The basic idea is that children in Africa play on a manually driven merry-go-round, not unlike those found in many playgrounds and enjoy themselves, not even thinking of it as work, but in the process they pump water out from a well into a tank so that it can be used by their communities.   Of course, there’s no doubt water wells provide a much healthier alternative to carrying water miles or using surface streams and ponds for water, and the makers of the Playpump claim it is superior to the traditional hand-operated pumps that have generally been used to provide water because it’s powered by children playing as they would anyway.

Seems like a good idea, right?

Well it does to many groups, which is why it’s not surprising to see that the concept has been embraced by so many of the most high profile philanthro-publicity groups.  Peace Portal, The Clinton Foundation, MTV and many many celebrities can’t seem to get enough Playpumps.

The Playpump costs about $14,000 per installation, which is at least four times more than a comparable well with a hand-operated pump.   However, some might say that it’s worth paying a bit more for bountiful, clean, safe, water. They’re manufactured and installed by Roundabout Outdoor, which is contracted through Playpumps international (now part of Water for People), with production facilities primarily in South Africa and pumps installed at hundreds villages across the continent.   In many cases, the pumps replace older wells with buckets of handpumps used to collect water and in doing so are the only source of water available to the villages.

But, as with so many things, this seemingly innovative, benevolent and wonderful idea is not quite all that it seems.

While a number of aid organizations and fund drives continue to enthusiastically support the Playpump concept and focus on installing more and more of them, other groups have been less than satisfied with the systems.   The group Wateraid reviewed the Playpump system and found it inadequate for most circumstances, citing the fact that it was only for use in playgrounds, was expensive and could not be easily fixed with local parts.

Owen Scott, a Canadian developer with Engineers Without Borders traveled to Africa to see the system in action and found that the Playpump hardly lived up to the hype.  He reported:

Each time I’ve visited a Playpump, I’ve always found the same scene: a group of women and children struggling to spin it by hand so they can draw water…. As soon as the foreigner with a camera comes out (aka me), kids get excited. And when they get excited, they start playing. Within 5 minutes, the thing looks like a crazy success…. I’ve always figured that as soon as I leave the excitement wears off and the pump reverts back to its normal state: being spun manually by women and kids

Having investigated how the pump is used after the ribbon cutting is over and the cameras have been packed up and hauled away, Scott found the pumps were not living up to the claims and in many cases, were inferior to the hand pumps they replaced.   He called the Playpump “a pretty weak idea.”

Some Of The Major Problems Which Have Been Cited:

1. The Playpump has proven to be prone to malfunction.   They break significantly more often than the traditional hand pumps, which are very mechanically simple and have few parts to fail.   Many Playpump installations have malfunctioned and do not provide water at all.
2. Unlike simpler pumps, when a Playpump breaks, it’s not easy to fix and generally can’t be repaired by locals.    When a traditional hand pump breaks, it does not require any special skill or parts to repair and can usually be taken care of quickly.   However, the Playpump system is not designed to be user-serviceable and uses parts that are not common.   When it breaks, a village can be without safe reliable drinking water until a Playpump technician visits to repair the pump.   This can take many months.
3. Children don’t actually like playing with the rotating pump wheel all that much and don’t necessarily provide a reliable source of energy.   It really should not be a surprise that a single playground item like a small underpowered merry-go-round would not be enthusiastically used for hours on end by children.  They may play on it a bit, but for the pump to really be productive, it has to be used very heavily.   When it is first installed, children may use it heavily, but the novelty wears off fast.   Before long, children have to be told to use it, making it a chore and defeating the whole purpose.
4. It is often necessary for adults to turn the wheel to pump water.   This is not only because of the lack of constant enthusiasm by children, but because in many villages, children spend a large portion of the year out working in the fields.   In these circumstances, the ones left at the village to turn the pump are primarily pregnant and elderly women.   For them the walking in constant circles to turn the wheel is considerably more effort than a hand pump.

The saddest thing about the program is that, for all it’s good intentions, many villages which had the system installed to replace their old hand-operated well pumps simply would like to have their old pumps back, in such cases, the Playpump has clearly been a lot of money spent to do more harm than good.

As with many such blunders, there are lessons to be learned from the Playpump. Some of the important ones include the importance of listening to the people who you are trying to help. They may be poor, but that does not make them stupid. If they say that the hand pumps are superior, don’t shove a system you think is better down their throats. Also, follow up on aid and make sure it is actually working before continuing to supply the same aid elsewhere and never assume that what looks like a good idea at first will turn out so rosy in the real world.

Would-be well-doers should learn a thing or two about the culture and above all else, make sure that the locals are aware that you want to help out and that therefore it’s more important that they be honest than they they put on a good show for the cameras. Clearly many of the villages where this was installed are trying not to disappoint or insult the visitors who come to photograph their Playpump.   It may very well be more useful to talk to them when there is not a big camera shoved in their faces.

Above all else, remember that the fact that you’re from Europe or North America and have light colored skin does not mean you know what is best for everyone.

There are many suffering in Africa without safe water and food and nobody can claim the continent does not have many problems that need to be addressed. Yet with enough money and effort, the wealthy countries of the world are working to make sure that every one of those hungry, thirsty children will have a laptop.

I’d like to add that it’s not as if radiometric dating needs to stand on its own on this one.   Yes, it is the gold standard for dating of geological material, but there are many other observations that can be made which indicate that the earth must be on the order of billions of years old.   The fact that there is room for discourse in refining the accuracy of the calculated dates does not mean that the data is completely wrong by many orders of magnitude.

