School district climbs in bed with oil industry

What a surprise to find, on my way back from lunch, that HISD's new Energy Institute High School is practically just around the corner from my new office.

The Energy Institute is a partnership between the IPAA (Independent Petroleum Association of America) and HISD and is designed to train students for careers in the energy industry.

Whatever.

This latest magnet school in Houston is just another example of the abdication of government responsibility in providing an education to our nation. We can spend billions of dollars a year killing innocent men, women and children in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen - but we can't provide adequate funding for education. We can spend millions of dollars to build shiny new playpens for billionaire owners of professional sports franchises - but we can't provide adequate funding for education. We can subsidize entire industries to "protect" them from foreign competition - but we can't provide adequate funding for education.

Local school districts are left to beg for money from local industry to make up for shortages in funding. Those industries - in this case the energy industry - then helps plan a curriculum that (and let's not be naive here, folks) puts themselves in the best light.

Don't believe me? Just listen to Houston's NPR station, KUHF and listen to the number of commercials mentions of donors that are in the energy industry. Then listen carefully to whether or not the local reporters ever cover a story that is critical of the oil or gas industry. Actually, listen carefully and you'll find that very few of the local stories the station broadcasts during its hourly news updates are anything more than reworded press releases from government agencies or local industry.

(And, what do you know, here's a reworked press release turned into a "news" story from KUHF about the opening of the school.)

So just how do you think a high school funded by the energy industry will cover major oil spills such as the Deepwater Horizon explosion? What about the dreadful environmental record of the nuclear industry? How about the ways in which the US government has carried out foreign policy directives aimed at making life easier for the oil companies? And how exactly would the practice of fracking be covered in science class?

The school district even provided a listing of what oil companies make up the Advisory Board for the new school on its blog:

To kick off the grand opening, Energy Institute High School hosted its first Advisory Board meeting at the Hattie Mae White Educational Support Center. The board, which consists of executives from Halliburton, Shell, Apache, and other top energy companies, is charged with providing HISD and Energy Institute staff insight into the field and how to prepare for energy careers. They will collaborate with the district to develop and continually update the institute’s curriculum.

Energy Institute students will explore the energy field through guest speakers, mentoring, field trips, summer camps, paid externships, and scholarships. All classrooms will utilize state-of-the-art technology, and teachers will receive training and real-world insight from industry leaders. The institute will begin with ninth-graders and add a grade level each year, eventually serving grades 9-12. 

So the oil companies will "collaborate" on the curriculum with the district. Is that we call it these days. These are companies that have an agenda. They have a mission - to maximize profits. That's not what public schools are about.

But what does Superintendent Terry Grier care? He's already gotten plenty of money from the IPAA to fund indoctrination efforts at two other high schools. As the old adage goes, we aren't discussing what you are, we're just negotiating a price.

You can't make a Mentos geyser without the Mentos

It was Book Fair night at my daughters' school last night and the guest of honor was a scientist at a local science attraction for kids. The girls wanted me to go so I dashed home early to do the final prep work on supper (steak and beef enchiladas with beans and rice) so I could meet them at the school in time for the show.

I got there and my girls led me out to the courtyard where the scientist and her husband were getting set up. Of course, having just gotten there without having tried to set up earlier in the day they couldn't get their projector to work - whether is was because the outlets were turned off, the extension cord was bad or the projector just didn't work, we don't know. It was a sign of thing to come.

Once the search for a working outlet ended (unsuccessfully), the parents and kids gathered in the little amphitheater as the scientist began her spiel. Behind her on a table were five soda bottles. There was but one thing this could mean -- the Mentos explosion!

First she told us about polymers because that's apparently what she worked on in a previous life. Then we talked about all the horrific ingredients in soda. As much as I like Dr Pepper, I'm not so certain I can ever drink another one again. At least I know what's in my homemade beer and there aren't any chemicals that can eat right through a metal can.

Next she talked briefly about the Mentos. She told us that there's a conference every year in which scientists gather together to discuss just why in the hell Mentos and Diet Coke create the crazy cascades of bubbles they do. The conclusion is that nobody has the slightest idea why.

Now it was time for the main event. My oldest daughter manned the Diet Coke bottle with her best friend (at least for this week) next to her at the Diet Pepsi bottle. The anticipation was building. The tension was so thick you could cut it with a knife.

"Um, does anyone have any Mentos? We forgot to bring them," the scientist said.

Excuse me? You're coming to the school to do one freaking experiment and you forgot the main ingredient? Is there not a checklist at the science place that lists Mentos as one of the things you need to pack in your bag? My wife eventually found some Mentos in the teachers' lounge - but I missed the explosion because I had to get back home to put everything in the oven so that dinner would be ready by the time everyone got home.

