the good old days

Next year, I’m paying for grad school by participating in a program which puts graduate students in science or engineering (like me) in middle school classrooms every week, to do demonstrations which help translate often vague scientific concepts into a form that kids can understand. So I’ve been scouting around for ideas of how to present science in ways that are both fun and educational.

Here’s an example… Let’s look at the concept that “The Universe is Regular and Predictable”. This is very important to science, because it means when we discover something (such as the law of gravity), we know it will always work the same way. Stuff always falls down due to gravity; it doesn’t sometimes float, it doesn’t sometimes fly up to the ceiling, it always goes down at 9.5 meters per second squared. Science WORKS because things are predictable, as long as we can figure out HOW they are predictable.

Now, please watch this little video below, and tell me if it helps you understand that idea.

It’s all so much clearer, isn’t it?

The sad thing is, the Science Cheerleader wants to make science more relevant to public discussion and policy-making choices. That’s a goal I completely support, and something that is desperately needed — but this series of videos, even though they are posted at the Science Cheerleader blog with paragraphs describing the science concept, make science look dumb and desperate in addition to obscure and confusing. It should be able to succeed on its own merits — there are plenty of ways to make science sexy without resorting to cheerleaders. The many, many women in science and engineering are not going to like this, at all. Many (hopefully most) men in science aren’t going to like it. It doesn’t even teach anything about science. So WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY?

Your Chance To Live: Technological Failures. Made some time in the 70’s by the Defense Civil Preparedness Agency, it’s a strange mixture of encouraging people to react calmly and rationally to disasters, and fearmongering about the technology that is everywhere in the world and just waiting to ruin your day.

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

The narrator is a graduate of the Shatner School of Timing and Inflection.

We, all of us, are caught up in a real world…. A place somewhere between the… space technology, and the diabolical machines of the silent movies. There are no, uh, space shuttles in that world…. no Tin Lizzies, either. But there is the… technology… that we so very much… take for granted.

The over-arching message of the film appears to be that technology is out to get you…. or at best, it’s baffling, uncontrollable, and incomprehensible. The narrator yearns for the days of the pioneers.

Life was much simpler then!

Yes, the days when you had to haul all your water in buckets from a spring miles away, that was so much simpler. Dying was a hell of a lot easier, too — no pesky medical intervention, just a quick shuffling off the mortal coil.

During the [November 9 1965] blackout, people stayed calm, and helped each other overcome… an incredible technological disaster.

The movie is a bizarre, rambling exploration of the ways things can go wrong (including non-technological disasters, such as fire) — randomly combined with upbeat reassurances that when modern civilization inevitably undergoes catastrophic collapse thanks to omnipresent TECHNOLOGY, we’ll be ok just as long as we stay calm. I was really disappointed — the worst danger from technological disaster is apparently a neurotic fear of the possibility of technological disasters.

Mmmmm!

Wait, WHAT?

Cream of Celery soup should NOT BE MADE INTO A MILKSHAKE, whether it’s 1956 or 2009. I’m starting to think the Campbell’s soup company was a little bit crazy. SURPRISE indeed.

via Found in Mom’s Basement, and JBCurio

According to the site the Della can change a woman’s life. “Once you get beyond how cute they are, you’ll find that netbooks can do a lot more than check your e-mail.” Yes you can “find recipes online” and you can use them “to track calories, carbs and protein with ease, watch online fitness videos, map your running routes and more.” — Fudzilla

Wow. I totally can’t do that with my high-powered built-from-scratch non-Dell(a) computer. I better go alert my friend who’s head of tech support, because I bet her laptop totally doesn’t constantly stream online fitness videos and map her running routes for her. And wow they have a featured artist! Just what a girl needs.

Let me know when it babysits.

Grumpy taxpayer Charles thinks we’d be better off without Congress since they won’t build him a post office closer to his house than ONE MILE AWAY, those jerks. (Probably a communist plot to prevent us from sending mail.) So the whole country has to suffer through a lack of legislature because he’s made one careless wish. (The world-without-what-you-hate theme was better in A Case of Spring Fever, but it works here, too.) So enjoy The Powers of Congress from 1947.

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

Apparently, Congress mainly keeps our world from looking like a weird German expressionist film. (You can stop watching after 6:30, it gets real dull real quick.)

