Education Reform

The Bush administration tried making education their domestic poster-boy cause as the Obama administration is making healthcare reform their current domestic worthy-cause. Ironic, given the Bush pronounced the word "nuclear" the same way as Homer Simpson. But it's about as fair to pick on Bush's intellect as it is to pick on a snake for losing a thumb wrestling competition, so I'll get back on track with my original topic now.

School reform made a small ripple in the news-o-sphere with the release of a study from the Annenberg Institute and NYCLU recommending making schools less of a prison state in order to increase success of students in academia.

It's kind of important to note that this was done in schools of "at-risk" students.

Their recommendations:

• Discourage the installation of metal detectors. Schools can create safe and successful learning environments without relying on metal detectors.

I honestly don't have experience with this. Our school districts don't spend money on this, and personally I never thought it was needed. But I'm not familiar with city schools, especially at-risk schools. I suppose as a deterrent it's a good thing, as a practical thing I don't know how effective it is. Guess it just means the kids wait until after school to shoot each other, and meanwhile a belt buckle is holding up the line of kids trying to get to class on time. If you absolutely have to get rid of that sucka' that be dissin' you girl, time ta' get creative in shop class with the band saw...

The statement is true though. You never hear about schools in clothing-optional communities having problems with kids smuggling contraband drugs and weapons into the buildings, so I guess they can have safe environments without metal detectors.

• Restore discipline responsibilities to educators. Minor disciplinary infractions must be handled exclusively by school officials, not police personnel.

That would be nice. In theory. In practice today, administration is beholden to the public, simply because it's a headache to deal with little Johnny's parents. Seems as if in more cases than no little Johnny is always the angel that couldn't possibly have stolen Sally's iPod and the parents have no idea how it ended up in Johnny's backpack, but I'm sure they'll find out in a lawsuit to the school because this suspension means Johnny can't play in the football game.

Okay, I'm overgeneralizing.

My point is that discipline is a...well, discipline in and of itself, and educators having to police the kids while walking a political line to keep parents happy is never a good mix. It seems that once parents start pulling the litigation or harassment card then it's simply not worth the hassle of giving Johnny a life lesson in character weighed against the time that would be invested in educating the parents that life just isn't always fair and that yes, their son can be a pain in the arse, contrary to what they seem to believe.

I suppose that it does end up teaching Johnny a lesson. Life not giving you your way? Mommy and Daddy can make it fair for you. I think that's where No Child Left Behind's brainchild had his life lessons learned, come to think of it...

• Assign fewer School Safety Agents to patrol schools. The number of police personnel patrolling the city’s schools should be reduced significantly, creating financial savings and strengthening the educational mission of the schools.

Again we don't have much experience in our area. Growing up, we didn't have them in our schools. I think that our local district did have a police officer or two after I had graduated; the school officials liked outsourcing discipline since it meant that the parents with objections had to take it up with a judge and not infringe on the administrator's time with objections.

I'm not sure what the recommendation means by implying there's a connection between fewer police officers patrolling schools will lead to a greater education mission in schools; perhaps the article linked to simply waters down the bullet points into sound bites and as a result it lost its meaning.

• Mandate alternatives to harsh discipline. Restorative justice practices, a conflict resolution method used at several schools profiled in the report, should be implemented in all city schools.

This could be interesting, given that I have no idea what the alternatives are they're proposing. A student court? We can't even get actual tax-paying citizens to report for jury duty; do we really want kids who won't pay attention in class to be in charge of some kind of pseudo-justice system?

My daughter is in student council. She did...well, nothing, to my knowledge. But it looks good on her college application. In that regard it seems as if student government is a lot like actual government. Even when I was in school I couldn't figure out what student government was supposed to do...they didn't have more than a pittance budget and were supposed to...well, I don't know, sponsor dances, maybe? They sure as hell didn't do anything with rules or learning incentives. We had a representative that was supposed to go to school board meetings, but it wasn't like they had a vote or could do anything other than talk to board members who would politely ignore them because I suppose the student didn't pay attention in civics classes in the first place.

