KellanStec

We should just run the Bill of Rights through a paper shredder. We won’t be needing it any more.

This article is a bit old, but I just saw it today (the article was published on February 23, 2007). It deals with the freedom of speech assured by the first amendment to students in public schools. Specifically, a girl wrote an opinion article–her first for the school newspaper–telling other students she thinks it is wrong to look down upon people who have a sexual preference unlike your own. The teacher in charge of the newspaper was suspended for two months for allowing the story to be published.

I remember throughout high school being puzzled after learning that the liberties illustrated in the Bill of Rights apparently did not apply in school. The court case Tinker v. Des Moines made it clear that students do not “shed their constitutional rights when they enter the schoolhouse door.” For some reason, high school administrators have higher authority to limit students’ rights than the United States government does its citizens–despite the clear opinions of the high courts.

What exactly did she say? Here’s an excerpt from the entire editorial, which I have archived here:

I can only imagine how hard it would be to come out as homosexual in today’s society. I think it is so wrong to look down on those people, or to make fun of them, just because they have a different sexuality than you. There is nothing wrong with them or their brain; they’re just different than you. I’ve heard some people say that they think there is a cure to being homosexual. I can’t believe anyone would think that. It’s not a disease, or something that you catch from someone else; it’s something that they don’t have control over.

This is what the administration at Woodlan Junior-Senior High School would rather not be available to students. Assistant superintendent Andy Melin, who claimed that the opinion piece was biased and also stated that he hasn’t read the editorial, said school officials do not have an issue with the topic but with the lack of balance and thoroughness in the opinion piece. In one sentence, we can see just how twisted this guy is: he simultaneously has not read the article, knows it is an opinion piece, and claims that it is biased. If anyone knows how someone can possibly know that an article he hasn’t read is biased, please let me know. Also, does he know that it is an opinion article? It’s supposed to be biased. Hence, an opinion.

Presumably, the administration was angered because it only offered one viewpoint of the debate: pro-homosexual. But if you read the article, you will see that the student urges for compassion for everyone, because everyone is different. How is that a bad message to send to students?

Whatever the rationale is, it shouldn’t matter. Everyone is guaranteed a full right to free speech as outlined by the first amendment:

Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech.

There are no obvious reasons why this should not apply in public schools–especially when the message in question is a message of peace and acceptance. One person’s private quarrel to some type of speech does not counteract the principles of the first amendment. It’s freedom of speech; not freedom from. This is exactly the type of thing that the first amendment was designed to protect, and here we have a case where it is being completely ignored. Students need to be taught how to think, not what to think.

If only we thought more like Voltaire:

I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

Today in my Intro to Sociology class, we were discussing an article written by Gwynne Dyer and entitled Anybody’s Son Will Do. The article discussed the re-socialization of potential military men, and how the system was organized to change the role they play in society. In the midst of dialogue, a student interjected with the “fact” that Fred Rogers was once a U.S. Marine sniper during the Vietnam War. Another student chimed in to mention that he has tattoos covering his arms, which was the reason why he so often wore long sleeved shirts on television. Now, I had a vague reminiscence that these stories were bunk, but I held my tongue because I wasn’t one hundred percent sure. Could it be possible that everyone’s favorite neighbor was a Vietnam killing machine? I probably should have said something, because I ended up being correct.

Being the skeptical myth-debunking machine that I am, I immediately did a little bit of research on the topic using highly venerated websites dealing with urban legends such as these. Snopes.com counters this story thoroughly. This is taken directly from their website:

This same rumor has often been applied to boyish country singer-songwriter John Denver (among others), and it’s just as false when told of Fred Rogers. Not only did Fred Rogers never serve in the military, there are no gaps in his career when he could conceivably have served in the military — he went straight into college after high school, he moved directly into TV work after graduating college, and his breaks from television work were devoted to attending the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary (he was ordained as a Presbyterian minister in 1963) and the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Child Development. Moreover, Fred Rogers was born in 1928 and was therefore too old to have enlisted in the armed services by the time of America’s military involvement in Vietnam.

So, not only is the story false, it isn’t even remotely plausible. It makes me wonder who starts these stories. It would have been much more believable had Rogers ever served military time, but he simply didn’t. I do know how they spread though. A person like me fails to point out the utter ludicrousity of such things, and now a large majority of those present will probably go on to relay the myth to others, and so on. It is an interesting story, and it’s popular because it’s a shocker! The internet makes this much easier to do. It’s a shame to see such things circulating around a great man.

