paszkiewicz-or-virtual-carnage-in-kearny-nj/#more-447 ...

Below these two videos is a post I made (perhaps to the Kate Bush fans’ “love-hounds” mailing list, I don’t recall) back in 1986 regarding a 1985 Christian “rock music seminar” about alleged Satanic backwards messages in rock music. I was familiar with the claims of supposed “backwards masking” where the sounds of ordinary lyrics were interpreted to have different messages when reversed, as well as actual examples of recordings that were put into songs in reverse. The former seemed to me to be examples of subjective validation, and I tested it myself by closing my eyes and covering my ears when the presenter gave their claims about what we were supposed to hear prior to playing the samples. Subsequently, this became one of the first tests the Phoenix Skeptics conducted as a student group at Arizona State University in October 1985. We invited the speaker to give his demonstrations before our group, but required him to play the samples first without explanation and have everyone write down what they heard. The result was that on the first pass, those unfamiliar with the samples had a wide variety of responses; on a second pass, once the expectation was set, everybody heard what they were supposed to hear. It’s interesting that this demonstration, the key example of which was a sample from Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven,” made a comeback two decades later–being used by skeptics to show the power of suggestion and expectation, as these two videos from Simon Singh and Michael Shermer demonstrate. Simon Singh, 2006: ...

British former surgeon Andrew Wakefield, whose discredited and abusive research was responsible for the resurgence of measles outbreaks in the UK and the U.S., is not just coming to Phoenix this Saturday, he is being celebrated by the Autism Society of Greater Phoenix at the Ritz Carlton Hotel. Wakefield’s 1998 paper in The Lancet reported symptoms of inflammatory bowel disease in twelve children with autism, and speculated that the cause was the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine. What it didn’t report was that Wakefield had a financial interest in his own alternative vaccine, that he had been paid by attorneys who were trying to prove that MMR vaccines were harmful, that his test subjects were recruited by those attorneys from among their plaintiffs, or that Wakefield engaged in unnecessary colonoscopies, colon biopsies, and spinal taps on children in his study. Ten of Wakefield’s 12 co-authors published a retraction of his interpretation of the paper, and the original paper was withdrawn by the journal this year. Wakefield’s name has been struck from the register of British medical doctors as a result of his unethical behavior. The publication of his paper was responsible for a significant drop in UK vaccination rates due to fear of a link to autism, which was accompanied by a rise in measles outbreaks (but no drop in autism diagnosis rates). It is a pity that the Autism Society of Greater Phoenix is promoting an unethical, discredited quack. ...

Science fiction has been a popular genre at least since Jules Verne’s 19th century work, and arguably longer still. But can it have practical value as well as be a form of escapist entertainment? Clark Miller and Ira Bennett of ASU suggest that it has potential for use in improving the capacity of the general public “to imagine and reason critically about technological futures” and for being integrated into technology assessment processes (“Thinking longer term about technology: is there value in science fiction-inspired approaches to constructing futures?" Science and Public Policy 35(8), October 2008, pp. 597-606). Miller and Bennett argue that science fiction can provide a way to stimulate people to wake from “technological somnambulism” (Langdon Winner’s term for taking for granted or being oblivious to sociotechnical changes), in order to recognize such changes, realize that there may be alternative possibilities and that particular changes need not be determined, and to engage with deliberative processes and institutions that choose directions of change. Where most political planning is short-term and based on projections that simply extend current trends incrementally into the future, science fiction provides scenarios which exhibit “non-linearity” by involving multiple, major, and complex changes from current reality. While these scenarios “likely provide…little technical accuracy” about how technology and society will actually interact, they may still provide ideas about alternative possibilities, and in particular to provide “clear visions of desirable–and not so desirable–futures.” The article begins with a quote from Christine Peterson of the Foresight Institute recommending that “hard science fiction” be used to aid in “long-term” (20+ year) prediction scenarios; she advises, “Don’t think of it as literature,” and focus on the technologies rather than the people. Miller and Bennett, however, argue otherwise–that not only is science fiction useful for thinking about longer-term consequences, but that the parts about the people–how technologies actually fit into society–are just as, if not more important than the ideas about the technologies themselves. It ends with some examples of use of science fiction in workshops for nanotechnology researchers which have been conducted by Bennett and suggested uses in science education and in “society’s practices and institutions for public engagement and technology assessment.” About the former suggested use, the authors write that “The National Science Foundation, which has by and large not been in the business of supporting science fiction, might be encouraged to fund training and/or networking exercises that would foster greater interaction among scientists and fiction writers.” While some steps have been taken to promote interaction between scientists and fiction writers–most notably the National Academy of Sciences’ Science and Entertainment Exchange project headed by executive director Jennifer Ouellette who spoke at last year’s The Amazing Meeting 7–this interaction is mostly one-way. The project is conceived of as a way for science to be accurately communicated to the general public through entertainment, rather than facilitating the generation of ideas for technological innovation and