What other data indicates:

• Rock formation and strata – At least hundreds of millions of years old.   While we do not have rock layers that go all the way back to the time shortly after the earth’s formation, the rock layers we do have do go back hundreds of millions to over a billion years.  Based on the rate of rock formation and material disposition, it can be inferred that the earth must be at least hundreds of millions of years old, if not considerably older.   The oldest known rock strata are estimated to be about 2.4 billion years old.
• Temperature – Over one hundred years ago, Lord Kelvin calculated that the earth would have required between 20 and 400 million years to cool from a molten state to its present form.    These calculations were correct but did not take into account the heating effects of radioactive decay, which was not known about at the time.   Factoring in radioactive decay, it is clear that the earth must have gone through more than a half billion years of cooling to have the solid and relatively thick crust it currently has.
• Plate tectonics – Fossils and geological formations can be found on different continents indicating that they were once connected.  Rock formations on the sea floor can be determined to have been produced from oceanic ridges. The earth is constantly erasing the record by recycling the crustal material in subduction zones, but the existing record and the known rates of continental drift, crust creation and seafloor indicate that the process has been going on for more than a billion years.
• Fossil Fuels - The surveyed reserves of fossil fuels such as coal and oil would have taken many millions of years to accumulate.   The processes that create fossil fuel continue today, such as accumulation of turf which is compressed into peat, the precursor of coal.   Based on the chemical and physical forces that create these materials and the rate of accumulation, it can be determined that the oldest forms of bituminous coal are at least 300 million years old.   Anthracite coal comes from reserves which go back even further.
• The age of the sun – The sun is dated at about thirty million years older than the earth (a very short period of time in such time scales).  The age of the sun can be determined through analysis of star life cycles, the ratio of hydrogen to helium in the sun, the rate of nuclear fusion and the propagation of solar vibrations.  The sun is about 4.57 billion years old.
• Dating of lunar samples – Samples of rock from the moon have been radiometrically dated and also analyzed extensively both physically and chemically.   These samples contain particles embedded from solar winds, such as helium-3 and deuterium.   They also are “weathered” by solar radiation, cosmic radiation and micrometeorites.   Based on both radiometric dating and the disposition of particles in lunar samples, their age has been determined to be about 2.4 to more than three billion years old.

Conclusion:

Radiometric dating is the most precise method of dating and allows for accurate dating of the very oldest samples of material, allowing the solar system and earth to be dated all the way back to the beginning.   However, it is not the only method of dating.   Many others don’t provide an absolute age of the earth, but do clearly indicate that the earth must be more than hundreds of millions or billions of years old.   Furthermore, these observations are all completely in agreement.   None indicate that the earth appears to be “young.”

When combined with radiometric dating, the evidence is clear and entirely one sided.   The earth is billions of years old.

There is some room for scientific discourse over the actual age as indicated by radiometric dating and other methods.  Based on what factors are taken into account, it’s possible that the data can be interpreted differently to within a few million years.   However, for the “young earth” to be the case, the data would not simply need to be off slightly, as might be the case with a minor variation in material distribution or elemental abundance, it would have to be off by many orders of magnitude.   Not only would radiometric dating need to be so completely wrong as to be off by orders of magnitude, but our understanding and observations of nearly all geological forces would need to be.

How Slums Can Save the Planet

“One billion people live in squatter cities and, according to the UN, this number will double in the next 25 years. Stewart Brand writes in Prospect Magazine about what squatter cities can teach us about future urban living. ‘The magic of squatter cities is that they are improved steadily and gradually by their residents,’ writes Brand. ‘Squatter cities are also unexpectedly green. They have maximum density — 1M people per square mile in some areas of Mumbai — and have minimum energy and material use. People get around by foot, bicycle, rickshaw, or the universal shared taxi.’ Brand adds that in most slums recycling is literally a way of life e.g. the Dharavi slum in Mumbai has 400 recycling units and 30,000 rag-pickers. ‘Of course, fast-growing cities are far from an unmitigated good. They concentrate crime, pollution, disease, and injustice as much as business, innovation, education, and entertainment,’ says Brand. Still, as architect Peter Calthorpe wrote in 1985: ‘The city is the most environmentally benign form of human settlement. Each city dweller consumes less land, less energy, less water, and produces less pollution than his counterpart in settlements of lower densities.’”

Reader Kanel adds this note of perspective:
“Kevin Kelly is another guy who wrote about slums in a very positive light, though he was more interested in self-organisation and why cities are cool, I think. Kelly also reports on the strange trend for slum tourism. What we’re seeing here is that the ’slums’ have become a vehicle for people to bring out their own ideas about cities, humans, and the universe at large. I have a feeling that we’re not really going to learn a lot about slums if we study them through these guys.”

Tourism? Self-organization? Why cities are “Cool”? The fact that comfortable westerners are willing to “tour” these destitute settlements of filth and desperation is offensive enough in its own right that they’d be gawked at.   These are not places where people are being creative and expressive for the sake of the greater good, they’re simply trying to cope with inhuman conditions.   If they figure out a way to stay alive in these miserable conditions, it’s not a beautiful work of self-organization, its human suffering, pure and simple.

I’m reminded of Joseph Stalin saying something like “One death is a tragedy – ten thousand are a statistic.”   When you step back and see the slum grow and change, it might look like some kind of elegant mathematical expression, and perhaps it is.   Yet what this is made up of is human beings, living in filth, squalor and constant danger of disease, fire, murder or any number of other things.   And yes, while slums do often improve over time, it’s because the residents generally DON’T WANT TO LIVE IN SLUM CONDITIONS.   Example: parts of New York City are now fashionable when in the late 1800’s they were about the cheapest and worst parts of the city.  Nobody would want to go back!

Yes, I realize that this is a transitional thing and that some countries have not experienced industrialization to the extent they will eventually.   Still, I’m amazed that these could be considered a good thing.

The original article is even worse.   The ass who wrote it seems to think it’s amazingly efficient to live in a slum and points out that many slums see food grown locally, even with “pigs raised on the third floor,” as it subsistence agriculture and living in the excrement of a pig is somehow a positive thing.

