Education

This blog is entering its fifth year today, and the content will be shifting a bit now that I am returning to school. Today was my first day of new graduate student orientation before classes begin next week; I’m a Ph.D. student in Arizona State University’s Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology program, which is beginning its second year. This is an interdisciplinary program within the Graduate College and allied with the School of Life Sciences, so today’s orientation was with new graduate students from other programs in SoLS. SoLS has 250 graduate students in 11 programs, of which 49 are entering this semester. (I chatted a bit with a couple of new graduate students in neuroscience.) There seems to be a wealth of supporting organizations and structures to SoLS programs to assist in getting funding, doing research, participating in education and public outreach, and dealing with administrivia. I’ll be delving into as much of it as I can, and periodically reporting on items of particular interest here. From today’s orientation, a few items that are part of SoLS education and public outreach are worthy of note. ASU has an “Ask-a-Biologist” program online, which you can also follow via Twitter. That program is intended for students in grades K-12, and is projected to hit a million visitors this year. There’s also the Science Studio Podcasts for adult education. And the International Institute for Species Exploration website. There’s also a program run by SoLS graduate students called Graduate Partners in Science Education, where graduate student volunteers work with underprivileged and at-risk junior high school students on field biology research projects. My current aim in the HSDST program is to build upon my past graduate experience in philosophy and cognitive science, my career in Internet services and information security, my interest in skeptical inquiry and critical thinking, and my interest in law to explore the concepts of trust and reputation as they pertain to online and digital media. At the moment, I’m signed up for a seminar on “Law, Science, and Technology,” a seminar on “Human and Social Dimensions of Climate Change,” the HSDST Core Seminar and Colloquium, and a course with one of my favorite undergraduate philosophy professors on Advanced Logic (that’s my “just for fun” class). Tomorrow’s a reception for all of the new graduate students at ASU’s Tempe campus, and later in the week I have some training on fire and lab safety–and next week, it’s back to class. ...

Via Pharyngula, a video rebuttal to a recent Bill O’Reilly show claim that Amsterdam’s drug policies are a failure that has led it to be a “cesspool of corruption, crime, everything is out of control, it’s anarchy,” according to guest Monica Crowley, Ph.D. (In a bit of irony, her doctorate is in “international relations.” She’s a Fox News foreign affairs and policy analyst who was a personal foreign policy assistant to Richard Nixon from 1990-1994–I didn’t realize former presidents needed personal foreign policy assistants.) Various cities in the Netherlands have placed additional restrictions on coffee shops that sell marijuana, such as not permitting them to operate within 200m of a school. The Wikipedia entry on drug policy in the Netherlands documents this, along with the details of their decriminalization (not legalization) policies. ...

