Whit's End - witbee's Blog - Bakersfield.com

High School Dynamics - Seniors Dating Freshmen

I was having an interesting discussion this weekend with a colleague. We were talking about the merits of having Freshmen-only classes in high school. Of course there are a lot of good reasons for it, but one of my biggest concerns was keeping the Senior boys away from the Freshmen girls as much as possible. In fact, I used the term "pediphile" once or twice. My colleague poo-pooed the idea that an 18 year old boy pursuing a 13 year old girl amounted to pediphilia. We agreed to disagree.

What do you think?

New Discovery! The Ancient One Trick Pony!

Scientists today uncovered the remains of an ancient dinosaur dubbed the One Trick Pony. The remains point to a terrestrial animal. The skull specimen found was very thick while the brain cavity was narrow suggesting the creature had only one thought at a time. Also the backbone was nearly non-existent. The hooves were well worn on this specimen suggesting it traveled extensively or walked in circles for hours. The ocular canals were very small suggesting the eyes were quite tiny and the dinosaur likely suffered from myopia. The species was believed to have died out because of lack of procreation in an all-male environment.

Scientists have given the dinsaur the scientific name Neo viri.

Sex, Food, Armadillos Dominate Ig Nobel Awards

This is awesome. Apparently there are awards for "oddball but often surprisingly practical scientific achievements."

www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,432122,00.html

Deborah Anderson had heard the urban legends about the contraceptive effectiveness of Coca-Cola products for years.

So she and her colleagues decided to put the soft drink to the test. In the lab, that is.

For discovering that, yes indeed, Coke was a spermicide, Anderson and her team are among this year's winners of the Ig Nobel prize, the annual award given by the Annals of Improbable Research magazine to oddball but often surprisingly practical scientific achievements.

The ceremony at Harvard University, in which actual Nobel laureates bestow the awards, also honored a British psychologist who found foods that sound better taste better; a group of researchers who discovered exotic dancers make more money when they are at peak fertility; and a pair of Brazilian archaeologists who determined armadillos can change the course of history.

Radio Station Returns Class-less Cox to the Air.

Apparently local radio personality Scott Cox is returnng to his time slot Monday morning after a whooping two days of suspension. I find this to be unacceptable. The man is a CONFIRMED liar and thief who also used his son to carry out these acts. He is still being investigated by the sheriffs department for his actions. Yet the powers that be determined he should be back on the air already?

I listened to part of the program on Thursday and Friday. I never heard Scott come on the air and ask Vegas to forgive him for doing such a stupid thing. Maybe I missed it. The on-air talent had insinuated that this was necessary for his return. But if you had to tell him to apologize, is it a sincere apology?

It is no secret that I never cared for Cox's shock jock approach. Especially at 6AM. The fact that there were people on this forum making excuses for him was silly. Just because he helps out his community doesn't mean he gets a free ride when he breaks our laws.

So from now on I will no longer listen to KERN 1410. As long as Scott Cox is on the air, I will listen to another station. The entire KERN staff is now a little less trustworthy by keeping this waste of space around. I realize I am just one person and I am not calling for a boycott. Make up your own minds.

Most people on here don't seem to care anyway because they agree with him about Chad Vegas.

Maybe we should vote for one of these candidates.......

http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=6176da6f0bb5c451d90a

.....When they are older.

My "Stay-cation"

I've been off work now for a couple of weeks. I know a lot of people look forward to this, but I'm not really an extended vacation type of guy. During these few weeks I actually went back to work for a couple of days here and there (proctored some CAHSEE exams) and had some other family commitments. So we really didn't have time to go anywhere. Now, my federal jury duty started (though my number didn't get called today) and will last until the end of August. So my chances of getting away from home are slim before work starts again on Aug 12.

This might bum some people out, but not me. My idea of a great vacation is staying home. During my time off, I have landscaped my front yard, built a large shed in my backyard, work on lesson plans for my high school classes, worked on lesson plans for my adjunct college class, watched lots of Star Trek, saw some movies, played with the kids, played with the puppies, played video games, spent more time with Mrs. Witbee (though still not enough) and many other things.

What's your idea of a good vacation?

Australian doctors warn against 'designer vagina' craze

Australian doctors have raised concerns about clinics offering vaginal cosmetic surgery, warning the trend towards so-called "designer vaginas" may be exploiting vulnerable women.

The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists said procedures being offered included "vaginal rejuvenation, revirgination, designer vaginoplasty and G-spot amplification".

"What is involved in these procedures is often unclear since recognised clinical nomenclature is not being used," it said in a position paper released this week.

The college labelled the procedures dangerous, expensive and unwarranted, and said it strongly discouraged surgery that was not backed by scientific evidence or clinical trials.

"The real risks of potential complications such as scarring, permanent disfigurement, infection, dyspareunia and altered sexual sensations should be discussed in detail with women seeking such treatments," it said.