Please take this as a cautionary tale not to take for granted your shiny gadgets are going to work properly at trial or that the equipment in the courtroom is going to cooperate. If you can make the trip ahead of time, check out the courtroom before you have to show up for trial. And always, always, always bring along a backup just in case the electronic gremlins decide to take the courtroom hostage on trial day.

Oh, and here's a Mentos meltdown for your enjoyment...

Now for something completely different...

What you are about to see (H/T NPR) is three years of the sun's life compressed into three minutes. NASA took two pictures a day of the sun from a satellite for three years and put those shots together in this video. It is wildly hypnotic and it gives you an idea of the violence just beneath the surface of the sun.

It also puts into perspective just how inconsequential we really are. Long before we started walking on our hind feet and making tools the cosmos did its thing and long after we kill ourselves off the cosmos will still be doing its thing.



Then we have this article from the BBC in which scientists estimate that over the next 200 years there will be one catastrophic collision with space debris every five to nine years. The debris we're talking about is all man-made: dead satellites, rocket booster stages and exploded fragments of both.

Apparently there are approximately 20,000 pieces of man-made space debris orbiting the earth that are big enough to be monitored - and somewhere around 500,000 pieces between 1cm and 10cm in length. All of these objects are travelling at speeds of several kilometers an hour.

And just why is there so much junk floating around in space? It's because through the lens of capitalism, since no one "owns" space, it is used both as a "highway" and as a giant trash can. It's the same attitude that has led to the pollution of lakes, oceans and the air we breathe. For, unless there is someone to charge rent for the use of space, there will be no incentive for anyone to clean up after themselves. Instead of viewing the commons as belonging to everyone and acting accordingly, those seeking profit look at the commons as belonging to no one with no consequences for trashing the place.

But, who cares, because by the time the consequences are felt, none of the folks responsible for the mess will still be around.

Blurring the line between science and propaganda

This past weekend my wife and I took our daughters to the Houston Museum of Natural Science. It had been a while since I was last there and it looked like a fun way to spend the afternoon. The kids were excited because Daddy was coming this time.

One of the first exhibits we looked at was the Weiss Energy Hall. All you need to know about the exhibit can be summed up with a list of corporate donors. Every energy company you've ever heard of, and some you haven't, threw the museum a few bones. It was a paean to the oil industry.

There were samples of drill bits and casing. They had little tanks with marbles and cranks so the kids could see the relative "weight" of various kinds of oil. They had games were the kids could take turns trying to be wildcatters. There was an exhibit about offshore drilling. They even had an example of slant drilling - a unique Texas way of stealing your neighbor's oil without him even knowing it.

There was a ride that simulated a trip down to the bottom of a well - and we even got to hear about the wonders of hydraulic fracturing.

But, interestingly enough (though not unexpected) there was not a single word about the environmental hazards of oil exploration or transport. Nothing about the Deepwater Horizon. Nothing about the dangers of fracking. Nothing but sterile, hygenic corporate propaganda about how wonderful the oil industry is.

I guess that's to be expected, seeing that the last thing the museum wants to do is piss off its corporate donors by putting in an exhibit that looks at the science of the oil industry. Heaven forbid we allow our children to see both the good and the bad of oil exploration and transportation. We certainly don't want out little tykes growing up and questioning the very foundations of the Texas economy. Better to turn them into quiet little sheep who won't go looking under rocks to find out the truth.

Of course the whole donor problem is nothing new to those of us who listen to NPR or watch PBS. Whenever the announcer tells us who gave the money so that the show could be broadcast you know you won't hear a critical word about that company during the broadcast.

But there is at least a little bit of hope. The other day on the local news segment on NPR there was a story about a University of Texas researcher, Cliff Frohlich, who came to the conclusion that the process of storing the used fracking fluid in deep underground injector wells was causing a multitude of minor earthquakes in North Texas. The Houston Chronicle even picked up on the story.

There was even an article that dared to look at the contamination of ground water by hydraulic fracking fluid. Here is a link to the study that looks at five ways in which fracking fluid can contaminate surrounding drinking water.

If the museum actually wanted to educate the public about the science involved in the oil industry these are some of the topics that should have been discussed in the exhibit. But, instead of putting together a science exhibit, the museum, instead, put together an industry-sponsored commercial. Now why should any of that be tax deductible?

Causation or correlation?

