I Speak of Dreams

Kev's Back!

via  Respectful Insolence

My blog-pal Kevin Leitch has re-opened his blog, Left Brain/Right Brain.

Go give him a shout.

Wise Words from a Parent I Respect

This is from the Love & Logic Yahoo group:

I've learned to look at kids' behavior as a coded message. When they don't do what we want them to do, they're usually trying to tell us something. Kids aren't great communicators - instead of telling us what they think or feel, they act it out with their behavior. Even if they're old enough to tell us what they think or feel, they might know from experience that we're not likely to respond to them the way they need, so instead they act out.

It is a good point of view to remember

Basic Concepts in Science

Over at the soon-to-close SchwabLearning parents' board, there's a boat-load of stupid being ladled out by a new member, who is convinced that her children's problems were caused by routine vaccination, which she insists are both dangerous and useless. 

Many countries are still suffering from these diseases due to malnutrition, improper hygiene, etc. Definitely worth looking into.

Sadly, I think it all boils down to money. I used to work in Social Services and I didn't have one client over the age of 50 that wasn't on at least 10 medications. Again, the drug companies bring in billions with vaccines and medications.

So I needed to wash the stupid out of my brain.  Thanks, Evolving Thoughts!

This is a list of the Basic Concepts [of science]  posts being put up by Science Bloggers and others. It will be updated and put to the top when new entries are published.

Dr. Free-Ride has just published The Norms of Science

Dennis Rivera, Aged 5, Handcuffed At School, Taken for Psychiatric Evaluation

Dennis Rivera is a kindergartener at PS 81 in Ridgewood, New York City.  He has asthma and has been in speech therapy.  On January 11, little Dennis had a very bad day, and became dysregulated.  He was taken to the principal's office, who evidently summoned Thalite Johnson, a school safety officer, who handcuffed the boy.  School officials decided that Rivera should have a psychiatric evaluation -- without the parents' permission.  Rivera  was transported by ambulance to Elmhurst Hospital for the  psychiatric evaluation.

Dennis's  mother, Jasmina Vasquez, was not contacted by the school until after the boy was handcuffed and EMS summond.  Ms. Vasquez works in Manhattan, and asked Dennis's babysitter, Sandy Ortiz,  to go to the school and retrieve the boy.  The school refused to release the boy to Ms. Ortiz (who regularly picks him up from school) but did allow her to accompany the boy in the ambulance to the hospital.

Rivera was released about four hours later.  His parents have withdrawn him from PS 81 and enrolled him at a private school.

I was tipped off by Crime Scene KC.

Is Officer Nohejl this year's Julie Amaro?

The very shortest version: Officer Nohejl is a school resource officer in Pasco County.  He set up a MySpace account--most of his MS "friends" are students in the Pasco County School District.  One of his 170+ friends had a link to a porn site.

Now Officer Nohejl is now under investigation by the Florida attorney general’s cyber crimes unit and the New Port Richey Police Department.

What?  An individual is responsible for a third-party link?  That's crazy.

Fortunately for Officer Nohejl, Karoli is on the case.  Below the fold -- other bloggers.

Making Math Real

Making Math Real
http://www.makingmathreal.org/

I just finished the 2-day, 14-hour introduction: http://www.makingmathreal.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=38&Itemid=57

My brain is either fried or overloaded.  Lots more sympathy for our kids, for whom the curricula challenge their learning styles.

Home from Idaho, Making Math Real, BatBoy the Musical

Friday was a powder day -- 6+ inches of new snow.  I am shamefully out of shape.

Today was day one of the Overview for Making Math Real.

Tonight, watching my nephew Jack star in BatBoy: The Musical.

Whew!

ABC Engaging in Shameful, Outright Anti-VaccinationPropoganda

Once upon a time, responsible people proposed a hypothesis that the rise in incidence of autism was somehow correlated with the rise in the number  and kind of vaccinations infants and young children received.

