Of course we believe in evolution!

This summer I got a DM on Twitter from a PR guy in North Carolina. He asked for my email address so he could send me this (edited for length):

Hi Barbara - As you may know I'm David Wescott, a PR flack living in Durham, NC. In my spare time I like to do advocacy projects with scientists and science communicators.

I know you heard about the video on YouTube from this year's Miss USA pageant, where all of the contestants were asked the question "should evolution be taught in schools?" and the answers weren't exactly what we'd hope they'd be. This quickly led to criticism from scientists and a parody video where fake pageant contestants were asked the question "should math be taught in schools?"

Given your background, I'm sure I don't have to explain how this is a hot-button political issue for many people. The discussion becomes so polarized so quickly that there never seems to be time for the most important thing - a positive, easy-to-understand message that explains why teaching evolution is so important. We can make the case for teaching evolution without resorting to attacks or getting baited into political sideshows that allow critics to shift the discussion away from the merits.

We're asking people to to provide a very brief video of themselves basically answering the question "why should evolution be taught in schools?" We're going to create a compilation video of women scientists answering the question much in the same style as the Miss USA video. (We think it's important to provide a showcase for female role models beyond beauty pageant contestants.) Then we'll use social media and PR tactics to promote what we're doing to moderate, sensible non-scientists who simply may not have all the facts - the people we're actually trying to convince.

I'm wondering if you'd like to provide a video and/or let other scientists you think might be interested know about this.

Best,
David

Now I'm not sure about the hot-button political issue and I'm not sure what he means by "given my background." But I had a lot of free time this summer and I liked the idea that I could do this while collecting unemployment compensation from Texas, so it's almost like they are paying to promote teaching evolution in school. So I replied (edited to protect the innocent):

Hi David,

You can put me down for a video.

This issue resonates with me particularly. I have a beautiful and gifted relative who was Miss {My Small Town} in 19XX and first runner up in the state pageant in the Miss America pageant system. She went to one of the top engineering schools in the country as a Presidential scholar. She was president of her sorority and the homecoming queen. She graduated as an Industrial Engineer. I recently realized that she's a CREATIONIST! I mean, I knew she was a religious zealot, but I was prepared to overlook that since she's the only person in my family who ever invites me to anything and we could just stick to engineering topics and be fine. But creationism, man, I was floored. And her son is HOME SCHOOLED! How will he EVER get the real story?!

Well he will certainly go to college. I just have to hope he has the rational sense to go to a good one. And then it is a UNIVERSITY responsibility to teach evolution. But what about his mother? She has a degree from one of the top ranked engineering schools in the nation and they didn't teach her evolution! They didn't actually teach it to me either as a physics major. I'm not really sure how I know it. We had the same biology classes in high school and I'm almost sure they taught evolution. I suppose the reinforcement I got from my family, the other side from hers, was key.

So why is health class in college with the slides of venereal disease a state requirement and not evolution? Georgia is actually required to teach it in high school now, by law, but I worry about the home schooled people. Is there anything to be done to educate them in college? The curriculum is so tight. I don't care if they just put an evolution book in required English class, do something! Make it like AP English so you can get out of evolution in college only if you prove you learned it already in high school?

Anyway, send me the requirements for the video and I'll try to think of something cogent to say about evolution.

Thanks,
Barbara

So I told the organizer up front that I am not college educated about evolution. I never claimed to have any credentials, only an emotional connection to the topic. He sent me these instructions.

Here's the plan. we're hoping you can provide us, by August 31 a brief video answering the following questions:
1. Why should evolution be taught in schools?
2. What is one way that studying evolution has benefited our society?
3. Can you imagine science without the theory of evolution?

I wrote something up and found I was completely incapable of memorizing it. I put it in my phone and read it over and over in free moments. Whatever kind of ADD I have is the variety that makes rote memorization impossible. I ended up putting my monitor next to the camera and held my trackpad to scroll through the text and tried not to look like I was reading. Even when I wasn't reading my eyes pivot like a ghost crab just from trying to remember. I suck at videos. But I said I'd do it, and they said they'd edit it, so I had to send it in. I expected the editor would spend a lot of time with his head in his hands. The idea that all these separate people would make video that would mesh was far fetched to me. I was right, too. My friend Dr. McWhorter watched the final compilation: "So the message is Blah blah blah blah blah blah?" Yeah that's what I got too.

PZ Myers put this video on his blog yesterday along with some commentary he found from detractors. And this personal reaction:

I confess to cringing in a few places — there’s too much ready equation of evolution with natural selection — but I certainly wouldn’t question the competence of these accomplished scientists, even if I might argue with them a bit.

