Why is it that I’m always the last one who can see it?
It’s that moment when something is broken in my life and I can’t see it. My wife and friends can. My children and my neighbors can. But I can’t. It’s like the very nature of the problem is to blind me to the problem. And to make it worse, the more everyone points it out, the more I seem to protect it, as thought the problem is me. And it’s not. The problem is the problem. But as long as I hold onto it, I can’t tell the difference. And the longer I hold onto it, resisting the gentle and not so gentle reminders of the world around me to “LET IT GO”, the more it gets embedded within me so that I can’t tell the where I stop and the problem starts. I literally become blind to the problem. And in the process I have become my own worst enemy, protecting that which destroys me.
I sometimes wonder if this blindness is what Jesus was talking about when he said:
“though seeing, they may not see; though hearing, they may not understand.”
Jesus was saying that it is possible to see but not see? I get that. Its like being the only one in a crowded room who can’t see the “Stupid” sign on my back. Everyone is laughing but I’m not willing to pull it off.
Much of the journey of following Jesus has led me to the simple practice of getting honest with myself so I can see. If we’re really after the truth, it’s pretty clear to me that the problem is when we hold onto a lie as if its true. And in the process we’re being duped. To be honest, I’ve been duped too long in my life. It just doesn’t work for me anymore.
But the reality is that this requires me to get honest with myself, to literally swallow my pride and begin to really listen to those around me who really have my best interest at heart. It requires me surrounding myself with people who will speak truth into my life while holding my dignity at the same time. It requires me to really get honest with those moments that I’ve picked up the lie…again. I hate that moment. But I’m learning to hate the moment I hold it even more. I want to let it go.
And what is perhaps more profound is the feeling I get when I actually do let go of the lie. My sense of clarity about it is ridiculous, making me wonder how I couldn’t see it before. It was sooooo obvious. And yet I couldn’t see it. I was captivated by it.
What if repentance is really just letting go a lie that destroys us? If this is true, then I want to get a PhD in repentance. I want to see very clearly the moment I’m destroying God’s image in me, the one that sustains me and lets me know I am loved.
Hat Tip GODSPACE
Towards the future of the real-time Web: Netvibes Instant Update architecture
Teach for America: Elite corps or costing older teachers jobs?
In Boston, TFA corps members replaced 20 pink-slipped teachers, says Boston Teachers Union President Richard Stutman. "These are people who have been trained, who are experienced and who have good evaluations, and are being replaced by brand-new employees."
This month, he met with about 18 other local union presidents, all of whom said they'd seen teachers laid off to make room for TFA members.
"I don't think you'll find a city that isn't laying off people to accommodate Teach For America," he says.
John Wilson, executive director of the National Education Association, the USA's largest teachers union : last May, he sent a memo saying union leaders were "beginning to see school systems lay off teachers and then hire TFA college grads due to a contract they signed."
Wilson says TFA hurts children by bringing "the least-prepared and the least-experienced teachers" into low-income schools and making them "the teacher of record."
TFA, he says, has "done a marvelous job of marketing their program and branding their program — you cannot take away from their business model. But what they're doing to poor children is malpractice."
Mobile, AL school system loses its mind
From the ACLU's site:
Without notifying parents, the Mobile County School System segregated by sex the entire student body of Hankins Middle School by sex for the 2008-2009 school year. The policy went so far as to bar boys and girls from even speaking to each other in school hallways.Under the sex-segregation program at Hankins Middle School this year, teachers had been instructed to treat boys and girls differently. At a teacher training, teachers were informed that boys should be taught about "heroic behavior" but that girls should learn "good character."
Teachers were told that male hormone levels directly relate to success at "traditional male tasks" but that when stress levels rise in an adolescent girl's brain, "other things shut down."