For students with an IQ above a toaster oven most of the "student conflict resolution" prepackaged programs probably won't hold much meaning. It's telling that people who are supposed to be in the real world apparently can't just tell kids how to handle situations and instead are told they must rely on pretty posters and handbooks that tell them how to deal with conflicts...apparently educated adults who are considered functional members of society can't share their common-sense strategies on how to deal with the jerk that doesn't know how to properly trade lunch tray items or get their fat arse off the swingset and share.

• Ensure students’ input into school rules. Giving students a sense of ownership over the school rules makes them more willing to obey codes of conduct.

This could be a nice laugh-riot. First we get a report that essentially points out that kids are brain-damaged, developmentally, until they're into their twenties, then there's this recommendation that urge turning more control over to these brain-damaged kids.

Do these people ever sit down and talk to these kids, get their ideas, before actually proposing these things? It sounds reasonable. Sounds very reasonable. In practice...um...I'll just say I'm skeptical and leave it at that.

Would it be out of left field to draw a similar parallel to prisons would having happier prisoners if they had a vote in how their punishments and disciplining was carried out? Or patients in asylums? These are extremes, but when it comes down to it, the people in prisons and schools don't have much say in whether they're there, what is done to them there, and they're working in a system which encourages conformity to reduce discipline issues. Usually for a reason.

• Institute transparency and accountability in school safety practices. The DOE must disclose raw data to allow New Yorkers to determine the effectiveness of school safety practices. Moreover, School Safety Agents should be subject to the same oversight as police officers.

...because the public is SOOO much more effective at dealing with issues they have no experience in. State and federal legislators have shown this time and time again with all the bureaucracy they've helped introduce into various sectors of society, from education to transportation to taxes and healthcare.

I love hearing people who have spent no time on the other side of the classroom...any role aside from their childhood brain-formative years sitting at a desk...dictating how to fix education. They have no idea what teachers have to put up with and how teachers spend more time dealing with bureaucracy and policies and politics instead of just teaching.

Although I'll also point out that teachers are members of the public too. They seem equally mystified much of the time at matters of intellect and education; there's nothing that seems to prevent sub-intellectual or low-achieving teachers from taking up positions in schools; I've heard stories of teachers that promote the idea that the moon landing were faked being in charge of teaching students and worse. It's just part of the human condition. On the other hand, why would good teachers with solid skills want to work for crap pay to put up with the hassles that are attached to teaching if what they really want to do is teach?

• Provide support services for students’ non-academic needs. Partnering with local hospitals and community based organizations to provide students health care and social services addresses non-academic challenges before they develop into behavioral problems.

This one sounds like advocating that schools become a nanny day-care than focusing schools on being schools. Parents already expect schools to act as substitute parents (unless it clashes with whatever subset of obligations they decide they actually want to take care of; "You want to teach my kid about SEX?? NEVER!") Now we want schools to give added services for kids that are lonely, pregnant, gangbangers, mentally ill, bored, overweight, underweight, depressed...

Was there a time when kids went to school to learn instead of form their own miniature nanny state?

Maybe I'm being too harsh or cynical. At this point it seems that we've had decades of "failing education" so...going by track record...there's not much hope that things will change anytime soon.

I've said before that just criticizing without offering alternatives is rather wasteful. I think I do have ideas. Practical? Probably not. But they're something, and the ideas distilled into something that would fit here would probably render them rather trite

Bullying in Schools

The school district my daughter attends, like so many others now, are actively trying to fight bullying in their halls.

When I went to meet with some teachers I happened to see some of the materials out promoting the pre-packaged program on which the district spent a pretty penny on; posters dotted the halls replete with trite slogans and various papers with crayon drawings and misspelled phrases by the students in the elementary schools.

But the thing that surprised me most was that in this program there are forms where teachers fill in incident reports for bullying. There were a series of labels for which you got into trouble...you were a bully, a henchman (aren't they the first ones to be smacked around by Batman?), or a bystander.

Yes. Bystander.

I remember when I was growing up we called this "minding your own business." I wasn't a victim of bullying...I didn't actively seek trouble, and I didn't actively cause trouble (outside of being a class clown, anyway).

