sudo life

As the drama surrounding the release of ‘Expelled‘ continues to unfold, there seems to be a lot of confusion around the difference between Plagiarism and Copyright violations.

A copyright violation is when you take the copyrighted work of someone else and use it in a way that they have not given permission for. Want to video tape an NFL game and show a portion in a classroom? That’s a copyright violation. Want to copy a DVD and give it to a friend? Technically, that’s a copyright violation. IANAL, so the subtleties of copyright continue to elude me, but that’s the basics.

Plagiarism is where you take the work of someone else and claim it as your own. If you take a photograph off of flickr that has been released under a certain creative commons license and you claim it as your own, that is not a copyright violation. It is plagiarism. If you take a copy of my .NET Geotagging library and claim you have written it, that’s not a copyright violation, since I released it to the public domain. It is plagiarism.

Taking a video, recreating it without the authors permission, and claiming it as your own? That is both a copyright violation and plagiarism. You fail.

P.S.  This great explanation has been posted over at ERV in the comments:

What the fuck is the matter with those people???

It’s beginning to look like some of them think that this is what scientists actually do all day. They muck about a bit, copy each other’s work, and ad lib their own bullshit on top. More cargo cult science. “Waah, why isn’t it working for us?” I don’t know how they are missing the parts where we collect new data and do experiments.

Philosophy copyright, education, Science

Here is a recent article in Seed, written by Thomas W. Martin, entitled, Scientific Literacy and the Habit of Discourse. Excerpt:

Science eventually yields impressive answers because it compels smart people to incessantly try to disprove the ideas generated by other smart people.

Can we make this required reading?

Mr. Martin hits upon another issue I have a real pet peeve about:

In the present cultural climate, altering one’s beliefs in response to anything (facts included) is considered a sign of weakness.

Political races especially have illustrated this perfectly. It’s a side effect of not having any popularly accepted standard of truth. People would prefer to deny reality itself in order to ‘feel-good’ or, in the political arena, appeal to some sub-group of people.

Philosophy education, Science

I tried another experiment last night. I had heard somewhere that if you boil green leaves, you can extract the chlorophyll from them when can then be excited by exposure to light, making the solution ‘glow’ as electrons move around. So I dutifully went out, gathered several leaves and put them in a beaker, which I heated over my Bunsen burner.

Note to self: Get new Bunsen Burner. After heating it for about 20 minutes and it still hadn’t boiled, I decided a new tactic was necessary.

Note to self: Buy more Denatured Alcohol.

I poured some of the liquid into a test tube, and added some of the leaves. Now the water started boiling pretty quickly. The water wasn’t getting any greener, though. After observing it boil for a while, I decided it was as good as it was going to get, and cut the flame. Then I removed the leaves, and exposed the final solution to a light source.

I was underwhelmed, to say the least.

There are several possibilities I have thought of as to what went wrong:

1. Boiling leaves is not an efficient method of chlorophyll extraction. Can be fixed by discovering a more efficient method.
2. I didn’t allow the leaves to boil long enough and need to be more patient.
3. My light source (a flashlight) was either not powerful enough, or did not give out light in the right part of the electro-magnetic spectrum.
4. My original hypothesis, that extracted chlorophyll will glow when exposed to a light source, is wrong.
5. Yet to be discovered.

A cursory search on google and I discovered that my original hypothesis appears to be correct, but my methods are lacking. At least I know I’m on the right track.

I’m purposely avoiding looking at how other people have done this in the past. I want to work it out on my own. Who knows what I might figure out along the way?

First, I’m going to try to find a better method of chlorophyll extraction. Alcohol might be a better choice than water, or perhaps an acid or base. I’ll also try boiling leaves in water for a longer period of time.

Second, I’ll find different light sources, perhaps a UV light source, like a black light, and an IR light source (a remote control perhaps?).

I think I’ll also try to locate some thicker leaves than the ones I’m using. Perhaps elm’s just aren’t a good source.

If I’m only changing one variable at a time, I’ll be busy for a while!

Experiments biology, chemistry, education, Science

It is a good question, and I’ve been asked it quite a bit this semester. The answer I usually give is that the requirements worked out for my degree such that I have to take Calculus III. This is true, but my experiences this semester in this class has led me to something else.

