What would Sam Adams think?

Something that has populated a few newscasts this week are stories about protesters or hecklers at various town hall meetings held by members of Congress. One story mentioned that many of the protesters had ties to the Tea Party Patriots movement. From what I can tell, and I haven't delved to deeply into these groups, they are tax protesters. One of there sites refers to "Tea Party 1776". Of course the tea party was in 1773 but who's counting. Also they must believe that the purpose of the Tea Party was to protest taxes, period. This is because they assume that the Bostonians that tossed the tea into the harbor were just like them, Americans. Well they weren't.

They were British subjects living in a remote colony, who felt ill treated by the government. So let's give them a scenario where they can be true "Tea Party Patriots". First off they have to move to Guam or one of the other U.S. Pacific island territories. Once their settled in there is some sort of trouble in that area and the U.S. Military has to expend time and resources to get it under control. The islanders provide personnel and supplies to assist in the operation. Now the Federal government is in a bind. It needs money to pay off the cost of the operation. So they decide to get the money from the islanders. A tax on beer sold to the island is put in place by Congress. The islanders protest to the Congress that the tax is unfair. They are only to be taxed by their local government. Congress replies, "Too bad, we need the money and you have it." Many of the islands send the beer back and don't pay the tax. The residents of Guam attempt to do the same thing but the Governor (local elected in this case but attempting to gain favor with Washington) refuses to allow this to happen. So our "Patriots" take to docks, find the ships with the beer and dump cases of Budweiser, Coors and Miller Light into the harbor. Then they would be like the Sons of Liberty who dumped the tea in the harbor.

I don't think Sam Adams or John Hancock would be members of the Tea Party Patriots. Just as I don't think the Tea Party patriots would not be members of the Sons of Liberty.

Book Notes: Corrupted Science

I don't remember if I said something or Megan told her brother and his family that "Books about science are always good." But this year I received a few books that are science related. One of these is a book entitled Corrupted Science by John Grant (2007 Facts Figures and Fun. The link will take you to the Sterling Publishing page for the book. They are the North American distributors.) The book is a follow-up to one entitled Discarded Science that was published in 2006. The focus of this book is how science has been misused and abused through out the years for a variety of purposes. There are basically three major sections to the book, corruption by scientists themselves, corruption for ideological reasons and corruption for political reasons. The last chapter is divided into three sub-chapters on specific political regimes that Grant views as having twisted science to their own ends. These are Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union and George W. Bush's America. While the first two of these would certainly be on any list of governments misusing science to promote a political agenda, the inclusion of the Bush Administration might be seen as a bit ham-handed considering they are still in office.

That said, I found the book to be engaging an informative. Grant provides a thorough investigation of many interesting cases in fraud, out right or by scientists "seeing what they want to see". While I was familiar with the "usual suspects" in these chapters I was surprised at some of the stories. It's obvious that in each of the areas treated Grant tends to focus on a particular branch of science and often on one area of study. Showing in each of these sections how fraud in one study might seep into other work in the subject area. In the ideology chapters he looks at military interference with certain areas of research. He also devotes one chapter to the battle between science and the literal interpretation of the bible.

That discussion has led me to want to learn a little more about the Creationist/Intelligent Design movement. In fact I'm now reading History of Modern Creationism by Henry Morris. More on that in a later post.

Finally the closing chapter on political influences is worth reading for anyone who wants to understand how science can be brought to serve a particular political ideology. I was of course interested in the Bush discussion, but I was also interested in the Nazi discussion since the Science Museum will play host to the exhibit Deadly Medicine from the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. The Stalin sub-chapter was disturbing if only because of some of the absurdity that passed for science during the period.

I've seen the book for sale in Barnes & Noble and it should be available from Amazon.com. It's worth the read if you have an interest in this area.