scientific development from the general public or the entertainment stories that are created. The SEE promotes the idea of collaboration between scientists and entertainment producers on the creative works of entertainment, but not necessarily directing creative feedback into science or building new capacities in science and technology, except indirectly by providing the general public with inspiration about science. Similarly, the Skeptrack and Science Track at the annual Dragon*Con science fiction convention in Atlanta provide ways for scientists and skeptics to interact with science fiction fans (and creators of science fiction works), but the communication is primarily in one direction via speakers and panels, with an opportunity for Q&A. (Unlike the notion of a SkeptiCamp, where all participants are potentially on an equal basis, with everyone given the opportunity to be a presenter.) [P.S. The Long Now Foundation is an organization that makes the Foresight Institute’s time horizon look short–their time frame is the next 10,000 years, with a focus on how to make extremely long-term projects work and how to create an institutional framework that can persist for extremely long periods of time. (The obligatory science fiction references are Walter M. Miller, Jr.’s A Canticle for Leibowitz and Neal Stephenson’s Anathem.)] [A slightly different version of the above was written for my Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology core seminar. Thanks to Judd A. for his comments–he raised the concern that SkeptiCamp is connected to a rationalist form of skepticism that is concerned to “narrow the range of ‘acceptable’ beliefs” rather than widen it. While this may be true, depending on what the class of “acceptable” beliefs is prior to applying a skeptical filter, it need not be–applying scientific methodology and critical thinking can also open up possibilities for individuals. And if the initial set of beliefs includes all possibilities, converting that set to knowledge must necessarily involve narrowing rather than expanding the range, as there are many more ways to go wrong than to go right. But this criticism points out something that I’ve observed in my comparison of skepticism to Forteanism–skepticism is more concerned about avoiding Type I errors than Type II errors, while Forteans are more concerned about avoiding Type II errors than Type I errors, and these are complementary positions that both need representation in society.] ...

Matthew LaClair, who exposed his proselytizing U.S. history teacher/youth pastor in 2006, now hosts his own radio show, “Equal Time for Freethought,” on WBAI 99.5 FM on Sundays at 6:30 p.m. ET in the New York/New Jersey/Connecticut area. The show is also online via streaming audio. This coming Sunday, April 25, Matthew will be debating a conservative member of the Texas Board of Education about their recent changes to the curriculum (e.g., removing Thomas Jefferson). If you happen to miss the show, it will subsequently be available in the online archives.

Studies of the public understanding of science generally produce results that show a disturbingly high level of ignorance. When asked to agree or disagree with the statement that “ordinary tomatoes do not contain genes, while genetically modified tomatoes do,” only 36% of Europeans answered correctly in 2002 (and only 35% in 1999 and 1996, Eurobarometer Biotechnology Quiz). Those in the U.S. did better with this question, with 45% getting it right; Canada and the Netherlands got the highest level of correct answers (52% and 51%, respectively). Tests of similar statements, such as “Electrons are smaller than atoms,” “The earliest human beings lived at the same time as the dinosaurs,” and “How long does it take the Earth to go around the Sun: one day, one month, or one year,” all yield similarly low levels of correct responses. Public understanding of science research shows individuals surveyed to be remarkably ignorant of particular facts about science, but is that the right measure of how science is understood and used by the public at large? Such surveys ask about disconnected facts independent from a context in which they might be used, and measure only an individual’s personal knowledge. If, instead, those surveyed were asked who among their friends would they rely upon to obtain the answer to such a question, or how would they go about finding a reliable answer to the question, the results might prove to be quite different. Context can be quite important. In the Wason selection task, individuals are shown four cards labeled, respectively, “E”, “K,” “4,” and “7,” and are asked which cards they would need to turn over in order to test the rule, “If a card has a vowel on one side, then it has an even number on the other side.” Test subjects do very well at recognizing that the “E” card needs to be turned over (corresponding to the logical rule of modus ponens), but very poorly at recognizing that the “7,” rather than the “4,” needs to be turned over to find out if the rule holds (i.e., they engage in the fallacy of affirming the consequent rather than use the logical rule of modus tollens). But if, instead of letters and numbers, a scenario with more context is constructed, subjects perform much more reliably. In one variant, subjects were told to imagine that they are post office workers sorting letters, and looking to find those which do not comply with a regulation that requires an additional 10 lire of postage on sealed envelopes. They are then presented with four envelopes (two face down, one opened and one sealed, and two face up, one with a 50-lire stamp and one with a 40-lire stamp) and asked to test the rule “If a letter is sealed, then it has a 50-lire stamp on it.” Subjects then recognize that they need to turn over the sealed face-down envelope and the 40-lire stamped envelope, despite its logical equivalent to the original selection task that they perform poorly on. Sheila Jasanoff, in Designs on Nature, argues that measures of the public understanding of science are not particularly relevant to how democracies actually use science. Instead, she devotes chapter 10 of her book to an alternative approach, “civic epistemology,” which is a qualitative framework for understanding the methods and practices of a community’s generation and use of knowledge. She offers six dimensions of civic epistemologies: ...