2012: The Real "Milestone", The Real Danger
Prior to the industrial revolution, the Earth's atmosphere was really ideal for supporting the wide diversity of life on the planet. Breaking it up into its physical, molecular contents, the atmosphere, weighing in at just over 5,100 trillion tonnes (5.1 x 1018 kilograms), was made up of the following elements (by mass, not volume):
* Nitrogen gas (N2): 3,890 trillion tonnes (around 75.5%),
* Oxygen gas (O2): 1,190 trillion tonnes (around 23.1%),
* Argon gas (monatomic): 66 trillion tonnes (around 1.3%), and
* Carbon Dioxide (CO2): 2.18 trillion tonnes (about 0.04%),
plus a variable amount of water vapor. But the amount of these gases in the atmosphere didn't really change very much over the past few thousand years, while human civilization developed, grew, and thrived.
And then, right around the year 1800, something new happened.
The industrial revolution! It brought great things with it, things that helped give us the world we have today. And it brought along with it one small, unforeseen consequence: every atom of carbon that we burned combined with oxygen in the atmosphere, artificially producing carbon dioxide in copious quantities for the first time.
This wasn't really a big deal at the beginning, because the amount of carbon dioxide we were producing was tiny compared to the amount that was already there. But over the past 200 years, our energy needs have gone up, and the way we've met them is -- nearly universally -- through the burning of carbon.
By 1870, the world was artificially producing a billion tonnes of CO2 per year.
By 1920, it was 5 billion a year.
By 1960, we'd hit 10 billion a year.
By the late 1980s, we were up past 20 billion tonnes each and every year.
And, at present, we're nearly up to 30 billion tonnes of CO2 emitted annually.
Out of this nearly 30 billion tonnes per year, the United States is responsible for about 6 billion tonnes of it. And over 98% of the CO2 that we emit comes from the production of energy in one form or another.
If you add this all up (and I did a few months ago), you find that humanity is on pace to have added 1.5 trillion extra tonnes of Carbon Dioxide by 2012! How's that for a milestone?
If -- as a world -- we don't cut our Carbon Dioxide production significantly, by 2030 we will have added as much Carbon Dioxide to the atmosphere as there was Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere when we started! The world isn't going to end in 2012; it isn't even going to end in 2030. But if we don't do something to stop making this mess that we're continuing to make, it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better.
So, you've got the facts now. What do you think we should do about it? And how can we make it happen?
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Other posts from Starts with a Bang
July 29, 2009 - Why do stars twinkle?
Carnival of Space #113 is here on Scienceblogs!
Weekend Diversion: Oh Captain, My Captain!
I present to you O Captain! My Captain! by Walt Whitman, a beautifully sad poem written just after the death of Abraham Lincoln.
O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up--for you the flag is flung--for you the bugle trills;
For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths--for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the deck,
You've fallen cold and dead.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
It's a poem that almost everyone has heard of, but that hardly anyone I know has read. It's also one of the most straight-as-an-arrow things about me: that I think Abraham Lincoln was simply a magnificent human being. I hope this oft-forgotten poem touches you a little bit the way it does me.
Posted by Ethan Siegel
July 24, 2009 - Should we go to Mars or not?
Recent Posts
* Why do stars twinkle?
* Mobile, AL school system loses its mind
* 2012: The Real "Milestone", The Real Danger
* Carnival of Space #113 is here on Scienceblogs!
* Weekend Diversion: Oh Captain, My Captain!
* Should we go to Mars or not?
* Nietzche and Astronomy?
* The Last 100 Years: The 2000s and WMAP
* The coolest trick for eclipse photography ever
* The Best Eclipse of the Century is Tomorrow!
Upcoming Events
April 8th @ 7PM -- premiere of the short film "Dark Matter", starring me, at Hollywood Theatre in Portland, OR!
July 29, 2009
Why do stars twinkle?
Category: Solar System • Stars
Sure, sure, everyone knows that stars twinkle. You look up at the night sky, and pretty much any star you look at appears to fluctuate in its brightness and intensity very rapidly, giving it a "twinkling" appearance.
bl_cam_whole_image.jpg
Why does this happen? It definitely doesn't have anything to do with the star itself, because "our" star, which you call the Sun, definitely doesn't twinkle the same way:
sun-sky-lg.jpg
Not only that, but there are a few objects in the night sky that don't twinkle: the Moon, planets, and satellites.