So here I am heading home from the office the other day listening to All Things Considered on the radio and there's this story about Kenya trying to fight the scourge of HIV by encouraging men to get circumcised. The reporter quoted a scientific study that the rate of HIV infection in uncircumcised men was substantially higher that the rate for men who were circumcised.

Well, that got me to thinking. This link between circumcision and HIV infection rates - is it an example of causation or correlation?

In other words, does getting circumcised reduce one's risk of getting infected by HIV, or is there something else at work? Is it because uncircumcised men have riskier sex practices? Is it because circumcised men are practicing safer sex?

The literature appears to be all over the place. Of course since the World Health Organization (WHO) jumped on board the circumcision train money has poured into Africa to fund circumcision programs. But there is still precious little hard evidence that circumcision has anything to do with HIV prevention.

Adding to my skepticism that there is no causal relation between the two are activists in Europe and the United States attempting to ban the procedure on newborns. If circumcision really prevented HIV infections, why would anyone be campaigning against it?

Now I'm no doctor and I am not going to sit here and pretend that I have some vast store of knowledge about the transmission of infectious disease or the human reproductive system. But I do think this issue is a perfect example of the causation v. correlation puzzle we run into in the courtroom.

The police coordination exercises the police use on the roadside to determine whether they're going to arrest a motorist for driving while intoxicated have everything to do with correlation, not causation. The studies used to provide a modicum of "scientific heft" to the roadside exercises all speak of correlations between levels of intoxication and performance on the exercises. Not one of them show evidence of causation.

The distinction is important. Let's say you're watching your favorite team play in a crucial game (sport and team not important). All season long whenever you've worn a certain shirt or cap or drank a certain beer or ate a certain sandwich, your team came through. Your actions did not cause your team to prevail. There was no causal link between your shirt (or your cap or beer or sandwich) and your team's performance. There was just a correlation - when you wore your shirt, your team just happened to win.

On the other hand, if it's dark out when you're driving home you turn on your headlights - as does everyone else out on the road. The lack of light caused you to turn on your headlights. There is a causal connection between nighttime driving and headlight use.

We can draw correlations between all sorts of statistics but just because you can draw a correlation between two observations doesn't mean that one caused the other. Your lucky socks won't help you win that poker game tonight, but your skill in reading the other players and their cards will.

Just because a motorist exhibits certain clues or signs or behaviors when walking up and down a straight line, doesn't mean that alcohol caused his performance. There are plenty of other factors that are not taken into account by the officer asking you to perform the exercise. And while the so-called validation studies may have drawn correlations to intoxication and performance on the roadside exercises, the studies did not make any causal connections.

The prosecutor will try to make it look like there is a causal connection between intoxication and performance, it's your job to point out to the jury the difference between causation and correlation.

A new perspective on our solar system

This video is just way too cool. Check out how different planets would appear in the night sky if they were as close to the earth as the moon.



H/T Eric Berger, Houston Chronicle SciGuy, and Brad Goodspeed

Book review: A Universe From Nothing

Yep. We've all heard it before. "Nothing from nothing is nothing."

But, maybe not exactly.

In his latest book, A Universe From Nothing, Lawrence M. Krauss takes a look at the history of the search for the origins of the universe. We go from the grand scale of the universe to our galaxy all the way down to the elemental particles of quantum mechanics to figure out how the universe began and how it will end.

Mr. Krauss was instrumental in researching the shape of the universe. Based on his observations and calculations, the universe is, essentially, flat. While he tells us this is good news because it means the universe won't collapse in on itself someday, he also gives us the bad news. It seems that sometime in the far off future there will be no more stars in the sky because the universe will have expanded to such a point that the nearest galaxies will be too far from the Milky Way for us to see them in the nighttime sky.

He points to an odd symmetry in the notion. For centuries we couldn't look out beyond our solar system. There were points of light in the sky but no one knew how far away they were. No one knew anything about them. Then we developed the tools to explore the heavens. But, at some point trillions of years from now, there will be nothing in the sky for people to see. It will be as if they never existed.

Mr. Krauss also looks at the origins of our universe. He demonstrates how virtual particles can appear and then, as if they were never here, disappear. He shows how the sudden appearance and disappearance of these particles doesn't violate the law of the conservation of matter or energy - because they have no mass and because the energy release by one virtual particle is cancelled out by the anti-energy released by a virtual anti-particle.

He posits that at the beginning of the universe particles were packed densely until the universe expanded rapidly in those first fractions of a second. The theory is based upon the difference between the calculated and observed amounts of so-called dark energy in the universe.