Today I went to hear Bruce Wagman speak on the subject of “Many Species of Animal Law” at ASU’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. Wagman, an attorney with Schiff Hardin who is also an outside litigator for the Animal Legal Defense Fund, has litigated cases involving animals for 18 years, written a case book on animal law, and teaches animal law courses at several law schools as an adjunct faculty member. He was introduced by ASU Law School Dean Paul Berman and Arizona Court of Appeals Judge Pat Norris. Wagman began by defining “animal law” as any law where the status of an animal matters–psychological, biological, welfare, etc. status of the animal, as opposed to its value as property. He suggested that animal law attorneys “may be the only lawyers on earth whose clients are all innocent." He divided his talk up into multiple “species” of animal law. Species 1: Companion Animal Issues He said this makes up the majority of his cases, and includes injuries by or to animals, including veterinary malpractice. The challenge is to get courts to recognize that animals are not merely property, since historically companion animals have been viewed as property with low or even zero market value. In cases where an animal is injured or killed, the market value doesn’t recognize the interests of the animal or other kinds of value that companion animals give. Under the American Law Institute’s Restatements of the Law, however, there is a notion of “special property” (or “peculiar property” in California’s statutes) which allows quantification of other kinds of worth to an animal owner, for instance if the animal is a therapy dog. There are no emotional stress damages available. Other sorts of companion animal cases include custody disputes, which often occur as a result of one partner just trying to inflict distress on another rather than having actual interest in the animal. Wagman said that courts are beginning to take a better look at the interests of the animal in such cases, and be willing to appoint a guardian ad litem, as occurred in the Michael Vick case and in another case in Tennessee where there was a dispute over custody of a dog between a dead man’s girlfriend and parents. There are dangerous dog issues, where an attorney may be fighting against the classification of a dog as a dangerous or vicious animal, or against its euthanasia–what he called “capital cases” for animals. In three counties surrounding San Francisco, what happens in the case of a dog biting another dog that requires stitches varies dramatically. In one county, the dog gets a period of probation. In another, the dog gets labeled as a dangerous or vicious dog, which requires the owner to meet various conditions of housing the dog, having a certain height of fence, carry additional insurance, and so forth. And in Santa Clara County, the dog gets euthanized. He pointed out that that county’s statute has an exemption for “mitigating circumstances” which he’s successfully used to prevent dogs from being euthanized. Finally, there are wills and trusts–he said he doesn’t do that sort of work, but that 48 states now have mechanisms for having trusts for animals. He said he considers companion animals to be a sort of “gateway animal” for getting recognition of animals in the law, and noted that we tend to be “speciesists” who would feel very different about snakes vs. Labrador Retrievers. [IMO, this is rational to the extent that animals differ in cognitive capacities, and I note that at no point did he discuss litigating on behalf of cockroaches against pest control companies.] Species 2: Farm animal issues–legislation and litigation. His second species of animal law was about animals killed for food–about 10 billion per year in the United States. He said the goal here is not to stop the killing, but just to improve the living conditions of animals before they’re killed for food. This is problematic, however, because the animal cruelty statutes are criminal rather than civil (with an exception in North Carolina that will be discussed with regard to Species 3 of animal law), and that the criminal law for animal cruelty excludes farm animals in 35 states. He discussed a few of the more abusive methods of animal treatment in factory farming–calf crates, in which calves are placed for about the first 60 days of life, gestation crates for pigs (outlawed in Arizona since 2006, as well as illegal in Florida, Oregon, Colorado, and California), and battery cages for chickens. He also discussed downer animals–animals which are either so seriously injured or ill that they are unable to move, which the meat industry wants to drag in that condition to slaughter. Wagman raised the concern that such animals, if sick, could potentially spread illness to humans, and listed a bunch of diseases that could potentially so spread, with BSE (mad cow) at the top of the list along with avian flu. Of these, only BSE has been documented to spread to humans, and the industry position is that there should be no restrictions on downer pigs unless and until a human actually gets sick. The state of California passed a law that said that all downer animals must be euthanized on the spot; the meat industry sued and overturned the statute in federal district court, but the 9th Circuit just reversed it last week (National Meat Association v. Brown). Species 3: Animal