This is a reverse-chronological list of conference and talk summaries I’ve written up, either at my blog or elsewhere. Most pertain to skepticism and critical thinking in some way (and I’d like to think that all involve the application of skepticism and critical thinking to the topics at hand), some are political, and some involve information security. I’ve got a few more of these in print form that are online in the issues of the Arizona Skeptic. Bruce Wagman on “Many Species of Animal Law," April 7, 2010, Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, Tempe, Arizona, Armstrong Hall 116. Joel Garreau on Radical Evolution, November 18, 2009, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, Coor 5536, CSPO Plausibility Project. Richard Carrier on “Christianity and Science (Ancient and Modern)," November 8, 2009, Humanist Society of Greater Phoenix, Home Town Buffet, Scottsdale. Robert B. Laughlin on “The Crime of Reason," November 5, 2009, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, Sandra Day O’Connor School of Law, Great Hall; 2009 Hogan & Hartson Jurimetrics Lecture in Honor of Lee Loevinger. Roger Pielke Jr. on climate change adaptation, November 5, 2009, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, Decision Theater. Roger Pielke Jr. on climate change mitigation, November 5, 2009, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, Coor 5536. Robert Balling on climate change, October 30, 2009, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, Coor L1-74. Personalized medicine research forum, October 23, 2009, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, The Biodesign Institute. Atheist Alliance International convention, October 2-4, 2009, Burbank Marriott, Burbank, California. Speakers: P.Z. Myers, Ed Buckner, Lawrence Krauss, Carolyn Porco, Martin Pera, Jerry Coyne, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Gerardo Romero, Jonathan Kirsch, Eugenie Scott, Brian Parra. Marco Iacoboni on imitation and sociality, August 27, 2009, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, psychology department colloquium, MU202. Joel Garreau on the future of cities, August 26, 2009, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes colloquium, Coor L1-10. The Amazing Meeting 7, July 9-12, 2009 at the South Point Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas, Nevada. Part 1: Introduction, Hal Bidlack, Phil Plait, James Randi, Bill Prady keynote. Part 2: Fintan Steele, Phil Plait, Robert Lancaster. Part 3: Jamy Ian Swiss/James Randi, Jennifer Ouellette, anti-anti-vax panel (Steven Novella, David Gorski, Joe Albietz, Harriet Hall, Michael Goudeau, Derek Bartholomaus), Joe Nickell. Part 4: Skeptics Guide to the Universe/Rodrigues-Watson wedding, Michael Shermer, Adam Savage. Part 5: Panel on ethics of deception (D.J. Grothe, Penn Jillette, Teller, Ray Hyman, Jamy Ian Swiss), Stephen Bauer, panel on skepticism and the media (Penn Jillette, Teller, Adam Savage, Bill Prady, Jennifer Ouellette), Phil Plait. Part 6: Sunday paper sessions, Million Dollar Challenge with Danish dowser Connie Sonne. Science-Based Medicine Conference at The Amazing Meeting 7, July 9, 2009 at the South Point Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas, Nevada. Part 1: Steven Novella on science-based medicine. Part 2: David Gorski on cancer quackery. Part 3: Harriet Hall on chiropractic. Part 4: Kimball Atwood on evidence-based medicine and homeopathy. Part 5: Mark Crislip on chronic Lyme disease. Part 6: Val Jones on online health and social media, and Q&A panel. American Humanist Association annual conference at Tempe Mission Palms Hotel, Tempe, Arizona, June 5-9, 2009. Sorry, only covered my own talk from the pre-conference workshops and the ArizonaCOR press conference. Jeff Benedict on the Kelo case and his book Little Pink House, Goldwater Institute, Phoenix, Arizona, April 15, 2009. SkeptiCamp Phoenix, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, March 28, 2009. Speakers: Tony Barnhart, Abraham Heward, David Jackemeyer, Don Lacey, Jim Lippard, Shannon Rankin, John Lynch, Jack Ray, David Weston, Mike Stackpole, Charlie Cavanaugh Toft, Xarold Trejo. Daniel Dennett’s 2009 Beyond Center Lecture, Galvin Playhouse, Arizona State University, February 18, 2009, on “Darwin’s ‘Strange Inversion of Reasoning.’" Bill of Rights celebration event at the Wrigley Mansion, Phoenix, Arizona, December 14, 2008. The Amazing Meeting 6, June 19-22, 2008 at the Flamingo Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas, Nevada. Overview and photo link. Part 1: Banachek memory workshop. Part 2: Hal Bidlack, James Randi welcome, Ben Goldacre on homeopathy, Neil deGrasse Tyson keynote, Alec Jason on Peter Popoff and criminal forensics, Penn & Teller Q&A, George Hrab musical interlude, P.Z. Myers