Open Science Thread

Over half a billion¹ years ago, the super continent Rodinia began to come apart at the seams. Gigantic underground cracks formed in the tectonic plate on which the ancient continent rode like a granite raft floating in a sea of denser molten rock. Three cracks radiated away, star-like, each individual fault probing the path of least resistance through the rocky subterranean matrix. Finally, two faults prevailed, defining the jagged rift where Rodinia split in two. And the other crack? With the tension relieved, it stopped spreading, and lay buried and dormant. Paleo-geologists call these ancient scars Aulacogens.

But eons later, if pressure builds anew, deep underground in an otherwise fairly homogeneous stretch of strata, any such flaw that happens to be nearby serves as an ideal place for patches of strained earth to slip past each other. At times with a resounding jolt carried far and wide in waves born on a seismic superconductor. This failed fault theory, one of many possibilities, sounds delightfully geeky: unless you happened to be near the Wabash Valley Fault System running throughout the upper Midwest early yesterday morning. Then you called it a friggin earthquake!

• Thanks to BushCo, neocon clowns have taken over the  Environmental Industrial Protection Agency, so it's no surprise the EPA is employing neocon tactics like ignoring lawful subpoenas, followed by the obligatory nonsense that complying would 'confuse the public.'
• For what it's worth, I think Tristero is absolutely right. We've tried ignoring right-wing stupidity and hoping things like creationism go extinct. It doesn't work. Better to take the lies head on. Here's one way you can add your voice of reason, and win fabulous prizes!
• The man who saw a subtle anomaly in a few lines of data produced by a primitive computer generated climate model has passed away, but his profound insight lives forever: Etched into the very fabric of domains both natural and abstract, simple rules can give rise to infinitely complex behavior. Edward Lorenz's observation would be midwife to a new branch of mathematics/physics called Chaos Theory and the related, fascinating topology hidden in the geometry of Fractals.

Open Thread for Night Owls & Early Birds

NPR’s "All Things Considered" takes a 6 minute, 40-second look at Single-Sex Ed ...in South Carolina, where there are 97 public schools that have all-male and all-female classrooms. Some 49 public schools around the nation are completely single sex, and more than 350 have at least some single-sex classes. These include schools as far-flung as Albany, Baltimore, Cleveland, Dallas, Detroit, Gary, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville, Philadelphia, and Seattle.

Michele Norris:The theory is that boys and girls learn differently. For example, boys need to stand up or move around to pay attention, while girls can sit quietly and remain focused. Boys need teachers to talk louder because they don’t hear as well. And boys’ classrooms should be cooler to help them pay attention. Leonard Sax is head of the National Association for Single-Sex Public Education. He travels around the country leading workshops for parents and teachers.

Sax: Many boys learn better when they are standing. As one teacher in an elementary school told me, "When that boy sits down, his brain shuts off."

Norris: Sax calls it an "emerging science."

Sax: Differences between adult men and women and how they learn or in how the brain works [are] very small. Differences between 12-year-girls and 12-year-old boys are huge. And the single-sex format allows you to accommodate those differences.

Single-sex classes and schools were legitimized by the federal Department of Education in October 2006 in regulations passed under the widely criticized No Child Left Behind legislation. The rules offer rationales under which single-sex classes or schools can be initiated, require that "geographically accessible" coed classes are available at the same school or a different school as the single-sex classes (without defining the term "geographically accessible"), and mandates two-year reviews of single-sex classes and schools to see if they are remedying whatever problem was identified when they were established.

In early March, Elizabeth Weil wrote a piece on single-sex public education, Teaching Boys and Girls Separately, in The New York Times Magazine:

Among advocates of single-sex public education, there are two camps: those who favor separating boys from girls because they are essentially different and those who favor separating boys from girls because they have different social experiences and social needs. Leonard Sax represents the essential-difference view, arguing that boys and girls should be educated separately for reasons of biology: for example, Sax asserts that boys don’t hear as well as girls, which means that an instructor needs to speak louder in order for the boys in the room to hear her; and that boys’ visual systems are better at seeing action, while girls are better at seeing the nuance of color and texture. The social view is represented by teachers like Emily Wylie, who works at the Young Women’s Leadership School of East Harlem (T.Y.W.L.S.), an all-girls school for Grades 7-12. Wylie described her job to me by saying, "It’s my subversive mission to create all these strong girls who will then go out into the world and be astonished when people try to oppress them." Sax calls schools like T.Y.W.L.S. "anachronisms" — because, he says, they’re stuck in 1970s-era feminist ideology and they don’t base their pedagogy on the latest research. Few on the other side want to disparage Sax publicly, though T.Y.W.L.S.’s founder, Ann Tisch, did tell me pointedly, "Nobody is planning the days of our girls around a photograph of a brain."