hoarding–private ownership, breeders, and the sanctuary that is not Wagman said that there have been 250,000 documented cases of animal hoarding, and that they are difficult cases to work with in multiple ways. He said he believes such cases involve mental illness, but while the APA has a diagnosis for “hoarding” behavior, it excludes animal hoarding which is considered to be different. How many animals constitutes hoarding? He said he likes to say “more than eight,” because he has eight animals at home. Hoarders characteristics include possessing more animals than they can care for, having a sense of being persecuted, and living in deplorable conditions. He discussed two cases that he litigated, ALDF v. Barbara & Robert Woodley, and ALDF v. Janie Conyers, which involved over 500 animals between them. The former case, in North Carolina, was able to use North Carolina statute 19a, which allows a civil cause of action for animal cruelty. Wagman had some horrifying photos from the Woodley case. They had hundreds of dogs in their home living in their own feces, where ammonia levels were 20 times the USDA maximum allowed in a pig facility. These ammonia levels caused blindness in the dogs, as well as chemical burns to bare skin that contacted the floor, such as dogs’ scrotums. Multiple dogs were kept in wooden boxes with lids on them, and never let out. Mrs. Woodley’s favorite dog, Buddy, not only had his eyes burned to blindness from ammonia, but the bone in the dog’s jaw deteriorated from malnutrition. Local officials had known of Woodley’s problem for 20 years, but considered themselves powerless to do anything about it, since the scale of the problem was so large–the local shelter had only eight kennels, while the Woodleys had about 450 animals. The ALDF had to coordinate a massive effort to manage the rescue of the animals through their case. Conyers was an AKC poodle breeder who had 106 poodles living in their own feces. Wagman said that animal psychological suffering is difficult to show, but it can be done; demonstrating physiological suffering is easier, with objective criteria like the ammonia levels and physical injuries to animals. There is no law against hoarding (except in Hawaii), just the criminal abuse statutes (and civil in NC). In the hoarding cases the abuse is typically neglect rather than active abuse. Species 4: Exotic animal ownership Wagman has handled about 10 chimpanzee cases. One was a case involving a couple in West Covina, California who had a chimp named Moe for 35 years that bit two people. He argued for a guardian ad litem to determine what was in the best interests of the chimp, and arranged to get Jane Goodall and Roger Fouts for that role. The court looked upon it favorably, but the couple came to an out-of-court settlement. He also briefly discussed the Stamford, Connecticut case of Travis, the 200-pound chimpanzee who attacked a woman that was in the news last year. He argued that there should be a legislative fix to ban exotic animal ownership completely–they’re wild animals. [A complete ban seems to me too much–there should be exceptions for research, conservation, breeding programs for endangered species, and so forth. And shouldn’t it be possible to domesticate other wild animals?] Connecticut has taken the step of banning chimp ownership. Species 5: Shelter practices - euthanasia, veterinary care, adequate food, water, and sanitation, and hold periods Animal shelters have an overwhelming job, said Wagman. The County of Los Angeles, which he sued, operates seven shelters which handle tens of thousands of animals per year. California law says that all animals must get veterinary care and be held for five days, and allowing animal suffering without treatment is not permissible. The shelters’ own records showed that they weren’t meeting that standard for thousands of animals, but they’re now working to meet them and having their activity monitored for compliance. A similar set of cases occurred in Kentucky, when the state transferred all shelter responsibility to the counties. Although the standards of care were minimal, they weren’t meeting it, and there were nutrition, veterinary care, and euthanasia issues. Upon getting notice, they quickly took action to remedy. In Georgia, by contrast, there is a statute that prohibits the use of gas chambers for euthanization at shelters, but the Commissioner of Agriculture sent out letters to the shelters asking that they purchase gas chambers for euthanization. Gas chambers apparently have very ugly results in some cases, such as with unhealthy dogs. A lawsuit against the state of Georgia for its failure to comply with its own statute resulted an an injunction, which they then immediately violated by sending out more letters asking for gas chamber purchases. After obtaining a contempt ruling from the court, they finally got compliance. Species 6: Entertainment Wagman called this category both the most obvious and the most hidden. The use of animals in entertainment is obvious, but what is not obvious is what goes on behind the scenes, the knowledge of which drains the fun out of the entertainment. Circuses, zoos, film and TV ads, animal fighting, public appearances, racing and rodeos, and hunting and fishing are all cases of animals used for entertainment. Wagman first discussed elephants in circuses, commenting on a recent Ringling Brothers