Life in the slums is also described as fairly pleasant:

In Bangkok’s slums, most homes have a colour television—the average number is 1.6 per household. Almost all have fridges, and two-thirds have a CD player, washing machine and a mobile phone. Half of them have a home telephone, video player and motorcycle

I’ve got news for this guy: if you’ve got more than one television, a landlines and a mobile phone and a refrigerator, you’re not in a slum! You’re just in a crowded, cheap community. Slums are worse than anyone could dream up as a vision of hell.   (Although, a rickety community with descent modern convinces will be just as bad as a slum once an earthquake or typhoon comes through)
Regarding the Author:

Stewart Brand is one of the world’s most influential—and controversial—environmentalists. After graduating in biology from Stanford University, California, in 1960, he became involved with the hippy movement and writer Ken Kesey’s “merry pranksters,” who were the subject of Tom Wolfe’s book The Electric Kool-aid Acid Test. Brand’s hugely influential Whole Earth Catalog, a counterculture guide to self-sustainable, communal living, was published between 1968 and 1972, and occasionally thereafter until 1998.

This seems so typical of the modern “Green” movement. This bastard is so full of himself, I wonder how he eats. Somehow being educated at Stamford, in the air conditioned halls of academia and then playing pranks while cruising the country in a VW bus that his parents bought him qualifies him to tell us how great life is amongst the stagnant open sewers in the filthy and disease ridden slums of India and Southeast Asia. I should point out that not everyone in the world had a chance to be “merry pranksters,” covering around while having sex with many unwashed partners, dropping acid, listening to Jefferson Airplane and sticking it to the man with their lighthearted antics over at Haight Ashbury.

Let me add: If it sounds like I’m being a bit un-scientific and less than totally unbiased on this topic, it’s because I am and I’ll be the first to admit it. I’m deeply offended by this son of a bitch and I loath all he stands for, the hypocrisy and self-serving narrow view that allows him to praise the suffering of our fellow man as he sits on his high horse and writes for a magazine. This is not just wrong, it’s downright evil. It’s the essence of the worst of all a human being can ever be. It is so revolting it actually surprises me, and I’ve seen some VERY revolting things.

So in conclusion:

DAMN STRAIGHT THIS MAKES ME MAD!

I’m not ashamed to say I’m furious at this  little modern-day Eichmann.   In fact, if he makes you mad, that doesn’t make you an irrational person, that feeling you have stiring inside of you is your sense of decency and humanity.  If you have one of those, this kind of thing might stir it up a little bit.

Not surprisingly, discussion quickly moved to the topic of religion and politics.   There’s thus far no evidence that Bishop was in any way an “Intelligent Design” or creationism advocate.   However, according to some in the community, she was a regular church goer – although to a church that was decidedly “liberal” in social additude.   She was also a member of the Clergy Letter Project, a project which seeks professors and scientists to give advice to clergy on issues of science.   Other than that, she does not appear to have been especially active in religion.   A number of reports (especially local) have pointed out that she was a “liberal from New England” or used similar language.   A number of outlets have also stated that she was a “Socialist.” These reports seem to based their conclusion on some comments by her students, in which they state that she was not openly political in class but that she was “a socialist.”  Despite the headlines, it’s not really clear from these comments that she was actually a “socialist” in the sense of being for overthrowing the entire capitalist system and creating a Workers’ Paradise – it may simply be that she was a bit left wing.   (Not that this is unusual in professors in general)

The bottom line is that, despite grasping for straws on both sides, there’s really no evidence that Bishop had any extreme beliefs or was all that active politically or religiously.   Even if she was, that really doesn’t count for much.   There are millions of Christians, Atheists, left-wingers, progressives, socialists, conservatives and libertarians who have never killed anyone and never would.

There is, however, some information which indicates a troubled past.   In 1986, Bishop shot and killed her 18 year old brother in Braintree, MA. The bizzare incident happened when she shot her brother in the chest with a shot gun and was found in the street holding the gun.   Police investigated the incident, but were unable to find any conclusive evidence to refute Bishop’s claims that it had been an accident.   Although some suspected it was not, no charges were ever filed.

Possible trigger was a tenure dispute?

There seems to be one thing that stands out as an issue of potential conflict.   Bishop had been working at the University of Alabama at Huntsville for six years but had been denied tenure in April.   She had appealed the decision and recently lost the appeal.   Being tenured is a pretty airtight guarantee of continued employment at a university, but also has other significance.   Tenure is often seen as a status symbol and not having received it after six years can be equally seen as an implicit failure or lack of status.   Not receiving tenure after six years also a tacit way of telling a professor that they might want to start looking for a new job, as it often means their employment is coming to an end.

Why Bishop was denied tenure appears to be rooted more in her teaching manners, dealing with colleges and generally her personal and social lackings.   It was certainly not due to lack of intellect or scientific accomplishments.   By all accounts, Bishop was brilliant.  She had published a number of papers on cutting edge areas of research and  had developed a number of significant technologies, including a cellular incubator that provides greater control and effeciency for tissue culturing.

Her reviews as a professor, however, were decidedly mixed. Nearly all of her students comment that she was very smart and knew her research well, but many said that her class was dry, boring or that she “read from the book.”  There’s no indication that she was an unfair, harsh or difficult to deal with professor, but there is a lot of criticism of her tests.  Many of the students complain that she didn’t make it entirely clear what kind of material was going to be on the tests or feel that the test questions were confusing.   Others complained about her grading policy or believed she didn’t do enough to teach the material and left too much up to the students to learn on their own.

On a few occasions it seems she had some major conflicts with others at the university.   One professor described Bishop as “Not able to deal with reality.” Others indicate that she had become quite angry about some of the decisions made by the university and her colleges.   Yet others seem to state Bishop was accommodating and even funny.   These polar opposite reviews may indicate that Bishop was the kind of person who either “Loves or hates” others and was prone to holding grudges or playing favorites.  She was know to carry a “personal beef.”

In some ways, I’m reminded of Bruce Ivins.

Some comments on a professor ratings site include the following:

What a waste of a great resource. Dr Bishop is very intelligent but a horrible teacher. No point going to class, she will tell you to read and know the entire book. She does not teach but gives you a list of topics that you have to teach yourself. Unfortunately this class is only offered with one other instructor! Take it with Adcock if you can.