The college said women should understand that there were a large number of variations in the appearance of normal female genitalia.

"The college is particularly concerned that such surgery may exploit vulnerable women," it said.

Ted Weaver, chairman of the college's women's health committee, said most of the operations cost at least 10,000 dollars (9,500 US), which he described as an "extraordinary amount of money".

"We feel these operations might prey on people with insecurities and fears who actually need psychological help," he told Australian Associated Press.

"They are also not very anatomically-based and have the potential to cause serious harm."

Doctors in the United States and Britain have raised similar concerns about the surgery.

Eco-Envy?

I just read the article on the good natured eco-grudge between Ed Begley and Bill Nye. http://www.bakersfield.com/896/story/493697.html I remember the episode the article references where Ed went to visit Bill as his new panels were being installed. Ed was GREEN with envy (sorry about that). It made me think of a new word.

ECO-ENVY: the coveting of someone else's "greener-living" technology or techniques especially if it evokes a "I wish I had thought of that" moment.

Probably not a new concept, but I have many times been guilty of it. When I see a house with solar panels decked out I am envious. I imagine their electric meter running backwards and I get misty-eyed. I see someone's innovative drip irrigation set-up or a small wind turbine in their backyard and my mind starts racing. I see Ed Begley powering his toaster with his exercise bike and I think "wow, I need toast and exercise myself."

I think I am more of a Bill Nye kind of guy. Begley cares more about function, less about form. Bill wants both or all bets are off. I think that is what keeps me from doing a lot the green upgrades. I would probably make a heck of a mess and it would cost too much to have someone do it for me.

Oh well, baby steps I guess.

Grades: Testing and Grading

Wow, this whole thing posted with no text so now I am re-writing it from memory.

I'm sitting here on the last day of school as students are finishing up their finals and I'm pondering the merits of our current system of grading students. I can remember many of my teachers never explaining how we got graded. Some of them undoubtedly gave us whatever grade they "thought" we earned. They were probably right, too. But it is better that we have a set system in place for determining student achievement.

A few years ago I had a student, repeating the class for the third time. He decided to show up only on the first day and for quarterly exams. At the end of the semester he was surprised to find out he was failing. He figured that if he could pass the test, he should pass the class. I told him to re-read his syllabus and see that passing the test was only a small part of passing the class. He finally accepted it, but was not convinced he shouldn't pass the class.

There are many alternative methods to grading, but the old stand-by of "X% for tests, X% for classwork, X% for projects" is probably the best for our educational system. The nice thing about this is you can design a class so that is it is research-oriented, lecture-oriented or lab-oriented and still use the scheme. The bottom line is, you have to do the daily work.

Each week I begin my class with a study of the weeks vocabulary. This work is a large part of the students grades since it is done every week. Still, in my lower level classes, many students choose either not to do it or not to turn it in. Why? They don't care about the daily work. Oh, they want to pass the class and they will study hard for the quiz on Friday, but the commitment to do their work every day is just not there.

How do we make students "want" to do their work? How do we give them ambition and drive? You've seen he movies where a teacher goes into a tough classroom and the students all change to sweetness and light. Remember, those are movies based loosely on what really happened. The vast majority of the time, ambition comes from home, not school.

So, what do you think? Should students be graded on the end product (tests) or should they be graded on their daily work? Or do you have a better idea?

Teaching About Sexual Reproduction

This week I began teaching a unit on sexual reproduction. It is the last new topic in my Biology class every year. And every year the level of ignorance about the human body displayed by my students seems to grow. This is why I teach the unit. Many of my fellow high school teachers stay away from the topic completely. The CA Life Science Standards for high school only mention sexual reproduction in terms of hormones, so the teachers feel justified in not teaching much else. Also, they believe it will be covered in Health (it's not).

But I feel I'm supposed to be readying these kids for college and life. Believe it or not, many young men believe "the baby comes from the same hole as they pee and poop." And many young girls believe "you can't get pregnant during the first two weeks after your period."

The best one, though. I covered all the vocabulary for the female reproductive system when a young girl raised her hand and said, in perfectly innocent deadpan, "what about the butthole?" I was speechless.

Man, your kids keep me on my toes.

Obama: Separation Strategy?

This weekend, as you've probably heard, Rev. Wright went a little coocoo in front of some journalists. Nothing really new in what he said, but it apparently broke the camels back for Obama. He has now formally denounced his minister publicly.

We can and have debated the impact one's spiritual advisor has on their own beliefs, but I'm more interested in the possibility that this is all part of Obama's strategy. He is now formally separated from his #1 liability.

What do you think? Is it all a show?

KERN 1410's New Morning Lineup

I commute 45 minutes to Delano every morning. The nice thing about it was the ability to collect my thoughts for the coming day and be brought up to date on all the latest news and traffic info by Bill Curtis and Dawnelle Sullivan. Their witty banter and straightforward news delivery made for a pleasant drive.