case which was tossed out on an issue of standing. The case involved the use of bullhooks for elephant training, which injures the animals. The defense didn’t deny use of bullhooks, but claimed that they only use them as “guides." Elephant treatment in zoos is also problematic, since standing around on hard surfaces causes painful arthritis. In the wild, elephants are awake 21 hours a day and may move 35 miles per day. Wagman discussed dog fighting, and said that the Michael Vick case was a wakeup call for America to the reality of dog fighting, which exists in every state and most major cities. He argued that the use of great apes in film and television should be banned, because of how the training process works. He said that while trainers claim to use only positive reinforcement training, an undercover person who volunteered for a year and a half with trainer Sid Yost found otherwise. A young chimpanzee is immediately treated to beating and punching to get them to comply. Their performance lifetime is about 3-5 years, after which they become to strong to conrol, and end up in private homes, in research, or in zoos, often all alone in barren cases. Wagman pointed out that the common use of a “smiling” chimpanzee is actually a fear grimace. He does lots of work for sanctuaries, of which there are nine in the U.S. for chimpanzees (including chimpsanctuarynw.org). Regarding hunting, he distinguished traditional hunting from canned hunting and Internet hunting. Hunting is protected in most states, including in many state constitutions. Canned hunting ranches, where animals are fed by hand by humans before they are flushed out into open areas to be shot, are not considered to be hunting by most traditional hunters. [But is considered hunting by our former Vice President, Dick Cheney.] Internet hunting, where a rifle can be fired at live animals over the Internet, has been banned in 30 states. He mentioned mountain lion hunting in the Black Hills of South Dakota, where mountain lions have become fairly scarce. A lawsuit was filed to try to stop the hunting on grounds of near-extinction of the animals, but the injunction was denied on the grounds that there were unlikely to be any mountain lions even found and killed. Two mountain lions were killed shortly thereafter in fairly quick succession, and even though there was a law that prohibited killing female mountain lions with cubs, the second one killed had a cub, and there was no prosecution. Some Adidas shoes are made with kangaroo skin, and the state of California has banned the importation of kangaroo skin, which Adidas ignored. Adidas was sued as a result, and they lost at the California Supreme Court–but they responded by persuading the legislature to repeal the ban rather than changing their practices. Species 7: Species and breed-specific legislation and ADA breedism case. A variety of dog breeds have been considered at various times and places to be “bad dogs” that create a special danger. After WWII, it was German Shepherds and Dobermans. All cases to stop such breed-specific legislation have failed, because the “rational relation” standard is met by only a single case of harm. A case in progress right now in Concord, California involves Theresa Huerta, a woman suing under the Americans with Disabilities Act to keep her pit bull therapy dog from being euthanized. Wagman concluded by saying that his overall objective is to keep the public and the courts focused on the real issue, which is ending blatant cases of animal abuse. Animal law is a growing field, and there’s an annual animal law conference in Portland that’s now in its fifth year. ...

Yesterday I heard Joel Garreau speak again at ASU, as part of a workshop on Plausibility put on by the Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes (CSPO). I previously posted a summary of his talk back in August on the future of cities. This talk was based on his book, Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies–and What It Means to Be Human. Garreau was introduced by Paul Berman, Dean of the Sandra Day O’Connor School of Law at ASU, who also announced that Garreau will be joining the law school faculty beginning this spring, as the Lincoln Professor for Law, Culture, and Values. He began by saying that we’re at a turning point in history [has there ever been a time when we haven’t thought that, though?], and he’s going to present some possible scenarios for the next 2, 3, 5, 10, or 20 years, and that his book is a roadmap. The main feature of this turning point is that rather than transforming our environment, we’ll be increasingly transforming ourselves, and we’re the first species to take control of its own evolution, and it’s happening now. At some point in the not-too-distant future, he said, your kid may come home from school in tears about how he can’t compete with the other kids who are more intelligent, more athletic, more attractive, more attentive, and so forth–because you haven’t invested in the human enhancement technologies coming on the market. Your possible reactions will be to suck it up [somebody’s still gotta do the dirty jobs in society?], remortgage the house again to make your kid competitive, or try to get the enhanced kids thrown out of school. What you can’t do is ignore it. He then asked people to raise their hands who could remember when things were still prevalent: ...

