Happy As Kings

Expelled Exposed

Ben Stein's movie, Expelled, is not a documentary.  It is a way to further inject mal-thinking into the cultural trend towards non-scientific attitudes.  This trend is nothing new and years ago I discussed it with my children when we read Carl Sagan's book The Demon-Haunted World:  Science as a Candle in the Dark.

Pseudoscience differs from erroneous science.  Science thrives on errors, cutting them away one by one.  False conclusions are drawn all the time, but they are drawn tentatively.  Hypotheses are framed so that they are capable of being disproved.  A succession of alternative hypotheses is confronted by experiment and observation.  Science gropes and staggers toward improved understanding.  Proprietary feelings are of course offended when a scientific hypothesis is disproved, but such disproofs are recognized as central to the scientific enterprise.

Pseudoscience is just the opposite.  Hypotheses are often framed precisely so they are invulnerable to any experiment that offers a prospect of disproof, so even in principle they cannot be invalidated.  Practitioners are defensive and wary.  Skeptical scrutiny is opposed.  When the pseudoscientific hypothesis fails to catch fire with scientists, conspiracies to suppress it are deduced.

Exposed follows the pattern of pseudosciences.

In thinking about the controversy, I wonder why science is accepted when it comes to flying planes, making paint stick to walls, improving hair conditioners, growing food, making computers, funneling electricity into homes, flying rocketships to the moon, Mars, Saturn and beyond, and millions of other everyday wonders.   Yet, when it comes to analyzing the evidence of Earth's earlier years, and earlier inhabitants, this same science is decried by some people.  I'd like to see an explanation of why science works so well elsewhere, but founders on the shoals of studing Earth's inhabitants.

I'll save my breath concerning the challenges to the evolutionary theory, but I will make one comment -- creation and evolution are two different subjects.  Creation is about how it all started.  Evolution is about what happened afterwards.  They aren't the same thing.

In any case, one thing those of us who are concerned about the spread of mal-thinking can do, is link to the Expelled Exposed website.

   

Dymaxion map

While looking for a supplier of a map puzzle I bought for the kids years ago, I came across a web site with the same puzzle.  The map configuration was named Dymaxion by its inventor, Buckminster Fuller, and when it is put together, the full globe can be seen in one view without distortion.

Dymaxion map

  Once the map is assembled at the website, it can be printed out and glued together to make a paper globe, or the pieces can be cut apart to make other configurations.

Alpine adventures

October 1991

We got in just under the wire of the Hochalpenstrasse being closed for the season.  There weren't many tourists about.

The kids climbed alpine boulders.

   

   

   

And froze in the wind on the Edelweissspitze.

   

   

Bearby even got a brand new dirndl (which is still around here someplace).

Poetry from October 1991

The poem was inspired by a project from The Big Beast Book: Dinosaurs and How They Got That Way.

The project (if memory serves, as we no longer have the book) was to make geologic strata using Jell-o, graham crackers, marshmallows? and other geologic artifacts.  I think variously colored Jell-o mixes were poured over each other to indicate the various strata, and the 'artifacts' (graham crackers and so on) were added to each layer.  Each layer was chilled before another layer was added.

After the project, the geologic strata were eaten.

The outdoor timeline from a few weeks earlier was another project from The Big Beast Book.

Ceiling stars

(don't bother with this one, it's just for an online friend with whom I'm discussing finding instructions for folding the stars, and I needed to show her a picture)

The stars aren't huge (although I have one made of full-sheets of the foil paper), but they are well-sized.

   

Bunnies, cats and lapbooks

I was just given a link for lapbooking, which is popular among some homeschoolers.  Lapbooking, related to scrabooking, came along after the kids had their diplomas, so we never got to do this activity.  We did use the Waldorf 'main lesson book' method, which made for nice 'souvenirs,' but I think the lapbooking technique would have been fun, too.

• Runaway Bunny lapbook

That this linked lapbook is about rabbits, put me in mind of our 'late' bunny:  Attila the Bun, aka Pat, the Bunny.  She was a character, and gave me lots of 'material' for documenting bun behavior.  One point was, bunnies and cats don't mix ... because bunnies don't put up with cats.  Bunnies chase cats, biting their heels, nipping their bottoms (bunnies are light on their feet and very quiet), and scaring the whiskers off the innocent pussy cats who were just sitting there minding their own business. 

In our lapbook on rabbits, we could have included pictures of scampering cats, printed-out-video-frames of Pat 'greeting her breakfast' by whipping around the room and 'twitching' into the air.  We could have included chips gnawed off chair and desk legs, strips of cardboard torn from boxes, and photos of munched-upon books. 

Asimov's Chronology of the World -- minus some corners.

Pat's been in bunny heaven for seven years now, but we still have many mementoes of her.

Here's Attila trying to get in the house to get after Merrie, who was a silly wee cat.

Pat, the Bunny was such a rascal.

Pat, the Bunny, 1991 - 1999

Merrie, a silly wee cat who had a song made up in her honor, 1978 - 1996

Multiplication book

A friend and I are talking online about making sense of math.  I told her about a Multiplication Book one of the kids made, and sent her graphics.  Unfortunately, she can't open the files, so here they are.

3-times table pattern

Multiplication factors for the number 12, and 13 as a prime number.

Week of 15 October 1991

Saxon math 54 & 65 lessons, 35 - 38

Science:  Usborne's Understanding and Collecting Rocks & Fossils

Piano practice on the rental piano.

Learning to type on the old Royal manual typewriter to improve skills on the Commodore 64 computer (for game playing, of course).

Some of that socialization that homeschooled kids are supposed to miss so much of.

Week of 7 Oct 1991

Saxon Math 54 & 65, lessons 31 - 34

History & Science:  The Big Beast Book, chapters 5, 6 & 7
Go outside Monday night and look for the Crab nebula in Taurus -- never mind, spring constellation

by C.                           by R.                   by A.

We made carbon 'leaf fossils' made by holding the leaves over a candle flame to collect carbon, and then laying a sheet of paper over the leaves and carefully rolling them with a rubber brayer to transfer to the carbon to the paper.

We made another time line of the earth's age using posterboard placards on small sticks to show the relative points of the various epochs and such; one step equaled one million years.  Our starting point was the recycling dumpsters which are the tiny white dot down at the far end of the railing between the grass and the road.

Friday:  leave for Garmisch
We nipped over to Fuessen to see Hohenschwangau, the castle where Mad Ludwig spent his early years.  We gave Neuschwanstein a miss this time. 

(to increase readability, the words are pronounced hoe-en-schvan-gow, and noy-schvan-shtein)

Neuschwanstein is on the left, Hohenschwangau is on the right.  Tourists rarely see the castles from the viewpoints shown on postcards.

Week of 23 Sep 1991

Poem:  There Once Was an Icthyosaurus, Isabel Frances Bellows  (poem taken from the Book Trails series that I've had since I was a kid; mine, alas, apparently is the "cheaper set")

Saxon Math 65 and 54:  Lessons 18 - 21

History and Science:  The Big Beast Book, chapters 2 & 3;
used chicken bones for material on pp. 47 - 50;
went to (unspecified) Museum for pp. 56 - 64

(illustration by C.)

Piano

Ballet

German: Oktoberfest & Learnables lessons 19 & 20

No lessons on Friday; left for Frankfurt to visit family for the weekend