Now someone decided to put Scott Cox on at 6AM. No offense to Mr. Cox, but his is the last voice I want to hear at 6AM. His style, if you can indeed call it that, is a disjointed ramble intermixed with name dropping of peole I have never heard of. He is abrasive and rude. He is a redneck Howard Stern with a few less fart jokes. And it seems the number of commercials has doubled.

Now some people undoubtedly like this form of crap-stick comedy, but at 6AM I just want the straight poop. I have often wondered how this guy is still on the air, but he must have some kind of audience. The target demographic seems to be truant 12-14 year old boys and they aren't awake at 6AM.

To the station manager at 1410: Please bring back Bill and Dawnelle. radio, KERE

Cool New People?

I've been here for months now and every time I look at the Cool New People list on the right hand side of the screen, I'm never on it. Now, I don't claim to be the most popular nut on the branch, but how does one get on this list?

I noticed everyone on there has a pic, so I put one on mine.

Some of these people listed I have never seen posting here before.

BLT and Chico and Random are almost always there. That's fime because they are cool, but hardly new.

What's the deal with that?

For the Grandparents - More Paul Harvey

PAUL HARVEY WRITES
HIS GRANDCHILDREN

We tried so hard to make things better for our kids that we made them worse.

For my grandchildren, I'd like better. I'd really like them to know about hand me down clothes and homemade ice cream and leftover meat loaf sandwiches. I really would. I hope you learn humility by being humiliated, and that you learn honesty by being cheated. I hope you learn to make your own bed and mow the lawn and wash the car. And I really hope nobody gives you a brand new car when you are sixteen. It will be good if at least one time you can see puppies born and your old dog put to sleep.

I hope you get a black eye fighting for something you believe in, I hope you have to share a bedroom with your younger brother. And it's all right if you have to draw a line down the middle of the room, but when he wants to crawl under the covers with you because he's scared, I hope you let him. I hope you have to walk uphill to school with your friends and that you live in a town where you can do it safely.

On rainy days when you have to catch a ride, I hope you don't ask your driver to drop you two blocks away so you won't be seen riding with someone as uncool as your Mom. If you want a slingshot, I hope your Dad teaches you how to make one instead of buying one. I hope you learn to dig in the dirt and read books. When you learn to use computers, I hope you also learn to add and subtract in your head.

I hope you get teased by your friends when you have your first crush on a girl, and when you talk back to your mother that you learn what ivory soap tastes like. May you skin your knee climbing a mountain, burn your hand on a stove, and stick your tongue on a frozen flagpole. I don't care if you try a beer once, but I hope you don't like it. And if a friend offers you dope or a joint, I hope you realize he is not your friend. I sure hope you make time to sit on a porch with your Grandpa and go fishing with your Uncle.

May you feel sorrow at a funeral and joy during the holidays. I hope your mother punishes you when you throw a baseball through your neighbor's window and that she hugs you and kisses you at Christmas time when you give her a plaster mold of your hand. These things I wish for you - tough times and disappointment, hard work and happiness. To me, it's the only way to appreciate life.

Written with a pen. Sealed with a kiss. I'm here for you. And if I die before you do, I'll go to heaven and wait for you. Send this to all of your friends. We secure our friends, not by accepting favors, but by doing them.

Paul Harvey

If I Were The Devil

by Paul Harvey

I would gain control of the most powerful nation in the world;

I would delude their minds into thinking that they had come from man's effort, instead of God's blessings;

I would promote an attitude of loving things and using people, instead of the other way around;

I would dupe entire states into relying on gambling for their state revenue;

I would convince people that character is not an issue when it comes to leadership;

I would make it legal to take the life of unborn babies;

I would make it socially acceptable to take one's own life, and invent machines to make it convenient;

I would cheapen human life as much as possible, so that the lives of animals are valued more than human beings;

I would take God out of the schools, where even the mention of His name was grounds for a lawsuit;

I would come up with drugs that sedate the mind and target the young, and I would get sports heroes to advertise them;

I would get control of the media, so that every night I could pollute the mind of every family member for my agenda;

I would attack the family, the backbone of any nation;

I would make divorce acceptable and easy, even fashionable, because if the family crumbles, so does the nation;

I would compel people to express their most depraved fantasies on canvas and movie screens, and I would call it art;

I would convince the world that people are born homosexuals, and that their lifestyles should be accepted and marveled;

I would convince the people that right and wrong are determined by a few who call themselves authorities, and refer to their agenda as politically correct;

I would persuade people that the church is irrelevant and out of date, and the Bible is for the naive;

I would dull the minds of Christians, and make them believe that prayer is not important, and that faithfulness and obedience are optional;

I guess I would leave things pretty much the way they are.