The following is a letter to the editor of Arizona State University’s State Press that the paper didn’t print. It was written in response to an editorial by Will Munsil, son of Len Munsil, who was editor of the State Press when I was an undergraduate in the 1980s. Len Munsil is an extremely conservative Republican, failed Republican candidate for Governor in 2006, and founder of the Center for Arizona Policy, Arizona’s version of the American Family Affiliation. His daughter, Leigh Munsil, is the State Press’s current editor-in-chief. When Munsil Sr. edited the school paper, he sometimes refused to print my letters to the editor for shaky reasons. The letter below was written in response to Will Munsil’s “Putting the Bible back in public schools," which was published on October 14. I disagree with Will Munsil’s assertion that the Bible is the foundation of American political thought. On the contrary, the American form of government was rooted in the work of enlightenment philosophers such as Locke, Montesquieu, and Rousseau. The U.S. Constitution’s form of government has more resemblance to Caribbean pirate codes than to the Ten Commandments. That said, however, I agree with Munsil that knowledge of the Bible is worthwhile and should be taught in public schools for the purpose of cultural literacy, so long as it is done without endorsing Christianity or Judaism. The Bible Literacy Project’s curriculum might be one way to do it. One way not to do it is to use the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools’ curriculum–it takes a sectarian perspective, is full of errors, and has failed legal challenges in Texas and Florida for being unconstitutional.I suspect this letter wasn’t excluded by reason of content, but because they had already printed a couple of letters critical of Will Munsil’s op-ed by the time I submitted this on October 16. Perhaps I should have mentioned that I’m an atheist, which makes the extent of my agreement with Munsil more interesting. Of course, my view is contrary to Munsil’s in that I think Bible literacy is likely to decrease, rather than increase, religious belief. But it wouldn’t surprise me if the NCBCPS curriculum is the one that Will Munsil had in mind. I should point out that I think it should probably be taught as part of a world religions class that covers more than just Christianity–kids should not only get information about the Bible that they won’t get in Sunday School, they should be informed about other religions, as well as the fact that history has been full of doubters of religion, as documented in Jennifer Michael Hecht’s excellent Doubt: A History. You can find out more about the NCBCPS curriculum that failed legal challenge in Texas here. Munsil cited Stephen Prothero, whose op-ed piece, “We live in a land of biblical idiots,” I wrote about at the Secular Web in early 2007. ...

Today I attended a lecture at ASU by Washington Post writer Joel Garreau, author of Edge Cities and Radical Evolution, about the future of cities. What follows is a rough sketch of his talk based on my notes. He began by saying that he’s interested in culture and values, and isn’t a “gear-head” about the emerging technologies that he’s written about (“GRIN” technologies–genetics, robotics, information systems, and nanotechnology). He currently studies cities–how they are shaped by technology, and how cities shape us. He started with a slide of an old Spanish map of the New World, which was mostly accurate, except for an oversized Florida and drawing California as an island. Why was California shown as an island? Because explorers in the Seattle area saw a body of water that went very far to the south, and explorers in the Baja California area saw a body of water that went very far to the north, and they just connected the dots. That error took 100 years to correct. Spanish explorers would land in Monterey Bay and carry boats inland, expecting to hit water, and they always commented that the Indians in the area seemed to be friendly. Garreau suggested that they were actually laughing at them for pointlessly carrying boats inland. When the explorers would fail to hit another body of water, they would report back that the map was wrong, only to be told that they must not have been where they thought they were. It finally took a decree from the King of Spain to change the map. His next slide was of the Los Angeles area, pointing out what he called “edge cities,” which he called “the biggest change in 150 years of how we build cities.” “Edge cities” are major and new urban centers around old big cities. They have a large amount of office and retail space, lots of jobs, and didn’t exist 30-40 years ago. They are popping up everywhere there is major growth. The area around John Wayne Airport in Orange County, California, is an edge city–it has 5 million square feet of office space (more than Memphis), 600,000 square feet of retail space. It’s not a suburb, or sub-anything. It’s not a bedroom community. It has the features of office parks and all traditional city functions. The edge cities in New Jersey in the greater New York area have more jobs than Manhattan. Phoenix was one of the earliest places to recognize that it was going to have more than one city center–we have major centers downtown, uptown/Central Avenure, Camelback/Biltmore, South Mountain, and Tempe (among