Extremely horrible teacher. All she does is read information from the book and never explains anything. Her review is telling you to study everything, and she picks the most insignificant information on tests. You have to teach everything to yourself, but her tests are so insame it’s hard to do well. TAKE ADCOCK

(Adcock is the name of another professor who teaches similar classes.)

These are, of course, entirely legitimate criticisms.  I’ve had a couple of instructors who gave tests which contained material which nobody expected would be on the test and was never mentioned in reviews before the test.   It’s frustrating.   Professors who just read from the book or expect students to teach themselves everything are also a legitimate issue – after all, courses cost a lot more then the text book and it’s fair to expect some descent instruction for the price.

In addition to this, the image that has been coming from her colleagues and other students appears to indicate that Bishop may have been a rather stubborn and difficult person to work with at times.   She may not have done well with the decision regarding her tenure and it seems she believed she was treated unfairly.  She may not have done well with criticism.

There has been some debate raised from this as to whether or not personality and other aspects of a professor should be taken into account when considering tenure.   One blogger over at Science Blogs asks “What role should personality or collegiality play in tenure decisions?” Others ask whether it should be considered at all.

My own opinion on the matter:  It absolutely should be considered, at least in cases where the primary responsibility of a position is teaching,

There have been many brilliant scientists throughout the years who are just not very good at explaining concepts in simple terms and are not generally good speakers or communicators. They may be excellent with their subject matter, but put them behind a podium and tell them to give an address to a small group and they’ll studder, say the wrong thing, confuse people or bore them to death.

I have met a couple brilliant researchers who actually come across as shy and are not outgoing at all. I did some computer work for a guy who was an amazingly intelligent researcher in the mathematics of chaos theory, but he never returned phone calls and was impossible to deal with in general.

If we’re talking about a job that involves primarily pure research, then that’s fine.   If it involves a combination of research and some graduate advising or teaching, then it might also work out.

However, if we’re talking about an undergraduate professor or biology who is going to be regularly teaching, holding office hours, advising students and so on then it won’t cut it. It doesn’t matter how brilliant you are, if you can’t teach then you shouldn’t be teaching – you should find a role that better suits your skills. Aside from being bad at it, my guess is that a person like that would be absolutely miserable having to spend time trying to explain things to undergrads.

As far as teamwork and cooperation – again, it depends on the setting and type of research. If it’s something that generally requires a lot of team work and very little individual research, then you have to be a team player.  It doesn’t matter if you’re brilliant, if you can’t get the job done because you can’t work in that setting.   If it’s something that is mostly individual research, it might not be an issue.

Of course, since decisions like tenure are made by faculty votes, department heads, committees and such, they’ll always be subjective to one degree or another.   It’s a judgment call, but this is not necessarily a bad thing either.   If a department feels that a certain professor simply does not fit in, is not being productive enough or is not doing a very good job of teaching, then it’s probably best that they don’t offer tenure.  If the faculty didn’t like working with her or didn’t believe she was contributing well to the department, then forcing them to work with her simply because she knew her work well isn’t going to help things.

Based on the accounts that have come out, Bishop was very talented but probably shouldn’t have been teaching.    In addition to not being very good at it, it seems she was never really that enthusiastic about the teaching side of things.   She really should have considered a career involving pure research, either for a private company, a government institution or a university in a position that does not involve undergraduate teaching.

If anything, the fact that she shot up a faculty meeting only proves that the department was right when it considered her not fit for pursuits that involved a great deal of social interactions and cooperation.   Tragically, they underestimated just how antisocial, difficult to work with and generally unqualified as a team player she was.

What is so disturbing about this case is that it shows how difficult it can be to predict these things.   Bishop may have been anti-social, stressed out, prone to holding a grudge, frustrated and bitter, but so are many many others and few resort to violence.  Anger and frustration may cause a person to “snap” and start hurling insults at others around them – or, it may cause them to start hurling bullets at them.  These are much different situations.

Still, not being happy with one’s job is no excuse for murder.   The bitch should never see another day of freedom. Bishop should have learned that sometimes things don’t go your way. Sometimes jobs don’t work out and sometimes you even get treated unfairly.  It doesn’t matter how smart or how much of an over-achiever someone is, they’re not special – they have to live by the same rules of civil society that everyone else does.   Everyone gets ends up getting screwed by a decision they don’t agree with from time to time.  That’s no excuse for violence.   Have fun rotting in prison.

Lead is, of course, toxic, which is why you shouldn’t do anything like eating the lead or grinding it into a fine powder and inhaling it.   The toxicity of lead, however, is fairly mild.   The Romans used to mix lead with vinegar and produce something they called “lead sugar,” which they sprinkled on foods.  That was a very bad idea and eating paint chips that contain lead in the form of lead carbonate is another bad idea.   This is especially true if you do so on a regular basis, since these forms of lead tend to enter the body fairly easily and accumulate, causing progressive damage with repeated exposure.

However, lead in its metallic form is perfectly safe to work with and even hold in your hand.  Its an excellent choice for things like gutters, where lead and copper can be used to create gutters that are low maintenance and last many years, resisting corrosion and wear and tear.   The lead is not very mobile in the enviornment and because of the durability of these gutters, they are popular for all kinds of buildings.

So why not install them in a school?   Well, because there are no words like “the safety of the children,” to dismiss all rational discussion and because we live in a society where a single broke thermometer is enough to evacuate an entire school and bring in hazmat teams in moonsuits.

Via the New Haven Register:

Parents alarmed over use of lead in school project

GUILFORD — Parents are urging officials to prohibit the use of lead in an upcoming elementary school roofing project, saying the material is a safety risk for children.

The school board has finalized design requirements for roof and gutter replacement at Guilford Lakes Elementary School this summer. The specifications document asks the designer and contractor to “avoid using lead-coated copper gutters.”