Since when was it the government’s responsibility to legislate astronomy? Yesterday, Wired posted an article about a Republican representative form New Mexico named Joni Marie Gutierrez who proposed a bill to make Pluto a planet “as [it] passes overhead through New Mexico’s excellent night skies”. The absurd notion that New Mexico has its own sky through which an object 3.5 billion miles can pass coupled with the fact that it can’t be seen by 99% of the New Mexico population makes Gutierrez look all the more ridiculous until you consider that she is passing this bill through legislation. The bill also declares March 13 to be “Pluto Planet Day”.

She appeals to emotion, saying that “We always took a lot of pride in the fact that [Clyde Tombaugh, a New Mexico native] discovered Pluto…When they declared it a dwarf planet, we took it as a personal affront.” Well, aside from the fact that passing a bill solely to make people feel proud is never a good idea, it is not the government’s job to decide what a planet is and what is not. Leave astronomy to the astronomers. I didn’t really know how to respond to this, so I am going to give seven reasons why Pluto should not be considered a planet.

1. Pluto does not have a central nervous system. It is a ball of frozen water and methane billions of miles away. It cannot feel pain, love, or any emotion whatsoever. Its feelings will not be hurt if we make it a dwarf planet. This sounds silly, but it seems to me that all the groups created on Facebook somehow think that removing planetary status deals a devastating blow to Pluto’s self-esteem. Emotional appeal is never a good reason to make something a scientific truth.
2. Pluto does not orbit in the ecliptic plane. Every other planet orbits in this plane. Pluto is inclined by as much as 17°. This means at perihelion, Pluto is about 8 Astronomical Units above the plane. This is absurdly divergent from the other planets.
3. Pluto has a highly elliptical orbit. Well, all planets have an elliptical orbit, but Pluto’s is abnormally high. This puts Pluto closer to the sun than Neptune for part of its year. 8th or 9th planet? Make up your mind, Pluto!
4. Pluto is tiny. At 2/3 the size of the moon, why should we even consider this a planet? There are numerous other Jovian moons that are quite a bit larger than Pluto as well.
5. Incretio ad absurdum. This is a Latin derivation that I made up, which means increasing to absurdity. The definition of planet that allowed Pluto to become a planet in the first place could potentially be applied to dozens of bodies in the solar system not currently considered planets. In fact, we already have discovered a few, and one of them is larger than Pluto–Eris.
6. Why aren’t Ceres and Eris planets? I think if this question is asked in an astronomy class, there should be a better answer than “The public is afraid of change.”
7. It’s a ball of ice. Pluto would be the first planet to melt into liquid if it were brought closer to the sun. If it were orbiting closer to the sun, we would probably call it a comet. It would have a tail just like all other comets.

Pluto’s planetary status has been questioned by science for years, so this is nothing new. Finally, in 2006, the International Astronomical Union decided to include the three following criteria in a formal definition of a planet:

• The body must orbit the sun and have a diameter of 2000 km.
• The body must keep its shape stable due to its own gravity.
• The body must be dominant in its immediate neighborhood.

These make sense to me. Of course, there were other things defined, such as what exactly constitutes “dominance”, but that’s not the point. These guidelines were designed to create more order in the naming of solar system objects. It’s great that the Pluto debate is sparking an interest in the public for science, but nostalgia does not make a science. If we start identifying remote snowballs smaller than our Moon with unconventional orbits as planets, then before you know it, lozenge-shaped lumps of iron will want to be planets, too. What’s next? A Voyager heat shield? Wow, that reductio ad absurdum is actually pretty funny.

If people want to form a close emotional relationship to a ball of ice billions of miles away, that’s fine with me. But some people expect the scientific community to gratify their fixation by distorting the definition of a planet into something that includes Pluto, purely for emotional and nostalgic reasons. Sorry, it does not work that way.

Yes, I know it’s Monday. Yesterday was the debut of a Dutch gym’s invitation to exercise in the nude. About a dozen middle-aged to elderly men showed up for the event of the hundred who signed up. The Netherlands are known for their comfortable standards on nether regions (get it?), but this may be a bit too much. I really hope they have rules about cleaning the exercise equipment that contact the more sickening body parts, such as exercise bikes.

Nude exercisers were required to put towels down on weight machines, use disposable seat covers while riding bikes and disinfect the equipment.

Thank FSM. I am glad to see a towel underneath the biker on the right.

Aside from the palpable hygiene concerns, we can see how hilarious this truly is. All we have to do is read a few of the nudist’s quotes, and ensue in laughter. “There are things that you like to do, and for a nudist, it just feels better to do them with your clothes off,” said Ron, who drove for more than an hour to bike naked. “You feel more free.” I wonder if he drove to the gym while naked.