others), and these were recognized as centers that would exist by city planners a couple of decades ago. Paris has La Defense as an edge city, as well as Marne-la-Vallee, where EuroDisney is. When superior locations for growth are first found, the rich people move in first, and tend to go uphill, upwind, and upriver, byt Marne-la-Vallee was a poor area that was planned to be an edge city by selecting it as the location for EuroDisney, and it succeeded. Boston edge cities include the Burlington Mall area, MIT area, downtown, Quincy/Braintree, and Framingham area. One major factor that has changed cities are the available modes of transportation. Chicago was formed as a rail town, based around inter- and intra-urban rail. Detroit was formed as an automobile town. The last industrial age downtown built in North America was Calgary, Alberta, Canada in 1914. In 1915, the one millionth Model T Ford came off the assembly line, and ended the old downtowns. The old industrial downtowns were from the 1840s to 1914, and existed because of the necessity of collecting raw materials in one place and having thousands of people there to work on those materials. Prior to those downtowns, cities were places like Jefferson’s Charlottesville, Washington’s Alexandria, and Lincoln’s Philadelphia. Most people earned a living from the land, and lived outside of cities. The automobile suddenly made places outside the old industrial cities far more valuable, like Long Island. Until 1955, the southwestern-most Major League Baseball team was in St. Louis, because movement by train placed constraints on scheduling. The Cardinals were thus the team rooted for by everyone further south and west. Once airplanes came into the picture, baseball could spread, and other cities could become major cities–Los Angeles, Dallas, Phoenix, Seattle, Houston. Garreau asked, if Chicago were leveled, what would you rebuild first–O’Hare, or downtown. O’Hare is more critical today. But the changes caused by automobiles and airplanes is nothing compared to the networked computer, which is making changes more significant and more rapidly than the automobile. He showed a photograph of a Kresge’s in the Capitol Hill area of D.C., explaining that it was a discount 5 & dime store, the K in K-Mart. He said Kresge’s is dead, and K-Mart is dying, but do you think the building is still there, and if so, what is it? The first guess–Starbuck’s–was almost correct. It is a coffee shop. He argued that Kresge’s and K-Mart has been killed by Wal-Mart, which is really an IT company that happens to sell sneakers. He claimed that when you buy a pair of sneakers at Wal-Mart, a process kicks off at check out that starts to make a replacement pair in Malaysia within 24 hours. So why are coffee shops popular, and why do people pay $4 for coffee? Is it the free wireless? He argued that it is a social thing, only marginally about the coffee and the wifi. The main factor around the physical environment is that the rare stuff we can’t digitize, like face-to-face contact, has much higher relative value than it did before. Bill Mitchell of the MIT Media Lab, and former head of the architecture department, has catalogued 87 forms of real estate in cities, all being transformed by information technology. One form is super markets. Garreau asked, if you could get hamburger and toilet paper delivered to your home for free, why would you get in your car to go get groceries? To buy produce or meat, was the answer suggested by the audience. He then showed a photo of a Freshfields, a modern farmer’s market, and showed a photo of booths with tables inside it–it’s also a place to sit and socialize. Another type of building is a prison. He suggested that we don’t need as many prisons if we use GPS anklets or bracelets for nonviolent offenses. He then argued that Moore’s Law will continue to hold for the forseeable future, and we’ve already seen 32 doublings in processors since 1959. The only thing comparable is railroad capacity doubling, which saw 14.5 doublings before leveling out due to requirements of coal, steel, and land, and being superseded by the automobile. The IT limits are the laws of physics, the marketplace, human ingenuity, and our culture and values, and he argued that only our culture and values set real limits for the forseeable future. (In a class yesterday, one of my professors said that a physics professor speaking at ASU last year said that we’ve reached the physical limits for silicon chips, and won’t see any more doublings, but a subsequent new development has already refuted him with a four-times improvement due to nanotechnology–presumably this.) Sequencing the human genome was thought nuts, impossible, and/or would cost a fortune, but was done in 2000 at a fraction of the expected cost, far sooner than anyone expected, thanks to Moore’s Law. Garreau suggested that ten years from now, anything you can put in a lab for $1 million will be something you can put in your home for $1,000; anything you can get now for $1,000 will be “pocket lint.” He used USB memory fobs as an example of today’s “pocket lint." He showed a photo of students at CMU in a computer lab, and asked, “Is there a future for physical university campuses?” He gave a yes, on the grounds that this is where you “meet your first spouse and friends for a lifetime”–the social aspects. Distance learning has