But that type of gutter can still be used if the professional designer hired says it’s the best material, as lead-coated gutters have proved to be long-lasting and durable, said Cliff Gurhnam, director of facilities and operations.

Well, since the gutter contractor knows that lead copper is one of the best, if not the best, material for this kind of application, that’s likely to be the recommendation. It’s not exactly an unusual type of gutter for a building of this type. They look good and they’re very durable. What more could you ask for in gutters?

PTA Co-President Kim Beckett told the school board recently that many parents have shared their concerns with her over the issue.

“We want to keep costs contained, but our childrens’ safety should be above that,” Beckett said at the meeting.

Now we have it. The most potent combination of political buzzwords: “our children,” and the word “cost,” “money,” or “safety.” Here’s where the rational discussion goes out the window, because the fact is that lead copper gutters are an industry standard that is perfectly safe and under normal conditions will have negligible seepage of lead into the local enviornment. Considering that this is a fairly well to do town, I wonder how many of the parents have lead copper gutters on their own home and don’t even know it!

As for cost, lets not forget that there’s legitimate reason to be concerned about cost in a project like this. Every dollar spent maintaining less durable gutters or installing more expensive gutters is one more dollar that can’t be used for textbooks, teachers’ salaries or even safety improvements to the school. Given that school districts don’t have an unlimited budget, spending money on useless items that don’t improve anyone’s safety can actually hurt both safety and the quality of education.

She said lead could seep from the gutters and into rainwater the gutters catch, and then contaminate the ground when the water flows out.

“The concern is the lead run-off, and anybody on the Board of Education understands that lead and children do not belong together,” Beckett said.

“Children” + (name of a substance people hear in the context of “poisoning”) = villagers with torches.

Parents also grew concerned last year during the roof and gutter replacement at A.W. Cox Elementary School when contractors began installing lead-coated copper gutters. Beckett said parents asked that a different material be used and were successful.

Gurnham said officials opted to use a new material for a few reasons, but declined to elaborate. The change cost the district an extra $42,000 in restocking and reordering fees, and in labor costs to take down the lead-coated gutters that had been installed, Gurnham said.

Sam Gerritz, who has two children in the school system, said Thursday that he would like to see data from soil tests at Cox, where lead-coated gutters had been used for decades before the roofing and gutter project. He added that he’s learned a lot about lead poisoning in children from his uncle, a geologist professor at Xavier University in New Orleans who has studied the topic.

“The way children get lead poisoning is ingesting soil. They do all the time. Children are getting their hands dirty, licking their fingers, things like that. It’s a real concern,” Gerritz said.

“From my perspective, the burden of proof lies on anyone who wants to bring lead into a school setting. They (school officials) need to prove this isn’t going to be a danger and I haven’t seen data that supports that claim.”

Gurnham said soil testing was completed at Cox last year when parents questioned the use of lead-coated gutters.

“It came back with the normal standard for soil. After 20 years, there were no elevated levels of lead in the soil,” Gurnham said.

When the design and list of materials are complete for the Lakes work, they will be reviewed by the Standing Building Committee, which oversees all town construction, he added.

So exactly what the hell level of “proof” will these parents accept? I doubt there’s any. Soil tests after 20 years of use on a building would be expected to be normal. After all, it’s a standard material for high quality gutter installations and has been in use for more than a century.   If your children regularly eat large amounts of dirt, then you probably have some bigger problems.   Yet given that soil levels are negligible, even this shouldn’t cause any real concern.

The idea that a school district would spend fourty two thousand dollars, taking down perfectly good and brand new gutters in order to install inferior gutters over concerns for a non-existent hazard is the height of absurdity.

However, if there is anyone out there who has lead copper gutters and wants to get rid of them, I’ll gladly tear them down and haul them to the scrap metal dealer, no charge!

In fact, I’m purposely avoiding the issue of climate change, because, while I do tend to think that much of the debate on climate change has involved cherry-picked data or trumped up predictions, I don’t feel qualified to state just how trumped up they are.   Really, I just don’t know and I don’t want to speculate too much on this one.   I probably could do so if I also did hours of research, but that’s not the point here.

As one who considers myself a “skeptic,” I have found many don’t quite get the concept of scientific skepticism.  One question I get a lot is “are you skeptical about everything.”   The answer is no, or at least, not to the same degree.   Carl Sagan said “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.”  This statement really sums up one of the most important concepts in skepticism:  that all things are not equally plausible and that those which are the most far fetched require the greatest degree of skepticism.

From the article:

So, after hours of research, I can dismiss Mr Eschenbach. But what am I supposed to do the next time I wake up and someone whose name I don’t know has produced another plausible-seeming account of bias in the climate-change science? Am I supposed to invest another couple of hours in it? Do I have to waste the time of the readers of this blog with yet another long post on the subject? Why? Why do these people keep bugging us like this? Does the spirit of scientific scepticism really require that I remain forever open-minded to denialist humbug until it’s shown to be wrong? At what point am I allowed to simply say, look, I’ve seen these kind of claims before, they always turns out to be wrong, and it’s not worth my time to look into it?

No, the spirit of scientific skepticism does not require that you remain open-minded to any “alternative” scientific beliefs or claims that do not provide very compelling and verifiable evidence to their validity. One of the things that I hear constantly when I describe myself as a “skeptic” is “are you skeptical about everything?” The answer is no, or at least, not to the same degree. I’m not skeptical about things that have been well established, repeatedly tested and are supported by well documented empirical data.

Yes, there does come a time when each and every claim of the same nature does not need to be examined and it’s valid to make a reasonable assumption. Take for example something like homeopathy. Homeopathy violates both scientific theory and basic logic and practical sense.   Every well controlled study that has investigated it has found nothing. Many have claimed to have some kind of data that shows it works, but at this point, so many have been debunked, it’s not necessary to approach each claim with the same sense of “open-mindedness” that one would approach a more reasonable claim.