While we are talking about naked people–or at least people exposing parts of their body which society deems indecent–I should mention the mother and daughter who were apparently* banned from Disneyland for life. You might not want to click if your boss/souse/parent doesn’t like you looking at bare breasts, less the nipple of course. Yes, I know I posted a picture of two naked men above, but you took that risk visiting my site. I’m unpredictable. Anyway, what they did was have a shirt with holes from which their breasts “peek”. Then they used the exposed breast as the flesh part of Mickey and Minnie’s face, adding eyes, nose, and mouth.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I think using a pair of human breasts to create the likeness of Mickey and Minnie mouse is creative. And also pretty damn sexy. But much too sexy for the fragile little minds that wander Disneyland! These kids are walking around all day looking for a Disney character to grab or get their picture taken with. And these women are trying to scar them for life. If the shitty music being played all day doesn’t give the kid brain damage, a partial human breast surely will. I wonder how many kids actually realized that these weren’t mice, but actual breasts. My guess is not too many, but I guess it’s just another example of adults reading too much into what children are thinking.

*As I was doing some browsing for more information, I noticed a larger image. That isn’t Disneyland, that’s Bourbon Street–Mardi Gras. Well, that takes out all the fun. Don’t read the last three sentences if you’d like to still think the picture was taken at Disneyland.

In the midst of one of our seemingly frequent late night religio-philosophical discussions on Morey 3N, there were two claims made a pair of the more prominent Christians on my floor that startled me. I would like to mention them and thoroughly debunk the claims made. Before I get started, I must state that I have absolutely no problem with opening religion up to debate. If you oppose someone’s political position, you are free to criticize it. But, question an opinion about how the Universe began and who created it, and you’ll find yourself at the business end of a metaphorical (or in the case of historical times, real) torch. I have absolutely no problem with religion, and these two men are among the nicest and most well-mannered of all that I know. But, at the same time, I am not obligated to respect their beliefs just because they are considered “holy”.

Claim 1: Charles Darwin recanted on his deathbed; accepting Christianity and rejecting evolution.
To many Christians (Young-Earth Creationists at least), Darwin was a villain who postulated a godless creation. I’m not exactly sure what this claim is supposed to mean in an argument regarding the truth (or fiction) of evolution. Even if it were true, so what?

I can debunk this one with a single quote, but I’ll elaborate on details first. It has been said that a woman by the name of Lady Hope visited Darwin while on his deathbed, and upon reading the Epistle to the Hebrews, changed his mind saying, “How I wish I had not expressed my theory of evolution as I have done.” This story has unfortunately been repeated by the religious for decades in an attempt to delegitimize evolution–in spite of many Christian websites testifying the truth. This seems unlikely due to the fact that Darwin, while repeatedly rejecting Christianity throughout his later years, generally avoided controversy. Darwin was at most a deist and at least an agnostic in terms of his religiosity.

The lie, however, was laid to waste in 1922 when Darwin’s own daughter denied claims of a deathbed conversion. “I was present at his deathbed,” she wrote “[and] Lady Hope was not present during his last illness, or any illness. I believe he never even saw her, but in any case she had no influence over him in any department of thought or belief. He never recanted any of his scientific views, either then or earlier. We think the story of his conversion was fabricated in the U.S.A….the whole story has no foundation whatever.”

Claim 2: A freshly killed penguin was carbon-dated to be 1,000 years old.
At first, I thought this one had just been fictitious. But, after a quick Google search, it turns out to be true–though the implications of this do not discredit the use of carbon-14 dating, as is the intention of the argument. It was a seal rather than a penguin, but that isn’t important. We know exactly why this happened. Read the link for yourself, but I’ll summarize. Basically, Antarctica has a slightly different carbon exchange than what is expected in the rest of the world. Old carbon is up welled along the Antarctic coast from deep in the ocean, and is introduced into the plant life, and eventually this “old carbon” makes its way into the animals higher in the food chain. This is one of the limitations to radioactive-dating, but it does not invalidate the tool.

These are just a couple of little things mentioned in the conversation that I can remember, and I don’t usually concern myself with things such as these. But, it’s been on my mind since last night, so I figured that I would write about it to get it off my mind so I can concentrate on finishing my midterm papers. It is just frustrating to me that some people snub some facets of scientific advancement if they are irreconcilable with their religious beliefs, and yet take advantage of all advancements that do such as cell phones, central heating and air, automobiles, and electricity. The evidence for evolution by natural selection and that we share a common ancestor with primates–indeed, we are primates–is so utterly overwhelming that to deny it, you may as well deny that the Sun is a star.