But the current system of education teaches kids that minding your own business makes you an accomplice to bullying.

I talked to a teacher about this; she said that she's torn with her own personal opinion on this issue because while she agrees that children should be active in preventing bullying, she remembers when she was in school and she stuck up for another kid being bullied. She ended up being punched in the nose.

Every day there's bullying. As adults, we call it office politics. Or we call it someone annoying the bejebus out of us. Here's a list of what constitutes bullying (according to this site):

• constant nit-picking, fault-finding and criticism of a trivial nature - the triviality, regularity and frequency betray bullying; often there is a grain of truth (but only a grain) in the criticism to fool you into believing the criticism has validity, which it does not; often, the criticism is based on distortion, misrepresentation or fabrication
• simultaneous with the criticism, a constant refusal to acknowledge you and your contributions and achievements or to recognize your existence and value
• constant attempts to undermine you and your position, status, worth, value and potential
• where you are in a group (eg at work), being singled out and treated differently; for instance, everyone else can get away with murder but the moment you put a foot wrong - however trivial - action is taken against you
• being isolated and separated from colleagues, excluded from what's going on, marginalized, overruled, ignored, sidelined, frozen out, sent to Coventry
• being belittled, demeaned and patronised, especially in front of others
• being humiliated, shouted at and threatened, often in front of others
• being overloaded with work, or having all your work taken away and replaced with either menial tasks (filing, photocopying, minute taking) or with no work at all
• finding that your work - and the credit for it - is stolen and plagiarised
• having your responsibility increased but your authority taken away
• having annual leave, sickness leave, and - especially - compassionate leave refused
• being denied training necessary for you to fulfill your duties
• having unrealistic goals set, which change as you approach them
• ditto deadlines which are changed at short notice - or no notice - and without you being informed until it's too late
• finding that everything you say and do is twisted, distorted and misrepresented
• being subjected to disciplinary procedures with verbal or written warnings imposed for trivial or fabricated reasons and without proper investigation
• being coerced into leaving through no fault of your own, constructive dismissal, early or ill-health retirement, etc

Wow...most people are bullied just by going to work.

So is it worth the money and time being spent on "anti-bullying programs"? Is it being blown out of proportion? Or is there a genuine need to bring this into the public awareness?

Surely the stories I hear about are those like the one from this guy, now a nearly perfectly adjusted (if not really bitter about his childhood) adult working at Google. I thought these were extreme stories, things that happen to a relatively small number of people, like winning the lottery or managing to get out of debt.

When I was growing up I experienced very little outstanding examples of bullying despite being fat and definitely a nonfan of athletics and sports. I figured that most of those stories were exaggerated, seeing as I was a prime stereotypical target for bullying and I wasn't actually experiencing it. Maybe someone reading this could post comments about their experiences growing up, or as parents with kids in school now.

Is bullying really a big problem?

High School: Geeks and Bullies

This post (click for link) by a PhD in computer science at Google regarding why he won't go to his high school reunion had me thinking back to my own experiences in high school.

I suppose this is another example of how I've ended up at this point, largely defined by my weight. The only thing is that I never had it as bad as this guy did. He describes having his fingers broken by some other student just so the bully could hear what it would sound like and having a swastika shape burned in front of his house; not that it was anti-semitically related, just that the kid who did it knew it would really bother him (and his brother got some revenge on the perpetrator too; he elaborated both of these details later on in the article). He grew up as a skinny geek and social outcast and his article is wondering what mental defect his ex-classmates have that they would think he'd want to see them at the 25th reunion.

It must have touched more than a few nerves; there's a huge list of anecdotes in the comments section.

I guess I was lucky. I grew up a geek; my first computer that I owned was a Commodore 128D, and I remember playing in elementary school...around third grade or so...with a TRS-80 in the school's enrichment program (or gifted program, whatever other schools would call it. I think it's a dying thing now since No Child Left Behind places emphasis on kids who don't want to be in school and gifted kids are assumed to be fine left to their own devices; a real shame). I wasn't an easy target though...I was overweight and sullen. Not emo. Just looked scary if I got mad, and my temperment was such that usually I left well enough alone. Mind your business, I'll mind mine. Step into my business and I usually used words that bullies were too dim-witted to understand. Or maybe they were afraid of what I'd do to them in retaliation.