on bat wings, Richard Saunders on educational materials for kids, panel discussion on identifying as a skeptic (James Randi, P.Z. Myers, Michael Shermer, Margaret Downey, Phil Plait, Hal Bidlack, and a member of the NYC Skeptics whose name I didn’t catch). Part 3: Michael Shermer on the Skeptologists and why people believe weird things, Sharon Begley on creationism and other weird beliefs, Derek and Swoopy on Skepticality and podcasting, Steven Novella on dualism and creationism, Jeff Wagg JREF update, Jim Underdown on the Independent Investigations Group and award to Randi, Randi on patching up relations with CSI (formerly CSICOP), Skeptologists pilot. Part 4: Phil Plait on astronomy, Adam Savage on his Maltese falcon, Matthew Chapman on creationism and Science Debate 2008, Richard Wiseman on the “colour changing card trick” and mass spoonbending lesson, panel discussion on the limits of skepticism (Goldacre, Daniel Loxton, Radford, Savage, Novella, Hrab, Randi, Banachek, and Saunders), Sunday conference papers: John Janks on Marfa lights, Don Nyberg on pseudoscience, Steve Cuno on myths in marketing, Tracy King on viral video. Part 5: Lee Graham on artificial creatures and real evolution, Christopher French on anomalistic psychology, Tim Farley on building skeptical tools online, Brian Dunning on The Skeptologists. Gene Healey on his book The Cult of the Presidency, Goldwater Institute, Phoenix, Arizona, May 1, 2008. Richard Dawkins 2008 Beyond Center Lecture, Grady Gammage Auditorium, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, March 6, 2008, on “The God Delusion." New Mexico InfraGard Member Alliance “$-Gard” conference, February 22, 2008, Albuquerque, New Mexico. Speakers: Frank Abagnale on protecting yourself from fraud, Anthony Clark and Danny Quist on malware secrets, Alex Quintana on current trends in malware, Melissa McBee-Anderson on the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3). Ayaan Hirsi Ali at the Phoenician Resort, Goldwater Institute award banquet, Phoenix, Arizona, December 7, 2007. Screening of “Mr. Conservative” documentary about Barry Goldwater, Goldwater Institute, Phoenix, Arizona, August 16, 2007. Features Barry Goldwater, George Will, Barry Goldwater, Jr., Sandra Day O’Connor, Ben Bradlee, Sally Quinn, Al Franken, Julian Bond, Hillary Clinton, and Jack Valenti. Ron Paul launches Arizona campaign at private home in Paradise Valley, Arizona, March 30, 2007. Followed up by Einzige’s “Ron Paul, Religious Kook," my “Spammers and criminals for Ron Paul," and “Ron Paul connected to white supremacists?" Skeptics Society conference on “The Environmental Wars," Caltech, Pasadena, California, June 2006. Intro and links to other summaries. Jonathan Adler on federal environmental regulation. Eugenie Scott on “Creationism and Evolution: Current Perspectives," Robert S. Dietz Memorial Lecture at Arizona State University, Physical Sciences building, February 3, 2006. National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C) Economic Crime Summit, November 8-9, 2005, downtown Phoenix, Arizona, and Freedom Summit, November 12-13, 2005, Grace Inn Ahwatukee. Economic Crime Summit and Freedom Summit comparison/contrast/overview–prayer vs. atheism debate, Terry Goddard, Roger Vanderpool, John Vincent, Kevin Robinson, Charles Cohen, George H. Smith, Eric Lounsbery, David Friedman, Chris Heward, Karen Kwiatkowski, Jim Bovard. Freedom Summit: Stuart Krone on technology and why we’re screwed. Freedom Summit: Steven Greer on aliens and conspiracy. Freedom Summit: Links to photos and other summaries. CSICOP Conference on “The Psychology of Belief," Seattle, Washington, June 23-26, 1994. CSICOP Conference on “Fairness, Fraud, and Feminism: Culture Confronts Science," Dallas, Texas, October 16-18, 1992. Part 1: Panel on multicultural approaches to science (moderator Eugenie Scott, Diana Marinez, Joseph Dunbar, Bernard Ortiz de Montellano), unofficial session on faith healing with Ole Anthony. Part 2: Intro remarks by Lee Nisbet, panel on gender issues in science and pseudoscience (moderator James Alcock, Carol Tavris, Susan Blackmore, Steven Goldberg), Richard Dawkins keynote on viruses of the mind. Part 3: Fraud in science panel (moderator Ray Hyman, Elie Shneour, Paul Friedman, Walter Stewart), Sergei Kapitza and Evry Schatzman on international skepticism, panel on crashed saucer claims (Philip Klass, James McGaha). Part 4: Robert Young on the Kecksburg meteor, Donald Schmitt on Roswell, awards banquet (Richard Dawkins, Henry Gordon, Andrew Skolnick), entertainment by Steve Shaw (now better known as Banachek), visit to Dealey Plaza. CSICOP Workshop on UFOs, Ramada Inn Airport Hotel, Tucson, Arizona, November 16-17, 1990. James McGaha, Robert Sheaffer, Robert Baker, and Ronald Story, all on UFOs.