Good Day

Sun, Not Man, Main Cause of Climate Change, New Study Says

Sun, Not Man, Main Cause of Climate Change, New Study Says
By Monisha Bansal
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
December 11, 2007

(CNSNews.com) - According to a new study on global warming, climate scientists at the University of Rochester, the University of Alabama, and the University of Virginia found that the climate change models based on human influence do not match observed warming.

That is contrary to the views held by former Vice President Al Gore, who accepted the Nobel Prize on Monday along with the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and who thinks that climate change is largely caused by human action.

Gore wants nations to tax carbon dioxide emissions and not build any new coal plants, among other steps. "It is time to make peace with the planet," Gore said in his Nobel speech, as reported by the Associated Press. "We must quickly mobilize our civilization with the urgency and resolve that has previously been seen only when nations mobilized for war."

The new report, which challenges the claims of Gore and the IPCC, was published in the December 2007 issue of the International Journal of Climatology of the Royal Meteorological Society.

The report was written by David Douglass at the University of Rochester, John Christy at the University of Alabama, and Benjamin Pearson and S. Fred Singer at the University of Virginia.

"Our findings basically are that fingerprints - that is to say the pattern of warming - that's predicted by greenhouse models does not match the fingerprints of observations, so there is a disconnect between greenhouse models and the actual reality of observations," Singer told Cybercast News Service.

"This means that the greenhouse effect - while real - is not very important in producing climate change," he said. "It's a lot smaller than what the models calculate."

Singer said the reason why the models "overestimate the effectiveness of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases is that the models ignore what are called negative feedbacks which occur in the atmosphere, such as clouds, which reduce the effect of the greenhouse gases."

"Their models just don't consider them properly," he said.

But Bracken Hendricks, a senior fellow at the liberal Center for American Progress, told Cybercast News Service, that the study is "radically out of step with the complete scientific consensus."

"The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is not just a report. It's not just a random gathering of scientists. It's the largest scientific body ever assembled," he said. "Their most recent assessment determined that there's 90 percent certainty that global climate change is happening and that it is caused by human beings."

But Singer said, "We have to remember that the climate has always been changing ever since we have records, and we have geologic records going back millions and millions of years. We know that there have been huge climate changes on the earth long before human beings actually came into existence.

"We are fairly sure that what's causing the warming are changes in the sun," he said. "These are very subtle changes that are very difficult to observe. The sun is really a quite variable star."

Hendricks, however, said because of the IPCC report, "the assertion that this is caused by increased solar activity or these sorts of things is out of step with the vast consensus."

"It's dangerous to get into a game of dueling science," he added. "We don't want to be gambling with the fate of the planet."

But Singer said because global warming is a natural event. "There is little point to try to control emission of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, which means that all of this legislation and all of these efforts to find substitutes for fossil fuels are pointless, useless and very, very expensive," he said.

Hendricks countered, saying that alternative energy will be a multi-billion dollar industry and "an opportunity to revitalize our global competitiveness" through innovation and job creation.

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=/Nation/archive/200712/NAT20071211a.html

The "Gay" Gene?

Gene makes fruit flies bisexual: study

December 10, 2007

BY JIM RITTER Health Reporter jritter@suntimes.com

A new study is providing insights into the genetics of homosexuality -- at least in fruit flies.

Researchers have discovered a gene involved in homosexual behavior in the tiny flies. They also found a way to turn homosexuality on and off with drugs.

Humans have a similar gene. But it's unclear what effect, if any, the gene has on homosexual behavior in people, said biologist David Featherstone of the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Featherstone and colleagues described their findings in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

After a century of study on fruit flies, researchers have accumulated a vast storehouse of genetic knowledge. UIC researchers were using fruit flies to study muscular dystrophy when they discovered a gene they call "gender blind," or GB.

Flies with a mutated form of the GB gene are bisexual. It appears they're unable to distinguish chemical smells, called pheromones, that tell whether other flies are male or female.

"The GB mutant males treated other males exactly the same way normal male flies would treat a female," Featherstone said. "They even attempted copulation."

The GB mutation appears to strengthen nerve cell junctions called synapses. This causes flies to over-react to pheromones. As a result, they "broaden their horizons and go for both males and females," Featherstone said.

Researchers tested this idea by adding a drug to the flies' apple juice. The drug weakened the synapses. So within a few hours, flies with the GB mutation stopped engaging in homosexual behavior.

Conversely, researchers gave heterosexual male flies a drug that strengthened their synapses. Sure enough, these male flies soon were courting males as well as females.

"It was amazing," Featherstone said. "I never thought we'd be able to do that sort of thing, because sexual orientation is supposed to be hard-wired. This fundamentally changes how we think about this behavior."

http://www.suntimes.com/lifestyles/health/689002,CST-NWS-flies10.article