Maybe it was the rural area I lived in or maybe it was because fat people were expected to be stupid and I didn't fit the stereotype, but for the most part I had no problem with people bullying me.

I was in chorus in high school. I did a lot of theater work (have a minor in it, actually). I wore a trenchcoat because it was a great utility; at the time, my fat usually kept me pretty warm so a thin trenchoat was just the ticket to protect from the wind without drenching me in sweat, but at the same time it had huge pockets for carrying my things which was necessary because I was too fat to get from one class to the lockers for my things then to the next class in time. I don't know how I'd survive in today's school system where bookbags are a hazard and coats aren't allowed during the day and trenchcoats are a one-way ticket to the guidance counselor, if not the principal. There was also the fact that the coat was almost like a post-industrial wizard's robe or hero's cape.

The fact that the coat draped on an already oversized guy sporting a non-smiling face was probably somewhat intimidating probably helped, in retrospect, send a message to not bother me if I wasn't in the mood.

I was a class clown despite these appearances. My insecurities and social awkwardness expressed itself by making others laugh; I enjoyed performing on stage and in class alike, to the chagrin of my teachers.

I had a small circle of friends. I only hear from a few of them anymore and those I do keep in touch with I usually only hear snippets from via Facebook.

I was fat, geeky, socially awkward, "different", hated sports, strongly disliked school and the institution of public education, resented the people I saw around me to be fools and ignoramuses, and introverted. And I liked computers, rejected organized religion which in itself is a sin in a small rural town like the one I grew up in, and wore a trench coat. What a formula. And of course I didn't date. There were a couple of girls I had a crush on at some point but no one ever wanted to be known for dating the fat social reject. I was far closer to "friend" material than dating material.

(I sometimes wonder if I would meet some of these people on the street if they'd not recognize me and suddenly be open to going out on a date, just so I could reminisce about whether they remember some fatass from high school that they wouldn't give the time of day to...then tell them to go to hell. Not that I'm bitter. My wife might even get a kick from listening to this transpire.)

And yet no one really picked on me. Aside from the expected comments about being fat. Usually I didn't hear them much, either because it was said behind my back or I didn't provoke outright teasing (or they feared that if I did catch up to them at some point, this fatass could still give them an ass whupping, I don't know).

I suppose that while I look back with very little fondness for my public school years I was fortunate in leaving without great mental scarring, unlike the guy that posted the article that got me thinking about this again. I honestly don't recall any great pains inflicted by my peers while growing up except for the occasional teenage melodrama of heartbreak, but that's hardly limited to something geeks have the monopoly on.

See? I've finally found something fortunate in my life to focus on. I'm told I always focus on the negative...now I have an example to point to.

Although now that I've said that I'll probably find a memory I've been supressing...

Anyone else have anything they'd like to share from their formative years?

Trust In Our Government

This is one of the best talks on the subject of trust in our government that I've ever found.

Lawrence Lessig is a professor of law at Harvard and is well known in copyright circles for his insights and intelligent decomposition of the corporate interests during the various legal scuffles involving copyright. Anything more I say here would just be rehash of his Wiki article or blog, though, so I'll leave it to you to check on the link if you're interested...I'll sum it up by saying that despite the topic of the legalities involved in copyright, he is one of those rare speakers that effectively communicates to his audience and I actually don't mind learning from him.

Check out that speech and see if you agree. From the summary at the site:
***
Only 9 percent of the electorate thinks the U.S. Congress is doing a good job. Lawrence Lessig talks about the damage that arises from politicians focusing on raising funds to get themselves reelected. This constant attention to making money feeds the Washington 'economy of influence'. The morally destitute behavior, foretold by Thomas Jefferson in The Founders' Constitution, undermines the trust of the electorate in the institution of the government.