Rant for a Monday Morning

A brief rant for a Monday morning. First of all I think the City of Boston and her beloved Red Sox should thank Fox Television and Major League Baseball for assisting in their World Series win. It used to be if you went 7 games in a League championship series you had 1 maybe 2 days off before the World Series. This schedule made sense. There should be some benefit to ending the LCS early. The last two years have shown that this idea is now backwards. You are better off taking 7 games to win your LCS, particularly if your eventual opponent sweeps their LCS. Enough of baseball, it is now officially the "off-season".

On to politics. Listening to Morning Edition on the way to work I heard that both parties in Iowa have now officially moved their caucuses to January 3rd. Is it me or have things gotten really silly. The Republican nominating process will be almost exactly 8 months long. Other democracies will run an entire election in less than 8 weeks. If the delegate selection process is starting so early why is the convention so late? Granted the Democrats aren't much better holding their convention the week before. Does anybody really believe there will be any mystery to the outcome of either convention? So for almost 6 months we will be in what amounts to the general election campaign but it won't be official until September 4th. If there is any mystery about the outcomes of the conventions I promise to link back to this post and say I
was a complete idiot.

Morning Rant Revisited

This morning I made a quick entry as much a reminder to me about the story on Morning Edition as anything else. So here I am 13 hours later with a little more detail.

The story that is linked in the previous post focuses on the fact that some schools have been rated as not making Adequate Yearly Progress in part due to the fact that students and tests could not be matched up. As a result the tests that couldn't be connected to students don't count. Most of the schools in the report received the rating due to insufficient participation. In one case the school was certain it had 96% participation, 95% is the threshold, but after all the dust settled they were told they didn't have enough students. One of the people quoted in the story mentioned that they received the list of errors earlier this summer. Corrected the errors. When the final report came it cited errors that had not previously been reported that the school had no chance to correct. Go read/listen to the story for all the details. So why did this trigger a need to rant?

The whole testing, AYP, NCLB thing smells like the work of a mediocre MBA. Trust me I've worked with/for several. They always want something that can be measured even when quantitative analysis is not really viable. But I promised the reason in the previous post and here it is. Vouchers. There is a cadre on the right that thinks all the woes of education can be solved by the market system. I mean look what its done for health care! Parents should have the right to take their money and spend where they want. Sounds good doesn't it. But the problem is if all the money that goes to a school for a given student is put into a voucher, then those parents are spending my money too. And I don't want them to! If we really want to provide the option of not having families pay twice for education then provide a tax credit. Then they can get their money back and not get my money. You see I pay taxes, state and property, that help fund the schools. We have no kids, so we have never been users of the school system. I don't demand a credit because I know its part of the public good that we as a society need to provide. But if you don't like the school system you pass laws and rules that make it look like the schools are failing, mostly because the paperwork has been screwed up and not necessarily by the schools.

Okay rant over. If you have something to say comment on it.

Morning Rant

During the next election cycle if one politician says "Things will be better if we just run government like a business" I might throw something.

This morning rant brought to you be the people who created No Child Left Behind. There was a story on Morning Edition today that makes you wonder what they are trying to accomplish. (Okay, I actually know the answer to this but I don't have time to deal with that now.)

On Burn Out...

No not mine. This past week saw two high profile retirement announcements. One is in sports, the other is in politics. Last Thursday, Twins General Manager Terry Ryan announced he would be stepping down at the end of the season. Ryan isn't leaving the Twins just stepping away from being the top dog. He'll remain with the club doing talent evaluation. Basically he joins former manager Tom Kelly as one of the team's super scouts. Ryan's main reason, its just not fun anymore.

Tonight's news included the announcement of Rep. Jim Ramstad. When I first moved here the 3rd District seat was held by Bill Frenzel. I remember the billboards at election time. Simply the name Frenzel in sloping letters. The Congressman's first name squeezed in at the top and the words "for Congress" or similar at the bottom. When Frenzel retired Jim Ramstad ran for the seat, cut from the same moderate Republican cloth as Frenzel, he was an easy choice for that district for 9 terms. He even adopted Frenzel's billboard style. His announcement included mention of burnout.

So good luck gentleman. You'll be missed. Minnesota is a better place because of your work.

Thank you.