More than just a scientific discourse, the book is a philosophical look at what nothing means. The objects we handle on a daily basis all feel solid to us - but there is more "nothingness" than matter. Most of an atom is empty space. But inside this empty space virtual particles come and go with impunity.

People ask us what we're doing all the time. Quite often the answer we give is "nothing." But even in our doing "nothing," there is plenty going on. So it is with the world on a subatomic level.

Most interesting is his retort to the creationists. Those who don't believe that the universe could have formed from nothing point to the hand of God as the prime mover of the universe's creation. To them, Mr. Krauss asks where did God come from?

See also:

Transcript of Lawrence Krauss interview from "Talk of the Nation: Science Friday," NPR (Jan. 13, 2012)

It's about time

Across the pond English scientists are trying to decide whether the world needs to change to a new time standard to compensate for the wobble in Earth's rotation. As it stands, every few years the International Earth Rotation Service adds a "leap second" so that the time kept by atomic clocks and the time measured by Earth's rotation stay within a second of each other.

England's Royal Society is proposing a change to Coordinated Universal Time which would do away with the leap second but not everyone is convinced that this is the best idea. As it stands, this leap second can play havoc with computers, smart phones and GPS devices.

If the leap second is abolished, over the course of a few decades the difference between atomic time and earth's rotational time will be about a minute; and, over the course of a few centuries the two times will diverge by an hour. Of course none of us will be around when that happens so I don't know that I'm too concerned about the whole debate.

But, this exercise does point out that what we call time is not a universal constant - it's a man-made construct. And, what's more, the earth's slight wobble is yet another reminder that we aren't in control of our environment - no matter how much we try to convince ourselves that we are.

Now, while we are debating how to measure time, how about we get rid of standard time and stay on daylight savings time year round? We can change the name of DST to standard time and go merrily about our way.

I am not looking forward to it being pitch dark at 5pm. That's depressing. I'd rather it be light later in the evening. It doesn't matter to me if it's still dark at 7am. I get up before dawn and run so I'm used to being up when it's still dark. If I wanted it to be dark at supper time, I'd move way up north. But, since I like it warm and sunny, I'm more than happy to live on the Gulf Coast.

There's nothing magical about standard time or daylight savings time. DST was introduced during World War II in an attempt to reduce the amount of electricity being used to light houses. By reducing the electric load in the evening, more power and resource could be devoted to the war effort. Just a few years ago DST was extended by a couple of weeks and the sun still rose in the east and set in the west.

So, how about it? Will you join my quest? Abolish standard time and enjoy an extra hour of light in the evening.

What goes up, must come down

You just can't mess with those laws of physics.

Sometime tonight or in the early morning hours of tomorrow a satellite is going to fall to earth. Scientists believe it will fall somewhere between 57 degrees N and 57 degrees S of the equator -- encompassing most of the populated areas of earth. The debris path is likely to be about 500 miles long.



According to Aerospace Corp., the satellite will  crash to earth somewhere along either the blue or yellow lines. So, here's hoping it doesn't hit you.

This graph is a depiction of the amount of junk orbiting the earth. The exponential growth in space junk over the past 10 years is astounding. Not only have we turned the earth into a giant landfill - we are rapidly turning the space around earth into a giant junkyard.

Now go and enjoy a little Blood Sweat &Tears:

Making learning fun

Yesterday I found myself taking my oldest to a birthday party for one of her classmates. I know, I know, a birthday party for a seven year-old - how exciting. How on earth did you get stuck with that gig.

Not yesterday. It was a mad scientist party and the guest attraction was Jon Bartell of Science Quest in Houston. Through some really crazy experiments and a host of critters, Mr. Bartell showed a roomful of kids just how much fun science can be. From cannons made with breath freshener to crushing cans to sending the kids up and back on a hovercraft, Mr. Bartell made science come alive for both the kids and the parents.

We have dumbed down and taken the fun out of so much at school -- all in the name of getting kids ready for standardized tests. What ever happened to teaching children to think and make their own discoveries? What ever happened to hands-on experiments? What ever happened to having kids who wanted to be at school?

Thank you, Mr. Bartell, for reminding us that learning can be fun.

A little break from the day-to-day

While most of us were sleeping, an asteroid passed within 154,000 miles of Earth -- inside the moon's orbit. Another is expected to pass within 49,000 miles this afternoon.

The table below shows the potential damage to earth from an asteroid impact. As you move from left to right, the size of the rock gets bigger as does the potential destruction. The orange area indicates extinction.

A larger image of the table above can be found here. Here's a link to images from the Catalina Sky Survey at the University of Arizona-Tucson.

The interesting thing about this event is that the asteroids weren't discovered until last Sunday.