Why Do We Lie To Students?

Minute Physics points us to a fact that I’ve always wondered about.  Why do we lie to young physics students?

 

I recognize that general relativity is not the easiest thing for an 8th grader to wrap her head around, but why not tell the truth?  Why not preface everything with “What I am about to teach you is a lie.  It just happens to be a good enough lie that it will work for most of what you will have to do.”?  And then at least show them the truth.  Or at least the truth as we know it now.  (Come on, unified field theory!)  Having to unwind years of “truth” can be very difficult.  Letting kids know that the truth is out there even if we don’t teach it to them in full now could lead to a much brighter scientific future for the world!

It’s About Time, Jesus, It’s About Time

Jesus has left the GOP:

After a long pause, Jesus added: “So, from here on out, anybody who says they’re speaking for me, or that they know I’d agree with them, is a fucking liar.”

Poor People Die Much Sooner Than Rich People

Life expectancy in the United States has been gradually increasing for decades now.  The average life expectancy is now up to 78.2 years.  There is a common misconception, however, that all have benefited from that increase equally.  This couldn’t be farther from the truth.  The lower half of the economic spectrum has a much lower life expectancy than the top half.

First, though, let me explain that 78.2 life expectancy number.  Every person born is expected to live to the ripe old age of 78.2.  Obviously, not everyone makes it.  That number takes into consideration babies that die at 1 month of age and managers that die of a heart attack at 50.  A lot of the rise in the life expectancy in the United States is really just a drop in the infant mortality rates and better health related outcomes.  This is as it should be, but it can cause confusion in people because your life expectancy at age 65 changes quite a bit from your life expectancy at birth.

Keep that explanation in mind when you read the Social Security Administration’s “Trends in Mortality” study.  There’s a lot of cool stuff in there, but we’re interested in tables 3 and 4.

Table 3 shows that a person in the lower half economic bracket born in 1912 was expected to live to 77 on average whereas one born in 1941 is expected to live to 80. That’s almost a 4% increase.  An upper half person born in 1912 was expected to live to 79 while one born in 1941 is expected to live to 86.  That’s almost a 9% increase.  So the lower half has experienced less than half the life expectancy increases of the upper half.

Table 4 shows the same data in a different way.  It shows how many years left a person has to live at various ages broken down by top and bottom half economic brackets as well as the difference in the number of years left between the two.

The full retirement age is already scheduled to raise to 67 in a few years.  There is lots of talk about raising it even further to solve minor problems that are easily fixable in other ways.  This is an incredibly bad idea.  If it happens, we may actually see the life expectancy of the lower economic half of the population drop as people work themselves to death.

There Is No Skills Gap

A friend of mine linked to this article purporting to explain the skills gap that is affecting not only the United States but also the world.  The article basically takes three charts from a much larger report (pdf) that also purports to explain a skills gap, but neither actually do, though, the actual report has some interesting findings that they for some reason completely ignore.  Let’s go through the three charts, though.

Continue reading →

Typhoon Bopha Update

The death toll for Typhoon Bopha is up to 540 souls with over 800 still missing and over 1,000 injured.

There has been very little coverage of this storm in the U.S., which is a little surprising.  The media usually loves stories where they can just quote rising death counts and report on human interest stories related to the typhoon.  I blame Kate Middleton.

It’s worth remembering, though, that this was an incredibly rare storm.  A category 5 typhoon really should not exist so close to the equator.  Typhoon Louise from the 1964 typhoon season was the only other category 5 to exist so close to the equator.

Climate change denialists will claim that you can’t say that global warming is occurring just because of a category 5 typhoon so close to the equator.  After all, it’s happened before.  And they’d be right.  No individual event can be held up to claim that global warming is happening.  But there have been so many unusual events and they just keep coming!

Talk about not being able to see the forest through the trees!  The evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of global warming occurring and all signs point to humanity as the root cause.  But I’m sure we’ll just continue fiddling along as the Earth burns.

What’s Pissing Me Off Now?

It’s time once again to play everyone’s favorite game: What’s pissing me off now?

This time, it’s the House of Representatives that is pissing me off.  Specifically and not surprisingly, the Republicans in the House of Representatives.  Even more specifically, Eric Cantor (R-VAginas don’t matter).

The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) expires at the end of this year and the Senate passed an updated version of the act that also protects immigrants, LBGTs, and Native Americans.  Sounds completely uncontroversial, right?

Not to Eric Cantor!  You see, right now, if a Native American woman is raped by a non-Native on Native soil, the Natives have no jurisdiction to prosecute the non-Native.  The jurisdiction falls to the Federal Government.  The Federal Government has close to zero capacity to prosecute such crimes.  The result being that rapists can basically rape with impunity.  The VAWA was updated to give tribal courts the power to prosecute rapes that happen on tribal lands.

