For many, major breakthroughs in isotopes or nanotechnology or enzyme can simply go over one’s head in their significance. However, scientists in Australia have developed something that will likely make them virtual Gods in their community: a major step toward a hangover free beer. The sudsologists say that they have found a way to increase the hydrating effects of beer by adding electrolytes, a common ingredient found in sports drinks. As Miller lite promises, “it is everything you always wanted in a beer. And less.” Finally, Joe Six Pack has his own scientists.
Category: Academia
Submitted by Charlton Stanley, (aka Otteray Scribe) guest blogger
Polygraph tests are 20th-century witchcraft.
-Sen. Sam Ervin (1896-1995)
As the Obama administration and the Department of Justice ramps up the crackdown on security violators and leakers, the whole thing has taken a bizarre turn. There is an ongoing criminal investigation of instructors who claim they can teach job applicants how to pass lie-detector tests. The two men are Doug Williams, who operates Polygraph.com, and Chad Dixon, who had a website called “PolygraphExpert.net” which has been taken down. Chad Dixon has entered a guilty plea, but the charges against him are being kept secret under seal. Dixon faces a maximum sentence of up to 25 years in prison; however, prosecutors are asking for a two-year sentence. Williams has not been charged with any crime; at least not yet, but is said to be under investigation. His only publiccomment was to say he has done nothing wrong.
The criminal investigation has not been acknowledged publicly. What little news that has come out is the claim it is meant to discourage criminals and spies from infiltrating the U.S. government by using so-called polygraph-beating techniques. Several current or former polygraph examiners are alleged to have been providing training materials and classes on how lie detector devices work and how to “beat” them.
Doug Williams and Chad Dixon’s business records were seized. The records are believed to include the names of as many as 5,000 persons who sought advice from the two men. The government claims about twenty of those people applied for positions with the government or government contractors. About half of that group was hired, including one or more getting jobs with the National Security Agency (NSA).
Federal officials have adopted a unique and controversial legal theory that teaching clients how lie detectors work and how to pass the test is a crime, and not protected under the First Amendment.
I find this more than curious. By way of full disclosure, I own a voice stress analysis machine and several biofeedback devices. I first became interested in the detection of malingering, dissimulation and outright lying when I was still in graduate school, and have maintained that interest ever since. Some people lie to look good, and some lie to look bad. Some lie and don’t even know they are lying. Some lie when the truth would serve them better.
In this piece, we will take a look at exactly what it is the Feds are talking about. And we will puzzle about why they want to make it a crime for anyone to teach people how the machines work. Or more accurately, don’t work.
Everyone is familiar with anxiety. Hands sweat, voice trembles, breathing may become more rapid, and the heart races. Many times trembling is visible to the naked eye. Anxiety is a fear reaction. Both the polygraph and voice stress analysis take advantage of these physiological reactions to fear, and take measurements of them. The theory behind both machines is that an anxious person will react. Practitioners of polygraphy and voice stress analysis operate on the assumption that telling a lie will result in a predictable and measurable physiological reaction.
Continue reading “Polygraphers trigger fear response in Federal prosecutors.”
This week we got another insight into the focus of the security agencies in the United States. Documents revealed that the U.S. Secret Service kept free-information activist Aaron Swartz under close watch until he killed himself following an abusive prosecution by the Administration. At the same time, the CIA reportedly zeroed in on famed MIT linguistics professor Noam Chomsky despite earlier denials. The prior investigation of Chomsky and the more recent investigation of Swartz shows little has changed in how civil libertarians are viewed by the government.
Continue reading “Report: Secret Service Targeted Aaron Swartz”
For those who follow the Big Bang Theory, one of the most curious accomplishments of the character Sheldon Cooper is luminescent fish. Now, scientists from universities in Turkey and Hawaii have done Cooper one better: luminescent rabbits. That’s right, bunnies that glow in the dark. They have also produced glowing cats and cockroaches.
Continue reading “Lepus Lumina: Scientists Develop Glowing Rabbits”
GJ 504b, a planet about 57 light years from Earth, is notable as only the second planet whose color has been directly observed by astronomers. It is also notable because that color is pink or a deep magenta.
Millikin University is facing a challenging controversy over one of its faculty, Professor James St. James. It turns out that James St. James is not his original name which was James Gordon Wolcott. The problem is that Wolcott is a former state mental patient who killed his family in 1967. St. James effectively reinvented himself with remarkable (and commendable) success — ultimately not just teaching but heading the university’s Department of Behavioral Sciences. The university is standing by him as people call for his removal from the faculty.
Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
In late July in Frankfort, Kentucky, supporters and critics of the Next Generation Science Standards clashed during a hearing over proposed changes that could be made to the science curriculum of the state’s public schools. The new science standards were developed with input from officials in Kentucky and twenty-five other states with the hope of making science curricula “more uniform across the country.”
Those who spoke in support of the new education standards said they are “vital if Kentucky is to keep pace with other states and allow students to prepare for college and careers.” Supporters feel the new standards “will help beat back scientific ignorance.” Critics—on the other hand—claimed that the new standards were “fascistic” and “atheistic” and promoted thinking that could lead to “genocide” and “murder.”
According to the Courier-Journal, nearly two dozen parents, teachers, scientists, and advocacy groups commented during the Kentucky Department of Education hearing on the Next Generation Science Standards—which are a broad set of guidelines that were developed in order to revise K-12 science content that would meet the requirements of a 2009 law, which called for educational improvement.
Submitted By: Mike Spindell, Guest Blogger
One month before I was scheduled to begin my freshman year in College my mother died. My father had gone bankrupt in his automobile franchise the year before and was working as a car salesman. Money was tight, but I had won a full tuition scholarship under the New York State Regents Scholarship program. While tuition was not a problem, there would be other costs associated with College, such as books and various student fees. My father found out about New York State’s student loan program and signed me up for a low amount of money, with the understanding that he would repay it. Due to his business failure my father had no way to get credit in his own name. Ironically, one month before my sophomore year my father died. I was 18 years old and the only work I had ever done was as a “car jockey” at the dealership where my father worked. There was little money in my father’s estate and I soon had to start school. I upped my student loan to the maximum allowed so that I would have living expenses until I could get a job to support myself through my remaining college years. Within two months, still reeling from the effect of being orphaned, I had gotten a job as a Night Watchman in a municipal hospital and arranged my course schedule around it. I lived in a furnished room, with a bathroom in a common hall, but my life slowly began to normalize. Later I got a job as a Clerk/Delivery boy in a liquor store, working 35 hours a week after school and making $32.50 plus tips, using my own car. I managed to scrimp by with the aid of taking out the maximum available student loans each year. The loans under the program them were from a bank, guaranteed by New York State. After I graduated I got a job for $6,000 a year and tried to pull my financial head above water. Six months after graduation though, I was notified by the bank that my student loan was to start being repaid, at a fixed rate that to me was a hardship financially. I went to the bank to ask to restructure the deal so I would pay less each month and they refused. It turned out that the New York State Student Loan plan was set in such a way that if the borrower defaulted the State would pay the bank the full amount immediately and then go after the borrower. It was therefore in the bank’s interest to have the student default, since they would get their return much more quickly.
Flash to many years down the road and my two daughters going to college. I was forced to take out student loans for their education, but I made each of them the promise that I, not they, would pay it back. This was of course the result of my own experience and I considered it my duty. I paid off my oldest daughter’s debt and am now paying off my youngest daughter’s debt. On my fixed income this is difficult. Both of them are working with good jobs, however, I don’t want my children to go through what I went through and would prefer they are not burdened by the costs of their education. Incidentally, they both worked part time when they went through college, although in both instances I didn’t want them to have to do so and that is only a minor part of why I am so proud of them. Which leads me to what is going on today with the Federal Student Loan Program, which brings in a surplus of $184 billion for the Federal Government. Call me what you will, but I don’t think that government should be a profit making enterprise and I certainly believe that it is in all of our interests to educate our children. At least one Senator feels the same way. Continue reading “The Student Loan Problem”
There is an unspeakable tragedy in India that again shows the lack of deterrence and regulation in that country over food safety, a problem also prevalent in other countries like China. Twenty-two children are dead after lunch in their school in Chhapra. The food was obviously poisoned and officials believe that the culprit was a pesticide. Two of the children of the headmistress, Meena Devi, were also sickened. She is now reportedly on the run with two other teachers.
Continue reading “Headmistress Flees After 22 Children Die From Poisoned Lunch At India School”
The appointment of National Research Council president John MacDougall in Canada — effectively the country’s top scientist — is being received by scientists the way James Watt was received by environmentalists in the Reagan Administration as head of the national park system. Like Watt, MacDougall seems antagonistic to the field that is supposed to be fostering with federal funds. Recently, MacDougall announced that “Scientific discovery is not valuable unless it has commercial value.” It turns out that all of that stuff by Galileo was just academic crap.
Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw)-Guest Blogger
We have all heard the stories about the federal education policy instituted under the George W. Bush administration referred to as No Child Left Behind (NCLB). That program required schools to continually test students in order to gauge which schools are “failing” to produce students who were making sufficient educational progress. The outgrowth of NCLB was the need for teachers to “teach to the test”. Schools across the country stopped teaching important subject areas because they were not deemed important enough to be on the all important test. Now, the latest federal educational program embraced by the Obama Administration, called Common Core standards, builds on the NCLB program and continues to force testing using standards that have not even been tested and are products of corporate sponsors tied to the testing industry! Continue reading “Common Core Standards = No Child Left Behind on Steroids”
Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty-(Rafflaw)-Guest Blogger
We often hear the term “school reform” used often by politicians of all stripes. Chicago’s politicians are no different when it comes to talking about and taking action on so-called school reform. Recently, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who is a big fan of the charter school program and a former investment banker, decided that the best way to “reform” Chicago Public Schools was to close 49 schools and terminate 550 teachers and another 300 school staff employees!
“On June 14, the Chicago Public Schools sent layoff notices to 850 school employees, including 550 teachers. The layoffs will hit hardest at those teachers working in African-American and Latino communities. These are the communities that were targeted in the system’s recent decision to close 49 schools – the largest single school closure in US history.” Truth-out Continue reading “Rahm Emanuel’s Reform of the Chicago Public Schools”
Many of us have been distraught over the attacks on privacy and the press by the Obama Administration as well as authoritarian turn taken by presidents in Egypt and Turkey. I am pleased to announce that I have finally found a president who is not only a reformer but completely free of special interest influence. Yesterday, my son Aidan Turley was elected president of his elementary school. He was able to use both general and single issue campaign themes. Single issue voters seemed energized by his campaign to put air fresheners in all bathrooms — using the above picture on posters near bathrooms with the theme of “Need A Breath Of Fresh Air? Vote For Aidan Turley.” It is the elementary school version of a “chicken in every pot.”
Continue reading “Change We Can Believe In: Meet Aidan Turley, Elementary School President”
Yesterday, I was killing myself in the Shenandoah by climbing “Old Rag” near Luray, Virginia — a six hour rock climb that has left me only semi-mobile this morning. This, therefore, will have to suffice as a belated Father’s Day posting. The picture above may look like every stick drawing of a boy and his father from kindergarten, but it is actually one of hundreds of “birchbark documents” (messages written on the bark of birch trees) from between the 11th and 15th Century Medieval Novgorod in Russia. The documents from love letters to shopping lists are a treasure trove for scientists, giving them insight into the everyday life of people of that age. However, it is the scribblings of the young boy that captivated me the most, including this picture of the boy and his Dad. The drawings from Novgorod come specifically from a Russian boy named Onfim. He is believed to have been around 7. Of course, I expect that Russian school officials in Novgorod will now move to retroactively suspend Onfim.
Submitted by Charlton Stanley (Otteray Scribe), guest blogger
“The democratic aspiration is no mere recent phase in human history . . . It was written in Magna Carta.”
–Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Third Inaugural address (1941)
On June 15, in the year 1215 AD, the King of England was an involuntary “guest” of a group of forty rather angry Barons in a field at Runnymede. After the Barons explained “the facts of life” to him, King John affixed his Seal to a document they called the Magna Carta. In those days, documents were not signed, as is the custom today. Instead of a signature, the official Seal of the person “signing” was impressed into hot wax poured onto the document.
King John consented to the Baron’s demands, sealing the document in hope of averting a civil war. Ten weeks later, Pope Innocent III proclaimed the Magna Carta document null and void, plunging England into a civil war the King and Barons had hoped to avoid. Fortunately, for posterity and the law, King John died before Pope Innocent III’s decree became law. He died only 15 months after sealing the Magna Carta.
Although this magnificent document did not solve King John’s immediate problems, it was reissued in multiple copies after his death, and was read to the people throughout England. In fact, when the first English settlers landed on the shores of Colonies around the world, they took their rights with them.
Years later, when the American Colonies decided to break away from control by England, the writers of the Declaration of Independence and new Constitution had the rights first enumerated in the Magna Carta very much in mind.
Continue reading “Today’s Birthday, June 15: The Magna Carta”