The Congress have been known for feathering their own nests, voting themselves back into power, developing the sixth sense to get re-elected into tenure, since the 1770s. Barack Obama may fix the presidency in one fell swoop, but the core of the problem is not in the presidency. It is in the loss of trust. People have lost trust in the government because the integrity of politicians is compromised by bribery from influential lobbyists.
***
Again. Download the mp3 or listen right from the website. Check it out and see what you think...feel free to leave comments here about it if you'd like. You just may be glad you did, or at least have something to think about. The talk was less than 15 minutes...

Your Daughter the Teen Mother

This is a topic that is just something I end up thinking about periodically, probably because I have a 17-year-old daughter with a boyfriend. It's a subject of great debate yet is often kind of couched in a silence at the dinner table; an uncomfortable pebble in your shoe rubbing on your foot. It's simply avoided.

Fortunately my Asperger's and her mother's sometimes lacking skills of tact means this normally doesn't apply to our family as a problem.

If I'm reading this right, the US had a 84 out of 1,000 teens pregnant on average. This report shows that almost half of school-age teens have had sex at least once. Newer information just further convinces me that this isn't a topic that should be ignored.

I've worked around kids enough...with a young one and a teenager in the house, especially...to know that you can't take for granted that they know what they should or shouldn't do. You'd assume that they could figure something out. Then we get questions about things like how to make spaghetti ("The instructions are right on the box!"). For some reason apparently the biological drive to mate, despite fumbling and possibly getting slivers, is strong enough that teenagers manage to figure it out while simpler things like boiling water without disintegrating the pasta...with instructions in hand...escape them.

Lesson: don't take it for granted that they know their parents views, understand those views, and understand the consequences.

My daughter has had exposure to the hardships incurred by unwed pregnancies. She has an aunt that has two children without a father in the picture; she lives with her parents and so the children's grandparents use a considerable amount of their resources to raise the grandchildren. She herself...well, isn't my biological daughter. My wife became pregnant her last years of high school and married the biological father; the marriage crumbled and reached a breaking point nearly ten years later, after which she divorced and met me, so she's my step daughter and she was raised under economic difficulty and had to move around as jobs and money permitted while her mom worked during the day and went to college on weekends and at night to try making a better life for them. She basically grew up seeing what can happen (although I guess her mom was a bad role model for showing the bad side of being a teen mom, since her mom worked her tail off to get through school while raising a daughter with little help from the father and managed to graduate with a degree...she now has a master's degree).

She sees the hardship that her grandparents go through emotionally with having their daughter and grandchildren with them as well as experiencing her own childhood with parents barely scraping by because of balancing family, bills, and education.

But again, we couldn't take that for granted.

My wife wanted to make sure that our daughter was able to tell her...if not both of us (okay, I'm not a teddy bear to relate to when there's emotions involved. I'm cognizant that she'll first go to her mother if something like this happens to have some support before revealing it to me...) that she was sexually active so she could get birth control. Or come to us with questions.

We differ a little here.

She knows I disapprove of her having any relations with someone else before she is married. I know, it's such a conservative view! Weird! But the fact is that I disapprove of it before marriage, I have made it clear to her that she has full support to do whatever she wants to do once she is 18 and out of the house.

See, my philosophy extends from the notion that if you want to play adult, you need to be in a position to live like an adult. Having sex is a big risk; condoms break, they slip, and anything that can get one motile sperm into the uterus can get her pregnant. At that point you are then responsible for bringing a potential life into the world that didn't ask to be here. Taking risks like that means you think you're prepared to go into the world as an independent adult.

She was told that if she got pregnant, she'd be given a reasonable time to move out to her own apartment. She's not disowned or banned or anything like that...she just needs to get her life in order and understand that there are consequences; sex isn't a little hobby thing to do when you're bored or to fit in. We agreed we'd help her out with things when we could, but only as long as she's making a reasonable effort to keep her own head above water...steady job, education if she needs it, pays own bills, learns the joys of keeping her car running, things of that nature.