The class started out rocky. The actual professor wasn’t there for the first 3 or 4 weeks of class, and during that time, we had 4 seperate teachers come in to cover basic Vector Calculus. I struggled for the first time in a math class. It had been 2 years since I took Calculus II, and I had heard that Calculus III is supposed to be the hardest undergraduate class someone can take. So I was very anxious about this venture. But now, with two weeks left in the semester, I couldn’t be happier with my choice. I have fallen in love with mathematics once again.

When you really understand an equation, there is something almost spiritual that happens. Others have described it as ‘reading the mind of god,’ but I don’t like that language. It doesn’t seem descriptive enough. It’s finding out something about reality completely with your mind, something that you know is true! You are literally discovering an ultimate truth with every step of the theorem.

Call me crazy but my two favorite math class periods in high school we when they actually showed the proof to two important concepts: the irrationality of square-root of two, and the derivation of the quadratic equation (x equals negative plus or minus the square root of b-squared minus four A C, all over 2 A.). It was one things to just be told these things, but for me, the more important question was, ‘How did we know them?’

This leads to something else, something that has drawn my interest lately, especially after reading ‘The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences.’ I am a music major – how does this all fit together? Music may be the universal human language, but mathematics is the language of the Cosmos.

Mathematics education, math, Science

I can’t think of anything (at the moment) that frustrates me more than a bad teacher. I have a class this semester, speech, which I was sort of looking forward to, but I also had a bit of aprehension. So far, it’s been terribly easy, but that’s not what bothers me.

It’s the teacher. Here is a sample dialogue (if you can even call it that) from the class:

Teacher: What does equivocal mean?
Me: Ambiguous
Teacher: Ok, but was does that mean?
Me: …
Teacher: Well?
Me: Not clear, has more than one meaning.
Me (thinking): I didn’t know Ambiguous has more than one meaning now…

That doesn’t seem like a big deal, but breaking a word down into the simplest words possible is just annoying. I guess we can’t really use bigger words in college today.

Here’s something else that just gets into my crawl. I’ve asked several questions now and pointed out a few things that didn’t make sense to me because I thought they were wrong. EVERY SINGLE TIME, the teacher has answered, ‘because that’s what the book says.’

Goddammit, how is that helpful? At least one of the things has been blatantly wrong and I got the smackdown in class, when I was right! If that’s not the height of incompetance as a teacher, I don’t know what is.

Here’s a few other things that we absolutely cannot do in class, or other rules that we have to follow:

1. Never, ever, use an abstract as a source in a speech
2. Follow obscure outlining practices simply because that’s what the book reccommends. I argued a logical alternative, and was told, ‘because that’s what the book says.’ Then I was further instructed to just do it without asking questions.
3. We MUST use notecards while giving our speech.
4. We MUST stand behind the podium while giving our speech.

There are others, but that just gives you the general idea. ANY movement away from these things recieves a reprimand.

The teacher also absolutely refuses to use blackboard (our Universities course software) because by putting notes on there, students might feel they can just skip class, even though she already has an attendance policy in place. This request came from multiple students, including myself. Using blackboard would provide a central forum for discussing class issues, grade access, and access to course documents such as the syllabus and class schedule. Assignments can be posted for easy access.

The teacher has refused to accept e-mailed work from us as she doesn’t want to use her ink and paper for printing it out (it’s provided by the University), but has no problem using that same ink and paper to give us the assignments in the first place.

Getting back to the original point – the thing that really sets me off. How in the world can ‘because that’s what the book says’ be seen as an acceptable answer for any college level student? It’s not like we’re talking rocket science, either. We’re talking basic procedure, techniques, and facts! If the teacher can’t explain these things – as her job requires – then what good is she?

From the way I see it, she’s just a talking hot water bottle with no purpose other than reguritating the book and imposing stupid rules without basis.

I would have gained more knowledge by reading wikipedia and joining a club where I could give presentations.

For once, I’m truly looking forward to teacher evaluations at the end of the semester. It probably won’t make any difference at all, but it might make me feel better to evaluate this teacher as she really is: incompetent.

Personal education, rants, skepticism

Even as a Christian, I struggled with this issue:  Teach Evolution or Intelligent Design in the classroom?  As a younger christian, I believe creationism to be absolutely true, to the point that I made a big deal about it not being mentioned at all in my 5th grade classroom.