been around for a very long time (Benjamin Franklin did learning-by-mail), but it’s always a second choice. Shopping malls, he said, are turning into entertainment spaces. He cited his friend Jaron Lanier (a virtual reality pioneer), who suggests that the first thing to disappear will be escalators, replaced by rides–so when you go up by ferris wheel and come down by water slide, think of Lanier. He observed that if you go to a mall at 10 a.m., you’ll see the senior mall walkers, and if you go in the afternoon, you’ll see “drug dealing rugrats.” (He didn’t note, but I thought of how Arizona Mills Mall in Tempe has turned one space into an indoor miniature golf course.) Office space–is there any future to it? Again, he argued for the social aspect, and maintained that the accidental casual face-to-face contact is impossible to digitize, yet he finds the random conversation at the printer jam (the modern equivalent of the water cooler) to be his most productive time of day. To this, Prof. Brad Allenby objected that there is casual contact in World of Warcraft and Second Life, and we shouldn’t assume that such things can’t be digitizable. Another audience member suggested that because human beings need touch, we need real physical contact. (But that assumes the impossibility of tactile telepresence.) Yet another pointed out that movie theater attendance is up, even though you can watch online or at home cheaper. Garreau said, supposed you decide face-to-face matters, but only need it two days a week–how would that affect where you live? If you only needed it 3 days a month, then where might you live? He said some cities will live, if they are good for face-to-face contact. Others will die, if they aren’t. We’re headed to a profound shift of what is urban/urbane, and cities like Santa Fe are the future. It has 63,000 people, opera, restaurants, second-hand boot stores. The top fastest-growing metro areas are smaller cities that are like villages with face-to-face spaces and are somewhat dispersed. The top ones are Wenatchee, WA, Provo-Orem, UT, Grand Junction, CO, Gulfport-Biloxi, MS, and Myrtle Beach, SC. The top states for real estate price appreciation are Utah, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. Other example cities in this model include the Adams-Morgan area of D.C., Tempe, AZ, and Marrakesh. He then briefly turned to other technologies. He said that Craig Venter says that by the end of this year he will have an organism that “eats CO2 and poops gasoline.” (And his company has just received $600 million in funding from ExxonMobil.) Nanotech may build membranes that purify water. These things will impact where cities become feasible. “Is Darfur the next garden spot?" He then referred to a book by Leo Marx of MIT, titled The Machine in the Garden. He argued that in the industrial age, we suffered a split–we had to come into the cities and leave nature behind. Now we’re trying to put what we like about cities into a garden. In the final Q&A, he said he has a hidden assumption that we will continue moving forward and not go back to pre-industrial society; he said “no petroleum engineers think we’re running out of oil, only cheap oil." He said that we’re seeing a new explosion of religious fervor, and included environmentalism in that, saying that it has its own saints and heretics. He thinks human beings are “hardwired to have faith–even Russia made Marxism into faith,” but said that he’s “a hardcore rationalist” even though “rationalism doesn’t seem to be emotionally satisfying.” He said, following Popper, that “science can’t tell you what is true, only what is false, but it can changes minds without killing people.” (I disagree with his statement that science can’t tell you what is true–theories that keep passing tests do at least approximate truth.) An audience member commented that virtual environments can convey mental and physical aspects, but not emotional and spiritual. Garreau agreed, but I think both (and a few other questioners) were making an unwarranted assumption that virtual environments will not be able to reach a point of being indistinguishable (or very nearly so) from real environments, and thus allowing effective conveyance of body language, subtle gestures, and so forth, perfectly adequate for transmitting emotional information. (As for spiritual properties, I think they’re in need of demonstration before we worry about them–and given claims that have been made about them, it’s surprising that the questioner thought physical proximity was a limitation.) In a conversation with Prof. Allenby afterward, he also pointed out that we may be better able to make judgments of trust in a virtual environment because we are more alert to the possibility of a partial presentation of a personality and to intentional distortions. There are also some types of cues that are more accurately picked up audibly, while visual information can overwhelm those cues. Prof. Allenby also noted that major technological changes may turn what we now think of as fundamental truths into contingencies, and that may include some aspects of what we call human nature. Garreau ended by observing that past predictions of what the future will be like have usually been wrong, becasue things are more complex and more expensive then we think–and then we get blindsided by innovations like the iPhone. ...