The two camps face a common enemy in the A.C.L.U., which opposes all single-sex public education. (When I asked a lawyer at the A.C.L.U.’s Women’s Rights Project why, she said, "Have you ever heard of Title IX?" referring to the 1972 Education Amendments that outlaw all discrimination in educational programs on the basis of sex.) But that hasn’t brought the two sides together. "What kind of message does it give when you tell a group of kids that boys and girls need to be separated because they don’t even see or hear alike?" asks Rosemary Salomone, a legal scholar at St. John’s University School of Law.

Sax wrote a scathing rebuttal of Weil’s piece, Just the Facts, Please!!! – or, how the New York Times got this story all wrong, which, he claimed, misrepresented "my position; portraying me (Dr. Sax) as a ‘gender essentialist’."

Open Thread and Diary Rescue

Tonight's Rescue Rangers are Avila, ezdidit, jennyjem, Shayera, smokeymonkey, and ybruti, with srkp23 as editor.

• distributorcap offers a poignant remembrance of the Danes who stood in solidarity with their Jewish countrymen, in Holocaust Remembrance Day - May 1, 2008 -- Denmark and the Jews. (Avila)
• Avenging Angel has 10 Debate Questions John McCain Will Never Be Asked. (shayera)
• Four entries from the outstanding NOLA Blog-a-thon: YatPundit asks, When is it right to jettison a Democratic Officeholder? like Aaron Broussard (ezdidit); Mike Stagg reminds us that Katrina still offers a glaring example of Republican ideology gone wrong in Katrina, Rita and the GOP Crony Capitalism (smokeymonkey); mlharges traces Katrina survivors and Where They Were Found in the haunting, well-researched Extraordinary Measures, Part II (Avila); and chigh examines some of the emotional effects experienced by Katrina survivors in KATRINA LAND – THE LIFE OF YIN AND YANG. (Avila)
• testvet6778 happily reports that some string-pulling and arm-twisting have led to one Iraq War veteran getting proper care in Daily Kos posters help a vet with PTSD CBS does a story on him. One down... (jennyjem)
• mem from somerville highlights a very interesting request from the Army Surgeon General in Pentagon funds stem cell research. (shayera)
• Mentarch analyzes the fatal flaws of the Bush administration in this outstanding diary: Of Arrogance, Mendacity And Incompetence (Part I). (ybruti)
• mofembot reports on the hardships being faced world-wide by the rising cost of food in "You pick. Just feed them." (jennyjem)
• shirah continues a great series with this post, describing how the misinterpretation of data can be exploited as grounds for discontinuing the SCHIP program in Protecting Insurance Companies on the Backs of the Poor, Part 3. (jennyjem)
• OrangeClouds115 offers A Story From China where, just like here, a protest "can be virtually erased by a media that doesn't cover it or covers it but makes it sound 1/10th of its actual size." (ezdidit)
• natalie902 offers a vital action report on Women's Rights, Sex & Salary: the Senate to Vote on Ledbetter Fair Pay Act (S. 1843) Next Week. (ezdidit)

Enjoy and please promote your own favorite diaries in this open thread.

Clinton trashes MoveOn, Part II

Following up on Markos' earlier post on Hillary Clinton trashing MoveOn for opposing a war they didn't oppose and for encouraging people to vote, here's what Hillary had to say about the organization earlier in the campaign, before they endorsed Barack Obama:

Well again, I want to thank MoveOn for hosting the forum.  And I also want to thank you for being such lively participants in American democracy.  You started from the very fundamental premise that in our democracy everyone should have a voice and that given the power of the internet, we now have millions of voices that are part of our debates.  I personally welcome that because for nearly a decade you've been asking the tough questions, you've been demanding answers, you've been refusing to back down when any of us who are in political leadership are not living up to the standards that we should set for ourselves and that you expect from us.  I think you have helped to change the face of politics for the better, both online and in the corridors of power. So although some of your members may be a little surprised to hear me say this, I am grateful for your work.  I remember when you started and how important it was and I look forward to continuing our dialogue in the years ahead on the important issues facing our country and the world.  

Yesterday she was grateful for MoveOn changing politics for the better by giving a voice to millions of Americans, and today they're a group of intimidating thugs?  According to Harold Wolfson, yes:

Howard Wolfson, communications director for the Clinton campaign, verified the authenticity of the audio, and elaborated on Clinton's charge that these same party activists were engaged in acts of intimidation against her supporters: "There have been well documented instances of intimidation in the Nevada and the Texas caucuses, and it is a fact that while we have won 4 of the 5 largest primaries, where participation is greatest, Senator Obama has done better in caucuses than we have." About Clinton's remarks suggesting dismay over high Democratic activist turnout, Wolfson said, "I'll let my statement stand as is."

But as Celeste Fremon of Huffington Post notes:

In fact, the Nevada caucuses occurred prior to MoveOn's endorsement of Obama, and when Clinton made her remarks, the Texas caucuses had yet to take place.

The Clinton campaign scores a hat trick on this one; lying, hypocrisy and flip-flopping.  Score!