Cambridge University physicist David MacKay’s book, Sustainable Energy: Without the Hot Air, is available for free download or perusal in a variety of forms including HTML, PDF and PostScript, at the website www.withouthotair.com.

From the J-Walk blog: Pat Robertson answers a question from a “pastor of a ministry to international college students” who asks whether his ministry leaders should be permitted to study the Koran in order to understand Islam, which he thinks is a bad idea since “there are plenty of Christian resources out there to get information on other religions." Robertson’s reply: Kelly, it won’t be wrong if somebody studies Islam, but they need guided study, because somebody needs to go along and point out the incredible inconsistencies in that book. And if you have a guided study of the Koran and see how much in there is just repetitious, how much comes out of the Old Testament and the New Testament, how much is just plagiarism from the Bible, etc.?. ...

A conference on “The Religious-Secular Divide: The U.S. Case” will be held on March 5-6, 2009 at The New School in New York City. The conference will: explore the tension between religion and secularity in the United States, which is long-standing, widespread, and increasingly intense. This is evident in contemporary debates over such issues as evolution and intelligent design, the importance of religion in political decision-making, and in spiritual or faith-based philanthropy. These issues will be addressed from the perspectives of religious studies, legal studies, political science, sociology, and philosophy. Charles Taylor will deliver the keynote address on March 5th at 6:00pm.The conference website may be found here. The current speaker list is: Richard J. Bernstein Jose Casanova David L. Chappell William E. Connolly James Davison Hunter Daniel Dennett Noah Feldman Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad Susan F. Harding George Kateb Mark Lilla David Martin Michael W. McConnell James A. Morone John T. Noonan, Jr. Ann Pellegrini Winnifred Sullivan Charles Taylor Peter van der Veer ...

Jeff Jacobsen has written a detailed article about the Anonymous protests against Scientology, which brings the reader up-to-date on Internet-supported counter-Scientology protesting since the article we wrote for Skeptic in 1995, “Scientology v. the Internet: Free Speech and Copyright Infringement on the Information Superhighway." The new article is called “We Are Legion: Anonymous and the War on Scientology." Check it out. Historical Comments Reed (2008-12-19): I've read the first chapter. Jacobsen provides much detail on the CoS's missteps of which I've heard only bits and pieces over the years. Excellent stuff.What made it especially engaging was having read and studied Shirky's book beforehand. Anonymous' protest serves as a fascinating example of undirected collective action of which Shirky basically said "it's coming."IIRC, Shirky's book hit the shelves about the same time the Anonymous thing got big. ...

I’m generally quite averse to watching sports, let alone reading about them. But I did read Michael Lewis’s Moneyball at one sitting and just read Malcolm Gladwell’s “Most Likely to Succeed” in the December 15 issue of The New Yorker. Gladwell’s article looks at examples of jobs where there are few, if any, available measurements of performance available before hiring that correlate with success in the position. The performance of college quarterbacks doesn’t track their success in the NFL (apparently due to factors such as the sizes of players and the types of offensive formations used), and none of the items on a resumé seem to predict the success of teachers or financial advisors. Yet quality of teaching is a huge factor in student educational success (as I’ve previously noted on this blog with regard to an Economist article about a McKinsey & Co. study that compared education across OECD nations). As The Economist article I referenced noted, “Studies in Tennessee and Dallas have shown that, if you take pupils of average ability and give them to teachers deemed in the top fifth of the profession, they end up in the top 10% of student performers; if you give them to teachers from the bottom fifth, they end up at the bottom. The quality of teachers affects student performance more than anything else." Gladwell suggests that we should find a way to hire more teachers, have them apprentice with demonstrably successful teachers, and weed out the bad ones. But the most successful nations do not follow Gladwell’s suggestion of increasing the number of new teachers, instead doing nearly the opposite. Again quoting The Economist: ...

Radley Balko on Palin’s performance in the VP debate: Palin was rambling, didn’t answer the questions she was asked, and the folksy stuff felt contrived. I suppose Palin did okay in that she didn’t come off like the train wreck she was in her Katie Couric interview, but Jesus, is that the standard? Is the bar that low for vice president of the United States? That seems to be the way the conventional wisdom is playing out. Oddly, the Couric interview may have actually helped her, then. Palin seems to have crammed just enough so she could toss out key phrases here and there to give the veneer that she’s informed. But it’s pretty clear she was in way over her head for most of the debate. Pick her apart with follow-up questions, as Couric and Gibson did, and she falls to pieces. ...

Sam Harris has a great op-ed piece at Newsweek: The problem, as far as our political process is concerned, is that half the electorate revels in Palin’s lack of intellectual qualifications. When it comes to politics, there is a mad love of mediocrity in this country. “They think they’re better than you!” is the refrain that (highly competent and cynical) Republican strategists have set loose among the crowd, and the crowd has grown drunk on it once again. “Sarah Palin is an ordinary person!” Yes, all too ordinary. ...