ISS_23AUG05_labelled_DSC_1960.jpg
Why is that? Why do stars twinkle, and nothing else? Well, there were two theories.
One was that the Earth's atmosphere was causing the twinkling. As pockets of turbulent air, both warm and cold, move around, they cause the light to move unevenly, causing relative brightness and dimness. Planets, satellites, and the Moon and Sun wouldn't do this because their apparent size is too big to be affected by such slight variations, but tiny, point-like stars could be.
Twinkle.gif
The other theory is that the Sun, Moon, satellites and planets are all close to us, but something happening at the edge of the Solar System causes the twinkling. Molecular gas clouds that live at the outskirts of the Solar System -- as part of the Oort cloud -- could cause the twinkling. As the starlight passes through them, the turbulence there causes the twinkling, and it's only because the other, closer objects are inside the Oort cloud that we don't see it.
outer-oort.jpg
So, which explanation is it? Well, this is one piece of science that we were able to test via manned spaceflight! How's this? Well, all you have to do is go up in a spacecraft beyond the Earth's atmosphere, and look.
Well, former astronaut Walt Cunningham wrote a book about this. The title?
Importance of Observation that Stars Don't Twinkle Outside the Earth's Atmosphere.
And there you have it. The Earth's atmosphere, and not gas clouds, cause stars to twinkle. You can find a much more detailed explanation at Astroprof's page, but this is one of the neatest little bits of information to come from manned spaceflight. Hope you enjoy it!
Posted by Ethan Siegel at 4:52 PM
Mobile, AL school system loses its mind
Category: Education
After just finishing my series on the last 100 years in bailey08ftw.jpgastrophysics, I was surprised to read an article in Bust Magazine that seems like it ought to be from 100 years ago.
You see, 100 years ago, segregating boys and girls was commonplace in schools. Not only that, but girls took "girl classes" like home economics, while boys took "boy classes" like trigonometry. One would think that we're past that by now.
One would hope so.
But clearly, this isn't true everywhere. The Mobile, Alabama county school system went way over the line starting last fall (2008). From the ACLU's site:
Without notifying parents, the Mobile County School System segregated by sex the entire student body of Hankins Middle School by sex for the 2008-2009 school year. The policy went so far as to bar boys and girls from even speaking to each other in school hallways.
Now, that's bad enough. There were seven other schools in Mobile that had implemented gender segregation as well, all of them without even notifying the students' parents. But at this one school -- Hankins Middle School -- there was a step that went even farther over the line.
Under the sex-segregation program at Hankins Middle School this year, teachers had been instructed to treat boys and girls differently. At a teacher training, teachers were informed that boys should be taught about "heroic behavior" but that girls should learn "good character."
Segregating boys and girls and treating them differently? Doesn't that sound like, oh, I don't know, separate and unequal? Teaching only boys about heroic behavior, why? Is the impliction that girls can't be heroes? Teaching only girls about good character, why? Implicity, because boys shouldn't be expected to have good character?
But it gets worse. Check this tidbit out (emphasis is mine):
Teachers were told that male hormone levels directly relate to success at "traditional male tasks" but that when stress levels rise in an adolescent girl's brain, "other things shut down."
I can't even believe that somebody thought this in this day and age, much less implemented this as a school-wide policy. But how can people expect children to learn how to deal with one another when they aren't even given the opportunity to interact with the opposite gender? When they aren't even treated as mental equals to one another? When they aren't held to the same standards?
Now, before you get too outraged, the issue is already resolved. The ACLU fought this and won, overturning it, and causing all Mobile schools to reintegrate starting this fall. But there are, somehow, people pushing for these backwards-moving reforms. Remember what Thomas Jefferson said, "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." Don't let people get away with things like this. Don't let important things like this slide. It's your freedom, it's your life, and (regardless of your politics) it's your country, too. Treat it with the high value it deserves.