Both sides don’t always need to be treated equally…

The appropriate approach is to place the burden of proof on those who claim to have proven the mainstream wrong. This is not to say that the mainstream is not occasionally proven wrong, because it certainly is, only that it is fair to demand some pretty compelling evidence first, and an uneducated person’s ramblings on a website are not compelling evidence.

Well, here’s my solution to this problem: this is why we have peer review. Average guys with websites can do a lot of amazing things. One thing they cannot do is reveal statistical manipulation in climate-change studies that require a PhD in a related field to understand. So for the time being, my response to any and all further “smoking gun” claims begins with: show me the peer-reviewed journal article demonstrating the error here. Otherwise, you’re a crank and this is not a story.

I both agree and disagree with the author on this one. Yes, it is absolutely true that peer review is critical to the process of scientific validation. Peer review is not perfect, of course, and that is why even peer reviewed studies should be verified and repeated before a firm conclusion can be drawn. Even peer reviewed journals are not perfect, and there have been some noteworthy instances where studies were just plain fabricated and managed to make it into the publication. These are rare, of course, and as such, the degree of skepticism that one views of scholarly studies is not the same as a website or a magazine article.

The problem is that not everyone seems to realize this and crank stories and websites do get traction in the media and do garner attention of the populous. That is a huge problem. If science policy were determined entirely by scientists, then the banter and claims bouncing around outside the Ivory Tower would be of no concern. That is not the case. While these claims may not have anything to them, the fact is that many people think that they do and are convinced by them.   Numerous examples exist in recent memory and as long as misinformation, especially wrapped in what appears to be valid information, is allowed to propagate unopposed, it will continue to cause harm.

In the 1990’s, the United States saw a large number of claims that silicone gel implants, especially breast implants, were causing serious health problems ranging from autoimmune disorders to cancer.  The claims were not supported by empirical data, but the claims grew into a media circus that attracted dishonest researchers and an army of lawyers and claimants.  Despite the lack of scientific evidence, the sensational scare eventually lead to a number of enormous lawsuits which completely bankrupted Dow Corning, resulting in thousands losing their jobs and retirements.  Yet this event was not isolated.

Today the United Kingdom is facing a political debate as to the degree of coverage that national healthcare programs should provide for homeopathic treatments.   Homeopathy just plain doesn’t work, but enough people have been fooled into thinking it does to force an otherwise educated and industrial country to burn money on a scam that does no good for anyone other than the quacks who dishonestly practice it.   In Sweden, the government officially recognizes and offers compensation to those who claim to have “electromagnetic hypersensitivity” and around the world, anti-vaccine groups have managed to kill hundreds of children due to preventable disease.   Other lives may be lost in war-torn areas, where limited funding for public health is spent not on nutrition or sanitation, but is instead diverted to re-mediating relatively harmless depleted uranium spent rounds.

While the claims may be bogus, the damage is very real and tangible.   This is also why these claims must be refuted, their fallacies exposed and the realities presented with at least as much effort and enthusiasm as those who spread misinformation.   There are a huge number of parties putting in a lot of effort to misinform the world.  This must be met with at least an equal effort to get the facts out and refute the bad science out there.

Yes, it is true that it is a lot of work to go through these claims, check the facts and debunk them one at a time, but it is also an important cause and one which can’t fall on the shoulders of any single site or person.  No single effort should have the end goal of completely ridding the world of bad science or refuting each claim made, but rather to refute at least a few and combat some of the bad science out there.   Together, we can make a significant dent in the problem.

Not so in Australia.   Despite being a country well known for its skepticism and generally secular, it seems that a vestige of the religious days still exists in some public schools in New South Whales.   On the bright side, while these classes are actually being mandated by the government (seriously), they are optional for students to take and more than half of families elect to have their children opt out of these classes.   Still, by law non-scripture students can’t be taught another subject during scripture class sessions.  Apparently this came about because it would give them the benefit of having time for additional education and thus encourage more to not take scripture class (or that was the justification anyway).   This amounts to a kind of no-compete clause that assures that schools all have dedicated time for religious indoctrination that cannot be used by any other subject.

This law goes all the way back to the late 1800’s and still applies today in New South Whales.   Many other parts of Australia continue to have mandated scripture classes in public schools, but now allow students to take other classes in place of the religious classes.  Only New South Whales still has a law directly preventing other classes from using the time and forcing students to choose between doing nothing and being taught religious beliefs.

Via Homepage Daily:

ELIZABETH JACKSON: The push is on for New South Wales to join the rest of the country and offer a secular alternative to scripture classes in the State’s public schools.

At the moment many parents are unhappy about having to choose between organised religion classes and an hour spent watching videos in the classroom.

A proposal for a pilot program promises to address what’s seen as a gap in the education for many children.

Simon Santow reports.

SIMON SANTOW: In the late 1800s the Church and State agreed that religion would have a dedicated hour a week in the school timetable.

But with that agreement came a no-compete clause that still exists in 2009. If you didn’t go to scripture you couldn’t be taught other things.

SIMON LONGSTAFF: We were told by a number of parents that their children were being placed into rooms where they wither had to colour in or do something reasonably meaningless.

But even worse, we heard about the case of students who during the hour that they weren’t attending scripture had to sit outside the principal’s office, which is a place normally reserved for children who’ve been misbehaving.

Given that there are a lot of parents who don’t want their children taught Christianity (or any religion) during school time, a lot of students are spending an hour staring at a wall or doing something else entirely non-productive.   Recently there has been a proposal for an alternative class.

Via ABC News Australia:

Ethics class proposed as scripture alternative

Seven primary schools in New South Wales are offering to participate in the pilot of an ethics course as an alternative to religion classes.

The Education Act prohibits non-scripture students being taught while others receive religious instruction.

It reflects a 19th Century deal between the New South Wales government and churches.

Scripture opt-out rates can be as high as 50 or 80 per cent.

P and C Associations, church groups and the Saint James Ethics Centre say that makes it a social justice issue for students.

The President of the Federation of NSW P and C’s, Dianne Giblin, says students who opt out of scripture are being discriminated against.