But we can't swoop in and save her every time. She wasn't living with us rent free if she decided she was living here; she uses electricity, she uses groceries (unless she buys her own), she uses space...she was going to pay a reasonable rent. My parents never told me much as I grew up about finances; I wanted to remedy that with her. We told her that we're paying a little under two grand a month to keep a roof over our heads. We make no secret from her what it costs with our bills and taxes.

But none of this made much of a real-world impact until she was strongarmed into getting a McJob. It was heartwarming to see her read her first paystub and realize how much money was taken out for silly things.

My primary concern, reinforced from the surgery, was that we want her to live on her own if we were to die. We have provisions in our will for her and her brother so that she'd be taken care of while my parents were still alive, and she's nearly old enough that should something happen she can care for her brother reasonably well in about five to seven years, I suppose (we're hoping to change the will should it become necessary later on), until he's old enough to live on his own. But my worry is that if we're always there to keep her protected from the real world she will never mature and lead her own life.

We need her to understand that. Desperately. I need to know that while it may not be pleasant, I want to know that if something happened to my wife and I that our daughter isn't going to be unable to sustain herself in "the real world".

I need her to understand that we will not raise her children for her because she wanted to experiment with her boyfriend because who will raise them if we die? Is it just another generation tossed aside unwanted after we pass away because we're too old to adequately care for her children?

She needs to understand that there comes a time when she needs to face the world and reality. We need to transition from careless teens to parents to grandparents...not perpetual parents. Just as my son and daughter can choose to do.

My wife and I don't want to look back on our lives after sixty or seventy years, just having the last grandchild moving to college from our home, wondering what we could have been doing had we not been raising our children's children or worrying about what is going to happen to our great-grandchildren. What if we had set firmer boundries? Or forced our daughter to take responsibility for her actions?

Of course this is all just one possible scenario. It's a worry, one of many that parents have to face. And like I said...as far as we know our daughter isn't active sexually, and she knows that abstinence is the only way to be sure she doesn't get pregnant, but that she is fully allowed to do whatever she wants when she is of age and we won't judge her negatively for it because we support her living her own life once she is taking responsibility for (possible) consequences. As long as she's happy and making her own way we can die without worrying about how she's going to manage. I told her that no matter what she chooses to do at that point it's fine with us.

Others, no doubt, have different opinions on the matter...

Republicans...Do They Like the Stereotypes?

It's well known that the Bush administration stifled science on many fronts; as a consequence, the Republican party is seen as being mostly pro-religion and anti-science.

But now apparently they don't mind having some of their more prominent figurehead organizations reinforce the idea that Republicans are ignorant racists as well.

I'm sure there are those who would say that this is a minor thing, that there are always rogues that give a group a bad name. This is true. But every little ripple in the news contributes to your perception of a group or idea and this is yet another ripple that can cripple. Unless, of course, you agree with them...in which case you're probably perfectly comfortable with this kind of ignorance on parade.

It's a real shame.

The Problem of Reasoning With Faith

There are a few points in my life when I really started to cement my philosophy of personal religious views.

One of them was when I realized the futility in arguing the nonexistence of a god. Primarily this is because theists can cite an argument that takes advantage of a flaw in inductive reasoning; namely, inductive reasoning proves what is probable, not what is infallible. For example we tend to believe that the sun will come up tomorrow because it always has in the past. There's some infintesimal chance that something could cause the sun to explode...but most people don't wake up thinking that is what will happen.

As is outlined in this paper this is a big reason that people will believe in something despite evidence to the contrary; you can't prove that it's not there because it's only probable that it's not there. For people that don't prefer to live by reason this is a perfect loophole.

For example...

Frank and Joe are friends who get together to have a chat. Frank tells Joe that there's a small invisible elephant named Nemo hovering over his head and that he controls the weather.

Joe is skeptical that there's a hovering Elephant named Nemo over Frank's head. "I don't see anything."

"He's invisible," says Frank.
"So how do you see him?"
"He wants me to so he lets me see him."
"Well...I want to see him. Can he show himself to me?"
"Not if he doesn't want to show you."
"What if I throw some paint above your head? Wouldn't that cover him so I could see him?"
"No, it'll pass through him."
"Does he make any sounds? Can I hear him?"
"Only if he lets you."
"So I can't hear him, I can't touch him, and I can't see him. How do I know he exists?"
"Easy! Look outside! Right there's the weather!"