I cringed too, PZ. And now I'm cringing again because I TOTALLY did that -- equated evolution with natural selection. I'm sorry! I didn't know that was bad. We were supposed to be talking about ways studying evolution has benefited our society. Maybe the example I thought of was ways studying NATURAL SELECTION benefited our society. I honestly thought they were related. I think it would be totally fair to question the competence of these accomplished scientists. I'm not that accomplished, just opinionated. I have free time. It's sort of the counter condition to being accomplished.

I suppose I am an illustration of the failure of our educational system, and another example of why PZ Myers hates physicists.

I am not sure about the details of the distinction between natural selection and evolution, but I am damn sure I don't believe in creationism. Richard Dawkins explanation of the strange path of the nerve in the neck of a giraffe sounds good to me. How my relative can believe it proves creationism instead baffles me utterly. When I was in elementary school we had a very old woman come to our class about once a week to talk about religion. She had boobs that hung so low they came down over her belt. I could never pay attention to anything she said because I was trying to imagine how she got dressed. How did she hold those up when it took two hands to buckle her belt? I remember her strange body shape vividly but nothing she ever told us about the bible. She was around when my mother was little too. I guess she had a less distracting figure when she was 25 years younger. My mother told me one day they learned about creation. She was intrigued and captivated. She went home and asked her mother, "Mama, we don't believe in evolution do we?" And my grandmother told her, "Of course we believe in evolution. Don't be ridiculous." And that was the end of that. My mother reckons she believed in creationism for about 4 hours. I suppose that's evidence right there that children are just naturally gullible, but tend to defer to their parents. I have no explanation for why an intelligent adult would believe a preacher over Richard Dawkins when it comes to this topic.

Anyway, the PZ Myers blog was to let people vent about how mean it was for some group called Uncommon Descent to call us "gals" and "show mares." Frankly I find their put-downs weak and it doesn't offend me at all. I feel worse that I screwed up the actual topic. Considering I am in fact incompetent, "show mare" is kind of a compliment. I guess I'm one of the ones that make them throw a qualifier before "young," but I like the association.

It shows sixteen female academics or science writers, mostly young, whose enthusiasm for evolution is so overwrought that they turn themselves into propagandists.

Eager to show how well they have been trained, they are like show mares who trot around the paddock jumping over each gate in turn. All the while they give the camera a look that says: “Aren’t I good?”

I'm pretty sure the way we mostly look wildly anywhere besides at the camera really says: "Aren't I done?" We definitely don't have the poise of the Miss USA contestants. And according to Penn Jillette they were only being judged by how they held themselves while they answered, not what they actually said. Which to a scientist is a complete non sequitur. How many Miss USA contestants could use non sequitur in a sentence? THAT is why we think we're so good.

Anyway, here's my unashamed propaganda about natural selection: the process whereby organisms better adapted to their environment tend to survive and produce more offspring. The theory of its action was first fully expounded by Charles Darwin and is now believed to be the main process that brings about evolution. (from the dictionary) I wasn't trying to piss off PZ Myers when I kept saying evolution. I read in the comments on his blog that the distinction is that evolution is random, not directed. Well that doesn't make a very good personal anecdote. I had to add some pictures to this video because it's bad enough to have to hear my voice. I don't have to see my face the whole time too.

First rule of new ideas

If you think of something you think is awesome there is a very good chance somebody else already thought of it. First step when you think you have a new invention is to look it up. It's called Prior Art in the patent biz. And it's FUCKING COMMON SENSE! There are 7 billion people in the world. If you have a one in a million idea then 7000 people had the same idea. Get a load of this press release from NC State. They modified this baby seat and did some ergonomic research on it and released “Comparison of infant car seat grip orientations and lift strategies”

This made me all ranty. Why is an engineering school using this embarrassing PVC pipe mockup of a better car seat handle when THIS ALREADY EXISTS IN THE REAL WORLD? I don't know a thing about babies. I don't have one, don't have any close friends with one, nothing. But I am alive and observant and I just know I've seen one of these and thought, "Oh, that's a good idea." In under 10 seconds of searching I found this one.

Now come on NC State. Couldn't you have sprung for a model already on the market and compared those? I'm pretty sure that obscene franken-handle with the exposed bolt threads did nothing to decrease the weight. You couldn't get a doll that looked embarrassed to put in there? At least one pretending to be asleep so her friends don't see her in that thing.

