A couple of years ago, while my brother and I were spending time with our sick mother, my kids were bored, though understood the importance of what we were doing. My son and step-daughter both saw it as the most boring trip to California we ever made. I agree, but we had to fight to break our mother out of a corrupt healthcare scam cycle where she was shuttled from one facility to another based ONLY on how much they could get from her insurance and Medicare and not on what her care required. But that is another story. Bottom line from that is if you have an elderly family member, get help finding the right care from them and DON'T TRUST the care facilities AT ALL. And if you need help out in California, I have the name of the person you need because he helped us starting on that trip.

But I diverge. My kids were bored. So my son, Jacob, started singing what was then his favorite song: Tom Lehrer's Elements Song (later on his favorite music was Woodie Guthrie songs...now it's all Pokemon). And my step-daughter filmed it with her phone (HA...that beats the Star Trek communicators...they didn't have a camera in those) and posted it on YouTube:

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This began at dKos. In a discussion I think about the origin of Jews (one of those stupid "they're all Europeans!!" BS diaries) the origin of the Indo-Europeans came up. This was a topic I was very into and up on...about 6 years ago or so. Kind of moved on to other topics since then and my knowledge on Indo-Europeans stagnated a bit. So, another Kossite, blue jersey mom, recommended a more recent book on the subject: David Anthony's The Horse, the Wheel, and Language. Which I have now begun to read. Good book so far, if you love the ins and outs of history and archaeology like I do.

I am not going to talk much about the book or Indo-Europeans. I want to ruminate about language in general based on a short section in the book. Particularly how language itself shapes our patterns of thought even without our knowing it.

Americans tend to be unilingual (monolingual?). Which means to most of us, even if we learn a foreign language in school, are shaped by a single language structure. We are completely unaware of the fact that the way our language is structured forces us to shape our thoughts a particular way.  read more »

This comes from the National Center for Science Education:

I thought that you would like to know about a screening of "No
Dinosaurs in Heaven," a new documentary directed by Greta Schiller
about the creationism/evolution controversy, to be held at 6:00 p.m.
on March 15 in the Martin E. Segal Theatre at the Graduate Center of
the City University of New York, 365 Fifth Avenue (at 34th Street) in
Manhattan. The event, part of the Science & the Arts Series, is free
and open to the public.

According to the filmmaker, "No Dinosaurs in Heaven" is "a film essay
that examines the hijacking of science education by religious
fundamentalists, threatening the separation of church and state and
dangerously undermining scientific literacy. The documentary weaves
together two strands: an examination of the problem posed by
creationists who earn science education degrees only to advocate
anti-scientific beliefs in the classroom; and a visually stunning raft
trip down the Grand Canyon, led by Dr. Eugenie Scott, that debunks
creationist explanations for its formation. These two strands expose  read more »

Every year on Darwin's birthday, I like to repost/update my essay explaining evolution and the evidence for it. Darwin's theory of evolution has been one of the most robust theories in science. With some modifications, it is still the basis of our understanding of most of biology. Every Feb 12th (Darwin's Birthday) I post an article or series of articles discussing evolution and the evidence for Darwin's theory.

Darwin's theory grew out of an era when a considerable amount of careful observation from around the world was beginning to be formulated into careful scientific ideas. Not all ideas from this era were equally scientific, nor equally valid. Charles Darwin's theory was formulated based on a huge amount of observation both personally made by Darwin and made by correspondents he wrote to from all over the world. It took many years for Darwin to put his ideas into words and his book, Origin of Species, spends a great deal of time addressing criticisms of the theory of Evolution. When Darwin formulated his theory, the Mendelian rules of genetics were unknown, and DNA wasn't even conceived of. So, in essence, the mechanisms and rules that govern evolution were unknown. Darwin defined the patterns of how living things changed and competed, and it was only later that those mechanisms were discovered, giving the statistical and molecular context for Darwin's theory. Those later discoveries have only strengthened Darwin's theory, never contradicting his ideas.  read more »

This sounds like an excellent talk, and a topic too rarely discussed.

5th Annual NYU Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration Week

Harriet Washington
Author
Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present
February 7, 2011
5:30 - 8:15pm
550 1st Avenue
Alumni Hall B

“Washington, a journalist and former ethics fellow at Harvard Medical School, tells some harrowing stories, and claims that throughout the 19th century, medical schools disproportionately used blacks in live surgical demonstrations. In more recent times, she writes, they have been disproportionately enrolled in risky, nonbeneficial research in gynecology, oncology, surgery, pediatrics, infectious disease and genetics. While the worst excesses are a thing of the past, blacks are still ‘at greater risks than whites of being conscripted into ... research without giving their consent.’ ”

-The New York Times

Sponsored by:
The Office of Diversity Affairs
The Black and Latino Student Association
The Master Scholars Program in Medical Humanism  read more »