“All the other young children are allowed to go off to their various faiths and look at their own ethics and their own values and morals, and the rest of the school are not allowed to do anything else,” she said.

“And this is important for these young people who are missing out on the opportunity to have a look at their ethics and their values.”

They have asked Education Minister Verity Firth to approve a pilot course on ethics, values and general religion.

Bungendore, Hurstville and Neutral Bay primary schools are among those offering to run the course.

Of course, this is not technically a religious class, so it would seem that a case could be made that it does not comply with the letter of the law.  But who could possibly oppose a class in ethics?   The church, of course!

Via Reason Weekly:

Religious Panel Fights Ethics Classes in Australia

THE State Government’s religious education advisory panel will fight a pilot program that offers ethics classes to primary school students who opt out of scripture.

Instead, it will continue its support for a policy that prevents students who opt out from having any instruction, and specifically no ethical instruction, during the time set aside for scripture each week.

In some schools, that leaves as many as 80 per cent of students excluded from education for an hour each week – despite reviews dating back to 1980 recommending the policy be amended.

Personally, I don’t have a problem with “ethics class,” and it certainly is better than the alternative, but my own experience in “ethics” education is that it usually ends up being fairly dry and very philosophical. In general, something like “ethics” is often taught in a way that tends to be so open ended and full of subjectivity that it really doesn’t actually accomplish a whole lot in terms of making people more ethical. It also is an opportunity for certain interests to gain a chance to indoctrinate students with their own brand of “ethics.”

Thus, while I don’t have a problem with it, I think there could be an even better alternative. I’d propose that the time be used for a new subject in primary schooling, a subject that seems to be lacking entirely. I’d suggest calling the class “empirical studies.” Basically, the intent is to teach not a single subject in science, but rather the core of how science works and how we can come to understand and evaluate reality. There’s not very much in the term of moral judgments, just the tools to assess the facts. Ideally, I’d like to have this integrated into all subjects in school, but that might be asking too much.

Thus, I present, Steve’s hypothetical curriculum summary of  primary school “Empirical Studies”

Human Perception and Common Mistakes related to it:

• The placebo effect
• Memory bias
• False memories
• Perception bias and illusions
• The ideomotor effect
• Common illusions and how simple trickery can be used for both magic theater illusions and for scamming
• Empirical data and methods used in science for reducing human factors
• Pareidolia
• Common logical fallacies
• Hindsight bias

Scientific Principles and Investigation:

• The scientific method and the importance of the steps and observations involved
• Independent repeatability and experimental review
• Controls, placebo, demographic and other
• The basics of statistics  (Of course, statistics is a whole subject onto itself, so this is limited to simply why statistical significance is so important)
• Common flaws in experiments and causes of errors – including inadvertent selectivity bias, inductive logic, data contamination
• Common errors in interpretation – including coloration not implying causality, overallocation of limited data, bias toward studies with “positive” results
• Peer review, journals and how scientific information is exchanged
• Science in the media and reliability of sources
• Provability and the issues of the null hypothesis

History and Historical Case Studies:

Historical examples of mass panic, public miss-perception, hoaxes and scams are an excellent subject for those interested in understanding how misunderstanding of human perception, gullibility, panic and misleading can result in large numbers of people believing things that are not so or in myths being created and accepted.  In some cases, such as those of the Piltdown Man, the 1989 Cold Fusion experiment, Project Alpha, Crop Circles and others, scientific researchers and others who should have known better were suckered into believing things that were not so.   In other cases, whole movements were established and thrived on premises that now seem silly.

These are not simply curiosities, as they demonstrate the realities of how these things occur in the real world.   However, as the number are too numerous for it to be covered completely in one class, it would be an excellent topic for independent study by students.   For example:  each student could choose a historical event or occurrence that demonstrates trickery and lack of critical thinking in the real world to research for a term paper and a 15 minute oral presentation to the class.   The presentations would be distributed through the year.

• The early 1800’s rise and fall of phrenology
• The mysticism and psychic craze of the Victorian era and the trickery involved
• The early 1900’s and the “golden age” of patent medicines and quackery
• The rise of modern propaganda in the 1930’s and 1940’s, especially the Nazi ministry of propaganda
• The Piltdown Man hoax
• The new age movement of the 1970’s
• The history of scientific investigation into paranormal claims, from serious attempts in the early 1900’s to modern examples
• Harry Houdini and the first generation of scam debunkers
• The UFO craze of the 1950’s and the history of the phenomena, going back to Kenneth Arnold
• The Cardiff Giant Hoax
• Project Alpha
• The Great Martian Invasion Panic of 1938 (the War Of the Worlds Mercury Theater Radio Show)
• The experiments conducted with Uri Geller in the 1970’s

Some of these topics might be a little advanced for introduction in early school, but that does not mean that the basics can’t be taught.  Giving young students an understanding of their own weaknesses in perception and the techniques to avoid them is the first step in making scientific reasoning a way of life and of looking at the world, and not just an academic pursuit. The more advanced areas of history and statistics can come later.   In any case, it’s something the educational systems of the world really seem to lack.

Perhaps it’s not my place to comment on how Australia educates their young, but religious scripture class in public school?  I mean, come on guys!

It was then that I realized something:  protection from non-ionizing radiation is a concern to health physicists and HPS generally does an extremely good job of providing scientifically sound and easily understood information.   I’ve cited HPS before as being a scientific professional organization that is uncommonly good with outreach to the public and media and an organization that many others could learn from.

Sure enough, they have an excellent fact sheet on mobile phones.

The fact sheet is recent, adopted only last month.   If I had to nitpick anything with it, I might say that the statement “data regarding long-term use (more than 10 years) of mobile phones is very sparse and unreliable” is a bit misleading, because we do have numerous studies that looked at people who have been using mobile phones since the early 1980’s.   In general, there’s no reason to presume there are any dangers and this is something that the fact sheet makes clear.   Even if it takes an average of 40 years for an enviornmental stressor to produce an effect, we should still see at least the beginning of the trend after much shorter periods of time.

