M-Squared on the Road

Blogging today from Omaha, Nebraska...home of Creighton University, Warren Buffet, Union Pacific Railroad, the College World Series, and about half a million of the world's best people.

I'm up here attending the annual Mid-American Athletic Trainers' Association (MAATA) annual meeting and symposium. Certified athletic trainers (ATC's) are required to complete 20 hours of continuing education each year, and a total of 80 every three years. So here I am...trying to learn something.

In honor of that, any chance to play a Counting Crows tune is a good thing:

Discovery prepares to come home

The photo above was taken by the astronauts aboard the space shuttle Discovery as the orbiter separated from the international space station. The two spacecraft closed their hatches and undocked yesterday afternoon.

The crew of Discovery spent today inspecting the orbiter for damage that could cause problems on re-entry. The are scheduled to land at the Kennedy Space Center on Saturday afternoon.

Every morning, Mission Control wakes the astronauts up with music. And what tune did they wake up to this morning? Enter Sandman, by Metallica. Rock on!

Daily Recap: Thursday, 3/26

Anatomy and Physiology:
We're still working on the rats. You should probably be at least starting the "external anatomy" section, and should also be ready to get your rat at any time. You'll want to make sure that you stay caught up on the grading as we go through this.

Several of you have decided to complete all of the written work before you begin the dissection. While I leave it up to you to decide how you want to tackle this project, I would highly recommend that you dissect as you go. The purpose of the written work is to prepare you for the dissection, and then to help you debrief and review afterwords. I don't think you'll get as much out of the project if you do all of the written work first.

Biology:
Lab day! We started working on the classification lab, giving you a chance to practice naming and putting things into groups. In the first part you organized and classified a group of 10 different shapes. In the second part, you are to classify your classmates in the same way that you did the shapes.

I'll be gone tomorrow...see you on Monday.

Evolution in Texas

In January, the Texas State Board of Education took a preliminary vote on a new set of science standards that will govern how science is taught for the next 10 years in the Lone Star State. I wrote about it here. As with most science-standards debates, most of the discussion centered around evolution. For the past 20 years, the Texas standards have included this language:

The student is expected to analyze, review, and critique scientific explanations, including hypotheses and theories, as to their strengths and weaknesses using scientific evidence and information.

The new standards will take out this "strengths and weaknesses" language and replace it with:

The student is expected to analyze and evaluate scientific explanations using empirical evidence, logical reasoning, and experimental and observational testing.

The revised standards eliminate the "back door" approach to creationism that is the intent of "strengths and weaknesses" language, and have been endorsed by dozens of scientific and professional organizations. On January 23, the Texas board of education gave preliminary approval to the revised standards after an amendment to re-insert the "strengths and weaknesses" language failed on a split 7-7 vote.

Final action on these standards was scheduled for today and tomorrow, following a public hearing date on Wednesday. Earlier today, evolution opponents again failed to pass an amendment restoring the "strengths and weaknesses" language on a split 7-7 vote.

A last-ditch effort by social conservatives to require that Texas teachers cover the "weaknesses" in the theory of evolution in science classes was rejected by the State Board of Education Thursday in a split vote.

Board members deadlocked 7-7 on a motion to restore a long-time curriculum rule that "strengths and weaknesses" of all scientific theories – notably Charles Darwin's theory of evolution – be taught in science classes and covered in textbooks for those subjects.
[...]
The tie vote upheld a tentative decision by the board in January to delete the strengths-and-weaknesses rule in the new curriculum standards for science classes that will be in force for the next decade.

Those standards spell out not only how evolution is to be covered, but also what is supposed to be taught in all science classes in elementary and secondary schools, as well as providing the material for state tests and textbooks.

A final vote is scheduled for tomorrow, but the results are expected to be the same. Proponents of science education claim this as a major victory in their struggle to keep creationism out of science classes, since the Texas standards typically have a large influence on what textbook publishers include in their books.

Traumatizing my son

I picked my 3-year-old son up from daycare yesterday afternoon and had one of my "I'm the best Daddy in the world" ideas. Since the bloodmobile was at the high school, I figured I'd take him up there and let him watch people donating blood. He gets a kick out of medical stuff, and enjoys playing with his little doctor's kit. Plus, he's been learning about the heart in his preschool class. I thought this would be a great opportunity for him...

...so we get to the school, and everything's fine for awhile. There's a student in one of the chairs getting prepped for his donation. We talk about how the "nurse" will poke him with a needle, and then they'll fill a bag up with his blood so that they can take it to the hospital and give to somebody who's sick. He was fine with all of this...

...so then we went around to the other side of the donation area to where one of my co-workers was in the middle of a donation. As soon as he saw that there was actually blood coming out of her arm and filling up the little bag hanging below her, he went completely catatonic. The technician who was monitoring the donation reassured my son that she wasn't hurting the donor. The donor did her best to show how healthy and happy she was, and that it didn't really even hurt. And I kept reminding him that the blood would be used to help somebody who's sick at the hospital. None of this worked...he just stared blankly at the whole process...lady...nurse...blood...needle...bag...blood...needle...blood...arm...BLOOD...NEEDLE...barely able to respond with simple nods when I asked him a question...

...so I think I've traumatized him for life. He'll probably never give blood, and may even grow up to start some sort of "anti-blood donation" activist group. A career in health care is probably WAY out of the question at this point. Even though he eventually rallied* and snapped out of his semi-comatose state, I'm afraid the damage may be irreversible.

*His rally was due, in large part, to the ALYX machine** that was on site. Surely something that fancy looking had a jet engine attached to it somewhere...

**Actually, it was probably the cookies that we cobbed from the "hydration station" that saved the day more than anything else. Nothing wards off permanent psychological damage like NutterButters and Oreos.