This is how it is with theists discussing the existence of God; it's telling that basically in order for Joe to "see" Nemo he must first, like Frank, believe he's there and that way accept the shortcomings in the lack of evidence. Joe could tell Frank all about what is known regarding meterology; cold fronts, low pressure fronts, heating of oceans and humid air from the effects of the sun heating the ground and water, etc. etc...but see, it's complicated to understand those things. It's far more comforting to just say Nemo does it.

More accurately as science advances our understanding of weather Frank just will fall back on either Nemo wants us to believe that, or those are the mechanisms that Nemo uses to manipulate the weather. It's still Nemo controlling it.

No matter what there's still a fallback to dismiss these arguments. Science provides reproduceable results, testable hypothesis and theories, yet stacked against something whose abilities are believed to be...well, what amounts to magic...it's far simpler for Frank to dismiss Joe with a lot of hand-waving and he'll continue to take comfort in what he's already invested in believing. There's no way to definitively show that there is no Nemo above Frank's head because no matter what evidence Joe brings to the table Frank can dismiss that that's just how Nemo works or what Nemo wants. It's the power of the divine.

It is impossible to argue with people who don't want to hear what you're trying to say; don't even bother. It's uncomfortable for the majority of theists to listen to something that challenges what they've believed all their lives, something that comforts them, and for people like that comfort is more important than seeking truth.

Nontheists, the best approach is to simply be honest with yourself and others if asked. Don't push your ideas upon others; it'll be as unwelcome to them as when they push their beliefs on you. There are others who feel alienated because they are surrounded in their communities by theists and who question themselves because they are a minority in their own community. Finding others who are comfortable standing up and saying they don't believe in an organized religion can help you find others who share your perspective; you're not alone.

Do It Yourself Biology Research

One of the neat things about people who are making the effort to educate themselves and the availability of information is that there is a resurgence in the citizen scientist.

Not long ago a 14 year old girl discovered a supernova in another galaxy. Caroline Moore is the youngest person to date to do so. She did it with a small telescope.

Biology is now gaining a foothold among homebrew scientists. The site DIYbio is a meeting place for people that are working in their garage to experiment with alternative applications for various bacteria and viruses. From the site:

*****
DIYbio is an organization that aims to help make biology a worthwhile pursuit for citizen scientists, amateur biologists, and DIY biological engineers who value openness and safety. This will require mechanisms for amateurs to increase their knowledge and skills, access to a community of experts, the development of a code of ethics, responsible oversight, and leadership on issues that are unique to doing biology outside of traditional professional settings.
*****

Because they use homebrew technology and no research funding, they are more open about what they're doing and don't necessarily have biases that money from pharma companies or the school's interests introduce. They're doing some really neat stuff for everything from cheaply mapping your DNA to creating microbes that can complete simple logic operations.

If you have any interest in biology...molecular engineering, playing with DNA, making peas that taste like squash, I don't know...head to their site and sign up on their mailing list. They're playing with some really neat stuff and hey, who knows? Maybe the next big advance in fighting cancer or creating a wonder drug will come from one of their member's basements. Or the back of my fridge.

The Positive Effect of Negative Thinking

Here was an interesting article called "Yes, I Suck: Self-Help Through Negative Thinking." It explores the idea that negative thinking isn't necessarily bad for you.

See, when you tell someone something that they don't believe, they cling more tightly to their own belief. Asserting that "Sarah Palin is a genius!" will just have your friend believe even more vehemently that she's a moron, or telling a friend who knows he's one of the dimmer of your entourage that he can be the next Einstein will have them thinking even more stubbornly that he's...well, a Sarah Palin.

Indeed, what I took away from the article was that trying to get people to think in a positive fashion can have a more serious effect; they start to see that their lives suck more than they did before the positive outlook.

It was an interesting read. If you suffer from the periodic "blue day" I'd encourage you to check out the link and see what you think of the findings. I thought it was quite fascinating.