I actually used to do some consulting for a mechanical design company back when I was professionally viable. They had a client that made baby stuff in China to sell at Walmart. They had me do some sewing work on a prototype baby bathtub that was a sort of hammock framed thing. Our main objective for the design was that it be stackable. Walmart wanted to optimize shelf space. I don't think these seats are stackable at all. Might not be a Walmart type product. Still, of all the things that can make a car seat more fancy and expensive I think putting a little kink in the molded plastic handle is pretty cheap. I hope it catches on. I'm not going to depend on NC State to drive innovation though.

The Pedant and the Advent Calendar

I relate to this article in The Guardian: Your moons are rubbish, astronomer tells Christmas card artists.

Peter Barthel... belongs to that group of scientists who notice things that most of us, through ignorance or lack of pedantry, are happy to overlook.

Oh, I'm definitely in that group.

"The lack of knowledge concerning the physical origin of the moon phases, or lack of interest in understanding, is found to be widespread," Barthel concludes.

No kidding. One of my in-law cousins (who is a degreed electrical engineer and should know better) came back from a trip to India and told me that the moon comes up in the middle of the day there! Umm, yeah? It does that everywhere! She just wasn't paying attention to the sky for the first 35 years of her life.

In the paper, Barthel answers the question that fast comes to mind: who cares? The errors are innocent, he says, akin to impossible rainbows that have the red arch drawn on the inside instead of the outside. "Now, watching beautiful natural phenomena like rainbows and moon crescents is one thing, but understanding them makes them all the more interesting. Moreover, understanding leads to knowledge that lasts," he writes.

The phases of the moon are easy to grasp. A full moon is directly opposite the sun with respect to the Earth, and so rises at sunset and sets at sunrise. A waning moon, moving from its third quarter to a new moon, has its left side illuminated to create this shape ( in the northern hemisphere. It rises around 3am and is visible very late at night or in the early hours of morning.

A waxing moon, on the way to its first quarter, has its right side lit and looks like this ) in the northern hemisphere. This type of moon is visible from afternoon twilight into the evening.

I don't think any of these proper orientations would detract from the artistry of the card, especially since most of them offend me on some other level anyway. Might as well scale back the pedantic wrath by getting one thing right. It reminds me of watching sci-fi, like Avatar. I don't mind about the future stuff they made up. But the things they got wrong that are current, every day things, it's just distracting. Maybe if these things are depicted properly people will appreciate the importance of them. The moon is a gateway celestial body. I'd like more people to care about exploring other planets and moons.

I noticed yesterday while I was watching the Mars Science Lab launch that there were less than 7000 people watching the Spaceflightnow.com live stream. This is a big deal! NASA is sending a rover the size of a small car to another planet to measure it and send back data. We've only sent things there a handful of times. Lots of missions to Mars don't even make it. I want to know how it's going to turn out, as it happens! But how many people watched Kim Kardashian get married? Out of how many marriages that happen every day? And they do and say the same thing in all of them! Why is that at all interesting!?! It's ALL been done. It's even over already. I would like to see Kim Kardashian's marriage end with an orange and white striped parachute and a skid mark on the steppes of Kazakhstan. The Soyuz landings always seem slightly undignified to me, as does everything associated with reality celebrities. Well, for them, very undignified.

Expedition 29 Landing (Nov 22, 2011) Photo NASA, Bill Ingalls

My favorite part of the Mars Science Lab launch was video of spacecraft separation. I saw they had that for the Aquarius launch and it just tickles me to no end!

The Rate Debate

I didn't have to do any long distance driving this holiday weekend, thank goodness. But my brother brought my niece Kate up from south Florida and my step-sister Beverly was in town from South Carolina. I thought it was the perfect time to attempt my first scripted video, with cast and lines, costumes and locations (all less than a mile from my house.) Kate is in the 10th grade but she already has more training in this kind of thing than I do. She's in the TV Academy in her high school. They have professional cameras and boom mics and all kinds of stuff I would love to have. I just used my trusty old Casio EX-FH20 to shoot this. My budget was $36 for a genuine military BDU coat and a sheriff patch from Amazon.

My step-sister Bev is no amateur. She moved out of New York and is taking a break from professional comedy because she has small children. Looks like she hasn't updated her website in over a year. (I can relate.) My graphic designer friend Stephen Leacock came up from Tallahassee to play the part of the do-right man. Kate and I planned ahead so we only took an hour of their time, not counting making them drive out to my house. I am not very comfortable with asking people to do stuff for me. I think I need to embrace wasting other people's time if I ever do this again because I pretty much only had one usable take for each clip. Camera was out of focus, or just not even recording, when I thought it was good.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Ron Garan's Fragile Oasis Time Lapse Video with Peter Gabriel

Time Lapse From Space - Literally. The Journey Home. from Fragile Oasis on Vimeo.