That's how science works, after all: noticing changes in the environment and wondering why the changes are occurring.  Then there's the next step: conducting rigorous experiments to determine the relationships, if any, between the two observed phenomena.  Then,  if the predictions the hypothesis made are borne out by the experiment(s), then the hypothesis can be  kept (and/or expanded).  Otherwise, a responsible person must reject -- throw out, give up -- the hypothesis.

One hypothesis, proposed by Andrew Wakefield in 1998,  was that the measles - mumps - rubella vaccine (MMR)  was implicated in a form of autism.  That hypothesis was been thoroughly discredited by 2001. Wakefield's scientific duplicity has also been thoroughly covered.

A second hypothesis was that a mercury-derivative vaccine preservative, thimerasol,  somehow contributed to, or caused, autism.  Arthur Allen's 2002 article, The Not-So-Crackpot Autism Theory, explains some of the factors and the timeline.  By March, 2003, researchers concluded:

On the basis of current evidence, we consider it improbable that thimerosal and autism are linked.

The research continued, however, investigating possible links between autism and exposure to  mercury via vaccination.  No correlation has ever been found.  As David Gorski wrote in  Mercury in vaccines as a cause of autism and autism spectrum disorders (ASDs): A failed hypothesis

The scientific data, taken in totality, do not support a link between mercury in vaccines and autism.

In other words, there's no "controversy" any more -- there is no link between vaccination and autism.  There's no valid "debate" about the role of vaccination in autism. 

Denialism (n):  the practice of creating the illusion of debate when there is none.

Anyone who continues to claim that there is a link can rightfully be labeled a denialist, a propagator of pseudoscience,  and may be engaging in the arrogance of ignorance.

But the beat goes on--in other words, anti-vaccination "activists" still push the two theories.  And now ABC, in the guise of a TV show, is beating the big drum.  They will be airing a drama, 'Eli Stone' on January 31, in which the title character, an attorney, sues his former client, a pharmaceutical company, "on behalf of the mother of an autistic child who believes a mercury-based preservative in a vaccine caused her son’s autism."

When it is revealed in a dramatic courtroom revelation that the chief executive of the vaccine maker did not allow his daughter’s pediatrician to give her the company’s vaccine, the jury in “Eli Stone” awards the mother $5.2 million.

Remember, there is no more "debate" or "sides" -- autism and vaccines/mercury have no connection.  The show's co-creator, Greg Berlanti, said that:

he believed that the script showed both sides of the argument. “I think they wanted us to do our homework about all of it, which we did,” he said.

Must be the University of Google homework used by Jenny McCarthy.

Why is this such a big deal? It's just a TV show pilot, after all. 

It matters in the big picture -- the defense of truth and reality over fantasy and wishful thinking. 

As Donald Kennedy wrote in  Twilight of the Enlightenment

Twilight for the Enlightenment? Not yet. But as its beneficiaries, we should also be its stewards.

It matters in the small picture --  quack treatments for autism kill,  failure to vaccinate injures and even kills.

Over the next two to six years, outbreaks of measles soared in Britain and Ireland, causing at least three deaths and hundreds of children to be hospitalized.

Fled to Idaho

I ran away to go skiing. 

Idaho is....different.  One state representative believes that the Communist Party USA planned the environmental movement, feminism, and the homosexual agenda to "take down America".

When we see many mainstream politicians and activist judges with the same agenda that just 16 years ago was that of Communist strategists, it is time for patriotic Americans to wake up and get involved.

Idaho's governor,   Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter, thinks the answer to mental illness in  Idaho is to set up a  fenced,

tented facility in the desert area south of Boise, near the current Idaho State Correctional Institution.

The skiing is good & the friends are fine.  I come back to the Bay Area Friday to undertake the first of a long series of trainings in Making Math Real.

Which of the following education reform movements is the most bogus?

Over at Teach Effectively, John Wills Lloyd has opened the Education Bogus Bowl, asking: Which of the following education reform movements is the most bogus?

• Block scheduling for classes at the secondary level.
• Brain-based instruction
• Differentiated instruction
• Inclusion of students with disabilities in general education settings

You can only choose one.  There will be other flights.  Go and vote.

Cross-posted at Kitchen Table Math.