Recently there was a post on this site that generated a lot of feedback, Conversation with a modern creationist. This was posted by Professor Lee Silver June 4, 2008. It is the record of an exchange between Professor Silver and Josh Pepper who is a very articulate and well read creationist. Maybe this exchange should be a warning sign, a shot across the bow of science.

There were an incredible number of comments on this post including my comment below. I have been thinking about the entire debate since then and have some additional comments.

What are the forces that drive science and technology? How do we get from Wilbur and Orville Wright’s day where they could tinker their way to a major engineering breakthrough with little more than spruce frames, canvas and a hand built engine.... what.... "a hand built engine?" Where did this come from?

We have all heard of Wilbur and Orville, but who has ever heard of Charlie? Without Charlie there would have been no powered flight at Kitty Hawk. Charlie designed and built the water-cooled engine, from scratch, that Wilbur and Orville used that memorable day in 1903 - he made it in six weeks. Did I mention Charlie was a bicycle mechanic?

It might be hard for the young student to see the fun in math. Up till now it has been memorize, memorize, memorize for them. This can give them a break and tease their minds. Numbers that look simple, just two digits "1" and "8." It doesn’t get any easier than this, but wow can these two numbers do some magic. Consider this magic square:

IXOHOXI

8818	1111	8188	1881
8181	1888

How do we get kids excited about math? In this age of high tech video games why would a kid want to be excited about math they have to do in their mind or with pencil and paper?

Maybe I am just too old, I remember the days before television and video games, I did get excited about math puzzles. Perhaps one of you video whiz kids can create a game series that uses the old math puzzles to allow players to advance from level to level. Until then, those of us who do care about math and math education have a responsibility to get kids excited about math - these will be the math innovators of the future.

Humor-

Comics are supposed to be fun, light reading. Something I read on MSNBC’s Comics & Games website has been on my mind for a few months. The column titled "News of the Weird" by Chuck Shepherd (March 30, 2008) had one paragraph that caught my attention.

"A team of researchers from the University of Calgary and the Tokyo Institute of Technology proudly announced in February that they had successfully stored "nothing" inside a puff of gas and then had managed to retrieve that same "nothing." That "nothing," is called a "squeezed vacuum," and the physicists tell us that a light wave can be manipulated so that its phases are of uncertain amplitude, then the light itself removed so that only the "uncertainty" property of the wave remains. ScienceNOW Daily News, 2-29-08"

Everything interacts with its environment - from the smallest sub-atomic particle to the largest galaxy. We are no different.

Interaction insinuates dynamic inter-relationship. Knowledge can be defined as "post-active" comprehension. The dynamic inter-relationship involved in the comprehension necessary to achieve knowledge is the tension between opposites, or what may be called reciprocal reciprocation (RR).

A RR consists of two diametrically opposing concepts which cannot exist without each other. They are mutually exclusive in concept and definition, yet mutually inclusive in the operation of comprehension.

A few weeks ago I wrote a blog about a Chicago charter school.

I was naive enough to believe that if a group of ninth graders could not read it was unique to this Chicago school. Today I read a report by Christopher B. Swanson, Ph.D. titled "Cities in Crisis: A Special Analytical Report on High School Graduation." Dr. Swanson’s report clearly shows that we are in an academic crisis in the U.S.

This was my first post. A total of three people read it, it didn’t take long to be relegated to the garbage pile of scientific dribble. I am not going to give up on this post, if it can’t make it competitively then it will be added to "My Latest Thoughts." Here it is safe from the Webmaster’s delete button.

These numbers have been on my mind for 45 years, since I was a senior in High School. I can’t just let them go, they will probably be the last thing on my mind as a draw my final breath -

58132764

72645831

76125483

81274365

I first saw these numbers in the book "Fun with Mathematics" by Jerome S. Meyer, published in 1961. I have had them taped to my computer terminal at work for years.

If you read the medical news lately you may have seen a headline title Skeleton May Show Ancient Brain Surgery. This article was about an 1800 year old skeleton found in Veria, Greece. The skeleton was of a woman of about 25 years of age that suffered severe head trauma and underwent cranial surgery, unfortunately evidence shows that she did not survive.

There is an interesting history of skull surgery, known as trepanation, which comes from the Greek word trypanon, meaning auger or borer. Cranial trepanation has caught the interest of surgeons and archeologist since the 1860's, when it was first realized that ancient humans had scraped or cut holes in the skulls of living persons in France and Peru.

Trepanation is serious enough surgical procedure in this day and age, could this procedure have taken place as a routine operation as long ago as 2000 BC? We do have a historical record of thousands of skulls with evidence of this surgery. Sometimes historical records suggest a reality that we find hard to accept.

I feel like I am going to be preaching-to-the-choir with this blog. The fact that you are reading it puts you in the "choir." I would encourage all of you to read the first two columns of the article "A New Bottom Line For School Science" by Jeffrey Mervis in Science Vol. 319, p. 1030-33, Feb. 22, 08.

The quote from this article that has me upset is "I don’t use a textbook or assign written homework because so many of them (the students) wouldn’t be able to read it." If this were a quote from a third grade teacher in a rural school for the children of migrant workers, I would still be upset but I could understand the teacher’s dilemma.