Additional information on wireless devices can be found from HPS here.

Here is one of my favorite “Expert Answers on the topic”

Recent news from China has shown an example of how a little understanding of evolution and developmental biology can shed light on what otherwise seems damn near supernatural. Organisms evolve and as they evolve they gain and lose certain traits.   The various traits of an organism are controlled by its genetics, but it’s not as simple as one gene making one trait.  Many traits and structures are controlled by multiple genes, including control genes, which regulate how and when a gene is expressed.   This is a nifty feature because it makes it possible for genes to be used in multiple ways.  For example, the genes that build arms and hands can be used to produce legs and feet, either through a recombinant mutation or by changing how and where they are expressed.

Since we all have evolved from previous species, we carry all kinds of genes for traits that they had, even if we ourselves do not manifest the traits associated with these genes.  It may simply be that the gene is “switched off” or that it has mutated in a way that makes it no longer effective at producing a given trait.   This is very helpful for evolution because these genes are like a library that can produce complex traits without having to completely reinvent them from the ground up.   A single mutation can switch back on one of these genes, inherited from previous ancestors and usually not useful.   However, on the rare occasion that it is, it can reemerge, sometimes being used in a totally different way.

Thus, our understanding of genetics has shed light on evolution and vice-versa.

And that is why it’s not really that weird that there’s a snake in china with a clawed foot sticking out of it…

Okay, it’s still weird, but the basic explanation is pretty simple: a mutation of some sort has caused the snake to manifest traits associated with a genes that have been long dormant and were inherited from the past ancestors of the snake which did have legs.   If we didn’t accept evolution we’d be left scratching out heads and looking at this saying “what the…”

So what the hell is a gene for a leg doing in a snake?  Did God put it there?  What for?   Did Satan do it?   Is this snake really Satan?   No.  The answer is much more straight forward than that.  It’s there because the snake evolved from legged reptiles.

On 29 September, Francesca Galeazzi walked to the top of a small hill in Greenland’s Jakobshavn fjord carrying a black gas tanks, kneeled down, opened the valve and released 6 kilograms of pure carbon dioxide into the air.

Galeazzi, part of an expedition of artists and scientists, later wrote on her blog:

The CO2 came out violently, freezing the air around the nozzle and producing an unpleasant whistle.

She had purposefully chosen a pristine spot. Others on the expedition were shocked by her actions. According to an interview she did recently with the UK Royal Society of Arts, one stopped talking to her entirely.

Galeazzi makes a powerful point. The average UK citizen emits 100 times as much CO2 in holiday flights each year, and producing the food and drink we each consume emits another 600kg. We don’t tend to think of these emissions because we don’t physically see them being released over the Greenland ice sheet.

But the real point of Galeazzi’s “installation” is about carbon offsets and, as she puts it “justifying bad behaviour”.

Okay, while I agree that “carbon offsets” are a crock of bull, this is even worse.   Apparently it’s another example of “raising awareness” but this also includes the classic guilt trip.  Yes, now it’s “bad behavior ” to take your family on holiday so that you might actually get to bond with the kids or see a pristine place in the world (notice her “bad behavior” of flying to Greenland in the first place is not mentioned).  Of course the reality of things is that aviation doesn’t account for all that much CO2 and trying to call innocent travel “bad behavior” is not going to do much when one considered the amount of emissions that things like coal produce.

The other part nobody seems to want to mention is that had this artist not released this CO2 from a tank, it would have ended up being burped up by a soda drinker, shot out of a paint ball gun, released from a portable cooling system or otherwise vented from any of the numerous end users of industrial Co2.

From the “artist’s” blog:

You might think I carried out an evil horrible action. I would like to reassure you, I didn’t! I have done something great: I have offset the carbon emissions generated by the CO2 cylinder, through an online Gold Standard Carbon Offsetting scheme! Cool no? This is great stuff; one can go about consciously polluting the world, wasting energy, producing tonnes of waste and abusing natural resources without feeling guilty at all!! One can simply pay somebody to compensate for his/her ‘bad’ actions somewhere else, and become carbon neutral!

Don’t you think this is great?

Do you?

Personally I think it is appalling.

The only thing “appalling” about this is that it’s a cheap stunt passed as art.   Believe it or not, there was a time when people who covered their car with Cheetos or stood motionless on a corner of Soho were just known as “weird and slightly creepy people.”   Now apparently the idea of actually having talent or producing something of beauty or insight is totally unrelated to art.   This is a stunt pure and simple and in my book, that makes it no more or less noble than the radio “shock jock” who gets listeners by having a pair of stripper twins on during the morning rush hour.

So who payed for this publicity whore to take a trip to someplace pristine for a cliche photo op?   Cape Farewell, a program that unites artists and scientists and takes them to exotic places to delve into the “cultural response to climate change.”    Excuse me while I vomit, but this is apparently how things are done now.   Screw the whole aspects of engineering and science, lets turn this into a philosophical, political excuse to go out and pretend that we’re super insightful.   Yoko Ono should be proud!

Anyway, since this behavior is seen as so horrible by so many and since we’re only concerning ourselves with the immediate, independent and smallest aspects of things and not the greater reality, let me go ahead and offer a fix to this sinful behavior:

There ya go.  Just open up one of these bags and all your sinful behavior will be absolved!   Note:  You’ll still be worthless as an artist, but there’s not much that can be done about that, other than perhaps getting a real job.

Lets just hope that nobody happens to call you on any of this crap or the fact that you’re wearing clothes made from synthetic fibers that take quite a bit of energy to produce as you take some photos for your website.   But then again, you’re one of the beautiful people, right?  Not the unwashed masses.  No, it would be appalling if any of them were to ride first class on their way to give a lecture on consumerism at an art gallery.   No darling, you’ve done good for the world, so just continue to enjoy your grande organic soy latte – after all, it is “fair trade” right?