Posted by Ethan Siegel at 3:41 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
July 27, 2009
2012: The Real "Milestone", The Real Danger
Category: Environment • Physics
doomsday1.jpg
Doomsday in 2012? Please, I don't even have time for that. (Check out Ian O'Neill's work for a nail-in-the-coffin of those myths.) But there is a big milestone that we will reach right around 2012.
Earth_Moon_atmosphere.jpg
Prior to the industrial revolution, the Earth's atmosphere was really ideal for supporting the wide diversity of life on the planet. Breaking it up into its physical, molecular contents, the atmosphere, weighing in at just over 5,100 trillion tonnes (5.1 x 1018 kilograms), was made up of the following elements (by mass, not volume):
* Nitrogen gas (N2): 3,890 trillion tonnes (around 75.5%),
* Oxygen gas (O2): 1,190 trillion tonnes (around 23.1%),
* Argon gas (monatomic): 66 trillion tonnes (around 1.3%), and
* Carbon Dioxide (CO2): 2.18 trillion tonnes (about 0.04%),
plus a variable amount of water vapor. But the amount of these gases in the atmosphere didn't really change very much over the past few thousand years, while human civilization developed, grew, and thrived.
And then, right around the year 1800, something new happened.
industrial-revolution.jpg
The industrial revolution! It brought great things with it, things that helped give us the world we have today. And it brought along with it one small, unforeseen consequence: every atom of carbon that we burned combined with oxygen in the atmosphere, artificially producing carbon dioxide in copious quantities for the first time.
This wasn't really a big deal at the beginning, because the amount of carbon dioxide we were producing was tiny compared to the amount that was already there. But over the past 200 years, our energy needs have gone up, and the way we've met them is -- nearly universally -- through the burning of carbon.
coal-power-plant.jpg
By 1870, the world was artificially producing a billion tonnes of CO2 per year.
By 1920, it was 5 billion a year.
By 1960, we'd hit 10 billion a year.
By the late 1980s, we were up past 20 billion tonnes each and every year.
And, at present, we're nearly up to 30 billion tonnes of CO2 emitted annually.
fig1.png
Out of this nearly 30 billion tonnes per year, the United States is responsible for about 6 billion tonnes of it. And over 98% of the CO2 that we emit comes from the production of energy in one form or another.
fig 3.png
If you add this all up (and I did a few months ago), you find that humanity is on pace to have added 1.5 trillion extra tonnes of Carbon Dioxide by 2012! How's that for a milestone?
If -- as a world -- we don't cut our Carbon Dioxide production significantly, by 2030 we will have added as much Carbon Dioxide to the atmosphere as there was Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere when we started! The world isn't going to end in 2012; it isn't even going to end in 2030. But if we don't do something to stop making this mess that we're continuing to make, it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better.
So, you've got the facts now. What do you think we should do about it? And how can we make it happen?
Posted by Ethan Siegel at 5:34 PM • 17 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Carnival of Space #113 is here on Scienceblogs!
Category: Astronomy
I'm not responsible for this one, though! Head on over to Steinn's page, Dynamics of Cats to see this week's Carnival of Space in full. Sure, I wrapped up my series on the last 100 years, but you'll want to take a look at my top 3 from this week's Carnival:
darkenergy.jpg
1. Chandra's 10th anniversary: it was a big deal when Chandra went up on the Moon landing's 30th anniversary, and so don't forget to celebrate our great X-ray observatory's greatest discoveries, including the first incontrovertible evidence for dark matter!
jupiter.jpg
2. Jupiter struck by something! Asteroid? Comet? ALIEN? Just what was it that struck Jupiter last week, and how did we figure it out? The story is here for you.
ISS.jpg
3. Get out of Earth's orbit! Are you hugely disappointed that humans haven't left Earth's orbit since 1972? Well, I am, but Bruce Cordell at 21st century waves takes a look at Tom Wolfe's opinion, which is definitely worth reading!