Then I sort of forgot about it.  I didn’t need to take any more biology classes that really studied evolution for quite some time, until two years ago in college, as a matter of fact.  Evolution was still a bad word to me at that point.

Then this last spring, the debate arose in the Kansas State Board of Education on whether or not ID should be taught in the classroom.  That is when everything started to change.

All my life I’ve been in love with Science.  I truly believed that God and Science were completely compatable.

But I was wrong.  They are completely seperate things.  Science cannot prove God’s existance.  It cannot disprove God’s existance.  Anything relating to God is not science.

Intelligent Design does not belong in any classroom, ever.  It is not a scientific theory, it is not supported by any scientific evidence.  It does not explain anything evolution cannot explain.

I think Christians especially should understand this.  They should be fighting to not have things like ID taught as science.  To do otherwise is show ignorance, not only of science, but of the world we live in!  It is to show ignorance of religious freedom, of history, and of facts.

It goes back to the basic principal that has been taught for centuries.  For a modern example see the movie, ‘the Time Changer.’  The principal is this: if science contradicts the bible or any of god’s revelations, science is wrong.

Over time, I’ve realized that this is really what faith is about: in the face of hard facts, ignoring them for some sort of divine explanation.

That is just not something I cannot accept.

Philosophy biology, education, evolution, Science

One of my many passions is teaching.  I love to learn new things, and as an auto-didact, I am always discovering something new and exciting.  I love this new knowledge so much that I can’t help but have a strong desire to share it.  Most of my knowledge comes from field outside of the common range of knowledge.  Lately, I’ve been studying Quantum Physics, Relativity, Sleight of Hand, Skepticism, and Evolution.  These are not things the common person knows much about.  So many times, when I’m trying to share this knowledge with someone, what I’m really doing is teaching this new idea to them, whether it’s recognized as such or not.

One of my greatest joys, however, is teaching in front of a class.  Over the course of my life, I’ve taught music classes, physics classes, and computer classes.  I think the physics classes were my favorite because they were the most hands-on.  I taught model rocketry and the physics behind it.

My classes were very different than other classes.  Instead of writing information on the board, I asked questions.  Eventually, it was the class that provided the answers, even though they did not previously know the answer.  This is the most powerful way to teach, and it is known as the Socratic Method.

Plato / Socrates believed that the Socratic Method worked because we already contained the entire knowledge of the universe, we only had to access it for the first time in order to know it.  This was an extension of their ‘Theory of Forms,’ in which our knowledge of the physical world was merely a reflection of some sort of abstract form of things.

Though I love the Socratic Method, I completely reject this sort of reasoning.

Why does the Socratic Method work, then?  Because man is a reasoning being.  We are capable of logic and building upon previous knowledge in order to gain new knowledge.

The students I had in the rocketry class had little concept of the newtonian equations, but they could very easily figure out the equations for velocity and acceleration, and from there we could derive the rest.  Physics was no longer “hard” for them, it was something they were able to come up with themselves!  Here is an account of a man teaching a third grade class binary math using the Socratic Method.

I don’t think you can top that.  Most college students have trouble with Binary math.

I detest how most classes are taught today.  Some information is written on the chalkboard, or – if you’re really unlucky – a powerpoint presentation, and you’re expected to memorize it.  Most students my age have no concept of expanding their own knowledge mere through thought because of this.  They expect the knowledge to just be given to them whenever they need it.

It can be very frustrating, and that is part of what has led me to be much more cynical.  It’s hard to have faith in the human mind when people are too ignorant to figure out and remember how to cut and paste on a computer, or do any sort of other extremely easy task.

Do you have a brain?  Use it, for crying out loud!  When I have a question, or I wonder how something works, or I need to know how to do something, depending on what it is, I tend to do one of these things:

1. Start Expirementing with different things
2. Take something apart and put it back together
3. Look it up in Google and/or Wikipedia
4. Look at the situation from different points of view (literally or figuratively)
5. Other

I had to add the last category in there because there isn’t a real set of things.  All these are concerned with one thing: getting more information.

So think and question things!  When you hear something new, ask yourself if it is inline with your own observations and if it’s possible if your own point of view could be incorrect.

After all, what good is having a mind if you never use it?

Philosophy education

How To Ask Questions The Smart Way

Hey! Finally! I think this ought to be required for all School of Education students I have to work with.

Philosophy education