Science At Its Best

After my completely depressing post last week, at least there is hope. An elementary school class in the UK recently published (in a real journal!) a study on bees. For this study, with the guidance of their teacher, they brainstormed, formulated an experiment, carried out the experiment, and wrote the paper, which included hand-drawn figures. Pretty impressive stuff for 8-year-olds! I wish I had an elementary school teacher with this idea. With a little help from their teacher, the students also managed to get their paper published in a reputable journal (click here for the article, which is free until January 1). Ed Yong over at Discover Blogs has a nice write-up of the story, so head over there and read all about it.

What's happening to our public schools?

I suppose this isn't really a news item, but I felt like ranting and had nowhere else to do it, so here goes. This morning I went to Donorschoose.org in order to make a donation. I came across the following request: http://www.donorschoose.org/donors/proposal.html?id=430063. If you read the request in detail, the teacher says that students in her 5th grade class are reading 2-3 levels below the 5th grade level. The thing I don't understand, is WHY are students who are reading at a 2nd and 3rd grade level allowed to be in 5th grade? I suspect this is a result of the lovely "No Child Left Behind Act" that has proven time and time again to be ruining our public schools, and yet is not repealed. (Of course it was brought to us by George W. Bush, who posed the question: "Is our children learning?") The main flaw is that schools are pressured into allowing students to pass to the next grade, regardless of whether or not they actually have skills to do so, because if the schools do not, they risk losing funding. The system encourages corruption, as seen in these recent news stories: here, here, here, and here. I can only hope that the system is changed, before it's too late.

Addendum: Now I'm really scared. This proposal asks for flash cards for multiplication tables for HIGH SCHOOL students: http://www.donorschoose.org/donors/proposal.html?id=457663. I am at a loss for words. We, as a society, are failing our kids.

Lazy Post

Too lazy to post a real post today... However, since the oil spill (DISASTER) is on my mind and such horrible images are coming back from the Gulf region, I plan on reading many of the articles that Slate has posted.

SpaceX Launch - Success!

On Friday, the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket pushed into space for its first test launch (see articles at CNN, CNET, and the Washington Post). This launch marks a new era in space travel for the United States. With the President's new mission for NASA to privatize space travel, efforts like this will soon become the norm. Gone are the days of shuttle launches, an image of which appears at the top of this blog post (STS-128, to be exact). If all goes well, it looks like SpaceX will be sending cargo into space as early as next year. And after that? Well, we shall see what the future holds.

Oh, and for those of you who remember the cool blue spiral seen above Norway back in December, it looks like Australians were treated to a similar show, courtesy of the launch of the Falcon 9. :)

Here is a video of the Falcon 9 launch, courtesy of APOD.

iPhone News: Tiered Pricing with AT&T

Yesterday, AT&T announced that new iPhone customers will be placed on a tiered pricing plan as opposed to the current, required unlimited data plan (see relevant articles at NY Times, Lifehacker, and CNET). In the past, I had not really thought about tiered pricing much because I considered myself to be a fairly heavy user. However, now that the tiered pricing has been announced and there are numbers (i.e. dollar signs) attached to megabytes, I am curious to see what my actual iPhone usage is. At the beginning of this post, I placed a bar graph (courtesy of AT&T's web page) of my data usage, inspired by a similar exercise done by the wonderful people at Ars Technica. As you can see, for the most part (except during December, which I suppose was a particularly busy month), I stay below 200 MB (and above 100 MB) per month. So I could probably go with the "DataPlus" plan, which would give me 200 MB per month at $15, and would add another $15 if I go over. I just might have to look into this!

Exploring Imagination

Technically this news item is from May 30, but I only read it tonight (and after midnight at that!), so it will have to count for today, June 2. It comes to us from the esteemed Chronicle of Higher Education, entitled "The Pleasures of Imagination." I love the image that comes with the article so much that I am posting it here. This is probably not allowed, but I have no bad intentions- so please go to The Chronicle and read the article!

I myself am an avid reader, movie watcher, and day dreamer who has always been entertained by artists who blur the line between fact and fiction, reality and a dream. It's probably telling that Haruki Murakami is one of my favorite authors. This article, beautifully written, touches on some of the reasons why we, as human beings, are drawn to stories- fictional stories- sometimes more so than reality.

As I was reading the article, I was reminded of one of my favorite quotes, from The Neverending Story, which I will end with here.

"Bastion looked at the book.
'I wonder,' he said to himself, 'what's in a book while it's closed. Oh, I know it's full of letters printed on paper, but all the same, something must be happening, because as soon as I open it, there's a whole story with people I don't know yet and all kinds of adventures, deeds and battles. And sometimes there are storms at sea, or it takes you to strange cities and countries. All those things are somehow shut in a book. Of course you have to read it to find out. But it's already there, that's the funny thing. I just wish I knew how it could be.'
Suddenly an almost festive mood came over him.
He settled himself down, picked up the book, opened it to the first page, and began to read..."

— Michael Ende (The Neverending Story)
[hat tip to goodreads for the quote]