Enjoy the latest Carnival of Space! And for those of you who want an update on the status of my hair, it's still here. We're up to 84 donations of time, goods, and/or money, so we only need 16 more to get my head shaved! Let's make it happen this week!
Posted by Ethan Siegel at 3:52 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
July 24, 2009
Should we go to Mars or not?
Recently, I expressed an opinion on this site in favor of a manned mission to Mars. I was met with many comments -- both positive and negative -- discussing this position. So I'd like to, first off, find out what your opinions on it are:
I realize that there are many other deciding factors on whether you think the answer should be yes or no, but I'd like you to pick the closest one.
For me, a combination of the first and third reasons are why I am compelled to say yes. This is important, because I freely admit that I believe the scientific merits of a manned mission to Mars are very slight.
................There's really no science about it; this is a chance for humanity to make one of our dreams come true. How many opportunities do we get in our lifetimes to really make one of our dreams come true?
July 23, 2009 - Nietzche and Astronomy?
Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster. And if you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you. --F. Nietzsche
Universe Today-NGC1097
The Last 100 Years: The 2000s and WMAP
The last 100 years have brought us from a Universe no bigger than the Milky Way ruled by Newton's gravity to a vast, expanding one with hundreds of billions of galaxies, covered in dark matter, beginning with the big bang, which was likely caused by inflation, and which will end in a freezing cold death as the galaxies accelerate away from one another, off into infinity. We gained and confirmed a new theory of gravity; we learned how all the elements in the Universe were made. We detected neutrinos from an exploding star hundreds of thousands of light years away. And we walked on the Moon.
Cognitive Daily
A "lie detector" test -- and how to cheat it
Wired : Threat LevelVulnerabilities Allow Attacker to Impersonate Any Website
L.A. TimesCalifornia beaches face a rising tide of pollution
survey traced 9% of beach contamination to sewage and 3% to storm water, with 81% from unknown sources.
Los Angeles County was home to the most polluted beach water, with 20% of samples exceeding state standards.
In May, Heal the Bay also ranked Los Angeles beaches as worst in the state for water quality.
Testing the Waters: A Guide to Water Quality at Vacation Beaches, will be available online today.
Canadians paying 7 per cent more for same goods as Americans; down from year ago
Military study probes hazards of Chicoutimi submarine fireBook Review/Science in the Media- Open Access
Charles Darwin's Reception in Germany and What Followed
Ernst Haeckel is widely seen—although this is disputed among historians of science—to be in an unholy intellectual line from Darwin to social Darwinism and eugenics in the early twentieth century, eventually leading to fascism in Nazi Germany. Creationist and intelligent-design advocates worldwide tirelessly perpetuate this purported but largely unsubstantiated connection between Darwin, Haeckel, and Hitler [4]. Such efforts are particularly and unnecessarily divisive in this “Darwin year,” when we celebrate not only the 150th anniversary of the publication of Origin, but also Darwin's 200th birthday. Furthermore, they do not do justice to Haeckel's understanding of Darwinian evolution by natural selection with all its unpredictability, but, more importantly, seem to aim to further undermine the acceptance of evolution by an often still surprisingly skeptical lay audience.Iran exiles 'killed in Iraq raid'
Seven Iranian dissidents have been killed during a raid by Iraqi security forces on their camp north of Baghdad, Iraqi police have said.
Eyewitnesses say Iraqi police have surrounded the People's Mujahideen of Iran (PMOI) camp and clashes are continuing inside.
Iran wants the camp closed. The exiles fear they will be forcibly repatriated.
The group is considered a terrorist group by the US and Iran. It was removed from an EU terrorist list earlier this year after a legal battle.
'Intelligence source' : reports suggest Washington has received intelligence from the group, and has urged Iraqi authorities not to repatriate its members or use lethal force against them.
"We have had promises from the government of Iraq that they would deal with the [PMOI] in a humane fashion," said US Gen Ray Odierno.
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