Dancing with the Universe

about just how your personal information could be assembled, correlated, and made available... and what the consequences could be.

Somewhat hyperbolic, but still an interesting thought-experiment.

Okay, it is going a little far to break out the quotes from "1984", but ( this is disturbing. )

Chief Justice Rehnquist has died.

I can't add a lot more to that.

This caught my eye, mainly because it has to do with plant pathology. It is, however, also a tale of the same sort of corruption that pervades the current White House. Which makes sense, given who Katherine Harris is.

Pressure was put on Florida officials to test "Celestial Water" as a cure for citrus canker

I haven't researched citrus canker specifically, but I remember hearing that it's been a real scourge in Florida over the last four years or so. It's a bacterial disease, and the combination of wet weather (which helps it spread from tree to tree) and hurricanes (which injured the trees, making wounds where disease could enter) has made a serious impact on the citrus orchards. The only treatment for most cankers is to cut off the affected parts, which in many cases in Florida has meant taking out trees entirely. Everyone's looking for some other way, but I don't know of any.

When Katherine Harris, who knows absolutely zip about plant disease, hooks up with a New York Rabbi and a cardiologist to suggest a cure, it makes me angry that scientists have to comply with ignorant superstitious beliefs just because of who she is. Other quacks are brushed off with a quiet "do the research and let us know". Yet this Kabbalist dreck gets tested by the state, because a U.S. Representative is breathing down people's necks.

Gah. I get irritated by politicians messing with climate change data, but I guess when they mess with my profession, it gets personal.

Kudos to This Is True:

A school spelling bee in Rhode Island was cancelled because the district believed that the competition conflicted with the standards set by the No Child Left Behind Act. (It was later reinstated by the new superintendent, who seemed to feel a little differently.)

Their argument: "a spelling bee does not meet the criteria of all children reaching high standards." It creates "winners" and "losers", you see, which is to be avoided; this is one of the main points of the No Child Left Behind Act, which seeks to make sure all children succeed. I note that the same reasoning has eliminated team sports in many elementary schools.

I recall one of the biggest disappointments of my grade-school years... I participated in our school district's Young Authors Project for two years, submitting hand-bound books in sixth and seventh grade. The first year I netted an award -- tied for second, I seem to recall. The prize that year was a little certificate, and the choice of any two books I wanted from the book bins, which were stuffed full of new young adult fiction. I had taken home "The Dark Is Rising" and another one the previous year, and was looking forward to rummaging through the bins again.

The second year my book was considerably better (as I had learned quite a bit about making one), and I expected to do well. I was quite dismayed at the awards ceremony, when they announced that there were no individual awards: we would all be given little medals for our participation, because our hard work had made us all winners.

It wasn't that I hadn't gotten a ribbon or anything to hold up as proof that I was better than anyone else... it was that, by lumping all of us together, they had done just the opposite of what they set out to do. Instead of making us all feel like winners, they made me feel like I was just another generic kid. All that effort to make the best book I could, and the only acknowledgement I got was a pat on the head and a platitude.

This is why, when I come across items like this, I know exactly how the kids feel. It's not just the bright ones, who feel like they're being lumped in with the average ones -- it's the average ones too, who feel like they're never given a chance to show that they're anything other than average. And when kids lose that chance to shine, everybody loses.