“We will call it Mexican flu. We won’t call it swine flu,” said Mr Litzman, who belongs to the ultra-religious United Torah Judaism party. — BBC

Look, if you don’t like the term “swine flu”, just call it H1N1, which is more accurate than “swine flu” anyway. Making up an alternative casual term is fairly silly (and, in this case, not terribly kind to Mexico who just happened to get stuck with the initial outbreak)… but it is also a telling statement of just how well-prepared you are to handle a potential pandemic.

(I also don’t really understand why you’d want to avoid naming diseases after a unclean animals anyway — is “Mexican Flu” somehow healthier?)

Those who feel that their cooking skills are sub-par might want to watch young bride Margie in the instructional film Cooking Terms and What They Mean from 1949. She makes anyone look better.

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

Margie has clearly never been in a kitchen before (come on, she decides to make chocolate cake for dinner?) and even needs to learn what the term STIR means. “No, Margie, your cake didn’t turn out so well — because you didn’t understand a term in your cookbook!” Wow. Maybe Margie should suggest to Tim that they eat out. Frequently.

I assume this comprehensive film was shown to students on the first day of Home Ec class, reassuring them that cooking was really incredibly hard and they needed to take this class… otherwise, they ran the risk of being incompetent wives like Margie. (It’s interesting to note that this specifically Home Ec film made no pretense of the lessons being useful for a career outside the home, unlike others I’ve watched.)

Luckily, Margie discovers her cookbook has a glossary, and learns how to make a delicious cake instead of chocolate bricks. (How this poor woman dealt with an icing that called for boiling syrup to the soft-ball stage, I don’t know — the film conveniently glosses over that difficult culinary challenge.)

“OK, Joe, now just sit here and relax while I spray this shit in your face. If we made the respirator right, you’ll be just fine!”
“Wait–what? Did you just say IF, Bill?”
“Haha, no, of course not! Just breathe deeply…”

Via Modern Mechanix, and appropriately tagged “just weird”

I know it’s better just forgotten, but perhaps you remember the hideous 2012 Olympics logo. We all thought it was clearly from the 1980’s — I mean, just look at it!

Turns out that we were wrong. It may be from the future after all. Look at this Dalek font:

Of course, it is also possible that graphic designer was unconsciously working from fond memories of watching the Daleks take over London and mind-control the entire population, when he was young back in 1964. That’s an even worse image for the Olympic Games than something “inspired by graffiti” and “aimed at the internet generation.”

Although, as a Dr. Who fangirl, I would be endlessly amused to see the parade of athletes like this…

Silly science experiments from years past…

The plan for Kellogg’s experiment was outlined in a Psychological Review (1931b) article in which he wrote:

Suppose an anthropoid were taken into a typical human family at the day of birth and reared as a child. Suppose he were fed upon a bottle, clothed, washed, bathed, fondled, and given a characteristically human environment; that he were spoken to like the human infant from the moment of parturition; that he had an adopted human mother and an adopted human father…. The experimental situation par excellence should indeed be attained if this technique were refined one step farther by adopting such a baby ape into a human family with one child of approximately the ape’s age.

Now, this is an interesting experiment to read about, both because of its motivations and theories, and because of its results. But there’s footage available from archive.org, too!

Orange Park, Florida, 1931-1932

This is one of a series of five films which present comparisons of a normal human infant and his chimpanzee companion, who were reared together in a strictly human environment for a period of 9 months. Both were given comparable treatment, being fed, dressed, punished, and spoken to like children of the same family. Both slept in similar beds and had similar playthings.

THroughout the 9 months various test and comparisons were made, as well as general observations. In this film we see comparisons of the two subjects during the first 4-1/2 months of the investigation.

I was almost falling out of my chair during the “cap on head” test.

I’m curious about one thing. From the FSU description:

Our final concern is why the project ended when it did. Time magazine’s review (”Babe and Ape,” 1933) said the following:

At the end of nine months the Kelloggs demonstrated that environment, particularly psychological environment, is necessary for the development of an individual’s inherent abilities. Gua, treated as a human child, behaved like a human child except when the structure of her body and brain prevented her. This being shown, the experiment was discontinued. (p. 44)

However, Time’s reason, while plausible, is not explicit in the book. Nor is a reason given in two articles that Kellogg would write about the subject toward the end of his career (1968a, 1968b). We are told only that the study was terminated on March 28, 1932, when Gua was returned to the Orange Park primate colony through a gradual rehabilitating process.

According to the book Elephants On Acid, however, the Kelloggs decided to end the experiment when Donald starting imitating Gua’s vocalizations (barks and grunts) instead of using words to express himself. There’s no attribution, so it could be speculation or it could be from interviews from people involved. I don’t know.