Eric Cantor seems to think that if we give tribal courts the ability to protect Native American women from being raped by white men it could open the flood gates of letting Native Americans prosecute white boys for other crimes that they commit on Native lands.  Because of that hypothetical problem, Eric Cantor is perfectly fine with Native American women being raped and their rapists getting away with it.

And that’s what’s pissing me off now.

The Child in Us All

Or as Ta-Nehisi Coates calls it, “The Seductive Dream Of Standing Your Ground“.  God, I love how he writes.  This is just beautiful:

The man in me knows how macho imaginings usually outstrip reality. He also knows that this may not have even been a threat. He further knows that kids, in general, do dumb shit. But that wasn’t the man in me talking. It wasn’t the father who knows he needs to be around for his child. It wasn’t the husband, who knows his wife is back in New York depending on him. It wasn’t the writer who hopes that his best words are still in front of him. It was some little boy who got jumped repeatedly more than two decades ago, back in West Baltimore, and his spent the rest of his days just “wishing a nigger would,” as my people say.
That boy is a damn fool. And part of any adults maturation must be keeping the idiot in them under wraps. But I can’t kill the boy. Nor should I. It’s that same boy who tells me not to punk out when I’m doing my miles, not to be a chump and take a day off from writing. The boy reinforces the man. But he needs guard-rails.

 

You don’t often see a man who made mistakes as a child and can both reflect on those mistakes and recognize how those mistakes still inform his adult life.  This requires a maturity that very few people possess.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, another man that I have a huge man-crush on.  That makes two.  Neil deGrasse Tyson being the other.  I guess the saying is true; once you go black, you never go back.

Word of the Day: Bacteriophage

Today’s word of the day is brought to you by Emilia Czysczcon, a Purdue University bioengineering student who collected some mud from a cave for a project and ended up discovering a new bacteriophage virus.

A bacteriophage (a.k.a. phage) is a virus that invades bacteria and replicates itself thereby killing the bacteria.  This may have huge implications for medicine.  Despite being a virus, it is completely harmless to humans.  It may, however, be used to attack bacteria that is harmful to humans, like tuberculosis.  It sounds really weird, but we should be able to inject ourselves with an engineered virus to attack a harmful bacteria in our system.

The science behind bacteriophages is either really advanced or in its infancy depending on who you ask.  Phage therapy was showing good promise in Russia before the advent of the antibiotic.  With the emergence of superbugs that are immune to antibiotics, though, you can expect phage therapy treatments to start becoming popular once again.  And we will have scientists like Emilia to lead the way!

This is Republican Leadership

Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) tried to force a vote yesterday on a bill that would give the President the ability to raise the debt limit.  He thought that Democrats would balk at this and they would look stupid, as they often do.  Majority Leader Harry Reid (R-NV), though, didn’t cooperate with McConnell’s plans and quickly agreed to a vote on the bill.  This put McConnell in the strange position of having to filibuster the vote on a bill that he recommended the Senate vote on.

This is how screwed up the Republicans have made the Senate in the last few years. Even when the Republican leader calls for a vote and everyone agrees to vote, the vote gets filibustered.  This is why the filibuster needs to be fixed and I hope the Democrats have the guts to follow through with fixing it at the beginning of the year.

This is also more proof that Republican threats of brinkmanship if the Democrats do pass filibuster reform are a joke.  Yes, please, threaten to do exactly what you have been doing for four years now.  We’re really scared.

A Momentous Occasion

It is looking likely that there will soon be a black man in the U.S. Senate once again!  And he’s a Republican!  *gasp*

Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC), one of the most obstructive senators in an incredibly obstructive body, announced that he is retiring as of the beginning of the year.  This allows Governor Nikki Haley (R) to replace him.  DeMint has suggested Representative Tim Scott to replace him and the South Carolina Republican party has indicated that they would approve of the choice.

If this comes true, Tim Scott will be only the seventh black man to attain the office of U.S Senator.  He will also be the first black Senator from the post-reconstruction South.  This is a pretty big deal.  I hope Govenor Haley picks him.

That’s really all the good news about DeMint retiring, though.  Tim Scott has all the traits that makes Republicans pretty darned unlikable.  He’s anti-immigrant, pro-business to the point that he’s actually anti-worker, opposes earmarks except if they are for his district, and wants to repeal Obamacare.  I haven’t seen any terribly anti-science stances from him, but I don’t hold out much hope on that front, given his party and his state.

But still, progress!